Evaluating LightUp / IDX / Podium
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Sorry I missed this earlier. A few clarifications on IDX Renditioner...
Imported images render fine without being exploded, as long as you don't have alpha channel transparency (our big missing link at the moment).
Materials applied to groups or components, included nested groups/components render accurately without exploding. Therefore it supports dynamic components. That's one of our big workflow plusses.
Another + is supporting all material changes made in the SketchUp material browser.
And the good news: all three apps are making it easy for architects to start rendering without having to learn much of anything!
Thanks,
William -
@wmanning said:
And the good news: all three apps are making it easy for architects to start rendering without having to learn much of anything!
That's definitely a great plus of all these apps. Although I wouldn't count myself to be a total beginner and idiot at rendering (have tried a couple of them and getting to know all those little tricks with clipping, bumping, reflections, refractions and whatnot), often you don't want to make a meticulously elaborate render and a fast setup for (pre?)visualization is very important and useful.
(And yes, William, a support for alpha maps - as there's no separate "slot" for clipmaps - would be very cool,indeed!)
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OK Gaieus. Added a slot for clipmap. Have seen references to it, and examples, but am not sure how it is used, or if LightUp uses it.
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I meant IDX Renditioner.
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I have never seen reference to clip map in the IDX documentation, please correct me if I am wrong. What is a clip map?
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Clipmap is same as alpha. Used for cliping. Podium can use clipmaps but easier way is just to use transparent .png. Also SU supports transparent .png.
Honolulu can you explain what is SU View as final render scene. Not sure what does it mean. -
Thanks, for the info, guess since I have never used one, I really wouldn't understand it.
SU view as final render scene is when you render the SU scene in a window, and "what you see is what you get". That is the rendered image is the composition in in the SU window, the same as when you export a 2d image from SU. For lazy guys like me, this saves time spent on cropping the final image.
My bias for a easy to use render, is for the purposes of presentation. I realize that the primary function of the software is to produce a quality ray-trace, but for me, that is only the first step in the process. The more that I can do with the render software; using background images, foreground images, contrast controls, and perhaps even sprites, the better. But I don't mean complicated stuff, that is best executed in post processing. Typically the client is coming tomorrow morning, we finally got the redesign right and need a sketch (not final) presentation.
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@honoluludesktop said:
I have never seen reference to clip map in the IDX documentation, please correct me if I am wrong. What is a clip map?
This is why I answered to William's comment...
@wmanning said:
...Imported images render fine without being exploded, as long as you don't have alpha channel transparency (our big missing link at the moment)...
William
...that this alpha support would be cool. Since in IDX there are no "additional slots" for different maps (the real time bump map preview created from the diffuse image is great for instance - in some other apps you also need to add the bump separately)
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Got it, thanks. Go here for evaluation table.
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Yup, I've seen that. Cool table - very useful.
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Honolulu Podium can render exact what you see in SU. It is called vieport resolution. You can also choose 2x viewport resolution. Makes very easy overlaying line drawing from SU. So yes Podium supports it.
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OK thanks; Guess viewport resolution was not available with the trial version. At least I did not see it. Will change the table on Monday when I am in my Office.
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@honoluludesktop said:
Guess viewport resolution was not available with the trial version...
That can easily happen as there's a max. resolution (500x500) that you can render with the eval version (I guess kost users' screen resolution is higher than that nowadays).
What I know besides this is that both Kerkythea and IDX Renditioner can render SU viewport so there's a good choice you can try out.
Example (model: SU 6 Pro - render: IDX Renditioner with the same viewport)
[flash=640,400:woic4v02]http://www.youtube.com/v/thuEv7K2FGU&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0[/flash:woic4v02]
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Sepo, I revised table at top of page. Deleted item from table because all support this feature.
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