Shaded walkthrough with blue screen background

[cosmickingpin]

I need to export an AVI of a walk through and this thing ha s amillion RPC objects so I rendered those out separately and now I want to export a shaded/ cast shadows view of the walk through and want to have the background set to a blue screen color. a rendering of the building will take about 350 hours on our "render machine." just 800x600 @ 150 dpi. Anybody know how to set the background to blue screen blue? I could model something but that will block the shadows in order to extend above the horizon.

[luigi]

I need to export an AVI of a walk through and this thing ha s amillion RPC objects so I rendered those out separately and now I want to export a shaded/ cast shadows view of the walk through and want to have the background set to a blue screen color. a rendering of the building will take about 350 hours on our "render machine." just 800x600 @ 150 dpi. Anybody know how to set the background to blue screen blue? I could model something but that will block the shadows in order to extend above the horizon.
I don't know of any way using the shaded view...

just try making the solid really far from the project, a cilinder, not top, no bottom....very tall!!!

Good luck!
Luigi

[iru69]

I need to export an AVI of a walk through and this thing ha s amillion RPC objects so I rendered those out separately and now I want to export a shaded/ cast shadows view of the walk through and want to have the background set to a blue screen color. a rendering of the building will take about 350 hours on our "render machine." just 800x600 @ 150 dpi.
Request clarification: For walkthrough, are you going to do shaded views with shadows (because it would take too long to render)? Or are you going to render (for 350 hours @ 800x600 @ 150dpi)?

[Kroke]

Can't you tell the background object to not cast or AccepT shadows? Doesn't it offer an alpha background for rendering? I think both apply, can't remember, been too long.

[cosmickingpin]

Site and RPC objects are rendered out "raytrace" separately with blue screen background split into separate avi's to be merged with the building divided into background and foreground. That stuff rendered out in an afternoon, all done- a big solid blue mass object happens to cut a big transparent hole for the building to sit all comfy like. the building won't render in a reasonable time frame an 8.1 issue I assume) so I am hoping to export an AVI of a shadowed walkthrough with just the building then merge that file with the right background and foreground. That way I can produce a convincing animation in a fraction of the time. So its cut into 5 tracks: sky and background, background trees and cars, building, secondary foreground, then extreme foreground with greatest detail (trees/people etc...). I was getting a crash when I tried to render the building, just the building and its like 25-30 minutes per frame (upgraded to newest build as instructed by ADesk). nothing special about this building either, just a 8.1 issue I think. the shaded view with shadows look good, but I need to render the site stuff. 800x600@150dpi is so odd I have never had a building not render out like this. The shaded view would work awsome if only I could get a solid blue background. I am going to try a "dish" shape and see what I come up with tommorrow, the horizon is gonna be a %^$# though.


Request clarification: For walkthrough, are you going to do shaded views with shadows (because it would take too long to render)? Or are you going to render (for 350 hours @ 800x600 @ 150dpi)?

I am not sure what you mean. I don't think it does for a non-raytrace just shaded walk through. But that would do it I think, if only I can find the setting. Anyone ever run across it?


Can't you tell the background object to not cast or AccepT shadows? Doesn't it offer an alpha background for rendering? I think both apply, can't remember, been too long.

Gonna give that a try tomorrow will keep you posted.


I don't know of any way using the shaded view...

just try making the solid really far from the project, a cilinder, not top, no bottom....very tall!!!

Good luck!
Luigi

[iru69]

I played around with this idea for fun... but didn't get anywhere. However, I wasn't able to achieve the "blue screen" effect your after.

Any blue object I placed around it either cast shadows itself (the tall wall idea) or cut out all the sunlight making the view look muddy and dark.

The most success I had was by creating a giant "sky" dome with a large hole at the top. However, a huge dome made things very slow and I still could see a "gradient" shadow effect in the blue. I also experimented with making the dome material translucent and doing the Hidden Line view with a color shaded surface pattern trick.

Better luck needed!

I take this opportunity to bring up a little wish list item (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=22294) I posted a while ago that might have helped out here.

[luigi]

These are my best first 2 shots...the blue isn't the best to remove from the video....I tried 2 types of materials...no luck in removing the different colors of blue (but I think there are mainly 2 types of blue, occasionally a third one)

Depending on the software you use to remove the blue it might be impossible to remove..usually it is explicitely one color (i.e. 0,0,255)

[Max Lloyd]

How about this?

I think Irusun had the right idea. But a few amendments. Firstly, build a huge hollow cone over your model with a big hole in the top. Secondly, adjust the altitude of the sun to a fairly steep angle, steeper than the angle of the cone. Therefore, due to the steepness of the sun angle, the inside of the cone will always be in shade, therefore retain a constant, in shade colour, but the sun can still come through the hole to reach your model. See the attached avi and revit model. The only problem with this could be that if you have already exported your other avi files, the sun settings may not now match up.

I'm curious to how you are stitching all these avi files together though. Can you elaborate?

Hope this helps.

Max.

(hmmmm, just noticed I had the sun settings set 'relative to view'. Not clever! I'm just re-running the render now to check it still works as anticipated!) Will post new results shortly) :Oops:

:idea: Another option for this is to export the avi as a series of jpg files and colour those individually in photoshop replacing the white for blue. laborious but should be very simple to do.

another option: I have just looked at whether you can adjust the background screen colour in revit to blue. The best I can do is to invert the creen which doesn't help. Is there not a way to do this? Even if this is possible, not sure the colour would export?

[truevis]

Two things I'd try:

In your render settings, set the background to your bluescreen color.

Or, use a blue .jpg as a sperical background image.

(PS: Make sure your quality settings are draft/draft to save time.)

[Max Lloyd]

ok, redone the walkthrough with 'relative to view' unchecked (so the sun stays in one place effectively, not moving with the walkthrough!!!)

Seems fine to me!

[cosmickingpin]

Well I am going to try a big blue ball made of a highly transparent blue material to surround the site evenly, that way most varaition in tone can be eliminated. I think if I crank the sun up the building will look fine (it has no blue on it). I rendered the site and all objects with a blue mass object turned on to in all tracks there is a perfectly formed transparent hole for the building to sit. So I can make the building with the white background the base track (in Adobe Premiere BTW), then layer the other 4 tracks on top there with holes cut for the building.
there are 2500 frames fo it is very hard to open and replace color 2500 times. so even if that ball ot dish Ideas don't pan out here I think I can do it with the white background for now.



How about this?

I think Irusun had the right idea. But a few amendments. Firstly, build a huge hollow cone over your model with a big hole in the top. Secondly, adjust the altitude of the sun to a fairly steep angle, steeper than the angle of the cone. Therefore, due to the steepness of the sun angle, the inside of the cone will always be in shade, therefore retain a constant, in shade colour, but the sun can still come through the hole to reach your model. See the attached avi and revit model. The only problem with this could be that if you have already exported your other avi files, the sun settings may not now match up.

I'm curious to how you are stitching all these avi files together though. Can you elaborate?

Hope this helps.

Max.

(hmmmm, just noticed I had the sun settings set 'relative to view'. Not clever! I'm just re-running the render now to check it still works as anticipated!) Will post new results shortly) :Oops:

:idea: Another option for this is to export the avi as a series of jpg files and colour those individually in photoshop replacing the white for blue. laborious but should be very simple to do.

another option: I have just looked at whether you can adjust the background screen colour in revit to blue. The best I can do is to invert the creen which doesn't help. Is there not a way to do this? Even if this is possible, not sure the colour would export?