Using Decals

Want to really impress your clients and give them the feeling that you really look at every detail just for them...! Or make your interior renderings look more realistic.

Every great residential designer will visit their client to see their lifestyle, particular furniture tastes and styles so they can get a better feel and understanding of their client. While you are there take lots of photos to refer back too, also take some good straight on photos of their artwork on their walls.

You can then use these images in your interior renderings and really impress your client.

Here's how......

·         Find a picture or adjust your photo to suit. Crop out any borders etc, don't worry too much about the size of the image just as ling as it's not fuzzy or too big a file.

·         If you don't already have a Picture Frame family get one...! Autodesk Seek has some, load it into your project and adjust the size of the frame to suit your image, ie: 5' wide by 4' high.

·         Flip to a elevation where you can see the picture frame such as a section or elevation, create a temporary one if you need too.

·         In the Insert Tab under the Link panel you'll find the drop down for Decals.

·         First you'll need to create a Decal Type. In this dialog box create a new type and give it a name, select the source file of your image and make any adjustments required to Brightness, Reflectivity, Transparency, finish etc...

·         After you have created a Decal type you can now use the Place Decal tool. Under the type properties select your Decal Type you just created.

·         Place the decal in the host picture frame, you can adjust the width and height before placing the decal on the options bar, or after you place the decal select the decal and you can adjust the width and height.

 Locking proportions is always a great idea.

·         Now you have placed your Decal you wont be able to see it unless you render the view or change your visual Style To Realistic.

Place a camera view and Render it to wow your clients, colleagues and boss...

Background Image for Renderings

So you have this great model and you have 3D views that the client love....but... they have a fantastic view you want to accurately display while appearing to be standing on their balcony. Or they want to see how the building will look on their site so you can accurately place the building.

You have some photograph's of the site that you can use so bring them into your model!

Here is a (quick) example of a finished product. Here I created a camera view looking out over the balcony. camera placement is important, luckily you can always move the camera around to get the right angle to suit your image.

On the Rendering dialog box under the Background style you  can specify your image.

Here you can customize the image and the position of the image by adjusting the offset and scaling the with and height etc.

You can manipulate location of the image only from this dialog box.

Run the rendering in a low or Draft mode or render a region if you have a large view.  Make any changes to the location of the image or the situation of the camera to get a realistic appearance.

Here is a quick one I did, doesn't look too bad and the clients love this, it adds a sense of realism for them.

Things to look out for, look where the sun is in your photo, you may want to adjust your location and time of day under the Shadows setting to match your photo. Nothing worse than seeing the sun in your photo and seeing the shadows on what would be the sunny side of the building.

Take a bunch of site photos if possible taking into consideration the location of the house and the features of the view. Think of where you have placed the Camera View and try to replicate that location on site.

Remember if you are rendering a project that you have light sources in and your using interior lighting, create a  artificial lighting set where you can basically turn off the lights you wont need in your rendering, otherwise Revit will have to take into consideration all of the lights even if they will not affect your rendering, this will speed up your rendering process. Don't make Revit work any harder that it has too...

This also works great for interior views where you want to show the view through the windows, say from laying on the bed in the master bedroom, or standing in the kitchen looking out.....