Path of Reflective Image

Will someone direct me to the exact location of the file for the
"Reflective Image" that is built into Photoworks. Secondly, can it be
removed and replaced with another image? What would the procedure be
to do this?
Many thanks,
Mike

 

On the PW toolbar, go to Scene, then the Environment tab, or
background, depending on what you're doing.

 

Matt,

I think he's talking about the Realview background.

Has anyone figured this out yet

Mark

 

I am referring to an image that looks to be the interior of an office
building, with a long row of sunlit windows and a ceiling, etc. If you
were to render a round pipe using the polished chrome metal selection,
this is the reflection that you would see. I am thinking that there
must be a file for this image, and that it must be a SW default
built-in image. This is the file that I would like to locate, and
hopefully to exchange with another image if needed.
Thanks,
Mike

 

I thought I saw something in 2007 to allow that. Am I dreaming?

 

When you say words like "render" and "photoworks" in the same sentence,
people assume you mean rendering in photoworks. It sounds like maybe
you're talking about using a shaded model with a Realview material
instead.

It turns out that each material has its own reflective image. If you go
to your SW installation directory, then \shaders\textures\cubemap.dds
is the background image file. DDS files (Direct Draw Surface) are most
widely used for games. The images are usually square, using a size
which is a power of 2. The SW images are 512x512 pixels.

You should be able to find a dds converter without too much difficulty.
When you do, you will have to take whatever image you want to use and
make it square and with sides sized at a power of 2, and swap it out
for the cubemap.dds file in the SW directories.

I've tried this, and haven't been able to get it to work yet, so my
instructions can't be complete. It messes up the graphics, so you have
to restart SW and not assign that particular material again. Make sure
to back things up before you tinker. I'd appreciate it if anyone who
finds a complete solution would post it. Not that I think this is a
really necessary thing to know, but it is interesting.

 

I think what you're thinking of is an image that can be put in the
background of the main SW window. The functionality has been around for
many releases, probably back to 98 or so, but in 2007, they moved it
and made a bigger deal about it. It used to be (in 2006) available at
Insert, Picture, but you had to go to Customize Menu to get it to show
on the menu. In 2007 its at Tools, Options, Colors.

 

This is interesting Matt. How did you figure this out thus far?

 

Same way as usual. Stumble across something, make a few mistakes, and
randomly press buttons. Shakespeare a monkey and a typewriter.

I knew the "shaders" folder was for realview, and so just got curious.
Fortunately my image viewer would view dds files, and I recognized the
out-of-focus scene, but the viewer wouldn't save the file type.
Searched for dds info and came across several game forums that talked
about it.

 

Good detective work Matt. I'm often asked if the default realview
reflection image and be changed and I always say, "no" but you may be
proving me wrong?

If the original poster is talking about PhotoWorks and not RealView then you
can access the default reflective image here "C:\Program
Files\SolidWorks\data\Images\textures\background" (Studio 2)

 

Quite interesting. To see a clear view of the picture, go to plasticshiny or
water. There are also a few more that use that same pic to some degree.
XnView will display them and can save a jpg as a dds. But when I tried to
just replace the old cubemap file with another one, SW crashed, and even so
when I modified the image file to match. So, there does appear to be a bit
more to it.

WT

 

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/DDS_Tools

Mark Biasotti had mentioned that the Nvidia site had some tools for
this. I believe the above page has links to what you need.