Revit to 3d Studio Max

BIM Workflow

3D Studio max is one of the best software to get photorealistic renders and video-animations to show our projects to the client. So it is a good complement to Revit software.

Objectives

The main object of this guideline is to show the different options of exporting a model from Revit to 3d Studio Max to do photorealistic renders. While there are several options in the workflow, the user will be able to choose which in the most suitable depending on each project.

Prerequisites

User will be using revit 2015
User will be using 3d studio max 2015 or 3d studio max Design 2015
User has knowledge to use either of the software properly

Procedure

1 Prepping Revit Model for 3ds max

Limit geometry by hiding or deleting → Use Visibility & Graphics to control it.
Purge unused before exporting → Manage / Purge unused.
Apply materials to all the elements in the Revit scene and also the elements inside a family. Try to apply specific materials not leaving generic materials without changing them.
Light properties are accurately transferred to 3d studio max. Therefore, make sure the lights you have in the current scene possesses the properties you want to use in 3d studio max.
The environmental settings are also transferred to 3d studio max, so assure to have the correct Solar orientation of the project.
RPC from Revit are not supported in 3ds Max → Remove them from the scene before exporting.
Section box to control the view or Auto-section Box (add-in).

2 Revit vs. 3ds max Rendering

There are several ways to get renders from Revit´s model: you can render directly in Revit, render in the cloud with Autodesk 360 or use another software application to render the image.

Render from Revit it is not a good option because of the quality of Revit's render engine and the shortlist of possibilities that it offers. Autodesk cloud is an online render gallery that allows to do Renders really fast and access to multiple versions of the renderings on the cloud, change rendering quality and apply background environments to rendered scenes.

However, we find that the best option to get high quality Renders is through 3d Studio Max and the best option to get fast and nice Renders is through Lumion.

Revit Rendering:

16 core for rendering
Animated Solar Study
Limited Effects

3ds max Rendering:

Unlimited cores for rendering
Camera & Rendering effects
Enhanced quality / Lighting control
Vray
Batch rendering, to kick off a sequence of images
Distributed rendering

3 Export Options from Revit

We have three options for the exportation:

DWG / DWF for Geometry Information (cannot export materials or lighting information, etc.)
Suite Workflows - FBX, which keeps geometry information, material data, lights and environmental settings and link the model directly to 3d studio Max.
FBX export which keeps geometry information, material data, lights and environmental settings.

FBX export, is the preferred format due to it keeps metadata and geometry information and the option to link the model from Revit instead of importing it may be a good option if we are still doing changes in the project.

4 Importing FBX file in 3ds Max

There are two options of importing a Fbx file in 3d studio max:

Import FBX
Link FBX

We can go back to Revit, update the design, re-export the Fbx model and replace the file updating in 3d studio max.

Settings of importation depending on how we have modelled the project and applied the materials:

Choose Preset (how to combine objects):

Combine by Revit Material
Combine by Revit Category
Combine by Revit Family Type
As one Object
Do not Combine Entities

File Units

5 3d studio Max

Materials:

The implementation in Revit now includes the Autodesk materials, a derivation of the Arch & Design material from Autodesk 3ds Max, arguably one of the most powerful and productive materials for mental ray in that application. The advantage of this is that you can transfer materials from Revit straight into Autodesk 3ds Max without losing any of the quality or appearance. Revit also has many of the same controls as Autodesk 3ds Max for rendering with mental ray. But this is where the similarity ends and the issues begin.

Create new materials
Modify Revit materials (scale textures, change diffuse and standard color, etc.)
Re-texture

Animation:

Autodesk can render a walkthrough, however you have little control over the animation. Transferring the model to 3d studio max is almost mandatory. Autodesk 3d studio max is also meant as an animation platform giving far greater control over the camera, the lighting, materials and even the ability to animate objects within your scene such as opening doors that you walk through. It also allows you to create and render multiple cameras that can then be stitched together into a single file, a small movie of the project.

Create simple animation

Render Scene:

Choose the best Renderer Engine
Customize the size of the Render
Precision Presets

Bottom-line

To prepare the Revit model before exporting
The ways of exporting a Revit model to 3d studio max
The way of importing a fbx model into 3d studio max
The characteristics of the imported model