Bwana Kahawa

Hi all, I've been approached to produce a series of images for a flooring supplier. They sell a range of products (wood, vinyl, carpet, etc) and would like a series of internal scenes to give a consistent preview of each of the products. Their initial request was 5 or 6 scenes (I'm guessing a kitchen, a bedroom, a lounge, etc), Each product would only use one scene, but would need two or three viewpoints of that scene. They sell a lot of products, so we're talking hundreds of (similar) images in total. I was hoping for a bit of advice from anyone who'd done this kind of thing before. Although I've been in visualisation for almost 15 years, I've never had to produce accurate textures from actual physical samples. It could be a good earner, but it's way outside my comfort zone! So I guess the questions are: * How best to photograph the samples? I won't be able to rely on textures provided by the manufacturers as they'll vary in quality, which suggests photographing them myself. Any advice on studio setup? Would it be worth hiring a professional photographer? What sort of size sample would I need as a minimum? * I'd probably use Maxwell to render the scenes, which offers pretty realistic materials. Would I be able to assume that all manufacturers could provide me with appropriate light reflectance values etc, or would I get away with just doing things 'by eye'? * Any other pitfalls or issues to worry about? Any advice appreciated. Thanks, Derek

Thanks guys, but again, we're using ArchiCAD, not 3DS Max. I would've assumed the maths to calculate the FOV would be the same, regardless of the intended rendering software. Zdravko, I'll check out that Youtube link. Anyone aware of any online calculators / translators?

Thanks Tom. Any idea why it's doing it? It's almost like I can't trust the metadata in an iPhone JPG. I'm aligning it in ArchiCAD rather than Max - even less accurate than Max, I suspect... Anyone else have any tips? When we're doing stuff for conversations with planning authorities, it'd be nice to be vaguely confident of our building size in the image!

Hi, I'm having real trouble aligning a model with a site photo from an iPhone 6. The way I've always aligned cameras may not be the best, but seems to have worked for me for a good few years: 1) Open the photo in Photoshop and extract the original camera make, image size and focal length (in mm) 2) Look up the camera's sensor size in mm online 3) Plug the sensor width and height and the image focal length into an old little Mac app called FOV Calculator. 4) This gives me a field of view equivalent to 35mm film 5) Plug the FOV in degrees into my virtual camera, match the image aspect ratio, and then line the model up with the underlayed photo. However, I've tried this process for 2 photos taken on an iPhone 6, and the FOV calc seems to be around 20 degrees out on both. I've double checked my process several times for both photos, but still massively incorrect. I've no idea where the error is, so if anyone could shed any light, it'd be much appreciated! Or is there a much better / foolproof method that I could use instead? Thanks, Derek

I guess asking them will be the last resort. No handy online converters that anyone knows about?!

Thanks for that. Obviously, we don't have Revit in house. Any other ideas?

Hi, we've been passed a Revit RVT file from a contractor which we need to get into ArchiCAD somehow. We can't really ask the contractor to convert it to an appropriate format for us. Does anyone know of any converters out there that we could pass it through? Even if it goes to something like 3DS, DWG or OBJ files? Any ASAP help appreciated! Thanks, Derek

If you need to know sensor sizes, I find http://www.dpreview.com has a great camera database - you can find most models on there (get the camera name from the image metadata), and you'll find the sensor size on the database.

Cheers!

A lot of it depends on what information you have to work from, the level of detail required and the complexity of the surroundings. Do you have photos of the site?

It's an ArchiCAD object file. PM me and I could probably have a go at translating it to 3DS (not sure how editable it'd be though, and it might lose any colour info.)

Hi Jeff, just wondering how the submissions were coming along? Will you have enough?

Studio/Institution: DJ Illustration Client: Rob Ruffles Genre: Industrial Interior Software: ArchiCAD, Maxwell, Photoshop Website: http://www.djillustration.com Description: Interior shot for a friend's university project - a bio fuel production facility with a public area / museum space attached. Modelled in ArchiCAD by Rob Ruffles. Rendered in Maxwell and post processed in Photoshop.

identifont is pretty good too...

Think I'll be coming along - looking forward to it! Derek