Generating a cloud rendering - Revit Tutorial

- [Instructor] One of the big advantages of working in a model, is that you can generate renderings any time that you'd like. So, at some point, if you want to start communicating how things are shaping up in your design, a really nice way to do that can be to create a really nice rendering. So, in this video, I'm going to walk through the process of creating, specifically, a cloud-based rendering, and if you had the full version of Revit, you'll actually have the option to do an in-product rendering, as well, which is similar, but a little bit different. So, there's basically three things you need to create a rendering. You need a 3D view. We've got one open on screen that I'm going to use. You're welcome to use any 3D view that you like. You need lighting. We're going to rely pretty much on sunlight for this rendering, and you need materials, and we're going to rely mostly on the materials that are already in here, but we will make one minor change. So, we have our 3D view already, let's move on to the lighting then. For this rendering, I'm going to use sunlight only. Now, the north direction in this project is behind the camera, behind me, so those windows we're looking at are the south facing windows, which means that just about any time of the year, or any time of day, we should be getting sunlight into the space. But what we need to do is actually turn that on and configure it a little bit. So, the way that we're going to do that is to come down here to the View Control bar, click this Visual Styles popup menu, and at the top of that menu is Graphic Display Options, so I'll choose that command. Now, in order to see the sunlight, it's a pretty good idea to turn on the shadows. So, the first thing I want to do is turn on the shadows, so I'll expand this option here, and I'll turn on Cast Shadows. Now, you can also optionally turn on ambient shadows if you like. These aren't really related to the sunlight, but they can make a nice effect in the space, so I'm going to turn on both of those. Now lighting is right here, so I'll expand that next. Now, the sun setting is what I want to use, and you can see that it's currently set to this in-session setting, so I'm going to click that button. Let's move this out of the way here. And the default lighting scheme is not going to work in this case, because you're just sort of arbitrarily setting an altitude and azimuth. What I want to do instead is use the Still rendering scheme. That has some presets over here, so I'll choose the Summer Solstice next. If we click Apply on that, you're going to see the space will lighten a bit. I'll click OK here, and click Apply again, and that will actually turn on the shadows, and if you look down over here in the front of the dining room, you can see we are getting a little bit of sunlight in the space, but not very much because the Summer Solstice preset was set to noontime, which means that the sun is very high in the sky. So let's click it again, keep Summer Solstice selected, duplicate it with this icon right here, and change the name slightly. I'll just add, "Morning" to the end. I'll select the 12 right here on time, and just click the down arrow a couple times to set that to 10 a.m. and then click OK, and notice that the shadows will shift now, and we're getting much more sunlight in the space. So you're welcome to fiddle with that some more and choose a different time of day if you like, but I'm pretty satisfied with that. Now, the last thing I want to do in this dialogue is put something in the background. So, I'll expand background here, and there are a few options, and I'll choose the gradient option right here, and then I will click OK to get out of that dialogue, and you can see, off in the distance it creates horizon and a gradient in the background and kind of gives me some sense of how that's all going to look. Now if you're using Revit LT, those settings are in a slightly different location. It's still the Visual Styles popup, but you'll have online rendering options choice instead. I'll choose that. Here's your scheme of sun only. Here's the sun settings here. You can choose the Still rendering, the Summer Solstice, duplicate it, set the time of day, and then these background options here are not exactly the same, but we're going to see the result of what you choose of these background options in the rendering. So, you've got different sky settings with a little clouds, or a lot of cloud, so you can choose what you want there. You won't see it previewed in the view window here in LT, but you will see it in the final rendering. Okay, so now let's move on to materials. If you look around in the space, you can see some different colors are applied to various objects. Those colors are coming from the materials that are applied. So for example, you can see a tan color on these windowsills, indicating that there's a wood material assigned to those objects, and there's sort of a yellow color on the chairs here, and there's an aluminum on these columns, and we've got a ceiling grid up here. Well, the floor surface is this large surface that's really dominant in the space, and it, currently, doesn't have any material assignment. So, I think that that would be a little distracting in the rendering, if we don't address at least that. So, let's put a material on that floor surface before we render. Now, there's a few ways that we could do that. We could edit the floor, we could create a new type, or we can just simply paint a material right on the surface. Now that's actually the easiest thing to do, so that's what I'm going to do in this case. We'll go to the Modify tab. Here on the geometry panel, you'll find a paint tool, and I'll click that. Now, here's a list of all the materials that are currently in the project, and you could certainly scroll through the list and locate the one you want, but sometimes it's a little easier to search right here. If you search for the word, floor, there's an oak flooring material right here, so select that, and then move your mouse back into the view window, and notice that you can highlight several of the surfaces of the existing geometry. So simply highlight the floor surface here, and click, to paint that material onto the floor surface. I'll click Done to dismiss that, and you can see by that dark brown color that it's now putting that wood flooring on the surface of that material. If you want to preview that wood flooring right here in the view, you can go to the Visual Style popup and choose Realistic Shading, instead of Shaded, and then it will actually show you the texture on that floor. So, this gives us a pretty good idea of what it's going to look like without actually clicking Render. So now it's time for us to go ahead and click Render. I think we're ready to do that. So, let's go to the View tab, and we're going to use Render in Cloud for this example. So, when I choose Render in Cloud, if you haven't logged into your Auto Desk account, that's the first thing you'll see, is it will display a window asking you to login. Now, I've already logged in, so next it's showing us the Welcome to Cloud Rendering screen, which I can dismiss by simply clicking Continue. Now, the cloud rendering service is not free. Some renderings are free, if you choose lower quality settings, but the higher quality rendering you choose, the more it will cost, and they charge you in cloud credits. So, if you want to do a test rendering that doesn't cost anything, just pay attention to your cloud credits, and make sure it says zero before you render. All right, so we're going to verify our 3D view. It's the 3D view from above. I want a still image, but there are some other choices. You're welcome to try those if you like. Render quality, Standard tends to be free. I'm going to choose Final. Notice that will cost me one cloud credit. And then, for the image size, the larger image you make, the more credits it will cost. So it's up to you what size image you want to create. Now I'm going to make a fairly large one, so I'll choose this extra large size here, and notice that will cost me nine cloud credits. So, if I'm satisfied with that, I can check this box right here to get an email when it's done, and then I just simply click Render. Now one of the biggest advantages of Render in Cloud is that you can continue in the background. This means that the rendering in cloud will take place online, and you can keep working in Revit. It doesn't tie up your machine. If you're in the full version of the product, and you have the Render button here, that will render in product, but it will tie up your machine while it's rendering, and this can sometimes take hours. So that's one of the biggest advantages of using cloud rendering. So, I do encourage you to try both, if you have the full version, and see which one you like better. Now all we have to do is wait for the rendering to complete, and then when it's done we can view it in our render gallery. So when the rendering's complete, you'll get an email indicating that, and at any time you can click the Render Gallery button here and go out to the web and check the progress. Now, any renderings that you've previously created will be listed here. Here's our rendering right here, and you can click on the View Project button, and that will open up the rendering and show you the result. So you can check it out here on screen. There's a few different options, like download, or delete. You can even re-render it in a variety of formats, so if there's anything about the rendering that you're not happy with, you can either go back to Revit and make changes to your model, or you can choose some of the options here and re-render it. If you're satisfied with the rendering, simply download it to your hard drive, and then you can share it with your recipients.