Milky wood tones

[LeftRightDesign]

Finally getting around to looking again at upgrading to HDPro 2022 now that I have gone out and purchased an expensive custom machine with lots of graphics capabilities (GeForce RTX 3090 w/ tons of gpu memory) but I'm still having difficulties making things look good.  The attached screenshots are from a plan I created in HDPro 2021, but I can't seem to get that milky quality out of any of the dark tones, particularly the wood ones.  The materials are set as dark and dull, and in some cases I've even tried blending in a black color with the texture, but I'm still getting that milky thing,

 

Plus the horrible difference between the floor in the two rooms; it is the same material in both spaces, and it actually should look like it does in the adjacent room, not the way it does in the kitchen.  As someone else mentioned in a previous post, this is an old problem, but it seems worse in 2022 than it was in 2021.

 

 

Any thoughts on how I might fix this??

 

 

Thanks to all.

[DavidJPotter]

https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/search/?default_tab=all&q=PBR+settings some of these articles on PBR may be helpful to you.

 

DJP

[LeftRightDesign]

Hi David -

 

Did check out those links; most I had seen before.  The issue is trying to ascertain how the new rendering engine in 2022 is changing the way materials look.  I've played with lighting, sunlight, all of the material options, and I'm kinda out of ideas for what to try next.  

 

This is what I'm getting:

 

The first image is what I had in HDPro 2021.

 

The second is what I get when I first open the same file in HDPro 2022.

 

The third is what happens when I change the daytime background intensity to 1, and make the chairs and the table both dull and dark (which sounds so depressing....).

 

Nothing I try makes the floor look good.

 

[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 

Edited April 9, 2022 by Dominic900
import an image.

[LeftRightDesign]

Thanks for your reply, Dominic.

 

I have played with everything you suggested in your second paragraph to no avail.  I was unaware that catalog updates are part of each new version (altho it makes perfect sense), so I changed the chairs and the floor to new materials from the Core Catalog in the trial version, but that didn't help either.  The picture below is a new floor material from the trial version set to Dark and Dull.  Still looks awful.  The chairs with the updated material just look the same as with the original material.

 

Maybe the catalog is not updated in the trial version??

 

And thanks for the lovely offer to help with renderings, but I really need to get this to work for the long term.

 

 

Regards,

 

 

Kit

 

 

[KPH_TX]

Kit,

 

I've noticed the same issue with flooring in different rooms rendering shiny in one space and darker/different in another. It actually appears to be true for any large object (long walls, ceilings, etc.). Further, as your screen shot shows, the differences always appear at room boundaries. 

 

Slight but relevant tangent - for a fireplace chimney, I used a soffit extending from the mantel through the ceiling and roof to form the chimney. Whenever I when to PBR, the fireplace above the mantel was blown-out white - like it was being blasted with sunlight - while the lower part rendered correctly for an interior. When I separated the soffit chimney into two pieces - an interior portion and an exterior one - the rendering problem resolved.

 

A light clicked.

 

I strongly suspect that the rendering engine lights an object from only one point on that object - and applies that light map to the entire object regardless of whether the lighting changes over the span of that object. I've been watching for this result in my renderings and it seems to be consistently true.

 

Back to the floors - if my suspicion is correct, the engine is lighting the floors in your dining room using a bright spot in the bay window and lighting the left-hand room using a more shaded spot by the door. Those two light maps are then applied to the entire floor in their respective rooms, with the result you've posted above. Ideally, the engine should be rendering the entire scene using ray-tracing, which would properly light each element on the floors. The next option is that the engine should be ignoring room boundaries when rendering a scene so that all the floors are treated similarly. 

 

I think the milky bits are the engine's attempt at rendering glare. May be wrong here.

 

Bottom line is I think this is an engine problem and not one we can fix through tweaks.

 

Kai.

[KPH_TX]

PS - from my system monitor, HDPro2022 makes very limited use of the GPU even when in 3d modes. A 3090 won't make a difference because it is rendering in software off of the CPU. Indeed, within the last week I upgraded from a RTX 2070 to a 3080ti and there has been ZERO difference in 3d rendering performance.

 

What has helped is exporting the 3d model to the DAE format and then importing that file into Epic's Twinmotion presentation engine. Twinmotion does use the GPU and it makes a HUGE difference for presentations. The downside is that you cannot change the HDPro design in realtime like you can with the built-in 3d engine. Here you have to make the change in HDPro, export it to DAE and then reimport it to Twinmotion. But it is worth it.

[LeftRightDesign]

Hi Kai -

 

Thanks for taking the time to weigh in.  I think I followed your light bulb moment (pun intended, bad tho it is) about the way the rendering engine deals with light.  It's been a huge disappointment, I must say, to have no real advance on the program w/ the new computer and the new rendering engine, but there's still hope for the next go around.

 

I used to have Twinmotion, but ended up deleting it because of the massive amount of time it takes to just get one screenshot.  I really need lots and lots of them because that's how I share my design progress with my clients.  I may try again, tho, when I have I some time to kill.  It might be worth it in some circumstances.

 

 

Again, thanks for your thoughts.

 

 

Kit