PW: Caustics and Applying materials

Not sure how many of you have used the caustic settings, but I just
started getting into using it.

My questions is if you turn it on at the Part level, does that carry
across to the Assembly?

My other question is applying materials. I peronally do it at the part
level. (ie make changes and adjustments) but you can also see the
materials at the assembly level and make changes. Is that one and the
same? Should you edit the part and then make the changes?

Lastly, with caustics you have the ability to adjust Energy, C Photons,
and G Photons. What or how does that begin to translate into
renderings. I definately see changes, but I guess I am looking for an
explination of what they are.

Thanks

 

I don't know much about caustics so I'm no help there but I can answer
the material question.

Yes, the materials you see in the Photoworks assembly file property
manager match what has been applied in spedific part files. If you
edit the material in the assembly then its the same as opening the part
and editing the material there. This works both ways. If you edit the
material in the part file it carries over to the assembly. I also
apply most of my materials at the part level. I seem to have better
luck with material mapping if I do this.

 

wrote in @g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Well, if you don't get any other response, mine might be useful. I'm not
too confident of my caustics knowledge, so hopefully someone else will
chime in.

The caustics settings, as I understand them relate to the lights, so the
part settings don't travel to the assembly. I think it has to be set up in
the assembly.

Personally, I prefer to assign materials at the part level. When I get
something that someone else has Photoworxed, it can be extremely
frustrating to go through the PW assembly tree to figure out what part got
what material, especially if the person just used features or faces to
assign materials instead of parts, and didn't group the parts together into
the same material folder.

"C" photons are "caustic" photons, "G" is for "global illumination", I'm
guessing. The "radius" setting is for the size of the spot of light a
photon makes when it hits a surface, and the energy obviously has something
to do with the brightness. You want to have small radius, large numbers of
photons, and adjust the energy to suit. As you might imagine, though,
these settings are made to the extreme peril of render speed.

And then there's the idea that caustics are only meaningful in transparent
materials.

You might consider getting the new Photoworks book from your reseller. It
actually has some decent things in it toward the end. It seems to have
been written by two different people, one plodding and pedantic about the
simplest things, and the other more concerned about conveying useful
information at a higher level. Solidworks training stuff is good at
telling you "what" to do to finish the exercise, but it's not so good at
telling you "why" you did that instead of this.

Anyway, check it out.

If you learn something, please pass it on. I don't think there's much
depth of knowledge on this topic among SW users.

Matt