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Why is PhotoWorks so heavily "castrated"?

Question asked by Martin Wrann on Dec 16, 2008
Latest reply on Jan 5, 2009 by Jeff Mowry

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Well, the topic says it all.

Look at Maya or 3DSMax - why is it not possible to get the same feature-set in PhotoWorks?

License restrictions? UI problems? Too difficult to implement? Technical problems?

Or is it because people at SW-corp don't see the need to create true high-end images?

A lot of SW-customers create their products in SW and have to hand them over to "professional" CG-companies to get really good images. An improved version of PW would be a great benefit for many companies.

Mentalray is great, PhotoWorks could be much better if it would have the same feature-set as the apps mentioned above...

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Garrett Brooks Dec 16, 2008 11:50 AM
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It has been a while since I used 3DSMax but these are not the same type of program. Maya and 3DSMax are designed primarily to make animations and rendered pictures. SolidWorks is designed to draw geometrically accurate parts and assemblies that can be built with the rendering being a bonus. That is not to say objects drawn in Maya and 3DSMax cant be built, they are just different style of program.

I can imagine as SolidWorks users first try at Maya or 3DSMax
Where are all the dimensions?
How much does this weigh?
How do I make a drawing?
What are all of these polygons I just wanted to draw a cylinder?

I think with PhotoView360 and working with Luxology they working to improve the rendering.
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- Martin Wrann @ Garrett Brooks on Dec 16, 2008 12:17 PM
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  Erm... really?
  
  Just kidding.
  
  Of course I know that Maya/3DS and all the others are completely different - but this was not the point.
  
  I would like to see the same rendering (!) capatibilities in SW as Max has.
  
  Solid Modeling is (in most cases) much faster than pushing around polygons (okay, if you like to model a human face, things will flip).
  
  Anyway, back to topic:
  
  Product designers working with SW would surely benefit from an advanced MR/PW. Lots of people have to convert their sldprt/sldasm to 3ds-files just to do HQ-renderings in 3DSmax.
  
  And that's the funny thing: One the one side, we're having an excellent solid modeler with an integrated rendering solution based on Mentalray. Unfortunately, this rendering solution is not as half as good as it could be. So files are converted and the rendering is done with another package based on the same render-engine.
  
  This is what I don't understand. The need to have 2 software packages whilst 1 package could do it just as good...
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  - Garrett Brooks @ Martin Wrann on Dec 16, 2008 4:16 PM
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    I did not want to insult you Martin,
    
    but I have meet people in the past that have told me to use 3DSMax and there reason would be "look in that movie they build that big space ship with 3DSMax and that's way more complicated than what you are trying to do" and I have trouble explaining what the differences are.
    
    I agree with you that there is a bit of irony that you will draw the part in one program that uses Mentalray and then render it in another program that uses Mentalray.
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  - Devon Berman @ Martin Wrann on Dec 16, 2008 4:58 PM
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    Martin, you answered your own question, but you forgot to ask it from a Marketing point of view:
    
    Martin Wrann wrote:
    
    This is what I don't understand. The need to have 2 software packages whilst 1 package could do it just as good...
    
    From a marketing perspective the wording goes more like this:
    "Can we make 2 software packages that run off the same engine, and then charge people twice for the same thing?"
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    - Chris Dordoni @ Devon Berman on Jan 5, 2009 3:34 PM
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      Some of the reasons for separate packages are surely marketing based.
      
      Rendering nurbs or spline based objects is generally done by converting the objects to a polygon mesh, regardless of the application. Some applications handle this conversion better than others. Then there's the whole 3 sided vs 4 (or more) sided polygon rendering issue. The specialization is necessary to the particular need.
      
      I believe SolidWorks is now partnering with Luxology, developers of Modo - a high end polygonal modeling app, for a rendering engine and this should advance SolidWorks rendering ability in the future.
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Charles Culp Dec 16, 2008 5:30 PM
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Except Autodesk owns 3DSmax, which would mean using a competitor's product.
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1-40NISF Dec 17, 2008 2:56 AM
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SW can actually get pretty awesome results if you really take some time to understand how to set up the scene. Thomas Parel did a great presentation at SW World 2007.

http://pareldesign.blogspot.co...-presentation-at.html

-Fred
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- Martin Wrann @ 1-40NISF on Dec 17, 2008 7:11 AM
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  This was also done using Mentalray (no, it's not a photo).
  
  http://features.cgsociety.org/..._1217090209_large.jpg
  
  I know, modeling this lady in SW is nearly impossible, this is just to show what mentalray is capable of. MR is one of the worlds most advanced render engines, it's (IMHO) a pity, that SW castrated it this way.
  
  SW is a M-CAD and not a DCC-package, I know that. For tool+die makers, for engineers and many others a render applet this mighty is useless. But ask the consumer product designers, the furniture designers and all the other SW-users that spend their daytime designing things and products, they might think a little different.
  
  @ Fred:
  
  The image looks good, still it's not very impressive.
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Charles Culp Dec 17, 2008 12:39 PM
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That's one example, but there are plenty more: http://www.3dm3.com/competition/cggirls/ or for a more general competition: http://www.3dm3.com/competition/

or adesk's own competition: http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/showcase/image_list

Just compare those to anything you've seen in Photoworks. Yes, a bit of that has to do with the time it takes to make these kinds of models in Solidworks, but the potential is still there, but yet out of reach.
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Gordon Metcalfe Jan 4, 2009 3:43 PM
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This add-on is a sawed-off version of the real thing and has only limited controls.
The real thing, Luxology's Modo is here:
http://www.luxology.com/pv360/

Its a complete 35 modelling and rendering package.
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Jeff Mowry Jan 5, 2009 11:40 PM
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From what I've seen of the Mental Ray engine, it's one of the most powerful engines for rendering something truly realistically. Most other rendering engines reveal tell-tale signs of being rendered (instead of photographed) such as dealing with reflections, shadows, and light a bit to artificially on a consistent basis. With proper set-up, all rendering engines are improved, but with a proper interface, I believe PhotoWorks could out-shine almost all other competitors because of the power of its rendering engine.

I'm still using v2007, but from what I've seen of the newer version, PhotoWorks has been largely forsaken by SolidWorks. After having some tutorial help by Brian Hill, my renderings suddenly had people wondering whether they were looking at a photo or rendering. PW360 certainly looks great for generating quick, appealing images, but I don't see the depth of options or image quality matching that of PhotoWorks anytime soon (except for those first starting out). Wouldn't an interface overhaul to PhotoWorks solve all that? Add some great default materials and the ability to tune/tweak all those materials?
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Why is PhotoWorks so heavily "castrated"?

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