Exporting to Radiance!

[hand471037]

holy ****!

OK, so I finally got Radiance running properly on my home Linux box. Radiance is a open-source light calcualtion engine that can produce some of the best renderings youve ever seen. See http://www.visarc.com/visarc/projects/fs_projects_0.htm for an example of someone who knows thier stuff.

Anyways, I successfully exported a DXF model out of Revit, conveted it to a Radiance model, and then defined materials and did some test renders.

It's not much, but it's a start. must learn more!

Zoog, i know you're into Linux. is anyne else interested in this stuff? I was thinking of writting up a general newbie guide to using Radiance w/Revit if anyone is interested...

[Steve_Stafford]

Jeffrey,

I need a "Intro to Linux/Radiance for Moderators"...I don't know the first thing about Linux, yet. Which means I haven't a clue about Radiance either yet. But after seeing those images, yikes!

How about two paragraph, "you need this and this and this" to get linux and radiance going??

Kick me in the right direction :D

[hand471037]

It's simple.

You will need:
1. lots of time and 2. lots of patience. ;)

No, it's not too bad. But if you've never worked with Linux before, it can be a little daunting.

to work with Radiance, all you need is:
1. something that can run Unix. This could be linux or BSD installed on another partition of your windows box, a new Mac with OS X, or a full-on unix machine, like a Sun or SGI (altho now Macs can be more powerful for this level of work). This isn't as hard a step you might think; there are several easy to use Linux distrobutions out there that make it very easy to make your machine a 'dual-boot'. This means that when you turn on your computer, a little bootloader comes up that allows you to pick whatever OS you want to run. My Machine is a dual-boot windows 2K & Mandrake Linux.

2. the Radiance software. It's open source, just like Linux, so it's free. You just download it from the website.

The easyest way to make your machine a dual boot machine is to make a new partition on your hard drive, with either partition magic or some other tool (a free one is inculded in Mandrake 9.1), then download the linux distrobution (flavor) you want and install it on that new partition. Again, this is very easy with the newer distros. For example, if you wanted to use Mandrake, which i would recommend (because it's much easyer than the others), it's as easy as downloading three .iso's, burning them to CD, then dropping the first one into the computer and rebooting. The install is very easy, just pick the options you want. If you've installed windows before you'll be fine. Just let Mandrake auto-allocate the partitions, and don't tell it to format your whole drive, and you'll be fine. You could even use it in leu of partition magic, the install has a re-size tool that will let you make a new partition and such, but I don't know how well it works.

Installing Radiance can be a pain. I'll write something up.

As for using Linux & Radiance, well, there is a ton of stuff online and books available, but it's gonna take a far mount of time to learn. It takes a little while longer to learn how to do something in Linux than in Windows, but once you learn, you can do about ten times or more worth of stuff. for example, making a directory in Windows is very easy. In linux, it's almost as easy, but once you learn how you could, say, make it create your new directory, make auto-numbered subfolders with it, make a list of all those folders, then e-mail that list to someone- all with one line of text.

It's kinda cool, and it's kinda scary. :)

Anyways, the easyest way to get into this is to just by a Mac. but if you're too poor like me, then Linux it is!

[Steve_Stafford]

Okay, need to buy some #1 but got lots of #2...(watch it J)

What would the minimum specs be for Linux to do this?? I've got a few skeletons that I could assemble a separate pc with...at least to get my feet wet.

[hand471037]

One of the stregths of linux is the fact that it can run on almost anything. If you cobled together a spare computer, it would be more than enough to install Linux and start learning. it might be very slow, but it will work. My first 'learner' machine for Linux was a P-233 IBM thinkpad laptop. very slow, but it worked. A P-II or P-III would be plenty to get your feet wet, and then when you've got a better idea of what you want to do with Linux and/or Unix, and Radiance, then you'll be able to figure out where it should go. I mean, whether you should make your primary machine a dual-boot, or whether you should just buy a used Mac for Radiance work, or if you'll even want to use Radiance at all.

[beegee]

Jeffrey,

Those Radiance images absolutely rock 8)

I have very little 1. Time and almost no 2. Patience. Given that, is it worth perservering with Linux - Radiance ? The whole process sounds convoluted - DXF transfers, material assignments etc. If theres an (invariable ) change to the model, do you go through the whole transfer thing once again ?

I would love to be able to get within cooee of those renderings, but don't know how long that would take. Exporting a Revit-Accurender to Photoshop for further enhancement won't cut it huh ?

beegee

[hand471037]

Uhm.. well here:

Radiance:
made from day one as a tool for lighting anylisis & rendering for buildings.
Large time investment, but HUGE payoff.
Open source software means no vendor changes messing up your work.
'real' light modeling, no faking, so things behave as real-world as possible.
consistant, well documented, if complex workflow.
workflow can be customized for *any* needs.
Renderfarm & complete crash recovery.
no limitations in resolution, geomotry, ect.
Free.

Commercal rendering engine:
Made for animation, re-adapated for buildings.
easyer to use. (but- and a big but- that all depends on what you are doing and what the interface is like).
commercal vendor means product can change out from under you (ala Lightscape)
Light is faked, Radosity and such, have to add fill lights and such to make things look right.
inconsistant, partially documented, ineffiecent workflow (accurender, 3D Studio, Lightscape)
Workflow is what it is, can't adapt it.
Render farm costs extra or not possible, no crash recovery.
limitations in resolution, geomotry, ect.
Not Free. ;)

so... whether or not it will work for you I can't say. If they add a Viz 4 render engine to Revit 6.0, then you'll be a lot closer to making images like the ones i linked to. But you'll never really get there without spending either a lot of money for software, or lots of time on something like Radiance. Accurender and other rendering plug-ins are great, and good for quick things, but the are limiting. That's why I'm learning this software, because I want to make some very good imges for a project I'm working on, and i can't afford anything else that can do this level of work. :)

[Wes Macaulay]

Wait a sec on the Linux thing guys... you can get Radiance for Windows as freeware as well:

http://floyd.lbl.gov/deskrad/download.htm

And then all ya gotta do is learn Radiance. But with VIZ so likely to be a part of Revit in R6, I would almost think this is only providing a short-term alternative to Accurender.

[wjspence]

I downloaded "Desktop Radiance" for Windows. It runs in AutoCAD. I have not had a chance to try it out, but if it is capable of the same quality, there is no need to go the Linux route. Has anyone else gone there yet?

[beegee]

Radiance:
made from day one as a tool for lighting anylisis & rendering for buildings.
Large time investment, but HUGE payoff. < CUT >
:)

Jeff,
Thanks for your well thought out response. If Radiance for windows works as well as the Linux version, that could be very interesting.

Do you think Viz will be a big step forward ? or will it still only fall into the plug-in category. ( I don't anything about Viz , as you might guess ). If its not that big a deal, than I will certainly start learing about Radiance.

beegee

[PeterJ]

I downloaded "Desktop Radiance" for Windows. It runs in AutoCAD. I have not had a chance to try it out, but if it is capable of the same quality, there is no need to go the Linux route.

Depends a little on your point of view. I have a linux file server that can in theory do a wide range of other things and I am slowly bringing it up to speed to do some of those other tasks. I have yet to pay a penny to use any of the software and the GPL aspects of Linux are appealing.

If you download Radiance for Windows and have to run it in AutoCAD then there is a £3,500 + VAT disincentive to use it for some people.

P

[christopher.zoog51272]

Awesome news jeffery, and of course I'd be very interested in how your install went. I sat down to try once but i got stuck, and never went back. Also post a few of your sample images not matter how rough, i'd like to see how the model translate, thanks!! anything you can share on this would be greatly appreiciated :D

I love linux!! I would switch over completly if i could get revit to run on it.

I think i've got you beat, i have mandrake 8.0 running on a p-166 mhz, with 32 mb of ram!!!!

Also this website is powered by apache on a variation of red hat linux.

I also have an old 3 com ergo "audrey" that runs a QNX shell. QNX is a tiny tiny os that is based on the linux kernal. Audrey is hooked up my network and shares broadband acesss with the rest of of computers. She has email, a datebook that syncs with both my wife's and my palm, caller id, mp3 player, a web browser, etc, etc. I can even control the other pc's in the hous from her using vnc. Plus it's cute enough so that my wife will let it sit on the kitchen counter. :wink:

http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0RQAuA!ESr2GtiZz!kfkGsJKrGKh1k672VQsiv*5fZsji3YNdaJ9oDB2ohBg1z*NnwYVxdkRjm8oxC!tMh2wxVQ7AMJNFjkyPE1IQPLmmlmU/2002041314.JPG?dc=4675367475110963667

long story short, yes, i do like linux :D

[hand471037]

OK, so desktop Radiance is not a full version of Radiance. it's limited. I won't go into to much detail, but I'll just say that for several reasons the linux version is better.

If you really want to run Radiance on windows there is a commercal port called something like 'raycast'. it also adds a easyer to use front end. But part of Radiance's coolness is that it's a Linux command-line tool, so all the stuff you can do with linux's shells you can do with Radiance too.

IMHO whatever next generation rendering plug-in they add to Revit still won't hit the rendering quality of Radiance. However, it will be vastly easyer to use, so it will be the best way to go for Revit user's. I'm not thinking that anyone 'cept me would want to use Radiance with Revit, due to the built-in rendering engine being good enough for most things. However, for ths project my Wife and I are doing, Radiance seems to be the best bet. It's also fun to learn, and is free. So that's a big plus. also no matter how good Viz gets, it still won't have the command-line control that Radiance has; which is both a blessing and a curse- you truely can do anything you can think of with radiance, however it takes a lot longer to learn.

As soon as I have a decent image i'll post it.

the install was hard, but only because it assumes that you know what you are doing. After a few e-mails to the Radiance e-mail list I was on track. Basically, you download the Libraries & the static-linked binaries, put the binaries in /usr/bin/local and the libraries in /usr/local/lib/ray, then use cp to set all the libraries as non-source files (a bug) and then add the proper stuff to your .login to path to Radiance and you're set. The only real stubling block (other than the bug that you have to fix) is that one of the main radiance commands, 'rview', is on most Linux distros already simlinked to Vim; which means that the wrong tool will run when you run rview. You can either fix that with yor path, or you can just remove the simlink to Vim and hope it doesn't break anything else :)

That's what I did.

[beegee]

Thanks again Jeff,

Looking forward to seeing your radiance image when you can post.

beegee

[PeterJ]

That's a neat little machine, Chris.

I really look forward to seeing your results, Jeffrey. I looked at Radiance a while back because I was interested in GPL rendering software as a means of gertting into render farming, but I don't do much full quality output work so it was more a conceptual thing and I didn't follow it up.

What is the project you and Mrs McG are working on?

Pete

[Nelson V]

Aloha Jeff,

Where can i Downoad Radiance-Linux?
We have a Linux file server and will be switched out, and i will have a machine not being used eccept as a backup file server :D

Mahalo Nelson V

[hand471037]

Here's the main Radiance page: http://floyd.lbl.gov/radiance/

Here's the page for 'desktop radiance': http://floyd.lbl.gov/deskrad/

Here's that commercial port that I was talking about: http://www.schorsch.com/index.html

Here's the Radiance user's reference webpage (e-mail list archives, it's helpful): http://www.radiance-online.org/

Also, attached is my first crack at a 'Revit to Radiance' guide.

Enjoy!

[hand471037]

Hey! Someone just ported Radiance to Cygwin! This is great news. Cygwin is a almost-full Linu shell that runs on Windows. It's like having a mini-linux that you can run without having to dual-boot. It's a wonderful little tool that's free and made by Red Hat. Anyways, someone compiled Radiance for it, and here's the link to his site:

http://www.dream.unipa.it/dream/pub/dot/anselmo/radiance/03.php#binaries

Here's the link for Cygwin: http://www.cygwin.com

This is great, for IMHO other than Radiance's complexity, the other thing holding it back from widespread use is the fact that it requires a Linux machine or a Mac to run... no more is this the case, as you can now run the full Radiance version (not just the limited Desktop Version) on any Windows box!

[christopher.zoog51272]

Thanks for the updates Jeffrey, as soon as I get a spare moment I'm checking all this out. :D

[hand471037]

OK, so here is a very primitive render from Radiance from a model exported from Revit. I mean 'primitive' in that I haven't applied complex materials to anything yet; just base color and reflectance. Radiance is very deep, and I'm really enjoying working with it!

More images to follow!

[hand471037]

OK, so just for fun, here's my thoughts on the brave world of Radiance. Just thought I would post them for some of you are both interested in Radiance and Linux. Also I've got Radiance running under Cygwin now, so it's easyer to fiddle with it while I do real work in the foreground :)

First off, I *love* the materials in Radiance. They are completely unlike anything else in any other rendering engine I've seen other than maybe Renderman. First off, you define what's almost like the 'root' material, which is how that material reflects light. So, with basic materials, that's just the color of the material, it's reflectance, and it's roughness (in terms of light/shadow, not bump mapping). You can end here, which is what I've done in the example I posted. Pretty basic, but good light results.

But then things get really interesting in that any material can have a modifier applied to it, that changes the material's color *or* THE MODEL ITSELF based upon varous math functions. No more bump maps, oh no, with Radiance the SURFACE ITSELF is made bumpy. It's not faked. Make a material really rough via a noise function modifier, and the edges of the object with that material will look like rough-hune stone! This is very much like the 'fur' from Renderman, in that it's something that's generated on-the-fly from math functions. Cool cool stuff. Other modifiers change the color, or transperancy, or such. And any number of these 'modifers' can be applied to a material, so that you can have very complex materials. And they can be mixed. It's bottomless! People use Radiance to model real surface behavor for scientific testing, it's so deep. But the very best thing about this is that it seems that there is a very minimal computer load in regards to material complexity. Materials can be very complex, and Radiance won't slow down; whereas Viz/Accurender/Truespace (the three I've done some work with) slow drasticlly when rendering complex materials.

Another real big advantage is that everything in Radiance is driven via text files. Then, prior to rendering, you compile these text files into one big octree file. So you can have the material definitions sepirate from the model definition file, or have multipule material files (for different material schemes), and can update one without having to mess with the other. So, you can re-export your changes to Radiance's format, and then re-render without any re-mapping, UV mess, or anything.

Also since it's all text, it's very very fast to define and cut-n-paste materials into your project. Also you get a much finer level of control over everything than sliderbars and such give you.

Second thing I love about radiance is the lights. In radiance, any surface can be made into a light source, and you can even have said surface acurately trasmit the outdoor sunlight, i.e. for a window or skylight. Also, Radiance doesn't use Radiosity at all, so you simply place a light, or tell it what layer the 'glowing' part of your light fixtures are on, and then render. Bam! instant global illumination. you could even apply a IES modifier to that 'light' material, and it will behave with the proper photometrics without any tweaking on your part. Again, this info can be in a sepirate file, so that you can make changes to the model without having to re-do the sun or any lighting. No 'sky domes'. No 'fill lights'.

It's much simpler, due to it's true to life nature, and much more complex, due to it's true to life nature. :)

So far things I don't like: Export from Revit is weak, and the DXF2RAD tool I'm using to generate my Radiance files leaves something to be desired. :)
I'm having to do some layer clean-up in AutoCAD prior to conversion. I would like to figure out how to just export directly from Revit to Radiance. But short of Revit making a Radiance export (something that a lot of lighting designers and I would love to see I bet) or making an API, I doubt that I will be able to. I'll still have to export to DXF, or if they included more info in the ODBC export, I could make a tool to parse that and generate my Radiance files semi-automatically.

Also I'm having problems with light sources. Radiance has a hard time making the geomotry that's been exported from Revit as a light source due to normals and the kind of surfaces that Revit turns things into when you export to DXF (everything is a complex polyface mesh). This is a problem I havne't solved yet, I've just had to re-do the lights in Radiance.

More to come!

Jeffrey

[hand471037]

OK, so here's another image. The 'l2.jpeg' image is another Radiance render, whereas the other one is the same scene rendered in Revit. As you can see, this is still w/o the complex materials in Radiance. I've got a ways to go. But the quality of light is nice, much better than the Revit render. Also the renders are a lot faster in Radiance too, but that's not a big deal, for Accurender in Revit always seems damn slow to me. ;)

Enjoy!

[bmadsen]

Jeffrey,

Thanks for taking us down this path. This is a real contribution.

As for the light calculations vs. radiosity, I believe "true" radiosity uses those same calculations. I think the VIZ version was "simplified", probably to improve performance and make it more user-friendly.

As for this kind of rendering, in my playing with it, I had the problem with all the grey on the surfaces. I know from looking around our office that there really is a lot of grey that reaches my eye from the painted/stucco/brick surface. But when I look at an image on the screen, all that grey looks wrong. Printing it out is no better. I think part of it is the pixilation factor. (look at zoog's photo - you'll see a lot of grey in the white and blue, but it looks correct.)

I've only played with this kind of rendering, but I've seen some beautiful images, so I know it can be done.

[hand471037]

Just a clarification: Radiance does NOT use Radiosity. Viz & Accurender do (as well do many other packages).

Radiance is a Monte Carlo Reverse Ray Tracer.

What this means, in normal english, is this:
'ray tracing' is a process where the computer shoots rays, from the light source, lets them make one or two or more bounces, and whatever rays hit the camera result in a pixel in the final render image. That's why it's called a 'ray-trace' for the computer is tracing the rays that come from the light source, seeing which ones hit the camera, and then figuring out what that 'ray' would look like. More rays = better picture. However, this approach doesn't account for any bounced light, only light that hits the camera directly. So you don't get, say, the color wash from a white wall getting hit by a sunbeam. you only get the patch of sun on the wall and nothing else. To get around this, Raytracers allow for an 'global' level of light, the 'ambient' light setting. But even this doesn't really do the job, for it makes the image look 'flat'.

Radiosity was a work-around for a standard raytrace program to figure out global illumination, or 'bounced' light. What Viz/Accurender/Et All do is throw a 'mesh' or net over the entire scene's surfaces, then calcs out how much light each of these bits of the mesh would throw onto it's neaubors. It then takes that info, and lays the raytrace over it, for Radiosty can't calc out things like reflections, complex materials, bump maps, and more. That takes a ray tracer. That's why you have to first calc out the Radoisty, and then render. That's also why you can change some things (like Render settings, or camera position) and not have to re-calc the radiosty; just re-render. However, Radiosty is still a work-around for figureing out what light is really doing in the room, and is still somewhat limited and processor-intesive. If you look closely at the shadows on my Revit render I posted within this thread, you'll see that the edges are jaggy; this is due to that Radiosty 'mesh' or 'net' process I was talking about.

Radiance is a Monte Carlo Reverse Ray Tracer. This means two things. First is that rather than drawing rays from the light source, it draws the rays from the camera. Normally this wouldn't work, for you would have to let the ray 'bounce' from surface to surface until the ray hit a light source, which would take way way too long. So this is where the 'monte carlo' part comes in; most rays coming out of the camera are bounced a certain number of times; while others, chosen at near-random, are bounced a whole lot more, and also 'scattered' into multipule rays. This methoid can accurately model 98% of the light within a room, and can be much faster than the traditional Radoisty calc + raytrace. However, it also means that materials & cameras & lights have to be 'real world' and not eayer to deal with approximations. So it makes it harder to do, for you can't just stick a spotlight in a room, hit render, and expect good results. :)

Now. keep in mind that I'm new to all of this, so I could be a little off in my discriptions. There is a document that descibes all of this better that I can, but I can't find it now (and it's way way longer than this post!)

hope this helps!

[PeterJ]

Intriguing stuff Jeffrey, clearly the Radiance rendering has better light, but it is difficult to compare without fuller materials. I have some questions...............

1. If you export and run a radiance rendering, and then you are asked to make some design changes by the client is the remodel, rexport and re-render in radiance a slower process than simply remodelling in Revit and rere-rendering?

2. Your reception desk has a picture on the wal behond it in the Revit rendering. Will Radiance allow the use of decals?

3. Overall despite the penalties involved in cleaning up in AutoCAD etc are you finding the process broadly on a par with simply rendering in Revit, or are you finding that the quality of finish is so much better that it is worth taking the extra time?

P

[hand471037]

OK, quick answers:

1. Yes and No. Once you had the workflow properly set up then the amount of time to render a change in Revit vs. one in Radiance wouldn't be so different as to make Radiance inefficent. Changing the materials would be the same. Changing the model would be a little longer in Radiance. While it certainly would be a little faster to start the rendering in Revit, when you factor in the time it takes Revit (or any, really) rendering software to first figure out the Radiosty and then render a good quality image vs. updating a textfile and then re-running the render within Radiance the time would be the same, and the Radiance one would look better. Also Radiance makes it *Very* simple to have different materials/lighting/sun options within the same model/scene. This is something that Revit doesn't have at all. Also it's possible to have Radiance running on a sepirate computer on your network and feed it jobs, to leave you with your desktop to keep working. Radiance also has complete crash recover, so you never loose a render; whereas I always get nervous with Revit when doing a large render than it's gonna choke and I'll loose the hour or so it's been cranking away....

2. Yes. You can map images onto surfaces/materials just like in Revit. I haven't gotten into making the materials more complex just yet; that's the next thing I'll be focusing on.

3. The quality is very key; that's why I'm even bothering. Once I understand Radiance well enough I feel that I'll be almost as fast with it as I am with Revit. So for design renders, it's all Revit, for the real showpeice stuff I think I'll use Radiance. See, part of the whole reason that I'm learning this is my wife and I are working on a book that will re-create via 3D varous pre-1906 earthquake sites from San Francisco, showing them as if they had survived and were around today. To do that I'll need a MUCH better rendering engine that Accurender, something really convincing, and I can't afford anything else.

Besides, since nothing in Radiance is faked, it actually works out to be much faster to work with than a more complex package like Viz for the same level of quality. Once I've got a better idea of how to use materials, then I'll be able to match the quality of Max or Mental Ray, but for free. Can't bet that! ;) Also Radiance runs on any unix system, so it will work on cygwin, linux, mac, anything... and it's open source, so it will always be there for me. Unlike Viz, which is goin' the way of the dodo (Viz is getting replaced by Max & being turned into a plugin for CAD systems, the whole 'vizrender'- or so I've heard the rumors say). Or lightscape, which is already gone.

But to answer your real question, no one in thier right mind would learn Radiance unless they had to or were into it. It will always be faster and easyer to just render within Revit, and with Viz Render (or whatever plug-in they put in there) Revit will do 90% of what everyone needs. I just really like Radiance, and like the 'look' of the images it produces. :)

[PeterJ]

I'm intrigued by the project. I knew you had a special reason in mind for pursuing the Radiance route and had wondered what it might be.

I don't really do very much presentation rendering at all so I think I wont take the time to pursue Radiance, unless I have room for a side project somewhere along the line and the list of those is already longer than it ought to be.

Good luck with it all.

P

[hand471037]

Quick update (for those that care)

Learned how to use more complex materials.

Also learned how to apply 'human eye' levels of light exposure.

Procedural materials are HARD. But cool.

This has been fun so far. Still wish there was a more direct export from Revit to Radiance, my current workflow isn't as efficent as it could/should be. But now I'm at about the same amount of time to produce a rendering as I was when using Trusepace/accurender. Soon I think I'll be much much faster. :twisted:

[hand471037]

Here's a shot looking up at a ceiling & a truss. All of these are very low res, I don't wanna fill up Zoog's server. :)

I love the streaming light effect on this one!

[gregcashen]

Except for the railing, which looks a tad too low res, that last one looks like a real photograph. The glare really makes it look like someone took a snapshot! Nice.

[hand471037]

It's interesting, with Radiance even the really low quality renderings will look like photos. ******, underexposed blurry photos, but still- right from the start they look like photos. With everything else, it never really looks like a photo; to a trained eye it always looks like a rendering, and to the untrained eye it might be convincing, but still not quite 'right'. Even really really steller renderings still have that rendering-ish look to them, if you know what I mean.

The other thing that's neat about Radiance is that all of these were rendered at 256x256 at 'meduim' quality. Yet everything is there, it's not like I have to set my rendering settings to a certain height in order to first see shadows, or materials, or have to reach a certain level of radio calc to get the glare and 'streaming' light effect. Heck I didn't even have to turn on that 'streaming' light effect. So it makes for much faster test renderings, for even super quick (each of these were well under a 1/2 hour) will include *everything* that you're going to see in the final render, just at very very low res. So you can tweak at this level, then set the resolution higher, and render knowing it will still look the same. No trying to hit a moving target, ala Radiosoty calcs, where you'll do a few steps to see how it's working, but won't know when it will be complete enough to look the way you want.

[Steve_Stafford]

Okay...I'll ask...when you going to postemup? :D

[hand471037]

I did! there are the last three pics posted. those are the ones I was talking about. I'll post more when I've gotten a better one done...

[Steve_Stafford]

uuh..those? I guess I should have scanned up the thread...huh? My bad!

[hand471037]

yet another pic... this one is a wide angle shot, looking up at the ceiling of a lobby. I'll have two more pictures of this lobby I can post later on...

Jeffrey

[PeterJ]

Complete with one of those funky danish mobiles from the company who'se name I can never remember.

These renderings do have a very special quality about them.

I was wondering how your San Francisco before the earthquake project was going Jeffrey, but if you are still learning to get the most out of Radiance I take it we are some way from seeing any finished images.

[hand471037]

Well as for the book, we're hoping to get a proposal and three prototype chapters done by the end of the year. Learning Radiance is a part of that effort; right now we are researching not only the three sites we choose for the prototype chapters but are also researching about publishing proposals and trying to find which companies might be worthwise sending out evetual proposal package too... So I hope that, by Jan., we'll have something mailable and can start shopping it around.

But I have really gotten into Radiance; it's been great fun, and I feel like, for the first time, I really understand what's going on with my renderings rather than just sliding little bars back and for, adjusting settings, and stabbing in the dark.

[beegee]

rather than just sliding little bars back and for, adjusting settings, and stabbing in the dark.

Never mind Radiance, that's where I am with Accurender !

[hand471037]

Well, that's my point beegee. With all the other 3D packages I've worked with, accurender included, it's mostly trashing around in the dark until you finally learn what does what. With Radiance, though it's harder to learn, everything is well documented, and it's possible to actually *understand* what's going on rather than having just be voodoo. So in some ways it winds up easyer to use & learn, for it's consistant and through, if complex.

Just like with any other unix tool, it's harder to learn than a tool for Windows, but with a much bigger pay-off when you do.

[Arnel Aguel]

Personally i don't really like the quality of radiance, for photorealistic effect with GI quality. Max, Viz or lightscape are still the best. Specially now that you have this ultra fast plug-in with Globall illumination engine for max/viz ( vray, final render and brazil)

If you check out at CG.Architect where all the professional architectural visualizers hang out i don't seem to hear anybody using radiance. They mostly use max, viz or lightscape.


I have done something in viz 4.0 using vray plug-in and this is the quality we can get. BTW, the model was done in ADT, i'm still in the process optimizing the linking process from revit to viz including layer assignment for ease of assigning materials in viz.

[Steve_Stafford]

If you look at the images at the link Jeffrey posted at the front of this thread, you've got to admit they are pretty darn good. But then I've seen pretty impressive stuff done with just about every render application there is. I was looking at the samples on Archicad's site the other day, a couple were expletive deleted amazing. Your images, Arnel are impressive too. Can't help but wonder what type of client springs for that sort of detail for one room? Wow!

I'm convinced a talented designer could take MacPaint and do a good rendering with pixels...my dad once told me the drums I was complaining about would sound pretty darn good if Buddy Rich were playing them. The point was knowing what to do with them, so the question isn't which is better but which one works best for the designer and let's him hit the "high notes" the easiest.

[beegee]

Arnel, those are some cool renderings !

I do like the natural quality of the ambient and sourced light in the Radiance renderings though.

I think Steves right though, if you know what you're doing, you can do it with just about any programme, including Accurender in Revit. I'd just like a book or a class to tell me where I'm going wrong. Don't have the time to experiment with and fine tune the settings.

[Arnel Aguel]

I do agree steve,

First, it all boils down to the artist. No matter how good the tools are if you don't know how to use them properly you will just produce garbage.

Second, design visualization is not the same as producing drawings once you follow the process you are done. It takes a lot of testing and tweaking to get impressive result. To get impressive result you have to use raytracing or global illumination these are very time consuming process so you have to get a fast renderer. A lot of renderer can produce amazing result at the expense of time. Like lightscape it is by far still the best renderer for the best quality but this is very slow. It will take you hours or days to complete. Same with other renderers including viz/max once you start using raytracing and GI you have to wait for hours. That is why plug-ins have been developed to speed up raytracing and GI. To date the most fastest plug-in is Vray by chaos group. Those render that will take hours will just be a matter of minutes in high resolution images.

[Arnel Aguel]

Check some of the cool architectural rendering done with Vray and judge it by yourselves. Don't mention about time its not comparable to any other renderer out there.

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2959

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3402

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3125

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3726

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3169

Arnel, those links require a password/username. ( Probably logs you on automatically )

[hand471037]

Arnel, man, it's great that you can afford Vray + MAX. It's cool stuff. I can't afford that, so I can't use it.

And there are things that Radiance can do that Vray and such can't that are important to me as well (that obvously don't matter to you). Vray, while great, is still faking everything, and as such, makes for gourgous renderings but isn't gonna work for the project I'm working on. Besides, I've already said that no one in thier right mind would want to work with Radiance (and that there are faster/easyer options out there) unless they had good reason to, or are insane, like me, and turning into a big ol' unix/lighting/architecture geek. :)

And, I read CG Architect all the time! CG Architect had an interview with the guy from VisArc just last year; that's where I learned of Radiance in the first place ;) Heck, I went to one of Mr. Ted Beardman's fine classes on Radiaosity in VIZ at AU last year, a regular contributor to that site! And you know what? I decided, that for me, VIZ's Radoisity wasn't going to work, for I felt that it was a kluge. And since I can't afford the extra rendering plug-ins, and feel that Accurender is limited, the only thing left is Radiance for me. :)

And I totally agree it comes down to the person doing the work and not so much the tools. Look at Hugh Ferris, I mean, that guy just used pencils for god's sake! (what I would give to go back to hand rendering!)

What I dig about Radiance is that it fits my mindset and workflow better. There are things I love about it, and the more I get into it, the more I'm liking it! For me, it's not how sexy the image looks; it's about a lot more than that.

[Arnel Aguel]

Sorry to stir the topic man, well, i think that's more than enough for rendering. We are not in the visualization bussiness are we? Maybe we could just get the best out of what we have in revit. Getting a great rendering image out of your design is probably only 5-10% of the whole building life cycle process. So rendering is just a plus factor to your design.

I just hope that there will be major enhancements in version 6.0. I love revit and i can live with it without any other rendering program.

[beegee]

Getting a great rendering image out of your design is probably only 5-10% of the whole building life cycle process. So rendering is just a plus factor to your design.

Trouble is, to build it ya gotta sell it.

[Arnel Aguel]

Trouble is, to build it ya gotta sell it.


LOL :lol: :lol: :lol:

Beegee are you saying you are not happy with accurender in Revit?

[beegee]

I'm saying rendering may be a small part of the whole process, but often, without a good rendering, there won't be no process.

[PeterJ]

Those of you who have access to The Architectural Review should look in the back page of the October 2003 issue for some hand drawings which are more realistic than any computer rendering I have seen. They are by an architect but are of petrol tankers and are astonishing.

I have looked at some of the renderings on Chaotic Dimension and there is some excellent work in their gallery (http://www.chaoticdimension.com/gallery/) but what I think after looking at these is that we have possibly been seduced by the work Jeffrey has shown becasue it has been interesting snippets and as design people we are all too ready to be fascinated by those. If you take a look at this image (http://www.chaoticdimension.com/gallery/imageinfo/1000200000000014.html) and look at the junction of the column to the rear right and the ceiling plane you will see the same kind of quality of light dissipation that we have seen in Jeffrey's images, but when we look at the entire view it is still very recognisably a computer generated image. I'd like to see if there is a source of radiance images to compare with (Jeffrey?).

I'm not suggetsting a 'render off' or whatever the competition would be termed, but some chance to compare whole images. Me I don't have the time to get into this stuff to this degree and so my interest is only in what you guys are able to achieve.

[Arnel Aguel]

Arnel, those links require a password/username. ( Probably logs you on automatically )

I've created one for everybody to see

username: revit
password: user

[Arnel Aguel]

Here is the link again, i've created username and password:

username: revit
password: user

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2959

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3402

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3125

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3726

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3169

[beegee]

Arnel,

I see what you mean. Thise really are breathtaking renders ! Full professional quality.

Now, how much is Vray. And how long does that take to render. And what sort of machine do you need to run it. ( I'm not having a go. I'm interested in the detail )

[Arnel Aguel]

Arnel,

I see what you mean. Thise really are breathtaking renders ! Full professional quality.

Now, how much is Vray. And how long does that take to render. And what sort of machine do you need to run it. ( I'm not having a go. I'm interested in the detail )


Beegee, if you are interested they have a downloadable demo version of vray with its full feature but with time limit and with watermark on it. You could also use their vray free (limited features) which is already very good for exterior rendering but you need to have viz or max. For the machine it runs quite nice with my old P4 1.8 GHz and 512 Ram.

here is the link

www.vray.com

[Arnel Aguel]

Sorry for the wrong link

www.vrayrender.com

[beegee]

Thanks Arnel,

I have access to Max, but I've never used it.
I will probably take VRay for a test drive this weekend. But I can't help thinking I'll be way out of my depth, since I still have trouble with Revit's Accurender.

[Arnel Aguel]

No problem beegee, if you have some problem with max or vray just let me know i might be of help.

[Steve_Stafford]

:shock: :shock: :shock: WoW...wOw...Yikes, staying home, not feeling too good this morning now... :cry:

Alright, take one of these Vrays . Call your reseller if the problem persists.

[hand471037]

Please don't look to my meager Radiance renderings as good examples. I'm still learning. :)

The best examples I know of are to be found on the Visarc site: www.visarc.com

There are also some good examples here:
http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/frameg.html

<edited out snippy comment>

[Steve_Stafford]

Speaking for myself I certainly didn't mean any disrespect Jeffrey, the whole discussion keeps us in touch with what's out there. I may aspire to do renderings of the sort we can see in these various links, but until our clients start asking or paying...it remains just that, an aspiration. Something to look forward to. I for one appreciate everyone's contribution to this thread and you for starting it.

[hand471037]

Sorry to be cranky. I need more coffee.

[gregcashen]

Holy ****! Those Visarc renderings are amazing! I actually mistook which was the pre-construction rendering and which was the photograph of the office building until I read the captions and then looked at the images again. Nice.

[PeterJ]

I'm enormously impressed by the Visarc stuff. Some of their project work is actually familiar so maybe it is the kind of imagery that has been doing the rounds. Good to see where it originated from. In particular the commercial scheme from Jung Brannen Associates has, I think become a well known image.

Where the Visarc stuff really scores, and in fairness the vray work too is in the long view. All the close ups tend to become glaringly apparent in their lack of dirt, chewing gum in the carpets, torn seats and so on, whereas the wide views are more forgiving in that respect. Generally the work is also better integrated into existing photos etc than I have generally seen.

I need to go back and have a look at some of the gallery shots on RUGI now to take a view on what has been produced in Revit (assuming they are all Accurender products on there) but the bar has been set pretty high.

[beegee]

All the close ups tend to become glaringly apparent in their lack of dirt, chewing gum in the carpets, torn seats and so on

Actually, you can't see any of that stuff on my carpet either. Its hidden under the beer cartons and pizza boxes. I doubt that even Vray or Visarc could properly capture the ambience of the sunlight attempting to break through the smoke and dust haze in my studio to alight on the stunningly bright gold of a randomly placed forex can. Ouch. Now where did I put those headache tablets.

[Arnel Aguel]

I doubt that even Vray or Visarc could properly capture the ambience of the sunlight attempting to break through the smoke and dust haze in my studio to alight on the stunningly bright gold of a randomly placed forex can.

That can be done in max or viz beegee using volume light effects.

[Steve_Stafford]

...under the beer cartons and pizza boxes....

Aah, whateth a prettyeth pictureth thoueth dotheth painteth Beegeeheth.

Glamour at every corner in you world eh?

[beegee]

I knoweth a good orthodonteth ... if you're interestedeth.

Nice one...

[PeterJ]

Come on, beegee, Steve models himself on Steed. You know an English 70s action hero would never stoop to the vanity of dental treatment

[theguru7remove1746]

One Problem Radiance is NOT free if you use it commercially ONLY if you are using it for educational purposes. David Thomas

[hand471037]

That used to be the case; now Radiance is open source under it's own licence; has been since last christmas.

See attached licence file. The only limitation is the typical liability clause and the typical name & copywrite notice clause. It's very much like the BSD licence, 'cept that you can't use the word 'Radiance' in attachment with a product you've derived from their source code unless you get permission.

[theguru7remove1746]

Thanks Jeffery, I did not know they changed it- Thanks David Thomas

[hand471037]

Yeah, the two things that happened for Radiance recently that made it accessible to me was this, and the fact that someone recompiled it to run on Radiance. Those two things really made a huge difference!

[hand471037]

OK, so it's been a year or so now since I've started learning Radiance, and I thought I'd give an update.

It's taken a year to get to the point where I can get predictable results from the software, as in I can aim for something and then get that something out of it. And I'm loving it. I'm going to post a couple of more recent images here just as an update, with more to follow in the near future.

This first image is a texture test pattern that I made to learn more about generating procedural textures within Radiance. These are all, 'cept for one (can you spot it?), procedural materials.This file was 'handrolled', as in generated using nothing but Radiance. I've got some examples of Revit exported models rendered in Radiance that I'll be posting later.

My typical workflow for this process is Revit -> AutoCAD -> Radiance, due to the existing Radiance exporting LISP scripts and Revit's lack of a 'by material' instead of it's current 'by object' exporting.

There's a few things I really love about Radiance:
1. I can start, stop, and restart, any rendering at any time. 100% crash recovery!
2. I can define things properly ONCE, and then never have to worry about it again. No guesswork, no faking things, no wondering why things look ******...
3. I can have as much complexity as I want, the upper limit is vastly higher than with Radiosity
4. The light is just so frickin' Beautiful. The attached images only have one light source, a automatically generated sky. No fill lights, no skydomes, no strange tricks...
5. I can have a Render Server running jobs that I can use SSH to connect up to for control.
6. It's free, and Open Source, so I'll always be able to use it. Heck, if I could only learn C, I could even modify it at will...

So, while it's taken quite a while to learn, I'm very happy, for all the things I never liked with traditional rendering is now gone. ;-)

more to come!

[PeterJ]

Jeffrey

Can we see some building interiors, please? I was very impressed with what you had produced previously as testers so I would like to see how you have come on. The practice runs on material samples are more useful if we have the same thing run through three or four different render engines to get a direct comparison.

I don't think that I have the time to start learning something else and I don't do much rendering but as a point of interest, do you stick with the Revit materials as you export or does everything have a new material assigned as it goes via AutoCAD and into Radiance?

[hand471037]

Peter I'll post some interiors in a little while, when I get the chance.

The materials are defined within Radiance. When I export out of AutoCAD, the LISP I use just makes a placeholder material of default grey per layer or color coming out of AutoCAD. If I translate a DXF from Revit into Radiance directly, the it's only by layer. Hence why I use AutoCAD as an intermediate step for now.

As for rendering this same scene in different engines, the point is moot really. Each handles materials differently, so it would be apples to oranges. It would totally just depend on the skill of the user at that point. While it would be harder to do this using only procedural materials in Accurender, someone with a lot of skill could probably pull this off.
Same kinda goes for comparing it to other Rendering engines at all, really. That's like looking at an Oil Painting, and then a Watercolor, and deciding that Oil Painting is 'better' and therefore that's what you are going to learn how to do. There are only two reasons that anyone would want to use Radiance. Either they need something that's actually accurate because they are a designer/lighting person, or they are unhappy with the limitations of other Rendering engines (I fall into the second camp). However Radiance is very hard to learn, and is slow in comparision to other rendering engines. So don't think for a moment that I'm recommending to anyone to acutally learn this stuff, I'm more sharing it with everyone because they seem interested in it, and in rendering stuff, overall. And because I'm obsessed with it. :-)

[hand471037]

figured out a better way to go to Radiance from Revit via 3DS Max. It's on my blog if anyone cares. (http://www.becausewecan.org/node/190)