AccuRender Studio for AutoCAD

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

We're up to Build 0082.  This new major release of the AccuRender and nXt product line now includes a plugin that works entirely within AutoCAD just like previous versions. It's got a ton of new features and is available for free for a while.  Take a look and let me know what you think.

See the Download->AccuRender Studio menu items for more details.

[Alfons Akamp]

I also downloaded and installed the latest version of Accurender Studio 0082. Under Win 7 64 Bit everything is fine so far, but under Win 10 64 Bit I do not get it running.
What could that be?
Is Accustudio running under Win 10 64 bit?

Ich habe mir auch die neuste Version von Accurender Studio 0082 herunter geladen und installiert. Unter Win 7 64 Bit ist soweit alles gut, aber unter Win 10 64 Bit bekomme ich es nicht am laufen.
Woran könnte das liegen?
Läuft Accustudio überhaupt unter Win 10 64 Bit??

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Windows 10 is my platform-- so yes it should work fine.  You'll need to describe your problem in more detail.  For example:

Does it install?  Can you run the standalone version?  Can you netload the AutoCAD plugin?  What happens when you try to run it?

[Alfons Akamp]

I have now tried to install the Accustudio version 082 and get this error message. Why??

Ich habe jetzt mal versucht, die Accustudio Version 082 zu installieren und bekomme diese Fehlermeldung. Warum??

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Too small to read-- I'll need a bigger image or just tell me what the error msg says.

[Peter Milner]

Rendering to a farm doesn't seem to work now.

The software creates the folders, but no data is sent.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

I'll check out the render farm this morning.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

0084 should fix the farm writing bug.  I would recommend reinstalling the software on the nodes at some point-- although it shouldn't be necessary to make this fix work.

[Peter Milner]

40 minutes render on local machine.

Lighting reduced to real wold values.

Window glass changed to Thin.

I noticed that you can't set glass IOR to 0.0, only 0.001.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

The IOR of architectural window glass should be set to real-world values of 1.5 or so to give you the greatest accuracy.  Reflections will be accurate in that case and it will not impact performance if you model the glass as thin.

An IOR of 1 is air. 

IORs of 0 do not exist. 

IOR < 1 is designed to model the interface between a thick medium and a thin one-- such as emerging from the ocean into the air.  It's generally not useful in Ar.

Breaking your cove lighting up into smaller, more localized pieces will help performance (particularly noise on the ceiling surfaces.)  It will work fine the way you have it, but will take longer.

I released build 0082 which fixes the problem where selecting lights is slow.  Working on 0083 which will fix the farm issue.

[Peter Milner]

Sorry, I meant 1.0.

With nXt I use this setting on window glass because it speeds up the rendering. With bright daylight coming through the window, reflections are virtually non existent anyway.

I would have thought that breaking the cove lighting into smaller sections would create hot spots and shadow areas which would be undesirable when trying to simulate hidden LED strip lights.

Does build 0082 fix the decals on solids issue as well?

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

I would still recommend real-world values. You'll see the reflections when you turn the daylight channels off and you won't really notice any performance difference. Also, with the new algorithms, the added light is bounced back into the room and recaptured.  More reflection occurs at glancing angles, etc.. If you must, however, the Standard material has an opacity component which is meant to model things like curtains.  You can make that work without refraction.

Cove lighting may take a bit of experimentation to get right-- it will work the way you have it-- it's just a difficult light it terms of added noise.  The more localized the source, the better the algorithms will deal with it.

I think the current version is 0084 now. There turned out not to be an issue with decals when I looked. I suspect you didn't have the latest nXtRender product which you can get from the download page.  To reload the decals on a previously saved ar studio dwg, you can use ArRemoveData and uncheck everything except decals.  Then rerun ar studio.

[Peter Milner]

Yep, decals are now working.

I'm happy to go with IOR 1.5 if it doesn't slow the rendering down.

Any joy with rotating texture images?