SolidWorks Mystery Tip: You Ask the Question | SolidSmack - SolidWorks 3D CAD Technology Design Blog

SolidWorks Mystery Tip: PhotoWorks DOF!

Published

on April 30, 2008

. Tags: solidworks, tips.

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solidworks tips Ok, I’m gonna try something here. I get a bit of emails asking questions about SolidWorks and alot of them are really good questions that I’d love to turn into posts. So that’s what we’re gonna do.

First Person to Ask a Question
The first person to add a comment below that asks a question about SolidWorks will turn this post into a 100% grade-A tip for everyone to join in on. All I ask, is that it’s not a question like, why does SolidWorks suck or can monkeys use SolidWorks… this is serious stuff people.

So ask away, chime in if you know the answer, and we’ll see how this goes. If you like it, we can turn it into a regular type of thing on this here blog.

The Mystery Question Is…

UPDATE! Jeff (at 7:22 am CT) asks - “In Photoworks, do many people use both the depth of field and indirect illumination? I find the two don’t work together well- turning DOF on causes indirect illumination to make little difference. I know this isn’t the most exciting question, and maybe a better one will be sparked from this.”

Help him out in the comments!

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jeff 5 months ago 1 point
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In Photoworks, do many people use both the depth of field and indirect illumination? I find the two don't work together well- turning DOF on causes indirect illumination to make little difference. I know this isn't the most exciting question, and maybe a better one will be sparked from this.

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Kyle Mason 5 months ago 1 point
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I find that Photoworks doesn't do a very good job with depth of field. Indirect illumination is one of the most important aspects of a good rendering, so make the rendering as good as possible without depth of field, then add it later (I think you can use photoshop).

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http://home.pct.edu/~maskyl27

Kyle Mason 5 months ago 1 point
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Here is a rendering I did with Indirect Illumination and DOF. http://picasaweb.google.com/ksmason71/Rendering...

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http://home.pct.edu/~maskyl27

Jason Q 5 months ago 1 point
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OOps, I didn't read the fine print, and now I have strayed off topic. Photoworks and DOF are greek to me, but it wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't as powerful or user friendly as a program made specifically for rendering.

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Rob Rodriguez 5 months ago 1 point
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You should be able to use indirect illumination and DOF together without issue. I agree with Kyle, "Indirect illumination is one of the most important aspects of a good rendering, so make the rendering as good as possible without depth of field, then add it later (I think you can use photoshop)."

I do sometimes have issues with DOF settings in PhotoWorks.

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http://www.robrodriguez.com

Lin Shaodun 5 months ago 1 point
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Introduce Depth of Focus surely will affect the indirect illumination ( or to be more precisely, will darken your scene), this is very natural, as it needs to follow the theory of photographing.

Imaging you are using a camera, (PhotoWorks brand), when you need to define a focus point with certain area of DOF, how the PhotoWorks is going to achieve this effect? it will try to reduce the aperture or shutter speed--->both will result in lesser light to expose your PhotoWorks film, so, naturally, if you need more DOF effect (narrow down the DOF range) , your scene will become darker, and you have to compensate it manually. (increase no. of light bouncing , or increase the light source brightness)

Below is something I copy from Maxwell Render website. Just for your reference. I found out it's quite useful for Photoworks users as well.

_____________________________________________________________________________

DOF Theory

When you focus on a centric element in your image, areas that are out of focus typically become unsharp. This phenomenon is called Depth of Field (DOF).

DOF Practice

The DOF amount depends on the fstop (An important notion in optics, fstop expresses the diameter of the entrance pupil in terms of the effective focal length of the lens. fstop is the quantitative measure of lens speed in photography. The smaller the fstop, the smaller the DOF, meaning only a small area of the image will be in focus.) value and the lens diameter, so the Focal length dictates the amount of DOF. Decrease the fstop value and/or the lens diameter for a more exaggerated contrast between areas that are in focus (sharp) and areas that are out of focus (blurred).

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Lin Shaodun 5 months ago 1 point
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An interesting tool here:

http://think.maxwellrender.com/dof_cue_tool-111...

A very good article here: one thousand times better than mine explaination:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field

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Marijn 5 months ago 1 point
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You could use Blender it is free and it kicks photoworks ass!
Here is my render:
http://img168.imageshack.us/my.php?image=velgxx...

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Lin Shaodun 5 months ago 1 point
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To Marijn :

1. We are discussion PhotoWorks DOF issues, your comments is not helpful at all.
2. Blender is not a plugin of SolidWorks.
3. Your render is not that good to convince me that it can kick PhotoWorks's ass.

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Marijn 5 months ago 1 point
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Here is a tutorial:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Import...
The only problem is that you have to learn some blender.

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jeff 5 months ago 1 point
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Lin, your photoworks camera explanation was great, thanks. It does make since that as a I reduce the amount of light in a scene to creat DOF, indirect illumination, while still used, makes less and less of an impact, because the environment isn't very bright.

I had normally just used indirect lighting, and used photoshop to create a post-rendering DOF. But with time restraints at work becoming tighter, I started to try to use DOF in conjunction w/ ind. ill. to pop out some renderings w/ little or no post photoshopping.

Thanks for all the comments.

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lei 3 months ago 1 point
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lin,
I'm a newbie on photoworks 2008. I dont have an OPENGL option on my rendering preview. How do I turn it on?

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