FormZ - Ready for the next decade?

[SoWhat]

Long time user of FormZ here... my first release goes back to 3.1! 

So pumped to see this Form Z 10 on the horizon. I haven't spent much time here on the forums but the promise of the next generation of FormZ will surely bring some more excitement! I've only just now signed up for the Beta - so I am really looking forward to seeing how she goes.

As a Mac user, I went through a period of frustration once Apple Silicon rolled around. However, I've stuck with it as my primary CAD (conceptual) program, usually bailing out at the detailing stages. More recently I've been using SketchUp Layout which is straight forward, but not the smoothest workflow out of FormZ.  FormZ Draft layout is decent but I've struggled to become a power user and usually lose patience with it quirks.  

I trialled V-Ray for a year recently and started to feel comfortable with some tricks here and there, but ultimately felt it was too cumbersome and decided not to renew. Having said that, I still push renders from time to time in Render Zone and recently started to miss the V-Ray output. With its bugs and slow render times, I suspect Render Zone is pretty much unsupported now. My go to quick visualisations (inside FormZ) are in the Full Shade Display mode. With a few alpha channel tricks I can get some pleasing results. 

Pumped to see the feature list for FormZ 10 and especially interested in the Twin Motion compatibility.I've only dabbled with Twin Motion but that is an exciting prospect!  

I am in the retail design space and in the new year considering investing more heavily in FormZ for conceptual renders. I curious how others are using or intend to use FormZ heading into the later part of this decade? Are you using FZ for modelling only and exporting into other programs? Is V-Ray getting better, are users happy with render output? 

Excited to here from active users....Cheers!

 

 

[Hugo]

Use FormZ 3D modeller for 3D and 2D output (not using FMZ layout nor draft), using Affinity Publisher to create perfect drawings and PDF’s Maxwell Render is my perfect render engine. Everything on Mac…

Edited November 16, 2023 by Hugo

[rmulley]

Also in the retail design space and a FormZ used since 2001. 

Happy with Vray and it's integration with FormZ tbh... depends on the client but I've use dit enough now to know how to bang out a quick render that hits the mark.

Getting a basic drawing package done in Layout though is pretty cumbersome.... I've really wanted it to work so it would be easy to integrate into my work flow but always got tripped up by some quirk or another to a point it just wasn't worth the hassle.  We have a Rhino user in the dept. that can knock out clean 2D drawings pretty quickly that I'm super jealous of.

Excited to see where FormZ goes.... It has been great interchanging models between Rhino & Solidworks which really helps. Still that 2D element coming short..... fixing that, making it easy to setup and export as pdf's (without fuzzy text) would be wonderful!

[SoWhat]

Nice to hear Hugo - I've heard Maxwell does pretty well but for some reason I've never look too closely at it. Publisher is pretty much like InDesign, so do you manually add dimensions if required? I do a similar workshop in Illustrator (or InDesgn) but it's a slow process. 

Rmulley - It sounds like we've been up against similar challenges. I did work out a trick to eliminate the fuzzy pdfs, but I'd have to be pursued to go back into layout to work it out again lol.  I have a colleague who really loved Rhino and mentions it whenever she see me in FormZ. I agree with V-Ray... Its material suite is stellar but I found it cumbersome to edit and save materials on the fly. If I start really rendering in FormZ again I'll probably head back to it. I was always envious of other programs that had light emitting materials when I was rendering in RenderZone. 

One big feather in FormZ cap is it passes files back and forth pretty well. SolidWorks Step Files work well as long as they aren't too complex. I used to get SAT files in from Revit amazingly well. SketchUp is a breeze!

 

[Hugo]

Sowhat, in my one person architect office i use 5 computers (4 old ones for render only) and Maxwell is very simpel to use. Very happy with it. 
My workflow is based on FMZ 3D modeller only. I am using it for dimension in the model as well. (Somewhere on the forum I explained how this works well with all control over it) Creating high resolution screenshots, save them in a linked folder and use them in Affinity is fast and with perfect graphics!. 

[SoWhat]

@Hugo there was an update to FZ a while back that removed the detailing work-space? I've searched on the forum for your overview but can't find it. It would be great if you could link to it here or even point n the right direction with a screenshot of the dimension tool you are using? 

@rmulley trialling VRay again and finding it reasonably smooth this time around. I think it's feeling a bit lighter on the CPU with High settings. Do you ever render creating an infinity floor (studio space)? Be interested if you are using the Vray Infinity floor? I've been using a simple alpha channel onto a flat plan and getting reasonable results. Test images attached for reference. 

I am trialing Beta Pro 10 and it's looking really promising.  I haven't trialled the latest release (from a few days ago) but I am glad to see they have addressed the switching from wireframe to shaded modes (Mac) bug!  Can anyone advise me on how to contribute to the forum feedback that is locked down to a password? I've messaged support a few times without a response. 

[¢hris £und]

The very original email invite to the beta test has the password.