Is Ambient Occlusion accelerated in Creo 3.0?

[pzago]

I'm using Creo 3.0 M060 on Windows 7 with nvidia Quadro K4200 and in the options panel it says that for "Pro/Engineer (Creo Parametric)" ambient occlusion is "not supported by this applciation". While on PTC website I read that ambient occlusion is hardware accelerated.

This thread is inactive and closed by the PTC Community Management Team. If you would like to provide a reply and re-open this thread, please notify the moderator and reference the thread. You may also use "Start a topic" button to ask a new question. Please be sure to include what version of the PTC product you are using so another community member knowledgeable about your version may be able to assist.

[AmitDeshpande]

Hi Paolo,

Can you clarify a little bit more?  What exactly are you doing, when you receive the "not supported by this application"  error?

Thanks,

Amit

[pzago]

Sure:

- Launch Creo Parametric 3.0

- Right click on the desktop, then select "nvidia control panel"

- In the settings tree, behind 3D settings, select "Manage 3D settings"

- Select the tab "Program Settings"

- There is a dropdown menu with supported applications found on the system, it's called "Select a program to customize"

- Select "PTC PRO/ENGINEER Wildfire (PTC Creo PArametric)

- Once the program is selected the interface shows a table with the settings for that program, first line is: "Ambinet Occlusion", it's grayed out and the "settings" field is "Not supported for this application"

I ask about the ambient occlusion because when it's enabled and the model is spinning, the effect is very grainy like a low resolution texture, and it "cleans up" when the model stop spinning.

[LukaszMazur]

Paolo Zago napisał(-a):

I ask about the ambient occlusion because when it's enabled and the model is spinning, the effect is very grainy like a low resolution texture, and it "cleans up" when the model stop spinning.

If I remember correctly, the effect you describe is intentional. When manipulating the model with AO enabled, the effect is simplified to improve performance and when you settle on particular orientation it's back to full visualization. I think it was deliberately coded that way and probably has nothing to do with graphic drivers.

[pzago]

Lukasz Mazur wrote:

If I remember correctly, the effect you describe is intentional. When manipulating the model with AO enabled, the effect is simplified to improve performance and when you settle on particular orientation it's back to full visualization. I think it was deliberately coded that way and probably has nothing to do with graphic drivers.

I think you are right, Creo seems to completely ignore many settings from the nVidia control panel (anti alias and ambient occlusion can be active in Creo even if they are turned off in the control panel). I don't see the point of hard-coding a simplified effect, I should be the one to decide if the effect is too heavy on the performance or not, especially since it seems hardware improves faster than Creo relase cycles ;D It seems form some videos I saw online that other CAD software don't need to reduce the quality of ambient occlusion, that's why I came to the conclusion that maybe it was not hardware accelerated after all