Revit workflow

[Nicinus]

I'm having an increasing need to enhance and visualize existing Revit scenes in Max. Most of these scenes have been filled with materials from 'Autodesk Materials' and test rendered with cameras and lights in Mental Ray.

Is there a way to convert these materials, cameras, lights, etc to Vray without to much manual labor? What is the recommended workflow here?

And a related and obvious question to this. What about making a Vray Material library available for Revit? Would that require a Vray port for Revit? Is that in the pipeline? Surely Revit must be a very important market going forward? I can see no other reason to use Mental Ray in my case other than being compatible with Revit (well, perhaps other than those nifty 'rounded corners' and ambient occlusion toggles in their materials. Why can't we have that?)

[pnel77]

That's the workflow I use and yes it's a bit of a mission converting each and every material to vray - get used to it though.
If Autodesk will allow 3rd party render engines to be available in their software..hmm..mmmm

[glorybound]

I watched a webinar, yesterday morning, on Autodesk's Cloud Renderer. It's pretty limited. You can only use Autodesk's default materials, and you can't customize anything. The presenter mentioned that the cloud renderer uses something much better than Mental Ray, but he can't talk about it. The WOW renderings, he was showing, were pretty poor in quality. Most were SE ISO's of the building, without any other effort, other than pulling a camera.

[Nicinus]

If Autodesk will allow 3rd party render engines to be available in their software..hmm..mmmm

You mean like Vray for 3ds Max? Do you have a script for the conversion?

[Nicinus]

Ok, so after reading up on this on the forums I'm now presumably more educated on the topic. Am I understanding the following correctly?

1) There can't be a Vray for Revit as Autodesk won't allow 3rd party renderers for Revit.

2) In effect the same applies to having a Vray material library in Revit.

3) The 'rounded corners' function in Revit/mentalray materials is protected by a patent.

O'boy. Tough spot.

[glorybound]

I'll post a Revit to MAX file later today. The file will be an Autodesk sample project, exported as an FBX, and opened in 3DS MAX with Revit. My understanding is V-Ray will read the materials fine.

[glorybound]

here you go:
http://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/60hfea

[pailhead]

I had max scenes crash after importing revit models. After cleaning them up quite a bit and remodeling some parts, i got it to work.

[etown]

I have clients starting to request revit files. What I understand so far is revit models are NURBS. So anything to do with revit is NURBS based? Is there anyway to convert from poly to NURBS in Max?

[Nicinus]

Thanks, Bobby, I've had a look at the file and besides from bogging down my system I actually had numerous material problems with it. Vray RT did not work with this file either, the model turned pitch black. Have you loaded it yourself?

etown, Revit models are not nurbs based. The massing tools may use nurbs but it is then converted.

[glorybound]

did you convert the materials?

[Nicinus]

I did not, how would I do that? You mean manually?

[glorybound]

right mouse click and V-Ray Scene Converter.

[pnel77]

Hi there..

Big Fbx problem: When I save the max file and reopen it the following error message appears: Missing Dlls - FileName: fbxfilelink.dfl Class: FbxMaxWrapper SuperClass: 0x100
Workaround is to first open the slate material editor and then open the file = no error BUT I can’t use backburner because of this error - Extremely frustrating