33 Apt. Building (Revit - Viz/Vray)

[rmejia]

Here's the most recent work done in Revit. Everything modeled in Revit except the plants, cars and waves. File linked to Viz and rendered with Vray. It's a residential 33 apt. building. Hope it is not too bad. Crits and comments welcome.

[Max Lloyd]

Not too bad? are you kidding?

I think it looks great, so well done!

I would like to do a high rise apartment block at some point just for fun. It must be interesting.

Max.

[SkiSouth]

I agree nicely done. Is this in Puerto Rico?

[Arnel Aguel]

Nicely done....just for some critics I don't like the road texture it seems to big for my liking...over all well done.

[snurresprett9]

I like it. Although for some reason almost every V-ray render looks the same. How is the process of getting the revit model into Viz working for you?

[jcdecastro]

Nice,
Viz-Vray is the way to go!
You cant beat it for the time it takes to get a good image.
What was your rendering time?



I am currently trying to work out the vray sun and physical camera, exposure thing. Its a bit tricky but i realise that since maxwell was released a physically based process from vray wasnt far.

I know most architects cant wait for rendering to be a more simplistic process, the sun is the sun, glass is glass and hit render. It is simplistic with accurender, but the output is so 20th century and it takes such a long time. In vray I can get a GOOD test render in less than 3 minutes.

I wish Vray was the rendering engine in Revit. In my simple mind it should be a matter of switching out accureder material for a vray material since the actual rendering engine is accurender, the actual engine can now be revit. seems almost too simple.

[rmejia]

Thanks to all for the comments.

Yes, this is in Puerto Rico.

The roads .... and sidewalks .... are still a constant source of pain for me. I use pictures for reference and the roads do not look like roads in pictures. I think that to make those look good I will have to take the texture to photoshop and work on them over there, but texturing is something I still have not practiced. It is on the to do list!

I am not sure how VRay renderings look the same. The colors? The way the shadows are done will probably be very similar in most VRay renders. I also have tried out Mental Ray and I like the way the rendering comes out, the shadows do look different but I get some artifacts which I would like to eliminate but don't know how and there is no Mental Ray forum or materials site. The export to dwg for file link in Viz has improved, now the materials come in with the material name from Revit. I am in the process of creating a material library with the same names in Revit as in Viz to simplify the transfer. File link will screw up the model sometimes ... and I have to restart a new scene and relink and merge elements from the old. To me the biggest hassle is reapplying the materials, so that is what I am working on to simplify.

The rendering time depends on the final image size. I reduced it to post it here. The size here might render in about 10 to 20 minutes, withought the trees and plants it would be half of that. All the thousands of leaves on the trees bump up the polygon count immensely. A larger (over 3000 x 3000) might take from about 1 to 2 hours with some high settings. I do really like VRay because of it's speed. A thing I used here was VRay proxies (all the cars and trees are proxies). Withought that I would not have been able to render them and the polygon count would have been huge in the scene. Maxwell is only an unbiased renderer, but VRay can render in biased and unbiased (QMC) methods, the unbiased method takes forever and I only see a use for it in detail renderings, not an exterior shot like this. There is an auto exposure tool for the Vray physical camera (Matrix exposimeter).
To me it has become a simplistic process. I export to dwg, file link, run the convert scene to vray, put in the sun/sky, set up a view with the camera, change about 7 settings in the renderer and hit render. In about 2 or 3 minutes I have a preview render. It can get a lot more complex though, and at first I was lost in the settings and the 3d program language and terms.