Anna's SolidMuse

More PhotoView 360 Renders

My latest project at Auer is an order for three new die designs. These tools are being built to work with three new ballistic press systems we are also doing the design and build on.

I am almost done with the designs and have quite a few of the common components already released to the shop for build. Been going through all the designs, tying up loose ends and getting the rest of the detail drawings completed and ready for final release.

We have a four day weekend for the Christmas holidays so I have brought my files home to work on over the weekend. I get pretty bored after about a day at home with not much to do. So I figured I would get some busy work done on these designs here at home.

Today I spent some time setting up one of my tool models for rendering in SolidWorks new PhotoView 360 rendering program.

On my list of things to do, is to send a request into the Luxology/SolidWorks PhotoView 360 Resources Forum for some new materials. Being in tool design there are a few materials we use all the time that are not represented. Black Oxide for fasteners is high on my list, along with some more refined appearances for machined and ground tool steels. More colors for anodized aluminums would be great to see also.

Here are the results of my rendering session this afternoon.

Cheers,

Anna

PhotoView 360 Survey

SolidWorks wants to hear from you.....

They have created a survey for those of you have used the new PhotoView 360 rendering program.  The survey is 11 questions long and will give you a chance to give your input on what you think of PV360.  You will also get a chance to give your opinion on the features future versions of the software should incorporate.

Please spend about 5 minutes and give SolidWorks some feedback on their new program.

http://www.solidworks.com/PhotoView360_survey

Cheers,

Anna

PhotoView 360 Impressions

I have been spending some time experimenting with SolidWorks new rendering package PhotoView 360 the past week or two.  I am pretty sure I am a SolidWorks user who is squarely in the target market for this easy to use rendering package.  I have zero artistic talent, am not always as patient as I should be with learning new software and for the types of products our company produces do not really need a full blown photo-rendering package.  So a couple weeks ago I installed the Pre-Release version of PhotoView 360 on my Lenovo Thinkpad T61p and gave the software a whirl.

I spent a few minutes reading a couple tutorials that were posted by Greg Leuenberger over on the SolidWorks discussion forum.  Cool, the software looked pretty easy to use.  Import your file, add materials, set your environment and render settings, then hit the render button.  The controls are pretty easy to use, there is not a huge amount of customization available, which will probably drive those that are more versed in PhotoWorks nuts.  But for the casual render jockey like me it works pretty well.  In no time at all I had several renders that looked pretty darn good.

PhotoView 360 has a direct competitor in Bunkspeed's HyperShot.  HyperShot was introduced in early 2007, and was pretty groundbreaking software that leveraged the power of today's computer platforms to offer an insanely easy to use rendering package.  PhotoView 360 is based on Luxology LLC Nexus technology which is used in their Modo 302 visualization package.  Pretty cool stuff....  It is truly amazing what can be done on a $2500 computer these days.  Not long ago you needed some pretty high end software with some ridiculously expensive computer systems to create these types of renders.

PhotoView 360 is still a bit rough around the edges.  There are a few things that I hope SolidWorks is planning to address as this software matures.  Those that are more versed in photo-rendering probably have a bigger list.  My needs are pretty simple.

I would like to be able to save my own custom materials.  At the moment any material tweaks that you make you need to write down your settings to save for future use.

The Save command is also basically non-functional.  I would expect when saving settings in PhotoView 360, that all my materials, environments and render settings would be saved to the SolidWorks model.  I should be able to re-open the file in PhotoView 360 and have the model be in the exact same view state as when I saved and closed the model.  At the moment you have to re-apply all your settings. To much CAD overhead getting in the way of me getting my design work done.

EDIT:  Mark Biasotti has contacted me to let me know what I am seeing with the Save functionality is a bug.  I am seeing it on my computer, but most users are able to save their PhotoView 360 settings.  I am running on a Windows Vista machine and there are a few bugs related to the OS. We have it added to the bug list for PhotoView 360 so SolidWorks can get the issue addressed.  AMW  02OC08

Fellow bloggers, Ricky Jordon, Rob Rodriguez, Josh Mings, and Gabi Jack also have some reviews of PhotoView 360, along with some tips on how to use the software.

All in all PhotoView 360 is a pretty neat package.  It fits in with the type of rendering my company would like to do.  My hope is SolidWorks will keep developing the package and not leave it half finished as all the product definition folks and developers attention gets focused on the next big thing.  This type of package is perfect for, I would guess, the vast majority of SolidWorks users who want to use their cad data for photo-renders but are not interested in the overhead of learning a more complex rendering package.  I can see PhotoView 360 becoming an important part of my workflow at Auer.