Is there a view mode which can show materials, AO shadowing, and Section attributes as they’re set in Properties? I can sees them in HIdden and Wireframe modes.
In Rendered and Conceptual I can’t find settings which will show them. Rhino7
Hi @djhg,
Do you mean the "section attributes? These should be visible in any display mode, also in Rendered:
Thanks Francesc. It’s how they display in detail windows that I need to better understand. There are many clipping plane settings in Options for any view mode. It has seemed to me over the years that these determine whether – and how – section attributes display, if they will display at all. Don’t these settings have to be just right? If so can you say how they need to be set and under what conditions they’ll display? Sometimes I think it depends whether a detail window is active or not, or whether Print Display is on. I’m in Canada and won’t be at my computer for about 6 hours to explore this or upload a project, but I don’t think I’ve ever been able to see section fill attributes in detail windows in most view modes (though they always display in Hidden). I can’t even see them in Conceptual, which would solve things. As it is I have always had to layer a hidden view over a view with materials and shadows to get materials, shadows, and section fills (as set in Va section attributes) on a layout.
I have had a moment to explore this this morning. A View Mode’s Clipping Plane settings are crucial. It seems to me that only when a View Mode’s Clipping planes are set as in the image at the bottom of this post, they will print as VA section attributes are set. This will display properly in a Print Display View.
But there’s a significant obstacle to working this out. Regardless of the colour set for a Section Boundary; unless Print Display is On, the boundary displays to match the colour of the Section Hatch. Where this becomes particularly confusing is when a detail view is active in a layout, whereupon the system displays that view as Print Display = Off (even if the view mode for the layout is set Print Display = On) so the boundary does not respond to settings in either Section Attributes or Options > View Mode. One can’t determine the effects of settings if one attempts to adjust them with the detail active, as is required to select an object. This confusing situation is invited because the quick way to launch settings for the view mode active in a Detail window is to activate the Detail and launch it’s View Mode’s settings from the Display Panel.
Another tricky situation is that the default settings for Conceptual View Mode are not as shown below. The way they behave when set to Default (on my Va3 R7 system, at least) the colour of the Section Hatch and Section Boundary prints as Black regardless of their settings in Properties.
Also, the Section Hatch is significantly darkened when set to display in Conceptual View Mode if that mode is set to show AO shadows. So much so that the colour is too dark to be distinguishable from Dark Grey. No amount of lightening in the Section Hatch colour settings is sufficient to counteract this, so it’s not really useable. So I’m back to layering Hidden Detail Views on top of Rendered Detail Views if I want Materials, AO shadows, and contour lines on all surfaces.
Hi @djhg can you share a model of reference so I can better understand which situation you are having and which settings are you using?
Thanks,
The attached file is simply a box. I’ve created several detail windows with various View Modes as shown in the screenshot below. Of course how they display will depend on your system’s View Mode settings, which are system-specific. None of my View modes will display Textures, Shadows, and a Section Fill (at least not as it’s set in Section Attributes). Conceptual comes close, but it shades the section fill so darkly that any colour used for it is ineffective.
When a detail is active, I can’t get any of them them to display the Section Boundary as it is set.
SectionFilllRepresentation.3dm (4.6 MB)
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Hi @djhg
I am confused by this statement. In your screenshot and file, all views show the section fill, isn’t it? and the detail in rendered shows the textures…
That’s weird. We will check it out. In Rhino 8 the section fill color shows correctly. And you are right, this error seems related to the fact a solid Edge color has been set in the Clipping plane settings, in the display mode settings.
I can reproduce this behavior. We will revise this.
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In Rhino 7 there’s no specific attribute for the section boundary display color (only for the print color). But you can play with the section hatch background to display the boundary in a different color than the solid hatch (by setting a specific color or by setting it to By Parent, which may take the object layer color)
“In your screenshot and file, all views show the section fill, isn’t it?”
The section fill attribute for the object is set to green. Rendered shows as grey and conceptuall as very dark grey. The only View Mode in this screenshot which shows textures and shadows and green section fill is arctic set to show materials. Maybe that’s the work-around, but I don’t believe arctic will show a contour line on a curving surface. Only Conceptual and Hidden will do that. And Hidden can’t be set to show either shadows or materials or both.
“you are right, this error seems related to the fact a solid Edge color has been set in the Clipping plane settings, in the display mode settings.”
But it’s present in versions of the View Mode where the Clipping Plane Settings are as shown in the screenshot in my original post. If there are settings which will correct this please let me know.
This is how your file opens in my PC. Rhino 7 and VisualARQ 3.8.1
Not in my PC. Have you changed anything in the Rendered display? just restore defaults.
If I change the Clipping plane settings in Conceptual display like described before (Show Edges > Color usage > Plane’s color) I get this dark green color too. We can investigate if we can show the same green color like in the other display modes.
None of the details in your file is set to Arctic. The one in Rendered shows shadows. If you draw a surface at the bottom you will better appreciate it:
I’m still unsure what you are trying to achieve in the end.
If you want to see the scene with textures, shadows, the section hatch and the section boundary, just use the Rendered display, and change the Section Hatch Background to By Parent:
Thankyou Francesc.
There are a few issues here so I’ll break them down.
General Section Fill Display:
If I reset only the Clipping Plane settings to default in a View Mode, is that all that’s required for the section fills to display as set in Va Section Attributes?
This is important because My View Modes are almost always customized. If I reset an entire View Mode to defaults, I’ll lose that customization.
Because my View Modes are customized, the way the project displays for you and the way it displays for me differs. (This even includes what View modes Rhino uses. At your end it seems to have substituted Wireframe for the version of Arctic I have set in the furthest right detail window). I didn’t label the detail windows’ with their View Modes in the project because I expected that there wouldn’t be a match and the various windows would simply be available for you to test in your own way.
Section Boundary Display in an active detail:
It appears from your reply that only if the setting for a fill’s background is set to “By Parent” will the Section Boundary display as set in an active detail view. I’ll try to remember this, but that will be difficult because Background settings controlling the display of Boundaries doesn’t intuitively register. What do you recommend when the section fill’s background colour needs to be different from the Boundary colour?
Managing display requirements of different view modes:
Conceptual View mode outlines the curving contours of the object in the below view.
Rendered Displays them as below, no contour lines on the curving surfaces:
So I only use Rendered if there aren’t curving objects. Conceptual slows Rhino considerably, but I use it if there are curving objects, though not if there are active sections because it won’t display the section fill correctly. If there are curving objects and an active section, the only way to get materials and shadows and section fills as set and contour lines on curves is to layer a Hidden detail view (which shows curving contour lines and section fills as set, but won’t show materials or shadows) on top of a rendered view (which shows materials and shadows but no curving contour lines and has been unreliable for me in displaying section fills). The Hidden view also slows Rhino, and managing layered views is cumbersome on a complex drawing.
I hope this will all be easier if Rhino 8’s tendency to cause my blocks to disappear goes away with subsequent updates to Rhino and Nvidia and I can upgrade to Rhino 8 in the future.
In the meantime, managing this all is a challenge which makes it necessary to be absolutely clear on how settings work, so I appreciate your help.
And as you can understand, if Conceptual Mode would display section fills as required everything would be simplified. Edit: Pen will show contours on curving surfaces, but it won’t display section fills at all.
If you set the Clipping plane settings to Show Edges > Color usage > Plane’s color, you will see the section hatch color as expected (except for the Conceptual display mode, which darkens a bit the color)
Your detail in Rendered display mode looks different than mine when I open your file. If you want me to check why, please send me the .ini of your customized rendered mode so I can identify which setting is changing the color of the section hatch. My guess is that it’s the same setting as the Clipping plane in the Conceptual display mode described above, which is set to a Gray color instead to “Plane’s color”)
You could use the “Boundary Print color” for that.
Theoretically, the Section Boundary Color should be taken from the object display color, but is taking the section hatch background color instead, which is wrong.
- I still wonder why your rendered display doesn’t show the section fill correctly. I hope we can figure this out in the first point.
- Have you tried the “Realistic” display mode? It may show everything as you expect (materials, section boundary with object’s color, section fill, contours for curvy objects…):
In Rhino 8, you have a better control on the Section boundary display/Print Colors
Really? This may depend on the model. Checking the TestMaxSpeed in this file, the Hidden display takes exactly the same FPS (Frames Per Second) than the Rendered display, and almost the same as the Shaded display mode.
I was wrong here. Since VisualARQ 2, it has never been possible to define a different section boundary color for display and for print. The display color is taken from the background color. Since this is already possible to be controlled in VisualARQ 3 for Rhino 8 I’m afraid we won’t change this in VisualARQ 3 for Rhino 7.
" My guess is that it’s the same setting as the Clipping plane in the Conceptual display mode described above, which is set to a Gray color instead to “Plane’s color”)" Yes, that’s it, thanks!
“Theoretically, the Section Boundary Color should be taken from the object display color, but is taking the section hatch background color instead, which is wrong.” Shouldn’t it always both display and print as it is set in Va section attributes (as does the Section Fill Colour)? That it does not makes it impossible to see the effects of editing the boundary’s attributes with an object selected in a detail window. It’s caused me confusion for years unitil I realized that the display was incorrect.
“Have you tried the “Realistic” display mode?” I just did, but it doesn’t seem to work any better than Conceptual. As you can see in the image below, the fill displayed is black though the fill on the object is set to green and the Realistic View Mode clipping plane shade is set to “Plane’s Color”
The Hidden view also slows Rhino,
“Really? This may depend on the model.” I think so, but when I use it it’s usually in conjunction with an active Va Section, and it may be particularly slow in that configuration. In any case it would be great to not have to manage multiple detail views.
“it has never been possible to define a different section boundary color for display and for print.” Thanks Francesc, but I think the problem is being misunderstood. I believe the problem is the opposite. The section boundary colour doesn’t display as it is set unless print display is on. (The only exception to this is in the unlikely coincidence of the Section Boundary colour setting matching the settings for the object’s display colour.) This behaviour makes it appear that the Boundary Colour setting has no effect when the selected object is an a detail window, which always uses display view as opposed to print display view .
I can see this is a bug in Rhino 7. In Rhino 8 it works well.