PhotoView 360 Preview: Download Now Available

by Josh on August 13, 2008 · Comments

Well surprise, surprise. You don’t have to wait till SolidWorks 2009 Pre-release 2 comes out to try 360, the new software announced by SolidWorks and Luxology is now available for anyone with SolidWorks 2009 to poke around in.

You’ll want to see the First Look Ricky Jordan has along with Gabi Jack some models for her first time ever.

I’ll have some up moments from now to show you some of the capabilities 360 has. Until then try it for yourself. Download PhotoView 360

UPDATE:
Ok, I’ve had my chance to get into PV360 and run some for you to see some of the different capabilities. Here’s some just created:

Platinum-plated Door Handle
Yes, a door handle that is platinum-plated. It’s for a custom VIP aircraft. This is the first model I opened. Here’s the I created and the video of the process, open to final , for the first time with no idea how to use it.

Video of Door handle process

PhotoView 360: Quick Rendering for SolidWorks Models from Solidsmack on Vimeo.

Polycarbonate Crystal Storage Holder
Clear object take up a lot of resources on the computer. I set these appearances in SolidWorks and 360 did a great job of bringing in the appearances along with the model. The clear materials really bogged down my processors and it took a bit to repaint and move the model around. Here’s the crystal storage in SolidWorks prior to bringing into 360 and the after bringing it in.

Crystal Storage in SolidWorks

Crystal Storage rendered in 360

Crystal Storage Detail rendered in 360

Plumbing System
Not as exciting, but a test at applying a lot of materials to different parts. You don’t have to apply material to every part. It recognizes the same parts and applies the material to all of them. This works great for nuts and bolts or fitting. Here’s the before, during and after shots of the plumbing system.

Plumbing System in SolidWorks

Plumbing System in opened in 360

Plumbing System in 360 with materials applied

Plumbing System in 360 final

Overview of PhotoView360
This program is a lot of fun to work in. It’s as easy as applying the appearances in SolidWorks 2009. It’s fun because it’s simple, but it’s also basic on features. This is simply for applying materials and scenes quickly to get some great looking and very appealing images of your design. It’s ‘pre-’ the model as you work in it, moving around and applying materials. This can slow it down, especially with transparent materials, but on opaque materials it’s very quick, as is adjusting colors.

It sucked the resources out of my Dual-Core computer pretty fast, the models with transparent materials in particular, so if I’m going to be using this more often I may look into a workstation with more cores. One thing I wish was easier to handle is rotating the model. It takes a little getting use to. Its more like manipulating the scene rather than the model. Speaking of the scene, it would also be nice to set the ‘floor’ or bottom of the model in order to get the model to look as if it’s sitting on a surface.

I love this. If you haven’t tried it out. go, immediately and download it. Tell me what you think in the comments.

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Tagged as: photoview, rendering

  • jeff b
    this looks like a good move. now if theres any other mac / iMovie users out there (didn't think so) you'll see the similarity. the latest generation of iMovie was a total redesign, great UI and much cleaner looking, and fast, but lacked the deeper skill set of the predecessor, and so the imovie enthusiasts complained. so apple made both versions available, the predecessor as well as the latest version. this will probably happen until the next version of imove comes out where we see the missed skill set in the new package.
    -that i hope is what will happen here. if solidworks wants to ease the transition they may want to consider offering both rendering programs and then maybe by SW 2010 complete the transition.
  • daniel
    You are right about this thing sucking power!
  • Floor
    You can change the floor or bottom
  • Thanks. I've been able to change the floor plane height. (rotation works great at 50m for me) but haven't been able to change the 'reflection plane' - I've discussed this with some people and it seems to be the top plane in solidworks that sets it.
  • Chris
    Josh,
    Thanks for the link and pointing out that 360 is available for download. I've been excited to get into rendering for a while without jumping full on into Photoworks and this looks like a great package. Hopefully SW (or blogs) provide enough documentation to really find out it's power.
  • Kevin Quigley
    Hey Josh.

    I was one of the alpha group with Rob R and co. and there a a few things the users need to know about. First off PhotoView will use as many processors as you can throw at it - I'm running a Quad Core and it flies. On an 8 core Mac it will run even faster. I'm not sure what the status is on 64 bit though.

    PhotoView is designed to read the materials you apply in Solidworks. You might notice that many of the environments and materials available in RealView are the same? Thats the idea. Set up the materials in RealView and transfer to PhotoView for rendering and tweaking. There are a few minor issues still to be worked out but it is pretty accurate. There is no return from PhotoView to SolidWorks - so if you change the material in PhotoView it is not updated in SolidWorks.

    Right now there is no support for decals or custom backgrounds or materials - probably due to the link with RealView, but I expect this will come.

    If you save your image as a format that can handle an alpha channel (eg TIFF, PNG etc) PhotoView writes this into the file automatically to allow easy compositing in Photoshop, so that way you can get rid of the rendered background or merge into a photograph.

    All in all this is my no.1 best feature in SolidWorks 2009. Yes it is similar to Hypershot. Hypershot does some things better, some not so good. The two can exist side by side.

    I think the current plan is to include PhotoView with Professional and Premium but not Standard. This in itself opens the door to Hypershot for Standard users (especially in non USA areas). The BIG question for me though (as a Standard user) is whay Luxology are going to do with the partnership now. Presumably they can now handle the SolidWorks file format? Does this mean Modo will read and write the SolidWorks format? Modo is a $895 package - substantially LESS than a Standard user would pay to upgrade to Professional. Time will tell!
  • Kevin Quigley
    Sorry meant to add. One of the areas where PhotoView scores over Hypershot is its ability to render out files of any size (Hypershot is sold on a resolution output basis), and, the fact that PhotoView has materials for LEDs, Area lights and so forth built in.
  • Kevin, thanks man. sounds like you had a good experience with it. I'd definitely like to see decals, depth of field (DOF) would be nice, along with configs, appearance and scene options, highlighting for selected components and ability to create more materials and scenes.

    sad that it isn't coming with standard. I would think you could get wider adoption by making it more accessible to users. some things you just don't want to make the user pay for, but I guess it could weed out those that are using features in the Pro version. oh well. I'm a standard user too, so I'll be outta luck or looking at Hypershot after SP00 hits.

    Thanks again for the clearing up some question I and others had.
  • cadjockey
    bah. I was all excited over this until I read no decal or custom material support! Without this its little more than a toy with no use in a production environment.
  • Hey Jon. Saw your comments on Ricky's blog about this. Yeah, there's some things it's missing but work for the simple, quick and pretty stuff. I hope there will be decal support soon as well. It's a hassle trying to do a decal up in SolidWorks. :)
  • Matt Graves
    So - how does this fit in with PhotoWorks: will it eventually replace it?
  • Initially it will definitely NOT replace it... for some. There's still alot it's missing compared to PhotoWorks, but if you're wanting quick renderings, this can get the job done. Rob Rodriguez is another good source for rendering info with PhotoWorks and PhotoView360.
  • DARIUS
    ITS RIGTH WORK WITH RENDERING SOLIDWORKS 2009
    A GOOD IDEA FOR THE COMPANY
  • natnicada
    Where is download progarm photoview 360
  • You will have to download it via the SolidWorks customer portal and have SolidWorks 2009 installed as well.
  • natnicada
    thank you Josh M
  • Exodia86
    Looks cool!

    Smart move by solidworks! Modo render is still the fastest as compared to bunkspeed or maxwell IMO.

    Hope there will be more of MODO integrated options such as UV mapping, texture paining, that can be found within solidworks in the near future.
  • I think adding all those feature would be a great move and one that's to be expected. Even better I'd love to see the real-time rendering inside of SolidWorks. Realview enhancements in 09 are one step closer. Thanks for the comment!
  • A nice neat trick to have custom materials and custom scenes in PhotoView 360 can be found at:
    http://3dvision.com/wordpress/index.php/2008/11...

    PhotoView360++
  • Thanks Stephen, I was going o do a post linking back to Scott's article! Thanks for mentioning it!
  • Josh-

    Excellent post!

    Have you had any luck recently with changing the "reflection plane"? I can't seem to find a way to re-orient the model with respect to the reflection plane either and am beginning to think it is fixed with respect to a plane in Solidworks.

    Thanks!
    -Dustin
  • koen
    This product is officially crap

    I tried a lot of these products and some are a great balance between performance and user-friendliness.

    THIS IS NOT. It's so bad, both in performance and bugs, I don't know where to start, so I won't bother....

    (professional consumer product designer)
  • are you talking about the 650 specifically or 3D printers in general? I'd agree some 3d printers produce junk.
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