Interesting, I hadn't noticed that yet either. I agree it was a great feature and wish it hadn't been abandonded, but perhaps it's hiding somewhere like you say.
Was there a reason for eliminating this?
Posts by TowerPower
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MatthiasL It looks like that may be possible, or at least easier to fix than the outside corner problem:
https://learnopengl.com/Advanced-Lighting/Parallax-Mapping
'You can still see a few weird border artifacts at the edge of the parallax mapped plane. This happens because at the edges of the plane the displaced texture coordinates can oversample outside the range [
0,1]. This gives unrealistic results based on the texture's wrapping mode(s). A cool trick to solve this issue is to discard the fragment whenever it samples outside the default texture coordinate range:All fragments with (displaced) texture coordinates outside the default range are discarded and Parallax Mapping then gives proper result around the edges of a surface. Note that this trick doesn't work on all types of surfaces, but when applied to a plane it gives great results:
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From the video it looks like there's an offset in the displacement, which leads to this very pronounced "looking below a glass surface" effect. I guess the value range of the heightmap is very low and it's mostly dark grey? These kind of displacement maps are not optimal for the technique in several ways, which is why we've decided to automatically normalize the value range for the next release. This way we ensure that the highest displacement is always at the surface level and we also prevent precision issues when reducing 16bit displacement maps to 8bit. For now you can test if it helps to apply "Auto Contrast" to the greyscale image before importing it in Enscape (so it contains values ranging from 100% white to 100% black for the highest and lowest displacement).
In general however the displacement effect is always going to be applied "inwards" into the surface - this is simply how the technique works and there're not really good alternatives around for our use case and realtime rendering at the moment.
The new parallex occlusion mapping is a great feature, but I can't help but be struck by its limitations. No doubt it's great for ground planes and other large continuos flat surfaces like walls - but it falls apart at outside corners, as evidenced in the screenshot below. Unfortunately, most buildings have lots of outside corners, so it makes the effect difficult to use unless you can conceal the edges somehow with columns or other geometry. I realize this is a built in constraint of the technique, as it's not actually displacing geometry, but are there any known tricks to get around this, such as rounded corners? Here's the only thing I've found so far that seems like it might address this: http://developer.amd.com/wordp…te_Generation(SI3D07).pdf
Blender also appears to have a feature that fixes corners, but from what I can tell it's using actual displacement with tesselated meshes rather than parallax occlusion mapping: https://blender.stackexchange.…-on-the-corners-of-a-wall Did your experiments with tesselation indicate that performance wasn't good enough, or was it simply a case of not having control over incoming geometry? If the latter, then some sort of corner trick like Blender uses seems like it could fix most scenarios. And for the others, I would argue that the relative small percentage of Enscape users that have enough initiative and know-how to add diplacement maps to their textures are also savvy enough to troubleshoot and correct their meshes if something wacky happens. But obviously, if performance is terrible with all those added tesselated meshes, it's a no-go regardless.
And speaking of corners, it's been mentioned many times before, but rounded corners would be another great trick to have alongside parallax occlusion mapping. As you know, very few objects in the real world have sharp edges, and being able to bevel them to varying amounts would make them much more realistic when you get up close, without needing to actually model fine geometry (Like POM, this would obviously be on a per-material basis)
Regardless though, I'm happy to see more material editing features being added, so good job team!
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Thanks!
Appreciate it Demian, it's really a joy creating videos with Enscape, especially when using a space mouse for navigation, which gives you much more fine grained camera control. My one complaint (and this isn't necessarily specific to videos) is that preserving settings is still a bit of a mystery to me. The video editor allows you to store field of view, depth of field, and time of day, which is great, but when it comes to a host of other visual settings such as clouds, wind, bloom, etc, those presumably are stored elsewhere. I guess I just need to look into the newly revamped settings management in Enscape (perhaps creating scenes in Sketchup will do the trick).
But regardless, it's still frustrating to me (and seems counterinuitive) that when you open a Sketchup model you last worked on a couple months prior, Enscape doesn't automatically remember the visual settings you used then. Instead, it inherits them from whatever the latest copy of Enscape you had open was, even if it was with Revit or another piece of software. I'm sure there's still a way to save them, but it seems like the most obvious and user friendly way to do so would be for Enscape to automatically remember them anytime you save your model, rather than forcing you to do so manually. The manual save option is important too if you want to have multiple different scene setups for a single file, but it should be in addition to the automatic save option. It's common for me to have multiple copies of Enscape open simultaneously, and it's frustrating that settings don't get remembered automatically within each project.
Demian Gutberlet I think I've located the new settings functionality (link below). In general it makes a lot of sense, but I still feel like you shouldn't have to do anything other than save your model file for Enscape to rememember visual settings. Forcing people to go into the presets tab risks they'll forget to do so after making changes, or not even be aware of the presets tab in the first place, as I was. The general principle of software should be to do as much for the user as possible automatically, and then only require manual action when necessary. Unless there's a compelling reason not to save visual settings automatically for you, I don't see why this wouldn't be a default.
It's akin to if Sketchup were to revert to the basic visual style every time you reopened a model (or actually, in this case, whatever visual style you happened to have in the last Sketchup model opened). Is it possible to manually save scenes in Sketchup and remember style settings? Yes. But should that be necessary to prevent them from reverting to the look of some other random model you had open previously that bears no relationship at all to the one you're working on currently? Obviously not. In my mind, this is where Enscape still falls short.
https://enscape3d.com/communit…tings%20icon%20has,the%20
Edit: feel free to move these comments to the 'Enscape Settings' thread under Ideas and Requests - it's obviously a bit off topic here.
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Did you altered the grass with the Herbo trick?
Nope, just standard Enscape grass, though I did use a larger aerial image for the texture to give more natural color variation.
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That closing shot... Great work.
Thanks!
TowerPower , great work indeed! The video turned out fantastic too.
Appreciate it Demian, it's really a joy creating videos with Enscape, especially when using a space mouse for navigation, which gives you much more fine grained camera control. My one complaint (and this isn't necessarily specific to videos) is that preserving settings is still a bit of a mystery to me. The video editor allows you to store field of view, depth of field, and time of day, which is great, but when it comes to a host of other visual settings such as clouds, wind, bloom, etc, those presumably are stored elsewhere. I guess I just need to look into the newly revamped settings management in Enscape (perhaps creating scenes in Sketchup will do the trick).
But regardless, it's still frustrating to me (and seems counterinuitive) that when you open a Sketchup model you last worked on a couple months prior, Enscape doesn't automatically remember the visual settings you used then. Instead, it inherits them from whatever the latest copy of Enscape you had open was, even if it was with Revit or another piece of software. I'm sure there's still a way to save them, but it seems like the most obvious and user friendly way to do so would be for Enscape to automatically remember them anytime you save your model, rather than forcing you to do so manually. The manual save option is important too if you want to have multiple different scene setups for a single file, but it should be in addition to the automatic save option. It's common for me to have multiple copies of Enscape open simultaneously, and it's frustrating that settings don't get remembered automatically within each project.
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Thanks for the feedback. I attempted to load it up gradually and believe the culprit to be a ceiling panel file (the ceilings across 6 storeys are broken up into several thousand small panels! 😬). I managed to get everything loaded and saw it briefly in the Enscape window before it crashed again.
I’ve requested the standalone from the Architect so I can circumnavigate the problem. Wasting too much time on loading and continuing my hate for all things Revit! 😂As for that Titan...🤔
Glad to hear it's working finally (hopefully). As for the 'Titan', I wouldn't bother with anything less than the newly released 3080 or 3090 cards (the latter being the 2080ti or Titan equivalent this generation, though it's possible they could release an even faster variant in another year or so and call it 'Titan'). As of now though, the 3090 will knock the socks off of any Titans, and comes with 24 GB of VRAM to boot ( the cards appear to be around 50% faster than their previous generation predecessors, even more so when you start factoring in RTX performance).
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This is a chapel concept we did a few months back that I just recently made some improvements to (such as wind in the trees now). I've included still images below, but the video gives the best overview.
PS - There's a bonus clip if you watch till the end
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So how do people feel about the newly released 30xx series cards? I thought the marbles demo in particular was really impressive.
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/202…ng-weve-been-waiting-for/
forum.enscape3d.com/wcf/index.php?attachment/20196/
I'm looking forward to seeing Enscape's performance boost and future quality improvements that might become enabled
(Speaking of which, have you looked anymore at DLSS 2.0 to see whether it could be useful?)
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Very imaginitive, love the ambiance
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Looking at the Lumion fur video, I think they've got it right. They appear to be using individual furs/strands rather than patches, which is how they're able to get clean edges. In addition, they're oriented in the normal direction rather than the z axis, so you can turn corners. The color of each fur is determined by the diffuse color, so patterns read through. The settings for droopiness in addition to size are appreciated as well. The more Enscape can integrate these kinds of programable shaders into the material editor the better it will be. The challenge with Revit is the lack of a dedicated Enscape material editor.
I think that patches still make the most sense for grass (though perhaps with some smaller individual strands and tinier clumps to fill out the edges?) Again Lumion does this very well with their numerous grass presets to choose from.
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Agreed, the new carpet material looks pretty bad. Also, it's clearly designed for shaggy carpets, which most carpets aren't, so I think having it default any material with the name carpet in it to this new material is a bad idea. It should be opt in, rather than opt out.
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Yeah using the forest horizon seems like it would solve this particular reflection issue quite well.
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This is the latest problem with Enscape. When I try to load a large model, it churns for several minutes with nothing happening. I close the Enscape window and try to start it again, but this message comes up:
The model is 222 mb, so quite large. I'm running the latest preview version and a 2080ti. I'm about to update my graphics drivers and see if that makes a difference.
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Very cool. Is the project the urban space/ park, or the building on the left?
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TowerPower Nice! Yeah most of the firms in town have at least one prior Ankromite. Next time you see them tell Alex Zimmer, Talbot and Ian that Chris Lewis says hi.
Will do! I was wondering if you knew Ian, and forgot that Alex and Eric both worked there before as well, they're all great.
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Archytextural Oh nice, yeah we have a few folks here that used to work at Ankrom - I'm from Soderstrom
Typically I do higher ed, so it's exciting to be helping out on a winery project. -
This looks like a wine tasting room. I'm assuming your Portland is Portland Oregon?
Dang good guess - right on all points
This is one of the early schematic options.
That's totally fine! Nice rendering!
Thanks! I was going for the clay model look. Some of the earlier variations included a physical sky, which was compelling, just a little too finished and realistic looking for this early stage of the design, when things should appear lose. In addition to going with a white background, I turned the clouds all the way up to make the shadows less pronounced and lose the orang-ish hue coming from the sun (though I suppose turning the saturation all the way down would have also worked).