Make fog fromout Archicad? Tweet

[rappet]

Hi,
One of these days I will go for it and try to make a nice scene experimenting with fog!
I've read in other posts about it and it looks like you have to make a box and have the camera outside
Or use a sphere with a smaller sphere subtracted inside for putting the camera, while the camera may not be inside the material that wil be 'fogged' by materializing....
Now, here is the thing.... If I understand correctly the object normals have to point inside,
while normally adjusted material in Archicad the normals are pointed outside

Does anyone now how to manage to make a scene in Archicad ready to make the fog-scene in OR?

Greetings,Jeroen

[face_off]

Now, here is the thing.... If I understand correctly the object normals have to point inside,
while normally adjusted material in Archicad the normals are pointed outside

I wasn't aware if that. I'm half way through fixing the "special characters in texturemap filenames issues", so can't check at the moment, but in summary, this worked on the Poser plugin...

1) Box around the scene (not sure the easiest way to do that in ArchiCAD - any suggestions?)
2) Camera outside box (auto-focus will want to focus on the box, so manual focus or use very small aperture)
3) Set the box to diffuse material with transmission being the fog color (off-white), and "scattering" on, and adjust scatter, absorption and scale to suit.

Paul

[necko77]

Yeah yeah... that's why archicad is not right tool. It simply don't have all commands that you need for rendering.Archicad is a half finished product even its been developed for years...I remember archicad 6...thats when i start using it and archicad is still missing stuff even users asked for them years years before... alwys some work arounds...

So you want to flip normals in Archicad....hmmmm there is not command for that BUT

First thing first....lets make archicad shows normals....

You have to activate special menu in archicad and select from there "show normals"
After that archicad don't offer you simple solution...

next step - use your brain and google

Create sphere in Blender (ofc) adjust normals (invert them) (i recommend sketchup too)
Export as 3ds or skp
Import in archicad
Use it !

Thats why's best roadway for best results is Archicad - Blender,sketchup - Octane Render

Archicad will never be able to do stuff like Blender...its a BIM limitation

Now, when you break the rules you will be able to do archicad fog !

I hope this helps

[face_off]

I found 5 mins to try fog in ArchiCAD, and it was very easy.

1) Add object -> Basic Shape -> cube
2) Size cube to enclose the scene, but not the camera
3) Assign a material to the cube which is not used elsewhere in the scene
4) Setup the cube material as shown below

There is a scene scaling issue which is diminishing the effect and showing the edges of the cube, because I think the rayepsilon cannot go high enough. I will add a scene scale factor to the next release (tomorrow?) to get around this.

To get the really cool rays will require better sizing of the cube, tweaking the materials, and scaling the scene. But should all be doable.

Paul

[face_off]

Whilst the above method gets fog - I'm not sure how to get sun rays. Tried importing a sphere with reversed normals and that made no difference. Have tried scaling the scene, using diff kernels, brighter sun, etc, and that didn't help. So not sure what I am doing wrong. Can't get sun rays in the Poser plugin either - so there is a problem with my workflow somewhere.

Paul

[face_off]

I found my workflow issue. The correct procedure is:

1) Load scene into ArchiCAD
2) Set camera viewcone to about 20 or 30 (to give yourself some space for the volumetric cube)
3) Set OctaneRender for ArchiCAD plugin. Open Viewport, start rendering, click A/F and select a focus point (this will turn OFF autofocus)
4) Go to Axo view, zoom out, add Object -> Basic Shapes -> Cube
5) Enlarge cube to cover your entire scene, except the camera. Camera must NOT be be inside the cube
6) Change the material of the cube to something not used elsewhere in the scene
7) Can back to General Perspective (cube should be blocking the view)
8) In the plugin, Rendering Tab -> Refresh
9) In ArchiCAD, unselect and reselect the cube (the new material should now be in the plugin Materials tab)
10) Change cube material to specular, reflection 0, index 1, smooth disabled, roughness 0, fake_shadows enabled, medium scattering (scattering 1, absorption 0, phase 0.5, scale 0.01).
11) Change kernel to directlighting
12) Rotate camera and move sun until you get the effect!

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you set the scene scale (Configuration) to 1, the a scattering scale of about 0.01 is used). But it is easier to scale the scene down (0.1), then you can more easily tune the scattering. Remember to adjust the rayepsilon if you scale the scene.

Increase the scattering scale to get more effort. A setting of 1 will be like a snowstorm!

Also, IMO a cube seems to work better than a sphere as the volumetric geometry.
And, no need to reverse the normals of the volumetric cube.
And, only works well the Directlighting kernel.

The effort works better inside (where there are darker shadows) than out.

No need to use blender or any other external app - all done within ArchiCAD!

Paul

[face_off]

Note: If you are doing an interior scene, with sun coming thru the window - just have the cube placed from the window to the camera. Do not place the cube outside the window (that just dilutes the effect).

Paul

[face_off]

And another sample. Again, directlighting, although path tracing and PMC work - but they spread the rays out a bit more and the scale requires more precision when setting.

[face_off]

Jeroen, I think you need to do your ferris wheel render with the sun behind it and these fog effects

[rappet]

Jeroen, I think you need to do your ferris wheel render with the sun behind it and these fog effects

Hi Paul,
I will, I will...
Great stuff you did with the last one.. Works perfectly!
Thank you for explaining how. Appreciate that
I hope I'll have time soon to experiment after finishing some work this week.
Cheers, Jeroen