RodCole

There has been a lot of discussion in the past relating to BIM and program interoperability. The other side of the discussion tends to center around the subject of file compatibilty, or file exchange standards for emerging file types. The main point of this exchange is to provide a way to leverage other applications in the developement of your 3D model. One of the main reasons for using specialty programs as early in the design process as possible is not only to create a better model, but to also provide valuable information as soon as possible in the design phase. In the architectural world we mostly hear from the major software suppliers regarding their ideas of how the industry should evolve. This generally ends up being to buy their products as well as their partners software products. Not hard to imagine why they would like to see things follow this path, but not my idea of a good time to be had by all. Something that I have stumbled onto fairly recently is the concept of a file pipline. From what I have seen this approach has been used extensively in the motion picture and video game industry for a long time now. In fact they have been using a vast array of software products and graphic assets to produce very complex projects with the goal of producing a high quality finished product while maintaining profitability. Seems to me that with the rapid emergence of new 3D graphic hardware and software that there just may be an opportunity to borrow project management and pipeline strategies of the graphic arts professional world to create our own projects including the production of construction documents. Part of what got me thinking about this is watching the developement of holographic programs. The thing that has not changed, in my mind at least, is the need for better file compatibility standards. This would go a long way to making the pipeline strategy more practical. 2 cents.

Thanks for the info guys. That is kind of what I have been gathering so far. That is that the low end is probably not going to provide much as far as sound quality is concerned. Then you get to the high end and so far I like what I have seen spec wise for either sony or I think it was called Yeti. Both were desktop microphones and I doubt if a person could go wrong with either of these, but the $120 to $130 a little higher than I was thinking I would have to pay for a good Mic. One of the things that I have been thinking that I would like to do eventualy is to use a program like camtasia to do a little green screen cameo type of thing. If a person were to want to do this, would you need a lapel mic or ?. The high end desktops are rated to pick up sound for a much greater distance and a wider range or field, so they may work for this. Has anyone tried doing any green screen, and if so what kind of mic would you recommend?

Hoping to get a little advice on microphones for use with Snagit. I have heard that USB microphones are recommended, but I was wondering what type are working out well. I have seen some rather expensive ones that did look good, but I wondered how the different styles such as lapel, stand, or headset perform. The good news is that there are a lot of choices, the bad news is also that there are a lot of choices. Thanks in advance.

You are quite welcome. This trick can work out pretty good when you want to place something right up against another wall as well by setting the width of the invisible wall to something very thin. Yeah, but the CAD line won't stop it from connecting though from what I remember. I haven't used any other method since I came across this way of doing it.

Have you tried placing a 3" invisible wall between them? This also works for times when you want them very close, but not connected. Hopefully I understood your question.

I hear you, but I would not hold out much hope that you would be satisfied with either the final outcome or the effort required to use Chief's CAD tools. I would recommend that you look into TurboCAD Pro Platinum for your needs. It is a bit spendy, but they used to offer competitive upgrade pricing that made it more affordable. For the type of things you will want to be doing make sure that the version you get has the lightworks rendering engine. The latest version has it available only as an option. You will need this in order to flatten or export PS views out to other file formats. Once this is done you can then import the saved views into Chief's layout pages for documentation purposes.

That will be far to late to be newsworthy Larry. What is kind of funny is that one of the major players involved in advancing these VR technologies is Gene Roddenberry's son. His goal is to see his fathers vision of the holodeck become a reality. Beta software is available for free currently, but as one would expect it is rather buggy and there are lots of equipment issues. More power to those testers though.

Please keep us posted Richard. What I see as a very good solution to these potentials would be for Chief to be able to have GPU interactive raytracing. The problem I have seen so far is that the interactive rendering engines typically only work with their own node based systems. That and U3D export would be a very powerful combination. It does not seem to be an issue with the advancement of technologies that is the problem. The problem is still the lack of software compatibilty. The more things change........

If you don't mind, could you give a bit more detail as to exactly what you mean by holographic plate (holograms). There have been types of holographic presentations available for quite some time now. Very cool what they could do, but the new VR that is about to be released has the potential to be much more powerful than anything I have seen previously. When this technology is combined with photorealistic ray tracing in real time using an interactive rendering engine things start to get a lot more interesting. Supposedly, visor based VR will be available at a broad consumer price base in the near future. Very soon we can expect beta software and prototype equipment to be available for these markets. I am not so sure how this will play out in the home design market though. Some may like the visor, and others may prefer to just view the model on screen. That can be done now, but with a bit of pixelization as the camera moves. This problem is currently being addressed. Whatever the form these technologies actually take, the real key is interactive rendering. As in change the model and or the material definintions to suit customer needs in real time. There remain some fairly large gaps in being able to pull this off currently due to the lack of interoperability required between various software products. Chief models and ray traced images can do a very good job of conveying design ideas, but the response I see from customers is vastly different when the ray tracing is in real time with interactive capabilities. 2 cents.

Antoine Check out Otoy for upcomming 3D Holographic products. There is quite a bit of info online, and they claim to be very close to releasing a free beta version of their offerings in this arena. There are serveral new products under developement that will be compatible with version 3.0 of Octane Render. From what I understand the target dates are this summer and for the betas and later on this year for 3.0.

Ozgur, have you tried exporting out to Blender as either 3DS or DAE and then exporting from there to a format that will work for you in 3D Max? I have found Blender's file exchanges to be pretty good so far for my uses, but I agree that CA's workflow could be a lot better when one is using other programs.

Keep us posted on your holographic model progress please, and if you don't mind telling, what software do you intend to use for the modeling?

Thanks Dennis Very nice, and especially given the file size. I take it that you did everything production wise using only Microsoft Movie Maker? I like the transitions and the image quality is very nice as well. I have been working with Chief's Walkthrough tools and there are some things I like about them, but the file size is very large compared to what you are getting and the render options are limiting.

In addition to starting this thread, I will also throw out some of the issues I have been having with the various approaches I have tried so far. My first work with Chief's Walk Through tools were ok, but choppy and the files were rather large. The quality was again, ok, but I wanted something with a bit more quality and also control over certain types of special effects that I had seen in other videos. The path I am taking is to use Chief's modeling tools in combination with Blender for special effects and animations generally. As to why I chose this approach? That is a good question. What I have seen is that the industry at large has many very powerful tools available, but theycan have rather large learning curves and costs associated with many of the approaches. The truth is, I really don't know which is the best approach and it really does not matter to me. What matters is that I gain the skills needed to accomplish what I need in order to produce the type and quality of videos I want to produce. Blender is free, and open source. Which means there are no additional costs associated with using Blender, and it is also a very unusual, but powerful program. The learning curve is a bit steep I would have to admit, but I am liking it so far. I also use Octane Render, partly for the speed and quatlity of the ray traces it can produce. But, it also has a tremendous up side when it is used as a plug in for other animation software. There is also the promise of VR, or holographics in the very near future. I am also very interested in screencasting, or captured short animations. Full animations are awesome, but very time consuming to produce. Screencasting can be close to the quality of a true animation with far less time invested. I have tried Snagit and like it very much, but I do find that the fps rate is not quite what I would like is some circumstances. So, I am still trying things out at this time and hope to make up my mind in a week or two. With the right rendering engines interacting with clients and choosing materials from remote locations is possible as well. Where things seem to be heading for me is screencasting to start along with learning to produce very short and effective videos. This at some point will hopefully arrive at the ability to interact with clients at remote locations, but that will be a ways down the road for me. I also like the idea of editing a screencast to include limited sections of high quality animation footage created in more specialized software. As soon as I get off the dime and finally pick a screencasting software I will post something that is hopefully a little good, and little bad, and probably a touch ugly as well.

This is something that is rather important to me, and I hope there are others out there who share an interest in this area as well. The purpose of this thread is to provide a location where questions can be asked and techniques can be shared on a variety of video platforms. I am hoping for this to be a place to explore the making of video presentations of all shapes and sizes. From those who prefer using programs such as Lumion, to those who prefer Blender or even the best of what can be accomplished in Chief Architect. The basic idea of this thread is to provide a place to learn and grow in skill and understanding over time in what I feel is a very important topic for the future of design and design presentation. With that being said, I think it is important to understand that this should be a place to discuss the nuts and bolts, as well as the reasons why certain approaches to video production are important. There are other threads for posting finished productions. I would invite anyone who has either a question related to video production in any of it's various shapes and sizes as well as any tips and tricks that might be of benefit to others who may be in need of some direction.

I bought the book a while back myself. A lot of it has to do with telling a story that appeals to your audience through staging and camera wotk. My experience has been that clients have a rather short attention span, even when it involves something of interest to them, such as their own home. Anything that helps in this regard is important, and I do find the book to be very helpful even if the title is a bit harsh. Thanks for sharing your efforts with us.

Updates, the option to participate in beta testing, free tech support, and Library items. But, I do agree that the instructional material could stand to cover a few key subjects at a more advanced level.

Just a note about square nails. I grew up in an authentic Victorian home, and had quite a few square nails that I kept in my toybox. I later read that many of those nails were made on board sailing ships by the crew after their daily duties were done. From what I remember they had strips of metal that they would then clip at alternating angles and then straighten the nails out and throw them into kegs. I guess that's how they got those Popeye forearms. Well, one of the ways.

Played with this a bit more and came up with the idea of selecting by color in Painter and filling with another color for items like walls. The selection process is very fast and you can set the wall fill color to anything you want in a paint program. What I don't like about this is how objects such as cabinets and furnishings don't look very good in what is essentially a plan view in a ray trace mode. What I think would look right is to have a very thin solid that has a material assigned either in place of the symbol, or bet yet incorportated into the symbol on it's own layer so that only that 2D appearing portion of the 3D symbol would show in a raytrace type of view plan view. CA does not provide this feature currently that I know of, but it could be accomplished fairly easily using using CAD Detail from View to capture the elements, and then using that as a pattern for the thin 3D objects that would be placed on the floor. There does appear to be some interesting things that can be done by leveraging a CA model into other programs that do have the capabilities that Chief may be lacking. There are probably also quite a few things that can be done in Chief directly as well. For myself, it did take a bit of experimenting in other programs to get some ideas going. But it would be much faster to not have to do all of the file conversions and swapping. Have a few things I want to try out in Chief some time soon. Edit: I think I would like to keep the walls black instead of changing the color, but that option is available. I do still like the idea of thin 3D symbols, probably White with some sort of raised details might look nice.

Very nice. Can you set the effects to Ortho, and then create a cutting plane with Lumion? I take it that you can set a time of day for the sun shadows, but is there also a way to place room and effect lighting? CA and Final View with Shadows might get close to this and then tweak it a bit. But, that wouldn't get the cutting plane the OP is after though.

This pic is not converted to a sketch style here, but you can use another program to set any number of sketch style options, and even merge it with the pic using FotoSketcher. The actual image was created from a model that originated in CA and then exported out to Octane Render where a Top view was used in Ortho camera mode and then the clipping distance was adjusted. (Kind of Touchy) What I found interesting about this is that anything that does not recieve light in the interactive render viewport is black. Just didn't think about it I guess, but it does make sense. Not so sure I like it though. Also notice the doors and also the pickets on the exterior railing. Anything in the model can be cut at any camera angle in either Perspective or Ortho camera modes. Check out the blotches where the tables are located. I think you can turn off the shadows using render passes, but I am not really sure about that. You could also hide the layers for the tables before exporting the model. Keep Squiggling.

Very interesting topic, and I agree with most of what has been stated above. The only thing that I would add is that there is a bit more to this story than just how these issues may relate to users of CT. I read a book fairly recently that I think was titled "Who owns the future" and it was about how large corporations are trading in information about every aspect of our personal lives. This information is viewed as being the key to future commerce, and therefore of great value in developing products and services. The problem arises when the the owner of such property is not compensated for it. I get that it may sound a bit far fetched, but consider how you would feel if and when you find yourself in such a circumstance. I am also curious if anyone has actually read the release we had to sign in order to be on the new CT forum? My point is that each of us should know their rights and exercise it in the way they see fit without any form of presure. Something to think about.

I did a project recently and did something simlar to what jon has shown, but I used TurboCAD Pro Platinum because I already have it and use it for many other things besides converting text to 3D solids. I am not familiar with SU, so I do not really know the workflow. In TC it requires a series of explodes and once you have a polyline you then extrude it to the depth you want. What I also like about TC is that you can set a draft angle so the extrusion can have a slope to the sides of the object, in this case text. Not always req'd, but nice in some situations. Attached is a rendering of a model created in Chief with signs made in TC by the process mentioned above and then the signs were imported as symbols into Chief. The Chief model was then rendered in Octane Render after a series of file conversions. As jon mentioned, the nice thing about going to the extent of learning how to do something like this is that it opens the door to much more realistic and accurate models of real text fonts, in this case the actual font used by the sign company.

It is about content and file formats for leveraging assets ASAP in the workflow in my book as far as BIM is concerned. Chief is great on content and medium to low on file compatibility. Close in many ways, but still too difficult to work with in the sense of having to jump though hoops repeatedly to get even basic file exchanges done. Looks like the momentum is building for BIM. I see it on the commercial construction side as well. Once it takes hold there will be no looking back, and my bet is it will be sooner rather than later. Lew, it pobably won't end up as we may see it now. Probably better.

GPU rendering can handle very large files, so long as the geometry can all be held in memory. Even multiple cards in one machine or the cloud for that matter. GPU raytracing is not available in Chief, this requires 3rd party programs. Blender and Cycles are free if you want to check it out. Lots of options available, but X7 is not to be overlooked either. GPU currenly means a cuda enabled card, which only Nvidia has right now. Just something to think about.