Some basic information:
In order to enjoy the benefit of rendering in the cloud, you will need to be on Subscription for the Autodesk Design Suite (Premium or Ultimate) or Autodesk Building Design Suite (Premium or Ultimate). You have access to this feature from the web, or from the plug-in within Revit.
To access Autodesk Cloud rendering, you will need to sign into the site using your subscription login and password. If you don't have one yet, you can create one. Once logged in you can download the plug in. After it is installed, it will show up on the ribbon on a new tab named Online which will have tools that will allow you to access the cloud from inside of Revit.
You can keep track of your usage by logging into your Autodesk Subscription account, under account settings. Under Cloud Products and Services you will see a summary of your usage for the various products and services available in the Autodesk Cloud.
Frequently Asked Questions:
How many cloud units do I get with my subscription seat?
There are a maximum of 100 Cloud Units per eligible seat on Subscription. Renderings are per-seat only and cannot be combined or pooled across multiple seats.
How many cloud units to produce a rendering?
Autodesk 360 Rendering = 5 CU per Rendered Image (Information updated July 10, 2012)
Can I get additional Cloud units?
At this time, there is no offering for additional Cloud Units. Rest assured, Autodesk is working on that.
How do I know if I have an eligible product?
You can check out the table we have showing all the benefits offered with Autodesk Cloud
The Cloud Rendering Benefits:
- High quality rendered images in a fraction of the time
- Not tying up your machine waiting for a rendering to finish
- No additional hardware purchase required.
Things I noticed:
- Some system resources are still needed, but not enough to prohibit you from working within Revit or other programs. My system that I did the testing from is an Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 2.40ghz, Windows 7 64 bit, 4gb of Ram
- The images rendered in the cloud have little or no speckling in the image as compared to rendering in Revit.
- The lighting and shadows are much more realistic.
Things to check for inside of Revit before you render in the cloud
- Do a test rendering inside of Revit to see if any materials are missing.
- This is something you wouldn’t find out from rendering in the cloud.
- Scene set up is determined inside of Revit for the usual things, materials, sun, lights, etc.
The Cloud Rendering Process:
Once you install the add in, it will be available on the newly added Tab, Online.
You will need to set up your camera view(s) and set your scenes in Revit as you normally would. Do a rendering at draft to make sure you have no warnings of missing materials.
To start the cloud rendering process from inside of Revit, select Render in Cloud You will see the following dialog appear for you to make the selections you want for your rendering.
Once you select Start Rendering you will see a blue circle swirling next to your name in the upper right corner of Revit, this indicates that the rendering is processing.
To open the Render Gallery, select the Render Gallery Icon on the Online tab and you will be able to see the process of the rendering in a dialog similar to the one below. Once the rendering is complete you will be able to see the large image as well as download or share the file.
If you selected to receive an email when the rendering is complete, that will be delivered to the email address associated to your login.
Rendered examples
The images below are examples and times to produce for renderings done inside of Revit and in the cloud. Not only is the time and resource savings impressive on its own, the quality is also better.
Rendered in the cloud in about 4 minutes at High quality, large image size and in the png format.
Same image rendered at Best in Revit took 21 minutes.
This interior rendering done in the cloud took about 20 minutes
Same image rendered at High in Revit took 54 minutes.
