Microstation

[alwan]

Here are some images i rendered in microstation. i used MS v6 to xm on different attached images. i did purely in microstion from model to rendering..

 

the only

[alwan]

Here are some images i rendered in microstation. i used MS v6 to xm on different attached images. i did purely in microstion from model to rendering..

 

the

[alwan]

Here are some images i rendered in microstation. i used MS v6 to xm on different attached images. i did purely in microstion from model to rendering..

 

the only thing

[alwan]

Hello,

 

Im a microstation user. i attached some of my sample works for you to evaluate... i did everything in microstation from modeling to rendering. i used MS v6 to xm. i used particle trace on bathroom, dining and living images.. i used v6 on lounge image and v7 on chandelier image.

[Parker1]

Alwan,

 

Very nice images for being pure MS. There is no argument that it is truly an amazing modeling tool, and a half way decent rendering one as well.

 

The turning point for me was nothing more then the desire to be able to leverage the processing power of my entire office (185+ dual core machines) from my desk with a few clicks in BackBurner. That time savings alone is worth the 'hybrid" work flow we are using.

 

The second, and equally as compelling, factor in using a two stage work flow was the amount of pre-modeled "stuff" that was available in the market place. Again, a HUGE time savings to be able to drop pre-textured, amazingly modeled, entourage into a scene and hit render.

 

Finally, once you have a scene methodology dialed in (ie your typical exterior scene, and your typical interior scene), the speed at which you can get a new scene ready for the first set of test renders is astonishing. You can do the same thing in MS, but test renders always suffer because you have to turn off all of the advanced features that make an image look half way decent to save on rendering time. In our work flow (particularly with Vray) all of our test images are done with every possible feature turned on because the rendering process is so much quicker, and the farm can be fully leveraged.

 

It has been awhile so I just thought I would chime in with a little diatribe...

 

Cheers

[iradeljic]

Hi everybody!

 

Ive been reading this forum for some time now, and recently I even registered, just for this MS forum.

 

The reason why I decided to give this new workflow a go is because I dont have the luxury of time or render farm in my office (only one dulacore 2.66 machine). So the image quality is not so important as the production speed.

 

Current problem is animation in MS of 500 frames. Each frame is rendered for 1 hour with all RPC trees etc turned on (Ray trace without skyshadow). And that will be only a part of the whole presentation.

 

MS Athens Beta is not stable to do any renderings now and multycore workload is still unusable. Is there a significant render time improvement if i add MAX and Vray in production (to get similar results to MS) ?

[Tommy Burns]

There is a big improvemnet in render times with Max and Vray and even bigger with mental ray. Then main one I found is that MS only uses one core on a machine where as Max uses all your power. Also raytracing is much quicker especially with mental ray and it is a whole lot easier to use now.

[Kurt]

Hi everyone!

 

how much do you have to pay for a Microstation XM licence in your country? It seems to be very hard to find this kind of information, and I wonder why..

[Parker1]

Kurt,

 

Bentley keeps this info pretty close to the vest. We have a large annual site license so I could not really tell you what a single seat would cost. I am guessing around 3K US probably. Don't you have MS already?

[Kurt]

hi Parker,

I have some licenses - but my company is growing and we'll have to buy some more licenses. It is just that it always gives me a bad feeling being unable to control or compare prices, especially when I hear and read that Bentley operates with very various price tags for the same software package...

 

Everything is expensive in Norway, but what do you think of 10.000$ for one (1) microstation license (select user)?

[Kurt]

OK, I just spoke to Bentley, and they assured me that Microstation costs about the same in all the countries in my area (N/W Europe). The prices are lower in the States and probably in Russia - but thats a different story.

 

Anyway, I am pretty satisfied with Microstation, Bentley and the way they handle licenses (select server), so I'll just dig up the money thats needed...

[migwood]

"What you do is build your entire model in Microstation as you normally would; be sure to use only Solids and no Surfaces. Next, you save-a-copy of the file as a DWG making sure to set the entity mapping to "ACIS Entity (Body or 3D Solid) in the DWG export options. Finally you dynamically link the DWG into max. Once there, you assign all of your V-Ray materials, UVW Map modifiers, and do your lighting. Now render with V-Ray and you get a beautiful result. We have worked out all the bugs and the process works great. We have now opened the door to all of the MAX and V-Ray resources which are out there waiting for us. No more struggling with particle tracing! I hope you get a chance to give it a try.

 

Hope to hear more from you here on CG.

 

Hi guys, I'm new to this thread.

I am trying to follow Parker's advice - have built a model in Microstation XM but when I save it as dwg I lose a lot of information - particularly anything modelled as smartsolid doesn't appear to translate. Could it have something to do with the conversion file?

Is there any reliable way of converting 3d dgn into 3d dwg without having

to spend time cleaning the converted file and remodelling it?

Because of this problem I end up doing my rendering in XM because I can't

afford to spend time fixing a corrupted model.

 

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Many thanks