The Revit Clinic

Revit 2016 – Render Coarse Poche Material

Revit 2016 added a second rendering engine - Autodesk Raytracer.  When rendering with this option, you can use the Coarse Poche Material (and have it use the color for the rendered image).  Previously when using the NVIDIA® mental ray engine the poche cut pattern color would not be displayed.  Example process below:

• Open a 3D view > click Edit Type from the Properties
• Locate the Coarse Poche Material parameter > click in the cell … button to open the material browser and modify the material Graphics > Cut Pattern settings for Pattern and Color (pattern needs to be set to Solid Fill) > OK
• Set your 3D view to Detail Level > Coarse
• Enable the 3D Section Box > adjust so it cuts some model geometry > you should see the color and solid fill pattern you specified
• View > Render.  For Engine, specify Autodesk Raytracer
• Click Render.  For the elements cut by the section box (and displaying the poche pattern / color) they should be rendered that way.  The realistic visual style should also show the coarse poche material

For this example when the view is cut by the section box and rendered, the color \ solid fill pattern still displays:

New Health Dashboard for Cloud Services

 

Recently, we launched a new customer facing dashboard that shows the current status of a number of Cloud Services as well as any upcoming maintenance windows.

There are two great features; not only is it real time, but you can subscribe to certain services so that you get an email when the status of that service changes.

 

 

Feel free to check it out here.

 

 

 

Get Your Render On with The Rendering Image Contest!

Do you love rendering?

Do you enjoy adding textures, shadows and reflections to create a stunning image?

Do you pull out all the creative stops when it comes to showcasing designs?

Then take part in the Rendering Image Contest!

Whether you’re a student, rendering artist, designer or small business professional - here’s your chance to show us your talent and do what you love doing from now until November 15^th, 2013. You could be one of the lucky three to feature exclusively in our Autodesk® 360 newsletter worldwide and receive fantastic prizes like an iPad, a $500 gift card and much more!

So what are you waiting for? Get your render on and follow these instructions:

• Create a still image rendering of anything you like: a building model, residential interior or object design.
• Visit Rendering in Autodesk® 360 and sign in to your Autodesk® 360 account.
• Upload your design from Autodesk® AutoCAD®, Autodesk® Revit® or Autodesk® Fusion 360.
• The final render must be done in Autodesk® 360 to qualify.
• Upload up to 5 images at once to enter here: http://autode.sk/render_3

Hurry! You could be the lucky owner of a cool Autodesk T-shirt if you’re among the first 50 entries.

Good luck!

 

Autodesk Cloud Rendering Hotfix released

Here is a list of what has been fixed. 

Cloud Rendering Web Portal: 

1. Re-render rendered the wrong view or had wrong thumbnail or view name.  We fixed two bugs in the gallery re-render feature. These should fix the wrong view re-render issues for new and previously uploaded files. 
2. Estimated time remaining information on progress bar.  The thumbnail progress bar remaining time estimate was not showing up when the mouse was hovering on it. 
3. Shorter view name in tooltip.  When you hover on a thumbnail in the gallery the pop-up that appears now displays the short version of the view name. 
4. Re-render email option added.  In the dialog that appears when re-rendering an image it's now possible to enable/disable the email notification 
5. Zoom sensitivity in panorama viewer.  We adjusted the zoom sensitivity in the panorama viewer.  There are slightly different behaviors depending on the browser used. That's expected. 
6. TIFF panoramas display.  Panoramas generated from TIFF images were not showing in the panorama viewer. 
7. Panorama size limited.  A Flash limitation in the Internet Explorer panorama viewer cannot display large panoramas.  Panoramas sizes are now capped for this reason and for overall system performance control.

Renderer:

1. Materials with bump set to 0 rendered black.  When a bump of relief map was set to 0 intensity the material was rendering black. 
2. Index of Refraction for Generic materials not working.  Generic materials had a fixed IOR of 1.5. Now we use the refraction parameter value correctly. 
3. Better rendering timeout estimation.  Some renderings were failing if they were taking longer than the estimated time. Now we allow extra time. 
4. Reflectivity parameters (equal values) error.  When Generic material reflectivity parameters were set to the same value the material was rendering incorrectly. 

Revit Add-in: 

1. Section box fix.  In some cases the section box was not cutting the geometry correctly when objects were visible in other non-sectioned views.  We now handle that case correctly. 

Download the add-in again and reinstall it to get this fix. 
http://rendering.cloud.autodesk.com 
New Rendering -> Download Rendering Add-in 

To download localized versions of the add-in, switch the page language before downloading (the option is a the bottom of the page). 

2012 UR2 and Autodesk Cloud

If you haven't seen it yet, UR2 is now available for Revit 2012 products:

Revit Architecture 2012

Revit Structure 2012

Revit MEP 2012

You can also view the readme and the update enhancement list (updated!) for this update.

Around the same time as the release of UR2 for 2012, we also annouced Autodesk Cloud.  Very exciting stuff.  

For Revit users, one of the coolest things is Rendering in the Cloud, which use to be on labs as Project Neon, but has graduated.  

Check this video by the one and only Lynn Allen

One of my favorite things about rendering in the cloud is the abilty to render panoramas.  If your wondering about access, there is a great resource that compares the benefits available. 

Unable to Override Imported SketchUp File Material in Revit

I want to expand on our previous post here, focusing specifically on a SketchUp® file being imported into a Revit in-place component.  You go through the process, but you are unable to override the Object Style > Imported Objects > Material.

It may not be immediately obvious in Revit, but if the SketchUp material [in use] has a texture image applied the Revit Object Style > Imported Objects > Material typically will not display.  A painted solid color material should display by default from SketchUp > Revit.  However a painted material using a texture image will not display in Revit:

If you run into geometry you cannot override in Revit, open the SketchUp file and check for materials in use which utilize texture images.  You can save a copy of the file, and delete the materials in the file leaving only the default.

Then in Revit if you re-import the file you should be able to override materials to each layer as expected.

Revision 3: Render Appearance Dialog Crash

We have added some additional information to the Crash when launching the Materials or Render Appearance Dialogs post to include some Revit 2012 specific links.  You can view the updated post here.

Also, the previous technical solution has been updated as well, available at the link below:

Revit 2011 or 2012 products crash when attempting to replace material render appearance

Revit 2012 Project Neon Rendering Service Error Message

Quick scenario for anyone who receives the following error message when attempting to render online with Project Neon for Revit 2012:

A problem occurred.  The rendering service could not complete your request.  <An authentication error occurred.>

The following process should resolve this behavior:

1.  Sign out of Revit 2012.  Verify this also signs you out of Project Neon by attempting to click the Web Services > My Render Gallery option.

2.  Clear your web browser’s cache \ temporary internet files.  For example, here is the process for Chrome and Internet Explorer.

3.  Sign-in to Project Neon first, by attempting to Render Online:

If prompted after, you can sign back into Revit 2012.

4.  Make sure you use the same login for both Revit 2012 and Project Neon.  By logging out, clearing the browser cache, and then logging into Project Neon first it should resolve the message.

If this does not resolve the issue please let us know!

Render Revit 2012 in the Cloud

You may have heard Project Neon now supports Revit 2012 cloud-based rendering; I would highly recommended checking out the Autodesk Labs post below:

Project Neon now supports Revit in addition to AutoCAD

Ambient Shadows Appear Distorted after a Linked Project is Mirrored

Let’s look at the following scenario:

You have a host project containing a linked project.  You copy an instance of the link and mirror it [maybe for an adjacent townhouse with a reversed floor plan].  Then in the view you turn on Graphic Display Options > Shadows > Show Ambient Shadows.  You notice the mirrored link instance ambient effect appears reversed or distorted where the original appears fine.

When mirrored Revit may treat the geometry faces as they are inverted for the ambient calculation, so the results could appear different than the original.

There are 2 approaches I would recommend should you run into this behavior:

1.  Temporarily Bind the Mirrored Link Instance

For scenarios where you simply need to create a presentation image or similar, I would recommend temporarily binding the mirrored link instance in the project.

Select the link instance > Bind Link.  This will move the link instance into the project as a model group.  This should display the ambient shadow effect as expected.  Do not save the project when complete.

2.  Rotate Link Instance instead of Mirroring

If you can achieve a desired result through a series of link rotations instead, I would recommend this approach.  When rotated the ambient shadow calculation on the link geometry should match the original orientation link.