Thursday, March 27, 2008

Render quality in Revit Architecture 2009


Chrome balls!!! Yes that's right and you may be asking why.....???? I just wanted to show the render quality and reflections that can be achieved with the Mental Ray Renderer in Revit Architecture 2009.

8 comments :

Phil Light said...

There are a lot of render engines that can render nice chrome balls. Some free ones too.

What I have to wonder is why is Autodesk shoving render capabilities down the throat of an already bloated app? Revit is a production tool more than it is a pre/viz tool.

Autodesk already has Max and Maya. It drives me crazy when I see Autodesk continuing to attempt to build the "all in one" app. WHY? Look at Adobe. In a web dev environment, you've got photoshop, illustrator, flash, dreamweaver etc. working as a team with those apps works well because Adobe builds in workflow support between apps, and each app can remain specialized, and low weight. You can have different people specialized in each aspect of project development.

Adobe doesn't try to cram all of illustrator, photoshop, flash and dreamweaver's capabilities into one application do they?

My vote is to put Autodesk's resources into the later stages of building design workflow and leave the pre/viz stuff for stand alone apps like autocad (Sketchup is better :) and max. Work on Revit's detailing tools and make the program faster. Work on the database and workflow features to speed the program up. Don't start trying to jam every Autodesk developed tool into one application.

my $0.02

Unknown said...

I am sure there will be many that disagree with your thoughts, but you've got a very good point about the whole Adobe interoperability, it just works. Having used all those products myself, they work together very sweetly, but I suppose it may have something to do with there heritage. However, like you I want Revit to run quicker, faster and be better at detailing, especially as we now have access to quad-core processors, direct x graphics cards etc. etc. and yet Revit is only using a fraction of this power. I am sure Autodesk are mindful of this, so we will have to see how things develop over the coming years.The trouble is, we need it now!!! :)

me@the.net said...

hmm, shouldn't be the reflection of your table shown in balls smoother? I mean, presuming the tabel is curvy or round, so the balls are, the table reflection should be simple curve. not this bumpy thing as your image shows ...
might be just artifacts of web compression anyway
jussi

Phil Light said...

I think it's the segments of the spheres? Use higher segments.

Unknown said...

Guys,

It’s the artefacts caused by compression. The image on my screen shows the spheres totally smooth. The spheres are actually inplace families and when creating the family it’s an arc and a line in a half moon shape rotated 360 degrees around an axis. You don't create the sphere like you do in Max, therefore you don't have control over the segments, because this is not how the Revit modelling engine works or even displays the geometry, its true solid geometry in the purest sense. The spheres are actually placed on a floor slab which has a fine concrete material applied to it.I hope that clarifies tings.

graham cowe said...

What graphics card should be used with Revit mental ray? I'm using Geforce FX5200 how much upgrading should I do?

Graham

Unknown said...

Graham

As it stands, RAC 2009 will use the graphics card, but not in the same way as say products like 3dsmax, which will direct all the graphic functionality to the graphics card. To be honest your Geforce FX5200 should be fine with Revit 2009, its certainly not worth up grading from what I've heard. However, you may want to check that you have the latest drivers for the card.

Architectural Renderings said...

What took a lot of time 10 years ago is now easy in Revit, but you'll get 10 year old looking images. Just my opinion of coarse.

Bobby W Parker
www.whitebirchstudios.com