How to do a realistic and world class render in Creo?

A long time ago I wished PTC would pick up POV Ray or Blender interfaces. Sigh.

Bart

I have to agree, trying to expect Creo to be the complete all in one package, is asking to much. The rendering in Creo is really a bare bones option that you would expect in an engineering software program, and can give a respectable result, but it is limited  by the fact that it is a sub feature of a cad package .

That's why I use an outside program that was dedicated for just rendering, the level of tweaks and adjustment offered in outside program to control the output is vast, and can change the result greatly.

I use a package that uses Iray and the level of detail in the textures, shadows, lighting, camera is by far, much more than you can expect a plug in of a cad package to offer, but is a steep learning curve in what you have to set to get very good results.

As for the time to render out the above image, I let it run til it finished and was about 20 min.

Peter

The key word here is perspective and i need to get this out.

If you know me personally i am an aggressive person.   Some take me wrong others are encouraged by me. From racing, climbing bicycling to Creo & Maya.  For me it's all about learning and how fast can one improve from day to day. Delta.  We might complain that people holing us back and often it is ourselves that hold us back the most.   In the most polite way possible i simply want to encourage people to learn new things and be aggressive about it.  It may change ones perspective.

Perspective is everything

To me perspective is everything.  I come from the perspective of engineering.  However to be aggressive, I made a push in the late 90's to learn other tools for rendering like Alias & Maya.  I even invited the then product line manager for training in those tools.   My now 15 years later perspective is from a movie rendering tools perspective.  An industry where their tools are used in every movie since Jurassic Park ,Spider man and star wars.

World Class Renders

The title posted was 'world class' and that quite frankly leaves our engineering tools in the dust. Not to complain I try to be proactive and make intelligent arguments and like in politics you try to utilize all your charisma to persuade others. It may be hard to imagine w/ an engineer's perspective how to make render tools better.  Remember decisions are all based upon what we know not what we don't know. 

Ill try to explain w/ respect to Maya renders.  A material in any modern render tool is a color w/ respect to how light reflects off it.  Is the spectacular highlight round and diffused at the ends making the material look dry looking or is the highlight rectangular making the material look wet and layers like a thick layer of automobile aftermarket paint job?  So yes creating a room in with a large format LDR image where that material reflects rectangular out of the material would make the object look wet and more glossy.

In Maya we can layer up these materials on top of each other creating effects only possible in Creo with multiple renders then later adjusting those renders using opacity layers in Photoshop.  Which by the way aggressive Photoshop experience is always a must w/ post production of renders.  (2 day class gets you to that skill set)

Some years ago Design Engine did a series of renders of an Indy Car for the Ad Agency representing Penske Racing then basically Marlboro w/ out the Marlboro signage.  The Indy car was molded in WF4.0 and you can download that Pro/E model from our website BTW  m We did the import OBJ into Maya and did the render in Maya with a blue sky and red car as you can imagine even had the PTC logo on the mirrors.   So the initial test renders we noticed the car was pink not red (no Pink in Marlboro land and thru much problem solving we realized the blue sky combined reflecting into the red made pink.  In Maya there is a setting in the material to not accept reflections or to accept reflections from some other object.  We quickly molded rectangular lights above the car and assigned a bright white luminescence material to those rectangle lights to obtain a rectangular spectacular highlight that made the red material pop as masterful rectangular speculator highlights of glossy wet red paint. (look into the eyes of you significant other and notice the layers in their eye from the pupil to the blood vessels to the glossy wet layer.  The camera in some of the renders went right thru the light that we made invisible to the camera but not invisible to the red paint material.

Another example that might be more applicable to product with respect to ground reflection.  In Creo rendering there is no way to control the percentage of reflection on the floor plane.  When a user first learns to render they usually apply floor reflections 14% or higher when in reality a highly polished floor would rarely present past 2% in these examples I present a screen capture of the same bike seat (not even a render) and muddy up the reflection some.  In other renders Ill had some noise to the floor to add swirls also in a layer in Photoshop.

Screen shot default

screen shot with the reflection blurred a bit using Photoshop to soften the reflection.  Just posted this

Image on the design engine instagram D E S I G N - E N G I N E instagram.com/designengineeducation/

These techniques are not avail in SW either LOL however, I have pushed for some of these types of items into now 10 years ago Pro/E and got laughed at.   I can handle it and I get it as most Engineers will never use this.   I'm a bit upset but that's why I don't bother helping change peoples perspectives.  It's like politics, you can try but your not going change another perspective so easy.  It's easier to just make fun of the politicians than to try to make meaningful change.

The PTC Augmented Reality stuff is cool fast and impressive for sure.  I suppose possibly fueled by Iron Man making changes in a mid air version of PTC Creo Augmented Reality/Windchill product.  Not sure that needs to be rendered to a photo-real level yet.    overall PTC Creo is an impressive sweet set of tools and PTC is run by some extremely smart people.  If anyone wants to participate from a professional level and try to inflict change, i suggest to join a technical committee and get fully engaged!

Bart Brejcha

Design-engine.com