revit rendering study

one of the main advantages of revit over autocad is instant visualization.  basically you can work with the visuals at the same time you're doing the planning.  this one was a preliminary "look" study of a boutique hotel, rendered natively in revit.  i read somewhere that there's a (3rd party?) rendering function that uses cloud-accessed files, but i don't think that's a particularly good idea for now, because basically it means you'd be limited by your internet connection.  it's bad enough that so many things can go wrong with windows while doing a complex rendering, and the occasional power failure, with cloud computing you'll also have to worry about internet connection.  soon maybe, but not tomorrow, and definitely not today.

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the autodesk maya 3d learning challenge

i'm kinda all over the place nowadays, so many things i want to do and i don't know what to do first.  so naturally, i decided not to do any of them.

i'm gonna try to learn a new app (new to me) instead - autodesk's maya.  it's basically a 3d modeling and rendering program and supposedly the best among all the ones geared towards cgi animation (avatar, anyone?).  the best thing about it, of course, is that it has a version for mac. i can play with it at home.  so i downloaded the trial app and i have a month to learn it. the objective is to have a working knowledge of the system and processes, enough to do simple photorealistic 3d renderings, before the trial expires.  the problem is that it's notoriously difficult to learn - which is exactly what i'm gonna say if i don't have anything to show after a month's time.  that, or that i got sidetracked by all the other things i wanted to do in the first place.  we'll see.

***above is a screen capture of the maya website.  i am not in any way affiliated with them.  unless of course they want me to be.  in which case they can always send me a full copy of the app.  hello? anybody there?

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meh. no vasari for mac?

if you've always thought autodesk products are way too expensive to have a personal copy in your home computer to play with, you don't have an excuse anymore. autodesk has just launched vasari, a.k.a. revit light, a.k.a. autodesk's version of sketchup. it looks promising (hello, it's FREE!), and pretty cool especially if you use autocad or revit at work. now you can create all those fantastic architectural designs that you've been dreaming of - you know, the ones that would make you famous one day and show your boss why he should've listened to you all those times that you suggested something that you were pretty sure will be a hit but instead got buried under all those pragmatic mediocrity? (don't look at me, my boss listens to me, most of the time at least)

don't hold your breath for some vasari projects from me tho - it doesn't come in mac version and i don't have a pc at home.


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BIM BAM!

© Joselito Briones

haha! considering i've never opened revit before early this year, i've learned enough to do a functional BIM of this project, and another one progressing nicely. everything's custom parametric family, too! (families are the basic components of the model)  the great thing about it is that i was able to see possible construction errors while I was designing the project, i was able to get as many views as i wanted from a single model, and when the model was done, it was a cinch doing all the required standard drawings (altho still laborious, 80+ pages of drawings, two colleagues had to help me when it was time to issue them). revit's definitely the thing to use in a small design-oriented offices. now if only autodesk can do revit for mac!

© Joselito Briones

well then, that's it for 3d models.  i think i'll pick up on my video editing now.

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my first revit rendering (fine, if you have a better title go ahead and change this)

© Joselito Briones

can you believe this stupid thing took more than 2 hours to render?!?!?. i really need to ask my boss for a new pc at work.

anyhoo.  3d rendering has definitely gone so far since i last played with it.  used to be that one had to create every single instance of every single object even if differs only slightly.   and then export it to a third party rendering software and readjust everything again. now with revit,everything's parametric. you do it once, if you're not happy with sizes, you change, say, a numeric parameter, and everything defined by that adjusts accordingly.  i created all the elements in this rendering (okay, except for that guy in suit, it was provided by revit) and they're all adjustable by mere changing of numeric values. yay! hahahahahaha. me's old. that i can still learn a new system is something i'm happy about.  best thing about this tho is that it can render natively. all i had to do was define the sun location/time of the day, and level of cloudiness.  2 hours of wait, and presto. come to think of it, 2 hours isn't all that bad, it used to take my old pc overnight to render a scene similar to this.

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