trees and entourage in 2009

[shenderson]

we were getting pretty used to the process with the accurender trees prior to the new rendering engine. is there any way to still use those trees or are we forced to use RPC now. what has been the experience with render times using the RPC.

[tenghui2000]

I like use RPC object (trees, people, cars) instead of the revit plant family even though I don't have Revit 2009. The RPC object are very nice, look more realistic to the rendering environment and easy to create as entorage family. The rendering time might be slightly longer, but it is worth of the quality. Other thing to keep in mind is that Revit 2009 doesn't have many RPC objects which means you need to purchase from the Archvison with extra cost.

[shenderson]

so how does this extra cost (to get what we had before for free) work?? monthly subscription or per download?

[sfaust]

You should be experiencing SHORTER render times than with the other plants. You may have longer times overall, but that's because mental ray takes longer (for infinitely better quality...) than accurender, but if you inserted geometric trees into mental ray instead of RPC, your render times would go up. RPC at render time is basically a singe face with a picture on it where the old accurender trees generated actual geometry, which takes much longer to render.

As far as the additional content, go to www.archvision.com. However, the plant library in 2009 is pretty good. There are only a few cars and people (just like 2008 and before) but there are quite a few plants...

[dfriesen]

so how does this extra cost (to get what we had before for free) work?? monthly subscription or per download?
You can choose an annual subscription, or purchase individual items or collections. Consider carefully before jumping in to subscription - you can only use it on one machine at a time - if you render on additional machines, you get a watermark. Also, you will lose all that content if you don't renew.
We are finding that purchasing models or collections would be a lot more practical, and will be doing so once our subscription runs out.

As an aside, a problem with RPCs is that they don't appear properly in reflections. If you view a building obliquely, RPCs that show up in reflections will appear tall and skinny. That's because the single face of the RPC is facing the camera, and the reflection shows it more from the side.

[shenderson]

thanks for the replies... most helpful.

i've always stayed away from the RPC because they are TOO real and if you don't bring your model to that level of 'hyper realism', (rarely, if ever do we have the budget) then they, IMO, are a distraction from the building. i prefer more painterly entourage and even 'ghosted' silhouettes of people for scale. can these types of entourage be created easily as RPC.

[SkiSouth]

yes download the free Rpc creator from Archvision. You simply make a bitmap with an alpha channel and create any RPC you need. Actually think there is a tutorial in the tutorial forum on how to do it, just be sure to change the search date when looking for the tutorial to" from the beginning."

[shenderson]

i don't see a free rpc creator download at archvision...

[jeffh]

i don't see a free rpc creator download at archvision...

Looks like it has changed from RPC Creator to RPC Creator PRO and costs $399 now. I don't see the old FREE RPC Creator anymore. :-(

[shenderson]

i got the impression that autodesk and archivision were working together somehow to bring this stuff to revit users but i'm lost on the archivision site trying to figure out what will work with revit, what the options are etc... i can't find anything on the autodesk side that sheds any light.

it almost appears as if revit users got locked into archvision content and now we're going to pay dearly for it. are there any other options besides archivision? if not then archivision can charge whatever they want and we have to pay it in order for the new rendering engine to function.

what does the future hold...will revit provide more rcp content out of the box in the future? if i tell my boss to spend a small fortune on RPC content am i going to look like an idiot a few releases from now when revit decides to do something completely different...i've already spent alot of time and resources setting up stuff around the accurender engine. anybody, including autodesk, have a clue?

[sbrown]

you can get unlimited access to all Rpc content for something like $600/year.

[shenderson]

that's like $600 per year - per machine for the subscription - so even in our little office we would be looking at a couple-o-more grand a year in addition to our revit subscription for everyone to be able to render (or in other words - use revit as advertised)...

that's not very good. and as someone said in an earlier post - all of that money is a sunk cost - no investment - you 'own' nothing. so they opted to buy packages - if i do that, i spend anywhere up to $500 dollars for a package and then what happens when a new version of revit comes out? are my old rpc's no longer usable...what happens if they switch the rendering engine again?

[Steve Hutana]

Is it just shenderson and me who are in shock here over this......?

I started on Revit 4.5 and In all my years I have never seen the likes of this.

Appears that Autodesk have decided to completely cut off
functionality of Accurender plants entirely when rendering . When I render in Revit 2009 my 2008 trees will no longer render.

Further it appears that if you attempt to render the site from "top view" in 3D the RPC plants do not render at all either. This surely is an error.

Yesterday I could render my massed planting library built up over 6 years in any view I wished and could edit planting graphics to suit my needs as recommended by many an Augi expert up to Revit 2008 and now we are restricted to sucking through a straw and lining 3rd pary pockets now.

For me Architecture is people, buildings and land, We must be able to create our own impressionistic views of these as we see fit. We cannot accept RPC as the only way any more than accepting communism as thee ideal lifestyle.

Extreme..no, ironic "yes.

[dbaldacchino]

RPC trees are not useable for plan views. That's because they don't have a picture to show you in such a view (horizontal plane). Cars on the other hand, do. As for Archivision, we already had a subscription because of their use in Max and I don't believe we're paying an additinal $600 per seat of Revit. I know we have a networked version but not sure how many seats. Again, not sure how it's working, but I suppose we might have (say) 10 floating licenses total. Not everyone in the firm is going to be rendering at the same exact minute.

[chris.needham]

Is it just shenderson and me who are in shock here over this......?



No Steve, add my name here too.

I seem to have enough RPCs with Revit for my requirements, but when I bring the file into Max Design via FBX, I can only use the demo content, whch appears to be about four shrubs.

So this seems like just because I want to use Max too (as suggested by Autodesk if I want advanced rendering etc) then I have to pay extra to use the RPCs that I've already paid for (indirectly.)

I'm definitely not happy about this. I paid extra money for Max for advanced features, but then find that I need to pay more again to use the features that I thought I already had.

[SCShell]

Is it just shenderson and me who are in shock here over this......? Further it appears that if you attempt to render the site from "top view" in 3D the RPC plants do not render at all either..

Hey there,
One of the big reasons why I am still using RAC2008!
Include me on that list.
Steve

[Norton_cad]

Good news. Accurender is developing a new plug in for Revit 2009+. Go to this web site to dowload the beta. http://nxt.accurender.com/
Also, someone said that the free RPC creator application is now not available. I have a copy.
Mental ray! Pah! Keep your 600 bucks, for activision content, and buy a decent digital camara, and buy the new & improved Accurender instead.

[Joef]

I have been using the accurender plug in for several months now. I prefer it over the Revit renderer for quick work. It must be said that I do not do a lot of rendering of any flavour.

[Steve Hutana]

My red glasses are off! Norton please post your findings as a major post thread to prevent others jumping from the windows!

Norton I am buying you a Fosters the next time the Road show invites me to speak.

I was up till 1am this morning breathing into a paper bag think terrible archicad thoughts LOL! "Jingos mate"

So Lov'in Augi right now:lol:

Cheers mate
Steve

[Cathy Hadley]

Just to clarify, I downloaded the FREE RPC Creator this morning. So that is still available. The link was bad for awhile, but they have corrected it.

[Steve Hutana]

Does anyone now where I can get RCP meshes for revit 2009? cant source from my 2009 ootb.

Well, its been a sleepless night creating my RPC trees using Photo shop and the RPC creator then learning how to direct the path in Revit 2009 etc etc

But.....it has worked YAY! Two solid days work to learn and implement, not to mention the 4 hours of shooting the native plants and trees.

3 major learning curves so far

1. Watch how you create the Alpha channels, use the solid fill for black and dont forget to flatten at the end!

2. Upon recieving the topo cad with Z heights and rescaled in acad prior to importing into revit 09. Revit kept dying on me once I started adding/editing items to the very large subdivision.
The workaround has been to link site topo into another master plan. Not the best option as I have to man handle the heights of my RPC, but no other choice presently as time is fading.
Make sure you map a new path to C:/RPC as this was a part reason for the dying as soon as I tried to place my RPC in site with own RPC trees.

3. RPC meshes, there is a free icon creator download which I am yet to try which will allow a tree Mesh appearance prior to rendering which is better tha 4 sides cross thingi! which graphically sux!

4. To get my RPC trees to work in 2009 I have created them in the RPC family.


Hope it helps someone. Feel free to email if needed. Personally its a headache to do and I know my photoshop cuting "alpha channels" are very average and really requires a graphic designer etc to do the cut outs properly! not to mention the personal impressionistic filter ideas.

[trombe]

thanks man,

will have to (finally) embark upon this quest (for real rather than trial as have done now) before Xmas and not looking forward to it...but to see our ka rawe vegetation in context will be worth it.
ka kite
trombe

[Steve Hutana]

Kia ora

Feel free to email on any Native RPC tree issues or call me on 02102361696. Happy to help where I can

Heare
Steve

[cliff collins]

Does the Accurender plug-in completely by-pass Mental Ray? How do MR protein/Pro materials work w/ AR?

?????????

cheers.........

[Norton_cad]

Accurender is a different render engin to Mental ray. You can plugin some render engins as an alternative, such as 3D studio max, Accurender, and probably others.

The Materials that each render engin uses is typically it's own set, but I suppose it is possible to use materials from a different library, if you could be bothered mapping one to another. I prefer to just use the Accurender standard materials.

I've always wanted a template that maps different materials to Accurender standards, for Sketchup/AutoCAD/3D Studio/Maya/Rino/and others. I guess it's a wish list for someone at Accurender if I post it one day.

Custom RPC content for trees can be edited not only in Photoshop, but in AutoDesk's Impression software too. The trick with seperating the background to create the Alpha channel image, is to try to aquire an image with a solid colour background. Preferably blue, if your creating vegitation RPC's. If you have a solid green background, (as advised in the tutorial) you may find it hard to seperate your Alpha channel image from the green leaves. Incidentally did you know that you can use RPC in Sketchup if you add the IRender plus plugin. Have a look at this web site for more info on this topic.
http://www.scriptspot.com/sketchup-main