PhotoWroks == Rendering Large Assemblies

Does anybody want to share some tricks on how to render large assemblies in
Photoworks? 5,000 parts and up. We get crashes and poor performances
consistently.

 

Good question...

*) I'd start with the RAM/3GB switch deally

*) Turn your 'Image Quality' all the way down

*) Turn off 'Indirect Illumination'

*) Lower 'Anti Aliasing'

*) Turn off 'Shadows'

*) Reduce 'Ray Tracing' numbers

I'll try and think of more.

Mike Wilson

 

First thing I did.

Oops. Counterintuitive, but I'll give it a try.

Think it was off.

When I ran on medium (lowest setting) it rendered, but was still too jaggy.
It was when I raised it a notch that bad things started to happen.

By default. Customer wants it that way.

In the basement.

I think the image quality was the biggest mistake I was making. I also tried
over the network. That is a big mistake. Whatever PhotoWorks does, it
doesn't do networking very well.

It really bothers me that hitting STOP on the animation process causes a
CTDT. It also bothers me the number of CTDT one can get just trying to get
it right. It also bothers me that even though I am on one of the fastest
systems available today things render sooo slowly. (I can do SIB in 18
seconds with the right settings.)

Off Soap Box.

Well I did find out that saving the large assembly to a part can help alot.
When I used the surfaces option it went real fast, but some faces were
missing especially on parts that should be visible but were internal to the
equipment being rendered.

Thanks Mike and others who contacted me.

 

you will want to 'gut' the interior components that you don't need and
then save as parasolid. this should dramatically shorten your response
times and saving.

 

Sounds worth a try. Maybe an envelope part can be used to efficiently
gut the model. I tried saving as a part. If I use surfaces or external
parts some things went missing. (How do you lose a 50hp motor?) I had
to do the save all parts option to not lose anything.