Enscape documentation

Lukas Fertig

Hi,

I'm currently testing Enscape to find a way to get quicker previews/renderings to present concepts to my clients. I'm quite pleased with the initial results, but struggle a bit with advancing any further since i cant find a lot of documentation/help on bricscad+enscape..

• whatever lighting i set up in bricscad doesn't seem to have any effect in enscape. is there a way to use ies profiles?
• are materials limited to bricscad materials or is there any way to define better materials with e.g. specular/glossy maps etc?
• is there any way to use proxies/layerstates/etc. with enscape to include some more complex display models without cluttering the cad file? (e.g. define a proxy to replace a certain furniture block in enscape)
• can material id passes etc. be rendered out to facilitate post production?

I see that some of the things I mentioned above are available in other enscape plugins, so I guess there's hope? Looking forward to hear from someone with some more experience

best,
Lukas

Michael Mayer

I tested it too.

First, I am very pleased with the result of Global Illumination
and Materials. It looks really good.

But don't know right now what it is really meant to be.
So far I see only a fast realtime preview for Bricscad only,
at half the price of the whole Enscape package.
But for Windows only.

But I also missed the Material part.
I am even not really sure if it will replace those common Materials
like Glass, Water, Grass, Aluminium, .... with better Enscape Materials,
when you use proper Material Naming in CAD.
I see there is Grass and Glass in tests, but how can I edit these Materials ?
How to get that fog and blur out of the Glass in Enscape ?

And if Material control happens in CAD only, Bricscad's Material Editor and
Assignment is pretty limited and tedious to control so far.
Also V20 pretty decreased Redway Materials, which were marketed as PBR (?).
(which is not bad as most RW Materials were not very technical or Building related)

But my main issue about Enscape for Bricscad for me is that such RT solutions
like Twinmotion, Lumion, (Enscape) main advantages are their delivered
Libraries to easily stuff your scene with all kind of Entourage like plants and
animated people or cars.
Which is totally missing and I think a bit chunky in Enscape as long it is
happening all inside the CAD GUI and Enscape seems to have no real own
App Window ?

So I am also not sure if that is so far a Enscape Plugin V0.8 or 1.0
and all features are planned for the following years,
or where Bricscad heading at all, concerning Visualization support.

The FBX export is good, geometry wise.
But very limited in excluding proper naming and object structures
and still the only way to get BC geometry out into a 3D App.
Material control in Bricscad for me is also a bit uncertain.
For example with Autodesks common workflow, usage of
"Material by Block" and such things, when using Library Objects.

I love Bricscad's BIM and DM,
but for me it is still so much more effective to just stay in Vectorworks
with Exchange to Cinema4D/Modo/Blender/Twinmotion/....
instead of going Bricscad, with the need of Vectorworks as a shuttle
in-between exporter App to a 3D App.

Lukas Fertig

But don't know right now what it is really meant to be.
So far I see only a fast realtime preview for Bricscad only,
at half the price of the whole Enscape package.

I'd happily pay full price if i wouldn't have to jump around between different programs anymore just to get concept renderings of reasonable quality., be it enscape, vray or whatever..

Michael Mayer

Yes, that would be also my dream.
But for me illusory.

Microstation has Modo integrated and can produce perfect results.
In Vectorworks I could theoretically achieve nearly the same quality as Cinema4D.
Nevertheless most people have a copy of C4D, when visualization has priority.

Beside the Render quality there is so much about Workflow and managing
Materials, Assignments, Entourage, Cameras. Settings, Batch Rendering and
Image Output, that does not fit in a CAD App.

So a lossless Exchange and Linking is needed.

just to get concept renderings of reasonable quality

Yes I think that is mandatory for any CAD App today.
But so far Bricscad has a very limited material system, is quite tedious
to manage, which is the base for all Enscape RT preview and rendering.
So very nice real time GI over Layer/Object colors.

Michael Mayer

@Lukas Fertig said:
Hi,

• whatever lighting i set up in bricscad doesn't seem to have any effect in enscape. is there a way to use ies profiles?

AFAIK Yes.
They have a IES Demo File to choose from IES files.

• are materials limited to bricscad materials or is there any way to define better materials with e.g. specular/glossy maps etc?

So far only by using their naming scheme in Bricscad, which will replace the
Bricscad Materials automatically by Enscape Materials.
Examples would be :
BC Materials which names include "Grass" or "Aluminium" would show
an Enscape Material instead.
But without Enscape Material Editor, like in Revit, that may not always be
what you want.

Mathieu

FYI, LUMION now has a livesync for BricsCAD: https://lumion.com/whats-new.html

Michael Mayer

Great !

Will Twinmotion also get a livesync in the future ?
For us mac users.