Converting a Chief Plan To SKP? Better Renderings

[RobUSMC]

We are a design build company and I several interior designers on staff and we are increasing our interior design only offerings on top of our remodeling.  My wife which is also an interior designer and was the president of ASID for the state of Texas and now sits on the national board and has a lot of industry contacts. You of her friends started a company called MyDoma Studios  https://www.mydomastudio.com/ which is a design software for interior design only and does not compare to CA with 99.9% of it capabilities. However, its rendering engine is something else and very user friendly setting up 4K renderings and live VR walk thrus.  Long story short is the only way to get a Chief plan imported into it to create these high end renderings and walk thrus is to first convert it to a .skp plan as its not directly compatible with Chief.   I have never done it this or is it easily done.  I'm basically looking for a program to do much better photo realistic renderings and have something for our interior designers to use on an iPad while at a clients house and not as overwhelming as Chief for someone that's never used it.   On a second note, as far as renderings, I truly wish I has the skills and knowledge to make all the setting changes, material property changes, lighting and so on to get much better realistic renderings. But when it comes to material classes, diffuse, specular, roughness, emissiveness, all the different maps and so on I don't even know what these mean or what they do.  Its kinda embarrassing since I've used CA sine 1999 with version 7.0  Ive watched a CA training video series on lighting, raytrace, physically based.  I had a plan open and made the same setting changes that was shown on the video but in the end mine didnt compare to the video as I assume the plan they started with already had a lot of other camera and material settings made to start with.

[GeneDavis]

Consider contacting some of our members here that are skilled in all those aspects of Chief rendering you need.  Pay for some one on one training.

 

Some of those members participated in the "realistic grass" thread which ran recently, and also the one on spherical backdrops.

[amddrafting]

With CA X14 and beyond the PBR Real Time ray tracing is a game changer.  I'm not sure why you would feel you need another software especially for interiors.  Now the VR aspect, at least for me, has a way to go but my clients are super impressed with the outcome of our walk throughs with them.

As far as textures and materials go there are a ton of resources out there that can help you understand images and mapping, etc.  There are free online resources to create those normal maps, metal maps, etc.  And I'm sure there are plent of people on here that would be willing to teach you how to get the best out of the software with a small fee.

As far as exporting you have a ton of options, Just go to a 3D view and then go to File > Export and you can see all of the file types that are available.

[Renerabbitt]

I'm with the others in this thread, I've seen plenty of MyDoma renderings and I don't find them to look nearly as good as a Chief rendering with a tech that knows their stuff. Heres a heavily compressed sample:

[RobUSMC]

Thanks for the input

[SHCanada2]

i just tried the mydomastudio. First thing I did was I added a wall to the loft template, and it ballooned the wall through the loft floor, which makes me think the loft floor is not a real floor in their template. So the usual difficulties  look to still be there.

 

It's nice that they list all of the furniture in a window and you can just click and drop, and it is quick to scroll thru different couches. CA might want to look at this. it looks to have a "similar" feature, which shows all sofas if you select it.

 

I also have to send my camera to be rendered, where it then sits in a queue, currently 5 people ahead of me. waited about 5 mins. And if I want to move the camera I then need to do it all again. 

Compare that to CA RTRT that renders in seconds. But I'll admit their render is excellent. so maybe that is the selling feature.

 

I played around in some of their elevation views, but the dimension tool would not dimension to the inside of the stairs. the whole dimension thing was an exercise in frustration, one elevation showed some chinese characters. It's like they are trying to do con docs, but have realized its not that simple.

 

It does look like it has some features which is subsidizing the price. For instance, they list prices of furniture from their preferred vendors, so my guess is they get a kickback

 

But what it does look like it is, is a full contract, pricing, proposal package management solution. My guess is that is also selling it.

 

But for me with the whole trying to do things quickly in web pages, was also an exercise in frustration

 

In the end, I would be curious to know if people that use this software, an then used a nicely setup CA template for interiors, would prefer this software, and for what reasons. 

 

 

 

[ericepv]

I modeled and rendered this in Chief...

 

[RobUSMC]

Looks great Eric.  My wife designs furniture for a few lines and has her own private line.  She is wanting to be able to find those specific furniture symbols and fabrics.  A lot of other design software like 2020 and MyDoma have a lot more furniture mfg. in their libraries as they are more geared for interior design.  I know we got Kravit recently and its a bit on the mid to higher line.  She was interested in a few of these other software's that do have an expanded furniture mfg selection.  Not to replace CA but there have been several furniture pieces that I've been able to find something close and try to reproduce a seamless screenshot of the fabric but again close but missing, especially with raytrace you can tell.  Im not looking to switch from CA ever. Its mainly for the designers with interior design only clients.

[amddrafting]

1 hour ago, RobUSMC said:

Looks great Eric.  My wife designs furniture for a few lines and has her own private line.  She is wanting to be able to find those specific furniture symbols and fabrics.  A lot of other design software like 2020 and MyDoma have a lot more furniture mfg. in their libraries as they are more geared for interior design.  I know we got Kravit recently and its a bit on the mid to higher line.  She was interested in a few of these other software's that do have an expanded furniture mfg selection.  Not to replace CA but there have been several furniture pieces that I've been able to find something close and try to reproduce a seamless screenshot of the fabric but again close but missing, especially with raytrace you can tell.  Im not looking to switch from CA ever. Its mainly for the designers with interior design only clients.

With 3D scan technology it would not be hard to scan an existing piece of furniture in a showroom, import it to sketchup, clean it up and the import into CA.  The fabric swatches might be able to be downloaded from the manufacturer and utilized to create a custom piece of furniture... or send a picture to someone and hire them to model it as close as possible.  There are tons of talented people out there who would be able to knock these out for you pretty quickly and might fit in the design budget without a problem.  Then before you know it you have a library of custom furniture that you can use and reuse on your next designs.

[SHCanada2]

1 hour ago, RobUSMC said:

She is wanting to be able to find those specific furniture symbols and fabrics

so can the user simply apply a fabric from a list of fabrics, to the furniture in the plan? If so, that would be a large selling feature I would think, and CA might want to consider adding that.

 

It would be nice in rtrt to select the couch, and then have a floating window with the fabrics, and then just paint them onto the couch

[Renerabbitt]

2 minutes ago, SHCanada2 said:

so can the user simply apply a fabric from a list of fabrics, to the furniture in the plan? If so, that would be a large selling feature I would think, and CA might want to consider adding that.

This is #3 on this list, if you add your input it will help out:

1 hour ago, RobUSMC said:

Not to replace CA but there have been several furniture pieces that I've been able to find something close and try to reproduce a seamless screenshot of the fabric but again close but missing

Rob, every major furniture vendor has its symbols available for download, which can be imported into CA. Every piece of furniture can be re-mapped for UV coordinates in a software thats free like blender very easily. You can also decimate a symbol in 3d to limit its face count. For those digital interior design folk, I find it important to learn these skills, or outsource. I will perform these tasks for people but I like to encourage everyone to give it a shot. It's not all that difficult to do.
There are also a host of seemless texture generators and sources on the net.
Push come to shove, hire a rendering artis.
I have a bunch of model and texture resources on my site with custom search engines in the Industry Tools section that comes up from the hamburger menu 

 

[SHCanada2]

2 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

For those digital interior design folk, I find it important to learn these skills, or outsource. I will perform these tasks for people but I like to encourage everyone to give it a shot. It's not all that difficult to do

 

but if a software already has them, that would, I would think, be a large consideration in purchasing the software. If I spent all day swapping out fabrics and window coverings, and furniture, I would rather a pallet be available, than go and create my own, one piece at a time.. If it is relatively simple, I'm surprised CA does not hire a summer student every year to do so, or perhaps to categorize existing ones. If i open up a couch and select the materials, a bunch of materials show up, and the first is a "Absinth Painting". Not exactly something one could put on a couch

 

I'll add my +1 to your request

[Renerabbitt]

11 minutes ago, SHCanada2 said:

but if a software already has them, that would, I would think, be a large consideration in purchasing

Mydoma acquired a popular online rendering platform geared toward interior designers which was created recently so it has a bunch of recent offerings but every interior designer I know that has used the platform extensively prefers chief, as the offering is still limited and doesn’t leave room for much customization 

[DeLayDesign]

Hey @RobUSMC

Chief has certainly come a long way - but has a little bit further to go in order to match some of the quality of other rendering programs like Lumion.  That being said the rendering capability with X14 or even X15 is pretty spot on.  A lot of times it's a matter of what kind of graphics card your system has.  I've experienced some really powerful laptops and PCs with impressive graphic cards NOT have raytracing capability.  I'd be sure yours has that capability.

Additionally, lighting has a huge impact in how your renders will turn out.  That and choosing decent materials.  A lot of the basic materials that come with Chief aren't great.  Heck even some of the manufacturer catalogs don't always look great.  It takes a little bit to figure out what the best set up is for your view.

Try focusing on your lighting, but maybe create a free profile on the 3Dwarehouse (powered by SketchUp).  I pull a good bit of items from that platform to help enhance my renders.

This render is completely Chief; but I did import some 3D plants, a new rug, and draped blanket to take it to the next level.

My light settings follow the video Chief released on rendering a few months back - I believe when they launched X14.



  

I hope this help!