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Architectural big ticket items - visualization
So far if you have managed to wade your way through this review of new Revit 2013 functionality, hopeful you found some useful improvements which will assist when using Revit. However, what about some real barn storming functionality? Ok, let’s start with visualization graphics. Whilst visualization graphics may be low hanging fruit to some BIM purists, to architects & designers a like, it is visualization functionality & the way you present your scheme that helps sell it. I know plenty of people who seemed to enjoy the class that Jason Grant & I gave at AU2011 on presentation graphics, so presentation graphics must be important to some people. In 2013 the Ghost Surfaces & Transparent Override options have been replaced with a single Surface Transparency slider. The Transparency slider allows you to control surfaces between 0 & 100%, so you can control individual elements with different levels of transparency.
Anti-Aliasing can be applied to all views, not just 3d views. If you use RPC content, these will preview correctly in Realistic Visual Style Views. The Graphic Display Option dialog has been further enhanced. You can now choose to between a new Sky background style, Images as background as well as the now famed Gradients backgrounds. You can choose a custom ground colour for the new Sky background, but the Sky colour itself is fixed, also it should be noted that the Sky background can is a little heavy for real-time use but ideal for presentation graphics. Finally we can also use Sky, images, and gradients in elevations, sections, isometrics & perspectives, so no more having to import bitmaps into these views to create sky backgrounds!
If you use Realistic Visual Styles in 3d isometric or perspectives views, you can now specify artificial lights & Photographic Exposure lighting schemes, exactly the same way you do in the mental ray renderer. Performance is slow, but for presentation graphics where you don’t want to render the image using mental ray, it’s a praiseworthy improvement.
A new progressive real-time ray trace render style has been introduced. You enable this new style from the view control bar. As soon as you enable it, the Revit caches the model; the view then starts to render immediately as a photorealistic style. You are able still able to pan & zoom around the Revit model, allowing you to create interactive walk through, but be aware that this renderer is using the processor & not the GPU of the graphics card, so the better your processor, the quicker the viewport will render. The rendering quality starts at low quality, but the longer you leave it the better the quality of the image. You are able to set the lighting, exposure & background from the graphic options dialogue. Once you have reach the quality image you require, you can stop the rendering by either clicking in the view or stopping render from the interactive Ray trace panel. You are able to save views that have been rendered, but be aware that these are only at screen resolution. I am confused why Autodesk thought we needed Ray trace viewport rendering when we have Mental Ray & cloud rendering. Seems rather over kill to me; I would have preferred the effort to have been focused on giving us sketchy graphic styles similar to that product that sounds like a well-known red source product.
So far if you have managed to wade your way through this review of new Revit 2013 functionality, hopeful you found some useful improvements which will assist when using Revit. However, what about some real barn storming functionality? Ok, let’s start with visualization graphics. Whilst visualization graphics may be low hanging fruit to some BIM purists, to architects & designers a like, it is visualization functionality & the way you present your scheme that helps sell it. I know plenty of people who seemed to enjoy the class that Jason Grant & I gave at AU2011 on presentation graphics, so presentation graphics must be important to some people. In 2013 the Ghost Surfaces & Transparent Override options have been replaced with a single Surface Transparency slider. The Transparency slider allows you to control surfaces between 0 & 100%, so you can control individual elements with different levels of transparency.
Anti-Aliasing can be applied to all views, not just 3d views. If you use RPC content, these will preview correctly in Realistic Visual Style Views. The Graphic Display Option dialog has been further enhanced. You can now choose to between a new Sky background style, Images as background as well as the now famed Gradients backgrounds. You can choose a custom ground colour for the new Sky background, but the Sky colour itself is fixed, also it should be noted that the Sky background can is a little heavy for real-time use but ideal for presentation graphics. Finally we can also use Sky, images, and gradients in elevations, sections, isometrics & perspectives, so no more having to import bitmaps into these views to create sky backgrounds!
If you use Realistic Visual Styles in 3d isometric or perspectives views, you can now specify artificial lights & Photographic Exposure lighting schemes, exactly the same way you do in the mental ray renderer. Performance is slow, but for presentation graphics where you don’t want to render the image using mental ray, it’s a praiseworthy improvement.
A new progressive real-time ray trace render style has been introduced. You enable this new style from the view control bar. As soon as you enable it, the Revit caches the model; the view then starts to render immediately as a photorealistic style. You are able still able to pan & zoom around the Revit model, allowing you to create interactive walk through, but be aware that this renderer is using the processor & not the GPU of the graphics card, so the better your processor, the quicker the viewport will render. The rendering quality starts at low quality, but the longer you leave it the better the quality of the image. You are able to set the lighting, exposure & background from the graphic options dialogue. Once you have reach the quality image you require, you can stop the rendering by either clicking in the view or stopping render from the interactive Ray trace panel. You are able to save views that have been rendered, but be aware that these are only at screen resolution. I am confused why Autodesk thought we needed Ray trace viewport rendering when we have Mental Ray & cloud rendering. Seems rather over kill to me; I would have preferred the effort to have been focused on giving us sketchy graphic styles similar to that product that sounds like a well-known red source product.
