Photorender help and discussion.

[esingleton]

Photorender help and discussion.

I am looking for some help or tutorials for getting started with Photorender and Alibre. As far as I can tell there is virtually no support for Photorender. I am having quite a difficult time getting things to look even remotely "photorealistic". Anybody have any pointers, tips, or instructions about using photorender and alibre?

Thanks

 

[rbrian]

Hi - I think Photorender is pretty easy to get started in - if you just get a little tip or two! The sophisticated images some create most likely come from a bit of experimenting!

In the mean time - here are some posted videos - simply camtasia screen captures - raw captures I put together for another comment in the Enhancement forums section on this topic! (Also from you - http://www.alibre.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2758#2758)

Check out the link - http://aircraft-computational.com/alibre/avi-1/index.html - directly here - I don't have all the links on my site updated to include it yet! I will get them edited and added to my swf directory too.

Ok. By the way - since these are simply the unrendered avi files from Camtasia - the video might be locked to a Camtasia CoDec! Sorry! ( I looked at them from wife's PC - Net link - Sound - but no Video. Will get this fixed as soon as I can! ) Robert

 

[rbrian]

Photorender - basic Info - Links Fixed

Hi - basically - for now skip the avi, and go to the flash pages - to get the link to the Photorender introduction I posted! Robert

 

[esingleton]

Robert,

Thank you for the reply. I have always paid attention to your website and tutorials. The basics you cover in the photorender movie are about as far as I can get. What I want to do is have my part on a white background with a white "floor" and show a shadow. I could do this with the Industrial pack demo I had a while ago and cannot recreate it with the standard photorender. Also the view selection seems a little strange to me. When I first open a model the default view is fine. I can manipultate it anyway I want, drop, rotate, whatever. When I try to return it to the default view using the orientation buttons it looks distorted, "Z+" in particular. The top looks stretched out, out of perspective. I will try and post a pic if I can.

 

[marm37co]

DROP SHADOW

esingleton:

In the scenary, bases, square can you work with DROP SHADOW. This is only in the version Industrial Pack. In the version Foundation this scenary configuracion do not appear.

Miguel

 

[MikeHenry]

There are some options in the standard photorender that will show a drop shadow of your assembly.

Select an option under light studios and I think that you'll also need to select one of the options in the Bases, Rooms, or Scenery Templates from the Scenery folder.

 

[siggy]

I just got the Industrial Pack version and have noticed the same distortion issues as esingleton is describing. The distortions always appear after changing the view axis and then performing some sort of rotate on the scene. The only way I have found to get it back to normal is to shut down Photorender and then restart it.

I'm also having quite a stability problem. Seems like whenever I apply materials properties to more than a few dozen parts and then try to rotate or zoom in or out of the view the program throws a critial error and shuts down. Of course all of my work is lost when this happens. Not sure if it's something systemic I am doing like not waiting long enough between render updates or what. Anyone else have issues like these?

 

[esingleton]

siggy,

As far as the distortion goes, I have found that if you recenter the view the distortions are fixed and the part is rotated as you wanted.

I will try to post a screenshot or two to better describe what I am talking about if any one needs a better explanation.

 

[jwknecht]

Re:

I'm also having quite a stability problem. Seems like whenever I apply materials properties to more than a few dozen parts and then try to rotate or zoom in or out of the view the program throws a critial error and shuts down. Of course all of my work is lost when this happens. Not sure if it's something systemic I am doing like not waiting long enough between render updates or what. Anyone else have issues like these?

siggy,

Yes. I have experienced the instability. Usually it is after experimenting with several effects... then it crashes. It seems the better you get, the less you have to experiment to get the effect you want and therefore less crashes. Note, I have not used photorender since V8 so I don't know if the stability improved with the new version.

 

[carradice]

I've been running V7 photorender for some time with no problems.

When upgraded to V8 installed V8 photorender and am now experiencing crash whenever I try and move/rotate/zoom on the part. Anyone have similar problems any advice?
Chris

 

[siggy]

I have an assembly that is made up of quite a number of parts and sub-assemblies. I can go into PhotoRender and assign materials to all of the parts and render a very nice looking image. Problem arises, however, if I go back to any of the parts or sub-assemblies and make any edits, no matter how minor. What happens is if I pull the assembly back into PhotoRender to re-render the modified design all of the material assigments go haywire. Parts will have randomly different materials applied. Parts that were linked together will now be linked to different parts. What a complete mess. Essentially, I have to go back to scratch, let PhotoRender assign the default material to everything and start over.

Has anyone figured out how to prevent this type of behaviour?

Robert