Tech

Thanks for the excellent tutorial FZnoob!

Allan, Text should be imported from DXF/DWG files. Can you please send the file (or a link to it) to support@formz.com so we can investigate?

Apple has changed the alpha channel of icons in Mojave and we are investigating if this is something that they will be fixing and if not what we can do to adjust for the issue without breaking support of other OS versions. This is just an aesthetic issue, the icons still function as expected. We hope to have a fix for this soon!

You can draw your own guides with the guide tool. The manual created guides and the smart guides are only available when the Guide snap is enabled. If you want to create some references for a drawing you can easily draw them on their own layer, set the layer to be not snap-able and use the line style override to set a dashed pattern for the layer. You can then enable and disable the reference layer by turning the layer visibility on or off.

The key to getting good results with Sub-D objects is to start with a simple frame of the desired shape and edges at key edges of the shape. For this shape we made a frame with a single edge at the flat ends. The whole object was given a 60% sharpness and then the end edges and points were selected and assigned a 100% sharpness to make the hard edges.

formZ 8.6 supports SU 2018. formZ 6.7.3 supports the old SU 7/8 format.

The same issue with the "Add to project" and "options" buttons happened with the first release of High Sierra as well. We are not sure yet if Apple will fix this again in Mojave or we will need to adjust for it. The workaround fo "Add to project" is to open the file and copy and paste into the desired project. The import options dialog will open anyway if not previously selected, so this is fairly minor. We are investigating the transparency issue with the icons to see if we can adjust for this as well without raising the minimum supported OS version.

We are not aware of any firewall issues with the V-Ray license server. We have a number of large company's with very secure networks that use the V-Ray license server with no issues. Please contact formZ support so we can get the issue resolved!

The texture map controls (placement, scale etc) are formZ parameters so they are used by both RenderZone and V-Ray for formZ (and shaded work/full of course). Renderzone inherits the the basic material parameters (diffuse color, diffuse texture map, bump map etc) from V-Ray materials. Materials that use these parameters (Generic, Car Paint etc) will appear very similar in Renderzone. If your V-Ray material uses a VRMAT material or other non image based parameters (reflectance, refraction etc), then RenderZone will show a approximation of the material. This works both ways so if you have RenderZone materials, V-Ray will inherit the basic material parameters (diffuse color, diffuse texture map, bump map etc) from RenderZone. Keep in mind that there are many other factors that affect the rendering including lighting, environment, global settings etc that its not realistic to expect the engines to give the same results.

Andrew, While displacement creates a nice rendering effect, it's weakness is edge conditions. The object's normals affect the displacement. To create the hard edge of a cube, form•Z will split the normals along the edge (ie one pointing in each direction of the adjacent faces). This will also be reflected in the displacement as you have observed. The workaround is to make the entire object render as smooth (Attributes->Smooth Shading->Facetted Objects->All Faces). See attached UI and resulting rendering. Note that there still can be slightly “roughness” where the patterns align unless you have a pattern that is designed for alignment (like the second example). The displacement uses the object's texture controls. A technique for setting up the mapping is to make a material with the diffuse texture that uses the desired displacement map. Use the texture tools to set the mapping type and parameters. If you do not want to use this material for the result, then assign a different material to the object once the desired mapping is established. We are consulting with Chaos Group if there is a way for us to have separate normal channels (and UV texture channels) for shading and displacement which would allow us to automate this behind the scene and give the desired shading across the faces. We will also be adjusting the UI to allow for a negative displacement amount. This might create better results in these cases. We hope this helps! BWB.bmp

Thanks for helping Jean Luc!

Thanks for your interest in V-Ray for formZ. You should experience excellent results with this hardware! With V-Ray you can choose to use CPU, GPU or both (hybrid). V-Ray for formZ will use all of the hardware resources available. You can also choose which resources are used if desired. V-Ray is licensed per render instance, not per processor or cores. That is one V-Ray for formZ application requires one license which can use all of the hardware available to render. If you want to perform a second rendering simultaneously within the same application instance (ie open a second project while the first is rendering and render it with V-Ray) then you can add an extra render node to your license. Render nodes can also be used for distributed rendering on machines on your local network. V-Ray uses a online license server that allows the licenses to be shared within your organization. Does this help?

?

You can adjust the intensity of the Sky Environment in the Sky parameters. Does this help you scene? You can also disable the GI effect from the Sky Environment by Using the environment override (using a bank color will mans that no GI illumination will come from the environment).

Clones can be transformed "individually" or "as a family". This is controlled by the option in the transformation tool options. "Individually" apples the transformation to each clones instance about its own local axis and the "as a family" option is applied to the while family as a set. Changes to a parameter of a clone are propagated to each instance individually. What we have observed is that in v8.6, the dynamic display during the transformation always functions "as a family". Once the final click of the transformation is made, the transformation is applied each object when the "individually" option is selected. See images We have logged this aa an issue and also have added suggestion to be show if an object is in a clone in the information tab (and how many siblings it has).