So today Autodesk finally announced the release of Revit LT. More details can be found here….
http://usa.autodesk.com/revitlt/
Autodesk Revit LT is built on the Revit platform for BIM and allows users to create designs efficiently with 3D, real-world building objects to produce reliable, coordinated documentation faster. Revit-based applications help deliver better coordination and quality, and can contribute to higher profitability for architects, design professionals and the rest of the building team. Some of the benefits of Revit LT include:
What I think is more important, is to actually understand what you are & what you aren’t getting by purchasing the LT product. This is explained in more detail on the feature comparison page. You should review this carefully.
http://usa.autodesk.com/revitlt/features/
Certainly if you are a small firm looking into the delve into the the large pit of BIM, it certainly worth reviewing Revit LT. But you must be aware of some of the limitations of the product, particularly the lack of collaborative working functionality.That’s not to say you cannot link in Revit Structure or MEP files, as you certainly can. If you are a small firm developing Revit content or working on small projects where you don’t need to necessarily collaborate between users working on the same dataset, then Revit LT is a good start point.
Via Revit Blog
A great detailed tutorial on rendering tip for interior scene by Jeff Patton on his blog:
I want to share a few tips for rendering architectural interior scenes with mental ray, using the mr Physical Sky and portal lights. These are some fairly specific tips that will hopefully allow you to achieve a smooth indirect illumination solution as well as control the intensity of the sun and other contributing lights.
I’m not going to start from the absolute beginning here. To get the most from these tips you should already be familiar with the basic fundamentals like how to add a daylight system to your scene, enable the photon target option on the mrSun, enable global illumination, etc.. If you’re not, then you’ll need to spend some “quality time” with the 3ds Max documentation/tutorials. With that out of the way, I’ll dive right in.
I’m going to use the Evermotion bathroom scene that shipped with 3ds Max a version or two back. At the end of this article I’ll post a link to my completed .max file for further reference.
I started by stripping any lights from the scene, hiding the window glass, and applying a single material to everything. That’s primarily so I can focus on the lighting tips for this article.
I then created a daylight system and let it assign the mr Physical Sky to the scene environment and assign the mr Photographic Exposure control.
I then edited the daylight system to remove the mr skylight. It’s not needed since I’m going to place portal lights at the windows. You can click the screen capture to view a larger version if needed.
From that point I added four portal lights to the windows (set to use the environment, not skylight since I don’t have one in the scene) and enabled GI (Global Illumination) & FG (Final Gather) and fired off a test render:
NOTE: I believe that it’s also mentioned in the 3ds Max documentation that the mrSun shouldn’t be behind the portal lights. I assume for this reason or something similar. So hopefully this adjustment will allow you to place the sun wherever you want/need and still prevent these lighting artifacts.
To “fix” this problem I’ll instance copy the mr Physical Sky shader from the scene environment to the material editor to make adjustments. Here’s what the default sky looks like:
I’m now ready to render again after making this simple change to the mr Physical Sky, and nothing else:
It’s a bit warmer and brighter with those photons from the mrSun. In case you’re not sure how to disable photon generation on a light, here’s some captures to help explain that:
With the mrSun/daylight system selected, scroll down to the mental ray Indirect Illumination rollout. By default it’s configured to emit photons when GI is enabled via the “Automatically Calculate Energy and Photons” option. Uncheck that option and also leave the Manual Settings disabled and no photons will be emitted from the light source, in this case the mrSun.
Also make note that I have decrease the multiplier on the mrSun from the default value of 1.0 to 0.2. I did this because at the default value it often seems like the mrSun is just too strong (IMHO). It is quite powerful on the indirect illumination side of things as well and that’s why I have also decreased the GI Global Multipliers on the mrSun (also located in the mental ray Indirect Illumination rollout of the mrSun). I decreased the energy to 0.5 and the photon multipliers to 0.25.
If you don’t do this edit to the mrSun photon energy then the mrSun will generate most of the photons in the scene, unless you specify a number of photons in the manual settings. I know this may be somewhat confusing, that’s why I’m providing the scene file at the end of this article. I discuss it further in some of the gnomon videos I made a while back. But basically if you’ll open the mental ray message window and follow the information it generates as it prepares the scene you’ll discover how brighter light sources generate more photons than less bright light sources (as to be expected). However, I would usually prefer to modify that behavior a bit to achieve more even light distribution in my scenes. At the cost of physical accuracy I suppose…but hey, it’s all about getting the desired look no?
While I’m discussing all this, let me address another frequently asked question. Why do I have so much blue in my scenes? Simple answer, it’s because the sky is blue. The portal lights are picking up their color from the sky and the sky is blue in this case. What if I wanted less blue? Easy. There are controls on the mr Physical Sky for this. Just uncheck the “Inherit from mr Sky” option on the mr Physical Sky so that you can edit it’s settings.
In the Non-Physical Tuning parameters, decrease the saturation level as desired to reduce the intensity of the blue in the sky. You can also try tuning the kelvin values on the mr Physical Exposure control, but that affects the entire image which may not be desired. This only affects the sky itself and thus the color of the light produced by the portal lights.
Less blue as you can see…a little to flat for my taste so I increased the saturation to something like .35 for the final image:
I know that’s a lot to cover in a blog post, so HERE’s the file that you can download and explore. Sorry, I can only save back to 3ds Max 2010 format.
UPDATE: Here’s an OBJ version of the scene for those not using 3ds Max.
Via jeffpatton.net
Be sure to check out Project Neon for Revit 2012.
http://neon.labs.autodesk.com/index.aspx
Project Neon has recently been updated to allow you to do cloud based rendering from Revit 2012. Just sign up, download & install the Revit 2012 plugin & you are good to go! I threw a couple of render at the system today & I am very impressed. It will even notify you once you render is complete!
Once the plugin is installed, you will find another tab which allows you to publish your render online or to view your render gallery.
The images can be rendered using all the normal settings with Revit. You simply click the “render online” button, pick your 3d view you want, set the image quality, then the image size, followed by the File format. You have three file formats to choose from PNG, JPG & TIF ; then just hit the “Start Rendering” button.
Your file is the published to the cloud where a host of super computers rip through the render in no time at all. Once the render is complete, you are alerted via email. Login to Project Neon & you can view & download your completed render from there. You will need to set up the exposure settings on your host workstation before hand but that's a small price to pay for the speed of rendering. Be sure to give it a go! This is genuinely an exciting development for the Revit user & harness the essence of cloud based computing.
Via Revit Blog
123D is a free solid modeling software program based
on the same Autodesk technology used by millions of designers and
engineers worldwide. Not an engineer? No problem, with Autodesk 123D
you can design precise and makeable objects using smart tools that let
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This new application has its focus on 3D printing, paper models and engineering prototyping.
Receive and manage upstream design changes from Autodesk Revit Architecture software with the new FBX File Link. This intelligent handling of data helps reduce rework of visualizations in 3ds Max Design when original designs are revised and refined, supporting nonlinear decision making processes and facilitating collaborative, iterative workflows. Designers can also take advantage of new import options to group incoming materials, helping to optimize and simplify management of complex data sets.
How do you Save Scene Materials to a .mat file in #3dsMax 2011?: http://bit.ly/adWxZC #autodesk #3d #cad #rendering #digarchi #architecture
ankit_surti
Capturing the reality as-built for various purposes (renovation, energy analysis, add-on design, etc.) is now becoming possible using your standard digital camera thanks to advanced computer vision technologies developed by Autodesk, called Camera Factory, and now made available through Project Photofly.
Project Photofly is a technology preview of automatically converting photographs shot around an object or a scene into "Photo Scenes" using the power of cloud computing. The photographs can be shot with any standard digital camera, as long as you follow some shooting guidelines.
Download HERE
The Photo Scene Editor for Project Photofly is a small application that you download and install on your Windows computer. This application allows you to submit your photographs to the Project Photofly servers and view the Photo Scenes returned by the Project Photofly servers. You can save a Photo Scene in its native format, RZI (Autodesk ImageModeler 2009 format), or export the scene to the DWG file format.
The Photo Scene Editor executable will operate until August 1, 2011.
download and view more videos here:
Via Autodesk Labs
