Archive for September, 2010

An Adventure in Non-Standard Walls in Vectorworks

Monday, September 27th, 2010

I am in the midst of an interesting drafting project. A two story house built from shipping containers. The house is partly built. The containers are on stilts with several windows and doors cut out in various places. I am drafting the structure, as built, in 3D in order to begin work on the final design phase; finishing the interiors, designing roof decking, and other aspects to make this industrial structure into a functional live/work space.


A Matson Shipping container and my 3D model in OpenGL

The containers are 24′ Matson shipping containers, the kind you see on ships, trains, and trucks. They make for a nice building material as they are very structurally sound and can be stacked on top of one another several high. While they are a great construction material, they pose an interesting drafting problem. The walls, in order to provide for maximum structural integrity, are corrugated. This is easy enough to model in 3D; draw a polygon in the shape of the corrugation and extrude to the correct height. However, this solution does not allow for the use of plug-in objects like Doors and Windows.

For the parts of the structure that are already finished, it would be easy enough to cut a hole in the extrude and drop a window in place without recourse to the many features of plug-in objects. But for the walls that are as yet uncut, being able to quickly and easily play with the size and shape of windows and doors without recutting the extrude every time would make the design phase a lot more pleasurable. So I set out on my quest to solve this problem.


A view of the corrugated wall with a window as it is and as I want it to look in OpenGL

A grumble on Twitter was quickly answered by Kevin Lee Allen. His suggestion was to use the Convert Polyline to Object feature and turn my corrugated line into a wall. Sounds simple enough. Trouble is, the conversion created 212 walls, one starting at each corner of the corrugation. Because of this, plug-in objects were not behaving properly as they would not cut through all the walls they intersected with.

After trying a few more things on my own, including an exploration of wall styles, I emailed Jonathan Pickup. Jon offers a web based consulting service and within an hour of my email being sent was on a skype call with him showing me through a screen capture how to do wall recesses. By doing a wall recess I am able to draw a wall using the wall tool and give it the corrugated look that the containers have. We appeared good to go.

This process worked brilliantly save one small problem. While I could model one side of the wall perfectly, the other side remained flat. Numerous attempts to recess the other side of the wall resulted in various failures. I could get a wall that looked corrugated on both sides, but the thickness of the wall would have had to be twice what the shipping containers are in actuality. That solution would obviously lead to problems down the road as the design phase of the project moves to interiors.

There may be a setting or approach to the wall recess function that I am missing, but as of yet my best course of action appears to be a return to my original solution of using an extrude. This will allow me to get accurate internal and external dimensions. While it is possible that, once insulation and paneling are added to the interiors Jonathan’s wall recess solution would be best, my plan is to treat the insulation and panels as separate 3D objects (or walls) and cut holes in them where windows and doors are.

While this route is slightly more laborious on a per object basis it will allow for more accurate modeling of the building. The structural elements of the containers, specifically the vertical corner pieces, make any wall tool solution a little more complicated than a standard drafting project.

The roof of these containers provides its own interesting drafting challenges which I intend to cover next week.

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Tis a poor craftsman who blames the right tool for the right job

Monday, September 20th, 2010

For a long time I was a strong proponent of the saying “Tis a poor craftsman who blames his tools.” The principal is a sound one at a certain level. Blaming a hammer because you did not hit a nail straight is disingenuous and foolish. It does not allow you to learn by paying attention to what you did wrong.

This idea becomes corrupted when translated into “I can make anything work under any circumstances.” While one could make a project work under poor conditions, they will not make the best work that could be made. It is possible to light a musical with three dozen lights on a two scene preset but it will never look good. One could make a passable effort and do something which looks good in spite of the limitations, but when we are concerned with truly great work we must have the right tools for the job.

This is a problem that lighting designers encounter regularly when working in the theater. Many venues have a stock of lights and many producers want to use that stock of lights rather than renting or buying equipment which fits the specific needs of the production. While one can do decent work sometimes without the right tool it is not the best work possible. A bank of PARcans is fundamentally different than a single 4k HMI. A Leko with frost is not the same thing as a Fresnel. SketchUp is not Vectorworks.

Too often a lighting designer is forced to use equipment that is simply not the right tool for the job. We learn to make the best possible work we can but that is fundamentally different than having the right tools to begin with. This happens with the physical lights themselves as well as control systems. While I have learned to program an ETC Expression so that it can do nearly everything an Obsession can do, having the Obsession makes the workflow much smoother and ultimately results in better work. And there are some things you just cannot do with an Expression.

Selecting the right tool for the job is what makes the great stand out from the good. Sometimes a bank of PARcans is the right choice over a 4k HMI. Sometimes an Expression is preferable to an Obsession. More complex technology is not always the right choice. Worklights from Home Depot make better footlights than nearly any theatrical lights available.

Knowing what technology to choose makes a great designer. If the solution does not work after having chosen the technology, the fault is not in the technology but in the designer’s choice. Always carefully selecting the tools we use does not preclude us from occasionally choosing the wrong ones. But then we learn and grow and do not make the same mistake twice.

This is an important idea for producers to understand. If we do not have the right tools we can not do our best work. This is a plain and simple truth. But it is incumbent upon the designer to choose wisely and appropriately. Being indulgent and buying into the idea that newer and more complex must be better diminishes the cause of getting the right tools when we need them.

I remember hearing Warren Flynn talk once about seven years ago. At the time I was very caught up in the newer is better mentality. His perspective made me question that. Someone made a derisive comment about some Autoyokes in his moving light rig and cheap producers. He was quick to point out that he specs them intentionally because they are quick to program and save tons of time when a simple frontlight special is needed. Shutters, gobos, rotation, frost control, and color all take valuable programming time when what the director wants is simple facelight or a downlight on a chair.

The designer needs to control the technology. If things go the other way around we have a disaster waiting to happen. Many draftsmen use nothing more than vellum and a number 2 pencil. It takes a lot of hand control to draft a high quality, readable set of construction drawings with a single middle weight pencil but if that is the right tool for the craftsmen then it is better than two boxes of top of the line drafting pencils or the most sophisticated 3D computer drafting program.

Learning new technologies is easy. Having complete control of the fundamental tools of one’s craft takes constant dedication and total attention. Focusing on our choices and learning from less than perfect ones allows us to grow and further perfect our craft.

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Design Software – Fall Preview

Monday, September 13th, 2010

As designers in the 21st century it is hard to imagine anything more fundamental to our work than the computer. The software we use to turn our ideas into designs is central to the work we do. Having played recently with Maya I have been thinking a lot about software and its role in design. While anyone with any degree of creativity is not bounded in that creativity by the tools they use, when you have the right tool for the job, the work becomes a lot easier and imagination is given freedom to roam unfettered.

There are some really exciting developments happening in the world of CAD this fall. The two of most interest to me are Vectorworks 2011 and AutoCAD for Mac. Vectorworks has long been a cross platform tool and the default drafting tool for theatrical lighting designers. AutoCAD has only ever played a minimal role with lighting designers and has been absent from the Mac since 1992.

Let’s start with Vectorworks. Information is a bit slim coming out of the company. What is known comes from a series of vague videos posted to their YouTube channel (Clip1, Clip2, Clip3). While the full range of of features remains unknown to the public, the direction they are moving in is very exciting.

The 3D environment looks to be vastly improved. The previously laborious 3D interface now appears to be a state of the art intuitive UI. Earlier versions of Vectorworks treated 3D space as an extension of 2D space. From their videos it appears that VW2011 3D space has been wholly redesigned as a native 3D environment. This is very good news.

Not only has the 3D working environment seen a massive upgrade, but the rendering engine is new as well. Renderworks is now based on Cinema 4D by Maxon Computers. This brings Vectorworks up to the cutting edge of 3D rendering technology. With the drafting precision we all love about Vectorworks and increasingly intuitive user interface combined with this massive upgrade to its rendering engine, Vectorworks is firmly taking a step towards being a competitive player in the 3D software world well beyond its conventional arenas of live entertainment, engineering, and architecture. I don’t know how popular the software is with game developers now, but I would imagine a substantial increase in that market with this release.

The next exciting development comes from Autodesk with their announcement of AutoCAD for Mac.

I have not used AutoCAD since it’s 2001 release when I was at San Francisco Opera. Having come from a Vectorworks background I found the logic behind the software a bit difficult to wrap my head around. Still firmly rooted in its early 1980′s command line mentality, AutoCAD 2001 was a very foreign language to me. The new software looks to be quite different. Being a new build of the program based on OSX from coverflow to a Mac style UI, the advances look to be very promising.

Not only does the visual layout of the UI look good (as a designer I want my working environment to reflect good aesthetic principals) but the 3D rendering engine looks beautiful.

I would honestly be surprised if AutoCAD made the developments necessary to really gain a foothold in the world of theatrical lighting. I will certainly keep my mind open to the possibility, but last I knew AutoCAD the difference between an AutoCAD block and a Vectorworks symbol were so far apart as to make them an ultimately useless comparison. Unless and until AutoCAD has an object type comparable in scope and functionality to the VW symbol it will never be a goto program for lighting designers.

All that said, it looks like a beautiful program for all other manner of draftsmen. In fact, I am waiting excitedly to get my hands on a copy of the software and see what they have done with it. AutoCAD for Mac looks to be very exciting indeed.

Providing a Mac platform for its software was not enough for Autodesk however. AutoCAD has also developed a line of mobile applications for devices like the iPad. This move will be wonderful for architects and other designers to share drawings and renderings with clients. Allowing the client an interactive experience rather than the static experience of a JPEG or PDF will be a boon to designers, engineers, and architects around the world.

It is an exciting time for software in the entertainment industry. Not only is the basic drafting technology improving at a rapid pace, but the 3D environments are becoming both common and easy to use. That ease of use will allow 3D to move from a nice to have to a need to have as both rendering and modeling time drops substantially.

All these new developments have me excited. What software are you looking forwards to?

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Lighting in Maya – Naturalism

Monday, September 6th, 2010

30 days is just enough time to get a basic familiarity with a computer program. Certainly when exploring it in one’s spare time between other projects. I began by working my way through the getting started guide to Maya 2011 and then moved on to my own projects. I knew I wanted to try my hand at some naturalistic lighting but did not have the modeling skills to get the level of detail and control that I would like with a project.

I contacted my friend Deb who used to work with Maya professionally and she offered to build and texture a scene for me. I drew a rough 2D layout in Vectorworks showing the groundplan of the scene I wanted. A street that Ts into another street, brick buildings, windows on the right hand side and a warehouse with steel rollup doors on the left. I wanted streetlights as I knew I would light the scene at night. Basically everything was there to show off different lighting ideas from streetlights to bare bulbs to fluorescent tubes to the headlights of a car.

Below is the opening frame of the animation.

A few seconds in a 1963 Jaguar rounds the corner and drives down the street. The light from the car scrapes against the various walls and textures creating a lovely effect.

It was an interesting experience to manage all the various ways in which light can exist in a 3D world. Obviously there are the rays of light emanating from a source. But it can be decided by the designer if those rays cast shadows or even if they stop when they hit an object. The headlights, streetlights, and lit windows all had an added feature of glow. Just because a light emanates from a source does not inherently mean that source glows, even though it would in the real world.

One of the most interesting aspects of this project for me was dealing with the rate of decay of a light. At one end of the spectrum a light can have no decay meaning its intensity continues unabated over space. Obviously we know from the inverse square law that this is not the case in reality. But in a 3D environment we need to trick the software in order to look real. The light from the sun, for all practical purposes, should have no decay in a digital environment. A fluorescent on the other hand should have a very rapid rate of decay. The sodium vapor of a streetlight, or an incandescent bulb, would land in between these two.

I often find myself, when working on a theatrical production, trying to fake naturalistic lighting conditions. Yet no matter how much it is faked I am still using real lights. As such they behave like real light should behave. In a digital environment like this, one has control over every aspect of physics. As such you can explore what parameters will make the illusion most accurate.

My license with Maya 2011 is up just in time for the new release of Vectorworks 2011 on September 14th. From what I have seen, VW2011 has added some amazing new features to its 3D environment. I look forward to exploring these new features with the 3D knowledge I gained in Maya.

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