Cloud Rendering Workflow in Revit: Your Questions, Answered!

This week, we’re turning to a Rendering Pro from our very own team, Aradhana Vaidya—the Customer Success Engineer on the A360 Cloud Rendering team. Last week, she hosted a webinar on the Cloud Rendering Workflow in Revit, which detailed how to share renderings to the gallery and select render settings to create the best possible images.  She demonstrated how to produce high quality results with:

• Still images
• Panoramas & Stereo Panoramas
• Solar Studies
• Illuminance Renderings and Lighting Analysis

Lots of new and experienced Revit users attended, and asked a lot of great questions.  Below, we’ve listed some of the best questions (broken down by category) along with our best answers, which you can use to help you with your own rendering projects.

Materials/Textures/Lighting

1. Why do renderings appear differently, colors, material, etc., when they are rendered in the cloud vs. locally?

Native rendering in Revit uses mental ray. A360 Rendering is the rendering technology developed by Autodesk to optimize rendering in the Cloud. We try to match closely with mental ray (with high quality settings) but there could be subtle differences.

 2. We see a few renders with light emitting from can lights. How do you show light emitting from light sources rather than just the light affecting surfaces it hits?

If you want to render lights properly by showing the light fixture as a light emitting object, you have to create a material with “self-illumination” and apply it to the bulb or diffuser in your light fixture. These luminance materials are supported in Cloud rendering.

3. In some programs adding lights one by one is the best way to get a good final lighting. Is that also recommended in Revit renderings?

A360 Rendering can handle large number of lights very easily without slowing down the rendering process. So you can add as many lights as needed in your design. You do not need to add them one by one.

4. I have seen noisy or grainy renderings sometimes. What is the best way to get best quality renderings?

This might happen if there is inadequate lighting in your scene, such as indirect light coming from a window. If the scene is well illuminated, you will not see this problem. Add more lights to your scene or increase the intensity of the existing lights.

5. I was curious if Autodesk was working on enabling tint settings, as well as the reflectivity settings (in the slider) within Revit. Right now they don't render online.

Make sure you install the latest version of Revit--this should enable tint settings.

6. I am a student rendering in the cloud and I created a custom brick material. When i rendered in the cloud the brick size was huge. When I render inside of Revit the brick wall looks fine and everything is to scale. Why I am seeing this difference in my renderings?

For issues related to material properties such as tint or incorrect material scale, make sure that you have installed the latest update for Revit available here.

7. Can you use custom textures in cloud rendering?

Yes. You can create a material in Revit and use custom textures for color, bump, reflection, etc.

 8. Is there any source for realistic materials?

There are several resources available online to download realistic texture maps. We don't recommend a specific site in particular.

Panorama rendering

1. When downloading panorama, is there a way to view it as a true interactive panorama (like it is when viewed directly in A360 Rendering)? In the past when I tried to download an interactive panorama to my local computer, it only downloaded a series of stills.

When you render a panorama, there are two options available for download. One is jpeg file, which is an image strip. The other is to download as an html file. If you do that, you can view it in the browser, preferably Chrome.

2. When downloading panoramas as jpeg is there a viewer available to view these? I like being able to download and edit the images via Photoshop rather than just having the html download from the cloud. If so can this be shared with clients?

We don’t have a viewer that we provide. But there are several viewers available online that you can use, starting with this useful website.

Other questions

1. What other files types can be rendered besides Revit files?

Besides Revit, A360 Rendering is supported in AutoCAD, Fusion, Navisworks, Infraworks and 3D Studio Max.

 2. Does a linked model get uploaded to the cloud when I do a cloud rendering?

Linked Revit models work with A360 Rendering. When you “Render in Cloud”, your Revit file is never uploaded to the Cloud. We convert it to an intermediate file format which consists of all the information required for rendering, such as the meshes, materials, lights, etc.

 3. Can you render using A360 with Revit LT?

Yes

4. What rendering engine does A360 use?

This is our own rendering engine. A360 Rendering is the rendering technology developed by Autodesk to optimize rendering in the Cloud.

 5. How many cloud credits do I need for a render?

You need approximately 1 cloud credit per megapixel.

Comments

[Robin Mercier Kuc]

Regarding #7 above on custom textures, I have found that in the past, you needed to add your image (jpg,png,etc.) to your Autodesk "mats" file or you will get a warning that the image is missing when you upload to the Cloud.
File path=Program Files (x86)-->Common Files-->AdskShared-->Materials-->Textures-->1,2,3-->Mats

Is this still the case?

[Aradhana]

Robin - You don't have to add your image to the "mats" folder. The easiest way is to duplicate and existing material and then add your own images for color, bump, reflection, glossiness, etc.

[Aradhana]

Here is post that might be useful - http://autodesk360rendering.typepad.com/blog/2015/03/rendering-pro-spotlight-andr%C3%A9-akset%C3%B8y.html

[Robin Mercier Kuc]

Hi Aradhana,
Actually, I neglected to explain that this only happened to me a few times over the course of years and I don't add the images to mats all the time. I still don't know why it happened, so that was my solution. (Glitches?) But thanks for the info!

[Raymond]

How can i disable the a360