Photoworks 2 decal quality

Hi All,

I'm still not able to get decal resolution in photoworks 1 to be anything
other than crap. No matter how high a resolution, or what format decal I
use, the results are always incredibly pixelated, so it is impossible to do
a zoom in on the product for close-up renderings.

Has this changed in Photoworks 2?

Does anyone else ever have to do close up renderings, and how do you handle
it?
Currently, the only way for me to get around it is to do all the artworks as
sketches and cut or boss them a tiny distance, but this can be incredibly
time consuming for complex artwork.

There must be a better way to do this, and I am hoping the Phoworks 2 may be
it...

Thanks
Olaf

 

Olaf, are you sure you don't have the anti-aliasing in the decal options
turned down to soft. I know it defaults to soft and can make for a blurry
image.

I can't picture your problem, but I have never had problems getting a nice
crisp decal. Maybe if you post it somewhere.

 

Hi All,
The problem I keep having is as follows:
In your favorite drawing program, daw a 100mm x 100mm square and write
something in the middle of it using a size 8 font. Preferrably letters with
curves like lower-case 'a', for example.

Now save the file at a very high resolution, say 2000 x 2000 pixels at
300dpi. So you now have a picture (in jpg, TIF, BMP, etc. Format doesnt seem
to make much of a difference for this example) format that you can zoom
right in on the lower case 'a' and everything is perfect and smooth.

Next, in Solidworks draw a 100mm x 100mm szuare and boss it out to 10mm. On
the front surface of the square stick you newly created picture as a decal.

Make the square fit on the screen and hit render: looks vaguely acceptable.
Zoom right in on the lower-case 'a' and render: It looks like absolute crap,
with the rounded curves of the 'a' now pixelated to hell.
Render to image at a high resolution of say 3200 x 2400 at 600dpi, and the
results are still the same.

All anti-aliasing does is soften the edges of the pixels, so is of pretty
limited use in this...

As best as I can tell, this is what seems to be happening: PW takes your
image and scales it to fit the model face. In doing so, as best as I can
tell, it reduces it to somewhere around 72dpi. It then stays at that low
72dpi resolution forever more, causing any hi-res close-ups to become
impossible.

A typical example would be if you are rendering for an A4 size product
resolution. For a high quality brochure, you need ot be able to zoom right
in on the small print of the product and still be able to clearly read it. I
cannot figure out if this is actually possible in PW.

Apologies for the long post, but i'm hoping someone can help. Or maybe
someone has some examples to show that it can be done?

Regards
Olaf