IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hello and welcome!
| | 00:05 | My name is Paul Aubin, and I am
thrilled to be here teaching you the Revit
| | 00:08 | architectural rendering course at lynda.com.
| | 00:11 | When working in 3D software, the term
rendering typically refers to the process
| | 00:15 | of generating static
photorealistic images from a 3D model.
| | 00:19 | Typically the goal is to create
something that closely resembles what will
| | 00:22 | actually appear in a real
space or built environment.
| | 00:25 | In this course we will consider the
tools available in Revit architecture to
| | 00:29 | create rendered output.
| | 00:30 | We will look at a variety of rendering
and presentation tools in the software,
| | 00:33 | including modeling techniques,
lighting, and sun position.
| | 00:39 | We'll create camera views,
axonometric views, and walk-throughs.
| | 00:43 | We'll enhance our views with shadow display,
ambient shadows, materials, and much more.
| | 00:50 | So if you are ready to begin leveraging
the efforts you've already invested in
| | 00:53 | your Revit model to produce
high-quality rendered output directly from the
| | 00:57 | software, then this course was designed for you.
| | 00:59 | Let's get started.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you are a Premium member of the
lynda.com online training library, you have
| | 00:04 | access to the exercise files
used throughout this title.
| | 00:07 | The exercise files are in a folder
called Exercise Files that I've placed
| | 00:11 | here on my desktop.
| | 00:12 | You can place yours wherever you like.
| | 00:14 | Within that folder, there are folders
for each chapter of the course and some
| | 00:18 | additional folders with some general resources.
| | 00:21 | Each chapter folder contains the
files that I reference in the movies
| | 00:25 | throughout the course.
| | 00:26 | You can use these files, or you
can use your own files if you prefer.
| | 00:30 | If you are a Monthly or Annual
subscriber to lynda.com, you don't have access to
| | 00:34 | the exercise files, but you can
still follow along with your own work.
| | 00:37 | Let's get started.
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| What you need to know before taking this course| 00:00 | Well, let's do a little housekeeping first.
| | 00:02 | The first thing we want to talk about before
diving into Revit rendering is what you
| | 00:06 | should already know.
| | 00:08 | Before going into the topics of this
class, we are assuming that you know a
| | 00:11 | little bit about Revit.
| | 00:12 | What you should know already is a
little bit of the modeling basics. Definitely
| | 00:16 | be familiar with walls, doors, windows,
roofs, and other basic modeling objects.
| | 00:21 | You should have worked with these objects
before, put them together, worked in
| | 00:24 | various views to create
basic modeling components.
| | 00:27 | You don't have to be an expert on every
aspect of every object, but you should
| | 00:31 | be fairly comfortable
with them. Project Browser,
| | 00:34 | very important part of working with
Revit. And I am going to assume that you've
| | 00:38 | been in the Project Browser before,
that you are comfortable finding views and
| | 00:41 | creating certain kind of views, certainly plan
sections and elevations should be familiar to you.
| | 00:46 | In this class, we'll be
creating 3D views as well.
| | 00:49 | So moving around the Project Browser
and understanding how the views relate to
| | 00:53 | one another is an important prerequisite skill.
| | 00:55 | Probably the most important of all
is the Revit project structure.
| | 00:58 | You should understand that in most
cases Revit files are set up as either a
| | 01:03 | single file or a small handful of
files that contain multiple views.
| | 01:08 | What you do in your view affects others.
| | 01:10 | So if you move objects, delete objects,
change objects, it's not a disconnected,
| | 01:15 | separate drawing that you're working in.
| | 01:17 | You are working in a view in a larger
project structure, so be aware that if
| | 01:22 | you're working in a team with other
members, the changes you make are going to
| | 01:25 | affect those other members, and that's important.
| | 01:27 | So as we get into Revit rendering,
you may be tempted to make changes that
| | 01:31 | affect the rendering and make the
rendering look nicer, but it might actually
| | 01:35 | affect the work that other folks
are doing in other disciplines.
| | 01:38 | So just be aware of that.
| | 01:40 | So those are the prerequisites
that I'm assuming that you know.
| | 01:43 | Let's look at an overview
of the rendering process.
| | 01:45 | Now typically we are
going to start with the view.
| | 01:48 | Now, in Revit, you have to render
from a 3D view, so that can include either
| | 01:52 | an axonometric or a perspective view.
So we can either use an existing one
| | 01:56 | that's already in your project, or
we can create one specifically for the
| | 01:59 | purposes of rendering.
| | 02:01 | The next step is usually to refine your model.
| | 02:03 | The model obviously includes all the
geometry that we'll actually be rendering.
| | 02:07 | This is the walls, the doors, the
windows, the roofs, and any other components
| | 02:11 | that we might add. And typically one of
the most important aspects that we're
| | 02:15 | concerned with, with our model, with
respect to rendering, is the materials that
| | 02:19 | are applied to those objects.
| | 02:21 | So is it made out of brick, is it made
out of a tile, concrete, and so on? And
| | 02:25 | those characteristics will
be used in the rendering.
| | 02:28 | Next, we consider lighting.
| | 02:29 | We have both artificial and
natural lighting in Revit.
| | 02:32 | Artificial lights are just component
families that we add to our models that
| | 02:36 | have lighting characteristics.
| | 02:38 | They can even be as accurate as
simulating actual true-to-life light fixtures.
| | 02:42 | And we have natural light which
simulates the sun and its actual position in the
| | 02:46 | sky for our geographic location and the
time and date of the year. And finally,
| | 02:51 | how do we want to output our rendering?
| | 02:53 | So we can output our rendering to the
screen, or we can output it to print.
| | 02:57 | We want to consider those factors when
we decide settings we want to use when
| | 03:01 | generating our rendering.
| | 03:02 | Also, we can consider, do we want a
photorealistic rendering, do we want more
| | 03:06 | of an illustration kind of feel?
| | 03:08 | So those are characteristics that we can
incorporate into our process as well.
| | 03:12 | So in general this is the flow that
we'll follow as we move through the
| | 03:16 | rendering process in your projects,
and this is the flow that we'll follow
| | 03:20 | here in the course.
| | 03:21 | It's not to say that you won't do
this in a little bit more organic way.
| | 03:25 | Certainly you might be working on
the models and the materials and then
| | 03:28 | something will occur to you about
lighting, or you might want to tweak and
| | 03:31 | adjust the view and then that might
trigger a change in the lighting or a change
| | 03:35 | in the output settings.
| | 03:36 | So you'll certainly do a little bit of
back and forth, but in general, this is the
| | 03:40 | flow that you'll typically follow.
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1. Creating 3D ViewsCreating 3D views| 00:00 | If you're interested in creating
renderings from Revit, it all starts with a
| | 00:03 | well-composed 3D view.
| | 00:05 | 3D views come in two varieties:
orthographic and perspective.
| | 00:09 | Each naturally shares some similarities,
but they also have some differences as well.
| | 00:12 | In this movie, we'll create each
kind of view and look at the various
| | 00:15 | settings and features.
| | 00:16 | It doesn't really matter which view we
start in, because we are going to be
| | 00:19 | creating new 3D views here.
| | 00:21 | Let's start with the orthographic view.
| | 00:23 | Orthographic view is pretty simple to create.
| | 00:25 | You just simply use the Default 3D
View button up on the Quick Access Toolbar.
| | 00:31 | And it will do one of two things.
| | 00:33 | It will either open up an
existing 3D view that you already have.
| | 00:37 | Let me show it to you here on
the Project Browser. Scroll down.
| | 00:39 | You can see the name has the
letters 3D, but it's got the little curly
| | 00:44 | brackets around it.
| | 00:45 | So that's the default name that
Revit uses for the default 3D view.
| | 00:49 | If you're in a work sharing project
that will actually add your username
| | 00:52 | inside the brackets there.
| | 00:54 | Now in my case, it came up shaded
because I already had this 3D view.
| | 00:59 | So what I am going to do is
delete it and create it again.
| | 01:04 | Now again, I am using the Quick
Access Toolbar button right here.
| | 01:08 | You can also go to the View tab and
locate it right there; so it's just a matter
| | 01:13 | of preference--same command.
| | 01:14 | Now notice when I loaded it the second
time because the default 3D view didn't
| | 01:19 | exist, then Revit actually just
created a new one from scratch.
| | 01:23 | The new one from scratch is always
oriented this way from sort of the southeast
| | 01:26 | orientation and it's always
in a hidden line visual style.
| | 01:31 | So if you want to make it shaded, you
could turn on the shading, and you can
| | 01:34 | of course zoom it and rotate it if you
want to. And it's just an orthographic 3D view.
| | 01:41 | Whatever you do to this view it will
remember the next time. So if I spin it
| | 01:45 | around here like so, and I close the view,
and then I just go click the button again,
| | 01:53 | it remembers what I did the last time,
because it's saved in that default 3D view.
| | 01:58 | So it's only going to create that fresh
one if you either rename or delete this one.
| | 02:03 | So if you want to preserve your
axonometric view, you might want to just rename it.
| | 02:08 | You can see I have a few different
renamed versions here in the file.
| | 02:11 | For example, this one, Arial View
(Axonometric), put Axon in parentheses there,
| | 02:16 | and this is a version of the 3D
view that's been saved that way.
| | 02:20 | Now the Perspective views, or
Camera views--go by both names there.
| | 02:25 | Let me start back in first floor plan.
| | 02:27 | Perspective views can be generated from
the dropdown that's associated with the 3D
| | 02:33 | View button ,and we are
going to use the Camera button.
| | 02:36 | Now you can find that dropdown on the
main button on the View tab. You can also
| | 02:40 | find it here on the Quick Access Toolbar.
| | 02:43 | It's the same button in both places.
| | 02:44 | I'll choose the camera, and I get
a little camera icon on my cursor.
| | 02:49 | Over here on the Options bar is the height.
| | 02:52 | This is basically my eye level.
| | 02:54 | So if you are an average-height person
then 5' 6" is probably a pretty decent height.
| | 02:59 | You click where you want to stand.
| | 03:01 | Let me zoom this view out just a little bit.
| | 03:03 | We'll kind of get a 3D vantage point of
the entire building. And I am going to
| | 03:07 | stand over here, and you just drag
the mouse where you want to look.
| | 03:12 | So I am going to drag pass the building.
| | 03:15 | It makes this cone, and when you click,
it will create the view and immediately
| | 03:20 | open it in its own window.
| | 03:22 | So creating the camera view is just as
easy as creating the default 3D view.
| | 03:27 | Default 3D view is the single-click,
camera view is two clicks, and in both
| | 03:30 | cases you are immediately
looking at your project there in 3D.
| | 03:34 | So, in the next movie we'll look at
some of the other settings and features of
| | 03:38 | these various views, but creating them,
as you can see, is a pretty simple and
| | 03:41 | straightforward process.
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| Working with 3D view settings| 00:00 | In the previous movie, we created both an
axonometric view and a perspective view.
| | 00:05 | In this movie, I'm going to take the
axonometric view and I am going to dig a
| | 00:09 | little deeper into its
settings on the Properties palette.
| | 00:12 | So I have here a view called 3D
view Settings open on screen, if you're
| | 00:15 | following along in the exercise files.
And the active view is the default 3D view,
| | 00:21 | or what I like to refer to as curly-bracket 3D.
| | 00:25 | That's just my little personal name
for it, but that's because over here on
| | 00:28 | the Project Browser, as we talked about, it
has the curly brackets around the name 3D.
| | 00:33 | That is the default 3D view name.
| | 00:35 | Now over here on the Properties
palette we have a lot of the standard
| | 00:38 | properties that you would expect,
things like View Scale and Level of Detail
| | 00:42 | and so on. And for our purposes here,
what I am more interested in is the
| | 00:46 | settings down here under Extents.
| | 00:49 | Now there are several check boxes in this area,
some of which have controls in other areas.
| | 00:54 | So these first two--Crop view and Crop
Region Visible--correspond to these two
| | 01:00 | icons down here on the view control
bar: Crop View and Show Crop Region.
| | 01:06 | So if you were to click on either of
these icons here--they are both like toggle
| | 01:10 | switches, so, for example, if I click
Crop to view or Show Crop Region, which
| | 01:16 | really, the crop region is way out here.
| | 01:19 | It's this big rectangle,
| | 01:20 | so showing it usually is the
first thing you want to do.
| | 01:23 | Notice that down here both of
those boxes are now checked.
| | 01:27 | If I were to uncheck, it's the same as
toggling both of those switches. And I
| | 01:31 | don't know if you can tell,
but the two icons changed.
| | 01:33 | So you see the little red X comes and
goes when I check this one and uncheck
| | 01:37 | it? And you can see the little light bulb either turns
blue or yellow when I check and uncheck that.
| | 01:43 | So it's subtle, but those
two are the same settings.
| | 01:46 | Now if I turn on the crop region,
think of this as a picture frame.
| | 01:51 | This crop region functions the same way as
crop regions in plan sections or elevations:
| | 01:55 | it's limiting what you see when you drag this
view to a sheet, for example, or print it out.
| | 02:00 | Now using these little grips on the
sides, I can actually reduce the extent of
| | 02:05 | this crop region down a little bit,
like so. And of course, it doesn't look
| | 02:10 | like it's doing anything, and that's
simply because at the moment I have the
| | 02:14 | crop region disabled.
| | 02:16 | This box is unchecked.
| | 02:18 | So if I check that box, or click the
icon down here, then suddenly the picture
| | 02:22 | frame activates and anything that
falls outside the picture frame is being
| | 02:26 | cropped out of the view. And if I zoom
in here, I now have a closer cropped
| | 02:31 | view of my drawing.
| | 02:33 | If I do ZF, zoom to fit, it will now
zoom the screen relative to that picture
| | 02:38 | frame, rather than to some
arbitrary size out in space there.
| | 02:42 | It also actually starts to tell you
why when you do zoom to fit in a 3D view
| | 02:47 | that it sometimes is zooming really far
away. Even if the crop region is turned
| | 02:51 | off, it's still zooming to the
edge of that crop region as a rule.
| | 02:55 | So if the crop region is set really
huge and invisible, then that's what it's
| | 02:59 | zooming to, and it may seem a little arbitrary.
| | 03:02 | So that's the crop region. And again, think
of that as a two-dimensional picture frame.
| | 03:07 | The easiest way to illustrate that
that's a picture frame is if I hold down my
| | 03:10 | Shift key and I drag the wheel, you
actually see that I can orbit the 3D view
| | 03:16 | within the picture frame.
| | 03:18 | It's going a little wild here right now.
| | 03:20 | Let me show you a trick.
| | 03:21 | If you select anything in the model
before you start to orbit, you get a lot
| | 03:27 | more control, because that
becomes the center of the rotation.
| | 03:31 | So if you want to actually fine-tune
the angle and the orientation of this 3D
| | 03:35 | view, that's really the best
way to do it. Now one other tip:
| | 03:38 | if I'm happy with this orientation, what I
really want to do over here is rename this view.
| | 03:45 | So I am going to right-click on it and
choose Rename, and I'm going to call this
| | 03:49 | 3D Of entrance. And the reason that I
want to do that is it will remember now
| | 03:55 | this orientation I created; otherwise,
when I close the project and reopen it,
| | 03:59 | the default 3D view always resets
itself back to that southwest orientation,
| | 04:03 | which can be a little bit frustrating
if you've spent a lot of time reorienting
| | 04:07 | the view and expect it to stay that way.
| | 04:10 | Now let me zoom out a little bit,
and let's look at one other setting, and that
| | 04:14 | is I am going to disable the crop for
a moment, so we can see the whole model,
| | 04:18 | and this other setting is the section box.
| | 04:22 | Now the section box is like a 3D crop.
So if you think of the crop region as a
| | 04:27 | two-dimensional crop, like a
picture frame, this is actually a 3D crop.
| | 04:31 | Now it looks like I've got to zoom out even
farther, because here's the box way out here.
| | 04:36 | So you get this 3D section box now that
surrounds the entire building, and it's
| | 04:41 | got its little grips here. And using
these, you are actually going to be
| | 04:45 | cropping the 3D model.
| | 04:47 | If I zoom in here, you can see that I
am actually cutting through the ground
| | 04:51 | plane when I do that.
| | 04:52 | So I am seeing brown earth there when
I start to cut it. And I can adjust the
| | 04:56 | size of this box, pull it
in closer to the building.
| | 05:01 | This gives me another kind of visual effect.
| | 05:03 | It looks more like an actual chipboard
and foam core study model now sitting
| | 05:08 | on a base, like the traditional models that we
would've created, traditional physical models.
| | 05:13 | So that's another option.
| | 05:15 | You have got a little grip here on the
corner that will allow you to rotate the
| | 05:18 | box. So if I drag that,
unfortunately it's not really visual,
| | 05:22 | so you have to kind of let go before
you see the rotation occur. So it might
| | 05:25 | take a few trials before you get that correct.
| | 05:29 | You can even drag it vertically.
And I could start to crop out part of the
| | 05:35 | building if I wanted to, hold down my
Shift key, and drag the wheel. And perhaps I
| | 05:40 | want to start peering into the model.
| | 05:43 | So the crop region is that 2D picture frame.
| | 05:47 | This is the section box.
| | 05:50 | Now here I'm showing you the manual
way to set up the section box, and in a
| | 05:53 | future movie I'm going to show you an
alternative approach to creating the
| | 05:57 | section box, which you might prefer,
but you'll have both methods at your
| | 06:01 | disposal to choose from.
| | 06:02 | Last thing to point out is, if you don't
want this section box visible here, you
| | 06:07 | can actually hide it. So you just
simply select it, go to the Lightbulb, choose
| | 06:12 | Hide Elements, it disappears.
| | 06:15 | Later if you need to get it back so that
you can make adjustments to it, you can
| | 06:18 | just use the Reveal Hidden
Elements and it will come back.
| | 06:22 | You'll see it here in red.
| | 06:23 | You can make adjustments to the height
of the box or the shape of a box and then
| | 06:28 | just toggle off the Reveal
mode, and it will re-enable it.
| | 06:32 | So that was some of the key Extents
features of the default 3D view that you
| | 06:37 | want to be aware of--the crop region,
the section box--and it helps you
| | 06:41 | fine-tune the extent of what
you're seeing in that 3D view.
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| Understanding camera settings| 00:00 | So continuing with the theme of the
last few movies, we created two 3D views,
| | 00:05 | both an axonometric and a camera view.
| | 00:07 | In the last movie, we looked at the
settings on the Properties palette for the
| | 00:12 | default 3D view, or for really any
axonometric view, and in this movie we are
| | 00:17 | going to look at the properties
that are available for camera views.
| | 00:21 | So let's go ahead and get started with that.
| | 00:23 | Now the first thing I want to point to
you is I am in a file here called Camera
| | 00:26 | Settings, and it's just a version of
the file we started with. And the view we
| | 00:31 | created got named 3D View 1 by default.
| | 00:35 | Now that may be fine, but for the most
part, I think it's a really good idea to
| | 00:40 | rename your views as you create
them and choose something more descriptive.
| | 00:45 | I am going to call this one Perspective
at Tower, and I am going to click OK. And
| | 00:50 | you can start to see that when the list
of views becomes a little more lengthy,
| | 00:54 | having descriptive names is going to be
really helpful, not only to yourself, but
| | 00:58 | to the other folks that are joining you
on the project, as to finding the right
| | 01:02 | view. Nothing more frustrating than
views 1 through 50 numbered sequentially, and
| | 01:06 | you have to open them all up to
try and figure out which is which.
| | 01:09 | All right, so we now have the view
named, and of course that name shows here as
| | 01:14 | well, so we could've changed it here.
And like our default 3D view, we have
| | 01:19 | this Extents area here. And we have similar
settings, but some of them are a little different.
| | 01:24 | We do have the Crop Region Visible
setting, but we do not have the Crop setting.
| | 01:29 | It's not possible to turn off the crop
on a camera view. But we could hide the
| | 01:33 | rectangle, the picture frame if you
will, if you don't want to see that.
| | 01:37 | I am going to bring it back.
| | 01:39 | So let's look at the section box next.
| | 01:41 | We talked about this in the previous
movie for the default 3D views, and you can
| | 01:47 | work with it here in perspective as
well, but notice that the section box is
| | 01:51 | actually rendered in perspective as
well, so clicking on that and trying to
| | 01:55 | manipulate the grips would
become really challenging.
| | 01:58 | So I've got a better approach to
manipulating that that we can look at in the next movie.
| | 02:04 | I just wanted you to see that section
box is available. I am going to turn it off
| | 02:08 | for now, but that can be a really
neat feature if you are trying to do a
| | 02:11 | sectional perspective.
| | 02:13 | So you can section through your
building but look into the building
| | 02:16 | in Perspective view.
| | 02:17 | That's where the section
box can really become handy.
| | 02:20 | Let's talk about Far Clip Offset.
| | 02:22 | Far Clip Offset is kind of important here.
| | 02:25 | When I created the camera view--let me
just take you back to Plan view here for a
| | 02:28 | second and just so to remind you of the
clicks--I clicked on the camera button
| | 02:34 | and the first click was where I wanted to
stand, and then we got this little pink
| | 02:39 | dot, and the pink dot is where you want to look.
| | 02:43 | But also, if I were to click right here,
that actually sets the Far Clip Offset.
| | 02:49 | I am going to escape out of here and
return to my Perspective at Tower and show
| | 02:55 | you what would've happened had
I actually stopped short there.
| | 02:59 | So let me scroll down. Notice the Far
Clip Offset has this number, 390 feet and
| | 03:04 | some random fraction there.
| | 03:05 | That's because I just clicked a point
and it was just whatever it was. But what
| | 03:09 | if the Far Clip Offset was only 50 feet?
| | 03:12 | Well, suddenly I don't see any of the
building at all, because I'm stopping way too short.
| | 03:16 | What if it was 100 feet?
| | 03:17 | Well, now I am seeing just a little bit
of the tower, but you can start to see
| | 03:21 | how important the Far Clip Offset is.
| | 03:23 | If it's 150 feet, we get a little bit
more, and 400 feet ought to get us back
| | 03:29 | to where we were, because it was 390
originally. And now we are seeing the entire building.
| | 03:33 | So if you accidentally clicked too
short of the back of the building, you might
| | 03:38 | find yourself clipping out part of a scene.
| | 03:40 | So the first thing you always want
to look at is that Far Clip Offset.
| | 03:43 | Now the other solution is
to just simply disable it.
| | 03:45 | So even if this was set back at 150
where I was only seeing part of the
| | 03:49 | building, if I just uncheck this box,
then it disables the whole thing altogether
| | 03:54 | and you're seeing the entire view, so
it's just sort of looks into infinity.
| | 03:57 | So those are the two approaches
you can take to Far Clip Offset.
| | 04:00 | I want to point out here the Eye
Elevation and the Target Elevation.
| | 04:05 | Now you may recall when we created the
camera I pointed out to the Options bar
| | 04:09 | that it was setting it at a 5' 6",
which is about the average eye height for an
| | 04:13 | average-height person.
| | 04:15 | I set both the Eye Elevation and
Target Height at that height, essentially
| | 04:19 | giving us a two-point perspective.
| | 04:21 | So if you look over here at the
vertical lines in my perspective, they're all
| | 04:25 | straight up and down.
| | 04:26 | I have just a nice two-point perspective.
| | 04:28 | Well, what would happen if I change
this Eye Elevation, for example, to
| | 04:33 | something a little
different, like maybe 20 feet?
| | 04:36 | The effect that that has is the
target stays at 5' 6", but I just basically
| | 04:40 | climbed up on a ladder, or went up on
a hill, and I am look down now into the
| | 04:44 | scene. And if you look again at these
edges, you'll see that now they have a
| | 04:49 | slight taper to them. And sometimes
that can add a little more realism to the
| | 04:53 | scene, because now we have a
true three-point perspective.
| | 04:56 | So, obviously it's a matter of preference.
| | 04:58 | If you prefer two-point,
you can certainly do that.
| | 05:01 | You want to keep both of these
numbers the same if you prefer a
| | 05:04 | two-point perspective.
| | 05:05 | So now I have just moved both up,
and the lines are straight up and down again,
| | 05:08 | but some would argue that this is
a little bit more realistic here.
| | 05:12 | So, one more thing is the
field of view of the camera.
| | 05:16 | Now this setting can only
be done graphically on screen.
| | 05:20 | If you click the rectangle here, what I
am calling the picture frame, it's got
| | 05:25 | four grips around the edges.
| | 05:28 | You can start adjusting those grips to
adjust the field of view and see more
| | 05:34 | or less of the scene, but the wider you make it,
it's essentially making a wider angle lens.
| | 05:41 | Unfortunately, Revit doesn't have a
setting over here that you can dial in
| | 05:45 | anywhere to actually put in
the type of lens you're using.
| | 05:48 | You can't say, I've got a
35-millimeter lens or a 50-millimeter lens.
| | 05:51 | It doesn't have that setting.
| | 05:53 | So you can start to do
that with these grips here.
| | 05:56 | You just want to be careful because
if you drag them too far, it starts to
| | 06:00 | distort out at the edges; you're
essentially creating a fisheye lens.
| | 06:03 | So, within reason you can push and
pull these. And you can see it's pretty
| | 06:07 | successful here on an exterior shot;
where it actually might start to become
| | 06:12 | problematic is in an interior shot
where you will really notice the distortion
| | 06:16 | if you are not careful.
| | 06:17 | So those are some of the key
settings that you want to be looking for
| | 06:20 | in perspective views.
| | 06:21 | We can adjust the field of view, the
Target Height, and, most importantly, that Far
| | 06:25 | Clip Offset is going to have a big impact.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Navigating with the 3D steering wheel and ViewCube| 00:00 | Navigation in 3D views can
be accomplished in a few ways.
| | 00:03 | There is, of course, the wheel mouse,
but the Steering Wheel and the View Cube offer
| | 00:07 | the most robust collection of options.
| | 00:10 | Using these two tools, we have many
ways that we can navigate in our 3D views.
| | 00:14 | The specific options available on each
of these tools depends on the kind of 3D
| | 00:18 | view; so axons and perspectives
will actually exhibit different tools.
| | 00:22 | In this movie, we'll explore both
the View Cube and the Steering Wheel
| | 00:25 | within each type of view.
| | 00:26 | I am going to scroll down here, and I
have two views that we are going to be
| | 00:30 | looking at on the 3D Views category.
One is called Aerial View (Perspective)
| | 00:34 | and the other one's called Aerial View (Axon).
| | 00:36 | So let's start with the axon.
| | 00:37 | I am going to open that up. And this is a
view looking kind of at the back of the
| | 00:41 | building, and it has the section box
turned on so that it's cropping out part of
| | 00:46 | the ground plane, just so we can
focus a little more on the building.
| | 00:49 | Now of course the easiest way to change
the vantage point of 3D axonometric view
| | 00:54 | is to simply hold down the Shift and
drag with the wheel. And you probably all
| | 00:58 | know that trick by now,
| | 01:00 | so that's pretty easy to do. But notice
as I'm doing this that over there in the
| | 01:04 | right corner, the View Cube is
actually turning with my mouse.
| | 01:09 | So it's telling me the general direction there.
| | 01:11 | So that's kind of handy as well.
| | 01:14 | Now what that means is this is
actually tied to our view navigation.
| | 01:18 | If you click and hold down anywhere on the
View Cube and drag it, it has the same affect.
| | 01:25 | So notice that I can spin the model
using the View Cube as an alternative.
| | 01:30 | Now the View Cube also
has several hotspots on it.
| | 01:33 | They are labeled, so if I want to look
at the front, I can click that and it
| | 01:38 | orients me directly to
the front of the building.
| | 01:41 | If I click the shaded region between
two faces, it will orient to those two faces.
| | 01:48 | It's kind of a 45-degree looking at both
front and right in this case. And if you do
| | 01:54 | the little corner--any one of the corners around
the cube--it will do a 45-degree at all three faces.
| | 02:02 | So now I've got the angle between top,
front, and right. And you can click
| | 02:07 | different corners to spin it
around in the other directions.
| | 02:10 | So the View Cube allows you to
really quickly just sort of use a starting
| | 02:14 | vantage point, and then of course,
you could use any other technique to
| | 02:18 | fine-tune and adjust it if you like.
| | 02:21 | Now the View Cube has lots of other options.
| | 02:23 | There's actually a little tiny arrow
here and a little dropdown menu. You can
| | 02:27 | also right-click and get the same menu,
go to Home, for example. It takes you back
| | 02:31 | to whatever view is set as the Home view.
| | 02:33 | Now you can go and make an
adjustment like so. And I don't think it will
| | 02:38 | remember the zoomed-in, but the
orientation it should remember. And if say I
| | 02:43 | want to set the current view as home,
now spin out to some other view,
| | 02:50 | now if I say Go Home, it will
go back to that view instead.
| | 02:53 | So that's some of the
options that you have in there.
| | 02:55 | You can save a view from here, and that
actually creates a named view of it over here.
| | 03:01 | Well, it was already named, so, you
could use that if it's a default 3D view.
| | 03:05 | So there's definitely some other options here.
| | 03:06 | You can hide and show the compass,
reset the front view, and you can even orient
| | 03:11 | it to other views, which
we'll look at in the next movie.
| | 03:15 | What I want to do next is jump over
to the perspective view. So I've got an
| | 03:19 | aerial view of the perspective.
It's kind of similar.
| | 03:21 | We are looking from a similar vantage
point. And we do have the View Cube here,
| | 03:26 | and you can certainly use it in a
similar fashion, but I prefer to use the View
| | 03:31 | Cube for axons and I like to use the
Steering Wheel here or perspective views.
| | 03:37 | Now the Steering Wheel is located on
this little floating navigation bar. I am
| | 03:41 | going to click on it. And you can use
the Steering Wheel in a lot of contexts.
| | 03:44 | You can use it in a 2D view.
| | 03:46 | You can use it in Axon view.
But you get the most features and the most
| | 03:50 | functionality when you use it in a
perspective view, so that's why I'm
| | 03:55 | demonstrating it here.
| | 03:56 | Now if I roll the wheel on the mouse
or drag the wheel on the mouse in a
| | 04:01 | perspective view, I am zooming and
panning the picture frame. But if I use the
| | 04:07 | Orbit or Pan feature here on the
Steering Wheel--and the way you use any feature
| | 04:12 | on the Steering Wheel is to
highlight it and then drag.
| | 04:15 | So I am going to drag with Orbit highlighted.
| | 04:18 | It actually orbits within the
view, within the picture frame.
| | 04:22 | If I drag Pan, it pans within the
picture frame, so you are literally
| | 04:26 | panning the camera.
| | 04:28 | So this Orbit and Pan is not
exactly the same now as your wheel mouse.
| | 04:33 | So they do two different things.
| | 04:35 | You can also zoom, and that's not like
your wheel mouse, because that's actually
| | 04:40 | zooming within the picture frame
rather than your wheel mouse which would zoom
| | 04:44 | outside of the picture frame.
| | 04:46 | Now there are four other
tools here in the center.
| | 04:50 | The Center option, you may notice when
you're zooming, there's this little green
| | 04:55 | ball right there, or when you're
orbiting, there's that little green ball there.
| | 04:58 | You see how that's the center of
action? The rotation or the zooming is
| | 05:03 | happening relative to that green ball.
| | 05:05 | Maybe I want to do the centering of the
zooming at this tree, or over here at the tower.
| | 05:10 | So I can click and hold down on Center
and drag this pivot point, and it will
| | 05:15 | even snap. You can see it's
snapping to things. And I can snap it there to
| | 05:19 | the base of the tower and that
actually re-centers the entire view on that
| | 05:24 | vantage point, but now if I orbit, you
see that it's orbiting around that point.
| | 05:30 | Or if I pan or if I zoom,
it's happening around that point.
| | 05:36 | Up-down, this is kind of
like riding in an elevator.
| | 05:40 | So, if I drag it up or if I drag it
down, it's sort of like just changing the
| | 05:45 | height of my camera but nothing else. So I
am just moving up and down. Here is Look.
| | 05:52 | This is turning my head.
| | 05:53 | So the camera stays still, but I
just turn side to side, or up and down.
| | 05:57 | Obviously we are in Aerial here,
so I don't want to go too far away.
| | 06:00 | And then finally, Walk is a little tricky for me.
| | 06:04 | I think you have to be of the
video-game generation to really do Walk justice,
| | 06:08 | but when you drag with this thing, it
starts to--oops! See, this is what happens.
| | 06:12 | It gets fast for me,
and then I go off into space.
| | 06:16 | So, I am not very good at this one,
but I'll let you guys experiment with
| | 06:19 | this. But if you're a first-person-
shooter video gamer, then you should have
| | 06:23 | no trouble at all with the Walk function,
because it would be very intuitive for you.
| | 06:27 | Finally, there's the Rewind
option, which I absolutely love.
| | 06:31 | The Rewind option is if you totally
flub the view and you get off in space
| | 06:36 | somewhere and you are lost you can just
start backing up through this filmstrip
| | 06:41 | here and it remembers everything you've
been doing. And you just drag either left
| | 06:46 | or right through the film strip and
you stop wherever you wanted to go. And
| | 06:50 | actually, I kind of liked where I ended up,
| | 06:52 | so I'm going to leave it there,
but you can do the rewind and get back to any
| | 06:56 | other previous location.
| | 06:58 | So the View Cube and the Steering Wheel
are two really handy navigation tools.
| | 07:04 | I showed the View Cube in the axon view;
| | 07:07 | I showed in the Steering Wheel in
perspective, but you can actually use
| | 07:09 | either one in both views, so I do
encourage you to experiment with them in
| | 07:13 | both contexts.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating cutaway 3D views| 00:00 | When you create a 3D view sometimes you
want to limit the extent of the 3D view
| | 00:04 | to a certain confined area of the project.
| | 00:08 | This is often the case if you want to do an
interior rendering or an interior 3D view.
| | 00:12 | There are a couple of ways you can do this.
| | 00:14 | Of course we can just generate a camera
inside the space. And if I were to create
| | 00:20 | a camera, for example, here--I'm
in the Office building file again--
| | 00:24 | if I were to create camera right here
in the lobby, it will automatically only
| | 00:30 | show me the inside of the
building, because it's a perspective.
| | 00:35 | What if I wanted an axonometric, though,
of the lobby, and I only want to see the
| | 00:40 | lobby and its walls in just that general space?
| | 00:43 | If I create a default 3D view, it's
going to go back out to the exterior, and
| | 00:47 | it's going to show me the whole building again.
| | 00:49 | Now I showed you in a previous movie
that we could turn on the section box and
| | 00:53 | we could drag the grips and we
could start cropping it down and doing a
| | 00:57 | sectional cut away all of a 3D view.
And that's effective, but that's the
| | 01:01 | manual way to do it.
| | 01:02 | There is actually a slightly better way--or
maybe not better, but it's the way that I prefer.
| | 01:06 | I am going to first create a section,
and I am going to draw this section through
| | 01:12 | the general area that I want to be in.
| | 01:15 | So I'm just creating a section over
here at the south side of the lobby.
| | 01:19 | Let me zoom in a little bit.
| | 01:21 | I can fine-tune the grips here so that
it's sectioning just to the other side
| | 01:27 | of this wall and just to the other
side of this wall. And then this one here
| | 01:32 | isn't as important, because it's outside
the building, but I'll pull that back a
| | 01:35 | little. And we are standing right here,
because this is where our section is.
| | 01:39 | Now if I deselect it, double-click it, you
might want to fine-tune the height as well.
| | 01:45 | Maybe I don't want to see all this
stuff down in the foundation, so I can drag
| | 01:49 | that up. And likewise with the height,
if there's any height adjustments you
| | 01:54 | want to make, if we want to actually
see in the lobby, we need to cut down
| | 01:59 | below the roof here;
| | 02:00 | otherwise, that pitch up
there is going to block our view.
| | 02:04 | So let's start with this
and see what this gives us.
| | 02:06 | Now you can't just hold your Shift
key down and try and orbit a section
| | 02:11 | view. This as a 2D view;
| | 02:13 | 2D views can't go into 3D.
| | 02:15 | So what we do is we come down here and
we take our default 3D view. And you can
| | 02:21 | see this is currently just giving us a
view of the overall axon of the building.
| | 02:26 | I'm going to right-click this, go to
Rename, and I'm going to name this 3D
| | 02:34 | Section at Lobby and click OK.
| | 02:39 | Now of course right now it doesn't look
very much like a 3D section at the lobby.
| | 02:42 | Come over here in the View Cube on
the right-hand side. Right-click it.
| | 02:47 | That gives you access to the View Cube menu.
| | 02:50 | Come down to Orient to View and you can
orient this view to any of the existing
| | 02:55 | views that you already have, including
all your sections. Shame on me for not
| | 03:00 | renaming section 1,
but that's the one I just created.
| | 03:02 | I am going to orient to that.
Of course it zooms out sort of far away.
| | 03:06 | Let me just do my View Cube again to
put it in axon, and now you can see that
| | 03:12 | we've got a nicely cropped 3D view
looking at that section, exactly the way that
| | 03:18 | we sized that section.
| | 03:20 | So this 3D section box, which is just
the box that we talked about in a previous
| | 03:25 | movie right here, is cutting away the
building to match exactly the extents of
| | 03:31 | that section that we just created.
| | 03:33 | If you don't like the way it looks,
you can now do the tricks that we looked
| | 03:37 | at in the previous movie and fine-tune
the section box. If I want to see some
| | 03:40 | of the ceiling and some of the
skylights, I can start to drag that up. Maybe I
| | 03:46 | want to a little bit of that ceiling plane out
of the way, and you can start to fine-tune it.
| | 03:52 | But the Orient to View gets you started
anyway, and gets you a view that's close
| | 03:57 | to what you want, and then you make
adjustments as you go along to make it a
| | 04:01 | better looking view.
| | 04:02 | So, that can be a great way to get
started with your section box, rather than
| | 04:06 | doing the entire thing manually.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. ModelingDeveloping approaches to modeling| 00:00 | When working in the building
information modeling paradigm, the expectation
| | 00:04 | is to create a model that contains not
only the geometry required to display
| | 00:08 | in multiple views, but also contains a
robust database of useful project information.
| | 00:13 | Therefore, generating renderings
from the same model that we use for
| | 00:17 | construction documents and clash
detection is certainly desirable.
| | 00:20 | In theory, this is possible, but there are
limitations and other issues to consider.
| | 00:26 | In this chapter, we will explore some
of the issues that we will face when
| | 00:29 | attempting to render our production models.
| | 00:31 | Let's focus on three specific conditions.
| | 00:34 | The first, I want to refer
to as a Design Intent model.
| | 00:38 | Early in the design process, when
you're working out what you want the project
| | 00:42 | to do and the form you want it to have
and the look at feel and the mood that the
| | 00:47 | building should convey, you are
working in a mode where you're just trying to
| | 00:51 | convey your design intent; you're not
necessarily thinking yet about how the
| | 00:55 | building is going to go together and
what kind of finished final materials are
| | 00:59 | we going to use, and how are the
construction details going to work out?
| | 01:03 | So at that stage it's usually quick.
| | 01:06 | It's usually lots of iterations,
lots of changes being made, and so the
| | 01:11 | approaches that folks take to modeling
at that stage may or may not be the same
| | 01:15 | kind of approaches they would take at,
say, the construction intent stage when we
| | 01:20 | are trying to actually convey how the
building is going to go together. What
| | 01:24 | sort of construction materials are
going to be used, when we are doing
| | 01:27 | detailing, when we are creating
detailed plan sections and elevations?
| | 01:31 | At that stage we are actually trying
to create a full set of construction
| | 01:34 | documents and a full set of
deliverables that we can hand off to the contractor
| | 01:39 | to actually get things built.
| | 01:40 | The level of detail, the attention to
detail, and the kinds of things that we are
| | 01:44 | going to build into our models at that
stage might vary a little bit from what
| | 01:48 | we were doing at the earlier design stage.
| | 01:50 | Now, depending when you do your rendering,
this may raise certain challenges for
| | 01:54 | the person doing the rendering and
whether or not they can use that same model.
| | 01:59 | So you may find yourself in a situation
where if you're doing the rendering, you
| | 02:03 | have to actually model things a little
bit differently than what you've been
| | 02:06 | given, in either a Design Intent
or a Construction Intent model.
| | 02:10 | So now we are actually creating a
third iteration of the model that's
| | 02:14 | specifically for the purposes of
rendering, to try and get across the right kind
| | 02:18 | of material or the right kind of look
or make the lighting pop the way we want
| | 02:21 | it to display. So there could be
several considerations, or several issues that
| | 02:25 | come into play, that make it difficult
to merge the needs and the goals of these
| | 02:30 | three different individuals and/or
teams doing the work at each of the stages.
| | 02:35 | So it's desirable to have a single
building information model where everything
| | 02:40 | is unified and we're pulling from the
same one, but it might be a little bit
| | 02:44 | challenging to pull off.
| | 02:45 | So let's take a look at what I mean
here in a very simple Revit model.
| | 02:49 | This file is called modeling
Approaches, and it's with the exercise files. And
| | 02:52 | what I have is three copies of a window
that each have a brick arch above them,
| | 02:57 | and the brick arch was
approached in three very different ways.
| | 03:00 | If we look at the left--the
brick arch that we have over here.
| | 03:04 | We can see it here on the left in both
this Elevation view and in the 3D model.
| | 03:09 | I am going to zoom in a
little bit in the Elevation.
| | 03:13 | The way this was created is this is
just a simple generic model that's actually
| | 03:17 | just a solid extrusion.
| | 03:19 | The shape of the overall arch was drawn
and then just simply extruded to match
| | 03:23 | the top of the window.
| | 03:24 | The trouble with going that approach is
when you try and apply a material to it, as
| | 03:28 | you can see over here in the rendered
side, the material doesn't match the
| | 03:35 | brick pattern at all.
| | 03:37 | There are no radial hatch patterns
available in Revit, so we are forced to choose
| | 03:42 | the next best thing I suppose, which is
this soldier pattern, which just puts the
| | 03:46 | brick straight up and down.
| | 03:48 | Again, for Design Intent, it might be
possible, because at that early stage
| | 03:52 | it might be enough to just sort of
convey that, hey, we've got a brick arch
| | 03:55 | here and we'll figure out the
details later. But if you're trying to do
| | 03:59 | nice presentation renderings from
that, probably not going to be a terribly
| | 04:04 | acceptable result there.
| | 04:05 | Let's zoom back out here in both views.
| | 04:08 | Let's go to the other extreme.
| | 04:10 | In Construction Intent, you may decide
to simply draft those kinds of details
| | 04:17 | right on top of the view.
| | 04:19 | Now when we look at it over here in the
3D view, it becomes immediately obvious
| | 04:24 | what the limitation of that approach is.
| | 04:26 | It's perfectly fine for two-dimensional
elevation drawing, section drawings, and so on.
| | 04:31 | This is just a masking region.
| | 04:33 | These are just detail lines.
| | 04:35 | Those items sit right on top of the view.
| | 04:37 | The advantages, from the point of view
of the person doing the Construction
| | 04:42 | Intent model, is it's a very quick.
| | 04:43 | I can lay that so-called arch out very
quickly by just drawing some simple lines.
| | 04:48 | The problem is it doesn't
show at all in the 3D view,
| | 04:52 | so there's nothing to render.
| | 04:53 | There's nothing to display in 3D.
| | 04:55 | That is a totally view-specific approach.
| | 05:00 | Now the one I have in the middle
tries to bridge the gap between the
| | 05:07 | challenges of the other two.
| | 05:08 | So when you look at it, at first blush
it seems like it solves all the problems.
| | 05:13 | We have an object, an actual true 3D object.
| | 05:17 | It's showing individual bricks.
| | 05:19 | Those bricks show in elevation and in
3D. And more importantly, if we look over
| | 05:25 | here in 3D, the material pattern is
actually following the arch, rather than
| | 05:31 | being just straight up and down
like it was in the other example.
| | 05:34 | To do this though, the downside--there
is always a downside--the downside is
| | 05:38 | this is a custom family that's been
created that it is a fairly complex and is
| | 05:45 | going to add a lot of file size to
the project. So the folks in the Design
| | 05:50 | Intent world and the Construction
Intent world may not be too happy with the
| | 05:54 | rendering guy coming along and loading
up their model with all kinds of highly
| | 05:58 | detailed 3D models, where each
individual brick is being modeled.
| | 06:03 | From a visual point of view, it's a
great solution, but from a practical point
| | 06:08 | of view, in terms of how it fits into
the grander scheme of things in this
| | 06:12 | unified building information modeling
approach that we are striving for, there
| | 06:16 | may be some challenges.
| | 06:17 | I've only illustrated three
different approaches here, but there are many
| | 06:21 | different approaches that you could
take to the same problem, in some cases. And
| | 06:25 | the one that you choose may be
suitable for one type of model and one type of
| | 06:30 | delivery intent but not so suitable
for other types of models and other types
| | 06:34 | of delivery intents.
| | 06:35 | So if you are really committed to the
idea that you want this single unified
| | 06:40 | building information model that gives
you all types of deliverables and all
| | 06:45 | types of communication vehicles,
| | 06:48 | it's going to be a challenge, because
you are going to have to get everybody on
| | 06:51 | board with that and make sure that
everybody is thinking of not only their
| | 06:56 | task, but what the tasks are of the
other folks that are going to be in the
| | 07:00 | model with them.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with wall layers| 00:00 | Whether you're creating a model for
construction documents, for rendering, or
| | 00:03 | for both, you will most likely create
the walls pretty early in the process.
| | 00:08 | Walls are perhaps the most basic
building component of any Revit model.
| | 00:11 | In this movie we will assume that you
already know something about creating
| | 00:14 | walls and therefore focus on some
issues that we will want to consider when
| | 00:19 | preparing the walls in our
model, specifically for rendering.
| | 00:23 | So I'm in a file called Office Walls,
and there's a 3D view in a file called
| | 00:27 | Exterior Walls. And all I have done in
this view is select all the walls and
| | 00:31 | isolate them and hidden all the other geometry.
| | 00:34 | It just makes it a little bit easier
to focus on the walls for this exercise.
| | 00:37 | I am going to select one of my exterior walls;
| | 00:40 | it doesn't really matter which one.
And what I usually like to do is create a
| | 00:44 | copy of it off to the side.
| | 00:46 | So I am going to come up here to the
Modify panel and click the Create Similar
| | 00:50 | tool, and I'm just going to draw a
little segment of wall off to the side here.
| | 00:56 | The main reason for doing this is I
can kind of work on this wall separately.
| | 01:00 | If I like what I've done, I can apply it
to the other walls; if I don't like what
| | 01:03 | I've done then I can
just scrap it and try again.
| | 01:05 | So it just kind of makes what
I'm doing a little less permanent.
| | 01:09 | Go ahead and zoom in on this guy.
| | 01:11 | I am going to select it, do Edit Type,
and that takes me to the Type Properties
| | 01:16 | dialog. So the first thing that we want
to do is click the Duplicate button at
| | 01:20 | the top and create a copy of this wall type.
| | 01:23 | It suggests the same name with a number
2 at the end, and I'll take that off, and
| | 01:28 | I am going to add a suffix
called Stucco. Click OK.
| | 01:32 | Now that's the name of this type.
And then I want to click the Edit button
| | 01:35 | here next to Structure.
| | 01:37 | Now I'm not going to get into
all the details of editing layers.
| | 01:41 | We actually cover that in the Revit
Essential Training class here in lynda.com,
| | 01:44 | so you feel free to take a look over there.
| | 01:47 | Really this would just be focusing
on the vertical structure down here.
| | 01:51 | Now of course, when you look down here you
will notice that everything is grayed out.
| | 01:55 | There's a little note here that says
this works in Section Preview Only.
| | 01:59 | So I am going to click the Preview
button here, make sure this says Section, and
| | 02:04 | then suddenly all those buttons light up.
| | 02:06 | So, that's what that little
message means right there.
| | 02:09 | If this is in plan, it doesn't work;
| | 02:11 | they are all grayed out.
| | 02:12 | So you've got to have both the Preview
turned on and the section Preview enabled
| | 02:17 | in order to see these buttons.
| | 02:19 | Now when you're in section Preview, you can
actually adjust the Sample Height if you want.
| | 02:23 | What this does is actually changes
the height of the little wall there, but
| | 02:27 | that's really just a sample wall.
| | 02:28 | It's not the actual wall you're changing,
so that's why they call it Sample
| | 02:31 | Height. 20 feet works
well for me in this example.
| | 02:34 | Now I do want to insert a new finish
layer, so I will make sure layer 1 is
| | 02:39 | selected, because whenever you click
Insert it will go above the one you have
| | 02:42 | selected. And I am going to create a
second finished layer that I want to assign
| | 02:46 | to my EIFS Exterior
Installation Finishing System material.
| | 02:52 | Now we are going to talk about
materials completely in a future chapter, so for
| | 02:56 | now I am just going to assign
from one of the built-in materials.
| | 03:00 | Now that's all I need to do initially,
because what I actually want to do is
| | 03:04 | apply this new item that I have added here
to only part of the finished layer over here.
| | 03:11 | So the way that we do that is we
actually go to the Split tool down here in
| | 03:14 | these series of vertical structure
buttons and I get this little knife cursor.
| | 03:19 | And when you move along on one of the
existing layers there, you will see a
| | 03:23 | little temporary dimension.
| | 03:25 | Now I actually want this thing to be 16
feet off of the floor, and I am going to
| | 03:31 | try and get that dimension
to comply there and click.
| | 03:35 | Now what if the dimension didn't comply?
| | 03:38 | Sometimes the dimension
will flip to the top side.
| | 03:40 | Let me first of all reset with the
Modify tool right here. Click on Modify.
| | 03:45 | I am going to click in the Preview
and start rolling the wheel mouse.
| | 03:49 | It turns out that you can select this
little line right here, which was created
| | 03:56 | from splitting, and there's
a little flip grip on it.
| | 04:01 | If I click that, it actually flips
the dimension up to the other side.
| | 04:05 | Now I do want it measured from the
bottom because when I use this on varying+
| | 04:11 | height walls in the project, I want
the base 16 feet to be brick, and anything
| | 04:18 | above that I want to use this Stucco material.
| | 04:21 | So that's why it's important that I get the
measurement to go to the one side or the other.
| | 04:27 | Now the other thing is this
temporary dimension actually can be active.
| | 04:31 | So if you didn't get it exactly at 16
feet, you can zoom in on this, click your
| | 04:37 | Modify tool, select that little line,
and then click on the dimension and
| | 04:44 | actually type in some other value.
Sometimes a little tricky, the interface
| | 04:49 | here, but scrolling actually sometimes works
better with the scrollbars in this interface.
| | 04:55 | What I want to get here is just make
sure that's 16 feet off the ground, and then
| | 05:00 | this little material that I have created at the
top I want to assign to the new material here.
| | 05:05 | So I am going to zoom in on it, and the way
we do that is with the Assign Layers button.
| | 05:11 | So what you do first is you select your
new layer, come over here and click the
| | 05:15 | Assign Layers button, and then click on
the region. And when you do that, it will
| | 05:21 | assign this layer to just that region.
| | 05:24 | This outer finish material is now
divided into two separate regions, and it's
| | 05:29 | using layer 2 for the bottom half and
it's using layer 1 for the top half. And we
| | 05:35 | could continue to split and create
additional regions and assign them to different
| | 05:40 | layers that we create.
| | 05:42 | You'll notice over here
that the two layers gray out.
| | 05:45 | That's kind of Revit's way of letting
you know that they are linked together.
| | 05:47 | If you decide you no longer want
this, you can use Merge Regions to put
| | 05:52 | them back together, and then you would just
click that little tiny line there in between.
| | 05:55 | So let's click OK.
| | 05:57 | Let's click OK again. And I will deselect
the wall so that you can see the result.
| | 06:02 | So notice that the top half no longer
has a brick hatch; the bottom half does.
| | 06:07 | If I zoom in and I turn on shading, I
get my brick pattern down here and this
| | 06:13 | tan color here--that
represents the stucco up above.
| | 06:16 | Let me go back to a hidden line view,
and now all that remains is to assign it to
| | 06:23 | the remaining walls.
| | 06:24 | I'll just use a tab selection here,
select the entire exterior shell, open up
| | 06:29 | my List, and assign it to my stucco wall.
And you'll now see that the brick band
| | 06:39 | goes all the way around.
| | 06:40 | Over here, these walls are too low to
actually use the upper material at all, so
| | 06:46 | they're not seeing any stucco.
| | 06:48 | Here we have got the
stucco just in the top half.
| | 06:51 | Now this one wall right here is
going to need some special treatment.
| | 06:54 | I'll leave that to you as an exercise.
| | 06:56 | The reason for that is because the base
of this wall actually starts much higher
| | 07:00 | than the other guys, so as it
measures up 16 feet relative to its own base,
| | 07:05 | it's rendering that wall completely in brick.
| | 07:07 | All we would need to do is repeat the
process, create another type, and set the
| | 07:11 | height just a little bit lower,
and that will be a good practice exercise.
| | 07:15 | Using the tools under the Modified
Vertical Structure within the wall type
| | 07:20 | dialog, you can split regions,
| | 07:22 | you can assign those regions to
different layers in the wall structure, and you
| | 07:26 | can merge regions back together if you
like. And doing all of this allows you to
| | 07:31 | start articulating the overall
vertical structure of the wall and layering it
| | 07:36 | vertically as well as what we were
able to do horizontally by just adding
| | 07:39 | layers in the first place.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding sweeps and reveals| 00:00 | Sweeps offer a way to add details to the
structure of the walls in your projects.
| | 00:04 | You can add a sweep directly to the
wall type so that they occur everywhere
| | 00:07 | that that wall type is used, or you
can add them as an independent element in
| | 00:11 | just the areas where they are required.
| | 00:13 | The basic concepts are the same in
both cases, but there are some interesting
| | 00:17 | differences as well.
| | 00:19 | In this movie we will look at creating
and managing sweeps and discuss the most
| | 00:23 | appropriate approaches as you
prepare your model for rendering.
| | 00:27 | Now I have the little freestanding
wall off to the side, which again, I still
| | 00:31 | consider it to be a best practice.
| | 00:33 | It's good to work off to the side,
make sure it's what you like, and
| | 00:36 | then actually apply it.
| | 00:38 | In this case the trouble with that is
that I don't really want to keep changing
| | 00:43 | the name of the wall type.
| | 00:45 | So in your own projects you might want
to actually practice in a separate file.
| | 00:51 | This way you can keep the name the
same and then when you settle on the
| | 00:55 | design that you like, you can copy and paste the
one from the other file over to your current file.
| | 00:59 | Of course, the other thing you can do
is just sort of work directly on the
| | 01:03 | live wall and assuming that they like it,
you can accept it and then undo if you don't.
| | 01:08 | So in this case why don't I do that?
Why don't I assume that I'm okay with this?
| | 01:13 | And we'll just kind of get rid of that
guy, and I am going to zoom in on this one,
| | 01:18 | and we'll add the sweep directly.
| | 01:20 | So the first way that we are going to
look at adding the sweep is to add it
| | 01:24 | directly to the wall type.
| | 01:26 | So we go to Edit Type, and the preview
is open. The section preview is open, and
| | 01:32 | if you recall from the previous movie
when we clicked the Edit button, that is
| | 01:36 | required to access all of
these buttons down here.
| | 01:39 | What we are going to look at here is
the Sweeps button over here on the right,
| | 01:42 | and when I click on that it brings up
yet another dialog, and I'll move it out of
| | 01:47 | the way so that I can see the
preview here in the background.
| | 01:50 | That's going to be helpful as we work.
| | 01:52 | And I'm going to click the Add button.
| | 01:54 | Now the Add button will add item
number 1. And the first column says Profile,
| | 02:00 | and it goes to default.
| | 02:01 | Default is just a square.
| | 02:03 | The shape of the profile is just a
two-dimensional shape, and what a sweep
| | 02:08 | means is it's going to extrude that two-
dimensional shape along the length of the wall.
| | 02:13 | So if I were to click Apply right now
and accept all the defaults, you'll see a
| | 02:17 | square appear down here
at the bottom of our wall.
| | 02:20 | And that's because if you read through
all the other settings here, that's where
| | 02:23 | it's telling it to position it.
| | 02:25 | Now if you open up the Profile list,
there will be more choices here, potentially,
| | 02:30 | depending on what you
have loaded in your project.
| | 02:33 | If the shape that you're looking for
is not listed here, there is a Load
| | 02:39 | Profile button in the dialog and you
can go out to your hard drive and load in
| | 02:43 | other profile families.
| | 02:45 | If you're not sure what a profile is
or how to create one, then you can take
| | 02:49 | a look at the movies in the Revit Family
Editor Training Series, here on lynda.com.
| | 02:55 | So in this case I've already got the
profile that we need loaded into this file
| | 02:59 | to save us a little bit of time. And so
I am going to scroll down here, and it's
| | 03:03 | towards the bottom. There is some wall
sweeps here for CMU, and there's everything
| | 03:08 | from one block to six blocks.
| | 03:11 | So depending on how tall you want your
CMU band to be down at the base of the
| | 03:16 | wall, you could choose any number of these.
| | 03:17 | I am going to choose the tallest
one here, 6 Blocks. Select that.
| | 03:22 | And again, along the way, if you want
to just simply click Apply, that can be
| | 03:25 | helpful for you to see how things are changing.
| | 03:28 | So notice that the height of
that box just stretched up.
| | 03:32 | The next thing is, do we want this just
applied to the outside of the brick, or do
| | 03:36 | we want to actually start
shifting it to the thickness of the wall?
| | 03:39 | And it seems to me that what we would
want to do here is first of all click OK,
| | 03:45 | come into this preview, zoom it up--
| | 03:48 | unfortunately you can't do this
while you're in the sweeps box--
| | 03:51 | But zoom it up nice and close.
| | 03:52 | Then I'll return to the sweep box,
and now we'll really be able to see what's
| | 03:56 | going on as we are working.
| | 03:58 | So you've got ways that you can shift this
thing in all three dimensions: x, y, or z.
| | 04:04 | The Distance--I just put in
a number here and apply it--
| | 04:09 | is actually the distance
along the two vertically.
| | 04:12 | Putting in a positive number will move
it up the height of the wall; putting a
| | 04:16 | negative number would drop it down.
| | 04:17 | So obviously distance is not
what I wanted. Set that back to 0.
| | 04:23 | Offset actually shifts it
within the thickness of the wall.
| | 04:27 | So let me try 4 inches here and apply it,
| | 04:32 | and you'll see that that
actually shifted it away from the wall.
| | 04:35 | Sometimes you have to do a little trial
and error and try a negative number, and
| | 04:39 | that shifts it within the wall.
| | 04:41 | Now I did 4 inches, and what you can
see is if I really wanted to match up
| | 04:45 | perfectly with the brick, remember--if
I move this box out of the way--that the
| | 04:49 | brick's thickness is actually 3 and 5/8.
| | 04:52 | So, if you wanted to be precise,
instead of 4 inches, put in 3 and 5/8 inches here
| | 05:00 | and then apply that and now it
will be nice and flush with that edge.
| | 05:05 | Setback we can't see in the preview.
| | 05:08 | Setback would be along the length of
the wall, and using a positive or negative
| | 05:12 | number, you could actually shift this
in or out along the ends of the wall.
| | 05:16 | So I am not going to be
able to demonstrate that one.
| | 05:19 | Cuts Wall is a handy feature because
that's actually going to cut the brick
| | 05:23 | here so that we don't have two
materials on top of each other.
| | 05:26 | And making it cut-able is also a
useful feature, because if you put a door in
| | 05:31 | this wall, you're going to want the door to be
able to cut a hole through this masonry band.
| | 05:36 | Finally, the settings I skipped over
is you're measuring from either the base
| | 05:40 | or the top. Here with the distance,
we were measuring from the base.
| | 05:43 | You're measuring from either the
interior or exterior side. Exterior side made
| | 05:47 | sense, so I didn't need to change that.
And if necessary, you can actually flip it,
| | 05:52 | and when you do, you can see that
it'll flip around the insertion point.
| | 05:56 | And then finally, you can
assign it to a material.
| | 06:00 | So don't let the name CMU 8 Blocks
fool you into thinking that it's already
| | 06:06 | assigned to that material.
| | 06:07 | All it means is the size of this
sweep is sized to match the blocks.
| | 06:13 | But if you wanted to actually use that
material, you have to come down here and
| | 06:17 | assign one appropriate material to that.
| | 06:19 | I am going to do Concrete Masonry Units -
Split Face, and then let's click OK here.
| | 06:25 | And you could see that when I OK,
because of the cut-able feature, it actually
| | 06:30 | cut out the brick in its way, and it's now
basically merged in and is part of the wall.
| | 06:35 | I'll click OK and one more time, and you'll
see that actually get applied to every
| | 06:43 | instance of the wall because we
applied that as a type-based sweep.
| | 06:49 | The alternative way that you can create a
sweep is to create what we call a host sweep.
| | 06:54 | Frankly, I don't know. That's what they
were called traditionally in Revit, and
| | 06:56 | maybe they have a new name for it now.
| | 06:57 | The reason I say that is because when
I open up the Wall dropdown here, they
| | 07:02 | call it wall sweep here, but we've
always referred to these things as host
| | 07:05 | sweeps in the past.
| | 07:06 | So wall sweep, host sweep.
| | 07:08 | But when I choose this tool here, you
will have a dropdown list here with choices.
| | 07:14 | And the main difference between the
host sweep approach is that you're
| | 07:20 | creating a separate object.
| | 07:22 | So let me just show you here the behavior
on screen before I actually edit the type.
| | 07:28 | Notice that if I was doing this wall
sweep trim here and I clicked, it would
| | 07:32 | actually create a trim board
along the length of that wall.
| | 07:36 | I can continue to add additional walls
to it, until I click this button right
| | 07:42 | here, which says to restart the sweep.
| | 07:45 | When I do that then you could see
I could begin adding another one.
| | 07:49 | So the first one that you create
actually sets the height of the sweep, and then
| | 07:54 | each subsequent click will
stay connected to that first one.
| | 07:59 | Notice also that if you click in a
location where there happens to be openings,
| | 08:03 | it'll start and stop around those openings.
| | 08:06 | Finally, there's another button here
for Horizontal or Vertical, so you can
| | 08:10 | actually create these trim boards
in the vertical direction as well.
| | 08:15 | Now, if you want your own shape, like
maybe I want to put a cap on the top
| | 08:20 | of that masonry down there at the bottom,
then I can choose Restart. Click Edit Type.
| | 08:25 | I am going to duplicate one of my
existing sweeps, and I am going to call this
| | 08:31 | Stone Cap, and come down here, and I am
going to find the profile item, and I am
| | 08:38 | going to open up the list, and there is that
same list of profiles that we saw a moment ago.
| | 08:44 | So you can use exactly the same profiles
to do a host sweep or to do an integral
| | 08:49 | wall sweep. And I'm going to use
a Sill Precast: 8" Wide here.
| | 08:56 | You can assign it to a material, such
as Precast Concrete, and here you have a
| | 09:05 | subcategory of Walls.
| | 09:06 | Now this is probably one of my favorite
features of the host sweep and the main
| | 09:13 | reason that I wanted to show you both methods.
| | 09:16 | When you create the sweep as an integral
part of the wall you cannot turn it on
| | 09:22 | or off independent of the wall.
| | 09:25 | But if you do it as a host sweep, you
get to assign the subcategory of the Walls,
| | 09:30 | and the subcategory choices here are
things like Trim or None or Common Edges.
| | 09:35 | So I am going to let it
stay on the Trim subcategory.
| | 09:38 | I am going to click OK,
and then I'll come in here.
| | 09:41 | Let's change this back to Horizontal.
And I am going to add that to these walls here.
| | 09:47 | Let me just add it to a few of them, okay?
| | 09:48 | Let me cancel out of here.
| | 09:52 | Why is that important? Well, you zoom in,
| | 09:55 | you know, there it is. If I go to VG,
Visibility Graphics, scroll down, locate the
| | 10:02 | Wall subcategory and expand it, you're
going to see that Wall Sweeps - Trim is a
| | 10:07 | subcategory of Walls.
| | 10:09 | I can turn it off. Click OK. And if
we are trying to create a building
| | 10:15 | information model that serves the
needs of both construction documents and
| | 10:19 | rendering, if you plan your sweeps
carefully, if the only reason you're creating
| | 10:24 | the sweeps is for the high detailed
models and for the rendering models, then
| | 10:28 | this can be a way to manage that so
that in the views that don't need to see
| | 10:32 | those sweeps you simply hide that
subcategory, and in the views that do want
| | 10:36 | to see them you turn it back on.
| | 10:38 | Now if I was going to do that the
elephant in the room here is, well, it's
| | 10:42 | cutting a little notch out of my building.
| | 10:44 | I can re-create that profile, so that
rather than cutting into the building, it
| | 10:49 | actually sits flush to the
face and it wouldn't do that.
| | 10:52 | So again, with a little bit of planning,
you could actually use that feature as
| | 10:56 | an advantage to be able to eat your cake
and have it too, as the expression goes,
| | 11:03 | and be able to have the sweeps both in
the model for rendering and turned off
| | 11:09 | for the views that don't need them.
| | 11:11 | Now one last little tip here: another
nice feature of sweeps is you can actually
| | 11:16 | grip-edit them after they're created.
| | 11:18 | So the sweep doesn't actually have
to be the full length of the wall;
| | 11:22 | you can pull it back some by using those
little grips. And actually that works in
| | 11:27 | multisegment ones as well.
| | 11:29 | So sweeps are a great way to
add little details to your models.
| | 11:32 | You can do them both as an integral
part of the wall type or as a separate host
| | 11:37 | sweep that you click and place independently.
| | 11:39 | There are pros and cons to each,
and largely it comes down to a matter of
| | 11:43 | personal preference.
| | 11:44 | But this is a great way to start
adding some of those details and features
| | 11:47 | to the walls without having to go and
model them in some other really highly
| | 11:51 | detailed way.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Constructing wall profiles| 00:00 | As we continue to talk about ways
that you can use your walls as a modeling
| | 00:04 | tool, there is another really neat
feature of walls called Edit Profile.
| | 00:09 | With the Edit Profile feature you
can actually look at the wall head on in
| | 00:12 | elevation and change the shape of
the wall by just editing the sketch.
| | 00:17 | So what I have here on screen is a
file called Tower, and this is actually a
| | 00:21 | little adjunct to our office building--
| | 00:23 | it sort of sits off to the side--and
we're linking it in into that file.
| | 00:27 | Now if I rotate this 3D view, I want
to just show you the kind of finished
| | 00:33 | version. What we're going to do here is
just sort of make this little scalloped
| | 00:37 | edge at the top of the wall.
| | 00:38 | So you notice how this wall sort
swoops down a little bit? And then of course
| | 00:42 | this wall hasn't been done yet.
| | 00:44 | This one's just straight across.
| | 00:46 | So that's our final result.
| | 00:48 | This is our goal right here, and we
are going to use this one to create it.
| | 00:53 | Now to help us along, I've created a
callout of the right elevation. This is
| | 00:58 | the right side of the building here,
and this callout is just zoomed in on the
| | 01:03 | top portion of the right elevation.
And you can see that straight across top
| | 01:07 | edge of the wall there.
| | 01:09 | We're going to select this wall
and start modifying its profile.
| | 01:12 | So I'd simply select it. Up here on the
Ribbon, we have an Edit Profile button,
| | 01:17 | so we'll go ahead and click that.
| | 01:19 | That will take us into Sketch mode,
and you'll see a purple line around where the
| | 01:25 | outline of the wall currently is.
| | 01:27 | Then using any of the normal sketch
tools, you can just come in here and draw
| | 01:32 | the shape that you want to have.
| | 01:34 | So this one is going to be pretty simple.
Maybe I'll go about 2 feet off the end
| | 01:38 | there, come over here.
| | 01:41 | Now it's not giving me the dimension
I want over here, so I'll just get it
| | 01:44 | close, right about there, about 2 feet off the
other end, and then shape how much curve I want.
| | 01:51 | Now what I usually like to do is
zoom this down a little bit and watch
| | 01:56 | that dimension up there.
| | 01:58 | I'm not a big fan of dimensions
with really long ridiculous fractions,
| | 02:03 | so I like to round these numbers off as
much as possible to a nice clean whole number.
| | 02:07 | So right now that's about the curve I want,
and the dimension reads 12 foot 7 and some change.
| | 02:13 | I am going to pick a nice round number
in that vicinity. What about 12 foot 6?
| | 02:19 | If you just start typing, it
will go right into the radius.
| | 02:22 | When I press Enter, watch the curve.
| | 02:25 | You can hardly tell the
difference in the shape of the curve.
| | 02:27 | So we made the radius about an inch
and a half less than it was, and it
| | 02:31 | still looks pretty good.
| | 02:33 | So that's just one thing that I like to
do when I am drawing curves, because I
| | 02:37 | like my curves to be a lot more rational.
| | 02:39 | I don't like those crazy fractions.
| | 02:41 | I am going to use the Split tool, with
the Delete inter-segment option, and I
| | 02:46 | will split from here over to here.
| | 02:50 | You have to create an enclosed
sketch, so make sure that everything is
| | 02:54 | touching end to end.
| | 02:55 | When you click Finish here, Revit will
tell you if you didn't achieve that, and
| | 03:00 | you can go back in and finish, and there it is.
| | 03:02 | So let's go back to the 3D view, Overall Axon,
and there is our finished edge right there.
| | 03:10 | So the Edit Profile is just a real
convenient and easy way to go into a wall,
| | 03:15 | get a sketch of the overall shape of
the wall, and then you modify that sketch
| | 03:19 | and change the shape to anything
that you need to suit your design.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Learning modeling tips| 00:00 | Walls may be the most common and basic
element in a typical Revit project, but
| | 00:04 | there are many other common
elements that we use as well.
| | 00:07 | Among those are roofs and floors and
ceilings and topography and any number
| | 00:11 | of component families.
| | 00:13 | In this movie, we will look at
general tips to help develop the overall
| | 00:16 | modeling strategy that we use for the
various elements that we intend to render
| | 00:20 | in our Revit project.
| | 00:21 | Now the first thing I would
like to talk about is topography.
| | 00:25 | My building is floating.
| | 00:28 | You can actually see the foundation
down below here. Clearly highlight
| | 00:34 | those elements and it would be very
difficult to render this view with any
| | 00:40 | kind of believability.
| | 00:41 | If I go to a nicely composed camera
right here, we have got a nice view.
| | 00:46 | We've even turned on the shadows and
the shading--both topics that we'll talk
| | 00:50 | about in future movies.
| | 00:52 | But again, the building just sort of
looks like it's hanging there in space and
| | 00:55 | just sort of floating.
| | 00:56 | Don't overlook the necessity of
giving your building a ground plane.
| | 01:01 | The easiest way to give it a
ground plane is to just simply create a
| | 01:04 | toposurface object.
| | 01:06 | You can find these objects on
the Massing & Site tab in Revit.
| | 01:10 | Of course working in the
perspective view you can't create them,
| | 01:14 | so let me jump over here to a site
plan view. And we are zoomed out a little
| | 01:17 | far so, let me just kind of zoom in
here on the model. And we could certainly
| | 01:21 | work directly in our project file if
we wanted and go to the Massing & Site
| | 01:26 | tab and click on the Toposurface tool and
actually place a topographic surface point by point.
| | 01:32 | I am not actually going to do that in
this model because, number one, it would
| | 01:38 | be preferable to create your
toposurface typically in a separate file and then
| | 01:42 | link it in--that would be the more
common practice--and also, when you create
| | 01:47 | the toposurface, even though it's
possible to create it point by point, what's
| | 01:51 | more likely is that you'll have some
sort of CAD file that came from your civil
| | 01:54 | engineer, and you can use the contours in
that file to create a topographic surface.
| | 01:59 | We actually run through this
process in the Revit Essential Training
| | 02:03 | class, so you, again, can feel free
to refer to that for steps on how to
| | 02:07 | actually create the toposurface.
| | 02:10 | So I have one of these files built already.
| | 02:12 | I am going to go to Open. And it's in
the Exercise Files in the Links folder, and
| | 02:19 | it's called Building Site.
| | 02:21 | Let's just go ahead and take a look at that.
| | 02:23 | I want to point out a few objects in
here that you might want to consider when
| | 02:27 | you're building this toposurface.
| | 02:29 | So, of course, there's the surface
itself, which is this object right here.
| | 02:34 | Now originally that was created as a
single unified surface, and you will see
| | 02:39 | that it's actually broken into
separate zones and regions here.
| | 02:44 | So what this allows me to do is, if you
select a toposurface, you can actually
| | 02:49 | edit it, to edit the points. And if
you go to the Massing & Site tab, you can
| | 02:54 | actually use these Split Surface tool,
Merge Surface tool, and Subregion tools,
| | 02:59 | depending on what you're trying to do.
And in this case Split Region was used to
| | 03:03 | break out the roads from
the rest of the surface.
| | 03:07 | If you wanted to create an area in
the middle that was paved or possibly an
| | 03:11 | area that was like a small pond or
something like that, then you could use the
| | 03:15 | Subregion tool. And you simply select the new
surface and apply a different material to it.
| | 03:22 | Grass was applied here, and over
here on the roads, asphalt is used.
| | 03:27 | That's just going to help when you render
this to make it a little bit more believable.
| | 03:31 | Now the other feature that you've got
here is a building pad, and the building
| | 03:36 | pad is used to essentially excavate
from your toposurface. So you trace the
| | 03:42 | shape of your building and you build
one of these pads and you give it a Height
| | 03:47 | Offset, and it will
actually carve down and excavate.
| | 03:50 | Now the most interesting object in
here is these trees, believe it or not.
| | 03:55 | These are a special kind of family
called an RPC Tree. And RPC content is from a
| | 04:01 | company called arcvision.com,
and they've provided some basic content directly
| | 04:08 | in the box with Revit.
| | 04:09 | So these trees that I have here come
with Revit, but if you want to visit
| | 04:14 | ArcVision's web site, they actually have
several other items for sale. But there
| | 04:17 | is a family template under New >
Family where you can create an RPC Family.
| | 04:25 | And I'm just going to open this
existing tree real quick and show you.
| | 04:30 | All that RPC Family does is kind of like a
cardboard cutout, sort of like a stand-in.
| | 04:37 | But the interesting thing about it is
it's got these two Appearance settings
| | 04:42 | here under Identity Data and if I edit
this, there are some settings over here
| | 04:48 | that we can configure. And then this
one right here, this is the library that
| | 04:53 | ArcVision has provided to Revit and
that ships out of the box with the product.
| | 04:57 | So we actually have all of these trees
that we can choose from, to swap in over
| | 05:02 | here. And the way that an RPC content
works is, somebody has gone out and taken
| | 05:06 | several photographs walking around the tree.
| | 05:09 | So rather than modeling a tree in 3D
and actually modeling all the leaves and
| | 05:14 | branches, they have actually taken
photographs all the way around, and then it
| | 05:18 | orients to your camera view in your
orientation, and when you render, it
| | 05:22 | actually shows you the tree
instead of this little cardboard cutout.
| | 05:27 | So don't let the simplicity
of this little thing fool you.
| | 05:30 | What's going to happen here--
is let me close this file--
| | 05:34 | when I do a render, and I'll just render
a region around one of these trees--and
| | 05:45 | let me just Render and Draft.
| | 05:47 | So when we render this, it's actually
going to swap in that photograph of a
| | 05:53 | tree, rather than, well, Draft, you can
see all the grass that's kind of in the way.
| | 05:58 | Maybe Draft wasn't the greatest choice.
| | 06:00 | Let's try Low here.
| | 06:03 | You can sort of see the little darker
blotch right there for the tree, but it
| | 06:07 | actually creates a real
and slightly better tree.
| | 06:10 | It actually shows the photograph of the
tree in place of that stand-in, that 3D object.
| | 06:17 | So you can populate your site file
with trees or other entourage that you may
| | 06:24 | want to have in the background.
And if they are RPCs, they are very light-
| | 06:29 | weight, because they're
not full-blown 3D geometry.
| | 06:32 | So let me close this file.
| | 06:34 | I am not going to save any changes I
made there. And then I am going to come
| | 06:38 | down here and Reload that link.
That brings that site file back in. And let's take
| | 06:45 | a look at my Perspective here, and you
can see now that the scene looks much
| | 06:50 | better, because I have a ground plane.
| | 06:52 | You can see some of those trees
peeking in over here and over here. And if I
| | 06:56 | were to render this scene, like I
said, those trees would swap out.
| | 07:00 | Some other things I want to just point
out to you real quick here is when you
| | 07:04 | build your model with other Revit components,
there is little details that you can do.
| | 07:09 | It might be easier to
show you in the axonometric.
| | 07:12 | We just sort of zoom in here.
| | 07:14 | You can add fascia boards to the roofs, for
example, to give them a little bit more detail.
| | 07:20 | You can create floor slabs and so
forth to represent patios and other areas
| | 07:26 | where you want people to stand.
| | 07:27 | So you want to think about these things
when you're looking from that vantage point.
| | 07:31 | Now if you're only concerned with the
rendering from a certain angle, you can
| | 07:36 | look at the angle that you're
interested in, and say, oh, yeah, I need
| | 07:38 | something out here to be believable
that there's actually some sort of a
| | 07:43 | walkway there. And maybe you didn't
need that in your two-dimensional floor
| | 07:47 | plans and elevations, but now that
you're doing a rendering, you just put in a
| | 07:50 | quick floor slab there to represent that.
| | 07:52 | As you're composing the rendering,
there is going to be this back-and-forth
| | 07:56 | between setting up the composition but
then going back and making adjustments
| | 08:00 | to the model. And there is lots of
little techniques and tricks, whether it's
| | 08:04 | sweeps or adding reveals and gutters
and these little slabs or just putting in
| | 08:09 | RPC Trees to make the whole
rendering look a little bit more believable.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Displaying imported geometry| 00:00 | Let's quickly address the
subject of imported geometry.
| | 00:03 | We've spent a lot of time in the last
several movies modeling things directly in
| | 00:07 | Revit and talking about tips on how
to enhance the model in Revit for the
| | 00:11 | purposes of rendering.
| | 00:12 | There are going to be plenty of times
when you're going to have geometry that's
| | 00:15 | created in a non-Revit file format.
| | 00:17 | Maybe its DWG file; maybe it's a SketchUp file.
| | 00:21 | They come from a variety of different sources.
| | 00:23 | Maybe you got it from online;
| | 00:24 | maybe you've had it for long
time in your own office library.
| | 00:28 | If you want to bring in items from
outside of Revit and use them in your
| | 00:32 | projects, you can do this, but you
are going to have very limited control
| | 00:36 | over that imported item, depending on
the source of the file, and what the
| | 00:40 | file format allows for.
| | 00:42 | So what I want to do here is just do a really
quick example of bringing in a SketchUp file.
| | 00:46 | So for this example I have borrowed a
SketchUp file from the Google SketchUp 8
| | 00:50 | Essential Training here at
lynda.com, and it's just a little grouping of
| | 00:54 | furniture. And we are going to bring
that into our lobby here, and I'm looking in
| | 00:58 | the view called 3D Section at Lobby.
| | 01:01 | And let's just spin this view around
a little bit, give ourselves a look.
| | 01:05 | Maybe we can fit in some
furniture in that location right there.
| | 01:11 | We could try and add it directly in the
3D view, but you might not get it in in
| | 01:15 | the correct height if you do that.
| | 01:17 | So I am going to run over here
and open up my Level 1 floor plan.
| | 01:22 | I am going to do a W+T for
Window Tile, and that'll put the two
| | 01:25 | views side by side.
| | 01:27 | And just sort of zoom in a
little bit so that we can see.
| | 01:32 | Well, this is that general area here
in the lobby that we are looking at.
| | 01:35 | Let's make sure that the plan view is active.
| | 01:37 | We will do Link CAD.
| | 01:40 | In the Exercise folder, there is
a Furniture.skp SketchUp file.
| | 01:45 | If you're not seeing that file, make sure that
you set the Files of type to SketchUp Files.
| | 01:50 | There are other formats that are supported.
| | 01:52 | I am going to leave all the default
settings here, and for the Positioning, I want
| | 01:57 | to use a Manual point.
| | 01:58 | You can use the Origin or Base point.
| | 02:00 | I am just going to set it to Manual-
Center, just to make sure that I'm right in
| | 02:04 | the center of the grouping,
and it's going to place it at Level 1.
| | 02:06 | And I'll go ahead and click Open,
and it will come in on my cursor.
| | 02:12 | You can kind of see my cursor is in the
center of the grouping there. And let's
| | 02:16 | try placing it maybe right
in this general location.
| | 02:19 | I don't want it to snap to
anything, so will just put it here.
| | 02:22 | Now, Revit will give me a little
warning message to tell me that some of the
| | 02:27 | ACIS objects could not be imported.
So this is actually one of the things I
| | 02:31 | wanted you to see about
bringing in external objects.
| | 02:35 | Even though Rivet supports SketchUp
files and Revit supports AutoCAD files and
| | 02:41 | so on, depending on how the geometry
was created in those files, it may or may
| | 02:46 | not be able to bring in all of the
data associated with those objects.
| | 02:49 | Now in this case, if you look at
my 3D view, I am seeing something.
| | 02:54 | So perhaps I'm okay and I want to
continue with bringing in this import, but in
| | 02:59 | some cases when you get this
warning, you might see nothing at all.
| | 03:02 | It might actually not bring in anything.
| | 03:04 | So you are going to have to spend a
little time understanding the source of the
| | 03:08 | files that you're getting and whether
or not the geometry is actually usable in
| | 03:12 | Revit, and just really run some tests--
| | 03:14 | that's the best way to figure that out.
| | 03:16 | Once it comes in, the other thing I
wanted you to see was, if I select it, there
| | 03:21 | are really no properties, either here
on the Properties palette or under Edit
| | 03:26 | Type, that I can manipulate to change
the way this furniture looks or what
| | 03:32 | materials it's using and so on.
| | 03:34 | If I'm satisfied with the way it came in
from SketchUp, then I am okay. But what
| | 03:39 | I wanted you to understand was, yes, we
can bring in outside geometry but with
| | 03:44 | certain limitations.
| | 03:46 | It may or may not be the best choice
in all cases depending on the kind of
| | 03:50 | rendering that you're trying to create.
| | 03:51 | Of course, the only other alternative
though is to start creating the furniture
| | 03:55 | in native Revit geometry,
and that may not be practical either.
| | 03:58 | So you'll have to weigh both of those
decisions pretty carefully as you compose
| | 04:02 | your final scene and get
yourself ready for rendering.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using custom components| 00:00 | Throughout the course of this chapter,
we have discussed many issues related to
| | 00:03 | not only just modeling,
but modeling strategically.
| | 00:06 | We have looked at lots of
techniques--wall techniques, techniques for
| | 00:09 | adding details to roofs.
| | 00:11 | We've added sweeps.
| | 00:12 | We have talked about adding a
ground plane using Toposurface.
| | 00:15 | We've even looked at bringing in
outside geometry, such as a SketchUp model, and
| | 00:20 | using it within our project.
| | 00:21 | Sometimes, however, you just need to
build the item, and there's a lot of ways you
| | 00:26 | can approach doing so.
| | 00:28 | One way is you can certainly go into the
Family Editor and you can create a custom item.
| | 00:33 | We've got an entire training series
here on lynda.com devoted to just that. And
| | 00:38 | in that series we actually created
this parametrically driven brick arch.
| | 00:43 | So I encourage you to take a look at
those tutorials if that's of interest to you.
| | 00:48 | In this movie we are going to look at
something a little bit simpler than that.
| | 00:51 | Up here at the top of our scalloped wall,
I'd like to add a little more detail.
| | 00:56 | It sort of seems unfinished right now.
| | 00:58 | The wall just sort of ends,
and it's just doesn't quite look right.
| | 01:02 | I want to put a masonry cap up there at the top.
| | 01:06 | So to create this, I need to just build
it, because I'm not likely to go out and
| | 01:11 | find anything that would fit that situation.
| | 01:14 | It's a one-off item that fits
specifically this design situation.
| | 01:19 | So that means I need to create it,
and I need to create it right here.
| | 01:22 | We call this in Revit an in-place family.
| | 01:26 | So let's go ahead and take a look at
creating an in-place family for this wall
| | 01:30 | cap along the top of this wall edge.
| | 01:33 | I am going to go over here to the
Component button on the Home tab and click the
| | 01:39 | dropdown, and at the bottom of the
dropdown you will see Model In-Place, and this
| | 01:43 | allows you to create an in-place family.
| | 01:46 | The first question Revit will want to
know is what category you want to assign
| | 01:51 | to your in-place family.
| | 01:53 | Now if you've done the Family Editor
training series, you know that we're limited
| | 01:57 | to certain categories that we
can create in the Family Editor.
| | 02:00 | So you might actually notice here
than that with an in-place family
| | 02:05 | the list is a little more extensive.
We can actually create in-place families for
| | 02:10 | some of the categories that are
actually system families, like roofs, like
| | 02:14 | floors, like walls.
| | 02:16 | We can actually choose a system category
to assign to this custom in-place family.
| | 02:23 | One of the reasons for that is in-place
families become a part of your project.
| | 02:27 | You can't pull them out of the
project and share them with other projects.
| | 02:31 | You can't save them as RFA files.
| | 02:33 | So they are kind of a one-off created in place--
thus the name--right here in this project.
| | 02:38 | Now for me, I think Walls is a
suitable category for this item, because I'm
| | 02:43 | going to associate with the top of the walls,
| | 02:44 | so I am going to go ahead
and choose that category.
| | 02:47 | It will then ask me for a name, and I am
going to call this Wall Precast Cap. And
| | 02:54 | then my view window will gray out.
| | 02:57 | It's kind of like being in Sketch mode.
And if you've ever been in the Family
| | 03:00 | Editor before and you look at your
Ribbon, you'll notice that it starts to
| | 03:03 | look pretty familiar.
| | 03:04 | We are getting a Family-Editor-type ribbon.
| | 03:07 | We have got Extrusion and Blend
and Revolve and all the usual shapes.
| | 03:11 | The best way to create the form that I
want to create--I want it to follow the
| | 03:15 | top edge of the wall here--is to use
a Sweep, because that's real easy to
| | 03:19 | accomplish with the Sweep form.
| | 03:21 | So I will choose Sweep.
| | 03:23 | And then over here I need
to designate the path first.
| | 03:26 | I have two ways to do that:
| | 03:28 | I can sketch it, or I can pick the path.
| | 03:31 | Pick the path is going to work really well here,
| | 03:33 | so I am going to choose that.
| | 03:35 | It defaults to Pick 3D Edges, and I can
simply select the 3D Edges of the tops
| | 03:43 | of these wall objects.
| | 03:45 | Here it only selected a little part of the
wall, so I not going to select that other one;
| | 03:49 | I will trim that up later.
| | 03:51 | I just want one sketch line for each shape.
| | 03:54 | So you can see some of those little gaps
that it's leaving there. And click Modify.
| | 04:01 | To clean up those gaps, I am
just going to use the Trim tool.
| | 04:04 | I prefer to have this be a continuous
object rather than several small pieces.
| | 04:10 | This green shape here is the location
of the profile, and what you need here is
| | 04:18 | to draw the shape that you
want to sweep along this path.
| | 04:22 | Now I am done drawing the path,
| | 04:24 | so I am going to click the green check
box here to finish it. And then I'm still
| | 04:29 | in the Modify Sweep.
| | 04:30 | I can't finish yet, because I need to
draw the shape now that I want to push
| | 04:34 | along that path, and I can do that in two ways:
| | 04:37 | I can either draw it by sketch,
or I can do it by profile.
| | 04:40 | Now there's already a profile here in this file.
| | 04:43 | There are actually several profiles.
| | 04:44 | We have got handrail profiles
and crown moldings, and so on.
| | 04:48 | And there is actually a
series of parapet caps in here.
| | 04:52 | Parapet Cap 14 through 26
were actually built-in.
| | 04:56 | They come with Revit, so that's a
profile that you can click Load Profile and
| | 05:02 | find in your out-of-the-box library.
| | 05:05 | What I did was I just did Edit Type
and Duplicate and I created a slightly
| | 05:09 | smaller version of that.
| | 05:11 | So I just changed the width down to
this 8-inch-wide one, and I have provided it
| | 05:15 | here in the exercise file for you.
| | 05:17 | So I am just going to go ahead and choose that.
| | 05:19 | If I zoom in, you'll see that that has
been sized at 8 inches to overlap the top
| | 05:24 | edge of the wall just a little bit.
| | 05:26 | You have some values over here. So if you
don't like where it's positioned, you can flip it,
| | 05:32 | you can rotate it, and you
can shift it in X and Y.
| | 05:35 | In this case, because I planned it for
the insertion point that was built into
| | 05:40 | the profile, we don't have to do any of that.
| | 05:43 | So all that remains is to click Finish,
and it will sweep that shape all the way
| | 05:48 | around the top edge of the wall.
| | 05:50 | I'll kind of zoom around there and look at it.
| | 05:54 | Now with the object still selected,
we can assign a material to it.
| | 05:58 | I will go ahead and click
that little button right there.
| | 06:01 | I'll make this Precast Concrete.
Click OK. And then up here on the Ribbon I
| | 06:08 | am going to click the Finish model button,
and that gives me my wall cap at the top.
| | 06:13 | Now if you hadn't noticed already, the
view that we were in has all of the stuff
| | 06:19 | above this portion of the tower hidden.
| | 06:23 | So let's just go back to the Overall
Axon, and we can see the view with our cap
| | 06:30 | in context with the rest of the tower.
| | 06:34 | If you want, you could repeat a similar
exercise to add little caps on top of
| | 06:38 | these columns here, but I'll leave
that to you as a practice exercise if
| | 06:42 | you're so inclined.
| | 06:43 | An in-place family allows you to
create a family using all the Family Editor
| | 06:49 | tools, but to create it directly in the
project environment using the context of
| | 06:55 | the surrounding geometry of your
project to help you build the form so that it
| | 06:59 | fits exactly the unique situation that you have.
| | 07:02 | It can be a very powerful way to add
these finishing touches and details to
| | 07:06 | your model, and gives that rendering
just that extra bit of realism when you
| | 07:10 | generate the rendering.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. MaterialsIntroducing materials| 00:00 | Materials define the appearance and
structural properties of the elements in
| | 00:03 | your building model.
| | 00:03 | Revit provides many materials that you
can use as is, or you can create your own.
| | 00:08 | In this movie we will look at an
overview of the Revit materials and the
| | 00:12 | Materials dialog user interface.
| | 00:14 | So just what is a material?
| | 00:16 | Well, a material defines all aspects of
a physical substance in your projects.
| | 00:21 | Materials are actually common to most
Autodesk products, and there's been an
| | 00:25 | effort over the last several years by
Autodesk to unify materials across the
| | 00:29 | product line, so a lot of what we
talk about here materials in Revit would
| | 00:33 | actually apply in some degree to other
Autodesk products like 3ds Max or AutoCAD or so on.
| | 00:39 | Anything that describes a physical
substance, what it looks like, what it's
| | 00:44 | texture is, what it's made out of, what
kind of structural characteristics it has,
| | 00:49 | that would all fall under
the heading of materials.
| | 00:51 | I am in a default empty
project file here in Revit;
| | 00:53 | I just loaded up the default template, so you
could do the same if you want to follow along.
| | 00:57 | And I am going to go to the Manage
tab and click on the Materials button.
| | 01:03 | The Materials dialog that comes up is
organized into two panes, so actually you
| | 01:07 | can use this Properties button down
here at the bottom to collapse the
| | 01:11 | right-hand pane if you like,
but I am going to leave it open.
| | 01:14 | The right-hand pane has four tabs--
| | 01:15 | we're going to briefly look at each one--
and the left-hand pane has the list of
| | 01:19 | all the materials that
are currently in the file.
| | 01:21 | Now we've got everything from
acoustical ceiling tiles to insulation materials,
| | 01:26 | masonry, different kinds of metals,
plaster, roofing materials, all the way down
| | 01:32 | to bottom, with some various kinds of wood.
| | 01:35 | Pretty good selection to get started.
| | 01:37 | Let's take a look at some of the
settings that we have in each of the materials.
| | 01:41 | I am going to start with the stuff that
actually doesn't pertain to rendering.
| | 01:44 | So that's going to include the Identity
tab first, which is a lot of text and
| | 01:50 | descriptive information that
you can assign to a material.
| | 01:53 | We can give it a description,
comments, keywords, manufacturer, model number,
| | 01:57 | any kind of information that you
might want to track in a schedule or in a
| | 02:00 | project report of some kind like that,
give it Keynotes and so on. So all of
| | 02:04 | that information could be
filled in if you so choose.
| | 02:07 | Over on the other side
we have the Structure tab.
| | 02:10 | The Structure tab will list out
structural properties if the material that you
| | 02:15 | have selected actually
includes those properties.
| | 02:17 | So at the moment here
Acoustical Ceiling Tile does not have any
| | 02:21 | structural properties.
| | 02:22 | Let's pick on one that's more likely
to have some structural properties,
| | 02:25 | something like
Cast-in-Place Lightweight Concrete.
| | 02:28 | Now over here you'll see all this
information about load carrying capabilities
| | 02:33 | and shear modulus and all kinds of other
information that would be useful to the
| | 02:36 | structural engineer.
| | 02:38 | If you're like me and your background
is architecture, you are probably not
| | 02:40 | terribly interested in all of this stuff;
| | 02:42 | you'll probably leave that to
the structural engineer to decide.
| | 02:45 | But it's nice that Revit includes that
information, and so we can actually put
| | 02:49 | that information directly in our
materials where it really belongs, right?
| | 02:52 | If you're going to assign Concrete to
something, then you want the concrete
| | 02:55 | actually behave like concrete.
| | 02:58 | So that's Identity and Structure.
| | 03:00 | For the rest of this movie and for all
the movies in this chapter, we're going
| | 03:03 | to focus on the other two tabs
here: Graphics and Appearance.
| | 03:07 | Now again, I still have the Concrete
Cast-in-Place selected, and so the settings
| | 03:12 | over here pertain to that material.
| | 03:14 | Let me pick one that's a little easier
to--it has little bit of variance in it--
| | 03:19 | let's pick Masonry Brick.
| | 03:21 | What you find on the Graphics tab is
this is the overall graphics settings that
| | 03:25 | apply to all of the
orthographic views in your project.
| | 03:29 | Plans, sections, elevations, 3D views--
| | 03:32 | they all use the settings you see here.
| | 03:34 | If you're cutting through the material,
like in a plan or in a section, you are
| | 03:37 | going to see this diagonal
crosshatch, in this case for the brick.
| | 03:41 | If you're looking at the material, like
in elevation, you're looking right at the
| | 03:45 | surface, you are going to see the
brick pattern that you see right here.
| | 03:49 | If you're in a 3D view and you shade
the material--actually you can shade in
| | 03:53 | non-3D views as well--
| | 03:54 | but if you shade the view, it's
going to use this reddish color here to
| | 03:59 | indicate that it's brick.
| | 04:00 | So let's take a quick look.
| | 04:01 | I am going to OK out of here, go back
to the Home tab, click on the Wall tool.
| | 04:05 | Let me just open up the list here
and find a brick wall, like maybe this
| | 04:09 | Generic Brick. And I'll just draw a
little piece of brick wall and zoom in. And
| | 04:14 | because I'm in a plan view and we're
cutting through it, we're seeing that
| | 04:18 | diagonal crosshatch.
| | 04:19 | If I switch to an elevation view, like the
South Elevation, zoom in, and look right at it,
| | 04:25 | we're now seeing that hatch pattern.
| | 04:28 | If I create a 3D view and use the orbit
a little bit here, zoom in on it, we're
| | 04:33 | seeing that brick pattern.
| | 04:34 | If I come down here to the visual style
and change it to one of the shaded modes,
| | 04:40 | like Shaded or Consistent Colors,
it's going to show me that red color.
| | 04:44 | The red color will have the
hatch pattern superimposed on it,
| | 04:47 | so it's not one or the other.
| | 04:49 | The way that Revit decides whether to
show the hatch pattern is really with
| | 04:52 | your level of zoom.
| | 04:53 | Notice that if I start to zoom out, at
some point the hatch pattern disappears
| | 04:58 | because it would become too dense to show.
| | 05:00 | It's really related to the zoom level,
not the visual style that you have set.
| | 05:03 | I'll change this back to a hidden line.
| | 05:06 | So that's the Graphics tab.
| | 05:08 | Let's go back to Manage, click on
Materials, and we'll take look at
| | 05:12 | the Appearance tab.
| | 05:13 | The Appearance tab is all the settings
that we would use in a rendering and also
| | 05:18 | in the realistic visual style.
| | 05:21 | Realistic visual style is
something relatively new in Revit.
| | 05:23 | I honestly can't remember if it came in 2012
or 2011, but it's a relatively new feature.
| | 05:28 | And we can turn on the Appearance
settings of the materials in a 3D view.
| | 05:33 | So here in the background I
am looking at a hidden line.
| | 05:35 | If I went to realistic, it will actually
show me this brick texture right here.
| | 05:40 | Now this brick texture here is just
basically a photograph of some bricks, and
| | 05:44 | that's what we are going to see when
we do a rendering or when we use the
| | 05:47 | realistic visual style.
| | 05:49 | Now we are going to get into this tab
quite a bit more in the coming movies.
| | 05:53 | For now I'm just going to kind of do
an overview of just the general UI here.
| | 05:58 | At the top there's a Search feature, so
you could type in some search criteria.
| | 06:03 | It will run the search immediately.
| | 06:05 | Now if you want to clear the search, you
can just click this little X here, but
| | 06:09 | these are the appearances that include
brick in their description somewhere, so
| | 06:14 | that's the search feature.
| | 06:15 | Let me clear that search, and it goes
back to the complete list of appearances.
| | 06:19 | Down here at the bottom is the Autodesk Library.
| | 06:23 | It's got a little lock icon next to it.
| | 06:25 | So this library is built into the software.
| | 06:28 | This library is actually shared
by multiple Autodesk products,
| | 06:31 | so if you have any Autodesk product
installed that uses the Material Library,
| | 06:35 | you'll have the same list in
those other products as well.
| | 06:38 | And it's organized by overall
classifications of material--metal and ceramic
| | 06:42 | and brick and so on.
| | 06:44 | And we could use this to locate other
types of appearances that we want to apply
| | 06:49 | to the materials in our Revit project.
| | 06:51 | Now I want to kind of stress this here.
| | 06:52 | This gets a little confusing.
| | 06:54 | A material is the complete package.
| | 06:58 | If I go back to the Materials tab
here, this is my list of materials.
| | 07:02 | It includes Identity,
Graphics, Structure, and Appearance.
| | 07:08 | Appearance is a much more specialized thing.
| | 07:11 | Appearance is just the
rendering appearance of the material.
| | 07:15 | Try and keep that straight if you can,
because that can get confusing, because
| | 07:18 | the two words can
sometimes be used interchangeably.
| | 07:21 | I just want to point that
out to you as we go along here.
| | 07:23 | I am going to switch back over to
Graphics, go back to the Materials tab, just
| | 07:26 | show you a few more UI items
before we leave this dialog.
| | 07:30 | We also have a search feature up here--
not to be confused with the one in
| | 07:34 | the Appearance tab.
| | 07:35 | This works the same way, that it would
now search my list of materials rather
| | 07:40 | than my list of appearances.
| | 07:42 | So I am going to close that.
| | 07:44 | Down at the bottom, you may be surprised to
find that there's no way to create a new material.
| | 07:50 | You can duplicate an existing material,
but you can't actually create a new one from scratch.
| | 07:55 | It's kind of interesting.
| | 07:56 | So the way that you create a new
material in Revit is you start with one that's
| | 08:00 | similar to the one you want to create--maybe
I want a new kind of brick--I duplicate it.
| | 08:06 | I give that a name.
| | 08:07 | So in a way it's a lot like all other
things in Revit. Like, if you want to
| | 08:10 | create a new wall type, there is no new button;
| | 08:13 | you start with an existing
wall type and you click Duplicate.
| | 08:15 | So it's kind of the same here.
| | 08:18 | We can also rename them.
| | 08:20 | We can also delete them.
| | 08:21 | The materials organize all
aspects of an element's physical and
| | 08:25 | appearance characteristics.
| | 08:27 | They control how the elements look in
orthographic views, shaded views, 3D
| | 08:31 | views, and can even convey structural
characteristics to the elements in the building model.
| | 08:36 | This gives us a single location from
which to control and modify any aspect of
| | 08:41 | an element's appearance and behavior.
| | 08:43 | Materials allow us to display
elements in the model with a great deal of
| | 08:47 | photorealism, and this will be the
focus of the next several movies, as we
| | 08:51 | continue to explore the aspects of
materials and their importance to
| | 08:54 | rendering in Revit.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding material appearance| 00:00 | Autodesk continues to refine materials with
each of the last several releases of Revit.
| | 00:04 | The Appearance tab, for example, has
been completely redesigned in this release
| | 00:08 | and now uses property sets
to control render appearance.
| | 00:11 | This remains an active area of
development, however, and some of the features may
| | 00:15 | continue to change with each new release.
| | 00:17 | In this movie, we will dig a little
deeper into the Appearance tab and introduce
| | 00:21 | the concept of property sets.
| | 00:23 | So I am working in an empty project
created from the default template. And as we
| | 00:27 | saw the last movie, if we go to Manage
and we click on Materials, there is a
| | 00:32 | fairly extensive list of materials
that are included with the software.
| | 00:36 | Now again, I want to stress that.
| | 00:38 | Material and Appearance is not the same thing.
| | 00:42 | If you select the Materials dialog,
these are the actual Revit materials that
| | 00:46 | are available to the Revit project.
And again, a material includes all four of
| | 00:51 | these things: Identity,
Graphics, Appearance, and Structure.
| | 00:54 | Appearance is limited to just rendering.
| | 00:57 | That's what this material will look like
in rendering and in realistic visual style.
| | 01:03 | Appearance is controlled
by Appearance Property Sets.
| | 01:07 | So we have a material, which is the
overall container--contains lots of settings.
| | 01:11 | Among those are appearances.
| | 01:13 | Appearances control render
behavior, and then appearances can also be
| | 01:18 | controlled by property sets.
| | 01:20 | Let's dig a little deeper.
| | 01:22 | Suppose I had a brick selected and I
go over here to the Appearance tab and
| | 01:26 | click on the Appearance Property Sets.
| | 01:29 | The properties of this brick use a
Masonry template, includes an image here for
| | 01:36 | what the brick looks like, and they
have a relief pattern, which is a grayscale
| | 01:40 | version of this brick, that's used as a bump map.
| | 01:44 | A bump map gives the illusion
of some relief in the material.
| | 01:49 | It makes it appear to have some texture,
some high spots and some low spots.
| | 01:54 | So the black pixels in the image will
appear as high, and the white pixels in
| | 02:00 | the image will appear as low, and then the
shades of gray will be somewhere in between.
| | 02:04 | That's the general concept is that it
goes high to low between black and white,
| | 02:08 | and that gives the illusion of depth
when you're looking at this material.
| | 02:13 | So that's what the relief pattern does for you.
| | 02:16 | There are different kinds of materials
that are available, different kinds of
| | 02:19 | templates that are used.
| | 02:21 | If I look over here on the Property
Set Side, there is a Create Property Set
| | 02:26 | dropdown. And if I open that up, you
can see a list of all the templates that
| | 02:31 | are available to the
software, and these are built-in.
| | 02:34 | Autodesk provides these
in their Material Library.
| | 02:37 | But they've got different kinds of
property sets that are available to each
| | 02:41 | overall classification of material.
| | 02:44 | So, brick is defined a little
differently than wood, which is a defined a little
| | 02:48 | differently than liquid.
| | 02:49 | So this is what the property sets are
intended to help us do, is to get the
| | 02:55 | overall characteristics of the object
established, and that makes different kinds
| | 03:00 | of settings available.
| | 03:02 | Now to really understand this, let's
take a look at the Autodesk Library.
| | 03:07 | And now a word of caution:
| | 03:08 | this Appearance tab interface in the
property sets can be a little bit challenging.
| | 03:14 | If you come here through the Materials
dialog, just be aware of a couple of things.
| | 03:19 | Number one, if I select a material over
here, like, "Oh, this looks interesting,
| | 03:24 | Metallic Paint, what is that?"
| | 03:25 | and I click on it, and then I say, "Oh,
that looks like an interesting material,
| | 03:29 | and I click on that,"
| | 03:30 | two things have happened.
| | 03:32 | One, Flaked Satin-Blue paint has
just been added to my current project.
| | 03:38 | It just jumped up here to the list.
| | 03:40 | Number two, because I came into this
dialog from the Masonry-Brick material, if I
| | 03:47 | click back over here to Materials, I
have actually just changed the appearance
| | 03:52 | of Masonry-Brick to use
this metallic blue paint.
| | 03:56 | I am going to click OK
here and show you what I mean.
| | 03:59 | Let's add a wall, a brick wall.
| | 04:03 | Let's go to a 3D view, and let's turn on Shaded.
| | 04:09 | It doesn't look like any
thing has happened so far, right?
| | 04:11 | We are still seeing red and brick pattern.
| | 04:14 | Well, remember, at this stage with
shading, we are only seeing the Graphics tab
| | 04:20 | of the Material dialog;
| | 04:21 | we are not seeing the Appearance tab yet.
| | 04:23 | What if I change this to Realistic?
| | 04:25 | Well, now you see how the color just
changed--let's see if can get this around to a
| | 04:29 | view that looks a little more blue.
| | 04:32 | You can see I picked a dark material there.
| | 04:35 | Well, we can see it at the top edge,
but you can sort of see the problem.
| | 04:39 | I have actually changed the render
appearance of brick to metallic-blue paint.
| | 04:45 | That's a pretty big gotcha that
you want to be careful of.
| | 04:48 | If you're in the Materials dialog and
you think you're just simply browsing
| | 04:54 | through the Autodesk Library, whatever
material you have selected back on the Materials tab,
| | 04:59 | you are actually actively changing it.
| | 05:00 | So you want to be really careful of that.
| | 05:03 | How would we actually browse them?
| | 05:04 | I mean that seems kind of like a
silly way for things to be set up.
| | 05:08 | I am going to cancel out of here, and I'm
going to go to the Manage tab, click on
| | 05:13 | Additional Settings, and you can go
right to the Property Set Libraries.
| | 05:19 | When I choose this, you get a
dialog that actually shows just the
| | 05:24 | Appearance Property Set tab.
| | 05:27 | It's kind of like ripping that tab out
of the Materials dialog. And here you can
| | 05:32 | much more safely do your browsing,
because now if I click on Materials, and say,
| | 05:37 | okay, what do we have under Fabric? All right.
| | 05:39 | Here are some different choices. Maybe
I like this Lace fabric and so on. And I
| | 05:44 | can click on that, and I can see which
features that it presents me over here on the
| | 05:48 | other side. And at this stage I don't
have a material selected, so I am not
| | 05:53 | actually changing the material yet;
| | 05:55 | I'm simply browsing through the Library.
| | 05:58 | Suppose I did want to create maybe
another kind of brick. Like, I had that brick
| | 06:02 | wall, and maybe that was my intention
all along is I was trying to create a
| | 06:06 | different kind of brick or
stone or something like that.
| | 06:09 | Well, let's look through
what we've got here for choices.
| | 06:11 | Let's go to Masonry. Here's Brick.
| | 06:13 | Here is the ones that are already
loaded in the project, but there actually
| | 06:17 | are several others here.
| | 06:18 | Well, that looks interesting,
maybe this cross pattern right here.
| | 06:23 | Let's take a look at that.
| | 06:24 | So this is a different brick image
that's being used to give us that pattern.
| | 06:29 | Here is the different relief pattern
that's used--again, the bump map, or the
| | 06:32 | relief map, which is going to make the
high and low and give it some texture.
| | 06:36 | So I have brought this into my
library now by just simply selecting it.
| | 06:42 | See, it's called Cross Pattern, so let's see if
| | 06:44 | we can find that here on this
alphabetical list. Just passed it.
| | 06:49 | There it is right there.
| | 06:50 | So we have got it now as part of our library.
| | 06:53 | Let's click OK. And how would I
actually get it applied to this wall?
| | 06:58 | Well, that's when I would return to
Materials, go to the Materials tab, select
| | 07:05 | my brick, then click over here on
Appearance > Property Sets, scroll through
| | 07:11 | this, find that cross pattern, and click it.
And now that applies it to that brick pattern.
| | 07:18 | If in shaded views you would like to
replace this color with something that's
| | 07:23 | more appropriate to this now brownish-
red cross pattern that we have, there are
| | 07:27 | two ways you can do that.
| | 07:28 | You can just click right on here and
pick a color yourself, or you can check
| | 07:33 | this little box here, and what Revit
will do is it will look at the bitmap,
| | 07:38 | it'll come up with an average color
that sort of matches that bitmap, and then
| | 07:42 | it will apply it for you.
| | 07:43 | So when I click OK, we now have that
cross pattern applied to the bricks, and
| | 07:50 | if we go back to Shaded view, it's using that
brownish color now instead of the reddish color.
| | 07:56 | So we want to be really careful about
how we get into the Appearance Property
| | 08:00 | Set dialog and be very deliberate about
our browsing. The safest way to do it is
| | 08:06 | to usually go first to the Property
Set Libraries, do your browsing and
| | 08:11 | manipulations in there.
| | 08:13 | Once you've established and chosen a
property set that you like--maybe from the
| | 08:18 | Autodesk Library, maybe from some
other source--then you can go back to the
| | 08:22 | Materials dialog and actually assign
that property set to one of your existing
| | 08:27 | materials, or you can duplicate an
existing material and assign it to that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a new material| 00:00 | In the previous couple movies we've
talked about the overview of the Material
| | 00:04 | dialog, we talked a little bit about
the Appearance tab and the property
| | 00:07 | sets, and we discussed a little bit,
some of the gotchas and the cautions
| | 00:11 | along the way, but you may be saying "yeah,
but Paul, I still don't know to make a material."
| | 00:16 | In this movie, we are just going to go
through the steps that are required to go
| | 00:20 | into the out-of-the-Box Autodesk
Material Library, find the material you want,
| | 00:24 | and make a new material from it.
| | 00:25 | What I have here on screen is a file
called New Material, and in here I just have a
| | 00:29 | simple brick wall. So we will keep on
the theme of a brick wall. And I want to
| | 00:34 | create a different kind of brick,
because I don't like this default burgundy
| | 00:38 | brick that comes in the out-of-the-box template.
| | 00:41 | So following the recommendations of the
previous movie, I am going to go to the
| | 00:44 | Manage tab first, go to Additional
Settings, and choose Property Set Libraries.
| | 00:49 | When this opens, I am going to consult
the Autodesk Library down here and locate
| | 00:54 | the Masonry category.
| | 00:56 | When you expand that, you've got Brick,
you have got Stone, CMU; so you can
| | 01:00 | filter it by whatever you like, or
remember, you can put in a search up above.
| | 01:04 | I am going to scroll down through here
and try and find a brick pattern that I like.
| | 01:09 | There are lots to choose from. And maybe
I want this Flemish Diagonal. That will
| | 01:15 | be a pretty interesting-looking
brick pattern that we can choose.
| | 01:19 | So I am going to click on it,
and that's going to automatically add it to
| | 01:23 | the property sets of my project, and the
properties for it will be displayed over here.
| | 01:29 | Now you'll see that there are lots of
properties available for this particular
| | 01:34 | material, but several of them are not
actually being used in this material.
| | 01:38 | They are still using a bitmap texture
to show that brick pattern, and they're
| | 01:44 | using a bump which is giving us the
relief pattern, which is, again, a grayscale
| | 01:48 | image to give it a little bit of
texture, a little bit of relief.
| | 01:52 | There's really no reason for a brick
to be self-illuminating, but that's a
| | 01:56 | feature of materials.
| | 01:57 | Materials can actually light up, kind
of like neon signs and stuff like that.
| | 02:01 | Cutout, if you wanted this diamond
pattern in the middle of the brick to
| | 02:06 | actually be holes, we could use
Cutout. If it was glass, we could have
| | 02:10 | Transparency or Reflectively.
| | 02:12 | We don't need any of those settings,
so that's why those are not checked.
| | 02:15 | The good thing about grabbing a
property set from the Autodesk Library is all
| | 02:21 | the appropriate settings are already
checked, the bitmaps are already there, so
| | 02:25 | we just choose the one we want and
it's now part of our current project.
| | 02:30 | That was the first step:
| | 02:31 | just browse through the Library and
find the material you want.
| | 02:34 | The next step is to go to Materials,
locate a material that's close to the one
| | 02:40 | that you want, so I am going to
start with Masonry-Brick. And instead of
| | 02:44 | modifying it directly, I want to first
duplicate it, because that's the best
| | 02:50 | practice; otherwise I am actually
replacing Masonry-Brick. And in this case, I
| | 02:56 | will give it a descriptive name,
and let's call it Masonry-Brick Flemish.
| | 03:01 | Go ahead and click OK, go to the
Appearance tab, scroll through my list here,
| | 03:09 | locate Flemish Diagonal, and select it.
| | 03:12 | So that is now the Appearance
property Set for this brick.
| | 03:16 | I am going to go back to Graphics--
| | 03:18 | you can see the Preview is showing that.
And let's check that box again that we
| | 03:22 | talked about in the last movie to
get it to average out from the bitmap
| | 03:26 | texture with the color ought to be.
And the only other challenge we have is
| | 03:31 | the Surface Pattern here.
| | 03:32 | I don't really have a pattern that
matches that Flemish Brick pattern.
| | 03:36 | I am going to scroll through
here and look, just to be sure.
| | 03:39 | We have a HerringBone,
but it's not quite the same thing.
| | 03:42 | So for the time being, I am going to
just leave the default brick pattern,
| | 03:46 | because technically it is
still a running-bond brick pattern;
| | 03:50 | it's just that they're using different
colors of brick to make the diamonds appear.
| | 03:54 | If you wanted it to actually display
with diamonds in the pattern, you would
| | 03:57 | have to create a new pattern, and you
might actually need to go out and do that
| | 04:03 | in a pattern editor.
| | 04:04 | So we are not going to actually do that
here because we are more concerned with
| | 04:08 | the render appearance than we are
with the texture. And as I say, it is a
| | 04:12 | running bond, so this is technically
correct, but just pointing that out to you
| | 04:16 | if you want to make that change.
| | 04:17 | Click OK, and the last step is to just
simply apply this material now to this wall.
| | 04:23 | So we have got this Brick wall, 4 inch brick.
| | 04:25 | I am going to do Edit Type.
And again, following best practice,
| | 04:29 | I will Duplicate and click OK > Edit,
and change the material to the one that I
| | 04:37 | just created, and there it is.
| | 04:41 | Summarizing the steps, start with the
Appearance Property sets, directly to the
| | 04:46 | library, browse, and find the one you want.
| | 04:48 | If you just simply click on
it, it loads a new project.
| | 04:51 | Go to the Material dialog next,
duplicate a material that's close, rename that
| | 04:56 | duplicate, and assign it to that new
appearance that you just created, and then
| | 05:00 | finally come back to your project
window and assign the material to the objects
| | 05:05 | in your project window.
| | 05:06 | In this case, I just assigned
it through the Wall Type dialog.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing a material texture| 00:00 | Sometimes the material that you wish
to use is not available in any of your
| | 00:03 | libraries--maybe Autodesk doesn't
provide it, or it's not in your office
| | 00:07 | network--so you may find yourself
just needing to create the material
| | 00:10 | completely from scratch.
| | 00:11 | Since the big part of the appearance
properties of a material is the actual
| | 00:15 | bitmapped image, then creating a totally
custom material usually means acquiring
| | 00:21 | a bitmapped image in some way.
| | 00:22 | Now there are lots of
sources for bitmapped images.
| | 00:25 | You can search the Internet, you can
go out with your camera and take some
| | 00:27 | photographs, or you could even open up
an image-editing program like Photoshop
| | 00:31 | and actually just paint the image
from scratch. So there are lots of
| | 00:34 | possibilities, and in this movie what I
am going to do is actually start with one
| | 00:39 | of the images that's provided with Revit.
| | 00:42 | So sometimes the image that Revit gives
us is close, and all I need to do is just
| | 00:46 | tweak it a little bit, and so
that'll be the subject of this movie.
| | 00:49 | What I've here on screen is a file
called Custom Materials. And I am looking
| | 00:54 | at a view called Bricks, and it includes that
brick arch that we looked at in the last chapter.
| | 01:00 | This brick arch was built from
scratch in the Revit Family Editor training
| | 01:05 | series here on lynda.com.
| | 01:06 | If you want to build this yourself, you
can visit that training series. But we
| | 01:10 | didn't apply any materials at that time.
| | 01:13 | We are going to look at how to
apply the materials to it now.
| | 01:16 | One of the advantages of this
brick arch is we wanted it to look like
| | 01:18 | individual bricks, so I need a special brick
material that actually doesn't show any mortar.
| | 01:24 | I just want it to show the texture of
bricks, because the edges of the bricks are
| | 01:29 | being defined by the geometry.
| | 01:31 | Now, I already have a material created--
| | 01:34 | I am going to show you the one that I
created, and we're going to apply it to this
| | 01:36 | big gray box here--but you'll see that
the material that I have is not actually
| | 01:41 | displaying on the arch right now.
| | 01:43 | That's the first topic I want to talk about
when you start getting into custom images.
| | 01:47 | Revit needs to be able to find them,
and they're often in a folder somewhere. And
| | 01:51 | they might be on your hard drive;
| | 01:51 | they might be in the network.
| | 01:53 | If you went home and you created a
bunch of textures and came to the office,
| | 01:56 | they might not have the same path
structure, and Revit wouldn't be able to find
| | 01:59 | the images. So here's the solution to that.
| | 02:02 | You go to the Application menu,
| | 02:04 | you go to Options, and there's a
Rendering tab, and we can add additional render
| | 02:10 | appearance paths right here.
| | 02:11 | When I click the little plus
sign, that adds an empty path.
| | 02:14 | I'll browse over here, and I am going
to browse to the Exercise Files folder.
| | 02:22 | And I am going to choose this
Textures folder that I've provided with
| | 02:24 | the exercise files.
| | 02:26 | Now in that Textures folder
I have a few example textures.
| | 02:29 | I am going to click OK. And usually
you have to close the current project and
| | 02:35 | reopen it in order for the change to
update. And you'll see now that that brick
| | 02:39 | arch does in fact have a
brick material applied to it.
| | 02:43 | if I zoom in a little bit, it's just
the texture of the bricks. So let's come
| | 02:49 | over here, take this big gray box,
click the material, scroll down--that one I
| | 02:58 | called Brick (No Mortar). I'm going to click
OK here, and you'll see that it's just this
| | 03:05 | single continuous texture
that looks like one brick.
| | 03:08 | This is a big, giant box.
| | 03:10 | It would be a huge brick. The texture
doesn't work quite as well on a surface
| | 03:15 | this large, because you can kind to
see the repeat there--and that'll be the
| | 03:19 | same case with the one
that we're going to build.
| | 03:22 | Creating a completely seamless texture
is another important skill to have, and
| | 03:26 | we'll be discussing that in a future movie.
| | 03:28 | For this movie we're just going to
focus on actually creating the texture and
| | 03:32 | then applying it to a material.
| | 03:35 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 03:36 | I'm going to recreate this
material from scratch now.
| | 03:39 | Sometimes, like I said, you can start
with the existing material, but to do that,
| | 03:44 | you need to know what it is.
| | 03:45 | So I am going to go to Manage, click on
Materials, and select the original brick texture.
| | 03:51 | I wanted my arch to match the same
color and texture as the surrounding brick,
| | 03:55 | so that's why I started with Revit's texture.
| | 03:57 | I'll come over here to the Appearance tab.
| | 04:00 | Here is the repeating bitmap texture,
and right here is the name of the file.
| | 04:04 | And if you pause over that, it will show
you the path and location to that file.
| | 04:10 | Now this file is included
with the installation of Revit.
| | 04:13 | That path is listed right there. So what I
am going to do right now is go to that
| | 04:17 | path in my image-editing program.
| | 04:19 | I am going to do this in Photoshop--
| | 04:20 | you can use any image-editing program that
you have--and we're going to open up that image.
| | 04:25 | Okay, so I am here in Photoshop,
and I've got the texture loaded, and you can see
| | 04:30 | the name of it right here. It's a PNG file.
| | 04:32 | There is that Brick Running Burgundy,
and it's loaded up from that folder that I
| | 04:36 | showed you back in Revit.
| | 04:37 | As you can see, this shows you many
bricks, and when we tiled this across a
| | 04:42 | surface, it looks like it's
created from a bunch of bricks.
| | 04:45 | The trick here to get a believable
single brick is you want to find a
| | 04:49 | relatively uniform brick here in the pack.
So maybe this guy right here looks pretty good to me.
| | 04:55 | And I am going to select just that brick.
Do Ctrl+C, come up here to File menu
| | 05:02 | create a new texture,
and do Ctrl+V, and paste that in.
| | 05:08 | Now it looks like I've got a pretty good
crop there. If need be, though, you can
| | 05:12 | rotate it a little bit.
| | 05:13 | You can crop it a little bit closer,
make some other adjustments. But that
| | 05:16 | looks pretty good to me.
| | 05:17 | I am going to come over here to Layers,
| | 05:19 | I am going to flatten the image, and then I
just simply need to save it as a PNG file.
| | 05:26 | Now it doesn't have PNG.
| | 05:27 | You can use a JPEG or a TIFF for a BMP;
all of those formats should be supported
| | 05:32 | by Revit. But the original was PNG, so I
am going to make this one a PNG as well,
| | 05:36 | and I'll call this Single_Brick.
| | 05:39 | Now I am saving it in my Textures folder
with the exercise files; you can put it
| | 05:44 | wherever it's convenient for you.
And then let's switch back over to Revit.
| | 05:49 | Here I am back in Revit, and what I
want to do now is create a material
| | 05:54 | that uses that texture.
| | 05:56 | So I am going to go to the Materials
dialog, click on the Graphics tab, select
| | 06:01 | a material that offers me a good
starting point. So again, since this material
| | 06:05 | is based on this original Masonry Brick, I am
going to start with that one and duplicate it.
| | 06:11 | I am going to add the suffix Single
Brick on the end of the existing name.
| | 06:17 | Now the only thing I need to change
here on the Graphics tab is I want to
| | 06:20 | remove the brick pattern.
| | 06:22 | I don't want it to use any hatching
at all on the surface, because this is
| | 06:26 | supposed to be just one
continuous material--no differentiation.
| | 06:29 | I'll go over here to the Appearance tab
and instead of the existing texture
| | 06:35 | here, Brick Burgundy,
| | 06:36 | I am going to click on there.
| | 06:38 | It goes to the default location where
that one is located, so I have to go to my
| | 06:43 | exercise files in my Textures folder.
Here's my Single-Brick.
| | 06:46 | I'll select that, and right now
you can see the preview there
| | 06:51 | is kind of stretching it out in an unnatural way.
| | 06:54 | Go ahead and click right on the image
preview and that will bring up the Texture
| | 06:58 | Editor. And the reason it's doing that
stretching is because the original was sized at 3'10" by 3'4".
| | 07:04 | If I scroll down here, you'll see the
Scale, and you can just input the size of
| | 07:12 | your image. So a typical brick is
about 8" across. I'll click in here.
| | 07:16 | Now it'll automatically use 9' 1/4"
because the link icon is toggled down
| | 07:22 | right here, and that locks the aspect
ratios, so let me un-toggle that and make
| | 07:27 | it to in 2' 2/3" in this direction.
And then you can see it now looks more brick-size.
| | 07:33 | I'll finish that, click OK, and all that
remains is for us to select this object
| | 07:39 | and apply our new single brick material to it.
| | 07:42 | I'll go here into the Materials tab, locate
Single Brick, click OK, and if we zoom
| | 07:51 | in, you can now see the new
texture being applied across the surface.
| | 07:57 | When I look at it, it appears that the
actual brick that I chose has a little
| | 08:01 | too much variation in highlight and in the
medium tone there, so that's part of the
| | 08:06 | challenge of coming up with a good
texture. So there may be some trial and error
| | 08:09 | where you go back and forth.
| | 08:11 | If I were doing this for real, I would
probably want to go back and re-create
| | 08:14 | this texture with something that
has a little bit more even tone.
| | 08:18 | But the basic process is, procure the
image through whatever means necessary: use
| | 08:23 | a camera, paint it in Photoshop,
use an existing image and modify it--
| | 08:27 | all of those are appropriate. Once
you've got the image, take it back into
| | 08:31 | Revit, apply it to an appearance, add
that appearance to your material, and then
| | 08:36 | you've got a nice custom material
that you can use in your projects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a custom texture| 00:00 | Sometimes you want to create a custom
material and there's no suitable image
| | 00:04 | file to be found on your hard
drive, or on an Internet search,
| | 00:07 | so it's time to just break out your digital
camera and go outside and take some photographs.
| | 00:11 | So that's exactly what I've done
here: and I've gone out and I've taken a
| | 00:15 | photograph of the side of my house and
turned it into a Revit material, and in
| | 00:20 | this movie we're going to look at the
process that I used to arrive at that.
| | 00:24 | So we are actually going to do
most of the work in Photoshop,
| | 00:26 | so I am going to switch over to Photoshop.
And I have the image file open on screen.
| | 00:33 | So as you can see, the image here is a
little larger than what we saw back in
| | 00:37 | Revit, and I've got this
blue tape around the corners.
| | 00:40 | That's an important part of taking the
photograph is you have to know how big
| | 00:43 | the photograph represents in real-life units.
| | 00:46 | So I actually went outside with a
tape measure, and I measured off an area on
| | 00:49 | the brick wall and taped it off like so,
so that I have a pretty good idea of
| | 00:53 | what the actual true-life physical size
of this texture was going to represent.
| | 00:57 | And of course I wrote those
numbers down, so we'll be using that
| | 00:59 | information little bit later.
| | 01:01 | Next, I have saved this file as a
TIFF file so that I could save the alpha
| | 01:05 | channel here, and depending on which
image editing program you're using--
| | 01:08 | I'm in Photoshop, but you can really do
the steps in any image editing software--
| | 01:13 | you should be able to load an alpha
channel as a selection, and that will
| | 01:16 | simplify the process a little bit here.
| | 01:18 | But you can of course go in
there and make a selection.
| | 01:21 | The important thing about
making this selection is twofold:
| | 01:24 | you want to know how big the selection
is in pixels and secondly, you want to be
| | 01:30 | really careful to keep that
selection, in this case, where the mortar is.
| | 01:33 | So you'll notice that horizontally and
vertically I'm right down in the middle
| | 01:36 | of the mortar, and then when you look at
the vertical edges between the bricks I
| | 01:40 | tried to go right between each of the
bricks as well, because that'll make it
| | 01:44 | easier to create a pattern out of this.
| | 01:46 | When it's some other image other
than brick, you may use a different
| | 01:49 | strategy, but you're trying to find an area of
the image that's usable as a repeating pattern.
| | 01:55 | So our goal is going to be to make
this pattern as seamless as possible.
| | 01:59 | So the first thing I am going to do
with this selection I have loaded is I am
| | 02:03 | going to crop it to remove all that
blue tape and so forth, and then I can just
| | 02:07 | deselect that area now.
| | 02:09 | This is 2106 pixels wide by 1938
pixels tall, and I am going to use a filter
| | 02:18 | called Offset here on the Other menu.
| | 02:22 | And what the Offset filter does is it
allows me to put in these numbers here,
| | 02:26 | so I am going to put in 1053 in this
direction and 969 in the other direction.
| | 02:32 | It takes the image and it shifts it
horizontally and vertically by those pixels
| | 02:36 | that you put in, and those numbers are
just half the sizes of the overall image.
| | 02:40 | So I am moving the image exactly one half
of its width and one half of its height.
| | 02:45 | And then with this feature right here,
Wrap Around, it takes those pixels that it
| | 02:50 | moved out of frame and it
wraps them around the other side.
| | 02:53 | Now the reason for doing that is, we
know that the middle part of the image was
| | 02:58 | tiled and repeating already just fine,
| | 03:01 | so that middle part of the image is
now out here around the edges. And notice
| | 03:06 | that we have this sort of
noticeable cross here now down the middle.
| | 03:10 | That's the part we want to clean up.
| | 03:12 | Now when you're doing this cleanup you
want to stay clear of the edge of the image.
| | 03:16 | It's very important that you leave
these pixels around the edge alone because
| | 03:20 | those are already working correctly.
And if you do any post-editing to those
| | 03:24 | pixels, you're going to mess up the effect.
| | 03:26 | Now the tool I am going to use to
clean this up is the Clone tool, so let me
| | 03:30 | just go ahead and zoom in a couple of
steps here to give myself a little easier time.
| | 03:34 | I am going to go to the Clone tool,
pick an appropriate size brush.
| | 03:39 | 45 pixels is just about okay. And let me
reduce the Hardness a little bit here,
| | 03:44 | just to give it get a
fuzzy edge--maybe about 20%.
| | 03:47 | You can vary the Opacity.
| | 03:49 | I am going to try about 75% Opacity. And
then this feature over here, this flow
| | 03:53 | feature, is kind of nice.
| | 03:55 | If you hold down your cursor while you're
painting, it actually tapers off after a while,
| | 04:00 | so that can help out a little bit as well.
| | 04:02 | I am just going to start in
this middle brick right here.
| | 04:05 | The way that Clone tool works is you
pick up a sample area and then you're
| | 04:09 | going to paint that
sample area onto other areas.
| | 04:12 | So just hold down the Alt key, click to
set that sample area, and now when I come
| | 04:18 | over here to the area where the seam is,
I can start painting. And you can see,
| | 04:23 | you've got to be careful
there. I went over a little bit,
| | 04:25 | so let's pick up a new sample.
| | 04:27 | You can start painting over the image
to cover up where that seem is and make
| | 04:33 | it look a little bit more believable.
| | 04:35 | Now here where we have a big difference in tone,
| | 04:37 | you just have to be a little bit more
diligent about your painting, a little more patient.
| | 04:44 | Don't be afraid to sample here at the
edge and get a little bit of the mortar in
| | 04:48 | there too, because that will help you
cover up some of these seams over here.
| | 04:53 | And if you just click, because there's
a little bit of opacity, sometimes that
| | 04:57 | just adds a little bit of extra--
| | 05:00 | it's kind of layering the paint, if you will.
| | 05:02 | So that can work sometimes.
| | 05:04 | So you'll get the hang of this after
you play with it a little bit and kind of
| | 05:07 | get the right touch for the tool,
to sort of make this look believable.
| | 05:12 | I've cleaned up all of the vertical seams
between the bricks running along the horizontal.
| | 05:18 | Right here we have a really noticeable
line running horizontally across the image.
| | 05:23 | This one is actually pretty easy to clean up
because of the direction that it's running in.
| | 05:27 | I can simply pick up a sample over here,
come up here--and I am not going to hold
| | 05:33 | down the mouse this time.
| | 05:34 | I am going to click it, and then I am
going to go all the way over to the other
| | 05:37 | side, hold down my Shift key and click
again, and it will grab the sample all the
| | 05:43 | way across that mortar one joint
down and paint it over the other one.
| | 05:49 | You can even come back again and press
Shift again if you want, but I don't like that--
| | 05:54 | that made that a little too dark--so
I'll undo that last one, and instead I'll
| | 05:58 | pick up a new sample, maybe right here,
and just sort of clean this up like so.
| | 06:05 | The Horizontal is a little faster,
because you can just do that little Shift trick.
| | 06:10 | But that's about it.
| | 06:11 | It looks like its pretty good.
| | 06:12 | This is very meticulous work.
| | 06:14 | You want to take your time, do the
painting to get it to look believable.
| | 06:18 | Again, the less noticeable the seam is
between your images, the more successful
| | 06:23 | you've been at your job.
| | 06:24 | Unfortunately, sometimes
you'll go through this whole thing--
| | 06:26 | you'll load it into Revit, you'll put it
on a wall--and it's still very noticeable,
| | 06:31 | so that means you just have to go back
to the drawing board and try it again.
| | 06:35 | Be willing to do that, be patient,
and you should get some pretty decent results.
| | 06:39 | Also, of course the quality of the
photograph makes a big difference as well.
| | 06:42 | I'm not exactly an expert photographer.
| | 06:45 | I could probably have created a nicer
higher-contrast photo, and certainly if
| | 06:48 | I had a nicer camera--there is a
lot of factors that play into this.
| | 06:52 | But let's go ahead and save the image.
| | 06:54 | I'm going to do a Save As. And I like
the PNG format for textures, so I am going
| | 07:02 | to switch to that format.
| | 07:04 | And I'm in the Chapter03 folder right now.
| | 07:06 | I want to change this to my Textures folder.
| | 07:09 | You remember in a previous movie we set
the Textures path. If you haven't done
| | 07:13 | that, you can go back and look at that
movie for how to add the textures path
| | 07:17 | to your path in Revit so that it finds
this folder and finds the textures in here.
| | 07:21 | Now I am going to call it that and click OK.
| | 07:24 | And then let's make
another variation of this image.
| | 07:28 | To make the bricks more believable,
we want not only the image that shows us the
| | 07:33 | bricks themselves, but we also want to
use another image for the relief map,
| | 07:38 | sometimes called the bump map.
| | 07:40 | And what a relief or a bump map does is
it starts to show depth in the image and
| | 07:44 | you do this with a simple grayscale image.
| | 07:46 | And the different tones in the
image show different amounts of depth.
| | 07:51 | It's like an illusion that is able to
be applied so that some of the pixels
| | 07:55 | appear like they're coming
forward and others are dropping back.
| | 07:58 | So all I have to do is go to the mode
of this image, change it to a grayscale
| | 08:03 | image, discard the colors.
| | 08:05 | I usually like to go to
Levels next and boost the contrast.
| | 08:09 | I like to flatten it both in
the white and the black here.
| | 08:15 | Now I have a nice contrasty
black-and-white version of the image. And then I
| | 08:20 | am going to do Save As, change to a PNG
again, go to my Textures folder, and I'll
| | 08:29 | add the word BUMP at the end of this.
| | 08:31 | Okay, so I am back here in Revit,
and all we need to do now is create a material
| | 08:38 | using those two new textures.
| | 08:40 | So we'll go to Manage, click on Materials.
| | 08:44 | Remember, you have the copy from an
existing material, so I am going to
| | 08:47 | start with Masonry Brick.
| | 08:48 | That's pretty close, because it's got
the right surface pattern and other
| | 08:51 | settings over here.
Come down here and click Duplicate.
| | 08:54 | Now since the file already has a version
of my house brick in here, there is one
| | 08:57 | here called Brick Paul, so I'll just
call this one Pauls House. The name will be
| | 09:02 | a little bit different
so we can tell them apart.
| | 09:04 | Let go over to Appearance, click on the
link for the image. That will go to the
| | 09:11 | Default folder, so I want to browse out
to my Exercise Folders and my Textures
| | 09:16 | folder and locate the image that I created.
| | 09:20 | I am going to click right on the image
and scroll down, because the size of the
| | 09:26 | image is being sized to the default
bitmap, which was 3 foot 4 by 3 foot 10.
| | 09:30 | I am going to change those numbers to
the sizes that I measured on my house
| | 09:34 | with the blue tape, and that was 34x32.
| | 09:38 | Now watch: if I put in 32 here and I
click, it's changing 34, and that's because
| | 09:44 | this button is still clicked.
| | 09:45 | So let me unlink the two of them, so that I
can put these two numbers in independently.
| | 09:50 | So now I am 2 foot 10 by 2 foot 8. Click Done.
| | 09:53 | I am going to expand the
relief pattern, do the same thing.
| | 10:00 | Select the BUMP image that we
created, scroll down and get those sizes
| | 10:04 | set correctly as well.
| | 10:07 | Don't forget to unlink.
| | 10:10 | So I've got those two settings.
| | 10:11 | I'd like to click over to Graphics
before I get out of this dialog, just to make
| | 10:15 | sure everything is okay. It looks
pretty good to me. Let's click OK.
| | 10:19 | Now I am going to select the wall, Edit Type.
| | 10:22 | If you want, you can duplicate this wall,
or we can go right to Edit Type and
| | 10:26 | assign a new finish material. And if I
scroll down, we'll select Brick Pauls
| | 10:31 | House, click OK, and then OK again, and zoom in.
| | 10:39 | We now have our new custom brick pattern.
| | 10:42 | Now you can sort of see a little bit of
a repeat ,and again, it's a little tough
| | 10:47 | to get rid of that completely
because of the tone in the image.
| | 10:50 | That just stresses the fact that if
you choose a good area to photograph, one
| | 10:55 | that's got pretty even tones,
you're going to get a much better result.
| | 10:59 | I just want to say that when I did this
exercise first, I took a photograph and
| | 11:03 | I went through the whole process,
photoshopped it, and then I applied in Revit
| | 11:07 | and you saw these bands of purple.
| | 11:09 | Now I have actually included that
image in the exercise files for you guys to
| | 11:12 | open up and look at on your own.
| | 11:14 | It was not at all noticeable through
the viewfinder of the camera, but once I
| | 11:18 | finally got it into Revit it was.
| | 11:20 | I am just letting you know that
sometimes you're going to go through the whole
| | 11:22 | process and you're going to need
to go back and rework some of it.
| | 11:26 | If you're not good at doing the
photography, or it's not of interest to you,
| | 11:30 | there are places online where
you can find brick patterns.
| | 11:33 | There is this one company called Acme
Brick company that has an actual program
| | 11:37 | that's free of charge that you can
download that will generate brick textures.
| | 11:41 | And I'm sure there are lots of
other similar resources out there.
| | 11:44 | So you may be able to find textures
for many common materials directly from
| | 11:49 | the manufacturers, without having to go
through the whole process of baking them yourselves.
| | 11:53 | But whatever means you use to get the
texture, bring it in, and you can create
| | 11:58 | Revit materials from them.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharing materials between files| 00:00 | So you've been creating a lot of custom
materials and gathering materials from
| | 00:04 | potentially other sources and
files, and you probably want to know how you
| | 00:09 | can actually keep track of all those
materials, number one, and then be able to
| | 00:12 | share them with your extended team, number two.
| | 00:16 | Well, this is a pretty important issue,
so I thought I would spend a little bit
| | 00:18 | time and talk about it.
| | 00:19 | And the first thing I wanted to talk
about is some of the differences between
| | 00:23 | the materials that are provided in
just the out-of-the-box Revit templates.
| | 00:28 | What I have on screen here is an
excel file called Materials in the Revit
| | 00:32 | Templates, and I have the Default.rte
on the far left and then the Commercial
| | 00:37 | Residential Construction.
| | 00:38 | These are the four templates that
ship with the US version of Revit.
| | 00:42 | And what I did was just sort of add
all the materials and space them out
| | 00:47 | accordingly, so you could kind of compare.
| | 00:49 | They all have this first Acoustical
Tile Ceiling, but anywhere there's a
| | 00:53 | gap, you can see that sometimes
there's a material, like this Cabinets and
| | 00:57 | Cabinet-Handles, that's only in these two
files and it isn't in these two over here.
| | 01:01 | If we sort oh scroll through here,
it just gives you a point of comparison that
| | 01:06 | while the lists are largely similar,
in some cases there're some pretty
| | 01:10 | dramatic differences.
| | 01:11 | Like there is all these different metal
materials over here in the Construction
| | 01:14 | template that aren't found in the other three.
| | 01:17 | So I've provided this file just for your
information. Feel free to use it as you will.
| | 01:24 | Let's switch over to Revit,
and this just sort of outlines one of the
| | 01:27 | challenges that we have.
| | 01:29 | If the templates don't even start with
the same materials then naturally as a
| | 01:34 | project grows and you start adding
custom materials, you're just further
| | 01:38 | exasperating the problem.
| | 01:39 | So what do you do about it?
| | 01:41 | Materials are actually system families.
| | 01:43 | So just like any system family,
you can't save them off as separate files.
| | 01:49 | So in other words, you can't create a
material and save it off as an RFA file
| | 01:53 | like a Revit family and then load it in.
| | 01:55 | You may recall that when were in the
Materials dialog there is no New button,
| | 02:01 | so you can't quickly just come here
from the Materials Library and import or
| | 02:06 | load in materials from other locations.
| | 02:08 | The way that you do that, there's two methods:
| | 02:12 | you can either use the Transfer Project
Standards command, or you can use copy and paste.
| | 02:17 | Now Transfer Project Standards is great.
| | 02:19 | First of all, have to have two files opened, so
right now it will say there's only one file.
| | 02:24 | So if I create a new file, and then I
go to Transfer Project Standards, it will
| | 02:33 | say that you're copying from that other file,
Sample Material Library, which I had on screen.
| | 02:39 | You can do Check None, scroll down,
locate Materials, check it, and click OK.
| | 02:45 | The trouble is, it's all or nothing.
| | 02:47 | When you do Transfer Project Standards,
it takes all of the materials from the
| | 02:52 | file you're copying from and
brings them over to the current file.
| | 02:55 | Furthermore, if those materials already
exist, you're going to get this dialog
| | 02:59 | that says that all these materials
exist and do you want to overwrite them or
| | 03:02 | just bring in the new ones?
| | 03:04 | So you could do whichever,
and now I've brought those over.
| | 03:07 | But what if you only wanted one material?
| | 03:10 | So I'm going to close this
file, and I'm not going to save it.
| | 03:12 | This was just a junk file here.
| | 03:14 | But what if I only wanted
this cherry wood material?
| | 03:17 | The alternate solution takes a
little bit of setup, but it's a CAD
| | 03:21 | standards-level setup.
| | 03:23 | The CAD or Bin manager could
orchestrate this process. And what we do is the
| | 03:27 | materials that we want to keep and
maintain for the long term, we put those in a
| | 03:33 | file, like the one I've got
shown on the screen here--
| | 03:35 | It's called the Sample Material Library--
and you assign each material to an object.
| | 03:41 | The object in this case is just a
generic model family called Paint Chip, or
| | 03:45 | Material Chip. And if you were to look
at this thing in the 3D view, you would
| | 03:51 | see that these are just
these little, thin wafers.
| | 03:53 | They're meant to look like paint chips.
And you just assign a material to each one.
| | 03:58 | And the value of doing that is you can
now select it, do Ctrl+C. Then you can
| | 04:04 | go over to that other project file that you
wanted and just do a Ctrl+V and place it in.
| | 04:13 | And so instead of transferring the
entire collection of materials, it's only
| | 04:18 | going to bring over the one material
that it needs, whatever was assigned to
| | 04:23 | that one paint chip.
| | 04:24 | Then you can just delete the paint chip,
because the material that's assigned to
| | 04:27 | it is now part of this other project.
| | 04:30 | That's really the most efficient way to bring
over just the materials you are interested in.
| | 04:35 | But of course to make that work
effectively, you want to set up one of
| | 04:39 | these library files.
| | 04:40 | What I did is I've got this one set to
Shading, and I furthermore went in and
| | 04:45 | added a material tag to each
material so that it's easy to identify them.
| | 04:50 | That just gives me a little text label.
| | 04:51 | You can certainly use text, but then
you've got to type it in manually, so I
| | 04:54 | prefer to use the material tag.
| | 04:56 | This material chip idea is not a new idea.
| | 04:59 | I am going to go out to Autodesk Seek,
which is the web portal that Autodesk
| | 05:04 | provides for content delivery,
and there's lots of manufacturer content on here.
| | 05:09 | You're probably already
familiar with Autodesk Seek.
| | 05:11 | But there is a location on Seek that I want to
direct you to that you might find of interest.
| | 05:16 | Down at the very bottom where it says For
Manufacturers, there is a FAQ for Manufacturers.
| | 05:23 | If you click that link, that will take
you to a general question-and-answer page.
| | 05:29 | And if you go sort of further down here,
there are some other general resources,
| | 05:35 | and the one that I want to direct you to
is the Revit Model Content Style Guide.
| | 05:40 | Now, this was authored about two or
three years ago, but most of the material
| | 05:45 | in this content guide is still relevant
today. And there's a whole section on materials.
| | 05:50 | You might be interested in this
beyond rendering, because this is a great
| | 05:54 | resource that explains the
best-practice ways to create content.
| | 05:59 | But there's a whole section on
materials and how to manage them, and it's still
| | 06:02 | largely relevant for today's version of Revit.
| | 06:05 | The only thing it doesn't address is
anything that do with property sets or
| | 06:08 | appearances, because that's a new future.
| | 06:10 | But the general management of
materials is covered very well in here, and that
| | 06:15 | whole material chip
notion is discussed in there.
| | 06:18 | Just a little bit of reading for you,
if you're interested in that thing.
| | 06:21 | Any materials that you want to use in
other projects, I think the most efficient
| | 06:27 | way to do that is to create a separate
Revit project file that you use as sort
| | 06:31 | of a master library or a
master warehouse for materials,
| | 06:34 | place each material in that file, put
it on a little material chip family,
| | 06:38 | and then you can just copy and paste
those between projects to quickly share
| | 06:42 | those materials.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Overriding material assignments| 00:00 | So you've compiled your collection of
materials--maybe you've got them some from
| | 00:03 | other sources, maybe you've created
them your own from custom textures--and you
| | 00:08 | now need to apply those materials
to the various parts of your model.
| | 00:12 | There's the obvious ways to apply
materials, which I am sure you are of familiar with.
| | 00:15 | We can add them to the wall types
and to the other object types, for example.
| | 00:20 | But there are a few other ways we can
apply materials in special circumstances.
| | 00:24 | For example, if I select this wall here
and I edit its type, the materials have
| | 00:32 | already been assigned to
the layers in this wall.
| | 00:34 | So we have a Finish layer that's
using the default brick material.
| | 00:39 | When I look at this though,
there's been a void added here.
| | 00:44 | So if you click right here, there's a void
object, which is actually carving away from--
| | 00:49 | if I were to delete that you would see
that that void is actually carving away
| | 00:54 | and creating like a niche inside the wall there.
| | 00:58 | I am going to undo that and bring it back.
| | 01:00 | When you do that, Revit doesn't
actually apply the material in the space that's
| | 01:05 | left behind, even though it would be
revealing that internal structure, and that
| | 01:10 | internal structure most likely
has a material assigned to it.
| | 01:13 | So that's one scenario.
| | 01:14 | Another scenario might be that you
might actually want to do some sort of an
| | 01:17 | inlay or something else
somewhere in the existing surface.
| | 01:21 | So there are a few scenarios when you
would switch over to the Paint tool.
| | 01:25 | Now, the Paint tool allows you to do just that.
| | 01:27 | It allows you to paint a material
onto the surface of your 3D geometry.
| | 01:33 | So let's go ahead and take a look.
| | 01:34 | Over here on the Modify tab, the Paint
tool is right here, and there is actually a
| | 01:39 | dropdown new in the 2012 release.
| | 01:42 | They've actually added a Remove Paint feature.
| | 01:44 | So I've already got some paint applied
here in the model and if I wanted to, I
| | 01:49 | could actually remove it--
that's what the Remove Paint does.
| | 01:52 | But of course we want to add the paint
to the places where it doesn't have it,
| | 01:56 | so let's go over here and we'll choose
the Paint tool. And this will show you
| | 02:00 | your list of Materials.
| | 02:02 | You can scroll through, and you'll see
the entire list. And I want to choose
| | 02:06 | the Masonry Concrete block Split Face, this one
right here, and then paint it onto that surface.
| | 02:15 | Now when it turns the corner, you'll
see its also gray right here, so I can
| | 02:19 | actually highlight and paint that surface.
| | 02:22 | Spin my 3D model around and paint that surface.
| | 02:27 | When you're rendering you may very well
see those surfaces, so using the Paint
| | 02:31 | tool can be a really quick and easy way
to deal with those little crevices and
| | 02:36 | other turns in the model that
otherwise wouldn't get a material.
| | 02:40 | So let's go ahead and change Materials
here to the regular brick, and we'll do
| | 02:45 | this same thing in this little area here.
| | 02:48 | Now, if its not highlighting the right
surface, just get close by and press your
| | 02:53 | Tab key--pretty standard Revit stuff
there. So tab into that one, come over
| | 02:58 | here, tab into that one.
| | 03:01 | Now I could continue painting for like
the floor structure and so forth, but you
| | 03:05 | shouldn't paint as a substitute
for actually assigning the material.
| | 03:10 | You should use paint to deal with
situations where either the material didn't
| | 03:14 | get applied automatically or in
conjunction with the Split Face tool.
| | 03:19 | So, for example, if I went to Split Face and
highlight this wall here--I might have to Tab.
| | 03:24 | There we go.
| | 03:26 | Highlight this wall surface here, what
Split Face would let you do is actually
| | 03:31 | create a region here on the surface of the
wall they could then receive another material.
| | 03:39 | So you can kind of see that right there.
And then I could go back to Paint and I
| | 03:43 | could choose a different material.
So maybe I want to put just a concrete in
| | 03:48 | there or a different color
masonry tile or something or other.
| | 03:52 | Make sure I am getting the
right surface there. There we go.
| | 03:55 | And I put some masonry tile
in that little area there.
| | 03:59 | So those are the two scenarios
where Paint is really useful:
| | 04:02 | when you want to kind of get those
edges that are turning the corner or if you
| | 04:05 | actually want to create some
sort of an inlay situation.
| | 04:08 | But if you need a material on a slab
like this then that I would recommend you
| | 04:13 | just actually edit the structure
of the slab and choose something.
| | 04:16 | Now this one has got a
Stone - Marbl applied to it, so maybe it just
| | 04:20 | doesn't have a texture.
| | 04:21 | So there already is a texture on here,
but if you want to choose something
| | 04:24 | different, you could choose maybe
this stone or this one right here.
| | 04:28 | Well, that one has got a random
rubble-like pattern, so let's try that, and you'll
| | 04:33 | see that gets applied on there.
| | 04:35 | So that's a quicker way to apply
the material, because you see it
| | 04:38 | applies throughout.
| | 04:39 | Reserve the Paint for those areas
where the material either didn't apply
| | 04:43 | correctly or where you're using the Split Face.
| | 04:46 | But those are just a couple of tips
for you for applying materials, because
| | 04:50 | when it comes time to render, your
rendering is going to see those little dark
| | 04:53 | gray areas otherwise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Sunlight and LocationSetting your location| 00:00 | This chapter is perhaps the
simplest of all the topics in the course to
| | 00:03 | discuss and configure.
| | 00:05 | However, being simple
does not make it unimportant.
| | 00:08 | In this chapter we will look at what
is required to have Revit accurately
| | 00:11 | position our building within the real world.
| | 00:14 | In this movie we will assign our
project's geographic location.
| | 00:17 | We are going to start off by
looking at the Location dialog.
| | 00:21 | If I go to the Manage tab, I will find
the Location button. And when you open
| | 00:26 | this, there are two tabs in this
Location Weather and Site dialog.
| | 00:31 | There's Location tab and the Site tab.
| | 00:33 | Let me go ahead and make this a
little bit larger, so we can actually see
| | 00:35 | what's going on here.
| | 00:37 | The primary function of the Location
tab is to establish your geographic
| | 00:41 | position in the world.
| | 00:43 | So it uses an Internet mapping service
provided here by Google Maps. And you can
| | 00:48 | actually type in your project's address
if you know the actual street address,
| | 00:54 | you can put in the longitude and
latitude, or you can even just put in the
| | 00:57 | general location, like a city, for example.
| | 01:01 | So I am going to write Ventura,
California, and that will zoom me over to the
| | 01:06 | other side of the country and make
my location here in the Ventura area.
| | 01:13 | The main reason that we care about our
location of course for rendering, is if we
| | 01:17 | want to render with sunlight, then the
sun that's in Ventura California is a
| | 01:21 | little different than the sun
that's in Boston, different longitude and
| | 01:24 | latitude, different sky cover
conditions, that kind of thing.
| | 01:28 | So with the correct geographic
location established, Revit can accurately
| | 01:32 | calculate the angles of the sun and so forth.
| | 01:34 | Now the other part of that is having our
building positioned correctly on the site.
| | 01:39 | Now there is the Site tab, and this
part may or may not be set up already in
| | 01:44 | your projects depending on how soon you're
doing the rendering in the project workflow.
| | 01:50 | If you're during the rendering very
early in the workflow then this might not be
| | 01:53 | set up yet, but if you're doing
it a little bit later it could be.
| | 01:56 | Usually this information gets
established from the civil engineering data that
| | 02:01 | comes in from an external source.
| | 02:03 | So in this case you can actually see
that there's an angle already input down
| | 02:08 | here for the direction of my True North.
| | 02:10 | I'm not going to change
anything here on this tab.
| | 02:13 | I'm simply going to click OK, go to my
site plan, and here in the site plan the
| | 02:19 | default behavior is to have
these two little icons displayed.
| | 02:23 | One looks like a little triangle,
and this is the Site: Survey Point.
| | 02:26 | The other is a little tough to see
because it's buried there in the middle of
| | 02:30 | the building, but that's the Site:
| | 02:31 | Project Base Point. And that's usually
some sort of a benchmark on the building
| | 02:36 | itself, where this is usually some
sort of benchmark out in the survey.
| | 02:41 | So the civil engineer would typically
control this point, and the architect
| | 02:45 | or other person responsible for the
building would typically control the
| | 02:48 | Project Base Point.
| | 02:50 | Now these points have been set up
already because, again, I'm assuming that
| | 02:53 | this information was set up earlier in the
project and we're just simply reacting to that.
| | 02:58 | The setting that we want to establish
here is when you look at a view in Revit,
| | 03:03 | particularly a floor plan view, you can
actually change the orientation of the
| | 03:07 | view to the either Project North or True North.
| | 03:09 | Currently I'm looking at the Project
North, which basically just orients the
| | 03:14 | building horizontally so that it
would fit nicely on a sheet of paper.
| | 03:17 | If I come over here at the Properties
palette, I can choose True North and when I
| | 03:22 | apply this, that rotation angle that
we saw in the Location Weather and Site
| | 03:26 | dialog will kick in, and it will
actually have the effect of rotating the
| | 03:30 | building in this view
| | 03:31 | so that now North is straight up on
my screen, but the building is oriented
| | 03:35 | correctly relative to north.
| | 03:37 | That obviously has a pretty dramatic effect on
the way the sun is going to cast in the site.
| | 03:42 | So establishing your projects physical
location in the world is important if you
| | 03:45 | want to accurately generate
shadows and the sun angle in the scenes.
| | 03:49 | So if the sun is going to be the
primary lighting source for your renderings
| | 03:53 | then you're going to want that
to be as accurate as possible.
| | 03:55 | So go into the Location tab, set up a
geographic location, and make sure that the
| | 04:00 | North orientation is correct
relative to how the building will be sited.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding sun settings| 00:00 | If you're creating any type of
exterior rendering or an interior rendering of
| | 00:04 | space with lots of natural daylight,
you'll want the sun to be positioned
| | 00:08 | accurately to give you the correct
shadows and lighting effects in your scene.
| | 00:12 | In the previous movie we established
our project's geographic location and north
| | 00:16 | direction in the world.
| | 00:17 | This is all we need to get the sun in the
correct location with relation to our project.
| | 00:21 | In this movie we'll look at how we can
configure the settings of the sun further
| | 00:26 | to control its exact position in
the sky with respect to time and date.
| | 00:29 | So I'm in a file called Office Sun
Settings, and I'm looking at the site plan. And
| | 00:35 | I've cleaned up the site plan just a
little bit. I went to VG Visibility Graphics,
| | 00:39 | and I turned off the grids, and I turned
off the reference plane, just to get rid
| | 00:43 | of some of the clutter.
| | 00:45 | Now to get to the Sun Settings, there
is some icons down on the view control
| | 00:49 | bar at the bottom of the screen. And there
is an icon right here for the Sun Settings.
| | 00:53 | It looks like a little
sun with a red X though it.
| | 00:56 | We can turn on and off the Sun Path.
We're not going to do that now; we'll do that
| | 00:59 | in a later movie. But for right now
we're going to go to Sun Settings.
| | 01:04 | Now the Sun Settings dialog opens,
and there are four possible conditions for
| | 01:09 | Solar Study in the top-left corner:
| | 01:11 | Still, Single Day, Multi-Day, and Lighting.
| | 01:13 | The simplest form by far is Lighting,
and this is the default in most Revit
| | 01:18 | projects when you first
create a project from a template.
| | 01:21 | Lighting does not take into
account your geographic location at all.
| | 01:25 | It's completely ignoring that,
and instead what it does is allows you to just set
| | 01:31 | an Azimuth and an Altitude directly
by typing in two angles, and it just
| | 01:36 | positions the sun relative to
your scene in that location.
| | 01:40 | There are some presets here.
| | 01:41 | So this one puts the sun over on the right.
| | 01:44 | This one puts on the left. And again
these are just sort of relative to the view,
| | 01:48 | not at all related to your geographic location.
| | 01:50 | So if you turn on these presets in an
east elevation, it will be to the right
| | 01:55 | of the east elevation;
| | 01:56 | you go to a north elevation, it will
to the right of the north elevation.
| | 01:59 | So clearly the sun would have no
real relationship to the world;
| | 02:03 | it would just be moving around with the view,
but it can make for a nice presentation.
| | 02:07 | What we're going to look at is
the settings listed under Still.
| | 02:11 | Now for Still you're just picking a
specific date and time. It will look at the
| | 02:18 | physical location of your building
and position the sun relative to that
| | 02:22 | physical location at the date and
time you indicate and then generate the
| | 02:27 | lighting and shadows
accordingly for that time and location.
| | 02:30 | So over here you can see that Location
is set to Ventura, California, just like we
| | 02:35 | did in the last movie.
| | 02:36 | There's a date here and the time.
| | 02:39 | You've got a dropdown where you can
change the date. You've got the little
| | 02:42 | spinner here where you can change
the time, or you can come over here and
| | 02:46 | use one of the presets.
| | 02:47 | Now if you just want to dial in a
certain date and a certain time then you can
| | 02:52 | use the In-Session, Still options.
| | 02:54 | In-Session is just kind of like a scratchpad.
| | 02:57 | You can just set it up, use it,
and then the next time somebody goes into
| | 03:01 | In-Session and changes it, it's not
gong to remember the previous one.
| | 03:04 | If you want to remember the previous
one, what you do is you select one of
| | 03:07 | these other presets, and that's going to give
you access to Duplicate, Rename, and Delete.
| | 03:14 | So notice that In Session can't be saved.
| | 03:16 | So it's sort of like a
temporary collection of settings.
| | 03:19 | Now these four here are
built into the default template.
| | 03:23 | So we have the Summer Solstice
and the Spring Equinox and so on.
| | 03:26 | And these are set to an
explicit date and time based on that
| | 03:31 | astronomical occurrence.
| | 03:32 | So if I want to know what the sun looks
like when the sun is highest in the sky,
| | 03:36 | I can choose the Summer Solstice.
| | 03:38 | If I want when it's lowest in the sky, I
can choose the Winter Solstice, and so on.
| | 03:42 | It'll set that date and time, and about
the only thing you might want to adjust is
| | 03:45 | the year. Maybe the day might move a day
or two or whatever, so you can look that
| | 03:49 | up on a calendar as to
exactly what the date ought to be.
| | 03:52 | But what I want to do here is I'm going
to OK out of here, and I'm going to pan this over
| | 03:57 | just slightly, zoom it in so we can get
a little bit better look, and I'm going
| | 04:01 | to turn on the shadows, which is right
next to the Sun Path button, and just
| | 04:06 | click that little toggle. And you're going to
see some shadows appear there in my site plan.
| | 04:11 | Now I'm going to go back to Sun Settings.
We can try different settings over here
| | 04:16 | and apply them interactively and
watch the shadows change on screen.
| | 04:21 | So here's the Summer Solstice.
You can see the shadows are really short.
| | 04:25 | Here's the Winter Solstice--they
become really long, and the Spring and fall
| | 04:30 | Equinox, it should be somewhere in between.
| | 04:32 | Okay and that's pretty much what you'd
expect from your own experience of the
| | 04:35 | way the sun moves across the sky.
| | 04:37 | I've got two presets that I created.
| | 04:40 | All I did was select one of the existing
ones, go to Duplicate, and give it another name.
| | 04:45 | So I have this one here where the sun is
on the front of the building, and that's
| | 04:49 | Early Morning, to remind myself of when
that would occur, and I'll click Apply.
| | 04:54 | So the sun is at the front of the
building, lighting it, and the shadows cast to
| | 04:57 | the back. And then here's the opposite.
| | 04:59 | So now the sun is more toward the back
of the building casting the shadows to
| | 05:02 | the front, and that's in the afternoon.
| | 05:05 | So you can see I'm
switching from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
| | 05:08 | So you can create as many presets as
you want to start testing the way that the
| | 05:12 | shadows move across your site and how
the siting of your building is affecting
| | 05:16 | those shadow conditions.
| | 05:17 | Now the last thing I want to
point out here is the Ground Plane at.
| | 05:21 | It's defaulting to placing the ground
plane at one of the levels in your project.
| | 05:27 | Now this is okay for general shadow
studies, and it's okay if you don't have a
| | 05:31 | site plan, because you need to
cast the shadows on something.
| | 05:35 | But we have an actual site file here in
the building, and if I uncheck this and
| | 05:40 | click Apply, the shadows change
slightly. You might've noticed the shadow
| | 05:44 | elongated just a little bit.
| | 05:46 | That's because the site plan actually
has some slope to it, and when you turn off
| | 05:52 | the ground plane at a level, then the
shadows actually cast on the real geometry.
| | 05:57 | So the more uneven your site is, the
more hilly your site is, the more you're
| | 06:01 | going to want this unchecked, because
you're going to get a much more accurate shadow.
| | 06:05 | So we'll look at the Single Day and
the Multi-Day settings in a later movie.
| | 06:11 | You can actually animate the movement
of the sun across the sky over a single-
| | 06:14 | day period or over a multi-day period,
and those are really very useful, and we'll
| | 06:18 | actually do some animations of that.
| | 06:21 | But for now we're going to
stick with the still settings.
| | 06:24 | So you can start with one of the
presets--either the Summer Solstice,
| | 06:27 | Winter Solstice, or so on--
| | 06:29 | change the date and time if necessary,
and get a really good sense of how the sun
| | 06:34 | is lighting and shadowing your scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the sun path| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to look
at the on screen Sun Path feature.
| | 00:04 | Sun Path gives us an interactive
construct that sits around the building in the
| | 00:08 | view and actually shows us the
accurate location of the sun in the sky as it
| | 00:14 | relates to the building in its north direction.
| | 00:17 | We can interact with this thing and
actually change the date and the time and
| | 00:20 | the position of the sun
all with on-screen controls.
| | 00:23 | So let's go ahead and take a look.
| | 00:25 | Now, I'm going to go back up a little
bit here in the view, because when I turn
| | 00:29 | on the Sun Path it's going to be
considerably larger than my building footprint,
| | 00:33 | and so I want to allow enough room.
| | 00:35 | I also want to turn off my cropping,
so that the Sun Path actually shows;
| | 00:40 | otherwise, it would fall
outside of that crop region.
| | 00:42 | So I'll just click the little Do Not
Crop the View icon down here, and then
| | 00:47 | right next to that the Sun Path
settings icon, I'll click on that, and I want to
| | 00:51 | turn the Sun Path on.
| | 00:53 | Now, since I closed and reopen the
file from the previous movie, the Sun
| | 00:59 | Settings have not actually been saved.
| | 01:01 | So in order for the Sun Path to
display correctly, you have to be using one of
| | 01:06 | the Solar Study presets, either
Still, Single Day, or Multi-Day.
| | 01:11 | If you're just using the Lighting
precept that we saw in the previous movie,
| | 01:15 | you'll get this dialog right here.
And remember, that's the default for most Revit files,
| | 01:20 | so it's pretty likely
that you'll see this dialog.
| | 01:23 | If you choose Continue with current
settings, it'll turn on the Sun Path, but it
| | 01:28 | won't really do anything;
the sun itself won't appear
| | 01:32 | because it won't have enough
information to properly display it.
| | 01:36 | If you click this option, it will
actually change your Sun Settings to the Still
| | 01:42 | option, and it will use your correct
project location and date and time, so
| | 01:47 | that's the option that I
want to choose right here.
| | 01:50 | Then when I do, you'll see the Sun Path
appears as a large circle surrounding my building.
| | 01:55 | Let me zoom out even farther. I told
you it was going to be pretty large.
| | 01:58 | You could see that this is actually a
compass--north, south, east, west directions
| | 02:01 | indicated--and there is a yellow arc
attached to that compass showing the
| | 02:07 | location of the sun's path across
the sky on the date of September 1st.
| | 02:14 | Now, many of the features on
this Sun Path tool are interactive.
| | 02:18 | For example, if I click on September 1st,
a little date spinner will appear, and I
| | 02:24 | can actually choose a different
date interactively on this calendar.
| | 02:28 | What would happen if we backed up to July 1st?
| | 02:32 | Now notice right here there's a little
orange piece of text that says 5:30 a.m.
| | 02:35 | Let me go back to July 1st, click on
that, and then click outside of that spinner
| | 02:41 | in order to accept that.
| | 02:43 | The date will change to July 1st, the
yellow arc will shift along the compass, and
| | 02:48 | notice that the orange text has
now changed to a different time.
| | 02:52 | That's sunrise time on that date.
| | 02:55 | So as you change the date, the
sunrise time will interactively adjust.
| | 03:01 | The same is true for this red
indicator here: that's sunset time.
| | 03:05 | So naturally, the sun rises and sets at
different times throughout the calendar year.
| | 03:11 | The other interactive
piece is this guy right here.
| | 03:14 | So if I click on this, I get another
spinner where I can actually change the
| | 03:18 | time. Click outside of it to activate
that and you'll actually see that little
| | 03:22 | blue ball move along the arc.
| | 03:25 | Now if you look carefully at the arc,
there is large dots and small dots.
| | 03:30 | Those are indicating 15-minute increments.
| | 03:32 | So we can move along that path very
easily in 15-minute increments using
| | 03:37 | those dots as guides.
| | 03:41 | You can actually click right on
the sun ball and start to drag it.
| | 03:46 | Now when you do, you can drag along the
arc, and it will snap to those little dots,
| | 03:51 | and you'll see the time changing.
And you can also drag off of the arc.
| | 03:57 | If I come back over here, it's a
little tough to see, but there's some
| | 04:01 | dots floating out here.
| | 04:04 | This is the analemma of the sun,
representing that sort of figure-8 shape that we
| | 04:09 | see the sun path follow if you
would actually trace the sun in the sky.
| | 04:13 | Notice the arc moving parallel to
itself as I do that. Moving along the
| | 04:18 | analemma, you're actually changing the
calendar date. If you move along the arc,
| | 04:23 | you're just changing the time;
| | 04:25 | if you move along here, you're changing the date.
| | 04:27 | So by doing that, this whole thing
becomes very interactive, and you can just sort
| | 04:31 | of drag the thing around in
real time and see things change.
| | 04:35 | If you turn the shadows on while you do
this then each time you let go, you'll
| | 04:40 | see the shadows update.
| | 04:41 | So if I bring the sun over here,
I see them update over there.
| | 04:45 | If I pull the date a little
forward, I see the shadow shorten.
| | 04:48 | If I pull it back, I see
them lengthened, and so on.
| | 04:52 | So it can be a very interactive way, if
you're looking for a particular type of
| | 04:55 | shadow, to get exactly the
effect that you're after.
| | 04:59 | Now once you've established where you
want the sun to be using this tool, you can
| | 05:04 | go back to the Sun Settings.
| | 05:07 | Notice that that set us to In Session.
Over here there's a Save Settings button,
| | 05:13 | and you can click on this
and create a new preset.
| | 05:16 | So I could call this April 2 at 10 a.m.
it looks like, and I can click OK, and now
| | 05:22 | I have a new preset that I can restore later.
| | 05:27 | Now, all of this stuff that I'm showing
you--the Sun Settings, the Shadows, the
| | 05:31 | Sun Path--you can enable in any view.
| | 05:34 | I just happen to be in the site plan
view here. But if you want to go to another
| | 05:39 | view, like perhaps this one that I have
here called Front Axon--I'm going to open that up,
| | 05:45 | that's just a 3D view from above--
| | 05:48 | I can come over here and turn on the
Sun Path, I'll get that same message. Why?
| | 05:53 | Because the settings of the
sun are actually view specific.
| | 05:57 | So you can render one view with the
Sun Settings based on location and
| | 06:03 | another view with them based on just
the lighting option where the sun is
| | 06:07 | from the top right.
| | 06:08 | So I'm going to choose the location
option again here, and you'll see a little
| | 06:13 | bit of it peeking out over here. Well, if
I un-crop the view and zoom out, there is
| | 06:18 | the sun, and now you see that arc is
actually literally arching up into the sky.
| | 06:24 | So this could be even a nicer way to
push and pull it and manipulate it.
| | 06:28 | Let's go ahead and turn on the shadows there.
| | 06:31 | Try and find a good view here where I
can do both of things at once and then
| | 06:36 | start dragging the time here and see if
I can get those shadows to be nice and
| | 06:41 | long on the ground there. And notice the trees.
| | 06:44 | So this can be a really neat tool to
interactively work with the sun and get the
| | 06:48 | shadows just the way that you like.
| | 06:51 | This in conjunction with the Sun
Settings dialog are all you really need to get
| | 06:55 | the sun in exactly the correct position, the
right time a day, the right date on the calendar.
| | 07:01 | Make sure you save those as presets, so
you can easily restore them again later.
| | 07:05 | And once you have all that established,
any natural day lighting that you want in
| | 07:09 | your renderings is ready to go.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. LightingInserting artificial lights| 00:00 | So you can light your
scenes in Revit in two ways.
| | 00:02 | You can use natural light with the sun
settings, or you can use artificial light.
| | 00:07 | Artificial light fixtures in
Revit are simply component families.
| | 00:10 | They're a special kind of component
families that use the Lighting Fixture template.
| | 00:15 | In this movie, we will not only look
at placing lighting fixture families but
| | 00:18 | also importing them from an outside library.
| | 00:20 | I am looking at the Interior 3D view.
And I want to add some recessed 2x4 light
| | 00:27 | fixtures in the drop ceiling here,
| | 00:29 | I want to add some wall sconces along
this wall and maybe even some freestanding
| | 00:34 | lights out here in the middle.
| | 00:35 | I am going to start in
the Ceiling Plan, Level 1.
| | 00:38 | Let's zoom in a little bit on our
ceiling grid, and we can add some 2x4 of
| | 00:44 | lighting fixtures into this view.
| | 00:47 | So if I go to the Home tab and I click
on the Component tool, I don't currently
| | 00:51 | have any 2x4 lighting fixtures loaded.
| | 00:55 | So I am going to come over here to the
Ribbon and click the Load Family button.
| | 01:00 | That takes me to the default library.
| | 01:02 | I will go into the Lighting Fixture
folder. And if I click the one at the top and
| | 01:06 | use my arrow keys, you can see over
there on the right that there are several
| | 01:10 | different styles and shapes of
light fixtures available here in the
| | 01:14 | out-of-the-box library.
| | 01:15 | You can use any one of those if you like.
| | 01:17 | I'm going to select the
Troffer Light - 2x4 Parabolic,
| | 01:21 | and I am going to use my Ctrl key and
also pick the Table Lamp - Arm Extension.
| | 01:27 | This is just sort of like a little
freestanding adjustable table lamp.
| | 01:30 | Click Open and you'll see the light
fixture attached to my cursor, and I will get
| | 01:35 | a kind of in this general location.
| | 01:37 | It feels kind of like it's snapping,
but I just prefer to put it a little
| | 01:41 | off center first, and then go to Modify
and use my Align tool just to make sure
| | 01:48 | that it's snapping exactly
to those intersections there.
| | 01:51 | So I am going to select the light,
and I will come up here and choose Copy.
| | 01:55 | I want to turn on the Multiple option,
pick a good base point, and go ahead and
| | 02:01 | make several copies.
| | 02:02 | Go to Modify, select all four of these,
go to Copy again, Multiple is still
| | 02:10 | checked, make some additional copies
over here, and there's my recessed lights
| | 02:17 | there in the ceiling.
| | 02:18 | Now, if I zoom out a little bit,
the ceiling is high enough that we're not
| | 02:21 | seeing any of the sconce lights.
| | 02:23 | If I go to Level 1 Floor Plan, this file
already has some sconce lights in it right here.
| | 02:29 | That's why we didn't load that family.
| | 02:31 | So I can simply select one of those,
and they are easier to place here in plan.
| | 02:35 | Go to the Create Similar button and
then just pick the locations where I want
| | 02:39 | to place them, and I will put one
between each set of windows, like so.
| | 02:45 | And then the final light fixture was the
little table lamp, and maybe I can place
| | 02:49 | it on top of this little box right here.
| | 02:50 | So I will go to the Home tab, click on
the Component tool, open up the list,
| | 02:57 | scroll through the available choices.
| | 02:59 | There's my table lamp right there.
| | 03:01 | I'll do the 100W-120V option,
and I'm going to place it there.
| | 03:07 | Now when I do, it's going to
disappear because it actually placed it on the
| | 03:11 | floor, so it's buried inside the box.
| | 03:15 | I'll just simply make a window to select
it, so it's still in there. I can grab it.
| | 03:20 | And it's got an Offset setting right
here, and I'll just increase that to about
| | 03:25 | three feet, which should put it
right on top of the table.
| | 03:28 | If you zoom in there, you can
kind of see in there in plan.
| | 03:31 | Then if we go back to our Interior,
there it is sitting right on top of the box.
| | 03:36 | So there is the sconce lights we added,
| | 03:38 | here are the Recessed ceiling
lights that we added, and there is the
| | 03:41 | adjustable table lamp.
| | 03:43 | So we just used basic out-of-the-box
lighting families here in this example, but
| | 03:47 | as you can see, light fixtures are
nothing more than component families.
| | 03:50 | You add them with the same component
button that you do other objects that
| | 03:54 | you add in your scene.
| | 03:55 | You can go out with Load Family and
browse and locate other lighting fixtures
| | 03:59 | that you may have available in
your hard drive, or on your network,
| | 04:01 | and you can even go out to the web
and search for lighting fixtures there.
| | 04:05 | Once you bring them in, those become
the actual interior lighting sources
| | 04:09 | that you'll be using in your
rendering whenever you turn on the Interior
| | 04:12 | Lighting setting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding light fixture families| 00:00 | Lighting fixture families
include a special light source element.
| | 00:04 | This element is unique to the
Lighting Fixture family category.
| | 00:08 | It has certain user-configurable options
such as the shape and distribution of the light.
| | 00:13 | We can even assign
industry-standard photometric web files to the light
| | 00:17 | source to make the shape and
distribution of the light accurately simulate
| | 00:21 | real-life fixtures.
| | 00:23 | In this movie, we will open a few
standard Revit families and explore some of
| | 00:27 | the specifics of the
Lighting Fixture family elements.
| | 00:29 | I am in a file here called
Lighting Families, and it has a few
| | 00:34 | out-of-the-box families in it.
| | 00:36 | You can see some ceiling-mounted
fixtures up here recessed into the ceiling,
| | 00:41 | we have got some wall sconces over
here, and we have got this little table
| | 00:43 | lamp fixture over here.
| | 00:45 | You can't actually edit directly
from a 3D perspective view, so notice
| | 00:49 | everything is grayed out here.
| | 00:50 | So what I am going to do is, over here
on the Project Browser, under Families, I
| | 00:54 | am just going to scroll down to
the Lighting Fixture category.
| | 00:58 | We have our Sconce Light,
| | 01:00 | we have our Table Lamp,
and the Troffer Light fixture.
| | 01:03 | So I am going to open up the Sconce
Light here, choose Edit, and when it opens in
| | 01:08 | the Family Editor, you'll
see some geometry right here.
| | 01:11 | This is just a simple Revolve, and it's
got a Frosted Glass material applied to it.
| | 01:19 | This yellow ball here is the light source.
| | 01:22 | Any lighting fixture family will always
have some sort of a yellow element here,
| | 01:27 | this Light Source element.
| | 01:29 | Now when I click on that, there's a
Light Source Definition button that occurs
| | 01:33 | up here. And the light
source can emit from a point.
| | 01:38 | It can be from a line, rectangle, or
a circle. And the distribution can be
| | 01:42 | spherical, hemispherical, spotlight,
or it can use a photometric web.
| | 01:48 | Now a photometric web is the
industry-standard 3D language, if you will, for light fixtures.
| | 01:54 | So all of the lighting fixture
manufacturers support this standard.
| | 01:58 | They are just simple text files,
| | 02:00 | these IES files, and each of these
text files describes the actual 3D
| | 02:05 | characteristics of the
light as it leaves the fixture.
| | 02:08 | So if you go to a particular
manufacturer's web site and download one of these
| | 02:12 | files, the lighting in your scene is
much more accurate and true to life than
| | 02:17 | it would be with just the generic
Spherical or Hemispherical or so on.
| | 02:21 | You can use either one.
| | 02:22 | You can see that this particular
light source is just using the generic
| | 02:25 | distribution, which will give you a
fine effect, but if you actually know of a
| | 02:30 | manufacturer that has a sconce that you
are after, and you download the web you
| | 02:35 | will get a slightly more
accurate lighting effects from that.
| | 02:38 | In this particular fixture, you can
see that this revolve is open at the end
| | 02:43 | here, and it's kind of open at the
bottom, and besides that, it's a transparent
| | 02:47 | material--it's frosted glass.
| | 02:49 | So therefore, there shouldn't be any
problem with the light actually shining
| | 02:53 | through this fixture, but that's
actually one of the things you have to consider
| | 02:56 | with light fixture families.
| | 02:58 | The main thing that I want to put
across to you here in this movie is that when
| | 03:02 | you are either building your own
families or acquiring families from other
| | 03:06 | sources, you want to make sure that the
geometry has been built accurately and
| | 03:10 | that the light source has been placed
accurately so that the geometry of the
| | 03:14 | light fiction doesn't
inadvertently block the light.
| | 03:17 | Let me show you an example.
| | 03:19 | Here on the web, I'm on the focal
point lighting web site. The URL is
| | 03:24 | www.focalpointlights.com.
| | 03:27 | And I'm looking at a light called softlite II.
| | 03:31 | I worked on a project once where this
light was specified and there wasn't any
| | 03:35 | Revit families available for this manufacturer.
| | 03:39 | Now if you look at this design, there is
this baffle right here and the light is
| | 03:43 | all indirect, shining up above.
| | 03:46 | If you just model that tube there as a
3D solid and bury the light source in
| | 03:52 | there, your light source will be totally dark.
| | 03:55 | So you have to keep in mind that the
light has to have somewhere to get out.
| | 04:00 | Now over here you can download a
cutsheet and the IES data for this light
| | 04:06 | fixture; in fact, this particular
manufacturer--and most lighting manufacturers--
| | 04:10 | have this kind of information available.
| | 04:13 | So what I had done was I took a look
at their cutsheet that was downloaded--
| | 04:17 | it's just a PDF file--
| | 04:20 | I used the dimensions here listed in
the cutsheet, and built a Revit family.
| | 04:25 | This is like the end cut here, and the
extrusion has to match the shape, so that
| | 04:30 | the light can actually shine
up and out of these areas here.
| | 04:34 | I will show you the actual Revit family.
| | 04:38 | Here it is right here.
| | 04:40 | If I highlight the extrusion right
here, you can kind of see what I mean.
| | 04:43 | The shape of the extrusion is sort of
this open cup shape right there. And then
| | 04:48 | the light fixture itself,
| | 04:50 | I made sure that it was set up above
that fixture, but yet below this solid,
| | 04:55 | so that when the light shines up and
around this geometry, it wouldn't be
| | 05:00 | blocked by the fixture itself.
| | 05:02 | Now, this is the light source, and it
has this very distinct shape to it.
| | 05:07 | If you look at the Light Source Definition,
that's because it's assigned to a photometric web.
| | 05:12 | So when you choose Photometric Web
here, if I direct you over here at the
| | 05:16 | Properties palette, you see that the
photometric web file right here is grayed out.
| | 05:21 | It's actually assigned to a parameter.
| | 05:23 | So if I go to the Family Types dialog,
there is a parameter down here for the
| | 05:30 | Photometric Web File, and it's got this
long name here, with an IES extension.
| | 05:34 | If you click in there, you can
browse out to one of these text files.
| | 05:38 | That text file was just simply this file
right here that you can download off of
| | 05:44 | the focal point lighting web site.
| | 05:46 | So you click there on that link, you
download that IES file, and then you point
| | 05:50 | to it here in the Revit family.
| | 05:52 | So it's actually pretty straightforward
to create a custom light fixture that is
| | 05:57 | based very accurately on a
manufacturer's true-to-life light source.
| | 06:02 | There is just two basic things you want
to keep in mind: make sure you can get
| | 06:05 | the IES file--that's what gives you the
accurate lighting--and then make sure that
| | 06:09 | when you're building the geometry you
don't inadvertently block the light.
| | 06:13 | I'm providing you the URL to the focal
point web site if you want to explore
| | 06:17 | further. They have a lot of really nice
light fixtures, and you can download IES
| | 06:21 | files for all of them.
| | 06:22 | I'm sure that most of the lighting
manufacturers have similar information.
| | 06:26 | So if you want to build a family like
I'm showing here, you can do that on your
| | 06:30 | own as an exercise, but I have directed
you to the focal point web site to give
| | 06:34 | you a little bit of a leg-up on the
information you are going to need there.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with lighting groups| 00:00 | Depending on the complexity of your
projects, you can end up with many light
| | 00:03 | fixtures in your models, sometimes hundreds.
| | 00:06 | Lighting groups help you
manage the artificial lights.
| | 00:08 | In this movie we'll look at lighting
groups and their benefits. And I'm looking
| | 00:13 | at the level one reflected ceiling plan,
and in here you see that there are some
| | 00:18 | can lights down the corridor.
| | 00:19 | There is lots of recessed lights in the
various offices, and there's some pendant
| | 00:23 | lights over here in the conference room.
| | 00:25 | There are a few other lights in this
model that we're not seeing in this
| | 00:28 | view, but let's go ahead and start
with this view and get a look at some of
| | 00:32 | the lighting groups.
| | 00:33 | Now some of the lighting groups I've
already set up already for us here. What,
| | 00:37 | essentially, do the lighting groups do, though?
| | 00:40 | Well, if we wanted to render an
interior view, like perhaps this 3D Lobby View
| | 00:45 | right here--this is a pretty nice scene
we're standing here at the lobby it's
| | 00:48 | framed out around staircase.
| | 00:50 | If I stand in this room and render,
there are some can lights right here that
| | 00:55 | are artificial lights.
| | 00:56 | There are some more up here.
There is actually some lights behind the
| | 00:59 | reception desk just outside of frame,
but they would contribute to the
| | 01:03 | lighting in this scene.
| | 01:04 | There is a little table lamp on here.
| | 01:06 | None of the other lights that I
showed you in the reflected ceiling plan, in
| | 01:09 | the offices or in the conference room, would
have any impact whatsoever on this rendering.
| | 01:14 | If I do not use lighting groups, when I
generate the rendering I'll have no way
| | 01:19 | to tell Revit that I'm only interested
in the lights that we see in this view.
| | 01:23 | Therefore, when I render I'll be waiting
many, many, many more minutes, possibly
| | 01:28 | hours more, for their computations to be
calculated, only for Revit to figure out, ah,
| | 01:33 | this light doesn't
contribute to the scene anyway.
| | 01:35 | So if you already know that the light
doesn't contribute to the scene, that's
| | 01:38 | what lighting groups can do for you.
| | 01:39 | It's basically an on/off switch for your lights.
| | 01:43 | So let may go back to the ceiling plan.
| | 01:46 | Let's start by adding some lights that
are already here to an existing group.
| | 01:50 | So if you click on a light fixture, up here
on the options bar there'll be a Light
| | 01:56 | Group dropdown. And you see that
this light currently says None.
| | 02:00 | Now if I click one of these other
lights, you'll see it says an item here,
| | 02:04 | Office114 in this case.
| | 02:06 | All four of these lights are already
grouped in a lighting group called 114.
| | 02:10 | So what I am going to do is select all of
these lights here in the conference room,
| | 02:16 | and from this dropdown I have previously
created a Conference Room 110 lighting
| | 02:21 | group. All we have to do is choose that.
Then Revit will ask me if it's OK to do, and
| | 02:25 | I'll say OK, and now these
lights belong to that lighting group.
| | 02:30 | Now if you come back later and you add
some additional lights--so let's say I go
| | 02:34 | to the Component tool here and
go to the same light fixture.
| | 02:40 | Let me do it this way,
because I can find it easier.
| | 02:43 | Let me scroll down here.
| | 02:44 | Here is the lighting fixture, under families.
| | 02:47 | Let's suppose I wanted to add some
recessed down lights in the conference room. So
| | 02:51 | I'm going to drag out the 8" 120V
Recessed light, and I'm going to place a couple
| | 02:56 | of them over here at this end. Maybe we
want to light up a credenza down at the
| | 03:00 | end, or something like that.
| | 03:01 | We can select these lights, and I can
fine-tune their position a little bit.
| | 03:07 | Well, those lights are not in
lighting group, so what you can do is you can
| | 03:11 | actually select one of the lights
that part of the lighting group.
| | 03:14 | It'll show you here, Conference Room 110,
and then you can click this Edit button.
| | 03:19 | That will outline the lights that are
part of that group in this green color.
| | 03:23 | It'll give me this little Light Group
tool palette right here. And all you have to
| | 03:26 | do is click the Add button on that
little tool palette, click the lights you
| | 03:31 | want to add. When you done adding the
lights, you can click Finish here, and now all
| | 03:37 | of these lights belong to the Conference
Room 110 lighting group. So you can add
| | 03:41 | and subtract lights from
lighting groups anytime you like.
| | 03:45 | So what I want to do now is I want
to create a totally new lighting group.
| | 03:49 | I want to take all of these lights
down this corridor here, the sconces, and
| | 03:53 | that little desk lamp that are in the
reception area that would contribute to
| | 03:56 | that lobby rendering, and I want to
add them to lighting groups, or create a
| | 04:00 | new lighting group.
| | 04:01 | I am going to keep the corridor lights
separate; there's already a group for that.
| | 04:05 | So, 1st Floor Corridor let's just add
those and click OK. And then to get to the
| | 04:11 | sconces and the desk lamp, you don't
actually see those in the reflected ceiling
| | 04:14 | plan, so I am going to go back to the
level one floor plan for that, zoom in over
| | 04:19 | here, select these three sconces on the wall,
| | 04:23 | select this table lamp right
here, and it says Light Group None.
| | 04:28 | Now when I open up the list I don't see
a light group for a Lobby, so I'll go to
| | 04:32 | Edit/New, and I am going to click the
New button over here and create a new
| | 04:37 | lighting group called Lobby.
| | 04:39 | Now that adds the group to my list right
here, but there are currently no lights
| | 04:45 | in that group. So I am going to select
the remaining ungrouped lights, which are
| | 04:49 | the three sconces and the table lamp,
using the Shift key, and I am going to click
| | 04:54 | Move to group and choose my lobby
group here and click OK. And you'll see all
| | 05:00 | those items go from Ungrouped over to here.
| | 05:02 | Now if Ungrouped is empty, that's good;
that's what you want, because now what
| | 05:06 | I've got is all the artificial lights in
my model are assigned to some group, and
| | 05:12 | that means that I'll have more control
over the various lights that are going to
| | 05:16 | be contributing to my rendering.
| | 05:18 | Let me go ahead and click OK, go to the
3D Lobby scene. The entire next chapter
| | 05:25 | is devoted to rendering, but what I am
going to do right now is just open up the
| | 05:29 | Render box real quickly here, choose Artificial
lighting, and show you this button right here.
| | 05:36 | When I click on this button here,
that gives me access to all of those lighting
| | 05:40 | groups we just created. So the entire
reason for creating lighting groups is for
| | 05:46 | you to have this level of
control when it comes time to render.
| | 05:50 | So sure, you can uncheck individual lights,
but if you had hundreds of lights in your
| | 05:54 | scene and you had to go through them
one at a time and the only indication you
| | 05:58 | had was Downlight-Recesses Can,
DownLight-Recess Can, you would have no idea
| | 06:03 | where these lights are located.
| | 06:04 | Putting them in groups you know
immediately, okay, those are up on the 2nd floor
| | 06:09 | corridor; I need those. These are in
office 114--don't need those; don't need
| | 06:13 | office 113, and so on. And you can
quickly move through the list and turn lights
| | 06:18 | on and off as required in order to
control which ones are actually going to be
| | 06:23 | used in your rendering.
| | 06:24 | So I am going to close out here, because we're
going to cover rendering in the next chapter.
| | 06:27 | A lighting group is use create
a subset of light fixtures for
| | 06:30 | particular rendering.
| | 06:31 | This essentially provides an
on/off switch for our lights.
| | 06:34 | This can greatly reduce the computation
time in a rendering by excluding lights
| | 06:37 | that would not affect the rendering outcome.
| | 06:40 | This includes lights that would be in
another room or somehow outside of view.
| | 06:44 | So, lighting groups are simple to create,
| | 06:45 | they are effective at managing large
quantities of lights in your project, and I
| | 06:49 | highly recommend that if you're doing
renderings in buildings that have lots of
| | 06:53 | artificial lights that you assign
all of your artificial lights to an
| | 06:56 | appropriate lighting group.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. RenderingUnderstanding the rendering process | 00:00 | So it's time to start rendering.
| | 00:02 | In this chapter we'll put to use all the
preparations from the previous chapters
| | 00:06 | and begin creating our first renderings.
| | 00:09 | So I'm in the file called Office,
and this is just a continuation of the files
| | 00:14 | we've used in previous chapters.
| | 00:16 | It's included with the exercise files,
and I'm in a 3D view called Front Axon.
| | 00:22 | Now what I have like to do in this
movie is just give you a quick overview of
| | 00:26 | the Rendering dialog and the rendering process.
| | 00:29 | The general process is you create a
3D view, you set up any lighting or
| | 00:34 | materials that you need to do--that's
what we've done in past few chapters--
| | 00:37 | then you click the Render dialog box,
configure few settings, and click render.
| | 00:43 | Sounds simple, right?
| | 00:44 | Okay, well I'm here in a 3D view.
| | 00:46 | I can access the Render dialog from
this button down here. It's on the View
| | 00:50 | control bar, and it looks like a little teapot.
| | 00:54 | I'll see this icon only in a 3D view.
So here I am in an axonometric view and
| | 00:59 | I see it; if I was in a camera view, such as
this Aerial Perspective, it would also appear.
| | 01:04 | If I went to a 2D view, like the 1st
Floor Plan, it will not appear. That icon
| | 01:09 | is not here. The first prerequisite of
doing a rendering is you must be in a 3D view.
| | 01:13 | So I am going to go to this view that I've
in the file called Perspective At Entrance.
| | 01:20 | I've been working on the composition of this
view, and I want to start trying out some
| | 01:24 | renderings from this
vantage point on the building.
| | 01:27 | There is my little teapot icon, so I'll
go ahead and click on that, and that will
| | 01:31 | display the Render dialog.
| | 01:34 | The Render dialog has several areas that
we can configure. And with the exception
| | 01:38 | of the Render button at the very top,
for the most part you work top down.
| | 01:42 | So you start at the top and kind of
configure the settings down to the bottom,
| | 01:46 | and then you wrap round back to the top
when you're ready and click the Render
| | 01:49 | button to actually generate the rendering.
| | 01:51 | Now I am not kind of go into detail on
all the settings just now. I'm just going to
| | 01:55 | pick a few basic ones to get us started.
| | 01:57 | Each of these sections will be the
subject of the next several movies.
| | 02:01 | So for right now I want my Quality
Setting to just be Draft. I am going to use
| | 02:05 | Screen Resolution, and I want to
generate my rendering from the Sun only. I don't
| | 02:11 | want to include any other lighting in
the rendering. And I'll leave all the other
| | 02:16 | default settings. I am going to let the
sky have a few clouds, and I'm not going to
| | 02:19 | worry about the Exposure
or anything else for now.
| | 02:21 | I am going to go ahead and click the
Render button. That will initialize the
| | 02:26 | Render process, and you'll get this
little dialog letting you know your progress.
| | 02:30 | And what will happen is the
screen will actually black out.
| | 02:33 | Don't let that alarm you; that's normal.
| | 02:36 | The mental ray rendering engine blacks
out the entire screen, and then you'll
| | 02:40 | see these squares kind of dancing
around on the screen. And what it's doing is
| | 02:45 | actually processing each
little area individually.
| | 02:48 | And it kind of has this sort of
stochastic way that it jumps around the image,
| | 02:52 | and there's very specific methods
that it used to decide which area to
| | 02:55 | calculate first and which one next and
so on. But it'll eventually get around to
| | 03:00 | processing all the little squares,
and you'll be looking at a final rendered
| | 03:04 | output, such as the image
that I have here on screen.
| | 03:07 | Now I don't think this image is
something I would want to put in my marketing
| | 03:10 | brochure; it's clearly not a very high-
quality image. But then again we did
| | 03:14 | choose the Draft Setting and low
Resolution, so that's to be expected.
| | 03:19 | The point of a draft rendering is
just to give you a rough idea of how your
| | 03:22 | overall settings are shaping up,
and we will certainly look at improving on the
| | 03:27 | quality of this rendering in the coming movies.
| | 03:29 | Once you've generated a rendering, you
can, down here at the very bottom, choose
| | 03:34 | this button here, Show the model,
and that will turn off the rendering and return
| | 03:39 | your back to the display
of your regular 3D model.
| | 03:42 | That button actually toggles to Show
the rendering, so if I click it again, it
| | 03:46 | redisplays the previously generated rendering.
| | 03:49 | So Revit will keep in memory the
previous rendering. If you want to save
| | 03:53 | renderings beyond that then you can
either save them to the project or export
| | 03:57 | them out to files, and we'll look
at those options in future movies.
| | 04:01 | So I am going to close my Render dialog.
| | 04:05 | That will redisplay the model, so the
cached rendering can only be displayed
| | 04:09 | while the Render dialog is open. And that's
the general overview of the render process.
| | 04:15 | So you first open a 3D view, click the
little teapot icon to display the Render
| | 04:19 | dialog, configure any settings
you like, and then click Render.
| | 04:23 | In the coming movies we'll begin
digging a little more detail into each of the
| | 04:28 | various settings that are available in there.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Defining quality settings| 00:00 | In this movie, we will continue our
exploration of the rendering dialog in
| | 00:03 | process by taking a little more
detailed look at the Render Quality settings.
| | 00:09 | I've opened up the view
called Perspective at Entrance.
| | 00:13 | If I click my small teapot icon here
and display the Render dialog, at the very
| | 00:19 | top of the window is the Quality settings,
| | 00:21 | and there's a Settings dropdown. And if I
open that up, you'll see that there are
| | 00:26 | several items already on this list.
| | 00:28 | Draft, Low, Medium, High, and Best are preset
configurations that are built into the software.
| | 00:35 | You also have a Custom
setting and an Edit value.
| | 00:39 | Now if you choose any one of these
presets, a variety of settings that are
| | 00:44 | actually behind the scenes get changed
and they affect directly the quality of
| | 00:50 | the rendered output.
| | 00:51 | In general, you can expect that Draft
is the lowest-quality rendering and Best
| | 00:56 | is the highest-quality rendering--and
of course, with the others in between.
| | 01:00 | If you want to fine-tune any of the
settings that are used by any one of those
| | 01:05 | presets, it's actually possible to
copy any one of the presets to the Custom
| | 01:10 | value and then modify that Custom value.
| | 01:13 | So you have sort of this one placeholder
for custom values that you can build yourself.
| | 01:20 | Now if I go to the Edit button
right here, this will display the Render
| | 01:26 | Quality Settings dialog.
| | 01:28 | The Render Quality Settings will have the same
dropdown that we just saw in the Render dialog.
| | 01:34 | If I wanted to start with the Medium
settings, for example, and modify them in
| | 01:39 | some way, I would choose Medium,
and then I would click this button right here
| | 01:42 | that says Copy To Custom.
| | 01:45 | That would take the Medium settings,
push them over to Custom, and then it
| | 01:49 | would make all of the values editable
so that I could start manipulating the
| | 01:54 | values of these settings.
| | 01:56 | In general, I think for most users
you should be able to find acceptable
| | 02:00 | rendering results by using
one of the built-in presets.
| | 02:04 | There's five different options, and I
think in general, you'll probably find one
| | 02:08 | that's suitable for your needs, or maybe
one or two that are suitable for your needs.
| | 02:13 | As a general best practice, you should
start with Draft first and generate a few
| | 02:17 | quick study renderings to give yourself
a rough idea of how things are shaping
| | 02:21 | up, and then progressively work your
way up to higher-quality renderings.
| | 02:26 | Now in my experience, Medium gives me a
really good balance, as you might expect,
| | 02:32 | between quality and time of rendering.
| | 02:34 | So as an example, if I've got the
Medium settings chosen here, a rendering like
| | 02:40 | the one I have on screen at a medium
resolution would take maybe five or eight
| | 02:46 | minutes to generate. Not so bad, a
| | 02:48 | reasonable amount of time.
| | 02:50 | If I jump up to High or Best, that same
rendering might suddenly jump up maybe
| | 02:56 | twenty, thirty, forty minutes, and at Nest,
it might go into several hours.
| | 03:00 | And the reason for that is because each
of these settings that we have here on
| | 03:05 | the scrollbar, there is a direct
trade-off between quality and time.
| | 03:09 | So as a general rule of thumb, with
3D rendering in any program--not just
| | 03:13 | Revit--the higher quality, the cost is time.
| | 03:17 | So you're always balancing the quality
that you want against the time that you
| | 03:21 | have to do rendering.
| | 03:22 | If you've got hours and hours to work
with, then you can generate potentially a
| | 03:26 | very, very high-quality
rendering, and then vice versa;
| | 03:29 | if you don't have much time, then you
might have to sacrifice some quality.
| | 03:32 | Now my experience is usually somewhere
in the middle is the best bet to balance
| | 03:37 | between time and quality.
| | 03:39 | And frankly, some of the
higher-quality settings just take a lot longer to
| | 03:43 | generate, but the average person who looks
at the two rendering side by side may not
| | 03:47 | notice a whole lot of difference.
| | 03:48 | Now what I have over here is I've taken
a screen capture of each of the Render
| | 03:55 | Quality settings from Draft all the way to Best
and I've kind of composited them all together.
| | 04:00 | Now I don't expect you to be
able to read these on screen.
| | 04:03 | I'm just sort of putting it here as a reference.
| | 04:05 | I've created a PNG file of this screen
capture and put it with the exercise files.
| | 04:11 | So if you want to open it up and print
it out, I just find it a little easier to
| | 04:16 | compare and understand what the
differences are between each of the presets by
| | 04:20 | looking at them side by side.
| | 04:21 | You could do a similar exercise just
by doing a screen capture, or you could
| | 04:25 | open up this file that I've already provided.
| | 04:28 | So in general, the lower-quality
settings are over to the left and the higher
| | 04:32 | qualities are over to the right.
| | 04:33 | So as we've already seen, I can Copy To
Custom and then that makes these numbers available.
| | 04:38 | So if in my Custom settings I wanted to
increase the Image Precision or Antialiasing--
| | 04:45 | you can see the little tooltip
gives me a little more information--
| | 04:48 | I could start to increase this value.
| | 04:51 | Now the best way to understand what
each of these settings does, quite frankly,
| | 04:55 | is to click this little
question mark right here.
| | 04:58 | That will launch the Revit Help, and it
will actually have an explanation for
| | 05:03 | each one of these settings.
| | 05:05 | And what I found particularly helpful
in that article was that it tells me the
| | 05:09 | range that's valid here.
| | 05:11 | So, like, if I drag my Antialiasing
all the way to the end, you see that 10
| | 05:15 | becomes the maximum number.
| | 05:17 | But if I start dragging this number,
you'll notice that it goes much higher than 10.
| | 05:22 | Well, according to the Help, the
Antialiasing is a value between 1 and 10, and
| | 05:28 | the Reflection and Transparency
Options is a value between 0 and 100.
| | 05:32 | So it's kind of helpful to know what
the range is, so that when you're adjusting
| | 05:36 | these, you have some frame of reference.
| | 05:38 | So again, the Help is an
excellent resource for looking that up.
| | 05:42 | But in general, the Antialiasing
is the smoothing around the edges.
| | 05:46 | If you have shiny materials, the
reflection and refractions have to do with
| | 05:51 | shiny and transparent materials.
| | 05:54 | So does the material
reflect? Over here on the left,
| | 05:57 | it's not reflecting;
| | 05:58 | over here on the right, it is.
| | 05:59 | Is it allowing light to pass
through and allowing refractions?
| | 06:03 | Here, if I've got multiple panes of glass,
at some point it might start to block
| | 06:07 | the light from getting through,
| | 06:09 | where over on the right-hand side,
the higher you increase it, it lets
| | 06:12 | more light through.
| | 06:14 | When you have shadows cast on objects,
are those edges blurry or splotchy?
| | 06:18 | Likewise with refractions being
seen through transparent images.
| | 06:23 | Do you want soft shadows? Do you want
them fuzzy like this, or do you want them
| | 06:27 | nice and smooth like that?
| | 06:29 | With indirect illumination, you can
actually tell it to use the sky as a light source.
| | 06:36 | So in real life when sunlight comes in,
it bounces off everything and it bounces
| | 06:41 | back up into the sky, and all this light
is being diffused around by the clouds
| | 06:46 | in the sky and by the atmosphere itself.
| | 06:48 | All that light is actually a light
source, and that's why when you look at
| | 06:52 | objects, shadows aren't completely black.
| | 06:55 | There is always some sort of light in
the shadow areas, and that's the effect of
| | 07:00 | all this light bouncing around.
| | 07:02 | And so these settings down here start
to control just how accurately those
| | 07:06 | shades and shadows are calculated.
| | 07:08 | So there's a lot of settings in here.
And then finally down at the bottom,
| | 07:12 | Daylight Portal Options, this
only applies for sunlit interiors.
| | 07:17 | So if you're doing an exterior
rendering, like the one we have on screen, these
| | 07:20 | settings are irrelevant.
| | 07:22 | But if I'm standing inside, you can
check these boxes to increase the quality of
| | 07:27 | light coming through windows
or doors or other glass portals.
| | 07:31 | Try it without them checked first.
| | 07:33 | They're all off by default, as you can see.
| | 07:36 | But then if you're not satisfied with
the quality of the rendering of the light
| | 07:41 | coming through those window openings,
you can try and check these boxes to
| | 07:45 | increase the quality.
| | 07:46 | But again, the cost is in time.
| | 07:49 | So in summary here, there are lots of
preset settings in this Quality dropdown.
| | 07:55 | I do recommend that you familiarize
yourself with each of the five that are
| | 07:59 | here and try to use those, because they're
already built-in and set up pretty logically.
| | 08:04 | You do have a Custom option, so you can
take any one of the presets and copy it
| | 08:09 | to Custom and then modify
it with the Edit option.
| | 08:12 | When modifying it, I do recommend that
you look at the Help file to get a little
| | 08:16 | bit more insight onto what
each of those settings controls
| | 08:20 | and then test out your preset by
running some test renderings and seeing
| | 08:25 | how they perform.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Performing test renders| 00:00 | Nothing could be more frustrating and
disappointing than putting a lot of time
| | 00:04 | into configuring your rendering and
getting everything set up the way you think it
| | 00:07 | ought to be, clicking the Render button,
and walking away, only to come back and
| | 00:11 | find a render that's at a lower
quality than you were expecting.
| | 00:15 | It's pretty disappointing and
pretty deflating when that happens.
| | 00:18 | So, one of the ways you can try and avoid
that is to perform frequent test renders.
| | 00:24 | Now, in the previous movie we talked
about the Settings dropdown and the various
| | 00:29 | choices that are under here,
| | 00:30 | and hopefully you've taken some time
to look at those settings and try and
| | 00:34 | understand them a little better.
| | 00:35 | Really the best way to understand each
of those quality settings is to actually
| | 00:39 | just perform a render using each one.
| | 00:41 | So I've done exactly that with the
image that you see here on Revit.
| | 00:44 | Let me go ahead and show you the results.
| | 00:46 | So you've already seen the Draft
result, and obviously this is the lowest-
| | 00:49 | quality version of this rendering. Everything
is very blocky, the resolution is really low,
| | 00:54 | it's highly pixelated, very
little antialiasing, and so on.
| | 00:59 | But even with that, this rendering
tells us a lot of what we want to know.
| | 01:03 | Without rendering it in any higher
quality, I can already start to make some
| | 01:06 | decisions about the overall lighting
level, whether or not the shadows are doing
| | 01:10 | what I want them to do, whether or not
trees and other entourage are positioned
| | 01:14 | in a place where I'd like them to be,
if any materials are problematic or not
| | 01:18 | doing what they're supposed to do.
| | 01:20 | There are a lot of things that this
low-quality Draft rendering can tell me.
| | 01:23 | Now here's the Low quality version.
| | 01:26 | The Draft rendering took about twenty-six
seconds to generate, the Low quality version
| | 01:31 | takes about double that.
| | 01:32 | It takes about forty seconds,
| | 01:34 | but already you can see the
quality is greatly increased.
| | 01:37 | The edges are much better resolved,
the antialiasing has been kicked up a few
| | 01:41 | notches, and I get a better sense
of the overall feel of the rendering.
| | 01:45 | It's still not anything I'd want to
put on my marketing brochure, but it's
| | 01:48 | definitely telling me a lot better story.
| | 01:51 | Now, Medium is almost at the quality that
I would be satisfied with. It's not bad.
| | 01:56 | It's still little fuzzy;
| | 01:57 | it's not quite as crisp and refined
as I'd like, but it's getting there.
| | 02:01 | The edges are definitely a lot crisper,
and I can start to really make some good
| | 02:06 | decisions about lighting and materials.
| | 02:08 | I think the lighting is a little bit low here;
| | 02:11 | it's not quite as crisp and
sharp as I would like it to be.
| | 02:14 | That's actually a function of the time of day,
but we'll get to that a little bit later.
| | 02:18 | This one took about a minute forty-five.
| | 02:20 | Now here's the High quality rendering.
| | 02:23 | The time jumped significantly from a
minute forty-five for Medium to six forty-five for High.
| | 02:28 | Now you still say, well,
that's only another four minutes.
| | 02:31 | It's not so bad, another five minutes.
| | 02:32 | It's really not that bad.
| | 02:34 | But every rendering you create, if
you have to wait five, six, seven minutes, it
| | 02:38 | does start to add up.
| | 02:39 | So if you compare this one to the Medium,
it's a little bit better resolved, and
| | 02:44 | maybe some of the details punch a
little bit nicer than it does in Medium, but
| | 02:48 | it's not significantly so.
| | 02:51 | In other words, this one took
nearly three times as long to create.
| | 02:55 | I would not call it three times better quality.
| | 02:58 | Finally, this version is the Best version.
| | 03:01 | Now, unfortunately, the settings here
were slightly different than the other
| | 03:04 | group, so you can see the
sky is a little bit different.
| | 03:06 | But overall, it's the same vantage point,
and overall it's still the same rendering.
| | 03:11 | This one took hours.
| | 03:13 | This one was actually one of the first
ones I did, and what I'm going to point
| | 03:16 | out here is, several things that
were actually wrong with this rendering
| | 03:20 | which led me to fix those things in
the exercise file that we're looking at.
| | 03:25 | One was right here
there wasn't a material applied,
| | 03:29 | so I had to pull out the
Paint tool and fix that there.
| | 03:31 | The moldings were the wrong material.
The edges of the roof were the sort of
| | 03:36 | dull gray and I wanted those
to punch a little bit more.
| | 03:39 | This window was not transparent.
| | 03:42 | So there was a lot of little problems,
and this is an example of what I was
| | 03:45 | talking about, where if you run the
rendering while you walk away from
| | 03:49 | your computer and you think you're
going to save time that way and go off
| | 03:53 | and do something else,
| | 03:54 | it's still pretty frustrating to come
back to your computer and find a rendering
| | 03:58 | that has all these really easily fixed problems.
| | 04:02 | Those were things that I could have
easily addressed ahead of time that just
| | 04:06 | left me feeling frustrated. Oh!
| | 04:08 | boy, if I had just done that, this
rendering would have been so much nicer.
| | 04:11 | So this is where I'm saying that you
want to find the right balance between the
| | 04:15 | Quality settings and the amount of time
you're willing to invest, so that you can
| | 04:19 | get a better result.
| | 04:21 | Here's one more slide putting them all side by
side. Use this for comparison a little bit.
| | 04:27 | So that should give you a better
sense of the five levels of quality.
| | 04:31 | Now let's look at one other strategy here.
| | 04:34 | Let's say that you've decided that you
like High quality, or even Best quality,
| | 04:38 | but you really don't have a couple
hours to invest, or even the full five or
| | 04:43 | seven minutes to invest on High quality.
| | 04:45 | Let's go with High quality here and say
that I really wanted to use that, but I
| | 04:50 | want to just check that I got the
materials right in those couple areas where I
| | 04:53 | pointed out in the
rendering that were wrong before.
| | 04:56 | Well, Revit offers us
this Region tool right here.
| | 05:00 | So when you click on that, you're
going to get this red box on screen.
| | 05:04 | And if you click that, you can actually
drag this thing down around a very small area.
| | 05:10 | And now the area that you're rendering
is just that little, tiny area right there.
| | 05:15 | I'm going to actually zoom my mouse in
a little bit, so that we can see that
| | 05:19 | a little bit better.
| | 05:20 | And the area is now basically two hundred pixels square.
| | 05:24 | Let me go ahead and render that,
and this should take significantly less time to
| | 05:29 | render than it would to render
the entire image at high detail.
| | 05:32 | Now remember, the entire image took six
forty-five to render at the High quality setting.
| | 05:39 | Okay, so that was just shy of one minute.
| | 05:41 | That was about fifty-seven seconds.
| | 05:43 | Now it took forty seconds to generate the
entire Low quality rendering and a minute
| | 05:48 | forty-five to do the entire Medium quality rendering.
| | 05:52 | But the High quality was six forty-five, and this
little, small region only took just under a minute.
| | 05:57 | So we saved nearly fix minutes on the time it
would take to do a full High quality rendering.
| | 06:03 | And if you're making a lot of tweaks
and adjustments to a particular area of
| | 06:07 | your model, then using the Region
Render tool is going to be a huge timesaver
| | 06:12 | and allow you to still render in one
of your higher-quality presets if that's
| | 06:17 | what you need to really make a good decision.
| | 06:19 | And you can see here that everything is
resolved very nicely in those areas, so
| | 06:23 | this is another good way to
compromise between time and quality settings.
| | 06:28 | So, just remember that doing frequent
test renderings is absolutely key to
| | 06:34 | conserving the amount of time it takes
you to generate high-quality renderings,
| | 06:38 | so please make that a habit
in your rendering process.
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| Refining the scene| 00:00 | As you perform your test renders,
you're likely to discover problems with your
| | 00:03 | model that need to be addressed before
you can produce your final rendering.
| | 00:07 | In the last movie you may recall that
I mentioned that the windows in my tower
| | 00:11 | were actually rendering as opaque,
| | 00:13 | and that had escaped my notice until the
time I actually generated the rendering.
| | 00:17 | So I thought I would take a quick
movie here and show you how to solve that
| | 00:21 | problem, because it's actually a fairly
common problem that comes up quite a bit.
| | 00:25 | So here you can see the windows are
opaque, and I hadn't noticed that until I
| | 00:30 | actually generated the rendering.
| | 00:32 | Now I'm going to switch back over to the
rendering just to illustrate the problem.
| | 00:36 | So if you look at the Best version on
the tower windows, you'll notice that
| | 00:39 | they're rendering opaque. And the High version,
| | 00:43 | they actually are transparent,
| | 00:44 | so that represents where I
actually fix the problem.
| | 00:47 | So let's switch back over to
Revit, and let's take a look.
| | 00:50 | So the trouble is a problem with the glass
material that's being used in the window.
| | 00:54 | So to solve it, we go to the Materials
dialog. So I'm going to go to the Manage
| | 00:58 | tab, click on Materials,
locate the Glass material,
| | 01:06 | and if I click over here on the
Appearance tab, what we find is that the
| | 01:11 | settings are set completely independent.
| | 01:14 | Usually this problem occurs when the
material has been upgraded from a previous
| | 01:19 | version of a Revit file and didn't
properly associate itself with the new
| | 01:24 | functionality under Materials.
| | 01:25 | If we come over here to the Properties,
they are listed as being Independent.
| | 01:30 | And I'm going to open up this list, and I'm
going to say let's make them By Property Set.
| | 01:34 | When I do that, this window will
appear, asking me if I want to create a
| | 01:38 | brand-new property set or use an existing one.
| | 01:40 | I want to use an existing one. And then
it will go through the list and find the
| | 01:45 | most likely candidate, which is
Glass. And I just want to make sure,
| | 01:48 | so I'm going to click on it to select it,
come back over here to Graphics, and
| | 01:53 | I'm going to check the Use
Render Appearance for Shading.
| | 01:56 | You can see now it's the
sort of gray-blue color.
| | 01:59 | Click OK and that should do the trick.
| | 02:01 | You see how the glass all
becomes transparent now.
| | 02:04 | I save the file and reload it into my other
project, and it should render just fine now.
| | 02:10 | So if you find yourself in a situation
where your glass is not transparent or
| | 02:14 | one of your other materials is not
behaving, it may be that the association to
| | 02:18 | the property set has been broken or
lost, and you can just link it back up
| | 02:22 | again by going back into the
Properties dialog and making the change that I
| | 02:26 | just made there.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Configuring the resolution| 00:00 | The Quality Settings dropdown in the
Render dialog is not the only thing that
| | 00:03 | determines how long it'll
take for a rendering to produce.
| | 00:07 | There are a lot of other settings that
come into play, and a very important one
| | 00:10 | is the Output Resolution.
| | 00:13 | So if we look at our Render dialog,
under Output Settings we have the Resolution
| | 00:17 | area, and there is a few controls in here.
| | 00:20 | Resolution is the measure of an
image's overall width and height.
| | 00:24 | So you can see here that there's a Width
value, 762 pixels, by a Height of 460 pixels.
| | 00:31 | Pixels are just the little
dots on a computer screen.
| | 00:34 | Each individual little square that the
computer screen has to paint in order to
| | 00:37 | create an image is called the pixel, or
picture element is what that's short for.
| | 00:43 | When you render, Revit has to create
each and every one of those pixels in order
| | 00:47 | to fill out the image.
| | 00:49 | The total number of pixels in the image
is just the height by the width, and you
| | 00:52 | could do that calculation if you wanted to.
| | 00:54 | Now what Revit does provide for us
right here is the uncompressed image size,
| | 00:59 | and it says that's 1.3 megabytes in
this case to generate the pixels required
| | 01:04 | for an image of this size.
| | 01:05 | Now all of this is based on screen resolution.
| | 01:09 | By default, Revit is generating
the image based on screen resolution.
| | 01:13 | Screen resolutions vary.
| | 01:15 | Traditional computer monitors were at
a 72 dpi screen resolution. Today's CAD
| | 01:20 | monitors are more or like 100, 110 DPI,
but it's still pretty low by comparison
| | 01:25 | to print resolutions.
| | 01:27 | If you're generating your rendering to
screen resolution, first of all, you don't
| | 01:31 | have any control over the number that's
being used because Revit is just looking
| | 01:36 | at your hardware and determining what
that screen resolution is. And the number
| | 01:40 | of pixels you can see there is fixed.
| | 01:42 | If you're generating your rendering
for output to a computer monitor--you are
| | 01:46 | going to do it in presentation on screen, or
| | 01:47 | you are going to put it in the
PowerPoint--then screen resolution is fine.
| | 01:51 | If you're planning to print the
image then you want to choose this
| | 01:54 | Printer option instead.
| | 01:57 | When you choose Printer option, you
are going to see the numbers adjust.
| | 02:01 | It's now going to tell you the number of
inches that the image is and the number
| | 02:06 | of pixels. And then in addition to that,
you're going to see a dropdown appear
| | 02:10 | over here, and currently it says 75 DPI.
| | 02:14 | So now we get two values:
| | 02:15 | the width of the image in absolute
inches and a number here in pixels, which is
| | 02:20 | multiplied by this Resolution value right here.
| | 02:24 | Revit gives us four Resolution values
to choose from, 75 all the way up to 600.
| | 02:29 | Now, 75 is basically screen resolution again,
so not really a good quality for printing.
| | 02:35 | 150 is probably the
minimum quality for printing.
| | 02:39 | Watch what happens when I choose 150.
| | 02:42 | It's going to multiply times that 6,
and the number of pixels in the Width
| | 02:46 | dimension just doubled.
| | 02:48 | The number of pixels in the Height
dimension also doubled, and look what happened
| | 02:52 | to the Uncompressed image size.
| | 02:54 | My Uncompressed image size is almost 2 MB now.
| | 02:57 | Watch when I go to 300.
| | 02:59 | Now, it's over 7 MB.
| | 03:01 | So each time you double the Width and
Height dimensions, you are quadrupling
| | 03:05 | the size of the image.
| | 03:06 | When you quadruple the size of the
image that's a whole lot more pixels that
| | 03:09 | have to be rendered, and therefore the
time it takes to render is increasing
| | 03:14 | exponentially as well.
| | 03:16 | So keep that in mind when
you choose your resolution.
| | 03:19 | It's not just the Quality
Settings that matter here.
| | 03:22 | The Quality Settings determine all the
little dials and controls in terms of how
| | 03:27 | Revit is going to bounce light around
the scene and how it's going to render
| | 03:30 | things, but this tells it exactly how
many pixels it needs to render, and so the
| | 03:35 | two factors work together to give
you the total time of the image.
| | 03:39 | So all the times I gave you in the
previous movie when we looked at the Quality
| | 03:43 | Settings were all dependent on
very low-screen-resolution images.
| | 03:48 | As soon as you start increasing this
resolution, you are going to watch those
| | 03:51 | times jump significantly, even
if we left this down at Draft.
| | 03:56 | So even if I put this at Draft, if I
have got to render 1,800 pixels that's
| | 04:00 | still a lot of rendering.
| | 04:01 | Now I will leave it at Medium. It's fine.
| | 04:04 | So where do these numbers come from?
| | 04:06 | Were does the 6 inches and the 3 5/8 come from?
| | 04:09 | Well, that we can actually
configure directly on the view.
| | 04:13 | So I am going to leave the Render
window open over here, and I am going to come
| | 04:17 | into the drawing window and click
on the crop region of the viewport.
| | 04:22 | If you're not seeing this,
you just have to turn it on.
| | 04:25 | When you select it, over here on
the Ribbon you'll see Size Crop.
| | 04:29 | There is a button there and if we click that,
this determines the size of the crop region.
| | 04:35 | So here you're putting in actual inches for
how big you want the rendered image to be.
| | 04:41 | So if I wanted to print my image out on
an 8.5x11 piece of paper in landscape, I
| | 04:46 | might want the image to be 10
inches wide to fill that page.
| | 04:49 | Now, very important, before you click
out of this field, make sure that you
| | 04:54 | choose this button down here,
Scale (locked proportions).
| | 04:58 | If you don't, this actually will
change the proportion of your camera.
| | 05:02 | Your camera will be 10 inches wide and
3 5/8" tall, and it will actually distort
| | 05:06 | your view that you have
worked so hard to compose.
| | 05:09 | So make sure you do Scale
(locked proportions). That will adjust the height to
| | 05:14 | match the width, based on the
previous settings that were there.
| | 05:18 | When I click OK, watch the numbers over here.
| | 05:22 | It's currently 6 inches by 1,800 pixels.
| | 05:25 | I am going to click OK, and now
its 10 1/16 inches and 3,019 pixels.
| | 05:32 | The pixels nearly doubled when I
increased the width of the image.
| | 05:36 | So now we're just adding that much more time.
| | 05:40 | Well, if the destination output for this
image is to a printer and I want a nice
| | 05:45 | high-quality image, I may not have a
choice but to choose settings like that,
| | 05:49 | but you are just going to have to be
prepared to wait a little bit longer.
| | 05:52 | Now I wish that Revit
had other settings in here.
| | 05:54 | 150 is a bit on the low side for a
print-quality rendering, and 300 is considered
| | 06:01 | the standard. 600 is a
bit overkill, in my opinion.
| | 06:05 | I actually have gotten very good
results with photorealistic renderings at
| | 06:08 | around 200 or even 250; unfortunately
though, I can't put those numbers in.
| | 06:12 | But what you can do is just do the math
to figure out the width of the image.
| | 06:18 | So if I wanted a 200 DPI image instead
of a 300 DPI image, what I need to do is
| | 06:24 | just reduce the Width down by
two thirds because 200 is two thirds of 300,
| | 06:30 | so I will end up with a
width of around 7 inches or so.
| | 06:34 | It'll still have the total number of pixels.
| | 06:37 | Instead of 3,000 pixels across, it'll
have 2,000 pixels across. Think about it.
| | 06:42 | If I want the image to be 10 inches
wide when I print it and I want to print it
| | 06:46 | at 200 DPI, that's real easy math to do.
| | 06:49 | Take 10 inches times 200 DPI,
I need 2000 pixels across.
| | 06:54 | So don't pay any attention to this
number; what's important is this number.
| | 06:58 | How many pixels are you getting?
| | 07:00 | If you can get those numbers to match
the pixel sizes you need, you can scale
| | 07:04 | that image any size you want in the
number of inches without losing any pixels.
| | 07:08 | I can take it into Photoshop and just
adjust the resolution without resampling
| | 07:12 | the image and print at a 200 DPI
resolution and get it 10 inches wide.
| | 07:17 | Bottom line is, very important to
consider Output Resolution in all of your
| | 07:22 | factoring and calculating.
| | 07:23 | When you're doing your test renderings
definitely consider the Region option
| | 07:27 | that we talked about in the previous
movie, use screen resolution. But when you
| | 07:31 | gets time to actually generate a final
rendering for print, you are probably
| | 07:34 | going to have to go to Printer, pump
up the DPI, and wait a lot longer because
| | 07:39 | generating a 21 MB image takes
a lot longer than one that's 500 K.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Choosing the lighting scheme| 00:00 | We discussed setting up lighting
extensively in its own chapter, but you have to
| | 00:04 | consider lighting when you're in the
Rendering dialog and choose an appropriate
| | 00:07 | scheme for the kind of
rendering that you wish to create.
| | 00:10 | So, if we look at the Rendering dialog,
in the Lighting area we will see that
| | 00:13 | there's a Scheme dropdown and if we
open it up, it's actually got six choices.
| | 00:19 | Three of them are exterior
renderings, and three of them are for
| | 00:22 | interior renderings.
| | 00:23 | There are pretty much the same
options under each kind of rendering.
| | 00:26 | So we can either render with just
the sun, just artificial lights, or a
| | 00:30 | combination of both.
| | 00:31 | So that seems pretty logical;
we've got all the bases covered.
| | 00:33 | We have talked about how to set up
both the sun and artificial lights in
| | 00:38 | the lighting chapter,
| | 00:40 | so here we're just going to talk about
choosing the different schemes and the
| | 00:43 | impact it has on rendering.
| | 00:44 | Now once again, you are
weighing quality with time.
| | 00:49 | That's almost always the balancing act
that you play when you're generating a
| | 00:53 | photorealistic rendering.
| | 00:54 | How much quality do I want,
| | 00:56 | how good of a rendering do I want, and how
long is it going to take for me to get it?
| | 00:59 | Where lighting impacts that is
typically in the sheer quantity of lights that
| | 01:04 | are involved in the calculations.
| | 01:06 | If you do a rendering, either interior
or exterior, with the sun only, it will
| | 01:11 | generally take less time than if
you introduce artificial lights.
| | 01:15 | Each artificial light that you add to
the rendering is going to add to the time.
| | 01:20 | Now don't let that be a deterrent to using
artificial lights, but just be aware if it.
| | 01:24 | If you recall in the lighting chapter
specifically in the Lighting Groups movie,
| | 01:28 | we talked about ways that you can
mitigate the amount of influence that the
| | 01:32 | artificial lights will have in your scene.
| | 01:34 | So, if you've got a collection of
artificial lights that are in an area that's
| | 01:37 | not seen by the current rendering,
then you can turn those off using lighting
| | 01:41 | groups so that they don't contribute to the
overall time that it takes to do the calculations.
| | 01:46 | So far in all the renderings
we've done, we have done sun only.
| | 01:49 | Now right below that you have the Sun
Setting, and you may recall in the chapter
| | 01:53 | on location that we saw
this Sun Settings dialog.
| | 01:57 | So we are not going to reiterate the
dialog here, but we are simply going to say
| | 02:01 | that if you've previously configured a
Sun Setting and saved a preset, then all
| | 02:07 | you need to do in the Rendering dialog
is click that Browse button and choose
| | 02:12 | the preset that you want.
| | 02:13 | Now in all the renderings I looked at a
few moments ago, I kind of felt like the
| | 02:18 | light was a little dim, and the main
reason for that is it was set to this Early
| | 02:23 | Morning preset, and the time was only 7:00 AM.
| | 02:26 | So at that time of day the sun is
still pretty low in the sky, and it wasn't
| | 02:31 | generating as much light.
| | 02:33 | So I am going to change to this Front
(Late Morning) preset, and the Late Morning
| | 02:39 | preset here is going to increase the
time by a couple of hours to 10:00 a.m., and
| | 02:43 | that should give me a little
bit more light in my rendering.
| | 02:47 | I am going to click OK. And one of the
ways I can test this to see whether I am
| | 02:50 | going to be satisfied is to
quickly turn the shadows on in the view.
| | 02:54 | Now what I'm looking for here is I
don't want the shadows to actually move too
| | 02:59 | far and start obscuring the
front part of the building.
| | 03:02 | So if I go back to the Choose sun
location browse button, go back to Early
| | 03:07 | Morning and click Apply,
| | 03:08 | you are going to see the shadows
change. And so the tower, for example, is a
| | 03:12 | little bit more directly lit than it is
when we do Late Morning, where a part of
| | 03:17 | it ends up in shadow, but the part
that's still directly lit will be lit with
| | 03:21 | more intense sunlight.
| | 03:23 | So I think it'll be a nicer effect.
| | 03:25 | So I am going to OK out of there.
| | 03:27 | If you decide to introduce artificial
lights into your scene, then you can
| | 03:31 | choose both Sun and Artificial.
| | 03:34 | When you do that, the artificial lights
button will light up, and this will give
| | 03:38 | you access to all your lighting groups.
| | 03:40 | And so I could turn off any groups
that don't contribute to this exterior
| | 03:44 | rendering, but I could leave
on groups that do. For example,
| | 03:49 | I have some lights out here on the
exterior walkway and there are some spot-
| | 03:53 | lights here lighting the outside of the tower.
| | 03:57 | So I could keep those lights turned on
to add light to the scene and turn off
| | 04:02 | the ones that don't contribute.
| | 04:04 | But at 10:00 a.m. it's not likely that the
artificial lights are going to add too much effect.
| | 04:09 | They may add a little bit, so you
might want to do an experimental medium-
| | 04:13 | quality rendering, for example, in just a
small region, to see exactly what the effect is.
| | 04:18 | So let's go ahead and make sure that
we've turned off all the lights we don't need.
| | 04:26 | I don't need any of the
offices or the conference room.
| | 04:28 | I will leave on the exterior walkway and
the spotlights on the exterior. Click OK.
| | 04:35 | Let's do Render region.
| | 04:38 | Maybe put it around an area here where
I can clearly see some of those exterior
| | 04:42 | lights. And the spotlight is actually
turned off, but its right about here. And
| | 04:47 | let's go ahead and render that at
Medium detail and see what that gives us.
| | 04:49 | Okay, so we can see now the result of that
small area at the Medium quality setting.
| | 05:00 | You may have noticed it took
considerably longer to render that little section
| | 05:03 | there, and that's because I still have my
Resolution set at Printer resolution of 300 DPI.
| | 05:10 | So I certainly could have canceled the
rendering in between, what I wanted to
| | 05:14 | point that out to you before doing that.
| | 05:16 | But if you discover that one of your
settings is still set from a previous
| | 05:21 | rendering, sometimes it can be a little
frustrating that you have to cancel out
| | 05:24 | and restart, but you want to really
double-check all the settings in the Render
| | 05:28 | dialog box before you click that render,
particularly if you've walked away from
| | 05:32 | the computer and you come back and it's
still chugging away and then you're frustrated
| | 05:36 | that you have wasted a lot of time.
| | 05:37 | So just kind of keep that mind.
| | 05:39 | Now the other thing is, you will see
here that the artificial lighting had very
| | 05:43 | little effect on the rendering here,
and that's really because of the time of day
| | 05:48 | and the intensity of the sunlight and so on.
| | 05:50 | What I will do is I'll drop this
Resolution way down to 75, and I'm going to
| | 05:56 | change this to Exterior:
| | 05:58 | Artificial only, which
doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
| | 06:01 | It's not like we could turn off the
sun in real life, but let's go ahead and
| | 06:04 | do it here in Revit.
| | 06:06 | Now before I do, I am going to take
this rendering that I have created and I am
| | 06:09 | just going to save it for safekeeping.
| | 06:11 | So I am going to click the Save to
Project, and it will ask me for a name here
| | 06:16 | and I'll just put Test Render. And I
always like to say something about the
| | 06:21 | settings I used, Medium
and the Region and click OK.
| | 06:26 | Now when I render it again, it's still
that same region, but now it's at lower
| | 06:31 | dpi, and it's not going to use any sunlight.
| | 06:34 | So it should be pretty
dramatically different of a result.
| | 06:40 | So we sort of have like an
eerie nighttime effect here.
| | 06:44 | Actually, it's nighttime in a part of the
world that has absolutely no light pollution.
| | 06:48 | I doubt it would ever be quite this dark.
| | 06:50 | But you can see that those artificial
lights are doing something in the scene,
| | 06:55 | but they're just not doing a whole lot,
because the intensity of those lights is
| | 06:59 | just being way overpowered by the sunlight.
| | 07:02 | So, usually when you combine both in
an exterior scene you're only going to
| | 07:07 | really see results if the sunlight is
really dim, like early, early morning or
| | 07:11 | late, late afternoon, and if you have
some pretty significant-power artificial
| | 07:15 | lights, like some streetlamps or some
wall washers and other things that are
| | 07:19 | meant to really light up the scene.
| | 07:20 | So keep that in mind when
you're planning your lighting.
| | 07:23 | It is possible to combine,
but you want to do it strategically.
| | 07:28 | So the Scheme dropdown offers you
those six options: three for Exterior,
| | 07:32 | three for Interior.
| | 07:33 | You can combine either artificial
light or sunlight, or combine both.
| | 07:37 | You are using the existing Sun Settings
that already in your file when you turn
| | 07:41 | on the sunlight, or you can actually
add additional presets if you like to. And
| | 07:46 | with the artificial lights you have
access to all your lighting groups.
| | 07:49 | So all that work that we did ahead of
time to set up the lighting, the location,
| | 07:53 | the sun's time and date, all of that is
preserved and accessible here from the
| | 07:57 | Render dialog, making it really easy
for us to turn on exactly the lighting
| | 08:02 | effects that we are looking for.
| | 08:04 | So another thing to be careful of--I have
a quick example to show you right here.
| | 08:07 | This is an example of that same
rendering done with the wrong lighting scheme.
| | 08:11 | This is the Interior:Sun lighting scheme
as opposed to the Exterior:Sun lighting
| | 08:16 | scheme, and as you can see, it's
pretty dramatically different.
| | 08:19 | The sun is absolutely
washing out the scene completely.
| | 08:23 | So the interior scene uses a different
algorithm to generate interior daylight.
| | 08:28 | So if you ever completely bleach out
your scene then just double-check the
| | 08:31 | settings. That's probably what happened.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying background settings| 00:00 | All right. Let's take a look at the
Background settings in the Render dialog.
| | 00:04 | Revit is capable of putting a few
different things in the background for us.
| | 00:08 | We can either have it automatically
generate a sky with clouds, we can just use
| | 00:13 | a solid color, or we can actually use a
PNG or JPEG or something of that nature.
| | 00:18 | So let me open my Render dialog,
clicking my little teapot icon, and the
| | 00:23 | Background settings are
down here toward the bottom.
| | 00:25 | And what you see is we've got a Style
dropdown and then depending on what you
| | 00:30 | choose for the Style dropdown,
the options here might change.
| | 00:33 | So let's start with the Style,
and you'll see that the first several options are
| | 00:37 | several different variations of sky.
| | 00:39 | We can do a sky without any
clouds all the way to Very Cloudy.
| | 00:43 | So you can choose any one of those
options, and those will be generated
| | 00:46 | automatically in the background.
| | 00:48 | So, let's try a few clouds and come
over here and click on the Region render,
| | 00:56 | select this box, and I want to
size it around an area of the sky.
| | 01:04 | And let's drop the Quality down to Low, just
so that we don't have to wait quite as long.
| | 01:08 | We'll use the Screen resolution,
and we'll keep our Sun Settings the way they are.
| | 01:12 | Let's go ahead and give that a try.
| | 01:15 | So there's the results.
| | 01:16 | You can see that we've got a little
bit of a blue sky with some sort of very
| | 01:19 | subtle clouds mixed in there.
| | 01:21 | It's a very subtle effect.
| | 01:23 | The clouds are not really contrasty.
| | 01:25 | Sometimes that kind of bothers me a
little bit, but it introduces a little bit
| | 01:28 | more realism to the scene and is
certainly may be a little bit nicer than if we
| | 01:33 | just chose a solid color.
| | 01:34 | That is an option here.
| | 01:35 | I can go to Color and pick a solid
color, but then I wouldn't get any of that
| | 01:40 | cloud effect at all.
| | 01:41 | It would just be the single continuous color.
| | 01:44 | So this is a little bit nicer,
a little bit more realistic.
| | 01:46 | Now the only trouble is if you look
down here by the horizon, there's this
| | 01:50 | sort of gray band here.
| | 01:52 | The model ends here where the grass
is and then there's no model, and the
| | 01:56 | horizon line is there.
| | 01:57 | And so in this little area in between,
Revit just fills it in with some gray.
| | 02:01 | It's not sure what else to put there.
| | 02:03 | That probably is not
going to look so believable.
| | 02:05 | So we really need to do something in that area.
| | 02:07 | Now there's a few solutions we could do.
| | 02:09 | We could put a wall there, build a fence,
add some more trees, to kind of cover
| | 02:13 | up that area, so that we don't
actually see the horizon line.
| | 02:16 | But if that's not an option,
then we've got to look at some other
| | 02:19 | opportunities there.
| | 02:20 | And one might be to actually use the
final option here on background, and
| | 02:25 | that's the Image option.
| | 02:27 | So if I open up this dropdown and
choose Image, I can customize the image.
| | 02:33 | Now, I've provided a couple background
image samples in the Exercise Files that
| | 02:38 | you can choose from.
| | 02:39 | At the moment, I'm choosing
this one here called Field01.jpg.
| | 02:43 | If I go to Image, there is also Field02.
| | 02:45 | You could choose either
one, but I prefer Field01,
| | 02:48 | so that's the one I've got loaded in right now.
| | 02:51 | The image can be Original Size,
but you'll see that it's rather large.
| | 02:55 | Now that might actually work in this image,
depending on the scale that we're looking for.
| | 02:59 | So you could certainly do a test
rendering and see whether or not that scale
| | 03:02 | would work for the image or not.
| | 03:04 | Stretch would scale it in both directions,
but it wouldn't maintain the proportions.
| | 03:09 | So I'm not a really big fan of Stretch.
| | 03:11 | Height and Width stretch it
proportionally, but as you can see, depending on the
| | 03:17 | proportion of the image compared
to the proportion of your rendering,
| | 03:20 | you're going to want to choose the one that
actually fills the available space with the image.
| | 03:25 | You don't want these blank bars at the end.
| | 03:27 | So in this case, I chose Width.
| | 03:29 | Now you can fine-tune it down here with
Offset and use those little spinners to
| | 03:33 | shift it in the Height and Width
directions by positive and negative numbers if
| | 03:37 | necessary, so if the horizon
needs to come up or down a little bit.
| | 03:40 | So, that's all just a
little bit of trial and error.
| | 03:42 | So I'm going to OK that, leave
all the other settings the same.
| | 03:46 | Let's click Render again, and see
what this does for us. There we have it.
| | 03:52 | I'm doing a Region render,
and sometimes the image slips a little bit.
| | 03:55 | So don't worry too much
about this black bar here;
| | 03:58 | that's actually going to
go away in the final render.
| | 04:00 | But you can see that the image
positions itself pretty well and is not too bad.
| | 04:05 | It's actually kind of believable in the scene.
| | 04:07 | The shadows are a little long.
| | 04:09 | If somebody looked at it closely,
they might call that out as an issue.
| | 04:12 | But I think the sky is a lot nicer.
| | 04:14 | It's definitely a much more natural blue,
and that kind of brightens the whole image.
| | 04:19 | So if you can get the scale and
proportion of the image right and if those
| | 04:23 | shadows aren't too distracting,
I think this one could work.
| | 04:26 | So the next thing to do would be to
turn off Region render and actually
| | 04:30 | render the whole scene at a low detail,
make sure that it's doing what you
| | 04:34 | think it needs to do.
| | 04:35 | If you need to, you can go into
Customize and start shifting it a little bit
| | 04:38 | and then do your final rendering after that.
| | 04:41 | So, Background options give us either
the auto-generated sky, a solid-color
| | 04:46 | background, or we can drop in an image.
| | 04:48 | The biggest challenge you have with
dropping in an image is finding an image
| | 04:51 | that's suitable for your
scene and that is believable.
| | 04:55 | You want to make sure that the
perspective isn't way off from your scene or that
| | 04:58 | the light and the shadows aren't
going in a totally different direction.
| | 05:01 | So if you can find an image that makes
it believable, I think it can actually
| | 05:05 | be a real complement to your rendering
and just a finishing touch that you're
| | 05:08 | looking for.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting the exposure controls| 00:00 | In this movie we will look at the
final area of the Rendering dialog, the
| | 00:04 | image settings at the bottom of the
dialog. That includes the Exposure Control
| | 00:08 | settings and some Export options.
And to do this, I thought we would switch over
| | 00:12 | to an interior rendering.
| | 00:13 | So I am in a file called Interior
Rendering, and I'm in a view called Interior,
| | 00:17 | just a 3D camera view. And I am going to
open up the Render dialog, clicking my
| | 00:21 | little teapot icon. And the main areas
that we are going to focus on is down
| | 00:25 | here, the Adjust Exposure,
Save to Project, and Export.
| | 00:28 | Before we do that, let's
get a rendering going.
| | 00:30 | So just double-check all our settings here.
| | 00:33 | Because we are working on
screen and I want the rendering to go
| | 00:36 | relatively quickly,
| | 00:37 | I am going to go with a Medium preset.
| | 00:40 | I am going to change to the Printer
Resolution at 150 DPI because 750 pixels
| | 00:46 | is a pretty good medium size that I want to
work with, and I get a little more control that way.
| | 00:50 | Because I'm in Interior, I want to switch
to one of the interior lighting schemes.
| | 00:55 | Now I could do just the Sun.
| | 00:56 | I've got these big windows,
lots of daylight coming in--
| | 00:59 | You can see from the shadow display--and I
would probably be okay for this time of day.
| | 01:03 | I am going to choose Sun and Artificial
just because. Now the artificial lights
| | 01:07 | will probably not contribute a whole
lot to the rendering, but if the time a
| | 01:10 | day were early in the morning or late in the
afternoon, they would contribute a little bit more.
| | 01:14 | So I'll let you experiment
with that a little if you like.
| | 01:16 | Now just to speed things up just a touch,
I am going to go to Artificial Lights
| | 01:20 | and just check all of my light settings.
| | 01:23 | I've previously turned off some of the
sconces that are behind the camera and
| | 01:26 | left on only the lights that we
can basically see in the view.
| | 01:29 | Now that's not necessarily what you'd
want to do in all situations, but again,
| | 01:34 | for this demonstration it
should serve our purposes well.
| | 01:36 | So I've got that and I am not going
to bother putting any kind of sky, so
| | 01:40 | I'll just leave it Sky:
No Clouds and leave it at that.
| | 01:44 | Let's go ahead and generate the
rendering to get us started and see what we get.
| | 01:52 | Okay, so here's our result.
| | 01:53 | Now you can see that the
rendering is a little bit washed out.
| | 01:57 | Somebody turned up the
sun really, really bright.
| | 01:59 | Obviously, the light coming in is
really blasting out the scene, and it's a
| | 02:02 | little difficult to make out the details.
| | 02:04 | That's where this Exposure Control will come in.
| | 02:07 | So if we click on this, one of the
really nice things about the rendering
| | 02:10 | engine that's being used here in Revit,
the mental ray rendering engine, is that
| | 02:15 | it stores information in the pixels
of the rendering, and you can actually
| | 02:19 | adjust things on the fly.
| | 02:21 | At the moment here, I'm
looking at all the default settings.
| | 02:24 | Now these little dials are somewhat
bizarre in their ranges, like for instance
| | 02:28 | this particular one can
range from -6 all the way to 16.
| | 02:34 | Now where they got that range
from, I really couldn't say.
| | 02:37 | I'll just do Reset to Default; it defaults to 9.
| | 02:40 | So obviously we certainly don't
want this image any brighter than it is.
| | 02:44 | If we did, it would just
blow it out even further.
| | 02:48 | But maybe if we boost it up just a
little bit, even just a little bit higher,
| | 02:52 | like 10.2 here, you can already see
the big difference in the rendering.
| | 02:57 | We can start to see a little of the
horizon in the background. The details are
| | 03:01 | popping out a little bit better over here.
| | 03:03 | This is akin to the exposure
control on a digital camera, and that's
| | 03:08 | basically what this is doing.
| | 03:10 | Now if you want a little more fine-
tuned control and if you're familiar with
| | 03:13 | image-editing software like
Photoshop, you can actually adjust the
| | 03:17 | Highlights, Mid Tones, and Shadows. And again,
each one of these works on their own scale as well.
| | 03:22 | The best way to get a little bit more
detailed description and to learn about
| | 03:25 | the range--for example, Highlights
goes between 0 and 1 and Mid Tones and
| | 03:29 | Shadows is between 0.1 and 4.
| | 03:32 | Now why they're not all on
the same range, I couldn't say.
| | 03:35 | But you can go to this little Help
icon right here, and that will explain to
| | 03:38 | you all the ranges that are being used
here, like the White Point, there are
| | 03:41 | some good tips in there.
| | 03:43 | 6,500 is the white balance for daylight.
| | 03:47 | If you're lighting your scene only with
incandescent light, they recommend you
| | 03:51 | start at about 2,800 and work your way
up from there, or use the manufacturer's
| | 03:55 | recommendations from the web site.
| | 03:57 | So there's a couple of different
ways you can set some of these things.
| | 04:00 | If I want to brighten up the
Highlights a little bit, again in this image, not
| | 04:04 | really sure I'd want to do that;
| | 04:05 | I might actually want to
darken them just slightly.
| | 04:07 | And you can kind of see it was really subtle.
| | 04:09 | So these settings are much more subtle
than the overall Exposure value, so I am
| | 04:14 | just going to adjust them slightly.
| | 04:16 | You can see the Mid Tones had a
little bit more of a dramatic effect.
| | 04:19 | The Mid Tone is if you took all the
pixels in the image and mapped them on a
| | 04:25 | chart and say, okay,
here are all the dark ones on one side.
| | 04:28 | Here are all the light ones on other side.
| | 04:30 | The Mid Tones is everything in between.
| | 04:32 | So when you do this, you are
kind of shifting and pushing those.
| | 04:35 | In Photoshop, that would be called a histogram.
| | 04:37 | That's basically what we'd be adjusting here.
| | 04:39 | I can make the image a
little cooler by adjusting that.
| | 04:43 | It doesn't take very much.
If I drop it down to 5900,
| | 04:47 | You can already see that there's
a little more blue in the image.
| | 04:50 | It's gotten a little lighter, a little cooler.
| | 04:53 | If I boost it way up here,
it's going to become very warm.
| | 04:56 | So this is a really helpful setting
here to set the tone of the image, and then
| | 05:01 | of course you can have a
lot of fun with saturation.
| | 05:03 | If I want to make this just a black-and-white
image, I can boost it all the way down to gray.
| | 05:08 | If I want to make it look like some
weird illustration, I can go all the way to
| | 05:12 | Intense and really whack it out.
| | 05:14 | Feel free to experiment
with some of these settings.
| | 05:17 | I am going to leave my
Saturation about where it was.
| | 05:20 | I like my White Point here to be a
little bit lower than the default.
| | 05:24 | I just want it to cool this image off
just a little bit. I am going to leave
| | 05:28 | these other settings the way I have them--
about 10.2 is fine here--and I'll click OK.
| | 05:33 | So when I'm satisfied with the
results and I've got a rendering that I can
| | 05:36 | live with, the next thing I'd want to do is
either save it to the project or export it.
| | 05:42 | If I click Save to Project, it actually
just adds this rendering to the Project
| | 05:46 | Browser in this project.
| | 05:48 | So if I click that, it will give it a name.
| | 05:50 | Usually I like to put in
the settings that I used,
| | 05:53 | so something like Medium 750 x 450.
And you might even want to put in some of
| | 05:59 | your Exposure settings if you wrote
them down, but for now I am just going to
| | 06:03 | write Exposure to remind
myself that I made changes.
| | 06:06 | That would show up over here, under Renderings.
| | 06:10 | I already had a couple in this file,
but there is the one that I just created.
| | 06:15 | The other thing you can do is export it.
| | 06:17 | When you export it,
you're creating an image file.
| | 06:20 | Now, you may remember that I only
used the default sky in the background.
| | 06:25 | So I am going to show you a little tip here.
| | 06:26 | I am going to put this in my Exercise
Files folder, and I'll just call this the
| | 06:31 | same basic name here, just put Medium
for now. And I always like to put the
| | 06:36 | resolution in the name, just so
I know what I am working with.
| | 06:39 | And instead of a JPEG, I am going
to change the file format to PNG.
| | 06:45 | When I do that and save it, Revit will
actually take all the areas that were sky
| | 06:51 | and make them transparent.
| | 06:52 | So let me switch over to Photoshop
and show you what that looks like.
| | 06:56 | So here I am in Photoshop.
| | 06:57 | You could do this in any
image-editing program. And you'll notice that that
| | 07:01 | little checkerboard pattern
appears in all the windows.
| | 07:05 | Those are the transparent areas
of the image that had the sky.
| | 07:08 | And what I can do is if I forgot to
load in an image, or I didn't have one
| | 07:12 | handy, I can save it off this way,
and now I can create a new layer in Photoshop,
| | 07:17 | and I can drop in my
background image after the fact.
| | 07:19 | Let's go ahead and drop the
background in real quick then.
| | 07:21 | So I am going to go up and open an
image that provided in the exercise files.
| | 07:26 | I've provided you a few samples.
| | 07:28 | You can actually choose whichever you want.
| | 07:29 | I've pre-sized this one to match
the resolution of our rendering.
| | 07:33 | So it's 750 pixels wide.
| | 07:35 | It's this sort of mountainous scene here.
| | 07:37 | I am going to select
everything and do Ctrl+C to copy it.
| | 07:41 | Let me come over here to my
Rendering and do Ctrl+V to paste it,
| | 07:46 | take this layer, drag it underneath the
first layer, and you'll see that it shows
| | 07:50 | through in all the transparent areas.
| | 07:52 | If I want to adjust, I can just
sort of move it around slightly.
| | 07:56 | Now, I resized it to match exactly to 750 wide.
| | 08:00 | If you want to be able to move it side to
side and maybe resize it a little bit bigger,
| | 08:04 | I have provided the full-size
image if you want to experiment.
| | 08:07 | So then we could save off the image
and use that as our final rendering.
| | 08:11 | You can also do additional exposure
control adjustments in your image-editing
| | 08:15 | program directly here.
| | 08:16 | I just want to point one other thing here.
| | 08:19 | You'll notice that there's this little gap here.
| | 08:21 | It kind of looks like the
ceiling is really bright.
| | 08:23 | The reason for that is the ceiling plane
in our Revit model was actually floating.
| | 08:28 | So what you're really seeing there
is the wall going up beyond there.
| | 08:31 | So it does look a little unnatural,
maybe, in the rendering, but I think it's
| | 08:35 | exactly correct just because
of the way the design is set up.
| | 08:38 | So that's the Exposure Control button.
| | 08:41 | The really handy thing about Exposure
Control is you can actually save it with
| | 08:45 | the Render Settings.
| | 08:46 | So if you want to render ahead of
time with certain exposure settings that
| | 08:49 | you've pre-determined, you can actually
build those right in and save that as
| | 08:52 | part of the view--and you see that
when you go to the Render Settings view is
| | 08:57 | the Exposure Control is right here.
| | 08:58 | So that actually is part of
the Render Settings of the view.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Generating rendered output| 00:00 | So we've created lots of renderings,
both interior and exterior, and I'd like to
| | 00:04 | discuss in this movie the various
ways we can output those renderings and
| | 00:08 | summarize all of our various options.
| | 00:10 | And we've looked at a few already,
but we'll just make sure that we've
| | 00:12 | covered all the bases here.
| | 00:14 | Now I'm in another interior scene.
I'm looking at the 3D lobby in the Office
| | 00:19 | Interior Render file.
| | 00:20 | Down here under Renderings, I've got a
Draft rendering that I used to just kind
| | 00:25 | of see how things are shaping up.
| | 00:26 | I can see its a little rough
in spots; obviously, it's Draft.
| | 00:30 | And then here's a
high-quality version of that rendering.
| | 00:32 | It's using a lot of daylight,
and there's some artificial light, and so on.
| | 00:36 | If you want to generate the rendering
yourself, you can go to that 3D lobby view
| | 00:41 | and adjust the settings
and try making another one.
| | 00:43 | But let's say that I wanted this rendering
and I wanted to output it now in some way.
| | 00:47 | Of course, you've seen in the last
movie and right here that we can just save
| | 00:50 | those renderings to the project.
| | 00:52 | Let me just remind you how that was done.
| | 00:53 | If I'm in the 3D view and I
have the Render dialog open,
| | 00:57 | it's just the Save to Project button.
| | 00:59 | But of course to do that, there
has to be an active rendering.
| | 01:02 | Right now, you see Show the rendering is
grayed out. Save to Project is grayed out.
| | 01:06 | Until you actually render, you
won't have those options available.
| | 01:09 | So it's a pretty good idea to save them to
project as you go along, or to export them.
| | 01:14 | If you don't do either of those things
and then you close Revit, the rendering
| | 01:18 | is basically lost, and you
have to render it again.
| | 01:20 | So it's not a bad idea to do this.
| | 01:22 | Saving them to project can increase the file
size of the project, so just be aware of that.
| | 01:26 | It can be a good way to preserve your
renderings while you're moving along
| | 01:30 | quickly, without having to
spend a lot of time exporting them.
| | 01:34 | But as I say, it can start to really
increase the file size if you end up with
| | 01:38 | lots and lots of renderings there.
| | 01:40 | So if you're in that situation, what can you do?
| | 01:42 | Well, let's say I wanted to keep this
rendering, but I want to move it out of the project.
| | 01:46 | One of the options we have for
outputting is we can go to the Application
| | 01:49 | menu, the big R, we can go to Export, and under
Images and Animation, we can just choose Image.
| | 01:56 | And this will give us an Export Image dialog.
| | 01:58 | Up here, you choose the location
where you want to export the image to.
| | 02:02 | You can click Change here and browse
to any location on your hard drive.
| | 02:05 | We can do the Current window only, or
you can even do this option, which I like,
| | 02:10 | Selected views/sheets, and then you
click the Select button right here.
| | 02:13 | I'm going to uncheck Sheets,
leave Views only, scroll down.
| | 02:18 | All of my renderings will be listed here.
| | 02:20 | So I could actually export an entire
collection of renderings all in one
| | 02:23 | shot, or I can just leave it the Current
window, which is what I'll do for this example.
| | 02:28 | The default actually fits it to a size,
so it's going to resample the image
| | 02:32 | down to a small size.
| | 02:34 | I don't typically recommend that.
| | 02:36 | I think you want to do Zoom 100% and
actually export the image the size you created it.
| | 02:42 | So if you created an image at 1,200
pixels wide, you don't want it to be
| | 02:46 | downsampled to 500 pixels.
| | 02:47 | You're going to lose a lot of quality.
| | 02:49 | So choose Zoom to 100% in most cases.
| | 02:52 | If you need to scale the image, scale
the image in an image-editing program.
| | 02:56 | They do a much better job
than Revit is going to do.
| | 02:58 | So my recommendation would
always be to export it at 100% scale.
| | 03:02 | Then down here, depending on the kind
of view that you're exporting--because you
| | 03:06 | can actually use this Export
Image command for any kind of view;
| | 03:09 | it's not limited to just renderings.
| | 03:11 | You can export floor plans
this way or elevations this way.
| | 03:14 | So it says if it's a Shaded view,
what file format do you want to use?
| | 03:18 | And if it's a Non shaded view, like this
rendering, what file format do you want
| | 03:22 | to use? And you can choose
any format that you prefer.
| | 03:25 | I tend to like PNG, but there are other choices.
| | 03:27 | And then of course you can
set the Raster Image Quality.
| | 03:30 | And again, my recommendation would
be, choose the same quality that you
| | 03:33 | generated the rendering at, and then if
you need to resample it or anything, you
| | 03:37 | can do that in your image editor.
| | 03:39 | When I click OK, it'll generate an
image on the hard drive in that location.
| | 03:44 | That's all there is to it.
| | 03:45 | So that's how you export an image.
| | 03:47 | Another great way to prepare an image for
output is maybe you want to print the image.
| | 03:51 | So you can print it directly from this view.
| | 03:54 | I could just go right up to the
Application menu and choose Print, and that
| | 03:57 | would work just fine.
| | 03:58 | Or, you can actually open up a sheet in
your project, and you can see that this
| | 04:01 | sheet here already has some 3D views on it.
| | 04:04 | And I can simply take a rendering
and drag it and place it on the sheet.
| | 04:10 | Now, how does it know how big to make it?
| | 04:12 | Well, that gets us back to that size again.
| | 04:16 | So the size that we created this image,
this particular one, is 900 pixels wide.
| | 04:21 | That's what it's using to
determine how big that image is.
| | 04:25 | Now the default is to lock proportions.
| | 04:26 | You could use these grips and re-stretch it,
but you've only got 900 pixels to work with.
| | 04:32 | So, if you start to create it larger
then what it's going to do is just get
| | 04:37 | fuzzy because it's going to take
those 900 pixels and start stretching them
| | 04:41 | out over a larger area.
| | 04:43 | Within reason, you might be able to
stretch it a little bit larger, but just keep
| | 04:46 | that in mind that if you stretch too
far, it's going to not look so great.
| | 04:50 | And then of course this is just on
your sheet now, and you can print it right
| | 04:53 | along with the rest of the document set.
| | 04:55 | So those are probably the two most
popular ways that you can output your images:
| | 05:00 | either drag them to sheets or export
them as image files and process them
| | 05:03 | further in your image-editing program of choice.
| | 05:06 | Just make sure you keep in mind those
resolution factors, and you should get some
| | 05:10 | really great quality output.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. WalkthroughsCreating a walkthrough| 00:00 | In this chapter we will generate a walkthrough.
| | 00:02 | Walkthroughs allow us to create a camera
that moves along a path through your project.
| | 00:07 | You can make adjustments to the path
and generate the walkthrough using any of
| | 00:11 | the visual styles you have, or you
can even render it frame by frame.
| | 00:14 | The process is fairly straightforward,
but there are a few little gotchas along the way.
| | 00:19 | So we'll move through it
systematically in the next several movies.
| | 00:22 | So let's start by actually creating the
walkthrough path here in this movie, and
| | 00:26 | I find that the easiest way
to do that is from a plan view.
| | 00:30 | And the plan I am going
to use is a site plan view.
| | 00:33 | So I am going to duplicate this site plan,
rename it, and call it Walkthrough Temp.
| | 00:42 | Now, the site plan is cut
way, way above the roof.
| | 00:46 | So if we scroll down here on the
Project Browser and locate the View Range, you
| | 00:53 | can see it's cut at 200 feet,
because it's the site plan.
| | 00:56 | That's appropriate for a site plan,
but in this case I'm actually going to start
| | 00:59 | from outside the building and walk
into the building, so I want to actually be
| | 01:02 | able to see into the floor plan a little bit.
| | 01:04 | So I am going to drop the Cut
Plane down to 4 feet, click OK.
| | 01:08 | Now when I zoom in, because this
started from a site plan, it doesn't show any
| | 01:13 | doors or any fixtures or anything like
that. It's still a pretty rough view, so
| | 01:17 | it's not a traditional floor plan.
But for the purposes that we want to use it
| | 01:21 | for, which is just a layout the
walkthrough path, it should serve just fine.
| | 01:25 | Now it might be nice to take a little
walk here coming in towards the building,
| | 01:30 | maybe walk under our little tower over
here, come down the awning, and then into
| | 01:34 | the lobby, so let's do that.
| | 01:36 | So I am going to come over here to the
View tab, click on the 3D View button, and
| | 01:40 | choose the Walkthrough button.
| | 01:42 | It's got settings similar to any other
camera. Here is your height above level;
| | 01:45 | that's basically your eye height.
| | 01:47 | And I am going to start over here by
this tree, and I am going to walk over in
| | 01:52 | this general direction, right about here,
and maybe I'll curve just a little bit.
| | 01:56 | I'm going to stop right in front of there.
| | 01:59 | And then what you generally want to do
is you want to place more than one point
| | 02:03 | at a curve, because you
notice how it starts to bend.
| | 02:07 | If I'm not careful, like right here, if
I click this point, you see how I get a
| | 02:11 | nice tight curve there; but if I try
and pull this too far, look what happens.
| | 02:16 | It makes this big, big loop.
| | 02:18 | So what I want to do is after I click
that point I want to kind of just step
| | 02:21 | over here and click again, and now I can
make a straight path down the pathway here.
| | 02:27 | So sometimes it's a little tricky,
but if you just make two clicks, sometimes it
| | 02:31 | allows you to make a sharper curve right there.
| | 02:34 | So I can kind of come into the lobby
right here, take a little turn here, click
| | 02:39 | over here, and end up over here by the
stairs. And I'll just press a single Escape
| | 02:44 | to exit out of there.
| | 02:46 | Now the path is still lit up here
because it's still selected, and what you can
| | 02:51 | do next is go right to Edit walkthrough.
| | 02:55 | Now be careful, because if you
deselect, it actually goes away.
| | 02:59 | So what happens if you deselect and it
goes away? Well, scroll down on the Project
| | 03:04 | Browser and under
Walkthroughs, you'll find Walkthrough 1.
| | 03:07 | So I am going to double click on it,
and that will actually opened it up. So if
| | 03:13 | you accidentally deselect it, that's all
you've to do is go locate it on the Project Browser.
| | 03:19 | To get control over it and to actually
move along the path, you have to select
| | 03:24 | this frame out here.
| | 03:26 | Now this part is not at all
very intuitive, in my opinion.
| | 03:29 | You've got to select the
frame of the camera out here.
| | 03:32 | When you do, that will give you the
Edit Walkthrough button and when you click
| | 03:36 | that, you'll get a series of controls here.
| | 03:39 | So if it's still selected in the site
plan, you can go right to Edit Walkthrough
| | 03:44 | from there, or you can go back to the
Project Browser, double-click it, select
| | 03:48 | the frame, but either way you're
looking for that Edit Walkthrough button.
| | 03:52 | That's the button you need, and that's
going to allow you to move along the path here.
| | 03:56 | The tricky thing is is we're at the end
of the path, and they've got some buttons
| | 04:00 | over here they kind of look like VCR
buttons, and you can click this to go
| | 04:04 | Previous Frame, but notice how its
going just a little bit at a time.
| | 04:07 | Well, a walkthrough is made up of a
series of frames. There's actually 300 of them
| | 04:12 | right here; that's the default quantity.
| | 04:14 | Wherever we clicked to place a
camera when we were placing points in the
| | 04:18 | site plan, those are considered
keyframes; so if I click this, I am jumping
| | 04:22 | back in bigger steps.
| | 04:24 | Now it still would take me a while to
jump all the way back, so what we're going
| | 04:28 | to do instead is I am going to come
over here to the Frame field and I am going
| | 04:33 | to type in 1 and press Enter, and that
will take me back to the first frame.
| | 04:38 | Again, a little counterintuitive there,
but I can reset back to the first frame.
| | 04:42 | Now the other thing that you want to
look for is there is two active tabs up here
| | 04:46 | on the Ribbon. So we've got Modify
Cameras, which really is mostly grayed out
| | 04:50 | because the active frame was the
only real editable feature there.
| | 04:53 | But here if I click the Edit Walkthrough
tab, that takes me back to the VCR buttons.
| | 04:59 | If you deselect out of the
walkthrough, it'll warn you that you're quitting
| | 05:04 | editing the walkthrough. It will say,
"Are you sure, you want to do this?"
| | 05:07 | If you say Yes then all those buttons
are going to go away; if I say No then I am
| | 05:11 | going to stay in it.
| | 05:12 | That's what that message means right there.
| | 05:15 | So what I want to do now is click this
Play button and when I do that, it'll
| | 05:19 | start walking through, and we'll really
consider this a rough cut, just from the
| | 05:23 | points that we picked.
| | 05:24 | Now you can already see kind of what's
happening here. We getting a little bit
| | 05:28 | dizzy because each time we click a
point to place a camera there was that
| | 05:33 | curvature of the path, and Revit is
interpolating all of the in-between frames
| | 05:39 | from our keyframes. And when it does
that, it's just sort of rotating the camera
| | 05:44 | along that curved path.
| | 05:45 | One of things we're going to look at in
the next movie is how we can go in and
| | 05:49 | start actually manipulating that camera
along the path so that we can control a
| | 05:53 | little bit more where we're
actually looking as we move along the path.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing a walkthrough| 00:00 | In this movie we are going to
take an existing walkthrough and
| | 00:02 | begin manipulating it.
| | 00:04 | We are going to specifically focus on the
cameras and their orientation along the path,
| | 00:09 | so let's take a look.
| | 00:11 | I am here in the file called Walkthrough Edit,
| | 00:14 | and I have a walkthrough already
in this file called Walkthrough 1.
| | 00:18 | I am going to select the crop region
of the walkthrough, and as we discussed
| | 00:24 | previously, that is how we get
the Edit Walkthrough button.
| | 00:28 | What I actually want to do is edit this
walkthrough from my temporary plan view.
| | 00:34 | So I am going to open up the
Walkthrough Temp and because I selected that crop
| | 00:40 | region in the walkthrough view,
| | 00:42 | it's still highlighted here as being selected.
| | 00:46 | So it's a little tricky because you
can't go directly to the Walkthrough Temp
| | 00:49 | view and actually find the
walkthrough object and select it;
| | 00:53 | you have to first select it in the
Walkthrough view and then switch views, and
| | 00:58 | you can see it here.
| | 00:59 | And what I want to do is click the Edit
Walkthrough button from this view, and
| | 01:04 | that's going to give me
access to the individual cameras.
| | 01:07 | Now let me zoom in just a touch more here.
| | 01:10 | What I'm interested in is this little
pink grip right here, because if I grab
| | 01:15 | that and start to drag it,
I can turn the camera.
| | 01:19 | And so this is the key to getting rid
of some of that seasickness that we were
| | 01:23 | witnessing as we went through the
walkthrough, and the camera was sort of doing
| | 01:27 | the little whiplash action.
| | 01:29 | So if I come up here on the Ribbon
and click Next Key Frame, that camera is
| | 01:34 | going to jump to the next orange dot.
| | 01:36 | And if necessary, I can
adjust my viewing angle again.
| | 01:41 | Go to Next Key Frame. Maybe I want to
start turning my head a little bit here,
| | 01:45 | Go to Next Key Frame. And again, at this
point would probably be looking down the
| | 01:50 | pathway. And you basically just continue
doing this, and what I want to do is keep
| | 01:55 | my head pointed forward even though
| | 01:58 | I'm moving down this path.
| | 02:00 | So maybe over here I want to start
looking into the building. And it takes a
| | 02:06 | little bit of trial and error, a little
bit of a painstaking process here. Maybe
| | 02:13 | at this point I want to start turning
all the way around and looking at the
| | 02:17 | reception desk, like so.
| | 02:20 | Let's give that a try.
| | 02:21 | Let me click out of there, come down
over here, open up the walkthrough, and
| | 02:26 | let me click Edit again. So again we
are the end of the walkthrough here, and
| | 02:31 | what I want to do is reset back to the
beginning, so I am just kind of come over
| | 02:34 | here in the options bar and type in
Frame 1, press Enter, and that puts me back
| | 02:40 | at the start point. And let's
click Play and see how we did.
| | 02:43 | So the more carefully that you
position those little pink grips, the more
| | 02:48 | natural it's going to feel
as you're moving through it.
| | 02:51 | You still get a little bit of a curve here.
| | 02:53 | I think the only way I could prevent
this one, this sort of swoop feeling like
| | 02:57 | I'm just on a roller coaster there,
would be if I added an additional keyframe
| | 03:01 | along that path, because I wasn't really
getting the control that I need to turn
| | 03:06 | my head there at that point.
| | 03:08 | But here you can kind of see that I am
keeping my eye focused on the reception
| | 03:11 | desk, so it's definitely a little bit better.
| | 03:13 | So you can obviously see that you'd
want to spend some time fine-tuning it and
| | 03:17 | tweaking it, and it's a little clumsy.
The interface is maybe not ideal, but
| | 03:22 | definitely workable.
| | 03:23 | So take a little bit of time to go
through, go keyframe by keyframe and
| | 03:27 | manipulate the direction that the
camera is pointing in, and you can make the
| | 03:31 | experience walking down the
path feel a little but more natural.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Fine-tuning walkthrough frames| 00:00 | So once you have your path laid out and
you've fine-tuned the adjustment of the
| | 00:03 | cameras and where they're looking, you
might want to also get in and fine-tune
| | 00:07 | the actual keyframes
themselves, and the individual frames.
| | 00:11 | And we have control over
doing both of those things.
| | 00:15 | When I was adjusting the cameras along
the path, I noted that it might be nice
| | 00:19 | to have another keyframe down this
quarter here, because we were sort of arching
| | 00:23 | out and it kind of felt almost like
being on a roller coaster a little bit.
| | 00:26 | So the way that we do that is we start
here in the walkthrough view--and I've
| | 00:31 | just tiled the two views next to one
another to make this a little bit easier.
| | 00:35 | And you notice when I select it, it does
highlight over here, as we've seen before.
| | 00:39 | I'm going to click over here in
the plan view next and choose my
| | 00:42 | Edit Walkthrough button.
| | 00:44 | Now I'm at an intermediate frame, as
you can see from the view in this view.
| | 00:48 | What I'm going to do is, on the
options bar, it says Active Camera,
| | 00:53 | but if you click that, you actually can edit
either the path or add or remove keyframes.
| | 00:58 | So I want to do Add a Key Frame, and if
I move my mouse, it actually sees the
| | 01:05 | path and kind of follows along there.
| | 01:07 | And so I think if I just come in here
and put a keyframe right there, then
| | 01:13 | change this back to Active Camera,
| | 01:15 | I'm going to go to the Edit
Walkthrough tab and jump to that keyframe,
| | 01:20 | I should be able to now have a grip here--you
see?--where I can adjust that down a little bit.
| | 01:26 | I'm going to go to the previous frame,
or previous keyframe, rather, and let's
| | 01:29 | just adjust that slightly.
| | 01:32 | And that allows me to turn my head and
stay a little bit more straight down the path.
| | 01:36 | So if you want to make those kind of
adjustments, you can always add keyframes later.
| | 01:41 | The other thing that I want to look at
here is the Walkthrough Frames dialog.
| | 01:46 | So with the walkthrough selected in
either view, I can come over here to the
| | 01:50 | Properties palette, and I'm
going to click on this button here.
| | 01:53 | And the primary thing that this dialog does
is determine how many frames we actually have.
| | 01:58 | Now the keyframes are where we
clicked and placed our cameras,
| | 02:03 | but there's a total of 300
frames for the entire walkthrough.
| | 02:07 | Revit figures out all the in-between
frames for us. So each point we click,
| | 02:11 | it just sort of interpolates and decides how
many frames should be in the intervening space.
| | 02:16 | Now, this is all done automatically by default.
| | 02:19 | And if you are happy with the speed
that you're moving along the path then
| | 02:24 | there's really nothing that you need to do here.
| | 02:26 | But if you want to actually start
really fine-tuning your animation then of
| | 02:31 | course you can change the quantity of frames.
| | 02:33 | You could add more and remove.
You can choose how many frames per second.
| | 02:37 | So the default is 15, which means
that with 300 frames, I have a 20-second
| | 02:42 | long animation, but by adjusting
either one of those numbers, I'll change the
| | 02:46 | length of my animation.
| | 02:48 | And I can uncheck this box, and now I
have complete control over the animation
| | 02:54 | keyframe by keyframe.
| | 02:56 | So each of my keyframes are listed here,
and you can actually start to speed up
| | 03:01 | and slow down as you move along the path.
| | 03:04 | Now, maybe I want to speed up as I'm walking
down this quarter here and then slow down again.
| | 03:11 | So I'll turn off Uniform Speed, and right
about here I'm going to accelerate to 2.
| | 03:17 | Now when I click somewhere else, you're
going to see all the other frames adjust.
| | 03:21 | Everything kind of adjusts and shuffles,
because we still only have 300 frames to work with.
| | 03:25 | Then I'm going to slow down right here,
and everything will adjust and shift.
| | 03:31 | And I have no idea what the result of
this is going to be, but let's click OK,
| | 03:35 | and let's test it out.
| | 03:37 | So I'm going to back up a couple
keyframes. Let's start right there. And then I'll
| | 03:42 | click over here, and I'll click
Play, and let's see what we get.
| | 03:46 | We could sort of see we speed up,
but we sped up only across a really short
| | 03:50 | period, but now the slowdown is over a
longer period because there's a bigger
| | 03:54 | distance between the keyframes.
| | 03:56 | So clearly I would have to spend a
little more time on this to make it a little
| | 04:00 | bit more compelling,
| | 04:01 | but the point is is that it can get kind
of boring to just follow along the same
| | 04:06 | path at exactly the same speed.
| | 04:08 | So if you actually use the Frames
dialog and start varying the speed, you can
| | 04:13 | make the presentation much more
compelling and interesting as people move
| | 04:18 | along your path.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Outputting a walkthrough| 00:00 | Well, there's certainly plenty more
playing we could do with this walkthrough
| | 00:03 | and refinements we could make along
the path and the keyframes and so on,
| | 00:07 | but let's go ahead and output it
just the same and see what we've got.
| | 00:11 | You can output your
walkthroughs to a variety of file formats.
| | 00:15 | Revit supports AVIs and other
types of movie file formats.
| | 00:19 | You can also output each frame to an
image file and then use composition
| | 00:23 | software to composite all those
different frames together and do it that way.
| | 00:27 | It really depends on what you're planning
to do with the output file when you're done.
| | 00:32 | In this case, I'm going to keep it
pretty simple, and we're going to export
| | 00:35 | just an animation file.
| | 00:38 | So I'm going to go to the big R, the
Application menu here, go to Export, and
| | 00:43 | under Images and Animations,
I'm going to choose Walkthrough.
| | 00:47 | When you do, it will bring up the
Length/Format dialog, and the default is
| | 00:52 | to export all frames.
| | 00:54 | If you were working on a fairly
complicated walkthrough that had lots of frames,
| | 00:58 | more than 300 that we have let's say,
you could actually choose a frame range,
| | 01:02 | tell it what frame you want to start on,
what frame you want to end on. And you
| | 01:06 | can even adjust the frames per second
right here in this dialog if you want to.
| | 01:11 | You probably built the walkthrough
based on a certain frame rate, so I don't
| | 01:15 | know if it would make a lot of sense to
change it here, but it certainly is an option.
| | 01:19 | We're going to do All frames.
| | 01:21 | And then under Format, you
get to choose a Visual Style.
| | 01:25 | Now we can output to all the same visual
styles are available in any Revit window:
| | 01:30 | Wireframe, of course, which wouldn't look so
nice, but it would certainly be the quickest.
| | 01:34 | Hidden Line, which is what we have on
screen right now, what we've been seeing so far.
| | 01:37 | We can do it in Shaded, Shaded with Edges.
| | 01:40 | We can even render it.
| | 01:42 | Now this is a course on Rendering.
| | 01:44 | We certainly could render it, but you
now know enough about rendering to know
| | 01:48 | that if I rendered 300 frames of
animation, that's going to take a
| | 01:52 | significant amount of time.
| | 01:53 | So if you plan to render your
walkthroughs, I hope you either have a really
| | 01:58 | powerful computer, or you might want to
spread it out over multiple computers.
| | 02:03 | And that's where doing a
frame range would be handy.
| | 02:06 | Let's say that I was going to do the
300 frames, and I wanted to render them.
| | 02:10 | Then what I would do is if I could
spread that over let's say 10 computers at
| | 02:15 | nighttime while everybody goes home,
| | 02:17 | we could break it up. Do frames 1 through
30 and then frames 31 through 60 and so
| | 02:22 | on across the various computers.
| | 02:24 | And then in the next screen, instead
of outputting to an AVI file, we could
| | 02:29 | output it to individual image files.
| | 02:31 | What we'll have when we come back in
the morning, if nothing crashed or no
| | 02:36 | problems occurred, is we'll have a
collection of 300 image files scattered
| | 02:41 | across those 10 machines, and then we
can take all those image files and bring
| | 02:45 | them into image-editing
software and composite them together.
| | 02:49 | In this case, like I said, we're
going to be a little simpler about it.
| | 02:51 | We're going to do all the frames.
| | 02:53 | We'll stick with the Hidden Line Visual
Style, and you can actually change the
| | 02:57 | Dimensions here. And 576x432 is not
bad, but I'm going to actually drop this
| | 03:04 | down just a little bit.
| | 03:05 | I'll do 400 pixels x 300 pixels,
and that should render a little bit quicker.
| | 03:11 | And you see that's actually going to
zoom it down a percentage of its size.
| | 03:14 | So let me click OK here, and it will ask
me for the name. And I will just output
| | 03:21 | this to my Exercise Files folder.
| | 03:23 | And it's using AVI by default, but you
can see here that the other options were
| | 03:28 | for us to create a bunch of image files.
| | 03:30 | Now if you choose one of these other
options, you're going to want to choose a
| | 03:34 | folder as a destination, because you're
not going to want 300 image files just
| | 03:38 | loose in your project folder.
| | 03:40 | So you could create a folder called
Walkthrough Output or something and output them there.
| | 03:44 | There are some options. So if you
click over there, it takes you back to the
| | 03:49 | dialog that we were just in.
| | 03:50 | So if you realize that you accidentally
set something wrong, you can come back
| | 03:55 | in here before completing the operation;
| | 03:57 | you don't have to
actually cancel and start over.
| | 03:59 | So let's OK that. Click Save.
| | 04:01 | When we do that, it will ask us
what video codec we want to use.
| | 04:05 | Codec is a compressor
software that compresses the frames.
| | 04:09 | The default is Uncompressed, which is
the largest file. But you can also choose
| | 04:14 | one of these other codecs over here.
| | 04:16 | I'm going to just go ahead with the
Uncompressed for right now and later in
| | 04:20 | video editing software,
| | 04:21 | I can take the uncompressed file and
then do any post-processing I need and then
| | 04:26 | compress I after that for
whatever delivery output is necessary.
| | 04:29 | So let me click OK here, and we'll
sit back and watch Revit do its work.
| | 04:35 | Okay, so let's go out and take a
look at what Revit created for us.
| | 04:38 | Go to my Exercise Files folder, and there is
the Walkthrough file right there. Open it up.
| | 04:44 | All right! Let's click Play.
Whoa! We're moving a little quickly there.
| | 04:50 | Might want to slow that down. Oh, there we go!
| | 04:53 | Right there, it's almost like it was on queue.
| | 04:56 | So what that tells me is I might want
to adjust my frame rate a little bit, but
| | 04:59 | overall, not bad for a first attempt.
| | 05:01 | So it all starts with the basic path,
and then you go through the path and
| | 05:04 | you edit the keyframes and the
camera settings for where the cameras are
| | 05:08 | pointing at, generate you
walkthrough output, and get ready to wow your
| | 05:12 | clients and colleagues.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Experimenting with Additional Rendering TypesCreating non-photorealistic renderings| 00:00 | In this movie, I'd like to talk
about non-photorealistic rendering.
| | 00:03 | We have spent the entire course
talking about the various ways we can create
| | 00:06 | photorealistic renderings, and they
offer very compelling and powerful
| | 00:10 | presentations, but there's a lot of ways
that we can communicate design ideas as
| | 00:14 | architects and designers.
| | 00:15 | Sometimes all we need is a good
hidden line view or a shaded view to get
| | 00:18 | across the design intent.
| | 00:20 | So in this movie, I'd like to
take a look at a few options.
| | 00:23 | I'm here in a view called
Aerial View (Perspective).
| | 00:27 | What we want to look at here is I'm in
a simple hidden line view--down here on
| | 00:30 | the View Control bar we have a pop-up for
our visual styles, and there are several
| | 00:35 | visual styles that come with the software.
| | 00:37 | We can do Hidden Line of course. We
can do Shaded--it gives us a nice solid
| | 00:42 | color shading effect.
| | 00:43 | We have Consistent Colors
which is another way to do Shaded.
| | 00:47 | The difference is you'll notice that
instead of a difference in tone there on
| | 00:51 | the slope of the roof,
| | 00:53 | it will use the same consistent color.
| | 00:55 | You can see here we've got a darker
shaded area of the roof, and Consistent Color
| | 00:59 | removes all of that.
| | 01:01 | We can even go to a Realistic mode.
| | 01:03 | Realistic mode actually applies the same
textures that we're using in the render
| | 01:08 | materials for photorealistic
renderings but just applies them in a more
| | 01:12 | illustrative way directly to the
surfaces of the objects, and it's much quicker,
| | 01:17 | because we're not
actually waiting for a rendering.
| | 01:19 | It's not quite as photorealistic, but it
kind of starts to convey the intent, so
| | 01:23 | it's a different kind of presentation.
| | 01:25 | Let me set back to Hidden Line.
| | 01:28 | If I click on the pop-up, at the top there
is a command called Graphic Display Options.
| | 01:33 | Now here you get a lot more
control over what each of these visual
| | 01:37 | styles actually does.
| | 01:38 | So here is a reiteration of the same
basic choices that we had there in the View
| | 01:42 | Control bar, the different ways
that we want to treat the surfaces.
| | 01:45 | If I go to a Shaded mode, for example,
then I get this little check box
| | 01:49 | that allows me to hide and show the edges.
| | 01:51 | Let me show you what that looks like.
| | 01:52 | Let's click Apply, and I am back in
Shaded. The edges are all outlined in black.
| | 01:57 | If I uncheck this box and I click Apply
again, that black outline goes away and
| | 02:02 | the colors just butt
right up against one another.
| | 02:05 | Now that can be pretty nice over here
at the ridge of the roof, but on some
| | 02:10 | of the surfaces of the walls they
kind of feel a little washed out to me.
| | 02:12 | So I don't think it's quite as effective there.
| | 02:14 | So my preference is to do Show Edges.
| | 02:16 | So I'm going to turn that back on.
| | 02:18 | We have a new feature here called
Ghost Surfaces, which was introduced in
| | 02:22 | the current release.
| | 02:23 | When I apply that, we actually kind of
get this x-ray mode where we're seeing
| | 02:27 | right through the building.
| | 02:28 | Now I think this is probably more
effective in a smaller view, where you focus in
| | 02:33 | on a certain area. Maybe you're trying
to focus in on a certain room or space or
| | 02:37 | a certain part of the building.
| | 02:38 | This could be a pretty
interesting and compelling presentation.
| | 02:41 | For the entire building
it might get a little busy,
| | 02:43 | so I'm going to turn that off.
But that's one of our options.
| | 02:48 | Silhouettes, I love this feature,
but I think it needs some work.
| | 02:52 | I'm going to just show you
what it does real quick here.
| | 02:54 | I'm going to choose the widest
line style that I have available.
| | 02:58 | So, all my line styles are listed here.
| | 03:00 | What this does is it's going to
outline the edges of objects that are at the
| | 03:05 | periphery of your image.
| | 03:07 | It's kind of like what we used to do in
hand drafting where we would outline the
| | 03:10 | profile of the 3D view or elevation
or whatever drawing we were working on.
| | 03:16 | You could see it's working really
well over here on the edge of the roof.
| | 03:20 | It's giving me a nice bold edge around
there, really accentuating and making that
| | 03:24 | edge pop. Not quite as
successful along these areas over here.
| | 03:28 | So I love the feature from that point of view.
| | 03:31 | What I don't like about it
is we have no control over it.
| | 03:33 | You'll notice there is no way here to
control where it applies the silhouettes.
| | 03:37 | Revit is basically in complete charge of that.
| | 03:40 | Now you do have a little bit of control,
but it's definitely a little bit tricky.
| | 03:46 | If I use the Linework tool on the Modify
tab, I can change the Linework Category
| | 03:52 | to one of my thinner line styles, such
as Thin Lines. In areas like over here
| | 03:56 | where the roof touches the tower
and it's not supposed to silhouette,
| | 04:00 | I could easily remove that,
and that solves the issue right there.
| | 04:05 | In other areas though, it's a little more
challenging, because there might be way
| | 04:08 | too many lines here. And the line goes
all the way to the end, and we have a hard
| | 04:12 | time controlling it, so, a little bit tricky.
| | 04:15 | But anyway, the Silhouette display can
give us an interesting effect but needs
| | 04:19 | a little bit of fine-tuning.
| | 04:23 | Show Ambient Shadows,
this is a terrific feature.
| | 04:26 | The first thing we want to
do is turn the shadows on,
| | 04:28 | so I'm going to click Cast Shadows.
And I'm actually going to change back to
| | 04:32 | Hidden Line view, so that the
shadows are really clear without the
| | 04:35 | distraction of the colors.
| | 04:37 | So let's click Apply.
| | 04:38 | So there we see the shadows, and by the
way, those shadows are being cast by the
| | 04:41 | preset Sun Settings of
Rear (Afternoon) that I have here in this file.
| | 04:46 | If I turn on the Ambient Shadows and
apply that, you get this subtle effect
| | 04:50 | where you get this sort of pooling of
light almost, where it's simulating the
| | 04:55 | effect of two surfaces when they come
at one another at an angle, they sort of
| | 04:59 | bounce light off of one another. And you
can kind of see a little bit of shading
| | 05:03 | in that area there, or down here along
the brick here, you see some shading here,
| | 05:07 | or there's just a little bit of
a texture now on that wall.
| | 05:10 | It gives the image a little bit more of
a warm feel, a little bit more emotional
| | 05:14 | feel to it, and I think it's a
really pretty terrific option.
| | 05:17 | Now it does work with other views as well.
| | 05:21 | So if I change this back to Shaded, for
example, you can kind of see it taking
| | 05:26 | effect over here and over here, so
it's really a pretty terrific option.
| | 05:29 | The last thing I want to point out
in this movie is the Sun Settings.
| | 05:35 | I've already made brief mention of the
lighting is controlled by our presets.
| | 05:39 | We've seen these before.
| | 05:40 | I've got Rear (Afternoon). But down
here, the Shaded view right now kind of
| | 05:45 | feels a little dark to me.
| | 05:46 | Some of the things you can do here is
with these sliders you can start changing
| | 05:50 | the intensity of the Sun, the Ambient
Light, and the Shadows. And what I'm going
| | 05:54 | to do is just kind of increase the
Ambient Light just a little bit, click
| | 05:57 | Apply, maybe a little bit more, and you see it
sort of brightens up the image a little bit.
| | 06:04 | So you can definitely play around
with those sliders a little bit there and
| | 06:07 | fine-tune the effect to
just what you're looking for.
| | 06:10 | The Graphic Display Options allow us to
find-tune the display of the visual styles.
| | 06:15 | So they all have there preset out of
the box, but we can fiddle with them and
| | 06:18 | make these kinds of adjustments
here to either the way the surfaces are
| | 06:21 | displayed or the ambient shadows or
the ambient light and so on and get a
| | 06:25 | presentation effect that's very compelling,
but not very expensive in terms of time.
| | 06:31 | So unlike a photorealistic rendering,
which could take sometimes hours to
| | 06:35 | generate a really high-quality
rendering, here with the visual styles it's
| | 06:38 | a matter of minutes.
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| Adjusting graphic display options| 00:00 | When working with Visual Styles and
Graphic Display Options, you can have Revit
| | 00:03 | generate a background for you, so that
you're not looking at just a plain-white
| | 00:07 | background behind your image;
| | 00:09 | you can actually put a
nice gradient fill back there.
| | 00:11 | So I'd like to start off by showing you
that, and also I would like to show you a
| | 00:15 | few interesting ways that you can
create rendered presentations from plans and
| | 00:18 | elevations in this movie.
| | 00:20 | Let's start with Graphic Display Options again.
| | 00:22 | I am here in a view
called Perspective at Entrance.
| | 00:25 | I am going to click on pop-up for
Visual Styles and choose Graphic Display
| | 00:29 | Options, and down here towards the
bottom we have these background features.
| | 00:35 | So you can either do None
or you can do a Gradient fill.
| | 00:38 | When you choose a gradient fill,
Revit will suggest some colors for the
| | 00:41 | ground, the horizon, and the sky, and you can
click any one of these buttons and make adjustments.
| | 00:46 | So if you want to use a different sky
color--maybe brighten it up a little
| | 00:49 | bit--you can choose the color you want,
or you can accept the color that Revit
| | 00:52 | gives you as a default.
| | 00:53 | Let's go ahead and apply that, and you
will see that kind of puts that nice
| | 00:57 | gradient blue back there, and there
is little bit of gray peaking in over
| | 01:00 | here for the ground.
| | 01:02 | Maybe I want to turn on the shadows,
apply that. It's starting to look a little nicer.
| | 01:07 | This is my Late Morning sun. Maybe I
want to do my Early Morning sun and see how
| | 01:13 | that affects the shadows, try that. And
of course I like the Ambient Shadows.
| | 01:18 | Let's try that. And you see how again
that sort of darkens everything a little
| | 01:22 | bit and makes a little bit of
shadowing on the surfaces here.
| | 01:25 | Right there with just a few clicks,
I have got a really nice interesting
| | 01:29 | presentation that I could put on a
sheet and print out, and it starts to convey
| | 01:33 | the overall feel of the approach
from this angle of the building.
| | 01:38 | All of the work that we've done
throughout the course for rendering has taken
| | 01:42 | place in a 3D view, because that's required by
rendering, if you are doing actual renderings.
| | 01:47 | All the stuff I just showed you
works perfectly well in floor plans,
| | 01:51 | elevations, and sections.
| | 01:53 | So, for example, if I took this floor
plan and I duplicated the view without
| | 01:57 | any detailing and just made a plain old view
of just the floor plan, I can turn on shadows.
| | 02:04 | I can go to Graphic Display Options,
and I can turn on Ambient Shadows.
| | 02:09 | I can change the Display mode to a
Shaded view. And this view I could print right
| | 02:15 | along with my document set as a
shaded shadow-casting plan presentation.
| | 02:22 | What if I wanted to actually render
something like this and start showing the
| | 02:26 | actual render materials?
| | 02:28 | Well, unfortunately, you
can't render a plan view.
| | 02:31 | If you look down here at the View Control
bar, we don't have the little teapot icon.
| | 02:37 | It's not allowed.
| | 02:38 | There is real simple solution.
| | 02:40 | I'll just go in and create a brand-new 3D view.
| | 02:44 | So if you notice here under my 3D views,
I don't have that curly bracket 3D view, but if I
| | 02:50 | simply click the Default 3D View
button, Revit will create one for me.
| | 02:55 | There it is right there. And I'm looking at the
default southwest axonometric of the building.
| | 03:01 | I am just going to use my View
Cube here, set it to top view.
| | 03:04 | I am going to take the section box
over here and turn it on right there.
| | 03:11 | I am going to take that section box,
pull it in nice and close around the part
| | 03:16 | of the building that I want to render.
| | 03:17 | Let's do a nice close crop like that,
zoom in a little bit. And if we go to the
| | 03:26 | front view just real quick, it's
showing me the top of the building.
| | 03:30 | I can take that same section box and
just sort of pull it down until I am
| | 03:35 | cutting through the part of
the floor plan I want to look at.
| | 03:38 | So now if I go back to this view, I am
actually cutting through a 3D model at a
| | 03:45 | plan view. And if I turn on the shadows,
you start to see that I am getting
| | 03:50 | basically the same effect now that I
got in the regular floor plan, but now the
| | 03:54 | difference is, here's my teapot and
I could proceed with a rendering.
| | 03:59 | So you can do this for elevations.
| | 04:01 | You can do this for plans, for sections.
| | 04:04 | If you want to render a more
orthographic presentation, all you've got to do is
| | 04:08 | create a 3D view, turn on the section box,
crop it the way you want, and then use
| | 04:13 | the View Cube to the orient it to that
orthographic view, and you're good to go.
| | 04:17 | Proceed with rendering as normal.
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| Developing a solar study| 00:00 | We have looked at lots of ways we can
create presentations from our Revit model.
| | 00:03 | We have looked at photorealistic
renderings and shaded renderings.
| | 00:07 | In this movie, I'd like
to look at solar studies.
| | 00:10 | We've already set up the sun's position
in the sky to help us with our renderings.
| | 00:14 | In this movie, we're going to take that
position in the sky and we're going to
| | 00:16 | animate it across time.
| | 00:18 | We can either animate it for a single
day to watch the way the shadows move
| | 00:21 | across the landscape across a
single-day period, or we can animate it
| | 00:26 | across multiple days.
| | 00:27 | And I'm in a Aerial View (Perspective).
And the first thing that I want to look
| | 00:31 | at is my Sun Settings.
| | 00:36 | Now currently, it's set to a Still
rendering and the Rear (Afternoon) preset that
| | 00:40 | we've worked on in some other movies.
| | 00:42 | I can change to a single-day solar
study or a multiple-day solar study.
| | 00:47 | With the Single Day, you're going to
set two times--the start time and the
| | 00:51 | end time--and it will animate the sun's
movement across the sky across that single day.
| | 00:56 | With the Multi-Day, you're going to
choose a date range and the time of day, and
| | 01:01 | it will animate across that period of days.
| | 01:04 | So for this example, I'm going
to do a single-day solar study.
| | 01:06 | I'm going to change the date to September 1st.
| | 01:09 | And instead of picking two times here,
I'm going to just click this button right
| | 01:14 | here to make it go from Sunrise to sunset.
| | 01:17 | So I'm going to let Revit look at
the date that I picked and tell me when
| | 01:21 | the sun rises and sets.
| | 01:22 | And it's going to create 13 frames from that.
| | 01:25 | And the reason for that is the Time
Interval is currently set to One hour.
| | 01:29 | So I'm going to change that Time
Interval to 15 minutes and that will increase
| | 01:34 | the number of frames to 52.
| | 01:36 | Finally, I want to uncheck Ground
Plane at Level 1, so that it actually casts
| | 01:40 | the shadows across my ground surface.
| | 01:43 | And then I'm going to click this
button over here to save these settings as
| | 01:47 | September 1st, 1 Full Day.
| | 01:49 | So that's going to be my settings.
| | 01:51 | I'm going to click OK, and you'll see
that shadows get really long and shade the
| | 01:56 | entire back of the building because
we're basically at sunrise right now.
| | 02:00 | What we can do is click the Sun Path
icon here and a Preview Solar Study button
| | 02:06 | will appear on the pop-up.
| | 02:08 | We choose that and here on the Options
bar, we'll get a little time control--
| | 02:12 | it's kind of like a VCR--that we can
actually put in the individual frame that
| | 02:16 | we want or a time, or we can just
simply click this button right here and play
| | 02:20 | the entire animation.
| | 02:23 | So just like that, by setting a few
settings in the Sun Settings dialog, we can
| | 02:27 | watch the shadows move across
our site in nearly real time.
| | 02:31 | Well, why don't we export that?
| | 02:33 | If you're happy with the preview that
you do on screen, all you need to do is
| | 02:37 | go to the big R, go to Export, under Images
and Animations, you can choose Solar Study.
| | 02:44 | You're going to export all the frames.
| | 02:47 | Your frame rate per second is listed
here, so this is going to be kind of speedy
| | 02:51 | here. The Total time is going
to end up being only 3 seconds,
| | 02:55 | so I'm going to drop this down to
about 5 Frames/sec and that will increase
| | 03:00 | the time a little bit.
| | 03:02 | It might feel a little choppy,
but at least it'll slow it down;
| | 03:04 | otherwise it would spike so
fast you can hardly see it.
| | 03:08 | For this one I'm just going to keep the
Visual Style at Hidden Line, but you do
| | 03:11 | have all of the expected choices.
| | 03:14 | We can shade it, we can use
Realistic, or we can even render it.
| | 03:17 | Now keep in mind, if you render it,
you're rendering 52 renderings, so you
| | 03:22 | better have a lot of time or share the load
among several computers in order to speed that up.
| | 03:27 | I'm going to do 100%, and let's click OK.
| | 03:29 | This will ask me for a name here.
| | 03:32 | I'm going to go ahead and add the
date to the name and click Save.
| | 03:37 | So Revit will offer us the
different compressor options.
| | 03:42 | We can do a Full (Uncompressed), or we
can choose one of the standard codecs here.
| | 03:45 | I'm going to do a Full (Uncompressed), click OK,
and then just wait for it to do the export.
| | 03:52 | So when the output is complete, you can
go out to your hard drive, wherever you
| | 03:55 | saved it, open it up, take a look,
and assuming you're satisfied with it, send
| | 03:59 | it off to your client or other recipient.
| | 04:02 | Now notice that at top it
actually puts the date and time for you.
| | 04:05 | It's kind of a nice touch.
| | 04:06 | So you can see as it's playing, what
time of the day it is as the shadows move.
| | 04:11 | So the Animated Solar Study is a great
tool to get a good understanding of how
| | 04:15 | your building is positioned on the site
and what the effect of the shadows will
| | 04:18 | be, not only over the building that
you're designing, but any neighboring
| | 04:21 | structures that might have
an influence on your project.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Well, this concludes our short tour of
the Revit Architecture rendering tools.
| | 00:04 | Thank you for spending time with me
exploring rendering and presentation
| | 00:07 | features in the software.
| | 00:09 | I sincerely hope you found the course
rewarding and that you learned something
| | 00:12 | that you can begin using
right away in your Revit projects.
| | 00:15 | Now it's time to begin practicing
what you've learned in your own projects.
| | 00:18 | You can begin using the techniques
right away in any existing project or even a
| | 00:22 | recently completed project.
| | 00:24 | Good luck and send me a
JPEG of your first rendering;
| | 00:26 | I'd love to see your results!
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