Current Visualisers

[david.elsbury]

Would Vivien be any better for you? We use that at my work..

[DonkiDonki]

Would Vivien be any better for you? We use that at my work..

 

 

 

Almost, but not quite. There is no live section so pre-vis isn't possible.

Vivien seems a good choice if mainly doing room plans and visuals but it's lighting plotting side is restricted compared to Wyg. (Cast hope that the Vivien designer would pass the mock plans onto an LD using Wyg once the pitch is successful)

And I can do pretty much everything with my current version of wyg that Vivien will do although Vivien has more helpful tools for room layouts.

 

Wyg stil seems to be the only option for having everything in a single program, (although it's CAD is not great at importing dwg or sketchup, at least in the versions I've had. I managed to sort most files I've needed to but it was a painful process at times) you just need to be able to afford it.

 

I'm kind of surprised that so many of the Visualiser packages pay little or no service to the paperwork side of things. Realizzer and Lightconverse both have pretty awsome looking vis engines but their paperwork plot support is either poor or non-existent. Capture Atlas seems to be the first one of the pre-vis intended options to finally take paperwork seriously. I suppose the assumption is that everyone already has AutoCad or similar.

 

One thing that I will miss from Wyg is that when building your model with it you specify all surface material properties as well as colour and textures. I suspect that the process of creating models externally to Capture will lead to having to spend additional time sorting textures again after importing. The same goes for the recent addition of material properties in Atlas. I'm hoping I can find guidance to minimise that pain through choice of CAD package and modelling techniques.

[DonkiDonki]

Does anyone know what happens if you produce a plot with too many DMX universes for the version of Capture you have?

(for example, if I get the Solo license to test things out, can I still produce the plot paperwork showing fixtures addressed to more than one universe? A custom text field next to each fixture would do it)

As far as I can see, you just can't control the fixtures on the unsupported universes from a control desk. However all other functions still work.

 

Thanks, that is good news.

 

That means once I get my head around things I can start doing plots and visuals even if the project uses more universes, I will just need to upgrade if I need to pre-vis the project?

I take it I could still set manual looks in Atlas on the fixtures outside of the universe allowance?

 

Now the size of Atlas I get can be flexible depending on how much I have to shell out for the CAD side.

[timsabre]

Now the size of Atlas I get can be flexible depending on how much I have to shell out for the CAD side.

 

I have just realised that I am using the Solo version of Argo not Atlas so I am not sure if what I said there is true about Atlas. Certainly on Argo Solo you can have fixtures on many universes but only control the first one for visualisation, but you can manually set the other fixtures. However you can't produce plots on Argo Solo so I don't know how that works on Atlas Solo (where you can produce plots).

 

I would get in touch with Lars at Capture to ask these questions, it's a very small and responsive team there and you will get to talk to the guy who wrote the software.

[DonkiDonki]

Well I've made the first decision, Capture Atlas Quartet edition is now mine. http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif

 

Almost stretched for Symphony but it's actually rare for my projects to really need more than 4 universes and I can always upgrade at the time when/if that day comes.

 

 

Now to sit through a bunch of Sketchup tutorials and try to wrap my head around building some models similar to what I would do in Wyg; to see what "interesting" things arise when importing models. (I might as well see how I get on with the free Sketchup until I see how I get on with it)

 

Wish me luck http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif

[timsabre]

Wish me luck http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif

 

Good luck. My only good advice about sketchup is to make things into components as soon as you can. Otherwise in sketchup's "extrusion" way of working, everything becomes attached to everything else and it's a nightmare. Like stringy glue was spread over everything in the model...

[Judge]

Nice! You have got lots of homework to do.

Now, I know that you have just spent a bunch of cash, but here is the new toy that you never knew you needed. My old buddy Shanks showed me this and he does a ton of work in Sketchup.

 

Its a 3D mouse.

 

http://www.3dconnexion.co.uk/products/spacemouse/spacenavigator.html

 

I can confirm that its excellent for that and also supremely good fun with Google Earth. I have yet to fully experiment with it in Capture but it ought to be handy there as well,

[DonkiDonki]

Nice! You have got lots of homework to do.

Now, I know that you have just spent a bunch of cash, but here is the new toy that you never knew you needed. My old buddy Shanks showed me this and he does a ton of work in Sketchup.

 

Its a 3D mouse.

 

http://www.3dconnexi...enavigator.html

 

I can confirm that its excellent for that and also supremely good fun with Google Earth. I have yet to fully experiment with it in Capture but it ought to be handy there as well,

 

I completely agree, in fact I've had one for a while and it has been fantastic for manipulating live views in Wysiwyg.

 

It didn't do anything when I poked it during a quick go in the Capture Demo but it's supposed to be supported so probably just need to add a profile or something.

 

 

 

Wish me luck http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif

 

Good luck. My only good advice about sketchup is to make things into components as soon as you can. Otherwise in sketchup's "extrusion" way of working, everything becomes attached to everything else and it's a nightmare. Like stringy glue was spread over everything in the model...

 

 

Thanks.

 

That's the kind of tip I was hoping for, if Capture is anything at all like Wyg when it comes to CAD then the avoiding pretty much any of the fancy CAD tools will be the way to go. I guess it's going to take some experimentation to get the best from it all.

 

[Judge]

Oh good - they are amazing things eh?

I just fired up Atlas and had a play around and the 3D Mouse works exactly as I would want it to. Push/pull to zoom in or out, rotate left and right, nudge stage left and right, pitch, yaw, roll, the whole thing. I didnt have to do anything special, it just worked like that.

 

One thing that I find missing from Capture is a home button of some kind, and I have asked Lars about this. So in Atlas every one of the views can be anything. In previous versions you had a plan, front elevation and side elevation, and in order to get a proper 3D view you would have to select one of the views and then use the orthographic view.

 

Now you can just mess with any of them, so it would be great to have a home option for when you have ended up with your stage upside down at a ridiculous angle with a bizarre zoom ratio - to center it and fit it all in window. Basically to revert to a top/front/side default view. Maybe its there and I have not found it?

 

You can select window and hit Ctrl +1 or 2 or 3 to reset windows, but not to do a fit all and center.

[indyld]

 

 

One thing that I find missing from Capture is a home button of some kind, and I have asked Lars about this. So in Atlas every one of the views can be anything. In previous versions you had a plan, front elevation and side elevation, and in order to get a proper 3D view you would have to select one of the views and then use the orthographic view.

 

 

In my Atlas, I can seem to do that via Command + 1 for Top, Command + 2 for Front etc. Or select Swing To Top from the list icon of view > Camera. This seems to be OK, whatever I do to the view. Edit to add: or do you mean that the view restores but not the zoom?