PhotoWorks Materials. 1

[GoWithTheFlo]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if anyone ever found a site with PhotoWorks materials. I know there are a lot of sites with textures, and a lot with physical description of materials (with mass, stretch factors etc.) and also a couple of threads on the subject.

However, I am looking for PhotoWorks Materials. Or at least a site that lists the visual properties of material (such as base color, reflection, etc) that I could enter in PhotoWorks.

P.S. On a side note, Thank you for all the help around here. Even though I don't post much, I often use the forums to solve problems. CorBlimeyLimey ctopher Bradley SBaugh are a couple of names that come to mind. Keep up the great work!

 

[ctopher]

I have not tried any of these, but worth a try.

http://www.3dlinks.com/links.cfm?categoryid=10&subcategoryid=94

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-05)

 

[ctopher]

http://www.bxhdesigns.com/site.htm

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-05)

 

[Theophilus]

I've learned a lot from Brian Hill (ctopher's posted link above) regarding indirect lighting and how to put together a scene for realism. Brian's now working for an animation studio (a la Ice Age)--go figure!

One thing that helps in figuring out materials is establishing a good scene to stabilize some of the variables before trying loads of settings in materials. You need to pin down something as "absolute" or else you'll drive yourself crazy going in circles.

I use indirect lighting for all my renderings (enjoying my dual-core FX-60) and am able to make up good materials on-the-fly with only a couple of custom saved scenes in my arsenal (so far). I just got a glossy white plastic material to render well--one of the difficult ones.

Other than all that, I don't know of a set library of materials for PhotoWorks. Maybe do a serch for Mental Ray materials (PhotoWorks rendering engine if I remember correctly).

Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe trumps reason.

 

[smcadman]

As for PhotoWorks materials, you'll have to make your own with textures. Even with the supplied materials, there isn't a "magic button" that will make your rendering look great. It takes time, practice and patience to make it look just right.

Go to

http://www.grsites.com/textures/

they have many textures such as wood and marble that can help with your scenes. After downloading a texture you like, on the Material Editor, pick the 1st button on the top-left (Create from File), find your .jpg and create a material.

Then it's a matter of going to the illumination tab of that material and finding the "Material type" that works good, such as Plastic, Anisotropic, and Conductor. I usually do not accept the default settings of the of the material type, meaning I tweak the Ambient, Diffuse, Specular, etc. The next tab is Texture, and this is where you adjust the Map Width and Height.

Again, there really isn't an "Easy Button" (not that I have found anyways).

Flores
SW06 SP4.1

 

[GoWithTheFlo]

smcadman said ''As for PhotoWorks materials, you'll have to make your own with textures.''

Is it possible to create materials from texture? I do not think we are talking about the same thing.

The materials I am talking about are the ones that are represented by a sphere in the material/texture selection menu of PhotoWorks (check out chrome or Mercury). You can edit them and change the color, the way light reflects upon it, surface style, etc.

The files are found (by default) here:
C:\Program Files\SolidWorks\photoworks\data\Materials

They are .P2M files apparently. I'll keep looking.

 

[rockguy]

If you look in the material editor you will see some materials represented by a rectangle (image) these are materials create from a texture (the pine mayerial under WOOD has both procedural(sphere) and textural (image)). You can create a textural material form any image file. The PhotoWorks help covers this pretty well.

Both procedural and textural materials carry the P2M extension. It stands for "PhotoWorks 2 material".

Rob Rodriguez CSWP
President: Northern
Vermont SolidWorks User Group

http://www.robrodriguez.com

(updated 5/01/06)
SW 2006 SP 4.0

 

[GoWithTheFlo]

I know how to create ''textural textures''(images) that is easy and no problem. However, is there a way to download procedural (sphere) textures.

I hope that now that I am using the proper vocabulary (thanks rockguy!)it is clearer what I need.

Once again, thank all of you guys for your help and patience.

 

[smcadman]

If you follow the steps I posted above, you will create a 2D Texture Mapped material from a .jpg or .bmp file. These steps will create a material with the ".p2m" file extension, along with a bitmap if you used a .jpg. For included 2D textures in Photoworks, go to Material > metals > miscellaneous:
brushed metal1 through brushed metal7, rough cast, etc.

Found also at C:\Program Files\Solidworks 2006\photoworks\data\Materials\Metals\miscellaneous

As for the 3D Sphere materials, I haven't found them anywhere and the ".p2m" comes up as "peer2mail" file on Google.

Flores
SW06 SP4.1

 

[GoWithTheFlo]

smcadman said ''As for the 3D Sphere materials, I haven't found them anywhere and the ".p2m" comes up as "peer2mail" file on Google.''

Exactly, thats also the definition on

http://www.filext.com

Oh well, to bad :-( I'll just pass up on this one. I'm tired of searching.

Thank you all.

 

[rockguy]

Not possible. The Procedural (sphere materials) are a shader and written by code. The only way to create these materials yourself would be to write the code and the only people I know of doing this is SW.

The user only has the option to modify the provided
(default) procedural materials using the options in the material editor. Once a procedural material has been modified in the material editor, it of course can be saved as a custom material. This newly saved P2M file can be distributed so others can use it but I'm not sure there is any real value in that (except time) because all users are capable of adjusting the settings to achieve the same result.

Rob Rodriguez CSWP
President: Northern
Vermont SolidWorks User Group

http://www.robrodriguez.com

(updated 5/01/06)
SW 2006 SP 4.0

 

[GoWithTheFlo]

rockguy said: ''Not possible. ''

Well, now at least I know for sure.

Thanks

 

[rockguy]

I probably should have said "not possible as far as I know". I have been wrong before. Not often but it does happen

You could submit this to SW as an enhancement request, I have.

Rob Rodriguez CSWP
President: Northern
Vermont SolidWorks User Group

http://www.robrodriguez.com

(updated 5/01/06)
SW 2006 SP 4.0

 

[Theophilus]

Sort-of possible. You can adjust the appearance of standard materials quite widely. My favorite general-use material is the injected plastic one in the Miscellaneous plastics section. You can add texture in the surface finish tab (like 3D texture, not bit-map), change all the illumination properties within that tab, change transparency, etc.

If you choose another material type, such as glass or water, you can get all sorts of other options in the Illumination tab. So you can make almost any effect you like with the given materials to start with.

Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe trumps reason.