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| Locks |
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Piranesi allows you to 'lock on' to a particular portion of the image, such as a specific wall or those parts of the image which correspond to wooden surfaces.
These locks mean that you do not need to create masks in order to limit your painting actions to a particular feature in the scene - Piranesi automatically detects the edges and does not paint beyond them.
Piranesi can do this because its Epix format files store a depth and material value as well as a colour value, making Piranesi quicker to use and more accurate than traditional painting programs. It combines the ease and freedom of 2D painting with the precision of 3D models.
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A plane lock has been used to paint a texture onto the floor of the lobby without painting over the walls or anything standing on the floor.
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| Painting in perspective |
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When you paint with textures - such as brick or wood effects - Piranesi uses its knowledge of the 3D geometry to continuously adjust the texture to honour the scene perspective.
For example, if you paint with a brick texture, the bricks get smaller as they get further away, and the horizontal lines of brick courses converge towards the vanishing points of the scene.
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| Cutouts |
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Piranesi uses the term 'cutout' for 2D raster images or 3D models which can be placed into the scene, such as people, plants, trees, furniture, or cars. 3D models can be in 3DS, DXF, SketchUp, Archvision RPC, or MicroGDS format.
Piranesi's 3D knowledge makes the placement work like magic - Piranesi automatically calculates the correct size and perspective for the cutout depending on where in the scene it is placed, and determines masking effects depending on what lies in front of and behind it. Cutouts can even cast shadows on other parts of the scene!
Once you have placed a cutout in your scene, you can go back to it later to tweak its position or change its characteristics.
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Simple scene before the addition of cutouts.
Piranesi has been used to add people and trees to the scene. Note the shadows and reflections. Piranesi calculated the sizes of the cutouts automatically.
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| Non-photorealistic effects |
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Piranesi is an especially valuable tool in early design stages. In these stages many details are not known, are too expensive to model, and even if they were modelled would distract from the important aspects of the design.
Piranesi provides a wealth of effects - many of which would not be possible without Piranesi's 3D knowledge - to give your image an artistic, hand-rendered look (they are referred to as non-photorealistic because the aim is specifically not to produce an image that looks like a photograph). Such images are often more attractive to look at, convey a 'feel' for the scene that a photorealistic image cannot, and draw the client's attention to what is important whilst fading out irrelevant details.
It is easiest to explain these effects by looking at the resultant images - the Piranesi gallery contains many examples of photorealistic and non-photorealistic images.
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In this image by Miller Hare, Piranesi has been used to focus the viewer's attention on the landscaped area, washing out the peripheral detail.
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| Styles |
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Effects or combination of effects - locks, cutouts, textures, fades, blends, and so on - can be saved as a style for future re-use.
Piranesi comes complete with a whole range of predefined styles, using over 2000 free texture and cutout images. A Style Manager is provided to help you manage your styles and create new ones.
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| Plans and elevations |
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You can use Piranesi without ever building a 3D model!
Piranesi allows you to import any plan or elevation image to use as a starting point. Many of Piranesi's effects will work without depth and material information. Because Piranesi knows that the image is plan or elevation, depth and material information can be added by constructing new planes and adding cutouts.
Piranesi will let you begin with any PNG, TIF, BMP, or JPG image - all you have to do is tell Piranesi whether to regard it as a plan or elevation. Many of Piranesi's effects will work without depth and material information. Because Piranesi knows that the image is plan or elevation, depth and material information can be added by constructing new planes and adding cutouts.
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Original elevation drawing
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Elevation drawing after painting in Piranesi
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| Panoramas |
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Piranesi breaks new ground by introducing animation to non-photorealistic rendering.
Panoramic views can be rendered with Piranesi, and saved in .MOV format for display using the industry standard Apple QuicktimeŽ viewer.
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click to play .mov file
(Requires Apple QuickTime 5)
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