Revit + viz

[cbiddulph]

Can you take a revit model and bring it into VIZ? I really like how VIZ renders.
thanks,

[juggergnat]

You can, with DWG import within Viz. Except you have to reassign every material in the building, and that's quite time consuming.

If you have a heavy investment in materials within your Revit model...those will go to waste. Good luck.

JG

[hand471037]

Actually, the info is still within the DWG, down to the Accurender mateirals and everything. It's just that Viz is 'ignorant' of it. You could write your own script, or try to find the rumored one that's out there, that would take a DWG from Revit, and in Viz, re-map everything automatically... Or you could wait for someone to make a product to do just that, or for Autodesk to get around to putting it into Viz. But the data is all there, as xdata, within the DWG and DXF. I learning how to make that work for Radiance, a different rendering package, and Chris Zoog here is learning how to do it within Viz. Maybe you shoud drop him a line.

It's not the best, I totally understand that. But other than the materials thing, Revit exports to other 3D software wonderfully- no reversed normals, no bad meshes, no screwed up geomotry...

[Richard McCarthy]

I agree, Revit does pretty good export on geometry, but you really have to reassign every materials yourself which CAN be a drag. There is a hope on horizon, as Revit v7 might support more flawless translation to MAX. I think others have try to also look into this and found that Revit does write out XML of the material list.. it's all there it's just matter of MAX/VIZ to recognise those tag and reassign those as material in the program itself.
In the mean time, you can try to tweak your own DWG/DXF export filter and give each distinct building object a material... once that's done, you can just select the objects easily in MAX with selection tool and assign them by the groups.

[christopher.zoog51272]

Yup, as far as I can tell, Revit exports out the whole shebang (materials, maps, uvw coords, etc) via xdata attached to the Revit created dwg/DXF geometry. It's just a matter of getting viz to "read" this info. I have to believe the viz team is working on this. But in the mean time, we are working on our own script to just separate each object that has the same Revit material id, on to a single dwg layer for each material. That way, assigning materials would be a snap. Currently I mess around with the dwg files to separate out each different material, but that breaks the "rvt to dwg to max cycle" If have a change in Revit, I'm SOL.

This script will make it much less tedious.

-z

[Richard McCarthy]

I also wish that Revit would be more or less SEAMLESS integration with MAX or VIZ.
When dynamically linked the Revit to VIZ as said in the Revit to VIZ white paper, initially I thought it would automatically and dynamically update all the changes I made in Revit. But in reality it doesn't work, if you have different wall configuration and if you delete the walls and change things around, VIZ will tell you it can NO LONGER track the data and changes... so you have to RE-IMPORT EVERYTHING and RE-ASSIGN everything again. So in short, if you want to have VIZ work dynamically with Revit, it still doesn't work.
I would like to see this rectified , VIZ should be smart enough to detect the changes and create the additional walls and delete the one that's been deleted....etc. ...I think if this is more or less seamless I will be a happier man...

[Vincent Valentijn]

I'm guessing that in due time Accurender will be droppen for VIZ within Revit anyway... Since VIZ is 'the' engine for Autodesk they probably would be wise to continue this over their whole product-line. The reason for Accurender being there still.. I don't know, who knows what kind of contracts there are laying around right?

For the mean while, great idea Chris ~ are you guys getting anywhere? I'm sure many will be interested around here if you find a nice filtersetting or script to get better results/functrionality for VIZ.

[cbiddulph]

Thanks everyone that was some great information. I guess you cant even take a naked model into VIZ because of walls having brick etc....I would be very interested in learning of whats in store with VIZ and Revit.

[juggergnat]

I never said the data was gone from the DWG models. But if I can´t easily access it, as far as I'm concerned it doesn't exist.

Can't say that I agree with this notion that exports excellent 3d models. It exports only great *.dwg and *.dxf 3d models that are absolutely gigantic in size (particularly the dxfs). These are not exactly the default 3d formats of most rendering programs. Luckily, if you are a loyal Autodesk customer, VIZ or MAX specifically will import that data pretty seamlessly because of the robust DWG importer (only in versions 5 and above, please). If you are a Lightwave user, a Truespace user, a Cinema 4d user, a Maya or Softimage user, or a user of any of the other myriad great cost-effective rendering programs out there...you are out of luck. Expect to spend plenty of time working around the fact that DWG is not a common import file format in the vast 3d rendering industry. *.3ds, *.obj...these are the most common formats, and Revit does not export them.

JG

[hand471037]

Jug, WTF are you talking about? I used to export Revit models to Truespace all the time. And I think the latest version reads DWG's even. I've also exported Revit models into Maya as a test, for I was thinking of better ways to do animations, and Maya is really really good at that. Even now, I export Revit models to a very esoteric rendering engine called Radiance, and have no problems.

Lots of things read DXF. It's just some require more reworking than others, and I totally agree that it sucks that the data that's there is not used. yet. ;-) But then people are now starting to write scripts to be able to use that data. Heck, Truespace has Python in it, and it would be trivial for someone who knew Python to write a little script that would load a DXF but consiter the materials & such. And if the market is there, someone smart will make a DXF 2 3DS converter (there are many out there) that is smart enough to use the xdata about materials, and produce a devent 3DS from the Revit data... I think it's only a matter of time, before Autodesk and others start to leverage this. It's not like the data is locked in there. And heck, even if you were working totally within AutoCAD/ADT/VIZland, it's not like you don't have to do any additional work there either. You're always going to have to do some tweaking within the 3D software.

But then I've been OK with using Accurender within Revit as a quick rendering engine, and have been able to get good enough out of it (it gets the job done), and then when I need something to be really really good I turn to better tools...

[Garn]

Don't know if you've seen this before - a tech doc describing the process of getting the Revit model into VIz .

http://www3.autodesk.com/adsk/files/2436357_Revit_VIZ.pdf

This technique uses layer color numbering when you configure the export dwg from Revit. Then you have to create or modify a "multi sub object" material in Viz whose number corresponds to the layer colors. It's long winded but until someone writes a plugin to read the xdata then it may be another way for you - if writing scripts is not your thing. That's how its done in ADT Render.

[cbiddulph]

Garn-thanks so much. thats going to help out a lot. this is long winded but it definitely helps.

[christie.landry]

a tech doc describing the process of getting the Revit model into VIz .

http://www3.autodesk.com/adsk/files/2436357_Revit_VIZ.pdf


It's good to see people know about the whitepapers we create!

[Andre Baros]

I hadn't looked at that white paper in a while but it reminds me of something... If the next release doesn't include some amazing new export options, maybe the export settings dialog could at least use some actual colors and line weights and be sortable by color, lineweight, or layer to make setting up export files friendlier.

[Arnel Aguel]

I also wish that Revit would be more or less SEAMLESS integration with MAX or VIZ.
When dynamically linked the Revit to VIZ as said in the Revit to VIZ white paper, initially I thought it would automatically and dynamically update all the changes I made in Revit. But in reality it doesn't work, if you have different wall configuration and if you delete the walls and change things around, VIZ will tell you it can NO LONGER track the data and changes... so you have to RE-IMPORT EVERYTHING and RE-ASSIGN everything again. So in short, if you want to have VIZ work dynamically with Revit, it still doesn't work.
I would like to see this rectified , VIZ should be smart enough to detect the changes and create the additional walls and delete the one that's been deleted....etc. ...I think if this is more or less seamless I will be a happier man...

I totally agree with Richard the dynamic linking process is still not seamless as it should be. Some objects loss data applied to them if you make some changes in revit and update you model in viz.

However, it is still worth the effort of having to re assign few of the loss link as the quality of the final product is great. Here is a basic example of this problem, everytime i update my model in viz the material assignment for the roof gutter is lost i have to reapply the material again.

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=7872

Just hoping the factory will fix this in v7