Colour difference between VW and the export to image file

[WhoCanDo]

Can anyone explain why there is so much colour difference between VW on screen rendered, and the exported image file ?

 

I have enabled a light source to try and fix this, but it seems that VW just ignores it when exporting to an image file.

 

The left is what I want, and the right is the export. Whether I open the image with a separate viewer, or if I drag and drop the image back into VW, it looks like the right.

 

[WhoCanDo]

After many hours of trial and error, I have discovered that if I copy my model to another drawing that does print correctly, that this model now prints correctly.

 

In the drawing that is wrong, somehow, it or I have changed a setting that cannot be reset. It would be nice to have a reset button somewhere though.

[BartH]

I'm Curious what would cause this.

I was thinking it might have to do with how the file was saved. if VW added a color profile (sRGB) to the saved image it might effect how it displays in other software. 

 

But, you say moving the geometry to a new file fixed it. 

 

 It could have been one of many things:

• a setting in the lighting environment panel,
• a setting in the rendering tab. 
• something in a default material that got reset when you imported the geometry into a file that already had that texture defined.
• the "Use camera effects" option inadvertently ticked
• something else completely!

if you would like to share the problematic file, I could dig into it a little. 

 

[WhoCanDo]

Thanks Bart.

 

Since I deleted the files that didn't work, and they were huge anyway, I thought I'd try a test today ( a.vwx )

 

First time and it failed.

 

I used a VW blank stationary sheet so that it was unadulterated.

 

When it's working properly, it's supposed to look like this with Metal Zinc Polish rendering with Final Quality Renderworks.

 

 

Not this ..

 

 

 

Using these settings ..

 

 

From this file ..

 

a.vwx

 

 

[BartH]

Interesting!

 

I am seeing something unexpected and I haven't locked it down, but take a look at this:

I am activating the Preview Render window, to check settings

The first image is as you have your settings, in the second, I just turned off "Save Alpha Channel"

Maybe  VW is trying to auto expose the image and the transparent background is messing with the auto exposure??

 

Can you get away without the Alpha channel? that might solve your problem for now.

TIFF files have the same issue

JPGs and BMPs work fine...

 

I will say that when I first tested this it all seemed to work OK, ( images with and without alpha channels looked the same) then , something changed and now I am seeing the color shift is on every export with an alpha channel; I am going to reboot my system and see if i get the same result  but I wanted to share this for now. 
 

[Dave Donley]

I think you've narrowed this down, when we export without alpha channel in design layers with no Renderworks Background applied we automatically put in a grayscale spherical background, so you can see the reflections on something besides an all black void.  When alpha channel is on, we cannot do this because it would make the background opaque, so you lose the automatic grayscale spherical background when alpha channel is on.  I will look into this further for a possible fix in some future version.  HTH

 

[WhoCanDo]

Unfortunately, I need to turn on "Save Alpha Channel" because we need to remove the background to paste into PowerPoint without wiping out the text and other objects.

 

I tried using a graphic editor to remove the background, but the silver finish is so close to the background that it can't achieve a high-quality finish.

 

Thanks Dave. That would save time explaining this when reporting this as a bug.