Rendering Overview

Rendering generates photoelectric images. You can render documents to the graphics area or to a file. When rendering to file, you can schedule document batches.

If you make changes to the:

• Model. Scene properties disappear until you render the scene again.

• Scene. Changes are displayed when you apply them and then render the scene.

You generally render a model a number of times while evaluating various effects. Rendering a complex model with a complex scene can take considerable time. You can reduce rendering time (improve performance) by applying certain effects (higher anti-aliasing, for example) later in the process.

Work Flow

One approach:

1. Apply the appearance and any decals (Decal Editor). Render to test the selections.

2. Select a scene or environment. Render to test the environment.

3. Select lighting effects using:

• Lighting scheme on the Lighting tab in Scene Editor

• Individual lights in RenderManager or SolidWorks Lighting folder in the FeatureManager design tree.

4. Render to test the lighting.

5. Incorporate any of the following. Each can increase rendering times significantly, or might not produce the result you expect. Test render at the lowest settings to gauge suitability, then increase values to improve the image quality.

• Lighting effects

• Global illumination

• Indirect illumination

• Caustics

• Image quality

• Refractions (for transparent objects)

• Reflections (for reflective objects)

• Anti-aliasing

5. Do a final rendering, usually with a high setting for anti-aliasing to create a high quality image.

Render Quality

In PhotoWorks Studio, you can control render quality using sliders. Note that the only difference between the High setting and next lower setting is Indirect Illumination.

When you apply a PhotoWorks Studio, previous render settings are overwritten, including those set outside Studio (in the Options or Scene Editor dialog boxes, for example).