mishmish

Hi Everyone, I don't know how many of you are still out there who using ArchiCAD conjunction with Electric Image but some improvments have been done in 9.1 As you know ArchiCAD is using a really old export format (2.9) which is still working and was almost sent to death. This export is very acient and I always had to use Transporter to recalculate normals etc. Version 9.0 just imported the FACT but had no option to do some adjustments - like smoothing angle which ArchiCAD use for low resolution smooth surfaces: for instance topographic meshes and spheres. as you are able to do with OBJ files. As a partial solution I used OBJ export but that damaged the layer structures what I could get from ArchiCAD through the FACT export. I asked the EIAS guys to fix this and here it is: 9.1 solves this issue. As Tomas instructed me you have to do following. Add the FACT file to a new project as you normally do. Select the FACT file in the Layers Window, go to Object>Export Object>Validate FACT This will bring up the nice setup window which OBJ or 3DS would normally have. I set the smoothing angle to 60 or 66 and that would do the job. It will also fix the normal vectors which I think has been really bad before from ArchiCAD - looks like out from ArchiCAD 16 it's not bad, but never know. One more tip: I usually use 1mm as an export unit. if you use 1000mm EIAS will not like that for some reason. But 1mm will work fine; you just have to assume the real world unit numbers in EIAS as meters. For future features I'm hoping for easy to use vegetation and distribution of it (ONYX trees or similar) combined with particle engine so I can spread out the trees using maybe the strength map paint on a mesh surface and/or follow a bazier path to distribute trees/object. Best MishMish

Hi Michael, I just saw this post. I haven't been here for a long long while. For many reasons, mainly because I gave up sweating blood the way you do, and described above. We have the same issue in the office and I sent this request to the development but the answer was that, not many people using ArchiCAD with EIAS. I don't think that stands so much the truth but let's say, ok, it's true. I would also wonder how many people are still using EIAS anyway following the late release of 9 and ownership change etc, but that's an other story. However I still love it, it's powerful, but I had to cut out from our working process and the reason we kept it updated because I personally hoping that EIAS 9 will be updated and maybe the working flow in EIAS will be better and counterbalance the time setting up materials especially when changes are happening in the ArchiCAD model. The ideal plug-in should work similar to Maxwell plug-in (which we use, not so happy with that but for stills it's good, and saves time with the material setups however for animations even with our 48 core farm maxwell takes waay too long) so something like the maxwell plugin- where I can select the EIAS engine as rendering and shoots out to the camera app or renderama. the only isse i hate is that the AC camera is really bad for animation and rather use EIAS cameras. but for that you need a good way to update changes in the model. OR the cinema4D plugin for archiCAD is also pretty good, but i hate fact that i loose the layer structure, that's when i decided not to bother with c4D. i also have problems with normals. AC has a bad FACT export so all the normals usually BAD (inside pointing) and i always use transporter to fix it. extra process... actually we all should be happy that Graphisoft left the FACT export in ArchiCAD. somebody needs to revamp it. So i don't' even know if that FACT 2.9 format will import good in EIAS 9 - when finally EIAS 9 will be released. So let's cross our finger for one thing. that fact format will work. otherwise the OBJ and 3DS export is a hell, loosing the layer and material structure with those. now what we can do is just keep crying and maybe somebody will write a proper export or plugin. untill, we loose production time or not use EIAS. have to choose. or just use in combination with others. I learned that over that 6 years using AC-EIAS combo.