Colouring up 2D Elevations - What Software?

[AFK_Matrix]

Hi,

 

Not sure if this is in the right section but anyway. Basically I work for a Housing company doing there CGI work. Now what they would like to do is create coloured up 2D Elevations/Streetscenes. Now I won't be doing this it will be our designers who really have never used Illustrator or any other package like it. I think Illustrator could be used for this but you have to go round the autocad drawing with Polylines to make it an easy task of colouring up the drawing. What other software is out there that could help with this? It has to be something which is fast and easy to learn. We would also want shadows put on etc etc.

 

Thanks.

[STRAT]

personally, i render elevations from my model in my 3d app and tart them up in photoshop. that way i get full reflections and shadows.

 

but, the rest of our staff cant do that. so we invested in photoshop elements (cheap as chips). All our architects now insert their elevations directly from autocad and 'paint' them up in Elements.

[AFK_Matrix]

Hi,

 

How easy is it to learn Elemants? One of the Designers has this and personally it drives me nuts as im used to Photoshop and in Elemants half the things I regularly use are greyed out in elements??? Do you just use the selection tools to mark off sections to colour in etc?

[chiquito]

try painter.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

one method i have used is going from AutoCad to PDF to Illustrator. using this method, i can more or less set up a nonlinear workflow, which is important when it comes time for changes. i suppose a similar workflow can be setup for photoshop, but i do beleive it is important to come out of AutoCad in PDF format.

[neko]

autodesk has a new application called 'impression' that looks like it could offer some advantages to illustrator, especially the active connection to autocad data.

 

i haven't used it much yet....download the demo and give it a go.

[IC]

We just do it in ADT using Hatch.

 

The gradient options in hatch are really effective when combined with Screening in the Plot dialogue.

[classix]

Hi!

In our office we use PDF or Postscript to bring drawings from AutoCad to Photoshop colouring them there. With PDF or Postscript you can draw with scale and with correct lineweights in Photoshop. Makes it easy to plot them in scale and to change things anytime.

 

Marcus

http://www.einherzfuerpixel.de

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

autodesk has a new application called 'impression' that looks like it could offer some advantages to illustrator, especially the active connection to autocad data.

 

i haven't used it much yet....download the demo and give it a go.

 

i forgot about that app.

[Eric]

I used Impression on one project. In my opinion, it's WAY cool, but WAY WAY glitchy, and a tremendous system resource hog. I wouldn't recommend it for production use until they work out the kinks.

 

I set up a paper space layout for my coloring purposes. Create the layout to use whatever size paper you're going to be coloring on in Photoshop (or Elements), and make sure your page setup is using 1:1, scale to fit is off, etc., and then output to a PDF file. When you open the PDF file in Photoshop, it will ask you for the paper size (which will default to that of the PDF file), and a resolution - I always choose the same resolution (225 pixels per inch).

 

Be sure to use a new layer for each type of material so you can easily change colors down the road if necessary.

 

If your cad drawing changes, you can generate another PDF file, open it again using the same settings as before, and drag the new cad linework into your colored file and align the new and old linework, and erase the old linework layer. Turn off all of your coloring layers, and then start from the bottom turning each on one by one, fixing the colors as you go. (This is where Impression comes in handy, but it's not actually easy at all, and you have to fix tons of stuff every time you reimport the linked autocad file).

 

For shadows, I typically create a new layer above all other coloring layers, and start painting black shadows - cut the layer opacity down to bring the color back and knock down the black intensity.

 

It also helps to create a template color swatch file on your server that everyone uses to grab common colors from. Our firm uses typical colors on most of our projects, so having swatches in a PSD file that we can sample from each time we color a new project is a huge time saver.

 

I haven't really used Elements much, but I believe all of this can be done with Elements.

[rotten42]

I sometimes use Photoshop ans sometime Sketchup. I find that using sketch up is quicker and the designers/Architects like the look it delivers.

[neko]

eric.

 

thanks for the feedback on impression and your workflow with photoshop.

 

i want to give it a go myself soon, but i really like illustrator for this kind of work.

[denham]

Illustrator