Books or Tips on Rendering

[Zig]

I'm a bit of a neophyte when it comes to rendering. It really seems like a lot of trial and error. I find this a bit frustrating when you have to wait for the rendering to complete in order to see the results of your adjustments to settings. I would love to find a reference which would help demystify the whole process.

Any recommendations on reading material?

[Cathy Hadley]

I, too, find this ART rather mystifying... And VERY time consuming. Please oh Rendering Gods... is it really all about trial and error?

Any resources worth reading up on... ?

Any tips ... other than don't use the Accurender sky or the red porsche?

CZH

[Archman]

Don't use the red Viper either. Just kidding :lol:

Seriously, I have found that the process is a lot of trial and error, but the more renderings you do, the better educated guesses you can make. One suggestion is to set you rendering resolution very low for your test renderings. Then they will render fast and you will get a general idea of what it is going to look like. Also, make use of the region raytrace tool. It too, cuts down on rendering time. Also, to speed things up, use lots of light groups and turn the lights off in the model that you would not see in the view you are rendering. This may seem rudimentary, and you may already be doing these things, so I apologize if I'm giving you info you already know.

Like I said before, I think it just takes practice. The first few renderings you do are going to take a long time, but after a while you will begin to be able to create them faster.

[jwilhelm]

I highly recommend that you purchase the accurender manuals from Robert mcneel (mcneel.com) they are very well done and explane a lot about ray tracing in general. There is also a new training CD available it is not architecture specific but looks good. Dispite all the wining you hear on this site about Accurender, it is one of the best renderers around but it takes a bit of knowledge to use. I have used accurender in Autocad & revit and frankly it seems like a pretty complete port to Revit as far as I can tell except that is doesnt have the lighting analysis features. It is well integrated into Revit, the only downside is the render time, hopefully they will implement a non photometric renderer like "phong" shading at some point. hope this is helpful.

[hand471037]

I've done a lot of rendering stuff and it really is like an Art. And as such, like any Art, to learn it you just have to do a lot of it. Raw experance here is your best friend. For, if I was trying to teach you to be a photographer, I could show you what a camera is, wht different lights & Films do, and the like; but in order for you to learn how to take good pictures you'll just have to do a lot of it and practice by going for specific things.

So get some books, or read up online everything you can find; but then pick a simple starting project with a goal (like 'I'm going to make an exterior rendering of this building I worked on' or ' I'm gonna do a walkthru animation') and finish it. then do another. and another. and another. And that's the only way to learn, really. Break it down into little tasks you want to learn, like 'Now I'm going to try to master Woods' or 'Now I'm going to make a plant in Accurender' and you'll learn faster than you think!

[beegee]

These Accurender Tutorials (www.accustudio.com/forum/tutorials/acad-ar3.htm) may also help.

[jpolding]

Is that you Zig?

I've seen your renderings and they're pretty darn good.

[Zig]

Jay, You sure your not just trying to up your post count?

I am always trying to improve the quality of everything I work on. I recently purchased "Enhancing CAD Drawings with Photoshop" by Scott Onstott. Its pretty good - particularily with compositing, etc. That said I really have to find some time to explore Viz. I really like the Accurender built into Revit but like I said I want to see if I can improve on that.

[jpolding]

Is your post count bigger than mine?:-P

I can work VIZ pretty well. Why don't you send me a model to play with? This way you don't have to sit around waiting through tweak time. Then I'll tell ya how I did it.

FREE RENDERINGS AND ANIMATIONS how could you go wrong!!