TheKitchenAbode

I have no problems running CA on my HP Spectra 360, it has the I5 7500U with HD 620 integrated graphics. Yes, Ray Traces are slower than my main system due to half the cores and lower CPU GHz. If you get a new laptop with a Thunder Bolt USB port then you can always add an external dedicated graphics amplifier if need be.

Although the DBX may show that, I believe that if you move a placed camera using the mouse scroll wheel the field of view changes but it does not change the DBX default setting. The DBX setting is the field of view used when the camera is first placed, you can uncheck this and manually set it.

Michael - Most of this look has to do with the lighting setup. There are just way too many variables to list them all. I am more than happy to try and answer as best I can a specific question. As many have mentioned in the past, there is no single setting that will guarantee a good. Ray Trace. Every scene has different combinations of materials and lights and as such they must be tweaked for that particular scenario.

Ray Traces do not have to take hours to get a decent scene. The shower sample you posted would not look really any better if you ran it for 10 days. Multiple passes will not correct for lighting issues or incorrect material properties, it just Ray Traces what you give it. If you don't like what you see after say 10 passes then it's time to go back and make some adjustments. Multiple passes only smooth's things out, reduces noise and refines some of those details, unfortunately it is not an auto correct function. This example took about 40 sec per pass and is good to go after about 25 passes. Also, Ray Trace tend to come out a bit on the soft side so consider using a photo editor to add some sharpening and a few other colour/contrast adjustments.

My stainless was looking a bit bland so I tweaked the material properties and made some minor adjustments to the Ray Trace Image Properties to punch it up. Here's a recap. Recessed lights only 60 degrees Recessed lights 60 degrees plus Ambient light system Recessed lights 60 degrees plus Ambient light system plus Material tweaks and Image Properties Adjustments

Here's an extreme example. Same as my other post but I have changed the cut off angle of the recessed spots to 60 degrees. Now the fridges are outside of the cut off angle and they are completely black. Turn on my ambient light system and things improve dramatically.

For lights being used for ambient control you must turn off shadows. You may also need to add an ambient light in the area outside of the shower.

Here is an example of the challenge when there is no ambient lighting system. This uses only recessed ceiling spot lights. Notice that the stainless steel that is not within the cut off angle is jet black. Here my cut off angle is 110 degrees, it would be even worse with a lower cut off angle. This is the same scene but with the addition of some ambient lighting. As you can see the dark areas are gone.

You need some form of ambient light in that room. Though it will slow down your Ray Trace time place a 3D point light in the shower, set it at about 48" vertical at an intensity of say 10%. The other option is to use a ceiling recessed spot light in the shower and set the cut off angle to something very wide, say 140 degrees, this method will keep your Ray Trace times fast.

Here is an example of the stainless steel materials in the bonus library. The metals (left to right) are in the same order as the library (top to bottom). This one is with their material properties as per their standard settings. This one is after tweaking the material properties. The lighting for both are exactly the same, differences are due only to changes in the material properties. Also, the camera angle will make a difference in their appearance. Here is the second one at a different angle.

There are also some metals in some of the manufacturer libraries such as Kohler, Formica and Wilsonart. They will all render quite well given the right lighting and with some tweaks to the material properties.

There are metals in the main library under materials and in the bonus libraries providing you have downloaded them.

If you are using a stainless steel then it needs a highly scattered type of light for it to Ray Trace properly. A point light will do this but then your Ray Trace times will suffer. Configure some spots to provide this effect and all will be good. Here's a scene I just ran. It has about 60 active spot lights and only took 5 minutes to run 25 passes, that's 12 seconds per pass. The wine fridge, stove and hood use the polished steel from the library.

Don't use point lights, even 1 point light will significantly slow things down. Turn off all lights in the plan that are not directly needed for the scene. Compute Caustics will slow things down as will using Environmental Lighting. Set your pic size to only what is necessary, double the width & height will increase your Ray Trace time 4 fold. If you are buying a new computer for Ray tracing then you need as fast a processor with as many cores that you can afford.

My understanding of the terminology is that "Render" refers to the view created when you open a 3D camera view. Ray Trace or Ray Tracing is an independent process to generate higher quality images.

Polished materials/metals and predefined metals are definitely the most challenging. They rarely render properly when lit by standard point or spot light room fixtures. They seem to be highly sensitive to the angle and intensity of the light striking it's surface. What they seem to prefer is many light rays coming from many different angles, essentially highly scattered light. This type of light is more like ambient light which is different than the light from regular room fixtures. My philosophy is that lighting a scene is a layering process, the first layer being ambient which defines and controls the overall lighting of the scene and the appearance of the materials. On top of this layer you add additional light fixtures such as lamps and recessed lights to provide accent lighting. If the ambient lighting is not right you will likely struggle with the other lights. Unfortunately, the ambient controls do not seem to provide the right kind of ambient light, they seem to be more like a brightness control. Those invisible 3D lights are the ones to use, takes some experimentation to get a handle on them but I think the effort is well worth it.

Your very welcome, glad it worked out for you.

The materials on the fridge are a problem. Looks like a model SKP model. I changed that and those artifacts have gone away.

It all depends on whether the drivers you have match with the ones that Windows has in it's log. If it matches then nothing will change, if it does not match then Windows will change it to it's latest known version. There can be a lag between a manufacturers new driver being released and it getting approved and into Windows, especially if you are using a Beta driver.

I believe there is now a setting in the Windows Update section that allows you to tell Windows Update not to automatically update the drives. May be worth checking out as this may happen again.

Hi Johnny - Trust me, my position is not to defend CA until death. I do not disagree with you about the shortcomings/limitations or that there are some weird workarounds that have to be figure out and that there are just some things, like BIM, that can't be done. I can't do anything about that and fortunately for myself those things don't really interfere with the type of work that I use CA for. There are many software choices out there and they all have their pro's and con's. What is the perfect software solution, it's the one that does the things you need it to do, and that of course varies according to each individuals specific needs.

Johnny - What is the purpose of this discussion, no matter what solution we attempt to provide, you either find a problem with it or you find something else that CA can't do. My suggestion is that you use Vectorworks and 3Ds or whatever and let it be.

Just out of interest, from the pic you posted, what element is there that posed such a challenge to do in Chief.

That's always a problem, there are very few people that have calibrated screens or even attempt to visually adjust their screens to be at least half decent. You have no control over this at your end. I have had this issue before and have had to adjust my pics so they will look ok on a clients screen. I do not technically calibrate my screens, I do this visually using several different pics that I know how they should look. True calibration is really only need in select industries, print media for example, if your monitor is not good enough and not properly calibrated then you will likely be very surprised when your downloaded print job comes back.

The original poster asked if any users could provide advice on how to use Chief to accomplish furniture type modeling, they did not ask if Chief was the perfect program for 3D Modeling. I Myself have responded appropriately to this question, yes there are ways to do this in Chief, here are some tips and examples and here are some of the known pitfalls. Unfortunately this discussion has warped into one focused on whether Chief has the functional and intuitive capabilities of a dedicated 3D modeling program. This aspect does not require any discussion at all, of course Chief does not have that level of capability, this fact however is not relevant to the posters question. If I were to take this approach then the next time someone asks about formatting text using the Rich Text function I will jump right in, focus on it's limitations and expound on the virtues of Microsoft Word.