Forums >> Revit Building >> Technical Support >> Walkthrough rendering stops

OneThing

active

Joined: Fri, Jan 9, 2009
26 Posts
No Rating

hey, ive got an issue when Im rendering a walkthrough.After I set the walkthrough up and all the settins it commences with rendering the first frame, but after a couple or so it stops. For some reaon the frame/crop region of the frame becomes smaller, and does not enclose the whole frame to be rendered. I have it set at 10 frame/seconds with 200 frames in total. Im pretty sure its not an issue with the way Ive set it up, cause ive cancelled the walkthrough render and had a look at what it rendered up to and that was fine.. Seems technical..Any ideas? Thanks

This user is offline

hisdirt

active

Joined: Sun, Nov 6, 2005
123 Posts

Hi there Onething,

Have you tried exporting the walkthrough as a shaded view movie? This would test wether the probelm was with rendering or with the actual setup.

It could also be the compression type you are using for the walkthrough, have you tried it uncompressed?

Hope this helps! 

This user is offline

View Website

OneThing

active

Joined: Fri, Jan 9, 2009
26 Posts
No Rating

Cheers for that.

I've been compressing the walkthrough so I'll try it uncompressed.

This user is offline

OneThing

active

Joined: Fri, Jan 9, 2009
26 Posts
No Rating

Cheers for that.

I've been compressing the walkthrough so I'll try it uncompressed.

This user is offline

OneThing

active

Joined: Fri, Jan 9, 2009
26 Posts
No Rating

Cheers for that.

I've been compressing the walkthrough so I'll try it uncompressed.

This user is offline

hisdirt

active

Joined: Sun, Nov 6, 2005
123 Posts

Hey again Onething, I see that you hail from windy Wellington!

Who do you work for down there?

This user is offline

View Website

OneThing

active

Joined: Fri, Jan 9, 2009
26 Posts
No Rating

This user is offline

hisdirt

active

Joined: Sun, Nov 6, 2005
123 Posts

Hey thats cool, did you find that Vic was really supportive or Revit as a CAD option? Unitec and Auckland Uni up here push it pretty hard.

Im halfway through my Architecture studies too, but Im also a self employed draftie / Revit consultant [read: geek], and Im finding plenty of quality work around - so studies are on hold! Im currently with a small drafting outfit in Newmarket called Assemble and really enjoying it.

When do you start back? Have you been enjoying the experience of working in an architectural office? You guys have some pretty interesting buildings down there, Aucks could learn a thing or two from your urban planners!

This user is offline

View Website

OneThing

active

Joined: Fri, Jan 9, 2009
26 Posts
No Rating

Umm I dont find that Vic has pushed Revit a heck of a lot, its definately the perferred choice though. We've had a couple of tutorials on it but its been really up to us to teach ourselves it.

I'll be starting uni back on 1st March, this week being my last week of work. Been a great experience to finally see how things get done in an office. Its been my first time working in an office relative to architecture so its been a nice awakening to the real world.

As far as I know I was super fortunate to get this job, a lot of my mates are stuggling and hardly any people in my year at uni managed to find any study related job. Good to see your finding plenty!

This user is offline

trombe

active

Joined: Sun, Nov 26, 2006
7 Posts

OneThing.

You might find that it is worth considering exporting the walkthroughs, as a set of sequential rendered frames / images, rather than perists with attempts at rendering an animation.

The export dialogue has this provision.

If you muck around with the animations, and it turns to custard you have lost a lot of time and all the rendering up to the point where it crashed or froze / hung.

When you export as a set of frame ranged images, if Revit hangs or crashes,  you only lose the unrendered frames + the one rendering at the time of the problem. You can then go back and set the frame range again to only render the ones you missed out on.

Searching the web will turn up Freware and other programs that take the sequential images, and stitch them into  an (.avi) or (.swf) etc. This method is well recognised in cg practice apparently. I now use it myself in Revit and in  Luxology Modo 401.  I found "Virtual Dub"  which is free, to be no trouble at all to do the business.

I have to say that I am done with Revit and walkthroughs though  ( my clients always are curious as to why things like the door does not open or you have to go through a wall or window !!!!)  and bought Modo 401 just prior to Xmas to replace Revit walkthroughs with normalised animation capabilities using Revit dxf geometry direct into Modo + plan on moving rendering over to Modo after I learn how to use the rendering engine well enough to warrant it.  Its awesome and there are no worries about restrictions on cores as Modo allows you up to 800 cores on one license so if you need to , you can hire computing power downtown and it does not matter if it is a mix of pc and Mac machines...its all the same to Modo.

 Stapeltons eh ? please give my regards to Neil K. and remind him we have not had a chat  about registration since Rob V's 50th.

best

trombe

Wellington

This user is offline

hisdirt

active

Joined: Sun, Nov 6, 2005
123 Posts

That is some good advice Trombe, Revit is considered a slow renderer.

Some middleground might be found in some advice posted on here by Mr Spot, who recommends exporting the walkthrough in parts (frames 1-100, 101-200, 201-300 or something) and stitching them in another programs.

Trombe, I would be very interested in hearing how well Modo 401 handles Revit models. A simple google search turns up some very impressive images, including volumetric lighting (suns rays) features, which is a beautiful fetaure. May ask the cost of the licence?

Onething, my thoughts are that work experience is what its all about, so congrats on getting the job over the summer! A little learning, then alot of experience. Then repeat. Are you having any luck with the walkthrough? 

This user is offline

View Website

OneThing

active

Joined: Fri, Jan 9, 2009
26 Posts
No Rating

Tombe - Niel says hi back and hope everythings going well. Thanks for all that info, might have to look into acquiring  Modo. Just had a look at the webiste and looks amazing. I also use 3ds max when I need to but I generally render in Revit and use photoshop when I can get away with it.

Hisdirt - yep the walkthrough seems to be working fine. I left one to render overnight and it worked out fine. But ofcourse the file is a way bigger but thats no major in this case. I've got 2 walkthroughs, one panning around the exterior, and another from above with a section box looking into the interior. I will then merge them togeather in adobe premiere. Cheers.

This user is offline

trombe

active

Joined: Sun, Nov 26, 2006
7 Posts

 yo  hisdirt:

 Look I am not going to slag another program over this gig. For me, I could not affford the $6,500 +GST  (12.5%) NZ + annual subs for Max + the baggage that seems to go with AD products these days.  I did a bit of homework over 2 years just watching and reading and closely following the progress of Revit as I have owned it since 2002.

I made up a table comparing a range of products and after doing all that stuff, galleries, articles, blogs, forums etc for a few years,  I decided that Modo was my best bet. Cinema 4D was a second place getter. Note that my interest was for a combined rendering 1st priority , then aniimation 2nd priority in one package to reduce a range of  potential issues.

Modo cost me $ 1,350 NZ - ($995 US), while Cinema 4D was going to be $ 4, 300 NZ odd.

Comparing apples with apples is not so easy. Max is a world benchmrak and rightly so and C4D is pretty close from what I can tell from reading, forums, blogs, articles, reviews, You Tube etc. However, Modo is like Revit 5. It is a 5 year old in development and I like the way Luxology treat people. They are also on a catch up mode I think you will find and I expect the next Modo to be just as amazing in terms of what they have put into the product as 401 seems to have been over 302 - especially for camera rigging and the like.

The key has always been to be able to get Revit native geometry somehow into another program cleanly so as to not lose or muck up the 3D geometry properties and so on. Only an AutoDesk product is liklely to attempt,  to retain materials properties for rendering or other analysis so I was under no illusion about that stuff.

Using DXF and FBX you are able to export Revit 3D model out and import it directly into Modo.

Once in modo, you have layers based system and it operates a lot like Photoshop using masks / layer masks etc for rendering layers - specular, noise, diffuse, alpha etc. You just select a layer - say Roof, in Items mode, then enter Polygon mode and select the bits you want to apply a material to for rendering and the rest is render set up really.

For animation the same process applies. Once the geometry is selected ypou are abvle to copy it to its own layer - say Entry Door and cut and paste the geometry into that layer. Now, you can do anything with it you like. I have a couple of evaluaiton and testing animaitons I have done trying to get the front door to open and an adjacent window a few seconds later etc and its super easy. I now have doen one using native Modo geometry that parents a child bi-fold door to the parent leaf  and has a detachable mullion that follows both as the pair opens smoothly to full open, thena at about 80%, a glass sliding door slides back to open up a TV Room to the larger living space...the doors, well wall actually  are 2.70 m  (9') high. the client immediaterly bought into this.

I know that Max / Maya/SoftImage XSi / C4D/Rhino and so on can do this easily, however Revit cannot do it at all.

I doubt they will ever make it so and we understand the progress of the rendering tools and so on for Revit platform development so it is a reasonable expectation that what is there now is not likely to improve radically to the point where Revit can animate in this way or render.  They hafve clearly decided mr is to be a fast set up system for lower quuality renders and for a different purpose than for top end presentation unless you are like me a sole parctitioner graduate (right now at least until I can get registered !!).

If you want better tools for this purpose, you must buy them and they have ....encouraged....people to buiy into Max. , but man, its costs too much and there are still truckloads of problems with it (forums)  and Revit (Revit forums) so in the end they made it to hard to buy into Max and very easy to buy Modo.

 Modo has a full commercial rendering engine-  stereoscopic rendering (3D) , motion blur, caustics, time lapse rendering, volumetrics, fog, specular, lens distortion, lens size, lens type, focal length, stop motion, DOF  and so on such that I think there are over 70 things to muck around with if you want and yet it is an easy thing to deal with and if you are comfortable with Photoshop from what I can tell, you would slip into Modo very easily and quickly.

 Amd as far as camera's go....I think you would not be disappointed. There is camera rigging so you can have pitch, yaw, sway, roll in motion for animation work. They have awesome back up, loads of free video tutorials, a great and positive forum - very little of the griping and mainly positive and constructive by cg focussed people.

Its a breath of fresh air really and for me to be able to avoid huge costs yet get superb tools like this and have a big suite of built in other tools is all a bonus (Modo is a modelling, sculpting, painting, animation and rendering package.

The only rider is that this is no SketchUp as one Architect put it to me. It is a pretty clever package but not takes a bit to learn  if you are intendijng to do it all. I am only interested in the rendering and animation capabilities and emphasis is on rendering 1s without having 3 or 4 other rendering packages such as say Kerkythea +Indigo + SU and getting into their plug-ins like VRay, Fryrender, Maxwell, Podium,Yaffaray etc.

You do not need an additional renderer,m however, Maxwell and Fryrender both plkug in to Modo as of version 401.

I use trhe 64 bit version of Modo (Modo works on Mac or pc for those who need to). I have a feeling Modo will  be utilising CUDA as best it can, to enhance renderring speeds but that is only rumour following some discussions last year with NVidia so called.

If you need to know more, I suggest thoroughly checking out the Luxology Modo web site :

http://www.luxology.com/modo/product_information/

I have no vested interest in Luxology. I just got brassed off with the limitations that are presented in Revit with no expectation of them ever being addressed. I also wanted a flexible program to do all those htings Revit does not.

If you want to see some Revoit geometry in testing animation, you can e-mail me offline

regards

trombe

This user is offline

trombe

active

Joined: Sun, Nov 26, 2006
7 Posts

sorry forgot....

 Yes Mr Spot is a legend anyway from years back. He is fantastic with Revit  (and a few other things !!) and has been a really big help to lots of people over a long time, so big ups to him.

Thanks Onething for hi to NK.

Last thing on Modo was that arch viz animation work in Modo does not trouble the toolset//I mean, it can model, sculpt, paint, animate and render like,  a bee into flight, landing and flight with all of the animalistic  / physical characteristics of the bee/ whatever like articulated joints, hair, fur etc. walking, flying and wing motion etc. Arch viz is kinda not an issue so whether it is a complex multi element video involving lights dimming, doors/ windows opening, water coming out of faucets, curved roofs opening up to the sky or something coming apart,  or just a skylight opening, you can have such things  easily and if you want to, you can duplicate the camera path and edit either one to assist with various tricks of the cinematographer (thinks like camera shake or pitching). Its behind C4D/Max/Maya/Softimage XSi by all accounts however, it is moving well towards them and at a fraction of the cost yet still going for quality. 

cheers

trombe

This user is offline

OneThing

active

Joined: Fri, Jan 9, 2009
26 Posts
No Rating

This user is offline

Walkthrough

1

Distributed Rendering

5

Walkthrough Export is very slow

3

Rendering a Walkthrough

1

Walkthrough Rendering

0