Introduction & Long time Revit user...

[jstampfl1]

... trying to make pretty pictures.

A bit about me: I've been working with Revit since its early days (pre Autodesk) and have struggled over the many years to produce "photoreal" renderings (not Revit's fault) - mainly because I never took the time to develop my skills in MAX or Sketchup or any other program that had a good handle on built-in or add-in render engines. In recent years I've spent a fare amount of time in Lumion and have produced some "fun" imagery/animations, but nothing ever earth shattering due to Lumion's inherent cartoony look.

When I stumbled upon Octane's website and saw that it's core was powered by Nvidia graphics cards I jumped on board because the machines I use, both at home and work, are setup with GTX770s due to Lumion's thirst for GPU power.

So after a short learning curve I began to produce the best images of my career... I didn't say best images ever... simply the best I've been able to produce to date.

Keep in mind, all of these projects below are test render projects. They have no client, no basis in reality and are something I came up with just so I could play with Octane. I've learned a lot as I've progressed with Octane and still have a long way to go, but here's a sample of what I've been up to since I first 'contracted' Octane on April 15th, 2014. Comments are welcome.

In order of creation...

"multi-box" based on some building I saw online


"my house conc" unique design


"my house pool" unique design


"my attic" unique design

[jstampfl1]

bumping this back up hoping for some comments?

[JessicaVines]

Nice job overall. Great effort. I like the twilight first image the best i think.

- Little inconsistent on the resolution of both models and textures. Overall too low.

- bit too much dof, and glint for me.

[jstampfl1]

Nice job overall. Great effort. I like the twilight first image the best i think.
- Little inconsistent on the resolution of both models and textures. Overall too low.
- bit too much dof, and glint for me.

Thanks JessicaVines - I appreciate the feedback. Yeah, my model library is made up of 99% free downloads. I'm very new to all of this so I take what I can get online

I enjoy the DOF since I have a photography background, but I understand it's not for everyone; it can be distracting. haha, too glinty huh? Gotta experiment with all the features!

Thanks again.

[Seekerfinder]

They're good!

Did you create them with the Revit plugin completely? How did you scatter the grass? A bit about your workflow?

I like Lumion but they just seem to increase the price constantly. Real annoying that is.

Cheers,
Seeker

[jstampfl1]

They're good!
Did you create them with the Revit plugin completely? How did you scatter the grass? A bit about your workflow?
I like Lumion but they just seem to increase the price constantly. Real annoying that is.
Cheers,
Seeker

Thanks, Seeker. No, these were created in the Standalone v1.2 student version. I've experimented with the Revit Plug-in, but I didn't find it as user friendly as the standalone. That may just be that I didn't invest enough time in the plug-in, but my workflow from Revit to the standalone was efficient enough for me.

I did all my scattering with Phantom Scatter. It took me a few tries to get something that looked decent, but Guus (the creator of Phantom Scatter) helped me through it. I used it to scatter the shag rug pieces as well.

I build in Revit, export using OBJ Exporter developed by Clive Broadhurt. I do all the materials in Octane. My biggest problem right now is placing all the misc. objects in Octane. It's very painful to locate furniture/fixtures/clutter, etc in Octane. I don't bother doing it in Revit because I would have to convert all the OBJ downloads to a format to bring into Revit, then re-export them with the Revit model. Right now that's my biggest slowdown in the workflow.

[Seekerfinder]

Hi stampie,

You might be missing a trick by not using the Revit plugin. It's not going to win the beauty contest but here are a few useful bits of info:

1. The plugin allows us to bring in OBJ's into Revit as proxies - i.e. use crappy Revit furniture or tree objects and link them to a better OBJ. Re-texture in Revit at will (without the benefits Octane's full material editor though);
2. The plugin allows us to use CSV file to scatter OBJ's in the scene. It is material based and while it's a bit laborious (you need to export the object geometry - like a site - from Revit and import to Guus' plugin to generate the scatter) it works;
3. The plugin allows us to export to OCS which creates a node structure and retains all proxies (OBJ's) you may have used. This is useful for detailed texturing and refinements if you want to work inside of Standalone. I find that I can do just about everything within the Revit environment though, which is brilliant.

Product support by face_off is stellar!

Best,
Seeker