MarckusW

Eliz, this is probably not the correct forum. If you are in the San Francisco - Silicon Valley - Monterey area, respond and I'll give you who I work with.

Good Morning JWI, I you are not working professionally then an old rtx 2080 will be fine. Better would be a rtx 3070. It just depends on what is available around you and your budget. When I am in South America I use a 2080 in the tower and a 3070 in the laptop. When in the USA I have a 4090 in tower 1 and a 4080 in tower 2. The laptops use 3070s, Do not over think this. If you are using a 390, then a jump to a 2080 or 3070 is going from prewarp to warp 4. Chief says use a 3080. So get a 3080. They know what they are doing and they won't steer you wrong. Best, Mark

Thank you for getting this catalog. I have been creating similar lights by placing a pendent inside a pendant and manipulating them.

I started using Chief in the late 90s as the primitive renders still blew programs like Cabinetware away. I am not sure if Cabinetware even exists any longer. At the time most of what I was doing were kitchen and bath remodels and Chief was the best thing out there to show a client what a layout will look like. Twenty Five +- years down the road I still use it this way but... I still hand draw all my cabinet drawings for the cabinet shop. I can come really close in Chief but what I (we) do is so precise it is faster to do the drawings by hand. This having been said I think just the typical plan view, elevations and then clean renders or ray traces should give the shop what they need in order for them to draw the cabinets. I have taken the time to draw a full set of kitchen cabinets in Chief to satisfy myself that it could be done. I then asked the cabinetmakers which they prefer, the cad or hand draws. They all preferred my hand draws. So much for technology. Maybe old dogs are too lazy to learn new tricks. Bottom line, don't over think it, don't assume you know what the cabinet shop wants. Ask them what exactly works for them. (The first time I personally built a cabinet that I got paid for is 49 years ago. Cabinet technology has radically changed during this time so maybe I should rollover and go back to sleep.)

Changing the sun and the environmental lighting is how I control the sky in Chief. I haven't played with Twin Motion. I have been asking Chief to unify the render and ray trace controls into a menu that gives the quality of Twin Motion or Enscape (or similar products). Chief has come a long ways but I need "more power to the warp engines Scotty!" One thing I have been asking Chief for is the ability to take a backdrop and move its distance from the home forward and back. What I want is the ability to use a photo of the landscaping from the home as seen through the windows and control the distance and the exposure. "It is a nice to have." Where it becomes really useful is when you wish to put in a window or door where one doesn't exist. Particularly a picture window. In any case, you are welcome. The images look great by the way. Photo wise they are a little "pincushioned." This can be handled by leveling the point view higher to the line of site of an actual person. In post you can typically find a set controls such as transform or similar. The problem with image correction is you will have to crop in. You will see in one of the photos I didn't have enough room to crop.

Justin, possibly in post you could mask the sky and give it more blue. Same with other areas. The problem is how much of what you have done is recoverable. You have to think of it as a digital negative. Resolve is like photoshop in motion so for example if you wanted to go crazy you could drop a movie into the TV on the side of the building as you pan. You can composite in whatever you want but... This is a world of diminishing returns. Meaning how far do you have to go to communicate to your client to get them to agree to what you have done. Having never imported a render such as your, I have no idea what I could do with it before it breaks. I would start as possible by increasing the dynamic range, meaning bring down the blacks and shadows in your case. I would do additional sharpening. At a certain point you lose cost effectiveness. I suspect whatever you did this in would allow you to improve the dynamic range and sharpness. Increase the dynamic range by dropping the black level and and pulling down the shadows. The high lights and colors are over exposed in some areas. Having not played with what you are using I don't know the controls. If you do not have control of the dynamic range and exposure then you have to go to something like Resolve but that takes you into the world of Marvel and DC. Bottom line: I like what you did and I think it communicates.

You are welcome Chris. If you try it, it has like everything a learning curve. If you have a question send me a message. The answer is usually simple, you just need to know where to look.

No problem Mick. I didn't take it that way at all. I thought your suggestion was correct. I was just adding my thoughts and reasoning incase there is some benefit for ArtsyG.

Kbird1, I use them for over cabinet lights, sometimes as under counters, kicks and light wells. I try to show the light as it will appear so the client sees how the light falls off. Even though I use LEDs as under counters in the real world I may not use them in my drawings as the light they throw in Chief is not as easily manipulated/corrected, at least for me. Here is an example from last week. These are not denoised as that was not the purpose of these images. I needed the client to see in their home how various lighting will look. They were making decisions about what they want. I am uploading these images as perhaps someone at Chief will see them and see the problem so it can be fixed. The error is so minor that I have not bothered Chief with it as for my purposes this is not an art contest. The images show why typically I don't use an LED under counter in my images. I probably could have solved the problem by changing the LED spacing so they are continuous and lowered the lumens The 1st images is just a control image of the kitchen in daylight. The existing house has a bump out for the kitchen and this is a tear out and replace. For the client the take away is how does this countertop, Vancouver quartzite, look against white cabinets and what happens in different lighting scenarios. The 2nd is both under counter and over cabinet. You can see the LED problem as a pattern against the rear wall under the cabinet. The 3rd is under counter, over cabinet turned off. Same pattern showing in the backsplash from the LED. The 4th is over cabinet. The under counter lighting, although turned off, still shows a line of light. The take away, I could play with the LED spacing and lumens or use a traditional under cabinet light and use a negative elevation to reduce the visibility of the fixture housing. At this point it is less trouble to use the under counter.

Over in digital film world, meaning Arri Alexa, Red, Blackmagic Design, taking days to render anything past 30 secs to a minute is just the way it is. The only real solution was minimally a dual xeon tower or really a render farm. The only thing that has been a game changer has been the RTX cards. Over here in Chief world the RTX cards were and are a game changer. The improvements from series to series are huge and if you have the money to buy 2 2080tis and are thinking... wow, wow, wow. Don't bother just get a 4080 or better 4090. The bottom line is if you want a high-end movie render, it is going to take time. The best advice I can give you is, if you want to polish a movie after export, I have always preferred Davinci Resolve to Premiere/After Effects or Final Cut Pro. I like Davinci Resolve so much that in 2013 I started importing CPU ray traces into resolve and grading them as I would in Lightroom or Photoshop. The tool set, controls and finish were just better. For the level of anything you will do with anything coming out of Chief and TM or anything similar, the free version is all you need.

There is another tool you can use. It is called "add lights". Go to the light bulb in front of the painter. Drop the menu and you will see it. You have to do the same thing as far as opening it up, then elevating it, lumens etc. I use "real lights" 1st to try to get what I want but sometimes you will need this as well.

I use the same method as David. I use a puck light and then move it upward into the cabinet. This is a negative elevation. Typically, I leave it a few inches below the top of the cabinet box. Then I play with the location forward or back from the front rail. You need to reverse the angle of the light to -90. Then play with lumens, cut off angle and drop off. I had this open in Chief when I read your question so I have uploaded a few images of a cabinet layout design I am mid. I am deciding what size tambour to use on the island. I did screen caps of the light menu to help you understand what I tried to explain above. Depending on the camera view you create you may need to play with it to get what you are looking for to show the client. Once this is finished, I will minimally take this into Lightroom before I show it to a client. If I really needed to "bring it" I would export to dae and finish in Enscape, Twin Motion, Lumion etc. then maybe Photoshop. I have uploaded the same 2 images straight from Chief and then with minor adjustments in Lightroom. There are many other people here who can show you how to finish. I try to get as far as I can in Chief.

Joe, start at edit on the main bar, pull down and go to preferences, at the top you will see appearance, drop down the menu and you will find font. This is a good place to start.

Thanks Rene. Price, learning curve and integration are the answer to the question. Hopefully the Chief Elves were listening... Happy New Year to All! Mark

Thanks Steve. Thirty hours to get viable results answers the question well. Mark