The 24 hour opening is now over for S11 and Library building. From 13th January the opening hours revert to 8.00AM to midnight every day including weekends
A 24 hour opening period will take effect again later in the year around final hand-in.
Studio support is available Monday – Friday during core hours; from 8.30AM to 9.00PM and at weekends for 3 hours during each day. If you have specialised printing, etc please do this during regular working hours when there is someone who can assist.
The workshop is open Monday to Friday 9.30 – 5.00PM
Please throw out any rubbish – the shelving storage is getting filled up.
Here are some tips / solutions / workarounds / that will be very useful for studio users.
PCs : No Logon Servers Available – Cannot log on OR no internet when returning to sleeping machine.
Solution: RESTART THE MACHINE
There is a network glitch in Stockwell Street and the Maritime Campus where network cards sometimes do not wake up from power save. The only way a student can fix this is a restart
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Plot queue (or queues) not showing in the drop down list
Solution: Add the plot queue(s) manually using the following steps
Click the Windows Start Button in the bottom left hand corner:
start-button
in the Search box type
\\GM-PS-N
This will bring up a big list of plotters and printers.
In the top right hand search box type
DST
This filters the list just to the printers and plotters in our print area.
plotter-list
Identify the plotter you want from the list and double click to install it. It is then available to print to from any application.
STANDARD-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q1 :: A2/A1/A0 Standard Paper
PREMIUM-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q3 :: A2/A1/A0 240GSM MATT paper
PTYPE4-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q4 :: A2/A1/A0 Tracing Paper
PTYPE5-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q5 :: A2/A1/A0 Textured Paper
PTYPE6-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q6 :: A2/A1/A0 Satin Semi-gloss Paper
PLOT-DST-T1300 :: Sheet Feed Plotter
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PDF Documents print blank pages on the MFD printer
Solution: Flatten the PDF by clicking the ADVANCED tab and ticking the Print as Image option
Often PDF files with lots of layers created with Adobe Photoshop will not be understood properly by the MFD printer. Print as Image will flatten the whole file down so it is simpler to process – it does not affect the quality of the print.
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iMac Keychain Access nags on logon
Solution: Click UPDATE KEYCHAIN (the MIDDLE) option when it asks what to do
If you have changed your Uni password this may conflict with the iMac’s password management system when you have previously logged into a machine with your old password.
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Large Screen wheelable Screens not showing anything
Solution:
CHECK screen is on – press upwards the joystick under the screen in the middle.
CHECK input is set to HDMI1- use the joystick to select HDMI1
CHECK the PC is powered on – the small square PC is mounted to the back; if it is on the power button will be glowing.
If all else fails restart the PC by Pressing and holding down the power button to force a restart.
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Connect to the Larger Scanner / Shared Area (S: drive) from a Mac
Solution: Once logged on to a Mac you can manually connect to the shared area
The large scanner will save scans to the SCANS folder on the S drive. This appears automatically on a PC. If you are on a Mac you can manually connect by selecting
“GO” in the top menu, then choosing
“CONNECT TO SERVER“
(or press CMD-K)
this opens a dialogue window – in server address type “gm-stu-shr1”
The S drive will now open – the scans will be in the folder “SCANS”
We are having issues with plotters on PCs not automatically appearing in the list of devices. If you cannot see a plotter then you can manually add using these steps:
Click the Windows Start Button in the bottom left hand corner:
in the Search box type
\\GM-PS-N
This will bring up a big list of plotters and printers.
In the top right hand search box type
DST
This filters the list just to the printers and plotters in our print area.
Identify the plotter you want from the list and double click to install it. It is then available to print to from any application.
STANDARD-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q1 :: A2/A1/A0 Standard Paper
PREMIUM-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q3 :: A2/A1/A0 240GSM MATT paper
PTYPE4-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q4 :: A2/A1/A0 Tracing Paper
PTYPE5-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q5 :: A2/A1/A0 Textured Paper
PTYPE6-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q6 :: A2/A1/A0 Satin Semi-gloss Paper
PLOT-DST-T1300 :: Sheet Feed Plotter
We have a new large format / large volume plotter: an Oce Colorwave 700
This machine replaces the HP DesignJet T7100 Plotter. It is a much faster and higher quality plotter and it allows for printing on various media types. PRICES HAVE NOT CHANGED
Please note we will be testing and trying out different media types initially – please feel free to give feedback and suggestions on which media you like or would like to see.
To start off with we shall be offering the following media:
Paper Type
Queue Name
A2/A1/A0
Roll
Standard Top Color Paper 120gsm
.
STANDARD-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q1
£1 / £2 / £4
R1 + 2
Premium Top Color Paper 200 gsm
.
PREMIUM-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q3
£2 / £4 / £8
R3
Tracing Inkjet Tracing Paper 90gsm
.
PTYPE4-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q4
£1 / £2 / £4
R4
Wallpaper Wallpaper Non-woven 120gsm
.
PTYPE5-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q5
£2 / £4 / £8
R5
Photo Paper Instant Dry Photo Paper – Satin
.
PTYPE6-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q6
£2 / £4 / £8
R6
You can plot from the Macs – but currently only to the Standard and Premium queues.
We shall leave samples of media types pinned up around the S11 Print area for you to have a look at.
Rendering, like printing, is one of those tasks that always takes far longer than you expect. While it is important to have good quality, sharp final images simply dragging all the sliders up to maximum quality is likely to have little visible difference but will significantly increase the time taken – and also the likelihood of the machine crashing altogether.
Think about what you are rendering – turn off layers / objects that you won’t see; there’s no point having complex hinges included in a distant perspective for example. Similarly, thousands of trees with dense branches,etc are going to kill a render as each twig needs shadow calculations etc. Consider adding people / foliage / rain / etc in Photoshop
For render sizes; the following is a list of image resolutions that will fill A3/A2/A1 sizes:
150 DPI (Sensible)
A3 – 2480 x 1753
A2 – 3507 x 2480
A1 – 4966 x 3507
200 DPI (Ambitious)
A3 – 3307 x 2338
A2 – 4677 x 3307
A1 – 6622 x 4677
300 DPI (At your own risk)
A3 – 4960 x 3507
A2 – 7015 x 4960
A1 – 9933 x 7015
Quick Render Speedup / Memory troubleshoot tips
Reduce resolution of final image
Lower the quality of the final render; there are some presets that can be loaded from the top of the Vray Options window: General – Preview / Very Low / Low / Medium etc (Start low and work up if the image quality is not adequate)
Override materials (see below): Global Switches
Troubleshooting Rendering / Memory Crashes
Often you can solve problems with render times and crashing jobs by being less pushy with your final images sizes. Try at least rendering a lower resolution, and if you must then work your way higher.
Vray Settings : Rhino / Vray
The following are recommendations from Chaos; the developers of Vray, for reducing excessive memory usage in Vray for Rhino and Sketchup
Geometry – scenes with lots of objects and/or triangle counts require more memory to render. There are several ways to reduce this amount:
Adjust the raycaster params in the System rollout (reduce Max. levels , increase Min. leaf size , increase Face/level coefficient , or adjust the Dynamic memory limit.
Image buffer – large output resolutions require a significant amount of RAM to store the final image. There are several ways to reduce this amount:
Use the Render to V-Ray raw image file option and then use the V-Ray raw image file viewer to convert the resulting file to a different format (see below)
Render the image in several different sections and stitch the pieces in Photoshop
Image samplers (AA) – the image sampling algorithms of V-Ray require some amount of RAM to hold all the data for the sampled image. This amount can be quite large, depending on the chosen bucket size and sampling rate. To reduce that amount:
Reduce the bucket size.
Switch to a different image sampler – for example, the Adaptive DMC sampler uses less RAM than the Adaptive subdivision sampler.
Global illumination caches – irradiance maps, photon maps and light maps all require additional memory to store them. Each of these has different methods for controlling its memory usage: Rhino scene – Rhino itself stores a lot of information about the scene. V-Ray has no control over that memory, but you can adjust the quality of render meshes to reduce it.
For the irradiance map – the memory depends on the number of samples in the map; you can reduce this number by using lower Min/Max rate , and more loose threshold values (higher Colour threshold , higher Normal threshold , lower Distance threshold ).
For the photon map – the memory depends on the number of photons stored. You can reduce this number by reducing the Diffuse subdivs for the lights, or by increasing the Max. density .
For the light map – increase the Sample size .
Lose the Materials
Lots of materials can add to the complexity and RAM requirements – even if you haven’t explicitly used any materials you might find some imported models might have had them attached. You can override any materials with a plain colour quite easily in the VRay options window.
In the Vray options dialogue box, expand the GLOBAL SWITCHES section
Tick Override materials
Click Override colour and select a colour to use for everything (white or light grey is good)
this will eliminate any material related errors / overheads that the file may have had.
NOTE: if there is a material that you still really need then you can make an exception for it by going to the Material Editor and for that material Options turn off “Can be Overridden”
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Don’t render to Image Buffer – render straight to a VRimg file
This is a big RAM saver; it means you are rendering directly to a file on your hard drive rather than into RAM. The advantage of this method is that the rendered chunks will be streamed to a file (in vrimg file format) and will then released from memory once saved so preventing out of memory errors common to large resolution renders. If you have to render large resolution images then this technique is very useful.
To make use of this option IN VRAY FOR RHINO AND SKETCHUP
In the Vray options dialogue box, expand the OUTPUT section
Below Render Output
Tick Save Output
Save your file – AS VRay-Raw Image File (VRIMG extension)
Tick Render to VRImage
Set VFB Mode as No Memory
Render your model – you’ll see a big red cross in the render window rather than the real image (i.e it isn’t using any memory trying to display the model)
When the render is finished then it needs to be converted from Vrimg format to OpenEXR format : There is a tool for doing this in
Start > All Programs > ChaosGroup > V-Ray Advanced for 3ds Max > Tools > VRImg to OpenEXR Converter.
Select your VRimg file via the INPUT FILE button > Convert > select a destination for the EXR file
Open this EXR file in Photoshop
It is quite likely that the file appears lighter than expected – this is due to differences in gamma settings of Vray. This can be easily altered in Photoshop:
Image > Adjustments > Exposure and set Gamma corrections to 0.4545
[divider]To make use of this technique IN 3D STUDIO
Disable all Frame Buffers (Max and V-Ray)
browse to the V-Ray:: Frame Buffer rollout in the Render Scene dialog
enable Render to V-Ray raw image format and select a folder and filename where to save the output to.
When render is done converted the file from vrimg format to OpenEXR format : There is a tool for doing this in
Start > All Programs > ChaosGroup > V-Ray Advanced for 3ds Max > Tools > VRImg to OpenEXR Converter.
