Dominic900

Hello Leftrightdesign,

Each new version of Home designer pro or Chief Architect Premier that I get I had to update the catalog and then change the material or texture with the new version of floor or whatever texture is in your design when importing your plan file into a new version of software had to make sure that it was updated to the new catalog as chief changes textures or materials with each new version. With HDP 2022 they switched to direct X 12 as shown on their website for HDP 2022. So some of the textures may not work correctly from older versions so you would have to redo some.  

Some setting that work really well are under the 3D menu look for 3d lighting/sun lighting adjust the lumens for sun lighting down from 100.000 to 5.000 or less some say to put it at 500 to 1000 for best results. Another setting is to lower the camera exposer to 2.5 under camera settings brightness setting. Also you could add more lighting in the other room to brighten things up a bit. For the floor, try a shiny to medium shine on your material settings after you replace the floor with the new catalog update, these settings work great for me.

I hope this helps you if not I am willing to import the plan into my Chief architect premier x13 and render them for you. If you want me to do that please post your plan here on the forum and when I get back (gone for a week return on 4-15) will help you with your project. Will provide screenshots of the renderings as when importing your plan file into CA13 the rendering settings will not work when re-importing your plan file back to HDP. If you would like my help please put all chosen textures/paint colors/materials you like best on all surfaces before posting your plan file so that I may adjust them and then render screenshots. Please write back which rooms you would like rendered here on the forum so that way I will know how many renders to do.

First render is free to see how you like it, 2 to 5 renders is $20.00 each. If you want more renders then we can discuss it later. We can work out payment details later.

Shown below is an CA x13 render of a kitchen/living/dining. Just to show you the quality of the render that I can do for you.

Thank you,

Thanks,

Dominic 

Hello Henk,

Welcome to the Home designer forum.

Sorry to say but according to the rental FAQ on home designer website (look for rental FAQ next to rent to buy button) it says that if you miss a payment, credit card is declined then you have to restart your rental and restart your purchase to buy Home Designer. Since it has been a month according to what you said it looks like you have to restart your rental in order to purchase in monthly payments. 

I wish I had better news for you. But that's what according to their rental FAQ says.

Kind regards,

Dominic

On 3/7/2020 at 12:59 PM, Donco15 said:

Thanks @Dominic900and @HDbyJustin thanks to your feedback... I am taking the plunge... I was wondering about the new version HDPro 2021. I will be upgrading and will share my feedback.  It is nice to see what other fellow more experienced users feel about the new version.  Really appreciate your candid feedback. Look forward to upgrading and using the new features... 

Hello Donco15,

Thank you for the nice words. I am happy to hear that the review I did helped you out. I hope that your upgrade works out well for you like it does for me. I am very happy that I also upgraded, the features work very well.

A special thanks goes toward Chief Architect for working hard on X12 and bringing up to date home designer pro features that I will use. Thanks again Chief Architect. 

Dominic

I also upgraded to HDP 2021 this past week. And I like how fast and smooth the renderings are in the standard view and PBR view. At least on my computer the framerate is very fast and smooth and I have a Nvidia TI 730 2GB memory video card. Any way some of the features I have tried are the waterfall counter, you have to make a custom counter in order to see the waterfall option. Please look in the help section for how to do this. Doors, I tried the glass panel option when editing a door (must be a glass panel door for this option) anyway you can edit the width, sides, top, and bottom individually if you want too. A nice feature to make entry doors have a cool effect or for modern homes. That is all that I got to play with for now but I give it five stars. This information is for Home Designer Pro 2021. Not sure if the features mentioned applies to lower versions of home designer.

Thank you for reading my review. I hope that it helps you.

Dominic 

Hi timeless 16,

Your rendering that you did in hdp 2020 looks very good. Look in youtube for twinmotion and those videos will help you out. Sketchup requires that when importing files bigger than 5 megabytes in size I believe it has trouble with files bigger than that when importing into sketchup. Some files have that trouble not all of them.

Best,

Dominic 

Hi Timeless 16,

The program I use (just got it a few days ago) called twinmotion. please do a google search for that program as I am not certain if you can mention other companies websites on this forum. It is by epic games and uses the unreal engine and epic games has released it for free (all you need to do is sign up for an account and select download from the website. enclosed is a picture that was done with twinmotion in about an hour worth of working with the software. What you have to do is import your design through sketchup and save your design as a sketchup  file then import your design into twinmotion. There is videos on youtube just lookup twinmotion for help.

I think that it does a nice job rendering. I hope that you think so too.

I hope that this helps you.

Dominic

On 5/6/2019 at 3:26 PM, lithandriel said:

I am trying to add some pendant lighting above and Island in Home Designer Architectural 2020, and I was referencing this video (~timestamp 6:54):

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/1914/ray-trace-rendering-lighting-types.html?playlist=103

 

This is a different version of the software, and the options that she uses to adjust the red cross-hairs (light position) do not appear to be available in Home Designer Architectural 2020. So when I adjust the height of the pendant from the ceiling so that the pendant hangs 72" up from the floor, the light-source position remains too high (see screenshot). 

 

Is there a way to fix this so that the render is more accurate in Home Designer Architectural 2020? Or is this just not doable? 

 

 

Hello, 

In home designer pro 2020 reference manual page 506 shows the option to offset the light position. It looks like that option is only available in home designer pro and chief architect professional line of software.

You might want to talk to chief sales and see if any upgrade sales will happen soon. Sometimes they have a customer loyalty sale.

Best,

On ‎5‎/‎1‎/‎2019 at 5:51 AM, Angie15 said:

 

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. 

 

Hello Angie15,

I have included a rendering done with a program called Simlab composer 9.1 VR edition. Here's what I did to get the rendering, 

1. enter a 3d view with your camera in home designer 2020

2. open file menu, and choose export to DAE file. (a sketchup file)

3. open sketchup and import in your design in sketchup. 

4. place your design on screen next to your little man in sketchup. Click once with your mouse.

5. Save your design as a sketchup file.

6 then import your design into the trial version of simlab composer. Please do a google search for simlab composer for website information and pricing for simlab.

7. download simlab composer 9.1. and try it out.

I hope this helps,

Best,

Hi Angie15,

Your rendering looks pretty good on my end. I am sorry that you are not happy with how things are not turning out with PBR rendering. I have added some pictures or renderings to help you out. Its a doctor office I am working on to get a feel for the software. Anyway if your not happy how things turned out you might give support a call or send them an email and ask why you are having these issues with rendering. Some on this forum are getting great results with PBR. I hope that things will work out for you.

Best,

Hi Timeless-16,

Here are some images that I could not load when writing to you in messager.  the first is PBR and the 2nd is standard view. to show the difference.

Dominic 

Heard back from support and the results are not good (for me anyway) it turns out that it was an error on my part I was looking at the door hardware for a bank of drawers rather than looking at the drawer hardware which is at the bottom of the dialog box. anyway my bad. Still learning how to use this software.

Sorry for the error.

Hello, 

Does anybody have trouble when using Home Design architectural 2020 that in cabinet hardware When selecting cabinet hardware that it does not change even when you turn off use default? 

Here's the trouble I'm having. When I tried going into cabinet dialog box to edit the cabinet hardware and select from the library and choose a handle it does not matter which one it does not change on the cabinet preview and also does not change on the cabinet itself on the drawing. Also when you select from the drop-down list without going into the library that the hardware when you select from the list it does not change no matter which part you select. I've already submitted a ticket to support about this issue but I wanted to know if anybody else was having the same issue.

Thank you for any help that you can offer. Will update when I hear from support. 

Hi Angie,

Now I don't have home designer pro 2020 but the same thing happens when I import a drawing file from past versions into 2020 of architectural 2020 (which I have ) the rooms and lighting are dark. But when it is a new drawing no issues. When it imports the lighting data something goes wrong. But what you might want to do is contact support and send them your file. 

Please update us when you find out what could be the problem. Thanks. 

Hello,

I was told last week that they are wrapping up testing and if nothing is found during testing might be released sometime in April of 2019.