Rendering Newbie

Okay gang, I've read the posts and other tutorials all morning and just don't seem to get this rendering thingy.

I have attached the 3D image I'm trying to render. Of course it all comes out black. The docs said to add a ground plane which I did, but it still renders all black. I played around with some lights and sunlight settings but I'm still getting either an all black or all grey window when I render this one.

Can anyone point me in the right direction here?

3d-decorative-fence.dwg

Here is your file and check it!...How i did for you!...

You gave black color to your ground plane!..no material...

so you will see all black!

3d-decorative-fence.zip

Dude, that is too cool. I think I understand most of what you did. I created a 3DFACE to define the ground below my fence. Then I played around with the render settings and I'm starting to get it.

One question that comes to mind is if I start to add other light sources to this should I turn off the sun settings?

How could I add clouds to the sky background?

unfortunatly there is no clouds with the MR render in Autocad. if you are adding other light sources for say an outside evening shot, I would leave the sun on, but change the time to a very early day time or night time. Then when you add the lights turn the intensity up to 50 for starters, the photometric lights seem to need that if there is any sort of sky and sun present.

If you need cloud,you must use background image!

Didn't have much time to play with it.

Dropped into a existing studio room with lights. Applied polished stainless to the tubes and rendered in a 3rd party app. But I understand ACAD's rendering engine is capable of similar results. -David

I've gotten a lot further thanks to everyone's advice, but to be honest, I still seem to have trouble applying materials.

Each time I try to apply materials to items, it applies them to everything in the drawing. I didn't read anything in my docs which spoke about how to isolate the materials on separate items so I must be missing something.

Here is the latest progress on this. We're building this for a local university's entrance to the campus. I still need to model the other panels that go in the adjacent openings. These are flat planed panels without the compound miters I had to deal with in the curved ones so that should be simpler to model.

The good thing about this model is it helped me discover that the gentleman who drew up the first plans for this missed the overall height by 18". I've corrected for this and will keep working at it. But I need to have a rendering ready before the next meeting with the client which is less than 48 hours away now.

try holding down the control key when applying the material.

"Each time I try to apply materials to items, it applies them to everything in the drawing."

One solution to this problem would be to assign materials to specific layers. You might have layers named concrete, stone, metal, glass, etc.

In the Materials palette, the first material slot is your Global material. It's the default material that gets applied to every object in your scene. So, if you set a bitmap as your Diffuse map in the Global material slot, it will be applied to all objects. You should leave the first slot alone and create new materials for your objects.

I think I almost have it, but there are still a few problems with my application of materials.

As you can see, the aluminum on the radiused side of this thing has the grass applied to it. I cannot figure out how to remove this material. I have clicked on the "Remove Materials from Selected Items" both before and after selecting the objects, but they still come up as a grassy surface.

Also, for some reason I cannot turn the Sky on. The option to do so just sits there with no way to change it.

The ACAD file is too big too upload so I'm only attaching the jpeg of the render. Any additional pointers would be appreciated.

For Sky ,Did you set "lightingunits" value 1 or 2 ?

Normally i don't use attach or remove materials option from material dialogbox.

I used it for only create materials & adjust setting !I always select object as i

want and change or attach material from properties dialog box...(right click-properties) or( Ctrl +1 ) !:)

ps..Acad 2008/9 already used to graphic problem.This can happen problems (especially in rendering work).

So If you will still problem,check your "3dconfig" setting .

The rendering went a little better this evening. But there are still some major things I'm not getting.

First, I cannot turn the sky on. The setting for this is greyed and is set to off and I cannot change it.

Second, the materials all disappered. Last night the menu was working completely different than it is tonight. I was able to get what I wanted but it's a real pain when AutoCAD takes off on it's own. Or perhaps I changed something and just don't know I did.

The lighting is still a problem. This is something I'm just going to have to experiment with. But at least the rendering is ready for the meeting with the the GC's office tomorrow morning.

Thanks to all who offered advice and tips.

For sky & background, check this ..http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?t=30939

For material ....Can you upload your problem dwg ?

If dwg is exceed limit,you can upload ..ifile or megashare...uploader!

The rendering went a little better this evening. But there are still some major things I'm not getting.

 

First, I cannot turn the sky on. The setting for this is greyed and is set to off and I cannot change it.

 

Second, the materials all disappered. Last night the menu was working completely different than it is tonight. I was able to get what I wanted but it's a real pain when AutoCAD takes off on it's own. Or perhaps I changed something and just don't know I did.

 

The lighting is still a problem. This is something I'm just going to have to experiment with. But at least the rendering is ready for the meeting with the the GC's office tomorrow morning.

 

Thanks to all who offered advice and tips.

as for the sky, turn on the sun through the sum palette and that should let you turn on the sky with illumination. As for the lighting, once you have that on look in your render settings for exposure control. That should help you dial in your contrast, brightness and mid tones.

I have gone to the Sun Properties dialog window and tried to turn the sky on, but it's not responding. You can see from the attached image what I'm faced with.

From what I've read, you can only enable the sky background if you are using photometric lighting. Type in LIGHTINGUNITS and change the setting to 2.

Take a look at THIS, it may be helpful.

I can see from the screen shot that he's got photometric lighting enabled.The problem is that AutoCAD for no apparent reason sometimes can't turn on the sky background unless in perspective view.

Bill try pacing a camera for your view,right click on it>go to camera view,or 3dorbit>right click go to perspective mode.