RenderWorks Tutorials

[Guest]

I just wanted to take a moment to point out that there are a few RenderWorks tutorials available on the website in the current and past editions of the Dispatch. The Dispatch is Diehl Graphsoft's quarterly news letter. The last three editions have been place on the website, linked from the news page. The current edition has a RenderWorks article that I wrote talking about reflective effects. The Winter and Summer editions both have articles written by Peter Perszyk, talking about the Render Bitmap tool and transparent effects. These are quick and easy ways to get to know the product a little better. If you have any ideas for a Summer 2000 RenderWorks topic, let me know so I can get cracking.

The URL is:

http://www.diehlgraphsoft.com/news/thedispatch/index.html

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-- Michael Pacylowski --

[Bruce Kieffer]

Michael,

Your article about reflective effects was extremely informative. I think an article about shadows would be helpful. I find shadowing useful to enhance the realism of a rendering and help differentiate adjoining surfaces of objects. Shadowing is most effective if it's subtle. I do a lot of exploded view illustrations. Since objects in these drawings are close to each other, applying shadows is more distracting than useful. With shadows turned on, there are too many hard shadows thrown from objects with an unobstructed line to the light source. You could help by explaining how to soften and "turn down" shadows to get more realistic results.

[MikeB]

I Agree, actually a general discussion on lighting, and techniques for various effects would be nice. I've seen alot of good models rendered ineffectively because of bad lighting.

Also, I've had alot of trouble with color. I suspect this is related to lighting but I haven't found a solution. The problem is that the images I export from VW tend to be rather washed out, the colors seem pale. I can usually get satisfactory results from manipulating the exported image in Photoshop, but this can be hit and miss and seems like it should be unnecessary. I just wonder if I'm missing something important in this regard.

Thanks

[Guest]

Washed out colors are not at all uncommon, and yes lighting can often help with this problem. Lighting and shadows are great topics for the next DISPATCH, which should be out in a month or so. I'll try and cover these areas in the RenderWorks tutorial.

Thanks for the ideas.

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-- Michael Pacylowski --