Posts by ViggoPaulman

Hi Demian Gutberlet!

Apologies for my late reply, the week has been crazy but I've finally found some time to run more tests. Please see below.

Quote from Demian Gutberlet

could you kindly acquire and install our very latest release

Already running the latest version.

Quote from Demian Gutberlet

how large in terms of megabytes the 4k textures used are?

We are using the Quixel Megascan textures. The 4K JPGs have diverse file sizes. Here are some highlighted examples to give you a rough idea:

Quote from Demian Gutberlet

Maybe you know the amount of 4k textures in total (roughly estimated)?

Ranging between 10 and 15 in this particular project. However, the lag I'm facing happens even if there are as few as 2 textures in a model.

Quote from Demian Gutberlet

Does it help if you (temporarily for testing purposes) replace the 4k textures by importing 2k or even lower resolution textures instead?

Actually, yes it does. This is what I tested today. I replaced some of the textures with 2K equivalents and clicking between them, they respond within a second, while clicking between other 4K textures, it takes up to 5 seconds to respond.

I'm wondering if I'm the only person who reported this problem, or if you received more reports of similar kind?

Is this lag coming from the fact that my GTX 1070 is no longer considered a "top" model?

Thanks for your input. Will be looking forward to your reply.

Best,

Viggo

Quote from Demian Gutberlet

Pardon me ViggoPaulman for the delay, I'm here to assist you now.

Right away, just so we're on the same page, could you kindly acquire and install our very latest release 3.4.2? Just in case you haven't already of course - If that makes no difference, can you also alongside let me know how large in terms of megabytes the 4k textures used are? Maybe you know the amount of 4k textures in total (roughly estimated)? Does it help if you (temporarily for testing purposes) replace the 4k textures by importing 2k or even lower resolution textures instead? Again, just for troubleshooting and if you aren't extremely short on time.

Furthermore, perhaps there may be a chance again for you to package this scene and sent it over as you did before regarding the sun-shadows problem we talked about?

Also, it should not be related to using SU 2020 instead of 2022, but I can also test that here on my machine with both versions.

Last but not least, already please also submit us a feedback report with your logs and feel free to mention my name in it so that my colleagues can assign the created case to me right away.

Thank you in advance, I always appreciate your cooperation, and in this case also your patience!

Display More

Hello Demian!

As always, appreciate your dedication and the effort you put forward. The day is coming to an end, so if it's ok, I can test out the solutions you suggested and get back here with another reply tomorrow. Until tomorrow!

Been waiting for an answer for a while regarding this issue. If someone from the team could address it, it would be great! Demian Gutberlet

Update: Did some more testing and experiments.

Please watch the attached short video. This lag/freeze appears only when I click on materials that have maps applied to them. The materials that don't have Albedo, Normal or Roughness maps (the first 2 on the list, for example) are working smoothly. As you can see, when I click through them, they respond immediately. But the other materials take some 5 seconds to respond.

Screencap.mp4

Hello again Demian,

just wanted to reach out and say thank you for the effort. Hats off to the developers too for their elaborate explanation.

Will be waiting to see how V-Ray/Enscape collaboration evolves.

All the best,

Viggo

Since updating to 3.4 Enscape has become noticeably laggier and slower. To a point that it's become impossible to have a smooth workflow.

Using 3.4 with SketchUp 2020, GTX1070 8 GB and 16 GB of RAM.

The problem is not in the renderer or the viewport, but the menus, especially the Material Editor menu. Whenever I click through different materials, it freezes for about 5 seconds and I have to wait for it to catch up with my clicks. Increasing/decreasing Height map or Reflections has become a struggle to. I can't use the sliders anymore because it just lags very badly. I have to click into the number value box to input a number, but even clicking there it lags.

Tried updating my Graphic Card, made sure that Windows is up to date too. Nothing seems to help.

It happens in every file, regardless of size, complexity or presence of Asset library models. Everywhere the same laggy menus. My materials are the same they have been since before 3.4 - 4K JPG maps, so I don't believe they're the culprit either.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

Can this be because I'm using SketchUp 2020? Should I consider upgrading to 2022?

Thanks in advance.

I have downloaded a trial of V-Ray 6 for SketchUp to make some tests and experiments.

There seems to be a huge bug in the system. The Enscape features (grass, water effect etc) appear in the V-Ray renderer only when you're rendering on the CPU (and that makes my PC howl with temperature). If I tell V-Ray to render on my GTX1070, it's much faster but the Enscape features are missing.

Also, can someone explain - so this features transfers only Enscape library materials? I almost never use the Enscape materials because I have my own library and resources. None of the maps that I applied for Enscape transferred to V-Ray.

Overall, this is a great and very promising new feature. It just needs to be perfected and refined and it will be one of the best in the industry.

Hey Adam.Fairclough thank you very much for your input. I experimented with your hints but sadly, it looks utterly fake. I contacted Demian and sent the SKP file. We'll see what the issue is and I'll make sure to leave an update here for others who might stumble upon this in the future.

Quote from L.S

I designed city landscaping some time ago, and I didn't think trees were glowing. This was done without HDRI background. This is perhaps similar lighting you are describing without direct sunlight? I always have sun brightness quite low well under single digit. I didn't use many artificial lighting for this one, but you may want to try placing fake soft lightings here and there with low intensity instead of relying on one global illumination source.

Hey thank you for the input! Yes, that is the result that I’m aiming at, perhaps a bit more gloomy/moody. Your comment makes me think that my problem is in the trees themselves perhaps? The “glowy” ones in my scene are Maple trees. Maybe there’s something wrong with them? I will check tomorrow again.

Your scene looks very beautiful. Did you use HDRI in your render or is it the default clouds/sky? Also I may be wrong, but it seems your day time is either early morning or evening, correct?

Quote from Demian Gutberlet

Hi ViggoPaulman , thanks a lot for your detailed report.

Right away could you please try turning off "Fog" through the "Atmosphere" tab in our Visual Settings? Simply set the slider to 0%, as it can sometimes make objects in the distance appear brighter compared to the rest closer to the camera.

Also, you are using our latest release Enscape 3.4 already? If it isn't too much trouble, is there a chance for you to package the scene and send it over to me? You could use wetransfer.com (or any other uploader) for example and send me the link to it through a DM. It's enough if you only include the relevant parts of the project and remove the rest, however you like.

I'm asking for the scene because even when trying to reproduce this exact behavior on my machine (with fog disabled) the difference in brightness between one vegetation asset to the next isn't as stark as seen in your screenshots.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Display More

Hi Demian! Thank you very much for the reply and your support. To answer your questions:

- The Fog setting is off in the renderings I showed. I also tried to play around with that setting but it didn’t help.

- The version I tested this on was 3.4.

I can gladly send you the SketchUp file. Will contact you via DM.

I’d like to note though, that my main problem is the Maple trees that I circled out. The leaves have no shade/contrast underneath and seem to “glow” when there is little sunlight, like andybot mentioned. I have a feeling this is simply an Enscape calculation question but I’ll be very thankful to hear what your dev.team has to say.

Spent some hours experimenting. Tried overcast HDRI-s, keeping the Sun intensity at different percentages (5, 25, 50 etc), playing with the HDRI image brightness, default cloud system thickness - still not getting better results.

Look at the shade in the shrubs with the checkmark. And then the same shrubs on the right - the render is inconsistent. There is also shade under the leaves of the closest tree, but when you compare it to the Maples across the street, they look like they were inserted with Photoshop. They have no shade or contrast.

Demian Gutberlet, can I get some tech support around this? This problem limits my work. I am forced to only create sunlit renders, because overcast and moody shots turn up like this...

Currently working on a new project, I am trying to achieve an overcast, cloudy setting in my exterior rendering with soft shadows and no direct sunlight.

When I reduce the Sun intensity to achieve soft shadows and the overcast look, the trees lose contrast and shade under the leaves.

Check out these examples with sunlight:

You can see the trees have shade under the leaves and enough contrast. Now compare that to these:

Even when there is no direct sunlight, trees are still supposed to have shade under the leaves. Compare the trees to the black car, which has dark shade (not shadow) underneath. Am I doing something wrong or is this Enscape's problem? I'm rendering on Ultra. I believe this has to do with the fact that the sunlight passes through the leaves on the trees and gets transmuted ("Foliage" material). As a result of that the underside of the trees get 0 shade/contrast. How can I fix this? Post-production does not fix the problem because lowering shadows or increasing contrast affects the whole scene.

Here's some overcast photos for reference. Notice the shade of the trees has uneven lighting and darkness.

Quote from Demian Gutberlet

Thanks a lot, ViggoPaulman , if you have not already, feel free to also forward your feedback to product management through our portal. We appreciate all the input as always.

Thank you Demian! Will make a separate entry there.

So happy with the new Multi-asset placement feature! However it's lacking a crucial setting that makes vegetation placement useless; Scale Specifier

✔️ Density

✔️ Random Rotation

✔️ Distribution Options

❓ Scale Range

The current algorithm assigns random scales to each component instance placed and by so some of the trees appear comically smaller. Please allow us to either disable "random scale" or specify a scale range. If someone is familiar with the Compo Spray plugin in SketchUp, they'll know what I mean. There you can set minimum and maximum scale factors. I always keep them at 1.0 to make sure tree proportions stay the same. Thank you.

Side note 1: Numerical density input with increments would be nice.

Side note 2: Even with density at 100% there is still considerable free space, Maybe allow collision between objects to a certain percent?

Hey all! Here’s a riddle I can’t seem to solve. 2 of my IES lights decided to rebel against me and have gone rogue. I have no idea what to do with this. They’re the exact same copy from the rest of the lights. Has anyone experienced this?