Artlantis R is an advanced rendering and animation product aimed at the architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, interiors, and industrial design visualization markets. The program has many relationships with architectural CAD and modeling programs, including a new plugin relationship with SketchUp.

It features a comprehensive shader library which can be customized and added to by the user. Additionally, the company features additional shader libraries on CD-ROM. Users can add their own textures to the library and then drag and drop them onto their objects.

Getting Your Model in Artlantis R

Artlantis R is a pure rendering application which requires the user to obtain his model from another application. ABVENT has had working partnerships with many companies over the years and two of those have been the historical leaders in computer-aided design (CAD) on the Macintosh platform: Graphisoft (ArchiCAD) and Nemetschek NA (VectorWorks). In partnering with Artlantis R those partnerships have been extended to Google's (formerly @Last Software's) SketchUp Pro 5 application; and last but not least you can import models in from Autodesk formats DWG, DXF and 3DS (studio max format).

The plugins required for ArchiCAD, SketchUp and VectorWorks must be downloaded from the ABVENT website, a small downside, but no big deal. Once you have a plugin installed correctly in your application of choice, you can export out or render out to the Artlantis file format (ATL). In the view below (see image 01) you can see various Artlantis options under the Rendering submenu in VectorWorks. Generally each plugin will specialize the options such as layer, grouping or class structures into object logical assignments.

01 - Artlantis R Plugin Adds Export Out Options to VectorWorks

In the case of a program like VectorWorks, you can choose to differentiate your objects in Artlantis R by their Class assignment in VectorWorks or by previously assigned textures, applied in this CAD application. ArchiCAD, SketchUp and VectorWorks all work a bit differently but in essence they generate the same result: a workable model in the .ATL file format. (see image 02).

02 - Artlantis Preferences in Plugin

For those unfamiliar to this process, it should be stated that managing this type of CAD to rendering application integration is not too difficult, the manual explains this process clearly.

Model Update Feature

It should also be stated that Artlantis R's capabilities with this type of integration include the all important ability to update a model after you have fully scene-produced it. That is, you can go back to your CAD application, change the model, then instantly update your original Artlantis scene file with the newly changed model data without having to resign any textures, create lights, add backgrounds or objects, et cetera.

Next: Working in Artlantis R

next page > | 1 | 2 | 3 |