puntloos

To be clear though, a list of 'used materials' has, well, its uses, but if you want to color-coordinate your house, what you would want is a "palette" - for example in my house I want birch, slate, and cream, so any 'colors' I can detect in the design that don't match these should be merged (and replaced with) the actual defaults. @Kbird1 mentioned the roofing texture but indeed I don't think I care about 'textures on objects' that i draw from the library. There are some exceptions I suppose, but I'm primarily worried about the recurring larger areas.

I'm a bit shy about my full plan out in the open (I've included architect drawings, map overlays location specs etc) plus it's horrible amateur hour (for example to generate a crown roof I inserted a fake floor between 1st and loft :P) - I've only played with chief as a way to 'understand' the work my Architect has done but I'll send it to support. (support case ticket: 109276 for @Dermot )

Ah, merge, I didn't notice that option. .. and it failed. I tried to merge 3x 'glass' (exact same name) and I got an error that merge was not fully completed (and suddenly my doors were with a strange black texture) @Dermot- sorry no idea! I only recently noticed the plan materials choice in material selector, but it has so many random things in there its main purpose that I imagine (quickly selecting from my default house palette) really doesn't work if I have to scroll through all kind of things. The merging might (...) fix the duplicates, but the dialog is still crowded with items that probably came with the library items (e.g. I'm pretty sure I didn't choose 'Green Exposed Fasteners' for any of my surfaces, but instead it is probably the awnings I chose..)

Let me show you what I mean: when i want to edit the default material of a door, I go to defaults, doors.. and then the "plan materials" in the material selector lists "birch - natural" 4x and a bunch of random things. I'd like a single birch-natural.

My current plan materials list is quite annoying, many 'random materials' and what's worse - duplicates. Makes the list pretty useless for quickly selecting appropriate colors. How can I collapse the material list so that my house only uses a few basic materials. For example I want all visible wood to be "Birch Natural", and most external accent colors to be "Color - Slate" halp?

At a quick glance I don't think this is free, asks you to sign up for $20?

Ray tracing of a walkthrough. X13 is fully 'frozen' with a "frame x out of xxx" window slowly progressing.

ah great, that's the trick I was missing. Yep the program works just fine running twice. I guess I'll have to be somewhat careful trying to edit the exact same file so better make a copy etc.

I am currently running a raytracing walkthrough. ETA 1 day+. And now I'm stuck waiting for it to complete. Why can I not run another instance?

Ah thanks.. @Renerabbitt how's your VR performance? What settings are you using etc? With 20% render resolution and standard view I barely manage 60fps.. not great.

To be clear I don't want to work in VR, I want to just walk around the house in VR and the performance is terrible for some reason (not to mention the rendering issue)

VR - I have a 3080 RTX and Ryzen 5900 - close to the best you can reasonably get nowadays. HP G2 VR headset so fairly high resolution in theory.. Yet with *all settings to minimal* - including having the render resolution in steamvr set to 20%, global illuminations off etc etc.. (most modern games run at 100%!) it barely manages to hit 60 hz Not to mention it looks completely wrong! Physically based rendering without ray tracing enabled, and with, both are black and white. If I switch to 'standard mode' it looks ugly but OK, performance still terrible. What gives? Any 3080 owners who get a decent FPS? (it's fine without VR!)

Using the new render engine, in various parts of the house I see light coming 'from the cracks' even though there are no cracks as I can tell. Something like this. What causes this? Obviously I've tried 'connecting the walls' etc but no joy. I thought maybe it was the intersection between internal and external walls but that doesn't seem to be it either. FWIW this house doesn't have any (electrical) light sources defined at all yet.

Ah thanks indeed it shows it's enabled. Yes upgraded to 3080 recently!

How can I tell if rendering is using my 3080 GPU? It certainly is raytracing (the telltale speckle with ever smaller graininess) but whenever I move my 1920x1200(ish) viewport it takes about 10 seconds to go from the start until 'acceptable'. Shouldn't that be less? Could it be it is using my fairly powerful CPU instead? In the task manager neither CPU nor GPU seem to be breaking a sweat but if anything I *want* them to break a sweat to be faster...

Thanks Joey. I guess theoretically we could share a populated .plan file.. I guess I might transfer my copy of spons into chief.. not looking fwd to it but one thing is true: I am still struggling to understand the scope and amount of small-to-large decisions I will have to make during my build. Do I have to decide on type of glue? probably not. What about plasterboard brand? mmmaybe? Type of pipes? meh.. Oven? Sure. Going through the exercise will probably force me to understand it all

OK, but that's a book Did someone input this book into Chief?

Does someone have some 'general pricing' available for common components, and can this be imported into Chief? There's a price book in the UK called 'spons' - do we have such a source file that just gives a general "a cabinet door tends to be xyzmonies. It would be super useful to drop this in and work from there... any idea?

Wow, that's amazing. I've also never seen PBR look that good. Other than 'place the things' what type of stuff did do you do additionally? The yellow light through some 'paper like' cover on the window casts interesting shadows that might be the core trick? If that chair is in the standard library I might have to place it somewhere just to see what it looks like. If anything though the PBR is too bright, but I suppose the weather outside in real life is a little drab? What's your own take on this comparison?

I think what I would love to see, to 'ground' my ideas a bit: 1/ Renders made by Chief, vs the final product. Surely there are a few chief-designed houses out there where some photos compare reality with render? 2/ Is there some way to have chief architect 'predict' the brightness in a specific spot (what would a light meter say if you held it in that spot)? - that way, if chief says "100 lux" and you then find a room where your real light meter also says 100 lux you can kind-of mentally compare the scenes?

When I use the camera, my renders always look very dark, and I don't quite understand if this is 'true', and the house will be this dark, or if I'm just not telling Chief the right things to draw realistic lighting? See attached image. - Daylight outside (didn't change sun settings/brightness) - 'beam' of light coming from the light gap above - Grey cabinets, ok. I can make them white - Side window to the right off-picture - No electric lights on. - Ceiling: default (white!) Dark. No? Instead, also attached - a real kitchen picture that has no direct light at all.. but well, clearly a flash photo - but it looks a lot brighter overall? Is that really just the flash and the small ceiling lights on? If I wanted to simulate this kitchen's settings, how can I render a 'flash' and ceiling lights?

I find myself (re)building the roof a lot. Main problem, basic house has a gable roof, but parts I intend to be flat (garage, extension) suddenly have a pointy roof again after every rebuild. How can I force a roof to stay flat?