One of the star new features of interest to many users will be the ‘animated transitions’ between views. The above Vimeo file shows the new “animated transitions” feature in action, including the typical 3D views and Saved Views in perspective and more. New in the VGM this year is under-the-hood plumbing improvements that bring about features such as general speed up, animated transitions between views, and, importantly, the new Wireframe views which are now rendered through the VGM itself-in other words, through OpenGL. It’s the Geometry Engine in the VGM that enables features such as the Clip Cube and is responsible for preprocessing items such as the shadows and lighting and section geometry. We won’t explain all of these here but they roughly work in order as listed. The VGM itself has four parts, an Engine, a Scene Graph, a Geometry Engine and a Render Engine. It’s important that readers understand the difference between these two types of rendering engines. ) and in it explain that the VGM is specifically an OpenGL rendering engine-not a photo realistic rendering engine, like say V-Ray. We have written a complete feature on the VGM before (see, Architosh, “Details on Vectorworks Graphics Module (VGM) in new Vectorworks 2014,”. Biplab Sarkar, chief technology officer of Nemetschek Vectorworks, Inc., has stated in the past that the VGM is like a hybrid between HOOPS and the Unity Game Engine. The Vectorworks Graphics Module, or VGM as Nemetschek Vectorworks calls it, is a proprietary custom-coded OpenGL rendering engine.
Getting Started: Big Things First-The Vectorworks Graphics Module We should state, however, inasmuch as it makes sense for continuity, we will be mentioning the whole of the visualization workflow at some level. As such, we will not be touching upon rendering improvements in detail in this review.
#VECTORWORKS VIEWER 2015 SOFTWARE#
In an adjunct product review, Architosh will be focusing concentrated effort in doing a complete review of Renderworks 2015, the product add-on software that focuses on both artistic and photo-realistic rendering and animation capabilities. These improvements are VRAM-intensive, however, and require at least 512MB of dedicated VRAM, with 1GB of dedicated VRAM being preferable.While our news report summary covers the entire product line-up, in this product review we will be looking at the product Vectorworks Architect 2015 specifically. If you use OpenGL rendering, Vectorworks 2012 and Vectorworks 2013 contain significant OpenGL improvements that drastically improve the rendering of shadows. Larger displays, such as displays that are 30” or larger, should use a modern graphics card with at least 512MB of dedicated VRAM, with 1GB or more recommended. Medium-sized displays with a native resolution of 1600x1200 or less should be driven by a graphics card with at least 256MB of dedicated VRAM. The amount of Video RAM (VRAM) required to drive Vectorworks adequately depends largely on the size of the display being used and the complexity of the Vectorworks document.