VisualDandD

So I have been playing with more rendering lately. Mostly TM. I have essentially what is the fastest box one could build (before the 4090 cards came out). For RTX it is fantastic, but I am looking into rendering video. Even doing 30fpx with ray trace the times are days with 3080ti, I am doing about a minute of vid and it will run for 2 days to accomplish. (cant wait to see how it comes out). So I did a quick search on rendering farms where you rent a virtual computer. Found monthly, weekly and even hourly rentals. Equiv to to 10-1080 Ti cards running on some. So has anyone here ever used any? If so which might one recommend. I dont do enough of it to justify monthly or even weekly rental, so hourly would probably be best bet. Any thoughts?

Here is the end result. Have not tweeked my renders yet. This is first run at them.....No post processing, just strait out of first shot. The client wants all white also. Not my color choices. They have a decorator with some 'out there' ideas. When I add some lights and do some lower light shots, the design will really pop. I included one darker one I will light with good effect.

I export to TM with terrain. I use the terrain to cut in driveways, side walks, and even landscape beds. The TM paint on terrain does not give a good enough finished product for that. Export to a terrain that contains your drives, and walks, (and beds if you want them). Have the terrain slope off approx 24" at edges. Import into TM and blend terrain to meet up with it. This is a chief terrain blended with a larger area in TM The driveway is modeled in chief as is the underlying terrain. (drive set approx 3" higher than terrain for grass) You can do some cool things in TM to get more realistic ground look. Perfectly flat grass looks fake. See ripples down the side of the home in the ground. That is an intentional element meant to try to being in some more realism.

Just wanted to share a little tip I have used for a while. When rendering in TM, I take my home and add terrain perimeter. I then go to all the extents of the terrain and add a 'elev-region' about 12-24" lower than where home sits (so the terrain tapers off). This allows me to add my driveway and sidewalks. I make them 2-3" thick and they stand ABOVE the terrain. For landscape beds, a nice hack is to use countertops. Set to 6-8" thick and apply a nice tapered curb molding to the edges and it makes nice raised beds. I bring it all into TM and then create a 'flat' landscape. I sculpt the TM landscaping, and blend it in with my tapered terrain perimieter. Add grass (which works nicely with the raised drives and sidewalks. Add bump and textures to landscape beds and plant in TM. Getting ready to render another project and figured I would share my process. Pic of elev regions, terrain and sidewalks and beds and clay model. I have a few more tweeks to do and then bring into TM for rendering.

Ha. I really dont put a lot of time in it, but I do remember the days when it was MUCH harder. These are old ones from Chief 9 (NOT X9 but 9). The old PovRay version. This was back when chief did not even apply freize and you had to manually drain in all the trim. I of course photochopped the landscape in, but pretty amazing what you would do with that old stuff, but generating that pic (without the landscape) would take 4 to 5 hours.... But my first renderings ever were for my first home that I designed in chief. They are attached as BMP's This was 6.0. I bought chief because I wanted to design my own home. As you can see from the design, the ability to do curves were a big thing that sold me on it. I had tried some other 'comp usa' programs and could not get what I wanted. I grabbed a real estate vid from when the house sold a few years back. We lived there for a decade. Those are not my furnishings, but the person who lived there after us. But if it were not for Chief, I dont think I could have pulled it off. It was the first home I designed. https://youtu.be/MuIPjkDnuvQ

That is super kind. I keep saying that I dont 'render', but I find myself dabbling in it from time to time. I do try to search out better textures and have saved a few. Most often, I will use chief's and then make normal maps to bring into TM and have them look better. Of all the things bricks and shingles are the 2 toughest for sure!

Thank you! I will load it and try it out!!!! Brick is always the toughest to get good looking ones for sure. Thank you again!

Some to add. The client is a porsche guy so I threw in some fun stuff. It is hard not to get carried away. After you do a nice model, the image generating is just as fun! .

I do this all the time. Chief can be a little finiky, but I have a way I do it. Not sure if it is the 'right' way, but it works for me. -I copy and paste in place the roof I want the kick out on. -I then drag one of the roofs from the bottom eve and snap to the inside of the wall. -Open the roof dbx and take note of the 'fascia height'. -Then I select the other roof plane and drag from the top down to the inside of the wall. (so now the two roof planes match and look like one roof) -then open the lower dbx and alter pitch as you desire for kickout. Whether radius or just lower pitch. -Then open lower pitch DBX and paste in the fascia ht of the upper roof plane in to the LOWER roof's ridge height. Just for removing any glitches, you can then join roof planes to clean up any small sub fractional issues. Then copy the lower kickout and paste it around the plan using point to point on baseline. I do all my roofs manually. Chiefs 'auto' tools start to fail as the design becomes complex. I might auto build a simple hip structure and then go in and start editing manually.

Yes Twin Motion. I worked on pool design and tightening up details today. I did not put a ton of time on the rendering end. But I make most of my own textures and normal maps. I often start with a chief texture and make normal maps for those. I tend to experiment a little.....but I dont consider rendering 'my thing'. Just something I do to convey ideas on higher end projects. Lots of details on this. Most all done in Chief

Thank you. I have further work to do of course refining. I love the way things evolve and even I am surprised at times! I'll post up some when I get a little further.

Here is what I used for rendering. I ended up using the radius wall that I broke into sections. Going to save the cabinet trick though. Thank you! These are not final renderings, but they are for design concept sign off.

@Alaskan_Son Has anyone submitted a request to make a CAD tool that will accomplish what this is doing? Be nice to have deform any solid along a line for example. Draw solid flat and then be able to manipulate said solid along a line. I can see this as being very useful.

Lots of options. This took me 30 sec to make. It is a perforated metal. Re-scaled it and changed color to bronze. There are also mesh materials. Just resize, and color. On chief, set the screen material to a discrete material. (some type of glass that wont be used any other place). Then when you switch the material in TM only the screen porch gets changed.

Michael You are crazy (in a good way) That works to get the 3d shape. I can draw 2d cad to represent the walls. I actually got it pretty close fudging it by eye with a wall and wall break tool. (which kinda shocked me) I may use this for my renderings since I want the cap to show nicer. (I did not draw cap in example below, just testing method. I have never fallen down the cabinet rabbit hole Seeing what you have done with them is insane. It seems that every time I cant figure out a good way to do something, it is solved with a cabinet! Thanks man!

I played with this a little more. Was going to see if I could 'sculpt' one from Solids. First making a arc wall and then subtracting '3d solid holes out of it. I laid out wall in cad and planned on sculpting from various elev angles to correct for parallax. I took the overall length of the arc and plotted it and then was going to use it to trace my 'cut out's. Chief got nasty when I tried to use arcs on the 3d subtraction boxes. Running a 3080ti and it was bogging me down and I had to Ctrl-alt-del a few times. Then I started simple 3d shapes and as I went along, chief started to not recognize the polyline subtractions. Way too buggy for me to go further with this method.

Hey all, it is not often that I am stumped, but I figured I would throw this out there. Have a curved entry wing wall which is on a perfect radius. The top of the wall slopes in opposing curves. I made it with a curved wall with radius wall tool (with the curved wall being brick on outer layers). I then broke the wall in the 3d view and manually created the top slope along the radius by eye. Wondering if there is a better way for something like this. Was trying to think how I might use molding poly lines, and solids, but I just could not see a clear path to doing it. I have it to where it is close to being acceptable, but I could still do some tweaking on it. Wondering if there is an easier way? Am I missing something? Thanks!

Recent modern I am working on. 10

When you are really trying to earn some points!.....

I am using TwinMotion2022. I dont spend too much time in the rendering. Do most in chief and then I pull in and just make it look pretty in TM. They guy who's home it will be is a big car nut. We have bonded over cars since I am as well. I am not against brown nosing ;-) So I dropped a few easter eggs in. A 959, a 930 and a GT3RS. They fit will with the home!

Thanks guys. Bump update. Bringing into focus..... It is nice when you are not asked to compromise much on the design end. You can do fun stuff. Yes, even moats and waterfalls with suspended walk ways Remember, rendering is not really my 'thing'. But I do it to capture the project feel. I do enough to translate the idea, but I dont sweat the details too crazy so dont be too critical of rendering

Michael, This was kind of the route I was thinking. KISS. I have a few layer sets that show in 3d and elev that dont show up on my FP views. Seems easy enough to do with a few things. Might be too niche a thing, but be a nice feature to add to doors to control pivot point...etc. I am just excited. Kinda like graduating to the 'big' leagues. FINALLY getting to work with a client who does not care about budget. Of course everyone cares to some extent, but it is not factoring into design decisions. Normally on modern homes, I start to run into things getting deleted because of cost and that wont happen here. Will have lots of steel, built-up roofs, and tons of commercial glazing, giant glass accordian walls...etc. Fun stuff. I have done a good amount of modern, but it is always on the budget minded side. This time I get to free myself from those restrictions!

@Renerabbitt I was half joking, but only half I will play around with it. I have to see what they end up picking style wise, but I was thinking of fudging with a polyline solid built up and make the 2-d work in CAD. Thank you for sharing. You have certainly fallen down the 'rabbit hole' with the work arounds using cabinets! Nice!

So finally have a client really to push some bounds on a modern. We are going to spec a 6'x10' pivot door w/ center pivot. My only issue is trying to represent in Chief. I can of course do a door frame and make some solids to represent the door. But wondering if there is a better way. I was experimenting with the door dialogue, and if you do a double door, swing both ways, you can have them pivot from center of door. But that is falling short for me. Wondering how others may have solved this.... I am sure @Renerabbitt has probably done this with a cabinet at some point Any help or ideas are appreciated.

Why not change at the wall definition level? It is extremally rare that I use the paint tool for a wall surface. I dont feel it is an effective nor efficient way of drawing.