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Rhino / Vray invisible ceiling??

Entasis79

I am doing a series of sun studies of a dorm building and I want to be able to render the rooms looking down in a plan view.

Is there some way to get the scene to render normally, as if the ceiling was there, but not have the ceiling actually show up, so you can see down into the rooms and see how far the the sun enters the room?

I guess the simpler question is, can I get hidden objects to interact with the Vray light sources, yet still remain hidden?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 
Oct 15, 08 3:09 pm
Cacaphonous Approval Bot

never tried it, but how do clipping planes effect the rendering with vray? ie drop a clipping plane just below the ceiling, see what happens.
i know some renderers ignore things that are hidden (as in act if they're not there because light wouldnt hit them) but do not know the particlulars of clipping planes and vray.

Oct 15, 08 4:37 pm  · 
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MArch n' unemployed

i was going to say this earlier, but it doesn't really answer your question, but you can do this in maxwell, they have a clipping plane function built in the renderer and it allows you to render sections - showing the cut, but maintaining the light as if it were uncut. if you're a student im sure you know someone who has maxwell. i know learning a new renderer isn't what you're looking for but its an option. i don't know much about v-ray

Oct 15, 08 4:42 pm  · 
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rehiggins

does vray have a "hidden to camera" feature? if you only hide it from the camera, but not the GI/lighting then you should be able to get the effect you're after

Oct 15, 08 5:17 pm  · 
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Entasis79

Thanks to all. I will try all of these ideas. Maxwell may be a bit harder to get to work, since I don't have any experience with it, but if I can get a copy, I will certainly try. Thanks again.

Oct 15, 08 6:00 pm  · 
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FOG Lite

the ever helpful Micha over at the AGVis forums has a tutorial on how to achieve the invisible ceiling effect. I think it just involves making a 2 sided material with the one facing the camera being transparent. Can't remember if its a vray 2sided or a sketchup 2 sided though.

Oct 15, 08 6:07 pm  · 
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rehiggins

you more than likely don't have the time for Maxwell-- not from a learning curve standpoint, but a rendering standpoint unless you've got (at a minimum) an octo core machine.

Stick with what you know and have, though there is a demo version of Maxwell available and who knows: your school may even have a few seats

Oct 15, 08 6:47 pm  · 
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Antisthenes

are there rooms above the rooms and if so can you just isolate 1 room? ya and a 1 sided material you can see through

Oct 15, 08 7:30 pm  · 
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Cacaphonous Approval Bot

MArch06: will check it out myself, but is this a maxwell studio only function or does it work with plugins?

Oct 15, 08 10:44 pm  · 
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rehiggins

joe6pk--

z-clipping planes are enabled in most plugins with Rhino having probably the best implementation/tools for defining them.

z-clipping planes are a function of the camera, not an independent entity that can be defined regardless of the POV

Oct 16, 08 1:20 pm  · 
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MArch n' unemployed

joe six pack, is that really you? yeah as rehiggins said you can control all the clipping in the plug-in, as well as in the studio itself.

Oct 16, 08 1:31 pm  · 
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Apurimac
you more than likely don't have the time for Maxwell-- not from a learning curve standpoint, but a rendering standpoint unless you've got (at a minimum) an octo core machine.

The hell are you talking about rehiggins? I get perfectly fine renderings at SL 14 on my 4 year old crappy centrino laptop, i just let it sit overnight.

Oct 16, 08 1:46 pm  · 
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rehiggins

that's exactly my point--you need to let it sit overnight…plus at SL14 I bet that most of the dielectrics and metals(if you have any) are still noisy, even if you're using AGS. You also probably need to turn off caustics

Overnight, and multi-day renders are perfectly fine for hero images of a final design, but this is not OK for design exploration where quantity of iterations is more important than physical accuracy of an iteration (most render engines can produce accurate-enough sun illumination and shadow locations).

i hate to say it, but VRAY would probably be the better solution for these quick design explorations

Oct 16, 08 2:01 pm  · 
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MArch n' unemployed

overnight on my machine and i get to SL 18 or higher, in 1 hour i can get to SL 11, which is more than fine for design exploration...especially when you keep the size of the rendering down

Oct 16, 08 2:09 pm  · 
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rehiggins

I bet that VRAY could do it in under 30minutes on most machines depending on the resolution. I still think 1hr is too long for an exploration. To be truly effective and productive you need render times at 10 minutes or less, especially if you decide to do an animation of sunlight changing over the day/week/year

Maxwell just can't compete with other engines based on render time; render quality, material creation/quality, and scene set-up are entirely different matters--the other engines don't come close

Oct 16, 08 2:17 pm  · 
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Deidra

If it should be something like this http://picasaweb.google.com/vayersoft/TopView3DRenderingsByVayersoft#5252895366438476626 I'll ask the collegues to explain the way they do it in V-ray....

Oct 21, 08 6:13 am  · 
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Cacaphonous Approval Bot

general feed into the data pool:
rhino's own clipping plane feature (which is great) doesn't get rendered in maxwell, but maxwell's camera z-clipping, as noted by folk above, does with a nice black poche at the section.
and no, still haven't made a sec to vray it up.

Oct 29, 08 2:47 pm  · 
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