Vray for Revit

[Vizioen]

Please tell me this is a late april fools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxGE...ature=youtu.be

[chris-x//]

Considering it's on the Chaosgroup Tv channel, i think it's real... My wife is gonna start taking my job over...

[Vizioen]

Yeah, I kinda just hoped it was a joke even though I thought it wasn't. Now the company I work for most of the time will force me to start drawing in Revit. Worst software for modelling ever. I know it's not directly meant for modelling but more for BIM, but try and explain that to them.

[alexyork]

This is the equivalent of giving amateur photographers a high-end shiny new DSLR. They're going to take better quality pictures but if they want high-end work with real artistry and that actually solves their client's problems they are still going to have to go to a professional photographer. I'm sure you get what I mean with my analogy.

SketchUp has had numerous engines for years and Revit has had Maxwell, I think, and others. It's a no-brainer for Chaos to expand into that market. Huge, huge market there. BIM is really taking off. A lot of my clients are fully invested in BIM and Revit modeling, even for stuff that really doesn't need a BIM workflow. And I love those models. They're clean and detailed and accurate. In a way this could be good for us. If the architect can actually get a good, solid model together and even start getting a good lighting and material set up going before they even engage us, this could make the design development process much, much quicker or even virtually non-existent.

Yes, I do think there will probably continue to be a drop-off in work for visualisers as architects and designers are given access to better and better tools, but it's up to us as visualisers to keep the gap as wide as possible in quality and artistry, and also to look to other avenues to deliver content to clients that perhaps they didn't know they wanted. It's the same challenge that everyone has faced for decades.

[vlado]

Alex is right, I don't think architects will miraculously start producing incredible renders but it could help them make better decisions and make more iterations. After all, a number of render engines have been available for Revit already. There's a parallel with V-Ray for Nuke where some have expressed fears that it will take away the job of lighters because compositors will be able to render - and I don't really see that happening either.

Best regards,
Vlado

[glorybound]

I worked in architecture for 25 years and have always done the illustrations. I can honestly say that nobody showed any interest in illustrating. People tend to just do what they are paid to do and they have very little interest in learning anything new. Revit has always had a render button, but in my experience, nobody presses it. If they do, they don't work hard to make something nice. If you are going to get good at something you'll have to spend a lot of time working your craft and for the most part, people are lazy.

If anything, it'll bring the laggards into the mix and they'll produce poorly done renderings and seek someone good to up there game.

[Vizioen]

@Vlado Ofcourse, I'm not saying most of us will be out of a job soon. But the architectural company I work for has a thing for Revit and if they will discover that my favourite renderer will be implemented in their favourite cadsoftware they will surely try and push me towards Revit. It's great to hear that Vray is expanding and enlarging its userbase ofcourse and I couldn't be more excited about it.

@ Alex, in all honesty I really loath what is coming out of Revit (or at least what the cad monkeys at my firm produce) the meshes are just really messed up (not a clean topology, normals reversed here and there,etc...) Let's just hope the scatter plugins leave Revit on the side.

@ Bobby; I receive quite an amount of requests to make a photorealistic render in Revit from where I work and I'm an all 3D kind of guy, I like to photoshop the colors here and there but that's about it, I don't like to fiddle with putting stuff in my renders. So that render button is used quite a lot here and indeed they don't work hard to make it nice.

[cheerioboy]

If anything, it'll bring the laggards into the mix and they'll produce poorly done renderings and seek someone good to up there game.

This. What could be a pain is if studios try to start the process in Revit with Vray and then try to hand it off to a max/vray artist thinking they've done half the work already for us... but instead,like Sketchup, you'll have to almost re-model everything to get things clean and detail them further correctly.

[glorybound]

I get a lot of SU models and not one, as of yet, has asked for a discount for providing the model. I am getting ready to start my third job with an architect who uses SU and I am so no looking forward to it. I think, if anything, the middle weight illustrator might go exstinct. I figured this out several years ago and did my best to up my game to get ahead of that middle weight pack. Like a marathon, you have a few in the back, a few in the front, and the mass is in the middle. That middle of the pack can be done by almost anyone now.

[Vizioen]

Haha I knew SketchUp would be brought up. I don't agree on that, because of this simple fact that SketchUp is a very capable piece of modelling-software in the right hands (as with most software). As an example Peter Guthrie uses it. And I use it as well for about 70-95% of the modelling work. As an example of how a model should be in SketchUp I encourage you to download this model: http://goo.gl/amVafL and import it in 3DsMax. It's something I modelled quite fast a few months ago. The only thing I need to do afterwards is attach objects by their materials and merge vertices and I'm good to go.

I agree on the whole marathon analogy though .

[glorybound]

In what I have experienced, SU models can go wrong fast, like any other model. The biggest thing I fought against, when trying to implement BIM at a local builder, was the purpose built model. Most people use Revit, or SU, for one purpose. The design team uses it to design and then it is tossed over the wall to CAD. The CAD team starts over for the CD's, which is then tossed over to estimates, which flattens it out and pulls out their scale. When the design doesn't fit the budget the cycle repeats a few times. Once done, a set of PFD's are printed out an sent to the field to be built. It is a rather silly process. Having said that, the model they used in the video was probably built to render and nothing else.

[alexyork]

It's funny. My experience with Revit and SketchUp is entirely opposite to you guys. I've found that most Revit models being sent to me are really good. Solid models, clean, accurate and detailed, with no weird hidden faces or dodgy multi-subs. Whereas the vast majority of SKPs coming to me are truly atrocious and almost unusable, or usable with many hours of cleanup work required.

I think that because Revit is geared up fully for BIM there is generally a drive toward a much more disciplined modeling workflow. The opposite is the case with SketchUp, where it's clearly been designed to allow people to slap together a decent model very quickly that looks fine in SketchUp, but when exported is a terrible mess.

That said, I have also received very nice, clean models in SKP from clients too. It's obviously down to the person using it rather than the software, but if all architects had to suddenly choose only one package to use for the rest of their lives I would campaign hard for that to be Revit rather than SketchUp!

[Vizioen]

It's funny. My experience with Revit and SketchUp is entirely opposite to you guys. I've found that most Revit models being sent to me are really good. Solid models, clean, accurate and detailed, with no weird hidden faces or dodgy multi-subs. Whereas the vast majority of SKPs coming to me are truly atrocious and almost unusable, or usable with many hours of cleanup work required.

I think that because Revit is geared up fully for BIM there is generally a drive toward a much more disciplined modeling workflow. The opposite is the case with SketchUp, where it's clearly been designed to allow people to slap together a decent model very quickly that looks fine in SketchUp, but when exported is a terrible mess.

That said, I have also received very nice, clean models in SKP from clients too. It's obviously down to the person using it rather than the software, but if all architects had to suddenly choose only one package to use for the rest of their lives I would campaign hard for that to be Revit rather than SketchUp!

The thing with Revit it (in my case everytime) is you receive a lot of geometry you don't need, and it's not a question of just turning off a layer and that leaves me with more than 300 000 objects sometimes and that just brings Max to a halt. Attaching all of them in one object isn't really handy and selecting them by material is just also a very tedious process because sometimes you just have a lot of different multisub materials with the same materials. Last time it took me 1,5 day to make the model work in Max. Cilinders are just a disaster as they get sort of 'trianglized'. And a lot of other stuff. Ofcourse it could be that our CADmonkeys just don't know how to make a decent Revit model . The projects we work on are most of the time very huge, hospitals with more than 700 beds, etc..

[cheerioboy]

I think what this all boils down to is that Chaosgroup is awesome in having Vray easy to use across all platforms. The problem is that the rest of the 3d programs don't act the same!

[alexyork]

The thing with Revit it (in my case everytime) is you receive a lot of geometry you don't need, and it's not a question of just turning off a layer and that leaves me with more than 300 000 objects sometimes and that just brings Max to a halt. Attaching all of them in one object isn't really handy and selecting them by material is just also a very tedious process because sometimes you just have a lot of different multisub materials with the same materials. Last time it took me 1,5 day to make the model work in Max. Cilinders are just a disaster as they get sort of 'trianglized'. And a lot of other stuff. Ofcourse it could be that our CADmonkeys just don't know how to make a decent Revit model . The projects we work on are most of the time very huge, hospitals with more than 700 beds, etc..

There is a handy script around that will explode objects into their subobjects, by multisub. So what you could do first is merge by instance, so you have one big object with the multisub applied, then run the other script to blow it apart by subobject ID. That script also then reapplies the *root* material for each object, not the multisub, so you end up with a very clean collection of objects, all named properly and with the proper material applied. I'll see if I can dig it out but it's basically called something like "merge by multi sub" or similar.

I am wondering if there is a way, during export from Revit > FBX, to retain layering. This would obviously negate the need to do the above, or at least simplify it.

One of my main clients works at a large practice and is very experienced in Revit, hence the super clean models, so I'm going to pick his brains and see what can be done.