rendering in archicad

[tom10]

I have just completed a flush white model of a large area that surrounds my site. exstruding shapes upwards to create the forms of adjacent buildings. When i render however the set up of the light and ambient does not complement the work. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what levels i should set the light and ambients to when rendering a white model in light works? At the moment allot of it looks to be shades of grey with certain areas to bright. i currently have the settings on...sun intensity 80. ambient light 20. contibution to ambient 30.

if anyone can get back to me with some suggestions i would truly appreciate it. thank you

tom

[Derek Forreal]

Tom,

 

you need to give a bit more info on the settings you have used. i'm not a professional user but have modelled, rendered and built several of my own residential projects. how long have you been using AC? i will assume you are a beginner.

 

first of all, the renderers that come with archicad (AC) are nowhere near as complete as other purpose made ones (vray, mental ray etc).

 

second, there is no GI in AC. this means that if a surface doesn't have any direct light shining on it, it will render dark (usually black if memory serves me well). you need to use fill lights to try to fake GI. or you can increase ambient light but this makes everything look very dull and grey.

 

all this means that you can forget the kind of white/grey renders you see on this and other sites coming direct from archicad. if you want that kind of quality, you have to invest both time (lots of it) and money (although there are free modellers - e.g. blender - and renderers - e.g. indigo - which are very capable softwares).

 

if you want to use AC, i suggest you experiment with the built in lightworks engine (not the 'internal' one) and the lightworks lights.

 

i've only been on the scene a few months though, so my best advice is to check out this and other forums. a great one for ac is:

 

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/

 

hope that helps

[stefkeB]

You could try to use the "Realistic Sun" in the Rendering Settings. This takes longer, but will have a more dome-like lighting quality. This can be augmented with the dedicated LightWorks Lamps

 

E.g. Window Light, which behave as an area light, which can be set to manual or to use the sun/sky light color and direction. This is often used to create a light source at the inside of a window, for more realistic interior lighting (akin, but not equal to GI effect).

 

There is no indirect lighting supported in ArchiCAD. The Skylight, however, is another approach to improve lighting in shaded areas, where they would stay dark with the default settings.

 

That said, I usuall use external rendering software for quality (e.g. Abvent Artlantis for ease-of-use and Autodesk VIZ for high-end, if I have the time).