render basics

so you've completed a project that you think is pretty cool and want to print it on high quality photo paper for your portfolio or just to impress the pants off someone ...


well here are a few tips:

• at the file menu, go to document" and click once on it.

• scroll down to "creative imaging" and wait for the flyout menu to appear.

• click once on "PhotoRendering Settings...", at the top

• a new window will pop up

• in this window, from top to bottom,

• be sure "lightworks rendering engine" is selected and showing in the "engine" field.
• uncheck "keep proportions of 3D window" and
• set the "size" to "inches", instead of "pixels"
• now change the horizontal arrow box to "16" and the vertical arrow box to "9". this is the ideal size for both printing to 11x17 and for DVDs, if you want to make a slideshow or something else in the future.

• just to the right of this area, set the "resolution" from "72" to "150". "300" is best, but it takes an extra long time to render at this resolution. "150" is plenty good.



• now under "lightworks effects":

• under "method", click "best".

• under "effects", check "reflection", "transparency" and "smooth surface". if "reflection"and "transparency" are already checked, just check "smooth surface".

• set "shadow casting" to "by lamp settings".

• set "antialiasing" to "best", by sliding the scale all the way to the right.

• under "light sources", check all, "sun", "ambient", "camera" and "lamps". for now, leave "sun" and "ambient" at "100%" and "camera" at "40%".


• under "background":

• under "background image" either select "colors" or "picture"
• if you select "colors", then click on the "sky color..." box.
• now select the lightest blue color, top row, 5th over to the right, and move the color bar, at the right, that will now appear, almost to the very top; 2-3 sections from the top. click "ok".

• if you click "picture", then click the "change picture..." box. select a photo image from the list. open and search in different folders within the library as needed. note: you can add your own picture here. just search for while in this window. it must be on your hard drive, preferrably in an archicad library folder. now click "ok".
• if you change the "resolution", the image will get smaller.


• under "brightness", check "darken all surfaces".

• now click "ok" at the bottom of the window.


• go back to the "documen"t pull-down menu.

• scroll down to "creative imaging".

• and click once on "photo render projection". it will take a few minutes or maybe even an hour to render the image.

• once archicad has finished rendering the image, save it as a "tiff" and you will be set to print out a high-quality image.

realistic looking bitmap trees

bitmap trees:
trees take up a lot of rendering time. each leaf has to be rendered seperately, so for an average size tree, having 5000 leaves, archicad has to take the extra time to render each leaf as a seperate polygon. it can take forever if you put trees in your model. without them, your house looks unrealistic and the scene lacks depth. This is why, when create a standard-real life tree, the leaf diameter is 2 to 3 feet and the density is low, around 40. a realistic tree will have a density of 500 to 800 and a leaf diamter of 1.5" to 3". sometimes archicad will crash just showing this many leaves in 3D, without even rendering!

the solution:
use bitmap trees. essentially bitmap trees are cardboard cutouts of actual trees. the background even shows through the branches, just like a real tree. they need to be placed perpendicular to the camera angle before rendering; otherwise they would look narrow and askew or even just like a line, in parallel to the viewer/camera angle. it's pain to move each tree for different views. you can just have different trees for different layers and turn off the ones you don't need in the current render. note: when using the "hand" sketch render option, bitmap trees will appear as rectangles. i have real trees on a seperate layer that i turn on only for "hand" sketches.