Hidden Line Rendering

[hdjohnson]

We are thinking of doing a rendering of our building so that it looks like the hidden line view, but we were hoping the program would cast shadows for us. Is there a way to do a rendering where it would look like the hidden line view, but with shadows?

[beegee]

No, you can only get shadows from a render.

Your best bet may be to consider Sketch-Up for this, since it sounds as though you don't want the "photorealism" of a full render.

[hand471037]

Another way to crack this nut is to export your hidden line views as PDF's, then open them up in PhotoShop 7. Takes time, but then you can add shadows by hand, and run a filter or two to make it look more 'hand-drawn'.

But the quick way to do this would be sketchup!. It's got a free demo that allows for saving for a limited time; you should give it a try!

[hdjohnson]

Thank you for your responses. I'll go download the demo of Sketch-up and see if this will work for us.

Once again, thanks!

[sbrown]

You could also take all your materials and make them white, you wouldn't have hard edges but you could post edit in photoshop

[studio3p]

I like the idea of making the visible materials white. You could then export two images: the first being the white materials with the shadows cast; the second being a hidden line of the exact same view. Then in Photoshop paste the Hidden Line export as a layer over the White Material layer with the shadows cast. Give the Hidden Line layer a Multiply blend mode and you should get something pretty close to what you're after. You will of course have to use the line tool in Revit in order to get anything beyond the default line weights, but it should work.

I attempted a Revit export in the SketchUp trial and it really bogged my system down. I didn't spend a lot of time tooling around with it, and instead moved on to the next thing on my list to get done that day. I would appreciate it if anyone has suggestions for keeping the exported/imported file speedy and light in SketchUp.

[beegee]

I remember someone, I think it was Kroke, said to just export the 3d view into Ketchup.

[PeterJ]

I think the guidance was to switch off what you don't need before exporting to Ketchup. i.e. lose furniture and internal partitions if its an external view you are playing with.

[hdjohnson]

I like the idea of making the visible materials white. You could then export two images: the first being the white materials with the shadows cast; the second being a hidden line of the exact same view. Then in Photoshop paste the Hidden Line export as a layer over the White Material layer with the shadows cast. Give the Hidden Line layer a Multiply blend mode and you should get something pretty close to what you're after. You will of course have to use the line tool in Revit in order to get anything beyond the default line weights, but it should work.

I attempted a Revit export in the SketchUp trial and it really bogged my system down. I didn't spend a lot of time tooling around with it, and instead moved on to the next thing on my list to get done that day. I would appreciate it if anyone has suggestions for keeping the exported/imported file speedy and light in SketchUp.

Thank you for the tip! I tried using the demo of SketchUp and my system couldn't handle it. I think SketchUp may work for small projects, but nothing large. Once again, thanks to everyone who gave me suggestions on how to do this.

[gregcashen]

This has been mentioned on the sketchup forums as well. Performance degrades considerably with complex models.

[hdjohnson]

Since I already have the views I want in Revit, does anyone know if it is possible to export these 3D views into sketchup without having to try and rotate the model?

Our current project really slows sketchup down and I thought if I could just open my 3D views in Sketchup and have it do the shadows it would really save me a lot of time. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.