Object & Material Browsers

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    • Official Post

    Hey Alex.N , the "Enscape materials and Enscape objects" features are only available in SketchUp so far, and we're also currently busy evaluating a multitude of options on how we'll be able to offer better material support for ArchiCAD!


    In the meantime, please be aware that ArchiCADs default material parameters are supported, as well as following keywords:


    water, ocean, river, foliage, grass, mirror, metal and frosted


    I hope this helps! :)

    • Official Post

    Can you please give us an idea when we could expect to see bump/normal features within thew Archicad add on? ( i.e pulling the information from the cine render settings for a material)

    Hi Nuge , there are currently no plans to implement support for these, or CineRenders settings in general, so I'll gladly file this as a feature request. Which settings would you like to see supported beside bump and normal, or is it just these two? :)


    Thanks in advance.

  • What! Are you serious?

    You (enscape) have told us earlier that connection to cinerender was on the way, and why develop a plug in for archicad that cannot use the same principles as the other plugins? Basic features like bump/normal is a must, without it the plug is basically useless for serious production...

    Or is enscape for archicad getting the same kind of menu/tools for materials as sketchup? (instead of cinerender connection)

  • Yes i have to agree with Marten,


    We have been promised the cinerender integration from the very beginning and its one hell of a surprise to see your response. your current policy of having different features for the different applications is ridiculous and something that you need to address quickly. having a basic bump or normal option in archicad is an absolute must.


    quote from Simon Weinberger in the Archicad early access forum May 29th 2018


    "We are planning to support (part of) the cinerender parameters. Perhaps we will use the keyword for things like grass and water. But right now this is not implemented yet. "

  • Demian


    further to this you posted in 2nd July 2018


    "Multi GPU support is on our agenda and received a further upvote through your message. Thanks for your feedback!


    ArchiCAD lights should work without issues, but be aware that we currently don't support the following: parallel lights, sun lights, window lights, cube area lights and hemisphere area lights. Maybe some of these lights were used?


    Regarding bump, we'll support the cinerender-materials soon, but we'll also have to look into what is possible to render. There might be a material editor in the future, but for now it's not something which is planned."


    has something changed that your not now going to support this?

  • Nuge  MartenE Right now, we have not started working on this feature yet, and it is not planned for the next release (possibly September/October). This does not mean we have canceled our plans to support more advanced materials for ArchiCAD users in the future. It simply means there are other features, that have a higher priority for us right now.

  • Simon,


    thanks for your reply but that's a really disappointing response to a rather basic function that the other applications currently have and to say that you have higher priority's is a bit of a slap in the face for archicad users that just want what is being advertised ie to be able to use a bump channel. not something to difficult i would have thought.


    Enscapes future direction regarding material editor really needs to be debated with your client base as i see a general trend on this forum of discontentment with your current approach

  • I completely agree with all of the issues above. Its such a great rendering program but its missing some essential features for the ArchiCAD version. It offers almost half of the options compared to other programs yet its the same price?


    Lighting may work in ArchiCAD but the control of the lighting power/strength is almost non existent.

  • Enscape


    No response, that's disappointing.


    Can you please give archicad users some hope that they will have a fully functioning plug in some time soon.


    Simon as you know i was one of the few that provided feed back during the beta testing and i love that we have enscape for Archicad, but i really thought that the development that you have been putting into sketchup would be transferred thru to the other plugins.


    I have been following the Trello enscape development board with interest but it appears to have been abandoned by enscape as none of you staff seem to be commenting anymore. is it still a true reflection of what you are working on?. If it is that those items will be nice to have additions to the software but not at the cost of basic functionally


    Please,please put some work into the archicad plugin so that it at least compares to whats on offer in sketchup and keep all of the plugins on a similar development cycle.

  • Nuge Sorry for not answering instantly. As a software developer I try to invest more time in improving the software than in customer communication.


    Let's take a look how the material editor for the SketchUp plugin came to life: Enscape for SketchUp was officially released in May 2017 (version 2.0), with some kind of a beta phase since March (version 1.9.6). At that time only the Revit plugin supported the full potential of our materials. SketchUp had only very basic materials, even less than ArchiCAD has today - Albedo texture with keywords for specific reflectivity settings and for special materials like water. Of course, many users wanted more control ("Look at what the Revit plugin can do!"), and they were right. But it's also wrong to say, that the SketchUp plugin was useless without it.

    In December 2017 (after a short closed beta) the material editor was released in preview versions, followed by the official release in March 2018 (version 2.2).


    Of course we could have adjusted our priorities to release the material editor earlier, but that wouldn't be fair to our existing customers using Revit. So we happened to implement area lights, the presentation mode and many other small improvements, before investing huge amounts of time into the material editor for SketchUp. There have been many SketchUp users complaining about it, but I still think it was the right decision.


    Today we face the same dilemma. Prioritizing feature requests is never easy. We decided to work on two topics that are highly requested and can benefit most of our users. You can find them on trello, the board is still regularly updated and read. We also wanted to include a material editor for Rhino in the next release, but postponed it because of bugs on the McNeel side. Believe me, we are not happy about it. Rhino users have to live without proper material support since November 2017.


    At the moment we try to release every 3-4 month, meaning version 2.4 should be released in September/October. Then we'll decide what to do next. If we schedule this topic for the 2.5 version, this means a release in Q1 2019, probably a preview in late 2018. I don't want to make any promises. Besides better material support for ArchiCAD there are a few topics on our agenda, that are highly requested, just take a look at the Trello board. You should know, that we are aiming for feature parity between all plugins, and that is a strong argument for providing better materials in Rhino and ArchiCAD.


    Short summary: This topic is not yet scheduled, but we are trying our best to bring it to you as soon as possible.

  • Simon,


    Fantastic thanks for replying, I certainly don't want to hold you back from the development so perhaps someone from enscape management should be engaged with customer communication


    While i understand where your coming from i cannot agree. don't forget that i am a paying customer of your product (and i expect a fully functioning product for the price i am paying - are sketchup user paying an extra fee for the enhanced functionally they have?), all of the discussions leading up to the release of the archicad plugin its been clear (to me and other users) that we could expect the additional channels (bump / normal etc) to follow quickly after the initial release (you your self indicated that very clearly on the forum). It now appears that we "might" get those features sometime in 2019. very disappointing.


    Enscape needs to change its approach develop an idea/feature (ie water control) and them implement it throughout all of the plugins, not we can get this done for sketchup or revit and maybe we might do it for the other plugins some time in the future (maybe)


    So from a paying customers point of view this is how i see things have evolved


    Enscape want to attract new customer base

    Provide archicad plugin

    promise that it will be fully featured

    provide incomplete plugin

    release promo video stating (just after introducing archicad as a new plugin) "and make use of all known functions"

    tell customers they now have to wait an unspecified amount of time to get the same features that other plugins have (for the same money)



    I was truly excited about you bringing enscape to archicad, you have a fantastic product and it works well within the archicad workflow but your development policy leaves a lot to be desired.


    Most annoyed

  • Hi Nuge,


    Thank you very much for your honest feedback which is very valuable to us.


    Our goal is to provide the same level of quality and usability in all our supported products. But because these are very different to each other we have to find individual solutions. Sometimes this means that certain features don't work with every plugin right away or that new plugins don't have every feature from the start. Even if not all parameters available in ArchiCAD are used from the get go, Enscape with its basic functionality should already be worth its price.


    If our statements previous to the release were misleading, we're sorry for any inconveniences.


    Thank you for your understanding

  • Hi Simon.


    No point thanking me for my understanding when clearly I totally disagree with your approach and policy, your comment "Our goal is to provide the same level of quality and usability in all our supported products" is clearly not true, if so why are you working on additional "new" featured before ensuring that all supported products have the same level of quality and usability!!!


    Any way it looks like my comments are going no where here as you fundamentally don't understand my argument. So i will leave it there and look forward to a fully featured Archicad plug in the not to distant future.


    Still annoyed Nuge

  • Nuge Thank you for clarifying your position.

    But it's not true that your arguments are going nowhere, we're trying our best to honor every feedback.


    If you have purchased Enscape for ArchiCAD and aren't pleased with it at all, we surely will find a solution as we want to have happy clients.


    I've sent you a PM as there's obviously no reason to flog a dead horse in this thread as we agreed to disagree. ;)