Digital Futures Workshop Series

Pratt Institute

School of Undergraduate Architecture

V-Ray Rendering in Rhino 4

Location- HHN 308

Date + Time- 2010.04.03, 12:00-3:00pm

Requirements- Participants are required to bring a laptop with the following software installed:

Rhino 4.0 (SR7) & V-Ray for Rhino Plug-In (v.01.05.29), Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS3

Description- The workshop will serve as an introduction to rendering with the V-Ray rendering plug-in for Rhino 4.  Participants will be introduced to the concepts and techniques required to effectively set up, develop, and successfully render geometry in Rhino 4.  Topics covered will include modeling, lighting, configuring options/settings, and post processing.  Emphasis will be placed on developing quick, reliable results while rendering with V-Ray in Rhino 4.

Workshop Outline:

User Interface, Navigation

-loading plug-in

-accessing the V-Ray toolbar

-Material Editor

-Settings

-V-Ray Frame Buffer (VFB)

Lighting

-Basic Lighting Concepts: Direct and Indirect Lighting (Global Illumination or GI)

-Types of Light Objects in Rhino and how to add them to a scene

-Adjusting Light Properties and Physical Camera Properties

Materials

-Understanding the Material Editor

-Adjusting Color and Transparency

-Adding /adjusting reflectivity

Rendering Settings

-Overview, speed versus quality

-Settings, Output, Gamma Correction, and VFB channels

-Primary Rendering Engine: Irradiance Mapping, important settings and guidelines

-Secondary Rendering Engine: Light Cache, important settings and guidelines

-Saving Images and Channels

Post Processing

-Adjusting rendered images in Photoshop, Color Correction

-Overlaying vector drawings from Rhino on top of a rendered image using Illustrator.

Digital Futures Workshop Series

Pratt Institute

School of Undergraduate Architecture

Revit Workshop Level I

Location- Higging Hall Auditorium

Date + Time- 2010.02.20, 12-6pm (w/ a 30min break @ 2:45pm)

Requirements- Participants are required to bring a laptop with Revit installed and an extension cord.

Description- This workshop will serve as a basic introduction to Autodesk Revit. It will cover the software history and will begin to open up how it is being used today in contemporary practices. This is geared for people that have little or no experience in BIM software and will serve as an introduction to some of the other Building Information Modeling courses that are available in the UG curriculum.

Conductor- Joseph Nocella

About- Autodesk Revit is Building Information Modeling software for Microsoft Windows, currently developed by Autodesk, which allows the user to design with parametric modeling and drafting elements. Building Information Modeling is a Computer Aided Design (CAD) paradigm that allows for intelligent, 3D and parametric object-based design. In this way, Revit provides full bi-directional associativity. A change anywhere is a change everywhere, instantly, with no user interaction to manually update any view. A BIM model may contain the building’s full life cycle, from concept to construction to decommissioning. This is made possible by Revit’s underlying relational database architecture which its creators call the parametric change engine. (text via wikipedia)

Brochure (pdf – 3950Kb)

Workshop Outline:

I. Introduction

II. BIM- Definition

III. Advantages of Working in a BIM Environment

IV. Current State of the Profession

V. Technology at SOM

VI. A Tour of the Tool

VII. Workshop

Workshop Files:

intro_levels

CAD background

Digital Futures Workshop Series

Pratt Institute

School of Undergraduate Architecture

Rhino Workshop Level II

Location- HHS 416

Date + Time- 2010.02.17, 7-10pm

Requirements- Participants are required to bring a laptop with Rhino 4.0 (SR7) installed and an extension cord.

Description- This workshop will serve as an intermediate lesson in developing surfaces in Rhino 4.  Participants will be exposed to differing approaches to generating surfaces with a focus on the particulars of continuity and curvature.  Topics covered will include lofting, sweeping, patching, creasing, and blending with in-depth tutorials on digital topography creation/manipulation and generating layouts for a laser cut site model.  Emphasis will be placed on creating a procedural understanding of generating and managing surfaces and polysurfaces in Rhino.

Workshop Outline:

Curves and Curvature

-quantifying continuity: Positional, Tangent, Curvature

-strategies to blend curves and surfaces

-analyzing curvature in 2d, 3d

-Workshop Tutorial 1: Periodic Table of Form,

adapted from article by Gray Holland of Alchemy Labs

Generating Site Topography

-Importing/Tracing a site drawing

-Extracting Loft Curves to generate Surface

-Generate the surface, resolving issues/inconsistencies

-Adding Detail: Roads, Existing Buildings, Landscape Elements

-Workshop Tutorial #2: Creating the digital site model

Generating Content from a Digital Site Model

-Generating a site drawing, the contour command

-Creating a laser file for a site model.

-Workshop Tutorial #3: Creating Site drawings and laser files from a digital site model

Workshop Files:

Download: Rhino Workshop Level 2 files.zip

Conductor-  Richard Sarrach

Description- Workshop will cover work-flow and basic rendering in Maxwell. Maxwell Render is a rendering engine based on the mathematical equations governing light transport, meaning that all elements, such as emitters, materials and cameras, are derived from physically accurate models. Maxwell Render is unbiased, so no tricks are used to calculate the lighting solution in every pixel of a scene; the result will always be a correct solution, as it would be in the real world. Maxwell Render can fully capture all light interactions between all elements in a scene, and all lighting calculations are performed using spectral information and high dynamic range data.

Location- HHN 308 (TBD)

Date + Time- 2009.11.09 (6:30-9:30pm)

Requirements- Participants are required to bring a laptop with the following software installed:

Maxwell Render V1.7 >>> TRIAL

Workshop Base Files >>> df workshop maxwell v001

Credits: Mihai Iliuta

Title- Lighting and Rendering in Brazil

Conductor- Brian James [McNeel] with Ronnie Parsons and Gil Akos

Description- This workshop will serve as an introduction to Brazil for Rhino and will move towards intermediate techniques. Topics will include the Brazil plug-in interface, render settings, lighting, environments, occlusion, and general work-flows for designers.

Location- HHN 308 (TBD)

Date + Time- 2009.10.27(6-9pm)

Requirements- Participants are required to bring a laptop with the following software installed:

Rhino3D | Trial

Brazil for Rhino | Trial

Title- An Introduction to MEL & Expressions in Maya.

Description- This workshop will serve as an introduction to MEL (MAYA EMBEDDED LANGUAGE) and its use through the command line, script editor and expression editor.  Participants will be introduced to scripting logic within the Maya platform and how this logic can be harnessed to create geometrical complexity.  Topics covered will include interface and navigation within Maya, fundamentals of variables, attributes, custom attributes and expressions. Emphasis will be placed on understanding how to harness these tools and effectively implement them through a series of architecturally relevant modeling exercises.

Location- HHN 308 (TBD)

Date + Time- 2009.11.02(6-9pm)

Requirements- Participants are required to bring a laptop with the following software installed:

Autodesk Maya 2009

Trial link

Digital Futures Workshop Series
Pratt Institute
School of Undergraduate Architecture
2009.09.28
Maya SubD Workshop I

Overview -
-Differences between Meshes and Nurbs
-What subD’s are and why we use them
-SubD surface Workflow(s)

Modeling in Maya –
-Maya Basics
Configuring Interface and settings
Navigating in Maya
Icons, Drop down menu, hotbox, shortcut keys
Tool Locations

-Polygon mesh modeling
Mesh primitive creation
Mesh editing & modifiers

-SubD modeling
SubD primitive creation
Converting meshes to subD
SubD editing & modifiers

Mesh modeling in Rhino3D & Grasshopper-

-Rhino Mesh Basics
Configuring settings
Mesh primitives
Meshes from surfaces
Mesh editing and modifiers
Mesh mapping and deformers

-Meshes in grasshopper
Translate a component into grasshopper
Mapping a parametric mesh component to a surface.
Applying Data from an Image

-Preparing for Export
Unifying mesh normals
Joining meshes and Welding
Export selected as .OBJ

Importing Files into Maya-
Importing .OBJ files
Troubleshooting Geometry
Exporting for rendering/3D printing

Downloads:

documents:

pdf

digital files:

rhino

obj

maya

image maps

grasshopper

Description: Grasshopper Scripting Level I

Topics will include:

1. Vector Basics
2. Grasshopper Scripting Interface
3. Coordinate System Mapping

Location:
Room HHS 416
Date + Time:
2009.09.22 (6-9PM)
Requirements:
Participants are required to bring a laptop with Rhino3D (SR6
9-July-2009) and Grasshopper (v0.6.0019) preinstalled.

Rhino3d download:

http://download.rhino3d.com/eval/?p=25

Grasshopper links:

• Grasshopper | Dot NET SDK
• Grasshopper | Forum
• Grasshopper | MAIN
• Grasshopper | Scripting Tutorials
• LIFT | Grasshopper Primer

Description: In this introductory workshop we will cover basic surface modeling and discuss general modeling approaches relating specifically to Rhino 3D Software. Students will learn how to import 2D drawings, create/edit accurate free-form 3-D NURBS curves/surfaces and extract 2D information such as sections, elevations and screenshots.

Location:
Room HHS 416

Date + Time:
2009.09.21 (6:30-9:30PM)

Requirements:

Participants are required to bring a laptop with Rhino3D, Illustrator + Photoshop

Rhino3d download:

http://download.rhino3d.com/eval/?p=25

Rhino3d base files:

df rhino workshop base file 092109.3dm