Designer1

Wow thank you so much for all the recommendations and advice! Its nice to know there are several options to remedy the shadow problems. I will try each of recommendations made on here and see which one works best for this plan. Thank you both for the replies and I appreciate all the time and effort.

Can anyone give me any lighting advice on how to lighten up the pitch black shadows under the island? I was also looking at how the recessed lights don't lighten up the ceiling as well as they do in a raytrace either... so Im trying to experiment with different lighting to try and get this to look as realistic as possible. This is my first PBR interior rendering. I can see the benefits and the challenges that everyone was talking about earlier and it does take some getting use to.

Thanks Michael, I will keep all that in mind. At least we have two different options to work with so hopefully I can find a use for both of them.

Does anyone know where the default raytrace options went? I looked on X11 help resource but the directions there aren't accurate to how the program is set up??? Heres what Im talking about... It works in 3d if you hit the raytrace camera button but where is it in defaults? Thanks!

Thanks everyone for the replies. Yikes...looks like Im going to have to use a combination of Raytrace and PBR. This should be interesting. Yeah Ill just stick with Raytracing for the exteriors then as it sounds not very favorable to use PBR for exteriors. From other topics on PBR is sounds like interior renderings using PBR are as good if not better then raytracing... so I will have to see how that goes. It seems from more experienced users on here that posted earlier that minor tweaking of the lights and sun are the only changes I might need to make as far as interior lighting goes. Cheers to the adventure of raytrace and PBR renderings coming up! Thanks again for the replies and input!

Thanks for the reply Mick! I just got to this right now sorry for the delay. I figured out how to get the shadows to work for the most part in PBR but don't know why the shadows aren't working for the trees? The shadows work for the trees in raytrace but not PBR.... is there a secret lever Im suppose to pull to get these shadows to work for landscaping?? Im trying to use humor to keep myself in the game as Im learning this PBR thing...lol.

I started setting my first PBR up and took notes of all the advice on this thread. Now the only thing that seems to be off is the sun...haha. For some reason with global illumination on and everything else on I cant seem to find where to turn the sun on. I have the sun angle and everything else on. Basically it just has the same lighting 360 degrees around the house. Im sure this is something stupid I have selected and its simple but because I haven't even done a raytrace in three years let alone PBR its confusing me. Any ideas where the switch for the sun is? Im trying to find humor in my mix up. Thanks!

Thanks a Million Mick! Im so excited to have some of the old ones back... the X11 ones seem so limited. Thanks again!

Im using X11 and noticed that a lot of the nice previous backdrops are no longer available. I don't have any other versions of chief installed but do have the files on the computer. How can I go back into previous versions of chief to just import the backdrops without installing the whole older programs again? Im not sure why the older backdrops would have been discontinued there were a lot of good ones. Thanks!

Great, thanks for the input Bill I will give that a try too!

Thanks for the reply Eric. Good to hear your not experiencing the same thing. This plan originated in an earlier version of chief but carried over to x11 a while back. So perhaps I just need to explore some settings to fix this. Glad to know this isn't a regular occurrence. Thanks again!

So I have an open concept floor plan to the kitchen, great room and dining area. I used the room divider tool to delegate the sections and room labels to allow for size calculations and accurate room names. The issue is the room dividers are messing up the crown and base moldings. Is there any way to have both the room dividers and not have them mess up the moldings? I don't want to erase all the dividers to take pictures only to have to replace them later on. Seems counterintuitive to not be able to have both work fine. Work done in X11. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

Rob you were right....if you go to.... Default settings > Camera tools > Floor Camera > Backdrop > make sure no backdrop is selected and then in the background color you can select whatever you want. The problem is unless you select this for the default for each plan it defaults back to the white background in each plan. So I will have to change this for my template plan so I wont have to go do this everytime! At least we know where to go to change it now...that was a bit frustrating. It wasn't essential but for me it got to be about the principle of me having to find out how to change the color! haha

Is it possible to change the background color in the library browser? Im finding it hard to fully view selected library items, especially light fixtures with the white background. I clicked around but couldn't find a place where I could adjust this. Thanks!

Great thanks Eric! No, each time I get a new version of chief I always start with the default plan that comes with that version and only making modifications with hardware, moldings, paint etc. So I never mess with layers like what Im experiencing with a few of these plans. Never in 16 years of using chief have I had this problem before, that's why it was so puzzling, I couldn't understand why this was for some but not all plans. Looks like I will try some of these recommendations you gave and try them out. Thanks for the suggestions, I appreciate it!