Angie15

Its really easy to replicate. In HD pro 2025. Draw an external wall or room, any wall doesn’t matter. Increase the wall depth to about 400mm from center. Place a window, with external casing. (70mm) recess the window frame by about 150mm choose any default 2025 sill/shape profile and recess it. Bam z-fighting.

@Renerabbitt Ah sure, maybe I should give you some training in Twin Motion then, because I can import, setup and get about 6 fully raytraced Exterior images in about 20mins, if I need to. IF I faff and take my time with one interior scene/picture, then yeah it’ll be about an hour too. I don’t bill per hour. I quote engineers, architects, surveyors, carpenters and interior designers ahead based on their plans as they need a fixed price to in turn pass on to their clients. There is no way I could charge per hour here, I’d be out of business. No one here pays per hour unless you’re a gardener, cleaner, child-minder etc and/or only doing a 2–4-hour job. So yes, I completely disagree. I’ll provide a quote based on what I can see on the CAD plans as well as fixed eta timeline. (About €400 for a TM Exterior, 6 pictures ) of an average 1800sft bungalow house. If I asked for anything more than that, I’d be told to go fly a kite. I’m pretty much already pushing the top end of the scale and it taken me years! It’s only because of my level of accuracy and attention to detail that I’ve got this far. You want to talk about work flow…I spend on average about 20 hours, PER JOB, “fixing” Chiefs’ holes and gaps with soffits, wedges, slabs and shapes thanks to the obnoxious wall, railing, and fence snapping; manually building window sills because they Z-fight, manually building dormer windows because the auto-floating dormer doesn’t work with 400mm cavity walls, manually building roofs with barge/verge walls, manually building skylight shafts, manually building corner windows and doors, manually building gutters, downpipes, building objects in SketchUp and importing them etc. And the terrain controls in chief are an entirely different kind of joke. THAT’S where my work flow problem exists!! Then…. Just when you think you have everything technically patched up… you switch to PBR… and all your ”patches” light up like Christmas trees because Chief cant “rasterize” in PBR properly. I'd probably turn off 3D dimentions if I could, makes no difference to me since I work off real CAD plans and elevations in CAD "Are you sure? because it did fix it on my HD2026" Apologies, your sill does work and fixed it in 2026...but now cmere, you’re blatantly admitting there was a Z-fighting issue otherwise you wouldn’t have had to “fix it” without me posting any futher details. Without "your" sill, the problem still exists in 2026. I appreciate that you took the time and thank you, but unforntunately, like I said Pro 2025-2022 is the issue, not 2026. Ill let go of my distain for this software when it actually works.

@RenerabbittI know PBR isn’t a ray-trace. It was an example of how chief managed to bollox the implementation of an industry standard (PBR) in their HD products. I had concerns that chief would similarly do a half-arsed version of ray-trace. Now, while the ray-trace in 2026 is ok...is it worth the annual subscription they’re charging for it, given that other external engines are doing it better and cheaper? Absolutely not. The few other token-gesture improvements are negligible. I’ve been using the trial version and there’s nothing there that I’d be excitedly throwing my money at. Ill reply to you on my other post regarding the sill z-fighting when I get a chance. Unfortunately, your fix doesn’t fix it. I’ve sat with technical support for months regarding it, and if technical support can’t fix it, I doubt you can, but I’m willing to give it another shot because it drives me that insane!

Unfortunately, I don’t think you can, unless you previously purchased it. The HD pro range is no longer available.

@RenerabbittI’m glad you picked up on my tone because I’m absolutely fed up. I posted that question before I used the trial version of 2026. I’m well aware of how Ray-tracing works, (or is supposed to work). I was querying whether Chief would actually do that because their attempt at PBR in HD was so poor. I’m also aware that Chief Premier had ray-tracing long before TM etc and I have used the trail version. What I’m saying is, that Chief has long since been overtaken by the likes of other free or less expensive software, and in a world where AI can generate photo-real images in minutes, and of all the things they could’ve done to improve the HD software, they’ve chosen to offer ray-tracing and charge 4x the annual price. All the other technical glitches and issues of HD Pro 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 etc, still remain. There is absolutely no other benefit to 2026, other than ray-tracing, and raytracing can be done on an external engine for free (with less effort and better results imo, especially for exterior renders)

@Renerabbitt here, sort this this out.

Cancel your 2026 subscription and revert to HD Pro 2024. There is no HD Pro 2026. They combined all their products into one inferior, subscription-based bundle and marketed it as “The best that’s ever been seen, the world has never seen the likes before, never has it been better”

@RenerabbittYou're out of your mind if you think this 2026 release is worth more than bog roll. Chief Architect has actually REMOVED several functions and controls from HD Pro 2025. Since you’re so affiliated with Chief Architect, maybe you could look into all my technical questions I’ve logged that cant be resolved?

I sincerely hope so, because PBR was ultimately crap and completely uncontrollable and unrealistic. Metals never reflected correctly, the backdrop over-exposed, it was an disaster. "The feature is called Real-Time Raytracing and it offers the highest quality, photorealistic rendering." Laughable and almost ridiculous, About 4 years behind on all your competitors there, and I doubt it will be anywhere near what TwinMotion or Simlab can do for free. Will it render only what it sees, or will it still over-light the backdrop and other "objects" exposed to the exterior like chimneys, slabs and soffits? Will the trees (images) cast shadows? Will I still have to "set it up as a photoshoot" and add a hundred lights to make it work?

Have you fixed the window sill Z-fighting yet? As per my technical support complaint? No point offering ray-traying if it still ray-traces wrong?

Chiefs terrain elevation controls are stupid. Extend the elevation lines all the way to the end of the terrain and then add another duplicate elevation line at the back of the house to flatten it out.

The Gable Porch entrance extends further forward than the other other exterior walls. "Flat angled roof" is a pefectly acceptable description, and any experienced architect would know exactly what you mean and how to incorporate it. Unfortunately, the easiest is to manually build those roofs, because its probably beyond HD Pro's capabability to autobuild, but even if you purchased premier, you'd still have to manually build it.

Select the front GF wall, change it to a hip wall. select the left side bearing wall and change it to a high shed wall. Tell first floor to ignore roof (or in chiefs case, 2nd floor.) The back wall roof pitch will determine the roof and attic walls for the 4 horizontal windows, but my bet is that you'll have to build this manually, its beyond HD Pro. Its even beyond Premier. Its a manual build.

Im aware I can remove the details tab. Im talking about the filters tab, where it no longer shows the sub-folders but everything in the entire volume instead of the folders! I did say what additional controls I was epecting. Read my original again. I was expecting explicit control over the window sills (as attached). Why does the window sill still Z-fight with the wall? If you even bothered to try this with a default plan you'd know what Im talking about. In Pro 2025, build an exterior wall (any wall) Increase that wall to a 350mm depth from center. place a window with casing. Recess a 50mm depth window frame, 100mm from the exterior wall, then recess the window sill. change the casing colour. oh look. Z-fighting! Im ranting because Id expect you and any other Pro User to know this and Ive been on about this for years! The gutter moulding problem according to Chief technical, is that I found a way to manipulate the software in a way that wasn't intented. If it wasnt intended, why have the option? Home designer suite did it no problem, so did Pro right up until 2023? So Chief removed the softwares ability to apply moulding to a gutter, but forgot to remove the ability to do do? Right.

Gutter Moulding. I was told by Chief Technical that there was no way for me to fix the problem, because the software shouldnt have been able to do it in the first place. Wow.

This is rediculous. Ive just upgraded to HD Pro 2025, ONLY, because it said "Sill and threshhold control for openings". "explicit control of doors,windows, and openings" Turns out there is no additional contol in 2025 from 2023 in this regard. 5 years on... the window sill still Z-Fights when its recessed. Regardless, I will logde another technical complaint regarding the window sills, and they will reply that because I dont I have PremierX14, that is apparently incompatible and blah blah blah. Why procliaim to have the fuctionanitly in PRO then? 2016 : Chief: cannot recces doors into a specified wall 2025 : Chief can only recess the door panel 2016 Chief cant do window sills 2025: Chief still cant do window sills. still Z fighting. 2019 Apply gutter moulding, move the wall, cheif tells you none of their products had it. WOW! And seriously? Who's stupid idea was it to remove the library preview for all materials, only the selected material is displayed! Do you have any idea how much longer this will take to find materials? And its replaced with the stupid "details" tab ffs!!

Yes I do realize that, and do you know what else, it doesn't work when your walls are 350mm plus thick, it leaves feckin holes everywhere that you have to fill with soffits and wedges and soffits and more soffits and celings and more soffits only to realize you cant use soffits because they don't span ceilings and walls and then have to change to shapes which keep snapping by default to the to the terrain!

In two fecking years nothing has changed. The software still does not use my GPU, yet it takes me 45seconds to make a change in PRB

I understand that , but unfortunately chief sucks at both. It sucks at dpi export as well as ppi.

Hi There. The centering tool uses a point of reference to "center" your object. If you click on the door ( as you have done) and center it to the middle of the room (there will be a horizontal line indicating this). If you then click on the window and center it using the same mid-room line it will center over the same door as you are choosing the same room mid-line as the door. There are several "snap" lines you can use to center objects, ie walls, other windows, rooms, roof etc, but they are usually perpendicular. You cant use the center tool to "center" sidelights next to a door because there is no center reference point.

Thank you Dominic, but that doesn't help me. To be honest, all the PBR renderings I've seen so far on this forum are actually pretty bad, I'm really struggling to understand how you could say they are great. They are all extremely dark and hazy. How do I make a room bright and crisp, where the white walls and ceiling are actually white, not grey, or a weird alien shade of green or blue because of the backdrop? Why is the software not using my interior light settings despite me setting it to such? Why does it make no difference when you set a light to 10 lumens or 5 billion lumens? Why when you use floor to ceiling windows or sliding doors, does the backdrop make my shiny steel blue and green, despite using a terrain? (this one REALLY irritates me!) Its terrible and very poor attempt by CA and I have no idea what they were thinking but whoever was in charge of the production should be sacked. Its not a PBR, its a half-arsed lame attempt to keep up with the likes of sketchup and v-ray and they failed dismally. pic 1 - Same plan in standard view pic 2 - Same plan in PBR (I want it brighter, whiter, and the blue wall gone. I cant for the life of me figure out why CA thought it was a good idea to reflect the backdrop!! wtf!) pic 3 - a technical issue I keep having, where everything goes black and I have to exit the software, restart my computer and reload the plan.

Hi JonQ Thank you for your reply. I have finally been able to get a decent rendering but its still not good enough for my liking Reducing the sunlight intensity only solves the problem in a room with windows. It makes F-all difference in a with no windows. How can it be a true physical based rendering when it doesn't take into account the actual light settings in the room? (even when its set to "actual" light settings and not automatic)

I'll attach the plan here anyway. pbr_lights.plan

Hi Dominic, Thank you for your reply. I did think that might be an issue so I started a new default plan. The pictures above are from a new drawing, not an import.

I upgraded to Pro 2020 from 2019 and I'm asking for help with the new PBR rendering in HD Pro 2020. I’ve searched PRB on Chieftalk, watched the tutorials, and read the reference manual. I’ve been playing around with sun intensity, angles, lighting and materials etc and it seems to make no difference. It’s still dark. In the tutorial videos, there is very little light difference between the standard render and the PBR, only a few teaks are needed. In mine, its like night and day. In this room (pic 1) I have 8x10000 lumen lights and 2 x 5000 lumen lights. Sunlight is default. In a realistic scenario this room would be blinding (A stadium light is 60000 lumens) In pic 2 there is 4x10000 and 2x5000 (I removed 4 lights) In pic 3 there are 2x5000 lumens (removed all the ceiling lights) There seems to be very little difference. It’s still dark. The white walls, ceiling and cabinet are not white either. I have the most recent graphics driver. Is there a setting somewhere that I’m missing or is this a technical problem that I should report?