Modelling workflow and Importing models from Revit (High-Rise buildings)

[dylanlester1]

Hello,

 

 

 

My employer wants to start doing high quality 3D renders. We work in Engineering high rise buildings (about 40 storeys) so Steel work, Concrete etc etc. But no Architectural elements. So no glass or carpet or anything like that

 

SO, the models we create are quite heavy in terms of poly counts.

I have some experience using Max (about 2 years) but only on small scenes like residential homes as a hobbyist (external and internal)

I'm looking for a workflow that is realistic within our company. I'm currently trying V-ray for Revit so I don't have to model it again in Max. Though I feel max will give me a better result because V-ray is showing some limitations already.

The problem is that the model is extremely heavy if I import into Max and I need to basically start from scratch and eliminate anything I don't need to get the poly count down so it becomes workable.

The other problem I'm facing is that whatever I import from Revit, it doesn't align properly on it's rotational axis. So North on the model doesn't face North in 3Ds Max. It will be at an angle. This make modelling extremely frustrating.

 

However, I don't even know if this would be the correct workflow. Would it be easier to just stick with Vray in Revit? What would you guys do?

[Nicolai Bongard]

When you model in Revit you probably do like we do here in Archicad - we model our buildings with the correct rotation and placement to the real world. (Allthough the coordinates are offset so that we draw close to the origin instead of way off, and we rotate our workspace so that we draw everything at 90 degrees angles). That way it is easy to draw in Archicad, and when we export to 3ds max the model will be rotated correctly according to north. This is great when we use a sun and sky and proper location coordinates to get pretty accurate shadows at different times of day for example, but it can be troublesome when additional modelling is required. However, one "fix" is to create a copy of the Archicad/Revit file and rotate it before export, so that the model imports at 90 degrees in max, and then just rotate the compass of the sun/sky to compensate for the rotation of the building. It is also possible to just rotate the imported elements in max. You could also set up a custom user coordinate system or whatever it is called.

 

As for the polycount problem, a suggestion is to perhaps convert some of the geometry to vray proxies so that it just loads the geometry at rendertime. I am not that familiar with Revit anymore, been a long time since ive used it, but in Archicad you can simply export whatever layer setup you want to a .3ds file. Hopefully you guys draw stuff on seperate layers in Revit, so you should simply turn off the layers you do not require for your 3ds max render. That way you should be able to lighten the load a bit, if you have lots of excess stuff that you dont need in your render.