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. 

5 hours ago, VisualDandD said:

 

Since I have very little experience with post processing.  Can you give me an idea from the one rendering I just did (first time I attempted to render any significant motion vid) what type of improvements post processing might yield?

 

It is WAY outside my wheelhouse and I dont even claim that rendering in general is something I consider myself skilled at.   I just know enough to mess with it now and again.

But IF post processing would yield good results, what might they be and what is the time involved vs said improvements?    Appreciate insights from someone in the know on this. 

For the vid, I just verified and adjusted my render setting on stills and then let it run.    100% honesty, All the scenes have identical settings (which I know I could improve if I set each camera with different optimized settings).

I am just trying to balance out what real improvements can be had vs actual time investment and trying to get an understanding whether pursuing post processing would be 'worth' it. 

Thanks for any input, this is the video I would love feedback on.

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.

5 hours ago, VisualDandD said:

 

 

 

 

10 hours ago, Chrisb222 said:

 

That looks great, thanks for the tip!

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. 

18 hours ago, Renerabbitt said:

Because of its ties to unreal 5. The industry is moving in this direction as a whole and unreal has widespread use, much broader than Lumion.
Also ease of use and continued developments. Twinmotion produced a pathtracer 2 full quarters sooner than lumion for instance.
Another reason, integration with quixel megascans and sketchfab.
and one more, twinmotion ships free with autodesk products now and utilizes the datasmith plugin.

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

12 hours ago, stevenyhof said:

I found a smaller investment, a week or so (maybe 30 hours) learning and developing a system within Twinmotion that I am very happy with, and in less than 15 minutes to produce a rendering. And to top it off, I just gave anyone who wants it, my background and settings, and some direction to generate their own rendering in less than 15 minutes.

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

Thanks Kbird1.

If cost were not a factor, why TM?

Happy New Year All,

A question for Twin Motion users?  

Why CA to Twin Motion rather than Lumion? 

And/Or why not CA to Sketchup into Enscape since it is a plug in in Sketchup?

Mark

Sketchup to Lumion.  Where Chief must go...

BTW, I am not sure why my tag still shows X13. I am using 13 and 14. I have earlier projects I must keep in 13 for the time being.

These are Chief to Lightroom.

Hi Imodel,

Yes, the upgrade is worth it. There are to ray tracing engines, CPU and GPU. I was involved AV production for decades so have used high end processors and cards for at least 20 years. I don't recall when CPU ray tracing was implemented however once I learned of it I started using it. I probably have a few 2010 images laying around. I would ray trace out images over night and then take them into Photoshop, Lightroom or Davinci Resolve to polish them. They were a great sales tool.

I had been asking Chief for GPU implementation for years. Last year I was about to give up and go a different route through Sketchup and Lumion as my partner's work flow is AutoCad, Sketchup and Lumion. Because of the implementation I stayed in Chief and he is working his way into Chief as well. He will still finish in Lumion until such time as Chief can implement a user friendly interface that can get the same results. 

It is my belief that Chief will do this.

I am not one of the heavy contributors to the forum but I did want to show what can be done in Chief with a finish in Lightroom compared to Sketchup to Lumion. As you look at these, here are 2 things to consider. 1. I am not being an artist or interior designer; I am only going deep enough to let the client see want they need to see to make decisions. 2. The images you will see in Sketchup to Lumion could have been Chief to Lumion. Chief although capable of doing the same export format DAE as Sketchup is still clunky to navigate through to get what is needed and lacks 3d object that are readily available in Sketchup. To be fair to Chief, they are actively working on the 3d object library.  I am not sure in what order these files will appear in this post so I will follow this post with 2 others. 1st Chief to Lightroom. 2nd Sketchup to Lumion. 

Another factor to understand between my workflow and the partners. I am concentrated on remodels and additions. He is doing the same but additionally new homes. We are design and build one stop shops in the USA and Argentina. These are from this week and last week and are typical for us. The partner, Nico, project is in northeast Argentina and is Sketchup to Lumion. The Chief to Lightroom is a small condo in a ridiculously expensive area in the USA.  

I hope this answers your question.

Mark

Chad, just go to the Bedrosians or All Natural Stone sites and download jpgs and then crop them. You may have to dl in a web format.

Some sites are dl friendly. Others may have copyright concerns. I know Bedrosians is fine with it as it markets their products. You should probably tell your clients where you got the image.

You can lightroom or photoshop them but a quick route if in Windows is 3D paint, crop and save to jpg. 

I believe these are Bedrosians.

Hi Jim, I consider a 3070 the make break point on ray tracing. I felt this was true of 2070s. Moving beyond Chief, when I was grading video ("digital film") and Nvidea moved to the 970 iteration, next the 1070 etc. I considered this the minimum. During those years I also used 2 AMD high end (for the time) cards. Stick with Nvidea. When Chief moved to GPU RT I was using a 2070 and 2080 with great results. I still use the 2080 when I am in South America. Mark

16 minutes ago, bdillard1 said:

I think you make an excellent point that for many people it works fine but for others with different hardware  - be it a slightly different video card, motherboard, monitor, drive controller, network adapter or something that CA doesn't play well with, it is frustrating.   Some people think if something works for them it will work for everyone.   

 

It is difficult sometimes to think outside your own immediate situation.  For example when conducting business with somoene in a country where being over an hour late for a meeting isn't considered odd or rude.  To us they might seem to be a problem but to them they might consider us a problem.

Interesting, I haven't been paying attention to the forum until very recently. Counting in my head I have run CA versions starting at ART in the late 90s up to 13 on 7 laptops and 6 towers with the only real problems occurring in Win 11 and Apple. Clearly I have been the lucky fool blindly walking down a sunny garden path.

November I had to work remotely in Argentina. I was taking an out of the box AlienwareX15 with a 3070. It came with 10 and I loaded 11 a day or 2 before leaving. Once I load 11 I started getting crashes about a device you get. At the time there was nothing in this forum and the RTX forums at all. Once I was there I loaded up Autocad and Lumion as well. The crashes got worse and worse I was afraid it was a bad laptop. Since I didn't have the problem in 10 I backed up and did 10 install factory reset and reload all drivers etc. I had zero problems after this. The problem is in Windows 11. 

This probably doesn't help you and its a pain in the ass to do while on vacation but if you can do a factory install with 10 you should solve the problem.

16 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

 

Unfortunately that is not the case for many of us ...I don't have Windows 11 and still have plenty of issues with X13 ( on my 3080 ) .... which will never be fixed.....

I just have to hope now that by some unknown factor they fix things in X14 as apparently they can't or won't in X13 or we would of had another update since Oct. 2021....

 

M.

Sorry to hear this!

I didn't know this was a problem as up until very recently didn't come to the forum unless there was an update or I had an odd problem that I knew someone would have figured out. I had a 2080 when 13 came out and had no problems. This was in a dual xeon. My mouse would freeze up and I would have to restart once a day but this is a known problem with 10 and xeons. Since I was doing nightly CPU RT this was sometimes a problem. I did eliminate the card factor as I put the 2080 in the other tower which is an I7 5960 and had zero problems. I was tired of the mouse problem, the system was ancient and 11 was not going to support xeons so I did an AMD 5950 build and used the 2080. (btw, I drive 2 10 bit 28" monitors and a 32" tv with no issues). I had zero problems and eliminated the mouse issue. Late summer 21 I had one of my sons staying with me working on video content so we put the 2080 in the Intel 5960 tower and I picked up a 3080ti for use in the AMD. Zero problems. I did have to use the updated drivers, of course. 

November I needed to work remotely from Argentina so I took the 2080 there and put it in the Intel 5930 tower we have there. It works great. Now that I am using PBR RT there is no real time difference between the I7 CPUs performance in CA.

Another thing of note is as there was a bunch of PR at the 30 series launch about how much better and faster they are. This is definitely true when rendering camera footage from cameras that shoot RAW flavors however in the PBR RT world there is very little difference in pass time, shading and texture between a 2080 and a 3080ti unless you are in a large project. And compared to CPU RT the difference feels like nothing. I am putting that out there for anyone who can get their hands on a 20 series 2070 and up. Even a laptop 2070 will perform reasonably. 

Kbird1, I see you have a laptop with 2070 super. Do you experience the same problem on the laptop? I have had no problems with the Alienware X15 with a 3070 in win 10 and CA 13.