scene too dark in photoworks

[adampunch]

just playing around in photoworks and i've run into a problem. I added aprropriate appearances to all the parts in my assembly and picked a "scene". Unfortunately when i render the scene, all my parts show up very dark (they should all be shiny aluminum and stainless). However, the toolbox hardware is incredibly bright. I even added a point light and turned up the brightness and ambience, but there was no effect. What am i missing?

 

[Theophilus]

There could be lots of things wrong--your scene won't necessarily render like the material icons.

Have you enabled indirect lighting in the Options tab? This helps the light calculate into a more realistic behavior and can fill in with shadowed areas. Also, the magnitude of your lighting and scenery will affect the scene lighting (and final rendering). Check your screen gamma settings (in Options) and make sure the value is set to 1.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

 

[adampunch]

thanks theo-
gamma was already at 1 and indirect illumination is on. It just seems that the brightness and ambience sliders only seem to affect the hardware i imported from the toolbox, and not the rest of my assembly, wich remains dark and dull. Everything looks like it's been treated with black oxide and the hardware is glowing white hot.

 

[Eltron]

What version are you on? I'd check to see that you don't have multiple appearances attached to your parts.

Dan

http://www.eltronresearch.com

 

[Theophilus]

Oh--play with the reflective properties--your aluminum/stainless stuff might be reflecting away too much of your light. Check those settings (and others) and I think you can dial it in.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

 

[adampunch]

using SW 2008 professional SP0.1 (haven't installed 1.0 yet)

how would you know if you have multiple appearances on one part? The method of selecting appearances first and then selecting parts is still awkward to me.

i selected a steel appearance and dialed the brightness down to about 40% and applied it to all the hardware. that helped a lot. I also picked a different scene that is inherently lighter. Still getting the hang of it, but i'm making progress. thanks for all the tips.

 

[Theophilus]

Brian Hill did a great tutorial regarding lighting/illumination:

http://www.bxhdesigns.com/tutorials/indirect_illumination/indirect_illumination.htm

Check your tabs on the left over the feature manager. Hit the decal/scene-looking icon (not sure if this is there in 2008--I'm not messing with that yet). This will show what materials are applied to what parts/bodies/surfaces. Kill off what you don't intend to have.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

 

[Eltron]

If you go to the PhotoWorks/Realview Render Manager tab you can expand the Appearances folder. If you have more than one for a part then you should detach the ones that you don't want.

Dan

http://www.eltronresearch.com

 

[overkill4]

One thing that really affects the brightness is the Environment mapping in the scene editor. By Default this is set to a spherical room environment. This room reflection makes metal objects look wicked cool, but can make many different scenes appear dark as you've described. Basically SW assumes this room image is surrounding your object, and if you have indirect illumination set then it will be darker in this case.

If you set the Environment Tab to "use background color" your scene will be significantly brighter, assuming you have a bright background color set under the back/foreground tab.



60% of the time, it works every time.

 

[Theophilus]

Check out thread559-205388 and see if that's the sort of limitation you're seeing.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

What did you dream? It's all right--we told you what to dream.
--Pink Floyd, Welcome to the Machine