VisualDandD

Yep....my fov had to be pretty large to fit in everything. TM has a parallelism tool which I did not use. I kinda liked the view. Albeit I am not a photographer and I am probably not playing by rules of proper composition at times With that said, your translation is quite faithful with such a large AI influence. Only a few areas that did not come out correct. Mask technique is a great way to approach. I know your PS skills are top notch. For me, I dont mess with that much. For reference, when I said 'cartoony' it was not an insult. I should have said stylized. Quite attractive, just not what I would describe as photo real. (the photo-real being an ever elusive moving target it seems at times ) Give me a hollar some day when you have time. Be great to catch up!

Rene. That looks really nice. I has some similar results and the stylized result looked too 'cartoony' to me. But client liked it. I prefer more realistic looking. But looking through a lot of realtors market with, these stylized renders seem to be popular. As always nice work! Here is same render one with letting AI do it's thing. The builder actually liked the AI version but now what I preferred.

Yea....nothing accurate at all about these at all. ....except maybe....everything. Guess we just do different types of work. Not sure if your work is more interior decorating based. But I have little in the way of use making pretty pictures out of empty square boxes. I am lucky enough to work with clients who have made marks for building things that are not just 'boilerplate' type designs. Pics of the 'not sensing too much accurate realism" ones are being built right now.

Trying to understand the usefulness of anything you have shown as an example except maybe what colors they like. Specifically, the offest with the window is puzzling to me and the renderings will mislead the client as to how a queen/king may fit in the room. I am not sure what you use renderings for, but I use them for clients to understand the design (as best once can). With that said most of my renderings in the design stage look like the ones below and they serve to allow the client to understand everything in a EXACT manner. I think the key point of using 3D in design is precision and ability to represent things as they will be (or should be) if executed correctly. If you represent things in a less than accurate manner, then 3d is just a gimmick. Might as well hand draw on paper and round up and down all your dimensions.

Sorry....for reference, these are just normal renderings of same project. Fully modeled in chief (everything except plants and greenery) Rendered in TM ..

The problem is when you are working with projects that you can t afford for AI to make any changes. Can have GREAT looking things, if you are not working with exacting clients. I have played with AI in just upscaling...etc but letting it do much more than that is not acceptable with the work I am doing. This was upscaled and played with a few other things. Here are a few I played with, but they stared with good rendering and only relied on AI to enhance what was there. I dont think there is much point in anything of filling an otherwise nondescript box of a room with furniture that AI put in there. I dont know I would call that 'design'. @basketballman the above examples have HUGE differences and would not be something I could present to a client. Your window centers changed, Window style and lite count. Sliding glass door added where was a window. Header heights altered. Completely unusable if you ask me.

@JiAngelo thanks for the tip! Looks like we have been playing around with Chief about the same time! Just like you I still discover new things all the time. The layer being on or off had no effect. Just an odd bug. I first thought it was simple interference as Michael had suggested. Not a huge one...just first time I noticed it. But could have been there for year as I dont normally combine the two models when I am still actively drawing my working model if that makes sense. The reference is neat. Never used that outside a single plan file either. Only issue I see is I use it for the purpose to communicate design direction with dynamic models during the process (vs a static plan view/cross section). Thanks so much though! Still learning as always

I dont think that is the issue..... I thought that might be the case though initially. (seen behavior before). Even if you try to use the tool well outside the area where the symbol occupies, those items still dont work. Really odd. Like if you zoom waaaaay out and try to place something the tool is not available. And as I said, no other interference of any other items besides shelves and partitions. To finish my work, I had to delete the symbol of the site, then go in add shelving, and then copy/paste in place from back up of where the site symbol had been. I could have just drawn CAD lines for shelves, but since I knew what was causing it, I just used shelf tool.

Found a bug which had me scratching my head for a while.... But I figured out what is causing it, but guess I should pass on to support. It is a bug where you cant place shelves or partitions in a model after inserting a very large symbol. It is limited to shelves and partitions only. You can still place soffits, cabinets etc. I model sites separately and then make symbol and then place it in my working design plan. This plan also had another full square mile of terrain added to show lake views and islands (which dictated the design and the client had very specific design requirements. Anyway this is the site "symbol". If I am in my working drawing, I can not add shelves. Selecting the icon and when you drag onto the scree, normally you see a preview of where the shelf will go. I does not. Partition also wont work. Took me a while to figure out what it was, but if I delete the symbol of the terrain, both those functions work fine. It I put it back in, they no longer work. Weird....anyone experience anything like this before? Believe it or not the model contains even larger elements but they are not part of what is causing it. I know because I selectively deleted things in finding out what is causing it. The other elements are 'live' in the model as 3d solids and not part of what is causing conflicts. Last image shows why I did all this (so client can understand the views)

Maybe for appraisal standards. But NOT for construction standards. I have been involved in building before I started designing. Almost 30 years now. The accepted construction standard in residential homes has always been outside of framed stud (where dimensions go to on plans, and stairs only on one level. Using the ANSI standards often yield a higher sqft anywhere from 100-200 sqft and even more on full brick homes. Stair config can have a large impact upon this. By using a non-industry standard, you are costing your clients and builders more money and making their homes more expensive to build. This is because a significant portion of the subcontractor base bills by sqft under roof. About 10 years ago, I started producing 2 sets of plans for each home. There is a "bank" set, with specific notation of sqft being calculated to ANSI standard (with a big watermark NOT FOR CONSTRUCTION on it). And then there is a "FIELD" set calculated to normal industry standards.

Open a 3d view of home. Make sure to turn OFF terrain so just the house and foundation is shown. Convert that into a symbol. Next, build your site model and then set your home into said model. Depending on the plan/foundation, sometimes I cut a hole in the terrain using a copy of the orignal home perimeter, but if not a basement, or you are only looking at views outside home, it should not matter.

Wow! Been away from the forum for a while. X15 looks pretty good. I have a current ssa and have not even take the time to download it. Might have to get around to it at some point. Love to see more of what can be done in it so will be following along this thread. I have been using TM for a while. Dont really consider myself a rendering person, but it comes along with some of the higher end jobs I do. Be interesting to see what can be done. Here are some examples or recent stuff I have done in TM. No post processing. These are the direct images out of TM. Video also renders at same quality. Need to catch up for sure!

I need to get around to installing x15 I keep saying when I get done with the 'next' project.. Just as a follow up. I rendered it (very quickly I might add...no sidewalks or drive and just dropped in a few bushes to break up the front). It actually rendered fine...

Looks like it might be fixed in X15. Thanks! Maybe I should get around to installing Thanks!

Forgot this work around. Set upper mulled trans unit to have sill. Un check apron and I created a very small cad block so sill is very small. (uncheck 'apron'). Hit 'clear' under the library profile and it will remove molding. Set lower mulled unit to 'lintel' and hit 'clear' to remove the molding. Looks pretty good, except in 3d the molding for the 'sill' extends to outer part of casing. OK for plan view but no good for 3d color. I made a 1/16 sq molding for sill but it will only let it go so small. For 3D I see 2 solutions. -Take casings off all windows and then add casing as molding polyline manually from ele view. -Use my lintel/sill trick and for the 3d make a very small solid that hides the sill and color match. Latter one is probably the fastest. Fin product elev and 3d with sill/lintel trick. Note: I did not do the color mask for the sill. Just showing how I got around it.

I had forgotten about this one, but anyone else have a fix? 4-mulled units. Two lower mulled first. Two upper (1/2 arch) mulled second. When you then mull the top and bottom together it makes the upper trans both full arch. Disclaimer. Current SSA but still working in 14 as I have never taken the time to upgrade to 15. Dont know if it is fixed there or not. But might be worth my time even if it just fixes that bug. Any body got any ideas? I The work around I have done in the past, is make single arch above and fudge my elev w/ cad line work to make it look like there are two frames. Pics of pre-mull (upper and lower) and post mull result below. Fixed in X15?

One of the methods I have come up with when dealing with finicky wall connections that I want to define intersections that Chief will now allow is to create a very thin wall (often just 1" thick). I can then draw some very intricate, even short return walls to intersect like I want to. The catch is I do a CAD fill box that only shows on my Floor Plan view. I set color of fill to wall color (gray in my case) and remove the line color. On the plan set it look perfect and 3d looks perfect. The thin wall bypasses a lot of min wall lengths that try to 'snap' walls to certain increments. Some may call it a 'work around' but pretty easy to do.

Here is my other work station.

Here is my messy office My son built my keyboards custom for me. (He had me pick the switches that I preferred...nice tactile ones).

Man your work is INCREDIBLE!!!! Just had to say that! Awesome job!

I am in 100% agreement with this. I would never take the time required fiddling with trying to get chief to draw all the roof perfectly in an automatic fashion. This becomes especially true with varying plate heights and offsets. It is quicker to just draw the roofs you want then it is to fiddle with the plan, make invisible walls trying to define 'rooms' to get the roofs to auto gen. I will use auto sometimes to just put a rough start on a a roof, but then I shut off and edit and draw roof planes as needed.

Glen I just used the square window (no casing in or out) and then made 3d solid overlays to 'hide' the part of window I did not want. I then made my sills out of solids and precast casing is a 3d molding poly line. You can see my solid selected in 2nd pic. Did same for interior. Does not look bad. I do my elev in 'line drawings' so I will have to delete the lines created by solids but this was the best way I could think to approach. Just was wondering if I was missing something?

Have current project that needed gothic arched corner free window. I could not figure out how to do normally within chief. Corner windows easy. Goes away as soon as you arch or shape. Am I missing anything? I used some 'work arounds' to do this. Also the keen eye will notice the wood insets cutting the brick veneer. Chief does not like to do this either. Even with material regions, it leaves some of the veneer material at sill and header. This was an easier work-around than window....

I used to 'back in day' when chief came with a printed 2+" manual in the box, sit down from time to time with the manual to explore ways to use the program. It would do me good to continue the habit in the electronic form. I am 'learn by doing' guy and only called tech support one time (back in 1999). I drew a home that exceeded Chiefs ability to move from model to line drawings when sending to layout. I remember when one of the guys from Chief explained that you can use CAD boxes (altered to any shape) along with the "Edit Area" function. This is now part of my 'go to' items I use ALL the time when making revisions. Such a simple little thing that saves SO much time making edits. Some day, I need to make it to one of the user group gathering. I am sure that even after 20 years there are some of the most simple functions I have missed over the years! Thank you @TeaTime for the help!

WOW....how did I miss that one! Now I have to sheepishly ask how long we have had that feature As long as I have been using Chief, I realize there is so much that I dont yet know it can do! THANK YOU!