Artlantis Road-Show – Architosh Gets the Scoop!

It’s a sunny day in Providence, Rhode Island, and I’m on the phone with Chris Stringer, General Manager of Objects Online, the US and Canadian distributor for Abvent’s popular rendering and animation software Artlantis. We have gotten together to talk about the upcoming “Road Show” event the company–along with France-based Abvent–is promoting and taking to various cities in the United States and Canada over the next few months.

Artlantis Render 3.0 and Artlantis Studio 3 are some of the most capable software programs in their respective class and they are designed specifically for the visual needs of architectural professionals. Yet the French company behind the software has at times taken a somewhat laissez-faire approach toward the giant US market. This is about to change.

Road Show Details

AFR (Anthony Frausto-Robledo): What is the “Road Show” about? Why is Abvent and Objects Online doing this event now?

Chris Stringer, GM (CS): The Road Show is about showcasing Artlantis, a world-class rendering and animation software. It’s about getting the message out to the US market that Artlantis has the best combination of rendering and animation features available for architects, in an easy-to-use but powerful formula and that it works seamlessly with all the major CAD platforms, including Autodesk Revit, ArchiCAD, Vectorworks and others.

This is an example of the type of animation you can produce in Abvent’s Artlantis 3 Studio. Video courtesy of Abvent / Objects Online.

The Road Show will help us establish closer ties with our reseller network, bring in current customers for further training to make sure they are using the program’s full features to their advantage, and help us spread the word more about Artlantis’ great capabilities.

AFR: What kinds of things will the Road Show offer architects and designers? What will they learn?

CS: We are focusing on two types of events. The first event is the demo event which will present a detailed and captivating overview of Artlantis to the architectural community. There will also be an opportunity for questions and answers so architects can learn just how easy it is for Artlantis to fit into their design workflow and what advantages it offers.

The second event is longer and involves hands-on training for our current customers. Though it could also be valuable for advanced rendering users who are just starting with Artlantis. We will go through four to five exercises covering key elements on Artlantis, from setting up scenes, to working with textures and objects, to lighting and to economizing models.

About Artlantis

AFR: What do you feel are some of the best features in Artlantis Studio in the latest release?

CS: I would say that Artlantis has always been built on the strength of its preview render window. You always had that immediate interaction between changes to your scene and the results of those changes. You can drop in people, trees, change textures, lights, et cetera and right there in the preview window you get instant results.

AFR: This with Radiosity too?

CS: Yes, you have Artlantis’ superb Radiosity engine results…right there in the preview window. This is what makes Artlantis unique in the market.

AFR: Do you have to use Radiosity? Can you use another lighting method for even faster results?

Chris Stringer (CS): You don’t have to use Radiosity, but using it gives superior results, due in part to the way it now automatically balances light levels, much like the human eye does. You can use the faster global illumination engine instead, but you have to set up your lighting levels differently if you intend to create final renderings using that engine. The difference in quality is dramatic, though, and most users will probably prefer Radiosity. The expert rendering parameters give users the ability to create faster, lower-quality Radiosity renderings before it comes time to create the final renderings. There are also some new built-in post-processing rendering filters that generate some of the same quality effects offered in image-editing applications like Photoshop.

AFR: What are the system requirements like with Artlantis? Can you get great results with moderate-level Mac and Windows machines?

Next page: Continued more about Artlantis in detail and the Road Show

CS: The requirements for Artlantis are very reasonable, even lower than the official minimum system requirements. But Abvent and Objects Online want customers to be happy with their results and so we encourage users to always put as much hardware fire-power into a rendering system as they can afford.

We have iMacs setup here and we use them quite often to help troubleshoot issues that our clients are facing. The great thing about Artlantis is you can get great results with less than the fastest hardware on the market. It gives users great flexibility.

AFR: Can you talk about Detachable Anchor points in the latest release of Artlantis? Can you use them to rotate things like doors and create moving windows?

CS: Yes, that is exactly what they are useful for! You can detach objects in a scene and then establish an anchor point, a hinge line, et cetera and then setup the door to swing open. Or you might set up a light source to follow an object during an animation.

AFR: How easy is Artlantis to learn compared to other full featured rendering programs?

CS: On the spectrum it is on the easier side. There are certainly more powerful programs like Cinema 4D and 3ds Max, but those programs are much more complicated to use and harder to learn. Artlantis is streamlined for the architect.

AFR: Exactly how?

CS: It provides architects with the essentials they need to get the best quality renderings and animations out quickly, so they can compete for their commissions and win over their clients. It may not have all the bells and whistles of the bigger rendering packages, but it has the tools architects really need, like the Heliodon, for example, which allows for accurate sun and location settings. There are enhancements like animated water, clouds and skies that add natural beauty to a scene. And, of course, the Radiosity engine allows for quick scene set-up, fast rendering times, and stunning photo-realism. This is what architects need to visualize their work. And it comes at a lower price point and greater ease of use.

AFR: This program can allow you to animate both water, clouds and even people. Is that correct? How does water work?

CS: Yes. Artlantis supports the easy creation of animations of moving water, clouds that move as well as time-lapse sun light. The water works as a shader, with simple settings for ripple size, depth, and animation speed. It is very easy to do this and it creates a very convincing effect.

AFR: How do you get moving people, cars and objects in Artlantis rendered animations?

CS: People are third-party objects with built-in preset behaviors. You define keyframes for the start and stop points of the behavior, then a path of travel for these objects. The people gesture, walk or run using realistic motion-captured sequences for their movements. Arms sway, legs move, et cetera. For other objects, you again set keyframes and any changes in position, scale, rotation, lighting, et cetera.

AFR: What are some of the very advanced sophisticated things you can easily do with Artlantis?

CS: With Artlantis Studio you can create animations where doors swing or slide open as you enter a room, where lights dim and go on and off. We also offer “seasonally aware” plants so you can automatically adjust plant foliage in different renderings, or even watch the change of seasons in a single time-lapse movie you create by simply changing the Heliodon’s date settings in the animation timeline. We also now support transparency of objects like people and trees. This gives you better control over the final presentation, to keep the focus on what’s important–the architecture.

The new layer capabilities in Artlantis give you the ability to easily manage different layers of information to present, for example, different layouts or furniture schemes, or to economize what is visible and rendered in, say, an interior view vs. an exterior view. Similarly, you can assign different light groups and Heliodon settings independently to each camera view, to more easily create a variety of different types of lighting schemes and environments that can be queued and batch rendered.

Next page: Third-party support and another Quicktime flyby with moving people.

Artlantis Third-Party Support

AFR: That sounds great. Artlantis now supports a plugin for Revit, is that correct?

CS: Yes. Autodesk Revit is now supported with a dedicated plugin. This is a plugin you install in Revit and then you can export your Revit models directly out into Artlantis format. We also have plugins for ArchiCAD, SketchUp and Vectorworks.

AFR: Does Artlantis support objects from third-parties like Google Warehouse and others?

CS: Yes, you can open Google Warehouse SketchUp SKP files directly into Artlantis without a plugin. The same native file support is available for DWG, DXF, DWF, OBJ, FBX and 3DS formats. We offer a myriad of objects from various vendors like Dosch Design, for example, because Artlantis supports so many file formats. Even if you are working in a high-end 3D package like Cinema 4D or Rhino, you can bring in complex models you can’t build in typical CAD or BIM packages and easily render them in Artlantis.

Final Details – Signing Up for the Road Show

AFR: What is your personal favorite feature in Artlantis 3?

CS: I think the postcard feature is wonderful. A postcard is an enhanced JPEG file, created from a scene you have completed and would like to use for future reference. The postcard stores information about the materials used in that scene. When working in a different scene or even a completely different project, you can open a saved postcard, click on any material visible in the postcard, and drag and drop it onto any visible surface in the preview window of the active project. It is a very efficient way to store and re-use a library of materials on a project basis.

This is an example animation third-party walking people are employed. You can see how much an animation may come to life with moving people.

AFR: When does the Road Show Start and how do people sign up?

CS: The Road Show kicks off in Boston on May 23rd. Both the free Artlantis demonstration events and the training events play out in each major city we hit on the road. The demonstration events are about an hour long and you will see some wonderful things. The hands-on trainings will last about 4 hours. We are starting in Boston, hitting San Francisco, Vancouver, Washington DC, Baltimore and other locations. You can learn more by visiting the schedule page.

AFR: Chris thanks for talking to us about the Artlantis Road Show Event.

CS: You are very welcome.