Hi Mike
"Thermals needed as opposed to more openings then"
Ceiling wall aligment? I need to check but I think the first issue is my own micro mis-alignments - the walls that are of non-constant height are tricky because I start off with one such wall but then break it into sections to change external textures - the breakpoint is calculated to be the appropriate height by DreamHome but as soon as you move the breakpoint to where you want it then its off. Just need to sit down with a calculator at some point and calculate the intermediate heights with precision.
I can see that DreamHome is struggling with the auto ceiling because I see some error triangles when in aerial view, I think I know whats going on and I am not surprised that an auto fit ceiling algorithm would have issues connecting my top wall boundaries into a sensible profile to triangulate.
I will try and make the comparison you suggest.
Yesterday I was full on getting a workflow together so that I can make the process of viewing and rendering in Mitsuba easier.
Mistuba, even the GUI interface was never written with the intention of people walking around and looking in different directions - its tricky to use keyboard commands to orientate the view. In addition the translator that is supplied with Mitsuba does not understand the simple transparency for windows that is exported, it needs translating into something that Mitsuba can understand.
The solution was actually very nice and simple.
1. The mapping between Mitsuba co-ords and DreamHome is very simple, Y and Z need swapping. Angles need to be negated.
2. After Mitsuba has imported it is trivial in the scene script to add materials that over-ride the ones exported by DreamHome - it is particularly useful if all materials of a certain type have been named something sensible like "glass" - then its really trivial. You could see this as an opportunity that gives flexibility.
3. You can create multilple camera views in Mistuba just like DreamHome and then just click between different views.
So........
I have one file to create a scene and import the OBJ from Dream Home
I have one file to set up all my favourite views for this particular house which were captured directly out of DreamHome by just jotting down favourite X,Y,height, angle1, angle2 co-ords
I have one file with my preferred material substitutions ( glass but also chrome ).
The first file imports the other two so its neat and tidy.
Adding a new view or material is trivial and only needs doing once.
Now when I start up Mistuba I have everything set up and can dive straight into a render and see exactly the same as I see in DreamHome view-wise.
Thoughts turn to animation and walkthroughs....
Mitsuba can work off the command line and you can pass in arguments like
$mitsuba viewX viewY viewZ angle1 angle2
Any simple programming language can be used to write a long script with hundreds of views / frames and so create frames to be stitched into a video.
I did this once with a small object I was designing - I calculated views for a viewer sliding up and down a helical path around the object always looking towards the object. I cannot remember render settings but I chose ones that gave a fast result - 24 hours later I had a video.
Right my son is pulling at me saying time for School - I better come back on this one.
Jon
