Quick question, how many people would be producing high quality photo-realistic renderings off their models? I know Photoview 360 is the add in for SolidWorks but does anybody use anything else? What do people who just have the basic package of SolidWorks use?
We have SolidWorks Standard, if we want to go to Photoworks 360 we need to upgrade to professional. Currently waiting on prices back from my VAR, but was wondering does anyone use the standard SolidWorks with another add in as its cheaper than upgrading to get the SolidWorks.
That's a difficult question because it's not an apples to apples comparison. SW pro includes more than just PV360. It has PDM, utilities, etc.
The "push button" render options out there, Shot, KeyShot, Showcase are priced about $1000. I think the upgrade to SW Pro is about the same (not sure exactly what it is?) so technically you get more for your money with the upgrade since PV360 offers pretty much identical features to these products. At the $1000 pricing Shot and KeyShot ar limiting the size of the output of your final image. In order to not have that limitation they are going to cost you about $2000. My opinion...at $2000 they are highly overpriced for the features you're receiving.
At that level of pricing you're better of to choose something like modo at $995 which will give you more rendering power and animation capability as well.
James,
The other side to think about is Learning curve. If you are going to spend your time generating renderings, then you may want to go with the outside options. PV360 is excellent at producing high quality images with minimal learning curve. Something like 3DSmax the learning curve may be substantial.
In my business all I do is photorealistic renders and animations and I use modo. You can look at either my site or the modo gallery to see the type of quality it produces. However, there is a learning curve. The fact that SolidWorks and Luxology are closely aligned is a good reason to look at modo.
I spent some time learning it and now I spend a good deal of time helping people make the transition from Solidworks to modo. It really depends on what your end goal is.
If you are a designer who shoots out renders for meetings and/or marketing material from time to time, PV360 might be your path.
If you are wanting to move into a rendering / animating role on a more full time basis, then you should look into the tools that were designed to do that such as modo.
The other option is to farm out the higher end animations and renderings as needed to firms like mine or other's on this forum.
Hope that helps...
Paul
To All,
We make glass bottles and jars, and of course design them as well, but for dealing with customers we will need going forward a rendering package to give them good realistic images of the product. So this will mean a bottle with the liquid inside and labels wrapped around.
The thing is, we have a number of designers, but I'm the only one who really uses solidworks, eveyone else just has the basics and never really use it. However if we start producting these images for customers it will probably be a new position created,and a new person probably brought in. Seeing as we have 3 seats of solidworks there's always the option off making use of it and its rendering aspect to produce these images. However the decision may be taken just to go to another program. This will be taken higher up and will be decided on a number of aspects including quality and costs. I will let my boss know all the options everyone ha suggested here.
cheers for all the quick replies...
PS...Paul, you suggested that we could outsourse to other people, the reason i'm been asked to find out this info is so that we can start producing it inhouse......
Just on a personal note, is Blender any good when it comes to quality??
I've never used Blender but I've heard that yes, its a very capable application and it's free. I typically stay away from freeware type situations since I'm always worried about their future and I hate to make business decisions on something that might dissappear tomorrow. But free is hard to argue with and maybe it's worth using it as a test bed to show what can/could be accomplished.
James,
Sounds like you guys are heading for a more serious focus on renderings. In that case, I'd recommend modo.
Paul
If your going to hire someone just to do your presentation renderings then your best bet is to got the modo or Keyshot route as that person is not going to need a $6000 seat of SW just to make images. Both modo and Keyshot have direct import of SW parts and assemblies.
The company I work for uses 3DSmax for rendering and SW as our engineering package. 3DSmax requires a plugin to convert SW files. I'm on the learning end of the stick, but I'm just not all that impressed with 3DSmax. Our rendering Guru is hooked on it, so, that's the way the company went, but if I want a quick rendering, I jump into Photoview 360. The included version doesn't have everything I want, but I can get in, assign materials and get a pretty good rendering in half the time it takes in 3DSmax.
I think you'll find more and more companies are realizing the benefits of producing imagery from their engineering data. I know for me personally I've seen an increase in interest and quoting of these types of projects.
You have to better define what your end goal is in terms of visualization. Do you need/want rendered stills only or will animation also be beneficial. You need to define this because some packages include this and other don't
In terms of SW (pro and premium versions) you can have both rendered stills using PV360 and rendered animations using a combination of PV360 and Motion. Other standalone packsges differ.
If you're looking the ability to create rendered still images then:
Shot
KeyShot
Showcase
are some of the options you might want to look at.
If you're looking the ability to create rendered still images and animations then:
Move
3DS Max
Maya
C4D
modo
are some options.
Speaking from my own personal experience you will not find a better value than modo in terms of price vs features.
Showcase has some crude still-to-still transition effects with a camera, so it can do some basic animations that way and it can be rather convincing.
Just in addition to this....
KeyShot 3 has animation.
There is also Blender (free) and ZBrush that has a full modeling/animation.
Rob,
Its been a while since I've looked at this, question you divided up the packages into two groups,
Shot
KeyShot
Showcase
Are you able to produce any sort of animation with these packages? Just to do a recap, we currently get these images and some animation done externally by a number of companies, there's a push on to look to see can we do it in house. At the minute I'm the only one using solidworks full time, or rather most of the time, one of the other lads is now been given the job of doing our bottle specs in solidworks so that there's two in the office at that level. Our company would like to bring the rendering in-house, basically one to save costs, but two because they hope that it will cut down on lead times to do projects.
I know firstly if we get a rendering package it will take time to get up to a level where we are comfortable with producing the images required, and that is just talking about myself, it may take longer for the other people. There is also the issue that we may not always have regular work coming through, and at other time will have loads on.
I know along with the images we like to get short animations of a bottle spinning or maybe a line up of bottles with one or more spinning so that the customer can see a feature etc.
Basically I was looking at Keyshot, photoview, maxwell or cinema 4D. I know its a awkward question to ask what you think would suit best, but based on the various factors what would be best, or should we look at mojo. By the way, the models will be done in Solidworks, that's the one thing our management will insist on as we already do them in solidowrks.
Hi James,
We use Keyshot here. The Pro version is able to do animation, and the non pro version is no longer limited in rendering size. As for speed of rendering, it is way faster than Photoview. And it's super easy to set up and get a good image.
There is a new feature where you can assign a small fillet to non filleted parts. This is great for adding that last touch of realism without having to create all those 0.15mm radii in your model.
KeyShot 4 has now got "Live Linking" set up with its plugin for SW. Change your SW model and it will update in KeyShot without having to reassign everything again. Great people on the forum too; you will learn alot from paying attention to their superusers who are heavy into car shots.
I've never used Modo, but I'm sure you couldn't go wrong there either.
Mark,
Are graphics easy to apply / update on all surface types and application methods like "lable, projection, cylindrical...etc"
Thanks,
Jonathan
Yes, graphics are easy to apply. They did have some issues with cylindrical mapping out of SW, but I think that issue has been resolved; though I haven't tried that yet. That would be important for your bottles I'm sure.
Hi Mark and Jonathan, Yes, it's fixed. There's a new quick tip on cylindrical mapping on the website http://www.keyshot.com/learning/quicktips/
Hi Mark,
There is a new feature where you can assign a small fillet to non filleted parts
You do realize that we now have this feature in SW2013. Also with 2013 you can have access to the vast array of modo materials also.
Regards
Mark
No, I did not know that. We have not started using 2013 yet.
My opinion......
If you need rendering and simple animations and you want software with a very small learning curve then I'd look at PhotoView 360 and KeyShot. Both have about the same capibility (give or take here and there, PV has better animation ability, KS has some nice rendering stuff) and are about the same learning curve.
At the same time both have about the same limitations.
Personally if it were me and I owned SW Pro or prmium I'd use PhotoView. KS just isn't worth the $. If you have standard SW then you might want to buy KS and not spend $ to upgrade SW.
If you want a lot more capability (rendering and animation) for less money than KS and about the same as upgrading SW then you could move to modo. Beware......modo has a larger learning curve, it's not as easy to use as KS or PV.
Some people use Shot / KeyShot and other's use modo. I know some people who use 3DSmax as well. However PV360 is pretty strong and it is native w/in Solidworks. Any particular reason you aren't looking at staying with it?
Paul