RENDERING...Q&A and GALLERY

[design-engine]

Prolux? is that the same?

 

[design-engine]

 

[design-engine]

That was quick and dirty. I see some flaws. Will continue on Monday.



I will be speaking at the Pro/USERS conference in Southwest
Michigan SMUG on July 12th and again at the Pro/USERS conference in San
Diego on the 28th of July.

Come by and say hi.


Edited by: design-engine

 

[SKYWALKER]

Nice render desing-engine , keep going on pro/engineer. In my opinion the floor should not be reflective , and the car needs some extra lights.


Have a nice day everybody

 

[Zaki]

good effort Bart

u done a nice job

 

[CPiotrowski]

Photolux...yes. But it doesnt appear that you are using it to its full capability. Keep trying.

 

[design-engine]

And about the reflection in the pavement...
It is about 6 percent reflection. Was trying to make it look wet like the
auto commercials.

Ok. Here is another. This JPG came from a PSD w/ 5 layers in photoshop
that control highlights and reflectivity in the pavement. There are small tears
that are visible between surfaces that I suspect will come out when I do a final
hi-rez image. So far these renders are to screen. Any comments about the tear
just above the right door. I started to take it out with photoshop. About
reflections in the car... I softened up and combined several renders to get the
yellow stripe from the road to soften up. Then added some basic people images to
all walls in the final render and cut the car out of that image in photoshop.
I am just happy to lighten up the image. Much less get chrome or brushed aluminum.

I
can not post any more elseware on the site... something about spamming
not allowed. I think I am being restricted or there is a blanket
number of posts one can post per day? I only posted one
since midnight. I think there is another problem with the talk
board. This new image has 3 percent reflectivity into the pavemnet.

Edited by: design-engine

 

[vide]

Hello there,





I'm using PRO e for about 10 months now and I really like the surface modelling. It seems very good and easy to use but I must practice some more, especially with cars caus they're the hardest surfaces but so fantastic to render. Bit of a car freak to you know. But as design_engine also mentioned. Rendering in pro-e is poor. It's out of time when you compare it to other products and I haven't even found a good plugin. Another thing that bothers me is that you can only zoom-in at the model but can't look from the to the outside ( like you're inside a room or something).Or am I wrong? The thing is that I'm trying to find the best sollution for rendering my Pro_e models but still keep the surfaces instead of translating it to triangles. Besides that there should also be the possibilty to make an animation, use particles, sky lights, GI, HDRI etc etc. These are the tools you want to use to create realistic renders. And these aren't in Pro_e. I have however found arender on cg talk where the model came from PRO-e but translated, meshed,translated,textured, translated and then rendered. So it took 4 different programs to reach this. For me it's to long but the rendering looks great though.


link: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=375403


Me myself is using C4D but this can't import STEP or Iges files. Therefor it becomes a massive file with to much polygons but the renders are very fine. Maybe I will post them in the future.


Good luck rendering!! And keep it up.

 

[design-engine]

someone should write a better interface to the
http://www.lightworkdesign.com/ as this is the rendering engine for
Pro/E 3rd party software like this requires access to the
kernel and should be accomplished thru Pro/TOOLKIT right?


Edited by: design-engine

 

[CPiotrowski]

Rubber on the wheels looks prety good and the plastic on the louvers. Car paint still needs alot of manipulating. The road wouldn't be that wide either.


This render is taken from completely inside a model.

Edited by: CPiotrowski

 

[speckofdustin]

In response to design-engine's (Hi, Bart. Nice Mustang model.) most recent post:

If you ask me (which I realize no one has, I'm just offering my opinion), the problem with Pro/E's rendering capabilities isn't Pro/E's interface to Lightworks. The problem is the render engine itself. Development of the Lightworks engine seems to have fallen behind that of many other renderers, such as mental ray. I used FormZ (which also employs the Lightworks engine) in college and the images that are on the Lightworks website now seem little better than what was possible back then (almost 10 years ago). Contrast that with the images on the mental ray site ( http://www.mentalimages.com/4_0_gallery/index.html ) and you will see how much more capable that renderer is.

Granted, one could argue that mental ray has a more specialized and "hard core" user base and that's why their gallery is better, but Lightworks has only recently added features, such as final gather, that mental ray has had for years.

If you want PTC to improve Pro/E's rendering capabilities, ask them to partner with a company with a better renderer.

Or have them ask Lightworks why their engine is behind and better images are possible in mental ray, Light Wave, VRay, Brazil, Maxwell, and so many others.

Until Pro/E's capabilities improve, I'll export models to another package for rendering.

Sorry, I probably haven't added much to this discussion. I'll stop now...


Edited by: speckofdustin

 

[design-engine]

CPiotrowski-
You are talking about building a model completely around the object
instead of using the cube to render inside? I will try that
then. Also Notice the broken surfaces above the door. I
posted to [email protected] and got a lot of suggestions from 1 increase
acuracy2 Go
to View-->Display Settings-->Model Display --> Shade Tab and
set Display Quality from default 3 to 10. 3 Turn on Feature
Anti-Aliasing in Render Setup 4 Turn On Small Surfaces Checkbox.



Hey Dustin whats up... you wrote that book! You won
first place in the 2002 photoreal competition. Hows it going?
Send me a copy of that book and I will get a review on
design-engine.com
http://www.design-engine.com/competition/






About Lightworks....

Lightworks is also the render engine for Pro/CONCEPT

It can do a wide variety of things like true procedural maping
etc. I think that product is quie mature however the problme
lies with PTC's not making it a priorty and writing into the code.




And Dustin, This thread challenged me to render that damd car in
Pro/E so I am trying my best to nail a render. I feel like I am
using 1990 3d studio



Edited by: design-engine

 

[CPiotrowski]

I am doing a render for MIKO right now. It would be done if my computer didnt crash after hours of troubleshooting.


I would be more than happy to render the mustang for you when I have a chance so you can see what you are shooting for.


What surfaces above what door? Are you referring to your car model?


I am also pretty sure I have pro/CONCEPT but havent messed with it yet.
Edited by: CPiotrowski

 

[james.lynch]

Hi Bart!


Nice render! looks great for a first attempt on photolux!


I must agree that Photolux is a bit of a dog to use and also that the level of control is simply not there when compared to pretty much any other render engine! I also think that the render times are quite bad (although it is one of the few ProE packages which can actually avail of multiprocessors! )


I also think it's quite.. I'd almost go so far as to say impossible to properly color match something (for example, if ID have specified that a particular qualified multi tone metallic paintis to be used and you are there like an fool for hours trying to get it just right!)


Also, it's very difficult to control reflections(due to a lack of ramps).


now that that's off my chest.. I actually do like photolux.. I think it has it's place! (while I don;t think it's worth

 

[CPiotrowski]

everything is controlled with perspective. Thats how you get your camera inside the room.


This is the model I am rendering for MIKO, I decided to just post this clay render so I can get on with the textured version and stop messing with this damn picture. It is just grey after-all.

 

[james.lynch]

looks good!


so do you think the above renders could be done in ProE? and not just render the files to look good but actually look like they are above? as they are in production?

 

[Miko]

Hi all..I want to tell you that I have asked CP for render my Gearbox (my bachelor project). I have uploaded my regular render in earlier post. I just want to know how it would be look like with usign of ARX because I have only basic skills of this module. I am wondering to see CP's result. good luck CP and I haev to say that I appreciate your help... Hi James nice to see you here again.. Does Photolux supporting multiprocessoring ? As far as I know it is supported only in Wildfire 2 M190 and WF 3.0... Am I right?

 

[james.lynch]

Hi James nice to see you here again.. Does Photolux supporting multiprocessoring ? As far as I know it is supported only in Wildfire 2 M190 and WF 3.0... Am I right?

Hi Miko! good talking to you again!


I've only realy used photolux on wf2.0 M190 or above, WF3.0 Pre prod and WF3.0 F000.. so.. I cant answer that! sorry!


what do you think of the above Lightwave renders?

 

[Miko]

Hi CP. You have overtaked me with information about your render of my assembly..Really sorry but I was pretty busy last few days..First thing firs..Beautiful render of bathroom..
About gearbox: Nice shadows and depth of field...Did you create this bump map texture for floor with Photoshop or it was just selected from Photolux Graphic Library?..
Why is first (input) crankshaft hidden?
Did you already see whole animation?
James: of course that this is great render []
Edited by: Miko

 

[CPiotrowski]

JAMES- This is my absolute honest opinion and to answer your question about pro-e and can it produce those images. I seriously feel that if I were paid to render at my job and not just working on it at home, IF..I were paid. Yes, I could produce a render like those with pro-e. Can I produce a render like those with my current time frime? Well, I think one or two of my renders have been very close to photorealistic, but still maybe a tad short of these images. I feel the robot render was photorealistic especially consideringit was a two hour model with no details. If I had added details and rendered the robot with the bathroom as its reflectant, I have no doubt it would have been able to hold up with any render program. Some models are just alot harder to convince the eye that its real. Things we see on a daily basis, constantly, tv remotes, appliances, vehicles...they are very hard to pass off to the naked eye. I have only seen maybe 5 or 6 people on the two biggest rendering sites that can pull off a no-shyt, cant find a flaw realistic car render.


If its raw brilliant, rendering you search for, then switching to another program is probably a good way to go, especially with the learning curve. Will your companies spend the money on 3DS for you when pro/CONCEPT can create the same images within itself? I dont know. I guess I just looked at this as PTC's eye opener that rendering can really be a big part of this program and package. They nearly have the market cornered in Engineering, trust me, the more we show this program can do and that we are interested in using and learning it, they will improve it.


Look at pro/CONCEPT, maybe thatwasnt such a big topic at PTC until they saw the interest generated on the biggest engineering forum on the internet. Look at the hits on this thread. Obviously alot of people stop in here on a daily basis to see who posted what. I definetly know 5 people havent visited this thread 35,000 times. They may have never seen this thread but then again, maybe they did. What I do know for sure is... when I get pro/CONCEPT (oh, I dont have it), I will be competing against the better renderers head-on. The difference will be...my models will be buildable and manufactuarble. I dont see 3DS making their program parametric anytime soon.


MIKO- Thanks for the compliments. THe bathroom render was actually still a WIP but I thought I would show it for an example. The floor is a texture and bumpI made in photoshop. I havent seen the animation yet, I keep forgetting its there. WHenever I open a model I kinda zone out. I will look at it soon. I am very excited to add animation to my background.


JAMES Lightwave renders in my opinion are equal with the best of 3DS. The problem with ligthwave is the sharability. Everything has to be a particular lightwave file, this emans scenes, images, everything. It is a much easier renering interface than 3DS.
Edited by: CPiotrowski