The Community for Architects, Landscape & Lighting Designers

VectorWorks+Thea Renderer

I've been using this new rendering software since it was first released in this year. My workflow was to export from Sketchup to Thea. To use a VW model I had to make all the textures again an flip backfaces inside sketchup, it was a huge work everytime, so I was not using my VW models for the job.

I've just figured out how to use VW + Thea together. Thea will import VW files with textures if you export them as.3ds from VW. When you import them inside Thea you will be able to change materials, put some lights add cameras. Just be aware to the correct scale when you import your files. Scale 1 means 1 unit = 1 meter.

Thea has both biased and unbiased rendering engines. I always use final gather because is very fast and good too. But if you have time, you can use unbiased engine and it will look like indigo renderer and maxwell images. Thea can render fancy light animations too.

I am not a rendering professional, but, to illustrate I will post here one image showing the model imported from VW, rendered in Thea in less than 3 minutes. And one interior I've made using Sketchup + Thea one month ago, this interior took about 20 minutes to render.

Thea is a new software so it is really cheap by now... I've paid like U$ 200,00 for it, I don't remember exactly.

I hope you enjoy the workflow too. If someone thinks that a videotutorial with a heavy accent and a lot of mistakes might help I can post some for U.

http://www.thearender.com/cms/

Attachments:

Screen shot 2010-07-22 at 4.50.29 PM.png, 468 KB

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Lloyd NB on July 29, 2010 at 12:12pm

Hi Felipe, Thanks for this information on Thea. I checked it out and I'm definitely interested in it. The price is certainly right and it looks very powerful. One question for you...does Thea need to be run inside another application, such as Cinema 4D or does it have its own interface, independent of other software? It seems that it can be independent or can be used with a plugin - either way- but the website was not exactly clear for me on this. So are you using your VW model (as .3ds) inside Thea itself?

Many thanks and nice renders from you too!

Best

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Permalink Reply by Felipe Junqueira on July 30, 2010 at 5:38pm

Hy Lloyd,

Thea is an independent software, like artlantis, for example. I've bought sketchup plug in, but I'm using vectorworks models too using the workflow described before. I'm expecting some problems too, VW does not export .3ds always correctly, curved walls have their height altered in the .3ds files, for example. You may expect some other problems too, this is an issue that Nemetshek have to solve in the future, to help VW talk to other softwares. But with regular walls, extruded geometry etc...everything goes ok in the .3ds files.
It works particulary well for interiors. One cool thing is that you can weld and smooth geometry before rendering in thea. Its a fast software that pops in a second in front of you and can render cool images in a fraction of time of artlantis, mentalray etc... (in the biased mode) ...

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Permalink Reply by Lloyd NB on July 31, 2010 at 10:57am

Thanks very much Felipe, I'm definitely going to try it out. You are right about VW exports, but then most software has some glitches in exporting.

Nice work here too!

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Permalink Reply by Felipe Junqueira on July 31, 2010 at 8:18am

VW + THEA

Attachments:

22_04_10_05.jpg, 81 KB
INTERIOR_01.jpg, 1.8 MB
LEO_02.jpg, 486 KB

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Permalink Reply by Michael Klaers on July 31, 2010 at 8:48am

Nice work, Felipe.

Can you show more screen shots of the exporting to 3ds and importing to Thea?

I haven't been able to successfully import to Thea.

MK

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Permalink Reply by Felipe Junqueira on August 1, 2010 at 12:42pm

You can set up a designlayer viewport with all 3d geometry and transform it to 3d polys if you have some exporting issues, inside Thea, selecting the geometry you cal weld and smooth is with right mouse click. Thea comes with the manual, but I'm posting it here for convenience.

Attachments:

Screen shot 2010-08-01 at 3.44.15 PM.png, 303 KB
Screen shot 2010-08-01 at 3.48.37 PM.png, 450 KB
Manual.pdf, 9.1 MB

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Permalink Reply by Felipe Junqueira on August 1, 2010 at 12:45pm

some other works with THEA, the ring was an engagement ring I've designed for my fiancee and was rendered usign unbiased engine TR2 preset, for small models like furniture its very fast too

Attachments:

ANEL_02_2.jpg, 245 KB
OP3.jpg, 914 KB
VISTA_02.jpg, 633 KB

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Permalink Reply by Felipe Junqueira on August 1, 2010 at 12:58pm

Image based lighting + point lights 2 per floor, more or less 30 minutes of rendering on unbiased engine TR2. Unbiased rendering engines never stops rendering, it keeps rendering for ever if you let them. The images begin as black pictures and after some minutes they begin to show up as noisy images that becomes clear over and over after some proper time, you can then save them when you like. Take a time to see what Thea can do for you in the showcase area of thea's forum...

http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=21&start=25

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