ENSCAPE FOR MAC SKETCHUP IS THE FIRST VERSION of the popular Enscape rendering application that runs natively on Mac computers. The German software interactive rendering tool has been mentioned and written about many times at Architosh, but this is our first product review. 

In our typical style, when we write the first review of an application, we make part of the review instructive and introductory. And we share our experiences learning and getting familiar with the application ourselves as part of our review process. 

Enscape for Mac for SketchUp runs as a plugin for Mac SketchUp users. Enscape is always a plugin—not a standalone render app—and currently, there are versions of Enscape for Archicad, Revit, Rhino, SketchUp, and Vectorworks. All of these, except SketchUp, are Windows-only versions at the moment. 

Enscape Basics

Installing the Enscape plugin for SketchUp for Mac is quite straightforward.  Once installed, you will find an Enscape tools palette and an Enscape menu under the Extensions menu in SketchUp. (see images 01 – 2)

UX Topics

The user experience of Enscape for SketchUp is thus: model like normal in SketchUp. To launch Enscape, click on the Start Enscape button at the top of the Enscape toolbar. This action launches the separate Enscape rendering viewport window. Next, move the window to the side of your SketchUp window so you can see both simultaneously. (Image 01)

Image 01 — Enscape for Mac SketchUp. SketchUp on the left and the Enscape window on the right. The Enscape toolbar is floating over the Enscape window. An Enscape menu is under the Extensions menu item in SketchUp. (click on images to make them larger, typical)

The next button on the Enscape toolbar (2nd one down from the top) is the Live Updates button. Click on this button to enable you to model in SketchUp and see those changes instantly in the Enscape window. (Image 02)

Image 02 — The Enscape toolbar is shown in SketchUp for Mac with Enscape renderer. The SketchUp window must be active for the Enscape menu to show. If you click on the Enscape window for any reason, the Enscape toolbar vanishes. Make SketchUp active again by clicking on it, and the Enscape toolbar re-appears. The buttons discussed start at the top and work down.

The third button down is the Synchronize function which means all window navigation and view changes in SketchUp get mirrored (reflected) in the Enscape window. (see image 04 and notice that the model is the same orientation in both windows). Note the shaded buttons. 

Skip the 4th button. The 5th button looks like a black circle with a plus sign and is for Enscape lights (more below). The 6th button looks like a tree, and this brings up the Asset Library (more on this later). The 7th button looks like a materials editor, a common symbol in rendering tools. We get into this in the next section. 

The 8th button is the Uploads Manager, and there you manage panos and web standalone renderings, and we will cover this under the Rendering section below. The final buttons in the toolbar are for app preferences or settings, feedback, and license and version info. (Image 02)

Navigation

Navigating your Enscape rendered model will take some practice, but it is mostly straightforward. The first thing to learn is that synchronization is your friend. In other words, rely on using your developed navigation skills in SketchUp to manipulate the Enscape window’s camera position. Rely on this until you fully master the Enscape navigation tools. 

If your model looks different or far away in the Enscape window or has vanished, click once on the Synchronization button (third button from the top, image 02). This snaps the model into the same camera view as SketchUp. 

Image 03 — How navigation works in Enscape’s window–synchronization off.

Image 04 — How navigation works in Enscape’s window–synchronization on.

Every time you launch Enscape, a How To Get Started window pops up, providing pointers on navigation, most importantly. Use the keyboard keys A, S, D, and W to move left (A), right (D), forward (W), and back (S). This same navigation works with the arrow keys. 

You can speed up these movements in the Settings for Enscape access via the gear icon in the main Enscape window. (See the movie below and image 05.)

Image 05 — Enscape Window Settings.

A left mouse click rotates the object model around the viewport; a right mouse click orbits the viewport camera around the object model. Getting good at using these will quickly position you anywhere in the model in the Enscape window. To change the time of day and hence the sunlight, add the Shift key with a right mouse click and drag right or left to move the time.

In this movie, we can experience Enscape walk-thru / fly-thru animation.

To do a fly-thru or walk-thru experience, you simultaneously use both the navigation keys and the left mouse button. See the movie inline above for an example of the fluidity of navigation possible. 

Enscape Window Icons

From the top left, the icons are Home Mode, Collaborative Annotation, BIM Mode, View Management, Video Editor, Screen Shot, Mono Panorama, and Web Standalone. (image 06 below)

Image 06 — The Enscape upper toolbar in the Enscape window.

Working from the opposite direction on the right, Help Pane, Enscape Window Settings, Visual Settings, VR, Navigation Mode, Project Mode, Safe Frame, and Minimap round out the Enscape window top buttons.  

Image 07 — Enscape’s minimap is shown in the upper left corner of the right Enscape window.

We will touch on a few key tools for now. If you create SketchUp Scenes, these automatically sync with Enscape and appear under the View Management icon (left side). You can toggle between SketchUp scenes. This is a handy feature. 

Every Enscape window has its own settings; you access them from the gear icon (right side buttons). These control the mouse speed, smoothing, and movement speed. They also determine the default camera height reference. 

I will touch on other controls below. This covers the basics, and the SketchUp user is likely anxious to understand how to address materials, lighting, and explore rendering options. 

next page: Lighting, Materials and Objects in Enscape for Mac

The post Product Review: Enscape for Mac SketchUp appeared first on Architosh.

It has been since August of 2014 that we last published a review of SketchUp and in that version (SketchUp 2014) the big news was the support of Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) file format in the world’s most popular 3D modeler. Since that time a lot has taken place in the world of SketchUp. For starters, while IFC export was new in SketchUp 2014 when we reviewed it that year, somewhere along the way IFC import was also supported. (We’ll mention more notes on BIM and SketchUp toward the ends of the review).

Also new since our last review six years ago, Trimble acquired Sefaira, the popular energy analysis software that works with BIM tools and SketchUp models. These tools are now included in what is known as SketchUp Studio, Trimble’s flagship version of the software. SketchUp Pro is still the most popular version of the software used in AEC workflows, while SketchUp Free and SketchUp Shop are versions for personal use.

Ecosystem vs Modeler

We noted in our 2014 review that there really weren’t any major new modeling functionalities added to SketchUp compared to prior versions. Trimble’s development efforts over the years have largely been focused on other areas; in some regard, SketchUp as a modeler is fully matured for what the company wants in its core capabilities. In other words, the assumption is that Trimble is letting third parties tackle more advanced features in modeling powers. When I asked Hariharan Natarajan, Customer Success Manager, Trimble, if this assumption was correct he confirmed by saying that “there are lots of specialties and types of users of SketchUp and they all have unique needs.”

And in mentioning the vast ecosystem known as Extension Warehouse, he says, “So we have created a platform that SketchUp users can plug into and just self-serve,” meaning that what users get today with SketchUp is a powerful and popular 3D modeler where they can direct their attention to thousands of extensions written by third-parties to tailor SketchUp to their specific purposes.

Insofar as architects are concerned, or even AEC users at large, that subject of Ecosystem versus Modeler is one Architosh will have to in full force in another article. Our primary goal with this review is to review SketchUp Studio, which encapsulates SketchUp Pro and Sefaira and to partly introduce the reader to Sefaira’s energy and daylight analysis features.

But first, let’s review the new in SketchUp 2020.

New in SketchUp 2020

Tags Not Layers

The big new change in version 2020 of SketchUp is that layers are now renamed as “tags.” One might think that renaming something is hardly much of a change, but in truth, there is much more to this adjustment. Let’s talk about why this is.

“Layers” was always the wrong word in SketchUp. In other 3D, CAD, and BIM software programs, the use of “layers” tends to mean more than just controlling visibility. Layers tend to represent the structure, order, and the protection and visibility of objects. The way you protect, structure, and organize objects in SketchUp is through groups and components, in addition to layers, now named tags.

The improved Outliner palette dovetails with Trimble’s decision to call rename the Layers palette Tags and encourages users to use the Outliner for structuring their model by groups and components. Now it is not necessary to use hundreds of formerly called “layers” to structure your SketchUp model.

Moreover, an important new feature in Layers 2020 is the ability to control the visibility of objects by tag from the Tags control palette. Speaking of palettes, in Layout 2020, they have been updated; users now can control various aspects of viewports without affecting other viewports.

In version 2020, the formerly called Layers palette is only renamed (to Tags) and other aspects largely remain the same. Still, Trimble wants users to now organize and provide structure for their models not by having zillions of layers but by using the Tags palette in conjunction with updates to the Outliner palette.

Outliner

Outliner now features small but significant changes. A new eyeball icon enables the user to control the visibilities of groups and components in your model. In this way, Outliner works similarly to many other professional 3D modeling, rendering, and animation tools. A model in SketchUp can consist of nested groups within groups. But with the new Outliner, the user has visibility control of these hierarchies.

These “groups” and “components” in Outliner can be renamed—and it is advised that you do. By naming groups and components in Outliner, you can now tap the power of the search tool to filter for specific items in your model. A single click on the word “Group” in the Outliner should give you that field in blank-form so you can rename it.

In this image, I have isolated all things in the Outliner that match the search term “slats” including groups name as such inside of the “unnamed” group.

For example, I was able to name wood shading devices on this model “Wood Slats” and searching by slats helped me isolate these objects in the model. One thing I did discover however is that when you search (filter) by a word or name, only those groups or sub-groups with that naming match will appear. This can be detrimental in some instances. For the wood slat shading devices, I created in this modern house (see the image above and below), naming every single piece or board can be time-consuming and also disruptive to your workflow. But what if I want to show what that shading panel looks like with every other board not there? That’s where the problem comes in. If I search the Outliner for “slats” it finds all the wood slat groups in the model but doesn’t let me see into groups nested in these main groups because they are not named and thus cannot match “slats” in the search field.

Sometimes this default control is good; in this case, it is bad. It robs me of the new power of the Outliner. A simple toggle button named “View Sub-Groups” in the Outliner would let me turn off and on the ability to see what is nested inside a group without having to have an exact match in the Outliner’s search field. It is impractical to assume or to make users name every single group nested inside other groups.

And finally, speaking of naming. If I have named groups “slats” I can find them with the letters “slat.” I don’t have to have all the letters match exactly. This is another interesting control level that Trimble might put into the hands of users—exact match versus partial match.

Inside the improved Outliner, the user can not only control the visibility of each group or component but can also control such visibility of nested groups, individually adjusting visibility by sub-item. Additionally, double-clicking on a group or component name while the eyeball icon is unselected will “ghost” the objects in that group or component, including all nested objects, as seen in this image.

One final important point about Outliner. When you select a tag in the Tags palette and make it invisible (previously known as making a Layer invisible) the groups and components assigned that tag do not fully disappear in the Outliner. Instead, they show up grayed out but selectable.

Other Items and Layout

There are other minor improvements in the basic functionalities of SketchUp 2020 but these items are the biggest and most important features. Layout 2020’s big new feature is the changes to the Tag and Outliner palettes and the new visibility controls in Outliner in conjunction with how things get structured in models. Layout 2020 is also faster at viewing larger models and has numerous small improvements.

Now let’s look at Sefaira, our primary star feature set in SketchUp Studio 2020.

next page: Sefaira Tools

The post Product Review: Trimble SketchUp Studio 2020 appeared first on Architosh.

At Autodesk University 2019, back in November of 2019, Anthony and I got a peek into this version. We were so excited by what we saw that the Twinmotion 2020 review became a bit of a group effort, with Anthony—along with my husband, Kevin Cahill, an architect, visualization, and VFX Hollywood professional—all contributing to the evaluation. Anthony provided additional insight and the pros and cons section at the end. Let’s get into it!

Twinmotion 2020 Intro

Initially, Twinmotion was created by French Visualization Studio KA-RA. It was created as a way for architects with limited 3D experience to create stunning still or animated renders for clients. After a brief partnership with the French AEC software company, Abvent, Epic Games acquired Twinmotion in 2019.

Twinmotion 2020 is a real-time immersive 3D architecture visualization tool for efficiently producing high-quality images, panoramas, and standard or 360 VR videos quickly without long render times. Twinmotion combines an easy to use interface with the power of the Unreal Engine 4. It is available for both Mac and PC.

Twinmotion 2020 has many enhanced visuals due to new Unreal Engine features like a physically-based sky and sun model and more realistic vegetation.

Twinmotion is also a great stepping stone for the Unreal Engine environment, and in the future, we hope there is a direct link between Twinmotion and Unreal Engine. It should be stated that being built on one of the world’s top game engines, the exposure Twinmotion has is massive. There are over 436,000 registered users since May 2019, a comparable worth noting as Unreal Engine 4 itself has over 7.5 million downloads. Epic itself is now claiming that Twinmotion is the number one real-time rendering solution used in both architecture and production and the number one rendering solution being tested in all aspects of different creative industries. Importantly for the Architosh’s legacy audience—and this has been noted several times before—it is the only real-time rendering solution native on the Mac platform in addition to Windows, leaving Bentley’s LumenRT and the very worthy Lumion exclusive to the Windows platform.

New Features in 2020 Version

Twinmotion 2020 is based on the 4.24 release of the Unreal Engine, with new volumetric light tools and screen-space global illumination (GI). There is also a new physically-based atmospheric sun and sky model (recently just added to Unreal Engine) and cinematic depth of field (DoF). Kevin, who has been using Twinmotion in archviz production work, noted that color bleed issues from the sun seem to be better if not very much solved entirely.

An example of the Depth of Field features in Twinmotion 2020.

At at a foundation level, the UI/UX is roughly the same though there are several improvements in this area related to feature groups we will discuss in a moment. Twinmotion 2020, like all versions, seeks to deliver professional quality images using an interface that the average architect or non-visualization pro can learn quickly. Some items in the UI are hidden on purpose to simplify the workflow; the challenge for the photo-realistic rendering entrant is remembering what tools exist in the more hidden portions of the UI and learning the logic of why they are there in the first place.

Vegetation Improvements

Vegetation assets are much improved in this 2020 release, being upgraded in polycount from tree models from XfrogPlants collections and brushes from Megascans Library (acquired by Epic in 2019). The selections of vegetation are mostly excellent, a lack of southwestern plants and cacti notwithstanding. Phoenix and Los Angeles architects may get a wee bit frustrated but Epic has already heard about this feedback so we expect a redress soon.

You can now blend different grasses into a vegetation layer and edit their individual characteristics rather than re-apply vegetation adjustments with the brush tools.

Epic seems to have made two primary improvements in this department. One, the image quality is much improved (as already noted). Second, it is now easier and faster to place vegetation and in a more realistic way.

Vegetation scattering uses a brush-based system giving users the ability to paint trees, bushes, and grasses quickly. Painting layers make it possible now to add items to the layer, place them with the brush, and then go back and edit the items on the layer. You can control the growth of your vegetation by selecting the plant or group and using sliders to cycle through the age (and thus usually height, width) of your vegetation.

Trees in Twinmotion 2020 now scale by age intelligently and more realistically, not just by geometry.

New in this release, when you age your trees in particular, they don’t just scale the geometry up and down but change as the tree would actually change over time. When you add trees to a paint layer, you can add two copies of the same tree and individually select and edit its settings, like age (height) and density. You can quickly create more realistic site environs by painting this layer with a brush and then adding species variety to it and then tweaking the settings of each item in the layer to create scale and density diversity.

This also works with grass, both turf type, and wild variety. And speaking of grasses, a new setting tells Twinmotion 2020 to fade the grass as you zoom further away from it, thereby saving your processor resources. There are different distance settings for this. Grasses are processor-intensive so this greatly aids in keeping Twinmotion 2020 running smoothly.

Finally, vegetation works more realistically in animations, including when wind runs through leaves on plants and trees.

next page: Lighting, People, BIM and Other Improvements

The post Product Review: Twinmotion 2020 appeared first on Architosh.

How long has it been? This may surprise you but Architosh last reviewed Strata’s software back in 2003, when Akiko Ashley, senior associate editor, reviewed Strata 3D Pro 3.8. Needless to say, there has been a lot going on with this company over the last decade and a half so a quick little history will set the table for this review well.

First Some History

Strata itself was among the first wave of 3D graphics applications that arrived on desktop Macs at the tail end of the 1980’s, with a product known as StrataVision. In the early 90’s Strata 3D Pro emerged and StrataVision became the little sister app. It would end at version 5 in 1998. By the mid-90’s Strata 3D was a household name in the 3D and CAD software space and CAD tools, like MiniCAD, often had export options to bring models into native Strata file format.

01 – Strata’s Strata 3D CX 8.1 still comes beautifully wrapped in one of the 3D industry’s best user-interfaces. It follows a classic MacDraw and classic Adobe app UI format which will be familiar to many Mac and Adobe users.

As CAD tools eventually developed their own native rendering features Strata fell out of use somewhat in the architectural rendering market but it successfully pivoted into new areas to extend growth—particularly packing design, product design, and as a 3D extension for graphics illustrators. To this last group, in particular, Strata tuned its UI and UX to feel familiar to Adobe’s legendary product line and this helped both attract graphics artists to the world of 3D but also helped in ease-of-use, which was always one of its most appealing factors.

Strata Design 3D CX 8.1 Today

For most, if not all of its life, Strata 3D has operated in the sub-thousand dollar category; Strata has never essentially competed with the tier one professional 3D studio applications, in the current era, like Maya or 3ds max, which operate and cost at much higher levels. Those applications are often judged as overkill for the types of architects, graphic designers, and environmental design professionals that need to work in 3D. Strata Design 3D CX 8.1 is just under $600.USD, and at that price packs one of the bigger punches in the industry.

When we last reviewed Strata we noted that it has long been known for its high-quality rendering. It has long had a radiosity engine of particular note and a high-quality and fast raytracer as well. And this is a good place to start.

Rendering. While Strata today still features its high-quality radiosity engine, the big news in the dot 1 release of Strata 8 (we will simplify its long name now until the end of the article) is the integration of the Embree raycasting engine developed by Intel. This engine helps identify if any ray intersects any geometry in a 3D scene and speeds the process endemic to Monte Carlo ray tracing. Embree is more technically a set of kernels that are highly optimized for Intel processors. Offering up to 800 percent speed-up on CPU-bound rendering the Embree integration is absolutely nothing to sneeze at.

02 – Strata 3D’s integration of Intel’s Embree technology leads to faster more beautiful rendering results. (image: Chris Tyler/Strata. All rights reserved.)

Rendering has come a long way over the years with Strata but this version 8.1 release in general added quite a few higher-level capabilities typically found in tier-one 3D software packages. One of those features is support for OpenEXR which offers high-precision floating-point color output. In both 8 or 16-bit color, white is always white. This is a valuable feature because humans don’t perceive light 100 percent accurately. Our eyes and brain see into darker areas with a bit more light than is actually there. Back at version 7.5, render output could be taken into Photoshop and the 2.2 gamma correction could be applied. Now you don’t need to; the new 2.2 Gamma function approximates how humans actually perceive light.

Other aspects of rendering in Strata 8 include the new 64-bit support in the app. This is clearly the most important update affecting rendering and scene capacity. You can load vastly larger scenes in version 8.1 than in the prior major release. With a scene like 10 million polygons, the app will use 8 GB of RAM. With the old 32-bit limit in Strata, users were capped at 3 GB’s of RAM. To be honest, Strata is a bit late to 64-bit support but it’s here now and longtime users (as well as new users) are bound to be thrilled.

03 – Strata’s onboard help system and help tools are practically unrivaled. Notice in the system above all the options (most have videos) and the sub-options just under Fundamentals. We are big fans of video tutorials, as longtime readers know, and Strata has very good product manuals and tutorials as well.

LiveRay is a new rendering feature aimed at allowing rapid raytracing during typical workflows where OpenGL would not suffice to show you complex texturing setups—the kind that are typical of product packaging in many cases. New anti-aliasing technology also exists in version 8.1 as well as interactive rendering image adjustment. This last feature means you can adjust the gamma, brightness, or black point during or after the rendering process. There are other smaller improvements in the domain of rendering, including better interactive lighting in OpenGL.

Modeling. In our last review of Strata, we structured the article around common core workflow areas in a 3D software package (e.g., modeling, rendering, animation). Keeping to that format, we’ll briefly touch on modeling next. For version 8, Strata didn’t really offer any new modeling features, so let’s recap what modeling features it does have since our last review was so long ago. From way back, Strata had a complete set of modeling tools—tools for splines, polygons, lathing, skinning, extruding, sweeping, metaballs, and the all important Booleans. In 2011 the company added a brand new Boolean engine and subdivision surfacing modeling enhancements (for version 7). Then in 2013 the company upgraded its modeling feature set further with items like a polymesh conversion tool and range of UV mapping enhancements.

While Strata’s modeling tools are substantial, there are other ways to get your model into Strata without literally modeling therein. Strata supports import and export of Autodesk’s DXF (but not DWG) as well as 3DS (import), OBJ (in/out), STL (in/out), Collada (in/out), and legacy support for MiniCAD (in), and Amapi (in/out). From an architectural (AEC world) standpoint, this is far too minimal. It really should support the extremely popular SketchUp file format, at least inbound, at a bare minimum, and it may want to consider Rhino as well.

Why do we say this? Well, take a look at the rendering quality in the image below. As you can see, Strata can produce stunning results for architectural environments. But these days AEC tools are already working in in 3D, a trend well documented here on Architosh.

04 – Another stunning architectural rendering by Chris Tyler, who is a Strata god. This entire scene was likely completely constructed in Strata 3D as well. (Image: Chris Tyler, All rights reserved)

When we learn of these limitations, we are sort of surprised given that Strata was one of the earliest strongest architectural rendering programs and there are still a lot of excellent work being done in AEC with this tool. A quick look at their Image Showcase proves this point. Given the superb work being done with package and product design— the true sweet spot of this application’s strength—a Rhino import feature would be fantastic given that tool is popular with industrial designers. However, Rhino users are often quite sophisticated, and there are dozens of rendering options for Rhino-driven workflows as well.

A better decision might be to support SketchUp as these days SketchUp has become the de facto modeling baseline in the architectural world. It is also very popular with “makers, ” and the invention and garage fabrication crowd would likely appreciate Strata’s texture mapping features for product graphics, decals, packaging, et cetera.

next page: Texturing, Lighting, Animation and more…

The post Product Review: Strata 3D CX 8.1 appeared first on Architosh.

What’s New in Mudbox 2012

Autodesk Mudbox 2012 continues to advance itself and in this year’s release the design software giant added support for 64-bit Linux in addition to Windows and Mac OS X 10.6.x support. In this update Autodesk touched on all three major areas of Mudbox (sculpting, painting and posing) adding useful improvements, but in general the largest updates are concentrated in the area of 3D painting and posing.

Before we get into those we’ll briefly touch on some general improvements. Version 2011 added 64-bit support for Mac and now as we mentioned we have the same for Linux. A big new improvement in this update is the ability to create and edit stencils. You can bring in images to use for stencils directly from the Mac clipboard.

Autodesk also has introduced new single-step “round-trip” workflows for other related Autodesk software, such as: Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Softimage. Imagining a scene origin from your DCC software of choice, you can export to Mudbox to add painting or sculpting effects and detail and then merge back to your digital content creation (DCC) software. That improves work flows for those working with Autodesk DCC suites. There is a new Send To option in the File menu.

Another useful and related new feature is the new Maya-like “Hot Menus” introduced in Mudbox 2012. Clicking the spacebar quickly creates a “heads-up” hot menu system. For whose who do not use such menu systems it may take getting use to. (see image 01).

01 – Autodesk Mudbox 2012 features new “heads-up” Maya-like hot menu system.

Some significant minor changes include the ability to use tools like Grab and Pinch to manipulate stencils to more closely conform to the shape of your model. There are new selection tools with region and lasso modes. This gives you more control over how you control your model. (see image 02).

02 – Mudbox 2012 features expanded selection tools with new lasso and region modes.

There are two new Grab brush options–Grab Silhouette and Follow Path–that allow you to create innovative new shapes. And this release vastly improves on texture data sets.

next page: Painting Improvements

The post Product Review: Autodesk Mudbox 2012 appeared first on Architosh.

First a Few Notes About Vectorworks

Vectorworks is the all-around CAD program for architects, landscape architects, civil engineers, mechanical and electrical engineers, theater lighting designers and design in general. From the standpoint of graphics, Vectorworks can be a one stop shop for an architectural office.  It’s a design tool, a production tool and a rendering tool that can also be used for most of the graphic layouts an architect might need.

Vectorworks is well regarded for its short learning curve compared to other CAD programs. Design can be done all in 3D and those 3D drawings will be or can be the same drawings that become the 2D drawings making up the production drawing set.  Client presentations can be rendered printouts, animations, walk-throughs, or even real time views of a 3D model taken on one’s laptop to a client meeting.  And if one needs to do a graphic presentation, a competition board for example, pictures, text, 2D and 3D drawings can all be composed and printed right in the program.

Vectorworks 2011

Nemetschek North America changed its name last year to Nemetschek Vectorworks. Most in the industry, including its users, saw that as a good sign–a sign that they really want to identify with it (the Vectorworks brand) and thus make it the best they can.

The biggest bit of news in Vectorworks 2011 is that they have replaced the rendering engine in Renderworks with the Cinema 4D render engine.  And they have created an easy integration with the actual Cinema 4D program.  This is a really big improvement especially for anyone wanting to take their models to a very high level. The company claims a 5 to 7 times increase in speed. However, we did not verify this in any tests in this review.

The other big feature change is what they call 2D/3D integration.  Vectorworks has for a long time been a very flexible program allowing one to create just about any 3D form.  But now with this integration of 2D and 3D the program is even more flexible and easier to use for preliminary design.  I know there are people who design in SketchUp and import into Vectorworks. Vectorworks’ new modeling technology, with its improved Push/Pull tool, will begin to enable experienced SketchUp and Vectorworks users to simply model all in Vectorworks 2011. We will spend some time digging into the new 2D/3D integration and modeling features as well as many other improvements in the full review.

New Improved 3D Environment

There are some stunning improvements to the new unified 2D/3D environment in Vectorworks 2011. The most important is the way 2D objects can now be drawn in 3D views, complete with text creation and editing abilities.

Most experienced Vectorworks users will delight in the ability and flexibility to manipulate planar objects in various 3D views. Architects and engineers for example might develop connection details in axon views complete with dimensions and extruded connections and members. (see images 01 – 03)

01 – The new unified 2D/3D environment allows all 2D objects, including hatches, fills and gradients inside objects to be planar objects which can be displayed in 3D.

02 –  In order to maintain associative dimensions one must associate the dimension to the 2D planar object prior to it forming the basis of a 3D object.

03 – This axon view was actually rotated. Notice how the text and leader lines exist in 3D. They were drawn on the workplane which was set to the face of the column.

Vectorworks 2011 allows you to work with text blocks in 3D just like in 2D. One caveat however. If you create a viewport of a 3D view or 3D object, you cannot place text in 3D in the annotation layer of the viewport. Therefore, you must first add that text on a design layer prior to the creation of the viewport. That is the method for establishing a detail like above. (see third image above).

Vectorworks 2011 now allows you to utilize, view and edit fills, gradients and hatches in isometric views. This will greatly expand the possibilities for presentation drawings.

The post Product Review: Vectorworks Architect 2011 appeared first on Architosh.

Autodesk acquired Skymatter Inc. in the summer of 2007 and have taken over development since then, releasing versions in 2009, 2010 and now 2011 (released earlier this year).

The What of Mudbox

Mudbox is a digital sculpting 3D software program with several different uses. In the visual-effects (VFX) industry Mudbox’s primary value is in creating high-resolution digital sculptures of creatures, characters and terrain. It is also a capable 3D painting tool and a tool for the creation of displacement and normal maps. 3D artists from hobbyist to studio professionals and animators can tap Autodesk Mudbox’s power and ease of use for rapid 3d sculpting.

What is powerful and useful about Mudbox is it utilizes 3D meshes and supports Catmull-Clark subdivision of mesh polys. One can work swiftly with a low-poly count mesh even after creating several surface subdivisions. The program blends into Autodesk’s arsenal of 3D applications nicely borrowing interface design coloring and features and works particularly well with Autodesk Maya in addition to Adobe Photoshop.

An Introduction

Mudbox 2011 features an updated user-interface that primarily changes in that it utilizes the same color scheme as Maya and Autodesk-related software packages. The Mudbox 2011 UI features a simple tabbed structure, a large primary 3d view window wrapped by layer, object and properties control palettes and tool and material trays at the bottom. (see image 01 below) The program has a very nice HUD (head’s up display) implementation within the primary 3d view window delivering key contextual messaging.

01 – Autodesk Mudbox 2011 has a very clean interface, relates well aesthetically to other Autodesk Media and Entertainment division software packages, such as Maya and Max.

When you open up Mudbox 2011 you are presented with a Welcome window overlaying the UI. (see image 01 above) The primary benefit of this window is to choose a template mesh. Mudbox speeds up character and object 3d modeling creation by providing templates such as a human head (bust), a bull, a human body, a cube or ball, et cetera. Also within this window are a series of video tutorials and quick start guides.

There are three primary functional areas in Mudbox: sculpting, painting and posing. In this release, the biggest new changes are in the introduction of a posing toolset and 3D painting.

As a general introduction, a model is chosen from a template form. This can be a humanoid, an animal, or basic form like a cube or sphere (as shown below, see image 02). When modeling you use the sculpt tools to create a basic sculpt stroke. This will produce either a positive addition or negative subtraction to the model’s mesh body. With each stroke of the sculpt tool, vertices on the mesh are affected. There are simple controls for the size and strength of the stroke using keyboard shortcuts with the tool. Another key aspect of sculpting is the degree of subdivision to the mesh itself. Mudbox 2011 allows for continued degrees of subdivision of the mesh, thereby increasing or decreasing the subtly of each tools’ deformations on the model.

02 – With various sculpting tools one can modify basic elements and increase subdivision levels.

03 – Mudbox features non-destructive sculpting layers and you can blend sculpt layers together.

When you sculpt in Mudbox you do so on “sculpt layers.” (see image 03) Mudbox calculates the differences between vertices after a stroke tool and records that difference (delta) on the layer. Deltas for all other layers are added up to arrive at the final shape of a model. Sculpt layers in Mudbox 2011 do not need to be in any stacking order because sculpt layers combine in an additive manner.

As you can see in the image above (see image 03), sculpt layers have opacity. Increasing the opacity amplifies the sculpting on that layer, while reducing it decreases the amplification.

04 – You can sculpt in Mudbox 2011 using stencils.

Mudbox already had stencil and stamp modeling in the previous version. With stencils Mudbox utilizes images to apply interesting sculpted details to the model. It does so by corresponding black pixels and white pixels differently to the affect of the tool. White values allow the tool to pass through and affect the model while black values don’t. In the image above the spiky hair on the human head was created using a stencil affect in the modeling. (see image 04).

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For those 3D users following US design software juggernault Autodesk, and their continued acquisitions, there have been some concerns that the healthy and competitive field of high-end 3D packages might collapse down with product integration. We have reported on Architosh that Autodesk states they have no such plans. But even if they did, rest assured that there are still several independent top-notch tool sets that vie heavily for technical dominance in this field. Maxon’s Cinema 4D is one of them.

In a previous review we took a broader look at the application. This review will be solely focused on the use of C4D AE v11 in the AEC visualization space. Maxon is a subsidiary company of German AEC software giant Nemetschek AG. As such it is a sister-company application to two leading BIM/CAD applications also under the German software giant’s umbrella: ArchiCAD and Vectorworks Architect. It also is a sister application to Nemetschek AG’s own ALLPLAN BIM software, the leading BIM software in Germany.

01 – C4D R11 has excellent built-in detection of new software with a streamlined ability to download updates including key plugins and updated help files.

From this view C4D AE 11 is made to work hand-in-glove with all three of these BIM packages. The product ships with plugin modules to support files from these BIM applications directly into C4D AE 11. Installing them is also quite simplified as the plugin modules are listed like other modules for C4D and are automatically discovered and downloaded by the application (see image 01 above)

Cinema 4D AE v11 – General Summary

C4D version 11 has two major applicable editions: Architectural Edition (AE) and Engineering Edition (EE). These are not to be confused with the “modules” of which there are presently eight different modules (available separately or in particular bundles). Modules vary from advanced and network rendering to hair and dynamics.

The Architectural Edition comes with several key modules useful to AEC visualization. These include the Advanced Render and Sketch & Toon modules, as well as the Architectural Extension Kit. The kit includes numerous tools and utilities useful to the Architectural Edition.

The Interface

Cinema 4D 11 features an impressive interface system. This UI system is the same one introduced in version 10 and as we mentioned in a previous review (see Architosh Review: Cinema 4D R10.5) the “program really is a GUI inside a GUI.” While some may find this awkward the beauty in this solution is it enables the Maxon developer team to focus development resources on features rather than code time on managing two operating system (OS) GUI environments. This is “only” beautiful when you consider the end result of this simplification on Maxon’s part and ask: “is this unified UI (user-interface) attractive and easy to work in?” This author’s opinion is a definitive yes.

02 – Mouse Move Activation and the very important Menu Popup Delays can be customized by speed differences in C4D R11, making this application unique in ability to control so much of the user interface.

For starters the flatter, multi-gray user interface is wicked fast! In fact you can customize the interface speed too! (see image 02) It also has that serious sexy look common to video applications and 3D tools like Luxology’s modo! The value of the gray interface is that color is special and stands out. A gray interface is also less intense on your eyes. (see images 3-4)

03 – The default light-gray user-interface option.

04 – The default dark-gray user interface option.

We want to spend a little bit of time on this interface before we plow straight ahead into this review’s real focus. While perhaps daunting at first sight and perhaps different than what you are used to, the Cinema 4D user interface system is powerful and easy to learn. Moreover, it is highly customizable, enabling the user to control palettes, menu items, icons and keyboard shortcut settings and even the colors of the interface features.

The post Product Review: Cinema 4D R11 Architectural Edition appeared first on Architosh.

To get a fundamental understanding of the overall program we suggest that you read our first review (from version 1). In this review, we will focus on the new features and the overall quality of this software. BeLight Software itself has a nice array of high quality videos demonstrating the many features and capabilities of Live Interiors 3D version 2 on its own site, which we highly recommend you check out.

Some Basics First – Floor Plans

Live Interior 3D allows you to start your project using some template floor plan arrangements (click on the link to see image) or types but you don’t have to. Although the templates come in a lot of common arrangements if you don’t see anything close to the configuration of your apartment or house you can start from scratch.

Drawing walls in Live Interior 3D is very easy. There are several really nice touches in this program. For instance when you click the wall tool the Inspector palette provides you the ability to set up profiles for crown and base mouldings, making these apart of the wall assembly rather than separate elements added to the rooms later. This saves time. A series of master walls gives the user the key walls they will need for exterior walls, including various thicknesses used in common construction.

01 – Split-screen feature. Makes wall/plan creation more interactive.

02 – Wall editing. Dynamic dimensioning makes adjustments easy.

Walls snap together very well in this program; however the real beauty comes when you decide to move walls or move a single wall. To do this you simply select the wall with the selection arrow tool, the wall will highlight green and there will be green diamonds at the ends of that wall plus a double-arrow icon over the center of the wall–implying slide me in either direction. That is exactly what you do to adjust the location of the wall. The beauty comes next when dimensions of the wall–and other key walls touching the wall you are moving–appear automatically and adjust dynamically as you slide the wall around. Once you reposition the wall those dynamically driven dimensions disappear. (see images 01 – 02)  We find this feature much easier and more powerful than many of the highend CAD software programs we review that cost hundreds more. The appearance of the dynamic but temporary dimensions is really an outstanding feature.

Of course in Live Interior 3D Standard and Pro you can always add permanent dimensions and annotations (notes) to your drawing to produce the common types of blue-print or construction drawings you seek.

Multi-Storey Design

Now in Live Interior 3D (Standard and Pro) you have the ability to add a storey below or above the current storey you are working on. You can add not just one but several stories (Pro), creating multi-story apartments or homes. And with the stair tool you can link these stories together. (see image 03)

To create a storey below or above you current storey you do so by selecting menu Edit > Building > Add Storey Above Current command. (see image 03) In doing this the storey below you will appear in gray. The Project Tree will than display a series of boundary walls that align with the boundary walls of the storey below or above your current storey. If you choose to delete your new storey you do this from the same menu. You can also create storeys, edit their default heights and other storey related functions by using the “Building Properties” tab on the Inspector palette.

03 – Multi-storey design is easy with Live Interior 3D v2.

04 – Live Interior 3D has excellent help system. Here it helps us find the command for deleting a storey.

In testing this we also got our hands wet with Live Interior 3D’s Help system; this taps some of the Mac’s underlying technologies, we believe, for sophisticated guidance systems that not only allows you to learn about the particular features in Live Interior 3D but also show you the menu commands that pertain to this feature. (see image 04)

Next page: Google SketchUp and 3D Warehouse integration.

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Interface

For seasoned users, the most obvious change introduced in version 10 is the whole look of the program: it has taken on a less-sculpted, slate-grey look with all the button highlights in orange (somewhat reminiscent of modo, we have to say). However, interface flexibility has always been a forte of Cinema, and the old-style looks are still there lurking under the surface, ready to be called up from the Edit > Preferences > Common dialog box. Cinema has also eschewed the collection of printed manuals of previous versions, with all its documentation now being searchable hypertext that is shipped on the DVD and opened from within the program itself. However, the documentation isn’t installed by default, and to install it you actually have to install the relevant language file that you want your interface to ‘speak’. This caused us some head-scratching at first.

The Cinema 4D interface concept also merits an explanation. The program is really a GUI-within-a-GUI (i.e. neither Mac nor Widows.) In fact, the Mac version doesn’t even use the Mac Menu Bar – all menus are accessed from within Cinema 4D windows themselves. This also leads to some problems: since the interface basically sits in a Mac OS X window, the three window control buttons don’t do what you expect them to. Clicking the ‘x’ button doesn’t close the current document — it quits the whole program. This had us really confused at first. Also you don’t get the little dot in the Close button to tell you that your document is unsaved.

But this control over the GUI has allowed the developers to build in a great deal of flexibility with regards to screen layout. Basically, every interface element (toolbars, OpenGL views, Attribute dialogs, and the like) exist as separate windows. These windows can then be docked with one another– either vertically or horizontally — to create a ‘flat’ interface. Should you require a little depth to your interface, any window or docked ‘pane’ can be turned into a tab, and these tabs can then be stacked to allow multiple panes to reside in the same interface space. Of course, most of the time, you won’t have to think about this, since Cinema 4D comes complete with ready-to-use interface layouts for General use, Modeling, Animation, two layouts for BodyPaint (Maxon’s 3D painting solution) and…Architecture.

00 – C4D Architecture Edition features exchange plugins for Allplan, ArchiCAD and Vectorworks, enabling

Yes, Architecture. Maxon is taking the field of architectural visualization rather seriously (see last section below). The number of layouts available to the user is essentially unlimited, and they can be chosen from the Layout drop-down in the standard interface or from the Window > Layout menu. Careful if you have you interface stretched across multiple monitors, though. Choosing a new layout snaps the entire interface into the monitor carrying the Menu Bar. Even with the interface split into two windows (one per monitor), both windows still crowded onto the main monitor when changing the layout. We hope this is addressed soon.

Another major interface change introduced in version 10 is Layers. These do what you would expect them to — organize various scene elements into groups that can be controlled as a whole — and a bit more besides. The architectural implications are obvious, in that you can group structural, service, landscape, entourage, etc. onto their own layers and hide and show them at will. Although you can also control visibility in final rendering, hiding in the Object and Material managers and in the Timeline.

Layers can, of course, be locked and they can have any deformers or HyperNURBS objects turned on or off at Layer level. Creating a new layer can be as easy as selecting some objects in the Object manager and Right-click > Add to New Layer. Naturally you can also add them to existing layers. Layers are also global: any item in a Layer will be affected wherever that item occurs: simultaneously in the Object manager and Timeline, for example. Layers also work independently of Groups in the object manager: the contents of a single layer can be drawn from members of different groups. We found the new layers extremely useful in organizing the often-messy hierarchy of imported model files — for instance we found them invaluable for organizing and controlling the visibility of the tangle of Cameras that seem to come in with our test SketchUp files.

01 – Cinema 4D’s flexible HUD system allows the user to drag commands into the main window as HUD elements.

Finally, we come on to the HUD. (see image 01) The HUD increases interface flexibility dramatically, by letting you simply drag commands from the interface into the OpenGL Editor (the 3D workspace). The commands then sit there independent of the view and give you immediate access to whatever attributes they control. For instance, select a number of attributes in the Attribute Manager, they become a collapsible HUD element. You can Command-drag to place the HUD element anywhere in the workspace. Then dragging on any of the fields in the HUD element, and the corresponding parameters update in real-time in the Editor. And in 10.5 the concept has been expanded so that just about anything can be used as a HUD element. We found that the positions of HUD elements could get a little ‘scrambled’ when changing between views, but luckily this is ameliorated by the new Auto Fold option.: this collapses any HUD element down to a single button that pops open when you mouse over it. The HUD really comes into its own when you want access to particular commands for a particular project, but don’t want to go to the trouble of designing a custom layout for the task.

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But the inevitable question gets asked: “what about Photorealism?” Sure, it’s always been possible to export your geometry (and textures, depending on the export format used) to third party programs, but this has at any time been accompanied by several caveats. First of all, geometry doesn’t get translated properly (missing faces, wrong smoothing). Second, textures don’t always make the transition properly. Third, you only want to do a rendering, but have to buy a modeling, rendering and animation package to use just one third of it (well, two thirds if you want the animation as well).

The Use of TurboSketch

Given the preceding, how many of us have thought how nice it would be to produce photorealistic renderings right there, inside of SketchUp? IMSI/Design (makers of TurboCAD) certainly thought so, and came up with TurboSketch, to date the only Mac-based plug-in renderer forSketchUp.

TurboSketch Studio is basically a collection of Ruby scripts for handling model translation and the LightWork Design rendering engine. Oddly, IMSI/Design have chosen to bundle the rendering plug-in with a copy of the freely-downloadable Google SketchUp. However, this has meant that due to licensing problems with Google, the product is not currently available for the UK market. This one has us scratching our heads. Why make the decision to bundle a commercial application with a freely-available one, if including that freely-available product means that you close out a large part of your target market? The plug-in does, after all, install and work fine with copies of Google SketchUp that are already downloaded, and also works without any problems with the commercial Google SketchUp Pro. Answers on a postcard please…

Once it’s installed, TurboSketch Studio notifies its presence by posting a small palette of nine icons that you can place anywhere on the screen. These icons represent: Preview Render, Standard Render, Presentation Quality Render, Save Image: then come Lighting, Environment, Image and Render controls: then finally a button to summon the help. (see image 01).

You’ll also notice that when you right/ctrl-click on an object, you get two new entries in the contextual menu: TurboSketch Material andTurboSketch Light Attributes. (see image 02)

01 – TurboSketch Studio’s palette icons are a bit weak.

02 – New Context Menu items in Google’s SketchUp once TurboSketch Studio has been installed.

Finally, moving over to the Components Browser, you’ll find a new sub-section: TurboSketch Lights where seven new component light types are installed.

The main claim of TurboSketch is that it emulates the simplicity of SketchUp in offering one-click rendering. So how true is this claim? Well, one-hundred percent true. But is the rendering you obtain any good? Well, by and large, yes, it is.

I’m sure a lot of us are familiar with the first results from a render: the anticipation, followed by profound disappointment at the first results, followed by the usual round of tweak-and-refine until you get the results that you wanted the first time. With a few reservations, TurboSketch Studio largely avoids this and really does delivers on its promise of one-click rendering. We say “largely” because the first time we tried it we got a jumbled mess. We then realized that what we were looking at was geometry that was hidden in our SketchUp files, but was rendering in TurboSketch Studio. This is a limitation of the Mac version of the program, so if you’ve got hidden geometry you’ll need to “Save As” — then delete the hidden stuff. IMSI/Design are working with Google to resolve this problem.

The standard environment is set up to use the sun position from your SketchUp file, provides the sun as the only light source and uses the SketchUp horizon and ground colors. The results can be impressive, to say the least. When the Presentation Quality render option is chosen, the light and shading quality of the resultant render can be quite beguiling.

03 – With quality set to “Presentation” and sun as light source one click gets you renderers of this quality.

04 – Another rendering of the same model showing attractive results.

There’s an almost luminous quality to the sunlight, and the shading and drop-off in the shadows is extremely convincing (although the shadows themselves aren’t soft-edged). (see images 03-04). For the presentation quality renders you will have to wait, however: at 1024 x 768 the render took just over twenty minutes for our scenes. That’s because TurboSketch Studio is unable to take advantage of multiple processors, which seems a real shame, especially if you have a Mac Pro. In this release animation is also not supported.

The two other render modes are Preview (for rough-and-ready ‘thumbnail’ renders) and Standard — which is often good enough. The renders can be tweaked for brightness and contrast before and after rendering and any settings are automatically applied to the next render. The quality settings for each of the render types is also tweakable through the Render Settings Dialog, although there doesn’t seem to be a way to turn turn off reflections for Preview rendering, which is odd, given that they’re not really needed here and can slow down the rendering considerably.

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