So i've gathered that turning a regular jpg image into a p2m isn't all that complicated of a process. i normally come from an artistic background for cad design (3ds max as primary) so things looking nice is at the top of my list. but i noticed that once you add a material as a p2m, there isn't a place to add specularity (shinymap), so everything looks kind of matte.
anybody got an answer to this?
Kojo, PV360 is a light version of Luxology's rendering and animation package, Modo (version 701 I think), and like that software, SolidWorks appearances are based on specific shaders. So there are seperate shaders for diffuse, emission, anisotropy, volume scatter and the like.
Unfortunately, Solidworks gives you very limited control over textures and individual shader settings.
The ones that are available are exposed in the Illumiination and Surface Finish tabs of the appearance editor (it's only visible in the Advanced mode of the editor.)
There's specularity control in the Illumination tab that you can use to drive the ammount of reflective light and it's color, but you can't drive it with a bitmap unfortunately.
My suggestion is that you choose a material from the library that has the shader characteristics you're looking for as a starting point, and then modify that. For example, if you're trying to make a translucent material, start with Orange Juice (which has a volume scattering shader) and change the color, self-illumination and transparent values.
If you want the same level of control over material definitions that you had in Max, then you should look at getting a seat of Modo, because it's materials can be used directly in SolidWorks (though they can't be modified there).
yeah i was afraid i wouldn't be able to make my own spec map. you wouldn't happen to know the process it goes through to create its own specularity for 360 would you?
I think it calculates specular color the same way other software titles do:
For a given shader, the specular color is added to the color of the light path as traced from the camera.
The P2M files are XML. You might try opening one in notepad and try modifying it manually.
Kojo, PV360 is a light version of Luxology's rendering and animation package, Modo (version 701 I think), and like that software, SolidWorks appearances are based on specific shaders. So there are seperate shaders for diffuse, emission, anisotropy, volume scatter and the like.
Unfortunately, Solidworks gives you very limited control over textures and individual shader settings.
The ones that are available are exposed in the Illumiination and Surface Finish tabs of the appearance editor (it's only visible in the Advanced mode of the editor.)
There's specularity control in the Illumination tab that you can use to drive the ammount of reflective light and it's color, but you can't drive it with a bitmap unfortunately.
My suggestion is that you choose a material from the library that has the shader characteristics you're looking for as a starting point, and then modify that. For example, if you're trying to make a translucent material, start with Orange Juice (which has a volume scattering shader) and change the color, self-illumination and transparent values.
If you want the same level of control over material definitions that you had in Max, then you should look at getting a seat of Modo, because it's materials can be used directly in SolidWorks (though they can't be modified there).