VisualDandD

You could have been a little nicer when you said that. After all, we are all about the feelings here

My old post got bumped. Still not using PBR, and.....yes still fighting every staircase that wraps a wall in a plan. I have been using chief since v6 (not x6). I have the ability to draw most anything manually in the software. EG with roofs, I run a few 'auto' roof leaving many areas defined with no roof above. I get to where I see the 'big picture' and then just draw manually. I am not asking for a lot.....just the ability to manually draw with stairs as I can with a roof. Manually break a tread around a wall...etc. Create returns and winders as needed. For a while I used landings to make these transitions, but they dont show right in 3d. Anyway....good deal for all those that like PBR. To me, the lack of normals in a lot of materials and the inability to easily manipulate materials, makes it not worth messing with for me. I am not saying PBR might not be good some day. But my honest opinion is that it was rushed into the new update and not even close to being ready. I dont think it is fair to compare Lumion to Chief as it is a dedicated rendering program (and I would expect it to be better). The guy at chief ought to navigate around Lumion a little though and see how beneficial well integrated material tools can be . Specifically using imported textures and the ability to on the fly create bump maps and adjust material properties almost instantly. It is a lofty goal, but the UI of Lumion for material adjustment is lightyears ahead. (As it should be...but I think Chief could improve) But frankly, I dont ever see using Chief as a primary rendering tool. If rendering is important enough to my business, I will use a software that is tailored just for that. Why try to be everything and still lag behind at some basic drawing functions? If I design, I want to use the best design software I can, because it is how I make my money. (I still beileve Chief is that for me). I am not losing jobs because I lack the ability to make pretty pictures. I can make as pretty a pictures as any guy out there rendering. It is just not an efficient use of my time since I am more productive designing and producing working drawings, than I would rendering. Does not mean I cant render though.....Below is a Lumion Render that took about 5 Minutes to make from a direct Chief import. I only added a few lights and defined the materials (all stock Chief). Nice thing is after the 5 minute set up, it takes about 5 more min to define a path and record a nice video. Vid was renered on high, so it took about 15 min to process. Again, I expect Lumion to be better since it is a decicated tool. I repeat, I do not expect Chief to compete with what it can do.

I checked out your videos and you represent several of Chiefs sample plans as examples of your work....even producing videos and walk throughs describing the design and the design process. You use the Grandview, the Breckenridge, timber frame, and Chick Cottage. (maybe more, but I did not go through all your vids). If you really did draw all those....nice work for sure. This vid below you say...."each of the following designs started with a rough sketch and photos and was created in one or more one hour design sessions". Wow....that is amazing that those plans done in just a few hour sessions. Nice work! https://www.youtube.com/user/sobbofner/videos

Nice work and point well made. It is hard for me to understand shipping with 'defaults' that are so far off. That is what I meant about it not seeming like it was ready. I have not even messed with it at all, but your work shows it has potential. There is a lot of work yet to go as well. The shadowing, and materials devoid of and depth due to lack of bump/normal. Sure they can update the cats at some point, but they are just so hard to work with from a manual standpoint as well. Making your own involves going in and getting the zipped files and then altering the image files to create your own maps...etc. It takes A LOT of work. Have you played with making bump or normal maps with PBR? That would improve the look tremendously if they would work. I can applaud the effort, but it is almost like chief has an identity crisis. It is trying to be everything. Pretty pictures sell software maybe....? But Those of us who have been with chief for a long time, have stayed NOT for the pretty pictures. We use it because for residential design, it is a great platform. If I want photorealism, I will use a specific rendering engine for that. Guys have used Thea for years that wanted a step above ray trace. Unless chief plans on devoting their resources to make their rendering on par with render specific products, professionals will use the render specific products if that is their business. (if they produce photo renderings) This is a mistake in my opinion since we will end up with beautiful pictures and still lack the ability to draw a stair that wraps a wall properly. And, (sorry Chief) They are years behind what the best products out there can do. They will always be in this position as they dont just render. Sorry for side tracked rant again.....but I just see chasing rendering as a losing battle. Nice work BTW.

Chief PBR is terrible right now. I refuse to even waste my time with it. It looks and behaves like a pre-release beta version. I dont think it was ready for release....not by a long shot. More bugs than a cheap motel. They need to have a MUCH easier way to manipulate and adjust materials, normal and bump maps...etc. In lumion, you can do this 'on the fly'. In fact, I just use most of chiefs native materials and just adjust in lumion. This was just done for a concept and I have ZERO added lighting. The "lights" just are material defined as having "emissive" bumped up. Just default single light source. Probably took about 15min to set up and takes about 30 seconds to render each image. In the last one, I added some lights under cab and where the fixtures were. Then lowered the sun. That took about 5 minutes, and rendering was about 45sec. (cant remember what my global illumination settings were) If I 'decorated' and played with adding lights, it could easily go to a presentation level in no time..... No hate on chief....but to me the PBR resources would have been better spent on producing tools that allow us to produce CD's and maybe.....fix stairs. How many years of complaining about stairs (a part of EVERY two story home you draw).

Thanks for the reply. I was beginning to think I might be the only one. I'll have to see if that is what is causing it. I always have multiple views open between monitors so that could likely be the case. Does it do it if you turn off camera labels in the 2D view?

Wow....those stand the test of time for sure. Really nice work and just shows how the 'tools' have been there to output some really nice stuff for some time. That living room is very nicely done!

Thanks man. You might have missed it, but that was done about 10 years ago. Was just using it as an example of how much landscape adds to the realism of the render. Your stuff is awesome by the way. I can get good looking renderings, but I spend WAAAAY too much time to get there. In the end, I cant justify doing it in most cases. I can definitely appreciate when you see a guy who has that part dialed in! Nice work.

I chose to use spray foam because of it's air sealing properties. It is amazing really, but you do have to make extra precautions such as fresh air provisions as the home become too tight. I used an ERV. I did a full sealed envelope. I just finished the project in Dec, and we did a blower door pre-drywall and were less than .5ach BEFORE drywall. HSF is 8800 sqft. My HVAC guy sized it conventional and said I needed 13ton if I buit the home "normal". I used a 2x8 plate stagger stud with 4" of foam (any more was a diminishing return and there was a LOT of wall). In retrospect, I could have used a 2x6 plate and got the same effect. The fact that they dont have to "shave" the foam actually makes it more efficient. The skin yeilds greater performance that is not factored into normal calculations. I spec'd andersen 100 series windows, which have decent performance. I hired an energy consultant to do a detailed long form manual J and ductwork modeling. The entire home sized out for 2.9 ton on a 95 deg design temp day. Total utility bill (home is all electric) for Feb was $160. I put in a lennox variable speed OUTDOOR unit which can actually change it relative size depending on demand and ensure proper run time. I used a 4 ton unit which can effectively run down to 1.5 ton if it needs it. I used a separate 2 ton unit for the walk-out basement as load is almost nothing. That area we added a dehumidifier in case the unit does not run long enough. Modeled in chief and built last year.

We dont have the energy requirements that you guys deal with, but regarding rigid foam in a braced wall, Huber has a neat product. They sandwich foam on inside so no lath or siding nailers required. They have engineered the sheer requirements to allow the foam in the inside. Pretty cool stuff. I am a fan of Zip system as well. This takes it a step further. Was going to use this on a recent project, but went with a staggered stud and spray foam application instead. I still used Zip on outside which was probably overkill, but the material itself is much better than standard OSB. Much greater water resistance in how it is made. (not just an exterior coating) http://www.huberwood.com/zipsystem/products/zip-system-rsheathing

The funny thing about rendering is how much an impact the landscaping can have on the realism of a given scene. Learning to blend those elements can add a great deal to the impact of a rendering. These below were renderings done in Chief 9.5 (NOT X9) I photochopped the landscaping out of the real pics and did a rendering of the home from the point of view of the photo.

I know the PBR was a big change with this addition. I dont even use it. It is essentially worthless to me. For clients that want 3d views, I use the watercolor and line drawings. Producing CDs is a big part. Silly things like still having to mess like crazy to make stairs work. (the winder tool to make a tread extend 3 1/2 to wrap the outside of the wall. And then the room divider line just keeps changing into a 3 1/2" invisible wall. (You then have to re-do to get the 3d looking normal again). It is a major PIA and stair improvements have been at the top of many's list for a very long time. (not discounting some small improvements to them...but still a ways to go).

Bump...Anyone else use a 3d mouse and see this same effect?

Working on a modern home built with conventional materials and glazing. (asphalt shingle roof and 'normal' windows and doors). This is the start of my concept for the design. Drawn in chief and rendered in lumion Still lots of tweaking to be done but the concept is there. I got a little carried away. I 'borrowed' the table and chairs from the BOTR model

Noticed this today. x10 GTX970 card 32gb ram i4790k processor...etc 3dconnection 3d mouse I had 3 or 4 3d view open and using standard render technique. I tried it with other rendering methods and was similar. Using 3d mouse to navigate was a little choppy. If I left clicked the mouse, it would navigate with zero lag. Anyone ever notice this https://youtu.be/DJbWYZUM_lE

Was not directed at you in any way. Just a general statement. You are always reaching out to help others figure out how to make chief draw something. I was just pointing out the obvious that just because one can draw something, does not mean it will "work" in the real world. I have spent almost 2 decades building. More than designing actually....so I tend to look at design from a different perspective. And as I am sure you have seen, we get many different levels of experience here on the forum. Even some that have no experience and buy chief thinking that if it draws it, then it must work. So like you, I was just trying to "help" from a different perspective. Much respect as always.

Really?.... There are many different types of people with various degrees of experience on here. Some have zero and just bought a program. I would hope to prevent people from making mistakes which will cost time and money to fix. I dont know of any engineer who would pass a structure like that. If they would, I would probably find another if they just had 2 center studs being the only supports in what should be a balloon wall. The aesthetic suggestions were just that....a suggestion. If he is happy with the design as presented but was offering a suggestion on how I felt it could be improved with little or no additional cost, and a better structure. I think NOT saying something is doing more a disservice.

That is a terrible design structurally and I dare say from and aesthetic as well as functional aspect, it could be better as well. You do need the load bearing ridge but with only two full length bearing members in that wall, it will be shaky as hell. If you HAD to accomplish this, I would be thinking a steel post MIN and bringing that wall up to a 2x6 at min. Your engineer might also consider one continuous built up header across the entire span to give the wall lateral support. This comes to the second part. I dont get the 2 operable slider thing. I never like that. I would do a single 4 panel unit with the two center panels operable. In the south standard header height is 83", so I would leave room for an 11 1/4 lvl above door (to take the load bearing ridge. I would have 4 2x6 studs between the slider and fixed unit running plate to roof line. (possibly a PSL col if necessary). To keep from having to break the vertical member, us a simpson HH6's for the lvl. You can then use a simpson HUC on the opposite side to catch the fixed window header. The HUC is a concealed tab and wont interfere with the HH6 which has an overlap on side of hanger to give you more lateral stability you will need for the center header holding the roof point load from the load bearing ridge. All in all, this change should be about the same money or less. (fixed units are cheap as heck, and the swap from two separate doors to one single unit should be very close). If raise the fixed windows up to match the other windows you have in the room, you wont need to temper them and that will be decent savings as well. In my opinion, a much nicer structural design with a better livability and better views. Just a thought and rough sketch attached.

Yes, this is an issue with chief. It would be nice to fix, but as another has said, I create a very small offset in the roof (gable side) to allow the eve to form.

I do WC w/ line for all the client drawings. I am pretty well versed in ray trace as well as using outside rendering products which I have used and produced some very good quality work....but, I cant see going photorealistic as being worth it. It takes 10 times longer (or more) to really get a good photorealistic render and I feel the the watercolor does just as good a job. Sometimes I think it is better as you dont get distracted by minor things that are not really important to the design. Just my observation.

In chief I find that bump maps are suitable for most things. What is nice about bumps is you can adjust right from the DBX to suit intensity. With 'normal' you have to do all your tweaking outside chief. Generating a normal map from a 2d picture takes some software and even then it is 'faking it'. There are a few programs out there. Crazy Bump is one of the best know and people regard as easiest to use if you enough to justify the cost. I use an online converter which gives good results and is free. It can be a pain to extract the texture file you are looking for to modify. Chief has them all compressed. EG, here were 7 different normals I made trying to find the right texture for this brick. In the end, the bump map looked just as good and took one shot. Normal 6 was the best for me. You can take almost any of those normal maps and use as a bump map and adjust right from the dbx the intensity and get good results.

Cant agree more. Especially when doing a lot of manual roof editing. This is a method I use a lot. I use poly line subtraction. One thing some might not be aware of is that it works on many things. (roof planes included). Expanding on this method, if I am adding interest to a roof, and want elevation offsets for example. I can do a polyline sub to break the roof into separate planes for example. Powerful tool. But still would be nice to say select a segment and delete all breaks between the next two selected points. Here is a vid of PLS

I still wish you could place a door header at proper height (83"), and not get a piece of molding applied to the bottom. "Standard" headers are 83" for 6-8 doors and the only way around this is the make the door taller and then use custom labels. Wish there was a definition for "door threshold" in the dbx so something this simple could me done right.

Wow! Really nice stuff. Chiefs brick is really lacking. These are SUPER nice. They also lend VERY well to bumpmaps. Just a quick example attached. Nicest brick by far that I have seen to use. Thank you!!!

Again, I will make my point about questioning are these increasing levels of security actually increasing software sales as Chief. Heck, people who want to steal software are going to steal it. I just did a search for "Chief Architect torrent" and it took all of 30 seconds to find several cracked version of X9 , along with many for previous versions. The funny thing is in the notes, it says " There are also full libraries for download etc. How much time and effort going into software security is worth it? Why not like many other softwares, just license to a machine with no internet required? Does this extra step really mean that a guy who is going to illegally download a Chief crack, is now going to buy the software? I dont think so. Chances are....his will still work just fine. It is when these security features start causing issues for regular users, (while not really preventing software theft), that they dont make a lot of sense. Seems a lot like the TSA checkpoints. As loyal paying users, we are the 80 year old grandmas getting full body searches, while the guys stealing the software are still walking right through security. Just my take, but at some point the additional verification are pointless as they are still not stopping people from stealing it. Invest those resources into some better construction doc tools and sales WILL go up. In my opinion the people who are stealing chief would not buy it anyway....so stop trying to fight that battle especially when the attempt makes dificulities for paying users. Just my take.