Piranesi ® 4 Painting Space for Windows Review

Piranesi ® 4 Painting Space for Windows Review
By Mike White - Bit Contructs.com


Overview

I started out in 2003 with Release 3 of the popular painting software Piranesi, which takes its roots in the work and style of the 18th century architectural draftsman, Giovanni Battista Piranesi. After seeing the demo CD I was astounded with the amazing range of capabilities that this software can provide to the architectural illustrator, landscape architect and interior designer. For this review, I used Piranesi ® 4 for Windows and eagerly looked forward to using the new tools and features as well as using the new entourage or cutouts (people, vegetation, cars, furniture, etc.) provided with this new release. I will provide a short overview of Piranesi for those contemplating a first time purchase as well as review some of the very important new features in Release 4 which now allow for a much closer integration between other software packages.

As with Piranesi 3 the software came in a small plastic case which holds the installation CD and data CD, installation guide, quick reference card, and the license and validation codes. The upgrade went well and I activated the software without incident. Unlike Piranesi 3, I did not receive a printed booklet with this release, however the 10 tutorials on the CD are much more comprehensive than the previous booklet was and are really what you need to review in order to get started.

I have taught myself a wide range of software applications from GIS to CAD to several photo editing software packages. However, Piranesi was only one of two software packages that I could not launch and at least start creating something of limited complexity without first reading the manuals. For Piranesi, this was not in any way due to poor menu design, underlying problems with the application, nor complexity in using the software, but rather just the unique nature of painting what appears to be a two dimensional image while using tools that utilize the material and depth information associated with the original 3D model. A quick look at the material and pixel depth display mode within Piranesi shows some of the extra data embedded in an EPix (Extended Pixel) file that Piranesi uses for calculating the various effects. (See Figure 1)

Figure 1a - Sample Piranesi View Modes, Showing Materials Which Can Be Easily Painted or Textured Individually or as a Group. Figure 1b – View Mode Showing Pixel Depth.

With that said, Piranesi is extremely fun to work with, relatively easy to use, and if you are familiar with Adobe Photoshop, JASC PhotoPaint or other photo editing software you should be able to use Piranesi very effectively once you have gone through the tutorials once or twice. For someone not fond of tutorials or following directions, I found the Piranesi tutorials to be fun, and they should get you up to speed very quickly and you will soon be amazed at what the software is capable of doing.

Once you grasp the concept that the painting tools are using an additional level of hidden information and become familiar with utilizing the four locks (plane, orientation, material, and color) which allow you to paint or manipulate only the surfaces that you want, you will be well on your way to enhancing and developing a rendering of your digital model. You will quickly find that the four locks provide you with infinitely more power and flexibility than using masks.

Piranesi is an unbelievably powerful tool that can help you populate your rendering with people, beautifully landscape your project, finish an interior space and/or create wonderful painted effects. However, Piranesi will not instantly turn you into another Giovanni Battista Piranesi and one issue that I have always had with renderings done with Piranesi - including mine, is that a lot of them tend to look the same and are of limited variation. To mitigate that you will need some artistic ability and will need to spend time with the software and study the work of others who have successfully created their own unique styles. Figure 2 shows some of the typical results with Piranesi filters applied to the entire image.

Figure 2 – Sample Piranesi Renderings of SketchUp Export with Landscape Elements and Background Sky Added in Piranesi 4.

For some particularly nice examples of what Piranesi can do when you artistically apply the various filters with a brush rather than simply running the filters over the entire rendering, check out the work by Wang Wang and others at the Piranesi Gallery. I was somewhat disappointed that with the exception of the quick start tutorial and a few movie tutorials there were no new tutorials showing more new techniques and styles for advanced users. Hopefully future releases will have some new tutorials for more advanced users providing details on utilizing the new brush filters and multi-fills.

One issue that I found very confusing when I started looking at the various software packages and renderings on the various architecture and software forums was determining what each software package could and could not do. One key issue with Piranesi is that it is not a 3D modeling application. You will need to create your base model in another software package such as SketchUp which can then export an EPix file for use within Piranesi.

Alternatively, most modeling applications will export your model in a format which can be read with Vedute, the free application provided with Piranesi which can then create the EPix file for Piranesi. More and more applications are providing EPix export options and plug-ins for the EPix format. An example of a 3D Studio EPix export is shown below.

While the painting effects, reflections and lighting will appear to be applied to a three dimensional model, you cannot rotate the model or change the view in an EPix file. It is important to export the EPix file in your modeling application with the desired export resolution, correct field of view, and any shadow settings so that the final rendering in Piranesi meets your final online publishing or printing requirements.  

Interface  

With Piranesi Release 3, I always felt that I was fighting the menus and looking for tool bars. With Release 4, there is an improved work space with better menu docking and layout resulting in a much improved work flow. However, one minor issue that I have is that the style browser which contains the libraries for all of the various filters, textures, brush settings, and cutout content was still confusing when it came to locating the painting effects and multi-fills. I find that I am repeatedly looking for the various painting filters throughout the library sub-directories. This is a minor issue, but can be frustrating when you are new to the interface and not sure of the style that you previously used and now want to apply again.

With the large number of drop down menus and the main image that is being edited, Piranesi is one application that will benefit from a dual monitor setup if you are fortunate enough to have one. However with Release 4, I found workflow to be pleasant and efficient on a 17 inch monitor set to a screen resolution of 1024 x 768. The mouse scroll wheel allows very rapid zooming and navigation around the image while editing and Piranesi and the EPix file format appear to by highly refined and optimized allowing even older systems to handle relatively large files.

I opened and navigated a 3,000 by 2,400 pixel EPix file on my old 700 PIII with less than 512 megabytes of RAM without any problems. Of course as with just about any image editing software, increased RAM will improve display regeneration, undo/redo operations, and painting operations. With my newer PIV system with 1.5 gig of RAM, I have successfully worked with 8,000 pixel wide EPix files which appears to be the upper resolution limit for a successful export from several modeling applications.

For all editing and limited painting that I have done in Piranesi, I use a standard mouse with the all important center scroll wheel for zooming. I have yet to use my WACOM pressure sensitive tablet, but will probably try it out as I attempt to develop more artistic styles and effects which could benefit from the increased level of control afforded by pen pressure.

Brushes and Painting

In my opinion, when attempting to create a hand painted or hand drawn look for architectural Illustrations, Piranesi’s brush engine and styles out perform Adobe CS, Adobe Photoshop WOW-7 Brushes and Presets, Sketch Master and ArtRage. While these applications represent huge advances in digital painting, they all still rely only on the two dimensional data contained in the digital file. For architectural Illustrations which often have a fairly high level of detail as opposed to a view of the mountains, forest or seashore it can be hard to keep window mullions, curb lines and other architectural details from getting lost or smeared when the filters are applied. Figure 3 shows a low resolution rendering with a Piranesi filter applied to an architectural model based on the underlying material and orientation of the surfaces.

Insert Figure 3 – Soft Pencil Filter Applied Based on Underlying Material and Orientation

In total, there are seven new filters for editing images, and even the basics theory of painting with a brush has been extended with a new bristle brush, and brush dynamics which introduce selected random elements into the stroke to increase the 'hand painted' effect.

As mentioned above, more applications are now able to export an EPix file for painting in Piranesi. Figure 4 shows a rendering of a model exported from 3D Studio in the EPix format. I have found that using exporting renderings from 3D Studio in the EPix format rather then the standard .jpg, .png, or .tif format allows for a much higher level of final tweaking than is possible in Adobe Photoshop or other photo editing packages. Figure 4 shows a heavily tiled pattern (the light colored pattern) on the driveway as rendered in 3D Studio. With the plane lock on in Piranesi, I can apply a new texture (light gray) with full control over color, scale, angle, transparency etc. without having to worry about any masking or getting the texture to scale correctly as it is applied further away from the viewer.

Insert Figure 4 – New texture Applied to Driveway with Plane Lock on Which Prevents the Texture from Being Applied to the Lawn or Structure without any Masking.

There are some know bugs with the 3D Studio plug-in which exports the EPix file, and I did have problems painting in the area where I had RPC (Rich Photorealistic Content) content. However, I think I will be applying RPC content in Piranesi rather than rendering it in 3D Studio which should eliminate that part of the problem. More on that shortly.

Two unique forms of a fill brushes can be used for lighting or night time scenes with new illumination fades allowing for spot or strip lighting to be easily represented. Reflections are also created with a unique brush application for interior and exterior situations.

Figure 5 – Interior Rendering with Lighting and Reflection Effects

Depending on your modeling application, you may be able to produce high quality interior renderings with lighting effects and reflections and not have to deal with expensive photo-realistic rendering software applications and their complex material properties, critical light settings, radiosity and the associated long rendering times. Figure 5 shows a simple example of interior lighting and reflections created with Piranesi in one of the tutorials.

Cutouts

Over 300 new cutouts and textures are supplied with Release 4 which makes populating an environment with people or landscaping a project a lot easier. I found many of the cutouts are best suited for stylistic exterior renderings since I felt the resolution and/or masking to be insufficient for photo-realistic renderings. Also, many of the cutouts supplied had strong highlights or shadows which are not conducive for use in interior renderings. Creating your own cutouts from just about any image file with a mask is very easy and there is a lot of RPC and cutout content available from third party suppliers such as Archvision, entourage arts, got3d, Real World Imagery.

As mentioned earlier, I found that placing cutouts and RPC content in Piranesi rather than a wire-frame environment is a lot easier (and a lot more fun) since you are actually placing the content in the finished environment. This affords several advantages. First, more precise placement is allowed with fewer adjustments since you can see how the cutout or RPC is interacting with the surrounding elements. Also, one of the common complaints about cutouts and RPC’s is that they are often to bright or saturated in comparison to the rendered environment. One way to reduce this problem is by dropping the transparency of the cut out or RPC content down to about 75% - 85% this can be easily accomplished and ‘fine tuned’ in Piranesi in real time – no need to wait for the entire rendering to finish to find out that you need to make adjustments to your entourage. RPC and cutout shadows can be generated to match shadows created in the original rendering application with Piranesi providing control over direction, transparency, color, and softness. One issue when using cutouts is that they are essentially paper thin and if the direction of the sun is from one side, you will end up with a razor thin shadow. Therefore, sun location and shadow orientation is an important consideration that needs to be planned for in the original rendering software if you are planning on using cutouts. RPC content with its 360 degree image data generate nice shadows regardless of their orientation or the direction of the sun.

In future Releases of Piranesi, it would great to have the ability to have height, width and mirror variations ‘randomly’ assigned each time you drop in a cutout or RPC content so that you don’t have to manual change the settings prior to insertion.

The one major downfall to placing RPC content or cutouts in Piranesi is when you have to produce multiple renderings of the same project from different angles. Placing and matching the same content in multiple views can become very time consuming if there is a large number of cutouts, there are a lot of views, or you have a client who keeps changing the camera location. If you are going to need to produce multiple, near photo realistic views of a given building or project where the cutout entourage (people, trees, and vehicles need to match) and/or there are going to be multiple rounds of revisions then Piranesi may not be the most efficient application to get the job done.

It should be noted that Piranesi allows you to save all of your cutouts independently of the EPix file so that you can have multiple cutout options that can then be dropped into the same EPix file for rendering, or you can bring in an updated EPix file and simple reload your entourage without having to set it all in the scene again.

Also, another huge benefit in Release 4 is the ability to bring three dimensional models from SketchUp, 3D Studio, and other 3D applications right into the EPix file. I have used this feature several times and it works great! This can be a real time saver by allowing you to add content without having to re-render the entire EPix file again. Also, three dimensional text can be created and placed with in the EPix file – something that can take along time in some modeling packages and environments.

Cons

I feel that plan view cutouts (trees and vehicles) for two dimensional landscape renderings are still somewhat limited in quantity and in varying styles. Entourage or cutouts (people, vegetation, etc.) and textures are still limited in quantity and quality for interior renderings and near photo-realistic work. The release 4 CD did not contain any new advanced tutorials and in my opinion the various fill effects are somewhat hard to locate within the library. I have found that there appears to be a limit of about 8,000 horizontal pixels when creating EPix files in some modeling applications and on the slower PIIIs which may be an issue for those wanting to use Piranesi to create large outdoor billboards for construction sites or advertisements. Placing and matching RPC content and/or cutouts into multiple views of the same project.

Pros

Piranesi provides an advanced set of tools capable of creating highly artistic renderings, near photo-realistic interior renderings, landscape designs, and architectural illustrations. It is the only known digital painting and editing package that utilizes the depth information from the original three dimensional model. This allows for easy painting and editing of specific elements with in the model and for applying filters to various surfaces based on orientation and material. Piranesi is a robust, stable and competitively priced application, given the high level of functionality, included data, and unique capabilities.

Conclusion

If you are an interior designer, landscape architect, or create architectural illustrations then Piranesi could provide an important competitive advantage and a new level of rendering capability especially if you are working in the three dimensional modeling and rendering environment.

While there have been great improvements in other digital painting programs, in my opinion when attempting to create the highly coveted ‘hand painted or hand drawn’ style for architectural illustration, Piranesi still comes out on top due to its extensive tool set and unique leverage of the depth and material data contained in the EPix file format.

Piranesi is an extremely powerful, well developed, and effective painting and editing package with more power, capabilities, tricks and options than you will probably ever use. I would definitely recommend this product and would strongly encourage you to try out the demo CD, check out the galleries and determine how this unique software package could enhance your projects.

While I have tried to cover some of the aspects that I have found important when initially selecting and now using Piranesi, there are a lot of details associated with getting a viable EPix file out of your modeling software, working with the files, using RPC content, and ultimately creating a professional rendering with Piranesi. A careful review of your final output needs and project types will help in maximizing the benefits and power of Piranesi and ensuring a successful integration with your modeling software.

For more information about Piranesi 4, you can visit there website here: http://www.informatix.co.uk/

 

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