I started with accurender, how do you map a picture onto the face of a

[Michael WILKI]

I started with accurender, how do you map a picture onto the face of a region, etc and make a specific color transparent in order to use photos of people and trees as free standing shadow throwing entities? Or is this impossible with viz?

[Tim Nelson]

Sadly, it's not that easy in most other rendering programs. If you are now using max/viz you need to use 2 seperate maps. One would be the actual texture map and the other would be a mask map with the white areas being the areas you want to show and black would be the areas that you want to see through. Then put the texture map in the diffuse slot and the mask map in the opacity slot.

[mwhite]

Use the 'decal' function under object properties - there is an eye dropper available to select the transparent color or you can just use a mask. There is also a 'feather setting' so you can adjust how much of the masking color you want to feather out.

 

Works great as long as the object that you select is NOT A BLOCK.

 

I usually just create a 5' or 6' high plane and use a width that matches the aspect ratio of my image that I'm using. It will automatically cast a shadow if you have the lights set up correctly (directly in front) or you may want to turn off shadow casting and just add later in Adobe if its critical. In the case of the attached image, it looks like I only have one light creating a shadow which should be corrected.

 

You can also use the free RPC creator and then create your own RPC's that can be added very easily. Some of the older RPC's work well and will cast better shadows. The new high res RPC's will not work so you will need to check compatibility on the Archvision website before buying.

 

Attached is an example of an image that I rendered with Accurender 3 using decals for the main model with masking and also decals applied to the 'flat screen' TV without masking.

 

Again, the detail function works great as long as you are not applying to a block (or region I would assume).

[Tim Nelson]

I think what he meant was that he is trying to do the same thing in Viz as what he already knew how to do in Accurender. Right?

[Michael WILKI]

Thank you both very much you just made my life extremely easy!

[mwhite]

Yup, now that I read it more closely it appears that is the case.

 

I originally thought he was using AccuRender within VIZ and forgot that it was Revit that uses AccuRender as the native rendering package.