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Appearance Name |
Shows the name of the
appearance. Type over the name to change
it.
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Appearance Type |
Sets the type or category of
appearance – such as glass, metallic paint, or plastic. Different types of appearances have different
parameters. These parameters appear below the
Appearance Type.
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Color |
Sets the base color of the
appearance. By default, the base color is gray.
You can change it to any color.
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| Texture |
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Texture |
Lets you add textures to the
selected appearance.After you load a texture for
an appearance, you can tune its parameters. When you apply an
appearance with one or more textures to an object, the textures
are mapped onto the selected parts.
- Sync Textures.
After you fill in the values for one type of texture
mapping, select this option to copy those values to the
other types of mapping (assuming the other types have
loaded textures).
- Color,
Specular,
Alpha, and
Bump. Lets you load a texture
of the selected type. Double-click one of the texture
squares to open the SOLIDWORKS Visualize\Textures
directory, from which you can load a texture.
This option appears only if you have
not already loaded a texture of this
type.
The following parameters appear
after you load a Color,
Specular,
Alpha, or Bump
texture to the selected appearance.
- Enable Texture.
Turns on/off the texture that has already been loaded.
This option appears only if a
texture of the selected type has already been
loaded.
- Blend Texture.
(Color and
Specular textures only.)
Combines the loaded image with the color of the
appearance itself in an additive fashion that allows you
to tint textures.
- Brightness.
Changes the reflectivity of the loaded texture map.
- Tile (U,V).
Tiling is the process of duplicating a texture across
the surface of an object. You must create tilable
textures so that the edge of one aligns perfectly with
that of its neighbor, otherwise the result is a series
of seams. High frequency textures are those in which
patterns repeat at short intervals over an object's
surface; low-frequency textures are those in which the
intervals are larger.
The default of
(1, 1) for Color textures
causes exactly one copy of the texture to be mapped,
from edge to edge, across each target part.
Values greater than “1” cause tiles of the texture
to repeat across each part. For example, a value of
(2, 2) causes the texture to repeat twice along each
axis, forming a 2x2 grid of tiles across the surface
of each host part.
- Shift (U, V).
Offsets the center of the texture in horizontal (U) and
vertical (V) directions, relative to the normalized
texture coordinates on the host part.
The default of (0,0) centers the texture on the
part.
- Repeat (U, V).
Toggles the texture wrap mode between repeat and clamp.
(The last pixel stretches infinitely.)
- Rotation. Rotates
the texture in texture space on the target surface.
- Bump Strength.
(Bump textures only.)
Determines the height of the bumps. Negative values give
the impression of engraving. A bump map can be a
normalized image (normal map) or a black-and white image
used by a 3D software package to simulate 3D detail on a
model surface. When projected over the model surface,
portions of the surface beneath white areas of the image
are raised; those beneath black areas are depressed.
Bump mapping is a rendering effect and does not affect
the underlying geometry of the model.
- Invert Bump.
(Bump textures only.) When
inverted, hills in the bump texture become valleys, and
valleys become hills.
- Treat as Normal
Map. (Bump
textures only.) When you first add a bump or normal
texture, the software guesses which type it is
(indicated by the half-checked box for this parameter).
Use Treat as Normal
Map to change between bump mapping and
normal mapping, and select whichever produces the
best results.
- Bump
Displacement. Converts the highlights
and shadows in the grayscale bump texture to 3D
displacement. This adds realism by adding physical depth
to the bump texture.
When
converting from 2D to 3D, the software
re-tessellates the underlying geometry to add two
triangles to every pixel on the texture mapped to
that geometry. For high detail textures, you need a
lot of RAM or VRAM.
Delete. Removes the texture of
the selected type. For example, if
Specular is selected, the
specular texture is removed.
Import/Load Texture. Loads a
texture (Alpha, Bump, Color, Specular).
Export. Saves the texture.
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| Texture Mapping |
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Displays parameters for texture
mapping. |
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Save/Export. Saves the selected
appearance to the Appearance library using the SOLIDWORKS Visualize appearance
file format (.svap). This makes the
appearance readily available to other SOLIDWORKS Visualize users on the same computer
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New Appearance. Creates a new appearance
stored with the project. You can
also create a appearance by right-clicking in the Appearance
tree and clicking New
Appearance.
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New Decal. Opens the Impt
Texture dialog box to let you load a texture from
SOLIDWORKS Visualize\Texture to act as a
decal.Decals are appearances with a texture
that includes a transparency channel, so it shows through
whatever is under it. For example, decals are commonly used to
put logos on top of other appearances. You can also create a decal by right-clicking in
the appearance tree and clicking New
Decal.
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