Renerabbitt

Def lookin good Mick I was playing around with some new textures I've been making...4 min rough render for giggles

When saving I often times create a new folder within the save dialogue by hitting windows shortcut ctrl+shift+n, this has worked on all previous versions of chief but not in x9 more often than not. It freezes CA and then I lose my work up to the point of the archived saves

with photon mapping on you should be able to turn down "ambient occlusion maximum" in raytrace settings instead of adjusting your light parameters

Graham as always, great input and posts, and nice work..hard work..kudos, gave you a thumbs up. Ambient Occlusion is a major player in raytraces, it provides a host of fixes to 3d objects and how they react to light sources while maintaining the integrity of the model. Even if a scene is blown out and overexposed, ambient occlusion can save the shadows. I've attached a clay render showing ambient occlusion at a low setting with no lights in the scene vs ambient occlusion's minimums turned up. You can see with ambient occlusion turned up you can produce a well-lit daylight scene without the need for point lights. The main benefit of point lights is to produce the metal effect in CA as the ray trace engine needs a direct light source to mimic the anisotropic effect of the metal Additionally, it's a good idea to set color to your lighting so you can see what it is doing as you adjust it. Graham, it looks like you have caustics and photon mapping turned off as well soft shadows turned off on all lights...I'd be curious to see what kind've speeds and realism you can work out with your methods with some of the better computational methods turned on.... You've proven the inverse works well. A note to everyone, you can go into the 3d/3d view defaults and turn up interior ambient which will automatically set interior ambient in raytrace if you plan on eliminating lights. Photon mapping and caustics need to find a light source, a good LARGE light source, but too many lights and the scene will be complicated. In a scene where you want to setup photon mapping and use as few lights as possible but still have the brushed metal its best to place a light opposite your camera angle...the same way you know a driver can see you if you can see his eyes in the sideview mirror. Also white lights set to color mapping at 255,255,255 are harder to compute using photon mapping, set lighting to 230,230,230. I think I remember a user named Jintu being pretty stellar with tricking CA.

I'm with Lew ! I use this PLS with detector but only for the purpose of the lot elevations...if I need absolute sea level elevations we hire someone

Lumion,Thea,Artlantis all have similar workflows, it took me a day to start producing rendering's in Thea, they have a very thorough manual and a few test scenes to reverse engineer the process and figure the program out. Just like any program it will take a while to learn all of the tips and tricks. Like Mr Scott Hall and Perry said, if your client needs some basic visuals chief will do the job, else contract someone to do it. Myself and a handful of others on these forums offer a variety of different render packages. ...Back on point to the topic heading, Thea is one of the only rendering company's that utilizes both the CPU and GFX card...even with liquid cooling I am constantly checking in on my system during a 6 hour render

I think it would really push the software forward, and the community as well. I've certainly noticed a buzz around the community with what chief has done with the raytrace in x9, so many people asking for computer upgrade information. If raytrace stays the standard then it will be left behind its competitors. I don't even design my palette in chief anymore. I put blocks of different color in the room so I can use the big collection of materials I created in Thea. Yesterday I did my first import into sketchfab and it took less than an hour to get what I would consider a very decent scene, much better than I could produce in chief. My client was thrilled. I know its a tall order, chief obviously has a lot more on its plate than just the raytrace engine, but the next request would be to make its exporting capabilities better suited for third party software. If they teamed up and saw benefit they may even acquire another company. I will say again your knowledge, and input are very much appreciated Graham, and I think your work is top notch...my raytrace frustrations are with the software, amidst a TON of praises for its other capabilities We totally hijacked this thread...sorry mods! Here's the sketchfab scene: https://skfb.ly/68WAs

Expanding further on Thea and to clarify, it took an hour to setup the entire house...the outside lighting environment has been established, the materials in the house set, all lights(what chief calls "lighting white") have been set to emissive surfaces, and I have grouped them by room, and the global camera settings have been set(35mm lense at a focus distance of 15 ft and f stop at 5.6 iso at 600 shutter speed 64 with ambient occlusion turned to 7). Now that I set that up I can pull any render from any view point including spherical/parallel and panarama. This means that I can pull any shot in that 4 min time, where as chief you would have to setup every room.

So I've been plugging Thea render studio on this site namely because I want to see chiefs rendering capabilities get reworked by the programmers. As much as i love chief and all it offers, it still doesn't cut it for me for renderings. from the point of me clicking the download button on Grandview to the second I typed up this post it has been 1 hour and 13 minutes. I made sure to use only stock textures and stock camera and light settings from the program, which means the only thing that took time was setting up lighting and cameras. I'm sure most people playing with this rendering took much longer just setting up chief. The render was a rough render at 4min and 42 seconds. if I were producing this for a customer I would take 2 days on it and make it look photorealistic, it would be 4K résolution with depth of field, custom textures with bump/normal/reflectivity/microroughness/displacement maps and all the bells and whistles... Even at stock (poor) settings and textures, and no effort put in, this render and workflow still looks better than the best render chief can produce.

I'm running a g752 and stays at proper temps during 4 hour full presto renders using 100%gfx and CPU together

Certainly useful, I knew about the framing elevation but didn't realize there was a framing schedule

The Kohler catalog has several items that exceed Chief exporting capabilities...delete your toilet and use a generic one and retry Also post your plan file for the material problem

I read one of your posts prior to posting this question in the forum which did point me to the "structural member reporting" so thank you, what I don't understand is where the information in member reporting shows up after you make your specifications...I deleted all but 16' lengths, but then where does this apply to the material lists? 1) I went into structural member reporting, delete all but 16' lengths 2) I created a polyline material list for the section of the house I wanted to include 3) the polyline listed had random lengths such as sill plates etc. 4) i set my exterior bearing walls as "bearing," with the hopes that they would be considered structural members and the 16' delineation would apply. Instead those walls were deleted from the material list This all leads me to believe that there is a separate list for structural members...and maybe I'm being an idiot(known to happen) but I can't seem to put it all together

So here is my confusion, if I list certain walls as "bearing" they don't show up in the poly list and my dimension defaults, i.e only 16' lumber do not apply to non-structural lumber in partition walls. I want to get materials for about 10 walls on a single floor mixed bearing and partition, with sizes being either 8' or 16', is this feasible and quick..what would be the method?

I'm new to material listing, is there a way to select certain walls, generate framing for, and get a cut list? I only see material by room or floor. I've done a few searches but can't find this specific scenario. If by floor, is there an easier way to remove existing walls other then going to the components list, much like the "include in schedule" tick on the window settings? Looking for the fastest method to get wall and ceiling framing material lists for a couple of rooms on a single floor

I would check in with someone at Chief about this...most any rendering program I know works independently of the camera view...which is to say that it doesn't know not to reflect outside light off of the foundation or roof because the camera is inside. It will calc light for ALL materials including ambient light and ambient occlusion...in the program I use, I have to delete anything I don't need to contribute to the scene to speed up my renderings. I believe their was a discussion about this years ago about turning off all lights that don't contribute to a scene. BTW kitchenabode not being combative, totally admire your work and knowledge! and Paul, will you setup a scene and post your plan, we can tweek it for you and tell you what we did to cut your time

just did a test scene for those who are curious see the computers in my sig xeon- 28 passes at 33 min 6700HQ -28 passes 1 hour 17 min

Anyone willing to do a speed text against my Xeon for rendering a same plan with same settings? I'm just as curious but my hunch is that I beat out the 7700 by a decent spread...could be totally wrong though ALSO, and this is a BIG also...get a motherboard that supports m.2, the speed of the samsung 960 is SOOOOOOO much faster than any other comparable SATA hard drive

there are global or per application scaling options built into windows, I needed to adjust all of them for my 4k screen and now I'm set

I use that same feature often in my rendering software, and unfortunately chief doesn't have a "make material unique" so that you can build separate coordinate mapping for the same texture. When I was using chief to render I would add all of the wood texture and their corresponding 90 turns to my user catalog for this very reason. It's interesting to me that the new 3d capabilities of x9 have everyone a buzz about realism in the 3d views...I've been geeking out over this kind of stuff for years, I'm not alone anymore! it's awesome!!

Mark is correct, say for instance you want to apply a texture you found on the internet to a tileable wall panel, but their is only a portion of the textures image that you want applied to your panel, so you have to set an offset to center your texture properly on your object...and then you want to save this texture to be used down the road using the same positioning for any object it may be applied to, you could set your parameters and then check global and add to library to be used with the same offsets

Lol @jcaffee just my two cents, I bought my 14 core Xeon in my sig for $500 on eBay, watercooled it and clocked it to 2.7ghz.. and it really cranks... sure there are some things that my laptop's 6700 are slightly more snappy on, but the gigantic l3 cache on the Xeon really sets it apart, not to mention the cores help with programs I use outside of chief Take a look:

I see your points, I think I'm with Joe and yourself on this one and may provide the vector view and clean it up a bit as you said as well as an accompanying render... a couple of things to note, I've been getting most contracts based on design, which often requires a different approach than build-sets.. and also, that I include a cabinet schedule as well as joinery details in my drawings. i just wanted to find the balance and incorporate something new... I think there is a solution here that can include all of these elements. Not disagreeing with anyone, I'm absolutely in agreement, I just want something more! included a newer rendering with more contrast and brighter(unrealistic) overhead light for more clarity

Agreed, I would like to keep the labels somehow, probably a rich text overlay with some transparency etc..

completely agreed, it will happen, I love the clarity of a rendering, coming into this industry as a builder it is so easy to distinguish the following image as a board and batten with stem wall foundation and an asphalt shingle roof: