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Will Photoworks be fixed or improved with SW 2008?

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Razberryjones

Razberryjones

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Question says it all, is anyone in the know about any changes to Photoworks with SW 2008. I'm currently shopping around for a 3rd party rendering engine, and Maxwell makes me nervous based on some of the informations I've read... ie, that it is still pretty much Beta software. (But then again, isn't it all?) Anyway, any info on this would be much appreciated. Thanks.
 
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Why not try it for yourself? SW2008 Pre-Release2 is available for download from the portal.

[cheers]
 
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I think there's also some mention of enhancements in the What's New PDF, but you'd really need to try something like this yourself to see if you can really get any better results or if it's primarily window dressing. One thing that's supposedly integrated is color management--in PhotoWorks, regular SolidWorks, etc. (from what I gathered). That would be nice.



Jeff Mowry
Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.
 
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PhotoWorks has a number of changes for SW 2008. When I find time I'm going to write a review on PhotoWorks 2008 for my blog.

As CBL says you can download PR2 now and try it for yourself.

Maxwell still has a lot of bugs, no doubt.

What kind of products are you trying to render?

Rob Rodriguez CSWP
Eastern Region SWUGN Representative SW 2007 SP 2.0
 
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Thanks all, I'm just plain afraid to download 2008, at this point, I still haven't recovered from the 2007 debacle. It has led to being able to obtain a faster, multiprocessor sysetem, but I have serious doubts as to wheter that will effect anything at all. I'm rendering POP displays from as small and table top condiment racks, to as large as 20' diameter custom Kiosks. Materials commonly run the gamut of custom finishes and are Steel, Alluminum, wood, Acrylic, Plexi Glass, Illuminated canopies etc... Not to mention the numerous graphics, Lettering, and product placement. Now they want me to be able to place the models in "real" environment settings. As I've said before, I'm at wits end with photoworks. Even if I did have the time to ponder exactly how many photons I should bounce or absorb off surface x to get y effect on surface z. The results are usually ridiculous, and at best cartoonish after 3 hours of set up and tweaking, and a 2 plus hour wait to save even one unusable file to the hard drive. Naturally, All without the benefit of even having a preview! I realize much of this is based on my experience level. But my point is. Even if I was the best 3-D artist in the world. I wouldn't be able to accomplish squat with photoworks alone. The sad thing is, it used to function much, much better than it does currently. I'm feel like I'm going to end up losing my job over all of this eventually, I've just made an 11K investment in a new computer system and my employers will want to see results on day one that I likely cannot provide.
They have absolutely ZERO understanding of what I'm even attempting to do, and any attempt to explain the concept of a rendering farm is met with stupified glares and disbelief.

That's brings up another great point? How do you retrieve the preview window in photoworks once you close out of it?
Tools, Customize, Commands doesn't work by dragging the icon back into the menu, and nothing in the help section that I can find.

Enough Ranting... lol... If anyone can suggest an affordable, stable rendering engine that is compatible with solidworks (either fia plug-in, or just format swapping) Please share!

 
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Once you apply the properties to your scene you can go to the Photoworks dropdown menu and select Preview Window. Alternatively you can pick the Preview Window icon from the PW toolbar.

Dan

 
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I've seen some really nice POP renderings done with PhotoWorks. I think you just need to learn how to make it work for you.

You can toggle the preview window on and off with the photoworks toolbar icon.

Rob Rodriguez CSWP
Eastern Region SWUGN Representative SW 2007 SP 2.0
 
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Hello, I know you are supposed to be able to toggle it on and off, I wish I could?? On my system. I used the preview window ONE TIME. Toggled it off, and now it is greyed out and does not allow you to click it, because for all intents and purposes, the funtionality is gone?

I've tried to add it back in using Customize commands, but then I end up with two greyed out icons, that don't do anything.??
 
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Yes, I've created many nice POP renderings with SW 2006 and below, I used to make it work for me just fine. I could take a low res image of a pile of baked beans from the internet, use the bump map gleaned from that file, and apply it to selected faces to achieve an almost perfect texture match on a clear plastic gatorade bottle, and I dare say, it was simple. For some inexplicable reason, I can no longer do that sort of thing with photoworks in 2K7. I agree, that I'm in need of further education on the subject at this point, but more or less SW 2007 threw me back into the stone age with my rendering capability.
It is in no way conducive to being productive in a fast paced environment, and that is essentially my problem.

 
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The icons will be greyed-out until you apply some PW properties to your model. Honestly, I never use the preview window. It's too small to really show me what's going on anyway. Aggravates me more than anything else.

You may already know this, but what I do while I tweak my PW settings is set my screen to Four View. The graphics processor only renders one of the four quadrants at a time. This dramatically reduces render time and gives you a big enough preview of the settings that you can actually tell what's changed.

Dan

 
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I am very inexperienced when it comes to rendering, so I can't say too much about Photoworks. I've seen some of the results more experienced users get on this forum and others, and they're impressive. I have had a hard time replicating those kinds of results.

Our company is evaluating Hypershot right now, from Bunkspeed ( I have been blown away by the results achieved in less than five minutes, and for us that's important since we don't want to spend hours rendering. There's a trial version available if you want to check it out.
 
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I've been able to achieve some reasonable renderings with Photoworks and believe 2007 is capable of the best results so far. But there is a trade off between time and results. I have found it to be very unreliable and prone to lose materials etc.
 
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