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JST

Alibre Super User
Finally managed to get a steel material that looks halfway decent. had to use the metallic paint material to do it. It can be a little too "perfect", the textures avaiiable don't quite capture the look of older steel with a few nicks. The "scratched" texture just isn't it, and I have not found one in the wild that I like.

But the tone and reflectivity I do like for steel that has been around for a while, no longer any polish on it, but retaining a sheen under the surface dirt and discoloration, and it looks good from a little more distance.. that's only a 1/2" nut. A lot of the "too perfect" comes from having sharply defined edges, where a real part has rounded when you zoom in on it. Supposedly regular Keyshot can do that, but KS for 3DS apparently cannot.
 

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  • better steel.jpg
    better steel.jpg
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JST

Alibre Super User
Looks very good. Just like the ones we used back at the guitar amp company....

P.S., The gaskets are usually 2 piece..... in halves.
 

oldfox

Alibre Super User
I'm still trying to find my way around inside KS. Question: Is it possible to assign a KS color, texture etc. to 1 Alibre Design color and have that same KS color etc. propagated throughout the model with that same AD color???? If is is possible that will really make my AD work a whole easier, if not?? Oh well.
 

JST

Alibre Super User
I know you can assign it (via a "material template" file in Keyshot) to a material in Alibre.

Problem has been (and this may have changed) that the interface between Alibre and Keyshot actually takes the filename instead of the material.

This means that you cannot (yet) assign a material name and know what it will be in Keyshot. It SHOULD be that way, but has not been. I had to go through the BIP file to find that out.

Once you have the model imported, you have then to assign colors etc to each part. Once that is done, they will stay the same, and if you make a "Material Template", they will be able to be assigned to a new version of the same model simply by applying that material template. But any new parts will have to be assigned, and a new template made.

Material template is on the "window" tab in Keyshot. You supposedly can do the assignment either by part, or by material, except that when I select "material", it actually uses the part.

I hope that has changed, or will soon be changed. Last time I checked, it had not been.

If it worked as expected, then you could have materials come in and get their "look" automatically
 

oldfox

Alibre Super User
I know you can assign it (via a "material template" file in Keyshot) to a material in Alibre.


Thanks. I'll see if I can find out how to use "parts" instead of colors. After all, each part is only one color in AD.
 

JST

Alibre Super User
An A-40 is not a big engine, but likely not gonna fit in full size...... Eventually I will put together one that is about 1/5 scale, for R/C airplane usage, but the innards are not all designed yet. That one might...... ;)

The model is big enough in number of parts that some prior versions of AD have had problems with it, even though memory limits were not approached. I did put every stud, nut, and locknut on it, for BOM purposes, so the number of parts may be more of an issue.

Actually had to take some out on the backside of the model before it was reliable in the Geomagic Design program version. 2018.2 does not seem to so much as sneeze when dealing with the model, so I may be able to finish it off further if I care to.

Oh. yeah..... Parts can be several colors, but each "feature" can only be one color. Like this
 

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  • drawer.AD_PRT
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Last edited:

slipstick

Member
An A-40 is not a big engine, but likely not gonna fit in full size...... Eventually I will put together one that is about 1/5 scale, for R/C airplane usage, but the innards are not all designed yet. That one might...... ;)

The model is big enough in number of parts that some prior versions of AD have had problems with it, even though memory limits were not approached. I did put every stud, nut, and locknut on it, for BOM purposes, so the number of parts may be more of an issue.

Actually had to take some out on the backside of the model before it was reliable in the Geomagic Design program version. 2018.2 does not seem to so much as sneeze when dealing with the model, so I may be able to finish it off further if I care to.

Oh. yeah..... Parts can be several colors, but each "feature" can only be one color. Like this



Went a little bonkers with the colors in my file - too bad it only comes in as 1 color in KeyShot. I don't have an extra $2K to upgrade - anyone care to spot me? :)
 

Attachments

  • Body - Hydraulic Hand Pump for Render.AD_PRT
    2.9 MB · Views: 10

JST

Alibre Super User
..... too bad it only comes in as 1 color in KeyShot. I don't have an extra $2K to upgrade - anyone care to spot me? :)

Is that the cost to get colors per surface? Ouch.

Just today, as Keyshot 6 loaded, the rendering of the orange tiger stripe kitten came up as the "splash" image. I was thinking to myself how that was even done... It must have come in that way from some program, OR there is an upgrade that will allow the stripes in Keyshot... but those colors are not even on surfaces, they are on arbitrary areas, with a fade-out between. Not a "CAD type" job.

Yeah, I think if I had 2k spare right now I would upgrade the computer before going farther with Keyshot (I need a client to pay soon). I think 4 processors is about the minimum with Keyshot unless you have lots of time to wait. I have 2 right now, and things do get done, but not very fast.

Trying to decide on the next laptop.....are 6 that much faster than 4 for Keyshot..... They do not help at all with the modeling side of things, and per Max, there is not that much that multiple processors can do absent a really major rewrite of the program to handle splitting up jobs among many processors.
 

idslk

Alibre Super User
Hello @slipstick ,

it's a little off ("alibre-user-shot-gallery"), but as mentioned on Alibre homepage under Add-ons -> Rendering ...
Simlab Composer 9.0.10 Lite Edition
haven't installed a live-link nor the complete materials from their website, so the colors are from AD.
Inside Simlab you can access the faces and give them different materials as well if you want to.

I have only:
- loaded your model
- exported the model as AP214 .stp
- imported in Simlab
- let Simlab do the rendering ;)
- ready:
Body_Hydraulic_Handpump.png

Regards
Stefan
 
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slipstick

Member
Is that the cost to get colors per surface? Ouch.

Just today, as Keyshot 6 loaded, the rendering of the orange tiger stripe kitten came up as the "splash" image. I was thinking to myself how that was even done... It must have come in that way from some program, OR there is an upgrade that will allow the stripes in Keyshot... but those colors are not even on surfaces, they are on arbitrary areas, with a fade-out between. Not a "CAD type" job.

Yeah, I think if I had 2k spare right now I would upgrade the computer before going farther with Keyshot (I need a client to pay soon). I think 4 processors is about the minimum with Keyshot unless you have lots of time to wait. I have 2 right now, and things do get done, but not very fast.

Trying to decide on the next laptop.....are 6 that much faster than 4 for Keyshot..... They do not help at all with the modeling side of things, and per Max, there is not that much that multiple processors can do absent a really major rewrite of the program to handle splitting up jobs among many processors.


Actually, I may have mis-spoke. On looking at this again, it's possible that the $1000 version may support that feature. Still...

upload_2018-12-11_5-24-11.png
 

slipstick

Member
Hello @slipstick ,

it's a little off ("alibre-user-shot-gallery"), but as mentioned on Alibre homepage under Add-ons -> Rendering ...
Simlab Composer 9.0.10 Lite Edition
haven't installed a live-link nor the complete materials from their website, so the colors are from AD.
Inside Simlab you can access the faces and give them different materials as well if you want to.

I have only:
- loaded your model
- exported the model as AP214 .stp
- imported in Simlab
- let Simlab do the rendering ;)
- ready:
View attachment 26680

Regards
Stefan


How did I miss that?! I'm downloading now!
 

simonb65

Alibre Super User
I get round the lack of material linking from Alibre to Keyshot by making 'things' as you would in reality, i.e. if its a separate material, it must be made from a seperate part (or consider printing on an surface as another 'part').

For example, I do a lot of PCB design, so my components are assemblies, made up of separate parts. Each part 'name' has the material or finish appended to the parts name/number ...

upload_2018-12-12_17-7-44.png
upload_2018-12-12_17-8-9.png

Each part is also given an Alibre colour, so that the Windows explorer thumbnails look something like they should ...

upload_2018-12-12_17-9-46.png

Those components parts are combined into an assembly, so sub-parts can be reused and shared in many 'components' ...

upload_2018-12-12_17-10-59.png

When I export that into Keyshot, each part is coloured based on the part colour given to it in Alibre.

upload_2018-12-12_17-14-11.png

I then have a material library of textures and a set of Template Rules in Keyshot ...

upload_2018-12-12_17-15-24.png

When this is applied to the scene, you get ...

upload_2018-12-12_17-16-34.png

When the whole PCB assembly is built using this process and the template rule is applied, you get ...

upload_2018-12-12_17-20-19.png

(there are a few parts I haven't created yet or split into assemblies yet!)

If, you structure your parts and use a process like this, its one mouse click to apply the material template, over and above what you normally do to get it into Keyshot! and whilst you've defined the material at source, you can still tweek the template mapping and materials as Keyshot evolves and you want to refine the realism of your renderings.

For those interested, I don't even create the PCB manually. I wrote a plugin that imports Gerber/ODB++/GenCAD manufacturing files and it creates the PCB assembly from that data. The only other item in the process is a mapping file which maps the PCB components to Alibre PRT/ASM files and defines their orientation and respective XYZ offsets between the PCB component datum and the Alibre datum.
 

JST

Alibre Super User
That is really "photorealistic"! The only thing that gives it away is that there is no solder. Other than that, it is basically a photo.

I am not clear on how you did the mapping to keyshot materials.... I understood there was a choice of "part" or "material". I did not know you could map colors like that.
 

idslk

Alibre Super User
Hello Simon,

have you drawn the "printing" on the processor an extruded it very thin in AD?

Regards
Stefan
 

jhiker

Alibre Super User
rules.jpg
I've been using Keyshot for years and I didn't know you could apply 'template rules' - thanks!
 
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