gold333

Hey all,

I'm going nuts. 

Every time I reposition something like a light (spotlight) it readjusts it's height depending on where it thinks the floors and ceilings are.

I have a loft with various mezzanines which aren't really floor slabs.

So I move a spot light, say 4 inches to the left in the plan, and I switch to the 3D view and its teleported to like 30 feet under the house or above the roof outside.

It's driving me nuts.

Is there anyway you can disable this or just lock the height of objects.

Here's one.

Holy **** that's what I'm talking about. Wow.

Thanks so much.

PS: Is one possible without sunlight and just the interior lights?

First, I'm no expert on the finer art of what is actually a Ray Trace (RT) view I believe you are after. You are referring to it as a render. Not actually semantics, there is a difference. There are some truly gifted people on this forum that produce some amazing Ray Trace images using Chiefs internal RT (Phoebe) but many of these same people are using 3rd party engines like Thea and POV Ray among many others out there. They produce the design in Chief then export them to the other software for a photo realistic image. That being said, the Chief engine is actually quite good and a really nice looking Ray Trace image is or can be a lot of work to get the materials and textures exactly right and critically too the lighting. Most of these same people do this for a living so might not be inclined to go to that much trouble for someone with just two posts to the forum. I do mean that with all due respect and certainly do not speak for any of them.

That being said, Search the forum (particularly the old forum archives) for Jintu, Kathleen, Wendy and George and several others that are the Ray Trace masters. Look for threads called "show us your goodies" for some examples of their work. If you like it, perhaps send them a PM to inquire what they might charge to do this for you, with the caution again that these are just a few of the folks whose work I admire, and I do not profess to speak on their behalf.

Last, looking at your plan, you need to save it with the textures and material you actually used, or it's anyone's guess as to what you intended to use as Chief will substitute. Go to "file" "backup entire plan" then select the top radio button. That will be the plan with the referenced materials and textures you used.

It looks very cool, and I wish you luck with it. Below is a link to one of the threads. Very long

http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread.php?36571-Time-to-Show-YOUR-GOODIES!!!!!!&highlight=Show+goodies

I know there are others very good at this, so I apologize and just listed a few of my favorites off the top of my head....

Thanks a lot for your advice.

To be honest, I didn't really use many textures. Only three, the Chief Architect built in crystal ice glass, the built in Aluminum Brushed and the plain color white. I backed up that folder like you said though.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5AAKhbO49n_d1lYV1dITzZpVDA/view?usp=sharing

Thanks for your feedback. 

To be honest I'm not an architect, I'm a photographer and that loft is my own apartment I am trying to design. A good friend of mine is an architect and he lent me his old pc which had Chief Architect on it and I started to just play around. It took me a good few weeks to get this far.

I see your point on the Raytracing being an art in itself. I'm pretty disappointed in my own abilities with it so far.

As for my aim in posting, I wasn't really looking to pay someone for this. I was just wondering if someone has a fast PC they'd like to push to the limits with a design that takes so long to ray trace on my Q9650@4GHZ DDR3 (even on a not top level raytracer like CA's) I was kinda hoping a ray tracing genius might show me how this would look rendered by a real architect/designer as opposed to me.

Thanks! I use a Q9650 @ 4.07 ghz but this thing is still too slow. 

I'd also appreciate some advice on what you guys think of the design. Chief Architect isn't really made to design minimalist lofts, etc. I had to build my own LED lighting in Chief Architect using lights and plexiglass.

Ok here goes. This is a loft (height 4.27m). It is empty as the picture shows apart from 3 objects which are present. A bathroom, a closet and a kitchen unit. (Maybe you can tell, but I first built the construction I was aiming for by hand out of wood and paper, you can see it on the kitchen unit!)

The design I made includes two entresols (hanging floors) to create a bedroom and a living room. Furthermore, downstairs is a photography studio, a cocktailbar a kitchen a bathroom and a make up and styling area.

The look is predominantly metal (brushed aluminum), glass (panels and glass stairs) and white. As you can see the built in renderer doesn't really do the design justice. It cannot do the specularity of the floors very well either. My design aims for satin sheen white floors.

The glass dividers above are supposed to be lit through by AMBI led lighting (variable Kelvin) but Chief doesn't have that so I had to make do with putting spot lights above and below each pane of glass, very ghetto render I know.

Here's a plan and a 3ds file with built in camera angles. See if anyone can do some nice renders. If anything fails to import let me know. Thanks if anyone could be bothered to help me.

Plan:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5AAKhbO49n_WUc5d28zc1V5dDg/view?usp=sharing

3ds:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5AAKhbO49n_c3RWQnU1bDBoM1E/view?usp=sharing

Hi there,

My PC is very bad. I use X5.

Does anyone have a Vray boosted Chief Architect that could do a render of the interior of a Milan loft I designed?

Thanks  if you can help me