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Posts Tagged ‘photoview’

Hi everyone! I’m sure by now many of you may have noticed that SolidWorks 2011 has been officially launched, which simply means that, although still in Beta 3 phase, it is now OK to acknowledge its existence and talk about it in public. Phew, what a relief, because some of us really struggle keeping something secret!  It will still be a while until it’s actually ready to use for production, but if you are on subscription, you can download and try the Beta version as early as today, if only to satisfy your curiosity.

I must admit this time around I haven’t been experimenting with the Beta as much as I would’ve liked. I guess you can say I’ve had a lot on my plate. To those of you who sent emails and other messages expressing your good wishes and prayers for my son: Thank You! The surgery went well and he’s recovering nicely. Even though I’m a bit envious of the other bloggers that got to visit SolidWorks headquarters this year, I’m definitely glad I stayed behind and was able to be here for him.  Anyway, I did get to test one or two things in the Beta version and was hoping I could find some time to blog about it.

I guess it is somehow obvious that since I had spent a bit of time playing with animations of lights in SolidWorks 2010 and rendering the animations in PhotoWorks, I would be curious about how all that would work out in SolidWorks 2011, now that PhotoWorks was out of the equation and PhotoView was the new rendering software. I guess in my mind I had this image of the “old” PhotoView and how it used to work as a stand alone application. I had no idea how it could replace PhotoWorks or even work out with the Motion Manager to produce a rendered animation, for instance.

So,  I tried it and was pleasantly surprised by all it can do now: you can add different kinds of lights and modify their intensity and color, apply special effects, modify the quality of the shadows they produce,  add decals, and much more  . In fact, even though I know it is PhotoView, the capabilities, the user interface, and the fact that it runs inside SolidWorks  makes me think a lot of PhotoWorks… only somehow simpler. It seems faster too, and more convenient. At least I don’t feel so threatened by this change, because what I already knew how to do in PhotoWorks translated really easily into this new PhotoView.

In this image you can see this extra tab called the Display Manager. From here you can access appearances, scene, lights, cameras and decals. If you look carefully, you will notice that each one of my lights exhibits two icons. The one of the left means that the light is turn on in SolidWorks, while the one on the right means that the light is turned off in PhotoView. Turning the lights on in PhotoView won’t show on the screen at all, because rendering takes place on a separate window.

 

So I turned all my lights in PhotoView and proceeded to create a preview render, like you see in the image. Oops! That’s not right!  Well, it makes sense that whatever settings I had for PhotoWorks won’t really apply in PhotoView, so I had to take a closer look to the lights and the new tools available in order to create a similar fog effect as I had in PhotoWorks.  By the way, while the rendering is taking place in this window, you can simply minimize it and continue working. It doesn’t leave you hanging there, waiting for it to be over. Isn’t that cool?

 

So I discovered that I could easily edit the PhotoView settings for each of my point lights. To achieve an effect similar to what I had before in PhotoWorks, I had to uncheck the option Shadows and check Fog. The fog option works in a way very similar to PhotoWorks, allowing the light to be visible as it would be in a room where there’s fog or light rain. 

 It took a little experimentation to find the right values to make this work, but the cool thing is that by leaving the preview render window open I was able to see the result of my adjustments to each setting instantaneously. I didn’t even had to check OK and or finish the command. I loved that!

 

After adjusting some of the settings of my two directional lights, I tried generating a final render using a better quality than the preview. You can adjust the quality of the preview and final renders, among other things, by accessing the PhotoView options. Notice how a second window opens on top of the preview one. In fact, even if you didn’t have the preview render window open to begin with, both windows will open whenever you do a final render. You should, however, still be able to minimize the final render window and continue working in SolidWorks. I think this part needs a bit of work, though. I was able to minimize the final render window, but the preview would not minimize. However, I was still able to open a different file and, after a few seconds delay, the preview window finally got out of my way. It wasn’t immediately, but it did happen.

 

Then I took a look at what happened to my lights inside the animation I had for this particular model. I noticed that all my lights were still off in PhotoView inside the animation and not only that, but the settings hadn’t been updated either.

 

I was a bit discouraged by this because that meant I would have to repeat all my work adjusting the settings, but then I realized that it makes sense that you can have lights for each animation that are altogether  independent from what you have for the model or for a different animation.  I also noticed that if I started a new study, then my lights would inherit the settings I had in PhotoView for my model. Interesting.

Here is another example of the use of fog in lights. This is a spot light that I added to the model of this flash light, remember? See? Too large values for fog distance and quality produce a beam of light that almost makes it look like a ray gun instead of a light. Lower values produce softer, more natural results in this case. It’s a bit of trial and error, I think, and it’s really nice to see it all change practically at the same time you do the changes.

And of course you can also edit the scene. This user interface seems to me like a nice mix between what it used to be with PhotoWorks and what’s new with PhotoView. It’s easy to use. Ah, did you notice that little pink handle near my cursor? I’m not sure what to call it, but if you click on it and drag it you can actually dynamically adjust the location of the floor in the scene.  That’s really neat. And it’s all taking place right in front of your eyes, in real time. No more guessing!

To be brutally honest with you, I was kind of bummed out that PhotoWorks was being replaced with PhotoView because I didn’t quite like the “old” user interface that was first introduced and because I felt kind of cheated for all the time and effort I put into learning PhotoWorks in the first place. I felt it had been a total waste of my time, but you know what? After checking it out I’m actually feeling much better. I really like what they did with it and I feel like my time spent with PhotoWorks wasn’t really a waste, that it will pay off after all. What do you think?

This is a little trick for creating your own studio that I learned from the Step-by –Step PhotoWorks Self-Study Guide, and decided to try on PhotoView 360, to see if it would work. Well, it does, with a few limitations, but it does work.

All it is about is creating a virtual studio with a backdrop, like photographers use in their photo studios, and a set of area lights.  The backdrop is simply an extrusion, like the one shown in the image, large enough so that the edges won’t be seen in the rendering, and with a smooth transition between vertical and horizontal surfaces, if possible, to avoid seeing the seam between them.  The area lights used here are like reflection panels in the real photo studio; a simple square shape will do. These area lights are mated perpendicular to the lines in the 3D sketch (shown in orange), as you can also see in the image. By editing the position and length of the lines in the 3D sketch, we’ll control the position of the area lights in our studio. Our model will go matted to the backdrop, preferably right in the middle. In this image, the model is a small LEGO toy car. As you can see, the model should be small in comparison to the studio, and the lights far away enough, otherwise it won’t work.

 

The book goes on in great detail about how to use this virtual studio inside PhotoWorks. Basically, you need to get rid of all other light sources and leave only the area lights you have created.  The same is true for PhotoView, we need to get rid of other lights and backgrounds in the scene and in order to do this, we are going to use the Black environment. Note: for better results, we should apply the Area Light material to the square panels before applying the Black environment; otherwise we won’t be able to see a thing. We can increase the intensity of the light in the scene by editing the Area Light material properties and modifying the value of the Luminous Intensity. I used a value of 20 W/srm2 in these examples. Of course,  it would be even better if each area light was a separate part, instead of three instances of the same part, because that would allow us to modify the luminous intensity of each light independently of the others.  In this example, however, every time I change the luminous intensity for one of the area lights, all three of them are affected, because all three of them share the same value.

 

By zooming and panning, we can obtain a closer view of the model, making sure that neither the area lights, nor the edges of the backdrop can be seen.  This is easier to do in PhotoWorks, thanks to the cameras. We can also add a material to the backdrop. It’s a good idea to try and experiment a few. The materials included in the folder Studio Materials, under Miscellaneous, have a few interesting choices.   I know what you’re probably thinking: it doesn’t really look good in the preview, does it?

 

Well, render the image and you’ll probably get a nice surprise. It make take some trial and error, some adjusting to the position and intensity of the lights, perhaps even adding more lights, but once you have your virtual studio customized the way you want it, you can exchange the model for some other one in the assembly and use it over and over again.