Rendering, it's more than a five min process
Rendering, it's more than a five min process
(OP)
Hi guru's
I'm playing around with some of the advanced settings in photoworks 3, and my part is starting to look pretty darn cool. However......I find that the part on my screen is far lighter in shade than my rendered part. It takes about 5 min to render each time after I make a change, i could spend days doing this (not by choice either).
Also the printed version is different in shade and colour.
Is this a normal process? Any tips or links would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Gerry
www.scatmat.com
I'm playing around with some of the advanced settings in photoworks 3, and my part is starting to look pretty darn cool. However......I find that the part on my screen is far lighter in shade than my rendered part. It takes about 5 min to render each time after I make a change, i could spend days doing this (not by choice either).
Also the printed version is different in shade and colour.
Is this a normal process? Any tips or links would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Gerry
www.scatmat.com






RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
Ray Reynolds
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
PW2's default gamma setting is 1.5. I find if I change it to 1 the screen image and the printed image are a lot closer in apperance. They still are not perfect but usually acceptable. The shading os your model bears no wieght on your PW rendering. You could have your model shaded any color but rendered in black.
Here are a few sites with PhotoWorks rendering samples. They don't give any information on how to use PW but it lets you see what is possible. www.zxys.com www.mikejwilson.com www.bxhdesigns.com
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
As with all photo-rendering software CPU speed and RAM are usually the rate controling factors.
nick
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
2 things I learned about rendering that always seem worth retelling:
1.) A screen never looks like a print. Screens are backlit; paper is not (unless you hold it up to a window). It may be necessary to do separate renderings for different media.
2.) For the pupose of tweaking material settings and lighting, try experimenting on simple shapes like cones and blocks which render much faster. Alternatively, use a simplified version of your model or a small piece of the model. This can really cut the amount of time it takes to adjust.
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
We render things all the time. One thing we noticed is that a screen rendering is normally lighter than a rendering to a file.
Some things that will save you some time:
1. Make small screen renderings before rendering to a larger file to check your settings. When doing this:
a. Allow shadows at their lowest quality setting.
b. Don't render with your window maximized--make it about 1/4 screen size
2. Don't use indirect lighting unless necessary--this takes a great deal of resources and also requires different reflective properties of each material than direct lighting (default) settings take. If you use indirect lighting, start small and work your way up with screen renderings as mentioned above.
Brian Hill at BXH Designs gave some of these hints to me--his renderings are incredible.
Jeff Mowry
Industrial Designhaus, LLC
http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
If you have the proper hardware and software and its properly calibrated and you are careful with your color ranges it seems that you can get close on a print to what you see on the monitor.
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
Basically, the problem stems from the fact that monitors display colors in the RGB gamut, which are additive in nature while printers print in the CYMK gamut, which are subtractive in nature.
The best you can hope for is to adjust your monitor contrast and brightness to emulate the printed page. Monitors display colors more vividly since the images on the screen are basically backlighted.
Another good thing you can do is use Patone colors values.
Ray Reynolds
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
For example with a monitor you can adjust color temperature, brightness, and contrast. With your video card it is possible to adjust gamma and color curves. So what you see is not just a function of what RGB value a bmp is telling the computer to display at a given pixel. Therefore a pure red rgb(255,0,0) block will look different on 2 or more different monitors even though both of them are additive devices. That's why its important to calibrate the monitor to some standard and view it in proper environmental lighting.
So if red isn't red from monitor to monitor how is your printer suppose to know what your monitor is displaying? It doesn't. Thats why devices can be assigned color profiles and such. Do a google or yahoo search on some of these terms: gamut, "color profile", "color management system".
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
Now..... I wonder if Photoworks can make good use of multi-threading (thus dual processors)?
Be naughty - save Santa a trip.
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
nik
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
Be naughty - save Santa a trip.
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
nick
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
However they do fly.....
Be naughty - save Santa a trip.
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
So, we often give Shinies what they want up front and fill in the works after approval--and charge them for both--but that's the way they like it. (Hope that doesn't sound too disparaging--jaded is more what I was looking for.)
Jeff Mowry
Industrial Designhaus, LLC
http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
Be naughty - save Santa a trip.
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
We use (well are hoping to) photoworks for pre-sales drooling. Basically we come up with an idea, in order to pre-sell that idea a nice glossy picture is required to get all our distributors pumped up.
I see realistic rendering being a very valuable tool for future employment, pre-sales, and marketing surveys.
I see solid modeling being split into two professions: Modelling and life like rendering.
An intersting topic for sure, anyone else willing to share their info on this?
Gerry Bolda
Product designer
www.scatmat.com
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
Then comes the "simple" work of making everything function according to the inflated promises by the Shinies. I often hear something like, "Well, it's already done, isn't it? It's right here--just finish it up." (Mind you, this is a Shiney client, not the end customer.) I am continually baffled by this, but it makes the gears go round and pay the bills, so that's the way it goes--besides, I'm used to it now anyway.
Jeff Mowry
Industrial Designhaus, LLC
http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
If only the shinies could sit in our seat for a day or two. I mean all they would have to do is push a button and go get some coffee. The computer would do the rest.
Our jobs are that simple. Aren't they?
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
x^2/a^2 + y^2/b^2 + z^2/c^ = 0
nick
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
Usually a few weeks after the prototype is shown in-house, we'll have orders placed for customers. I guess people think you can go directly from design to selling, and by-pass that small hinderance of "production".
Ray Reynolds
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
Jeff Mowry
Industrial Designhaus, LLC
http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
Ray Reynolds
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
Be naughty - save Santa a trip.
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
I'm planning to model and render my coffee mug soon--boring, right? Simple model. However, this is a real mug with my coffee in it and evaporation lines, drips, and all the other slobby things about a well-used mug. The idea is to build a photorealistic rendering and tutorial for how to create the effects in PhotoWorks. It will probably take about three hours to do everything, including the creation of the decals and coffee lines--from scratch--and I hope the results will be great.
Now I just need to find an extra three hours somewhere. I'll post the rendering on my site when I finally get it done--with a basic tutorial oriented toward adding detail when time allows for that as well. PhotoWorks is a powerful tool when used creatively.
Jeff Mowry
Industrial Designhaus, LLC
http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com
RE: Rendering, it's more than a five min process
It's easy to follow for newbies like me, and after only a few pages into the book my renderings are looking much better.
Gerry Bolda