suggestions for Lavina for archviz

[s.riegas]

After working for a bit with project lavina and 3090 gpu, I can say that i am enthusiastic with this software.

Here follow some suggestions that in my opinion will improve significantly the workflow of architectural visualization.

1. support for space mouse, so that you can fly through a space and record this movement. When performed nicely it can generate some holywood camera like effect. I have been using this technique to record camera movement in 3d space in ue4 and the results are brilliant, plus it gives a feeling of physicality as it would be if directing a real film. this feeling of 1,2,3 shot and then you need to perform with your brain a nice recording that might as well follow a character inside your scene.
2.in the render sequence make it possible to decide what frame range you want to render. this is another thing i found great in ue4. so the workflow will be that in the animation editor you create your camera sequences and then one day you render for instance 10 seconds and then the next day you want to render the next 10 seconds, or send the rendering of these next 10 seconds to another pc. Right now is not possilbe.
3.make the animation editor more intuitive to pan, scale move around frames.
4.if possilbe bring back the possilbility to duplicate objects.
5.make it possilbe to move scale rotate objects around the scene and be able to save that state of the scene, so that when you open project lavina again you find objects in the new position.
6.when on live link with 3ds max make quick save snapshot possible
7.when on live link give a possibility to render sequence with animations that take place in 3ds max
8.when on live link make it possible to lock a camera that lavina will be rendering while i am in 3ds max perspective mode and modify my scene , so that in project lavina i only see the changes taking effect on a still camera. this is very intuitive when i consider making a short film with a character inside an architectural scene, meaning in lavina you have your camera still and you pose a character in the 3ds max viewport that needs a lot of moving around the character, so that the camera is not moving in lavina but just the character changes poses.
9. when drag and drop a vray scene with animations and merge with current lavina scene, the merged scene's animation dont work, they dont appear in the animation editor.

Thnak you very much for your consideration and all the effors you have put to make this software a great tool

[vladimir.nedev]

8.when on live link make it possible to lock a camera that lavina will be rendering while i am in 3ds max perspective mode and modify my scene , so that in project lavina i only see the changes taking effect on a still camera. this is very intuitive when i consider making a short film with a character inside an architectural scene, meaning in lavina you have your camera still and you pose a character in the 3ds max viewport that needs a lot of moving around the character, so that the camera is not moving in lavina but just the character changes poses.

We can add an option to pause the camera updates in Lavina, or even a second option to pause all updates.
But what if you just lock the render camera in 3ds Max, wouldn't that work for you ?

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vladimir.nedev]

5.make it possilbe to move scale rotate objects around the scene and be able to save that state of the scene, so that when you open project lavina again you find objects in the new position.

This is possible, unless your scene is loaded from a live link.
If we allow it during the live link, you will have two sources of the transform information, so that's why it's disabled.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[s.balabanov]

Hello and thanks for the detailed suggestions!

Since Vladimir has commented for a few of the points, I'll try and address the rest.

1. support for space mouse, so that you can fly through a space and record this movement. When performed nicely it can generate some holywood camera like effect. I have been using this technique to record camera movement in 3d space in ue4 and the results are brilliant, plus it gives a feeling of physicality as it would be if directing a real film. this feeling of 1,2,3 shot and then you need to perform with your brain a nice recording that might as well follow a character inside your scene.

This is on the to do list, but we had some more core related features to deal with first. We will get to it once we have essential features working. May I suggest using the 3d mouse in 3ds Max and then using live link? Would that work in your case?

2.in the render sequence make it possible to decide what frame range you want to render. this is another thing i found great in ue4. so the workflow will be that in the animation editor you create your camera sequences and then one day you render for instance 10 seconds and then the next day you want to render the next 10 seconds, or send the rendering of these next 10 seconds to another pc. Right now is not possilbe.

Actually, there is a way to render only a range of frames even now. Once you finish working in the animation editor, close it, and use the start and end time markers (the red and green triangles at the bottom of the timeline)

We will improve these in the future. E.g. there is no precise indicator where the marker is - you have to place the play head there to see the timestamp. Let me know if the current state allows you to achieve what you're after.

3.make the animation editor more intuitive to pan, scale move around frames.

This is definitely something we will be working on. Do you have a particular behaviour in mind?

4.if possilbe bring back the possilbility to duplicate objects.

We removed it temporarily, since it caused some issues. We will certainly bring it back, soon.

5.make it possilbe to move scale rotate objects around the scene and be able to save that state of the scene, so that when you open project lavina again you find objects in the new position.

As Vladimir wrote, this should be working while not in Live link. Let us know if the problem was not during live link please.

6.when on live link with 3ds max make quick save snapshot possible

There are some things to solve first, but we will bring it back. Would it work if we save the snapshots not in the project folder, but e.g. in the documents user folder?

7.when on live link give a possibility to render sequence with animations that take place in 3ds max

We are working on a solution to this. The next release will have a couple of workflows to make that possible.

8.when on live link make it possible to lock a camera that lavina will be rendering while i am in 3ds max perspective mode and modify my scene , so that in project lavina i only see the changes taking effect on a still camera. this is very intuitive when i consider making a short film with a character inside an architectural scene, meaning in lavina you have your camera still and you pose a character in the 3ds max viewport that needs a lot of moving around the character, so that the camera is not moving in lavina but just the character changes poses.

What Vladimir suggested should provide the functionality you describe. Let us know if there is an issue with locking the camera from the render settings. Here's a video that illustrates the result.

9. when drag and drop a vray scene with animations and merge with current lavina scene, the merged scene's animation dont work, they dont appear in the animation editor.

This one is also planned, but it will take a bit more tim. Could you explain what the use case is? Do you merge animated "place-able" objects, e.g. cars, people, trees? An example would help us a lot in determining the way merging should work.

Best regards,
Simeon

[s.riegas]

Dear Simeon, Vladimir
Thank you very much for the intuitive feeedback. Very valuable.
With Vlad's suggestion i managed to lock the cam in max and when moved to another viewport such as perspective it works fine. lavina is rednering the camera and i manipulate my geometry in max and only updates when something changes in the scene. This is solved
Then rendering specific range of frames as well solved with your suggestion.
My suggestion is to check ue4 sequencer to inspire for functionality of animation timeline. It is the best by far. for instance it would be great to have different sequences you create by moving cameras, lights , animations .... then combine all these sequences by inserting sequence insdide sequence and this way you compose, you direct your film... and then at the end you composite all sequences in a parent sequence that will be the sequence that you finally render..
Regarding merging animated vray scenes, you guessed correctly that we want to be able to add moving object like trees, cars , people... and then be able to save this scene and keep all animations.
Regarding snapshot will be perfect if saved in documents folder. Right now I found a similar automatic way to snapshot with share X software.

[s.riegas]

Two more suggestions that will help workflow could be the following:
1. inside lavina be able to select which gpu to use for rendering sequence, in case you have 2 gpus installed in your pc, so that with one gpu you could render sequences and with the other keep navigating and setting your scene and preparing the next thing to animate. This could help as well the live link responsiveness, if one gpu you run 3ds max and the other lavina.
2. when working with live link in 3ds max and you make changes that appear in lavina, if you could save sceen from lavina that next time that you will open just lavina you will have the updated scene without need to have 3ds max open. I guess this is now possible if you export vray scene from max and save lavina configuration in lavina. then you open the new scene in lavina and you apply the configuration. If that could be done in fewer steps with a save scene in lavina.

[s.riegas]

One additional suggestion that I think is very important for archviz is the possibility to keyframe inside lavina the rotation of the environment HDRi or the rotation of sun or the intensity of lights.
This way beautiful animation could be generated with minimum workflow. Thanks a lot in advance for your consideration

[s.riegas]

Hi again
Another suggestion that you have already been working.
The script import lavina to max works great to import the camera paths that are created in lavina to 3ds max.
Currently the script does not support the recorded cameras. if you could easily solve this.
Thanks a lot

[s.riegas]

One additional very helpful improvement would be grouping lights when exporting vrayscene from max.
Groupping either instance ligths or by groups, pretty much like Corona lightmix. This way when you open lavina in lights section you have a few groups that you can play with intensity , color instead of hundreds of lights that is not very intuitive to work with
Thanks for your consideration

[Alexander.Atanasov]

Hi s.riegas

There is already an option for that in Edit > Preferences > UI menu. When you enable it lights that are similar in parameters and types will be grouped together. You can check the docs here: https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/LAV/Menus

Best regards,
Alexander