Rich_Winsor

To answer my own question I found it here.

I have never been a fan of change just for the sake of change. I must admit that so far I don't see anything of great enough significance to warrant a revamping of the forum. It's like when the local market decides that they are going to rearrange all the items in the store. All this does is inconvenience all the regular customers and it isn't going to bring in more new ones. Things I have noticed so far include no numbering of the posts in a thread. No friends in my profile section (I didn't have many but where did they go?). And what happened to my post count? I worked hard to accumulate over 500 posts and now I'm back down to 496. And what happened to the preview post feature? I used that a lot to proof my entries.

No file attached but scroll down the list and check out this thread. https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/11617-how-to-draw-an-arched-entry-porch/

Have you tried the suggestions in this thread? Your mouse can be programed specifically for different applications. While you have Chief open in an active window, open the 3Dconnexion Home dbx/window. Navigate to the Advanced Settings screen where you will find you can control all aspects of how the mouse functions while using Chief.

Very nice indeed Chop but the question remains unanswered. We can't tell from the images. Were you able to accomplish the mitered corner joints? How does it all look in Vector View?

2D trees don't cast shadows. You need to use 3D trees if you want the shadows to show.

I haven't had much occasion to use the sidewalk tools, so I was disgruntled to discover that Chief apparently has no provisions for making control or expansion joints in sidewalks and slabs. I don't know anybody who pours concrete without such joints and it's little touches like this that add believability and realism to a scene. This is what a standard 48" wide sidewalk looks like in our neck of the woods. Not just an unbroken expanse of concrete. To accomplish this effect I had to make an array out of 50 2' x 2' segments of sidewalk. And Lord help you if there is a driveway involved.

Whoever hung those "shutters" apparently was unclear on the concept of what a shutter is. Granted they are obviously intended to be purely ornamental as shutting them would not cover the window. I don't think you can get that arrangement using Chief's Window Tools. Chief want's to have shutters that will cover the window area when shut (and rightly so).

Yeah, I had a play with the three wall approach. The catch is that you can't get a tight enough radius unless you use a very thin wall. This, of course, leads directly to the 5 wall approach. BTW, for some reason that curved wall section really slows down my machine too. Didn't crash it though.

Seems easy enough but I haven't been able to make it happen. I don't need a curved wall. I need a curved corner on the 90° intersection of 2 straight walls. I can achieve the effect using a molding polyline but then it doesn't behave as a wall. I tried a vertical quarter round molding at the intersection but the walls snap together at the corner and override the molding section. Any thoughts?

I'm always on the lookout for interesting seamless textures. I found these on the web somewhere and "lifted" several of them to add to my library. They have a sort of Art Deco(ish), or is that Art Nouveau(esque) flavor. Here is a little vignette I threw together using a couple of them for wall covering. BTW, I forgot that this RT was cooking so this might be a personal best for me of 275 passes.

Can't say about HD Pro but I'm pretty sure Chief sells actual printed manuals and user guides on their website if you want to get a "hard" copy.

While on the second floor try the Reference Floor Display.

No problem, I enjoy seeing how Chief's capabilities stack up against other programs. Might I ask, what software was used to render your examples? P.S. I really didn't work all that hard, but my CPU asked for a day off after that session.

Sorry for the tardy response CB. The image on the left is a symbol of the false ceiling that I saved to the User Library. I made the shapes out of p-solids and solid subtraction (or maybe it was Hole in Polyline Solid). Once you have the shape you want take a 3D view with only the shape in it (nothing else). Then from the "Tools" drop down menu select "Symbol" and then "Convert to Symbol". Once you have the Symbol you can resize it to fit any shape room by dragging the edit handles. That is what is pictured in the thumbnail. There is no doubt that all that indirect lighting takes a heavy toll on Ray Trace time. As a workaround I put all the indirect light sources on their own layer (Lights, Indirect). That way I can turn them all off as I work with the rest of the image. I believe there are 226 indirect light sources in the scene along with the 8 additional lights in the room. I had a play with it over the weekend. Here is a recreation of one of your thumbnails done entirely in Chief with standard Library content. Well, actually I made the armchair in the foreground and the end table lamps. It was a case of it was easier to make 'em than it was to fake 'em. I basically concentrated on the ceiling effects and didn't do any adjusting to the lights in the room. It could use some more passes (I think this was 40 passes) to smooth out some of the graininess but it should give you an idea of Chief's capabilities.

Anyone have an explanation for this? I meticulously duplicated the camera positions of Cameras 1 & 2 so they are identical. So why do they display differently in Plan View? We really need copy and paste functions for cameras and Undo and Redo functions as well. Is there some technical reason why these functions won't work for cameras?

I believe the answer to your question is no. At least I am not aware of such a breakdown. Of course if you have nothing better to do you could compile your own chart by opening each template and noting the pertinent defaults. Sounds like a lot of work. You'd probably be better off by creating a few of your own templates with defaults that you use the most.

The transoms aren't doing it for me. I'd go with the 8' Doors.

Looking good Harry. Now if Chief would just let us have some smoke wafting out of the chimney.

Check this out. Here is a "High Definition" close up taken from my caustics test image. If my math is correct this image has 16 pixels for every pixel in the original image. Original Image: 1600 x 1279 pixels = 2,046,400 total pixels Close up Image: 6400 x 5116 pixels = 32,742,400 total pixels 32,742,400/2,046,400 = 16 So what I did was to re-ray trace the original image at the higher pixel count which produces an image that is approximately 36" x 28". Then I took the image into PSP and cropped it down to the close up Image which is a more manageable 12" x 8". Running these ray traces is not for the faint of heart. Last night I started the ray trace with no limit on the number of passes and went to bed. When I got up 8 hours later and checked the progress it was on pass 50 something so we had a little breakfast and let it cook until it reached 60 passes. Total time approximately 8 1/2 hours. This was so much fun I'm thinking about starting an enormous ray trace and going on vacation. When I get back I will either have and amazing image or I will find my computer in a puddle on the floor. I can envision using this technique in conjunction with other views. For example you could have an "artsy" front elevation image done in say watercolor and line and then have a hi-def insert showing the entry way.

Well here is my ray trace. Since I was one of those kids that never read the instructions before assembling a model, I didn't bother to read the post. I saw the title and just downloaded the plan and looked for a saved camera view. When I didn't find any I just created my own shot. Here’s a quick no frills take on a gloomy winter’s day to match the tone of your backdrop. Your log textures were among several that didn’t come along with the plan so I rustled up some from Chief. Other than that it’s all your plan. Oh yeah, I added the ubiquitous mini blinds too. What do y'all think of my dirty snow texture? Seems fairly believable to me.

Since the light is coming from the right of the shot, and since the screen in that side doesn't show in the scene, you might want to just delete the screen on that side and see what you get.

Under Lighting in Ray Trace Options what do you have the Direct Sunlight Intensity set at? The first thing I would try is boosting the intensity and see what you get. Don't be afraid to try numbers like 6, 7 or 8. The scale goes all the way to 50 but I must admit I haven't gone anywhere near that number.

Is this the type of thing you are looking for? You might want to check out these videos for some construction and lighting tips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnL84X-y0UQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7pnbjo3-C8

Looking good Graham. You've got the mantel lights dialed in quite nicely. As I recall I just backed the intensity of all the lights back down to the minimum in the drop down menu. Definitely need to be throttled back some more but I'm not going to melt down my CPU pulling endless passes especially when the OP seems to have abandoned the thread. Speaking of melting down my CPU, might I ask what is the largest image size (in pixels) that you have worked with? I have been playing with the idea of creating a really large image and then cropping a "close up" section from that image. There seems to be no limit to the fields for pixel width and height. Apparently you can keep adding zeros in the entry fields until the cows come home. Wonder how long a pass would take for an image a couple of billion pixels wide?