Our office using Revit extensively. Renderings in Revit look like crap but can be good to get your point across, depending on the client. If you want high quality renderings, then you might be stuck. Not sure how familiar you are with Revit yet, but set up a camera angle and render on high to get the best results.
From my experience, lighting is hard to make look good in revit. I have had some success using Piranesi, but we usually just throw it into MAX. I'm sure I really didn't give you anything to go on here, but maybe a more specific question could get you a better answer.
Don't just don't. That is why they make VIZ. When you export to 3ds format very often the planes become triangulated, almost everything becomes triangulated, however there sometimes are planes and a few objects which come through the export as planes but then the normals are wrong or the faces are pointing in the wrong direction. You then have to assign double sided materials or you get invisible faces. There are lots of problems with texture mapping and other stuff I'm not going into for brevity. Sure -maybe a small scene might be ok but a building is huge in terms of geometry. VIZ handles the objects native to Revit & ADT by keeping the hierarchy of the component groups and the nested subobjects without triangulating or making each surface planar. If you made something in Revit or ADT it opens up nicely in VIZ plus you can link update and just do the textures and lighting in VIZ. That way your drawings can be developed parallel to the rendering. Importing in 3ds format is a one-way work flow. What about VRAY its hot. I'm not sure they make that plugin compatible for VIZ, but VIZ is essentially Max with added features. VIZ has some nice lighting features like IES files & luminares.
@arthur braagadocio: Even though my office uses acad and viz, I'll bet the basic idea is the same. What I normally do is go to the file link manager to link or import a cad-file. There, under "basic", you'll find the option "unify normals". Usually, this works like a charm.
Personally, I have never had a problem exporting models to MAX. If you export as an FBX file, it comes into MAX clean.
I agree, it is one-way though. I just create a MAX file, and xref it into my working file. That way, I just save over the first export to update my working file without screwing up any settings. Kind of a half-assed way around it, but it works for me.
I have never used VIZ, I will have to investigate.
What version are you using? 2008 and earlier I agree with you, the rendering is doo doo. But 2009 version however, has mental ray. I've used it on some school and work projects for gray study models and I love the quality I get. Here is a link of some rendering techniques...
it's really not all that bad now; though the mental ray implementation is severely handicapped (MR has so much more capability…kind of a waste imo) and it's painfully slow because it's not able to fully utilize the multi-cores available in most current machines.
just be warned if you decide to export to another program: right now the only program that can open the FBX format that Revit 2009 exports is 3DS MAX/3DS Design(VIZ successor), any other program that handles FBX won't be able to open the files (though this may be changing as I type this)
I usually export as ACIS solids and use Maxwell from Rhino…
We have been rendering the view w/ landscape on, then render w/ landscape off, make a pdf of the view in hidden-line - making sure that view is saved in REVIT. Occasionally we'll make a pdf of the view in wire frame instead of hidden-line to show the structure
Place those 3 views into photoshop, adjust the transparencies of the 3 images, add some entourage, sky, shadows - DONE!
We just upgraded to 2009 so I havent used the new Mental Ray just yet. But I hear its waayyy better than 2008 or earlier.
Aug 26, 08 1:32 am ·
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REVIT RENDERING
so, for better or for worse my office is getting into revit.
its pretty shitty at first, but i think when CD and CA comes along, it should be ok.
so i need to produce some renderings of the facade of our restaurant for the redevelopment agency to approve
has anyone done any successful renderings in revit, either through just screenshots or actual render function?
materials, lighting, camera options are all to be figured out as well.
i'll be up late messing around with it, so if anyone has any suggestions, let me know!
oh btw i hope to photoshop the facade into panoramic site images.
thanks
Our office using Revit extensively. Renderings in Revit look like crap but can be good to get your point across, depending on the client. If you want high quality renderings, then you might be stuck. Not sure how familiar you are with Revit yet, but set up a camera angle and render on high to get the best results.
From my experience, lighting is hard to make look good in revit. I have had some success using Piranesi, but we usually just throw it into MAX. I'm sure I really didn't give you anything to go on here, but maybe a more specific question could get you a better answer.
Good luck.
no not max - VIZ. Max will garble it all up. Whats the diff? Same thing only VIZ has the object enablers.
Don't just don't. That is why they make VIZ. When you export to 3ds format very often the planes become triangulated, almost everything becomes triangulated, however there sometimes are planes and a few objects which come through the export as planes but then the normals are wrong or the faces are pointing in the wrong direction. You then have to assign double sided materials or you get invisible faces. There are lots of problems with texture mapping and other stuff I'm not going into for brevity. Sure -maybe a small scene might be ok but a building is huge in terms of geometry. VIZ handles the objects native to Revit & ADT by keeping the hierarchy of the component groups and the nested subobjects without triangulating or making each surface planar. If you made something in Revit or ADT it opens up nicely in VIZ plus you can link update and just do the textures and lighting in VIZ. That way your drawings can be developed parallel to the rendering. Importing in 3ds format is a one-way work flow. What about VRAY its hot. I'm not sure they make that plugin compatible for VIZ, but VIZ is essentially Max with added features. VIZ has some nice lighting features like IES files & luminares.
@arthur braagadocio: Even though my office uses acad and viz, I'll bet the basic idea is the same. What I normally do is go to the file link manager to link or import a cad-file. There, under "basic", you'll find the option "unify normals". Usually, this works like a charm.
Personally, I have never had a problem exporting models to MAX. If you export as an FBX file, it comes into MAX clean.
I agree, it is one-way though. I just create a MAX file, and xref it into my working file. That way, I just save over the first export to update my working file without screwing up any settings. Kind of a half-assed way around it, but it works for me.
I have never used VIZ, I will have to investigate.
VIZ is discontinued.....so maybe it's not the best program after all.
I think Revit produces nice black and white renderings with shadows turned on. You can always add slight color in photoshop.
This is coming from a guy who hates good photorealistic renderings, and revit is not even good at them.
What version are you using? 2008 and earlier I agree with you, the rendering is doo doo. But 2009 version however, has mental ray. I've used it on some school and work projects for gray study models and I love the quality I get. Here is a link of some rendering techniques...
Revit Rendering Blog
it's really not all that bad now; though the mental ray implementation is severely handicapped (MR has so much more capability…kind of a waste imo) and it's painfully slow because it's not able to fully utilize the multi-cores available in most current machines.
just be warned if you decide to export to another program: right now the only program that can open the FBX format that Revit 2009 exports is 3DS MAX/3DS Design(VIZ successor), any other program that handles FBX won't be able to open the files (though this may be changing as I type this)
I usually export as ACIS solids and use Maxwell from Rhino…
I do ACIS in and out as well from and to Rhinoceros for working with revit too when i have to.
all revit
crapppp... ok nevermind
any torrent recommendations for 2009...er for my friend
We have been rendering the view w/ landscape on, then render w/ landscape off, make a pdf of the view in hidden-line - making sure that view is saved in REVIT. Occasionally we'll make a pdf of the view in wire frame instead of hidden-line to show the structure
Place those 3 views into photoshop, adjust the transparencies of the 3 images, add some entourage, sky, shadows - DONE!
We just upgraded to 2009 so I havent used the new Mental Ray just yet. But I hear its waayyy better than 2008 or earlier.
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