Inventor Studio Tips

IBL and Inventor Studio Animation Rendering

In Inventor 2011, the real time display can use image based lighting. Inventor Studio does not render with that lighting. However, there is a way to render the animation with the IBL lighting style active and see some decent results. How? Use Preview No Render. Let me explain.

Here's the display with standard lighting style Two Lights active.

Here's the display with IBL lighting style Plain Room active. The scene is lighter,  has a horizon, and some nifty highlights on the part surfaces. Leave this lighting style active and switch to the Inventor Studio environment.
 

In Inventor Studio, I set up a camera animation that would do a slow Pan into the part.

Next, I set the render output settings to use Preview: No Render.

Specify the frame rate, 24 fps yields a smoother recording than the default 15, but takes more time as there are 9 more frames being rendered per second of animation.

Click Render, select your preferred codec and click OK.

The following dialog box displays:

Just click OK.
The key is this, the Preview No Render option uses the view camera. Hey! That's the scene with IBL in it! Right you are! So, how does it look? See for yourself.

This eliminates having to play with the lighting styles if you don't have the time or inclination.

Rendering with Fade

Let's say you have a project you want to present. You want certain elements to fade to reveal the interior.
Instead of experimenting with a bunch of settings and rerendering several times, do the following:

1. Create the animation.
2. Create the Animate Fade action for the specific components with the following parameters.
     a) Opacity 100% > 10%
     b) Time 1 sec.
3. Click OK.

The default render animation setting is for 15 frames per sec. That equates to 90/15 = 6% fade per frame. The time slider moves in 1/10th of a second increments which gives me 1.5 frames per increment or 9% change in opacity.

I move the slider between the various increments to see which fade effect level appeals to me, then render that frame. Here's the result of an animation at 0.6 sec.

Alternatively, before I leave for the day, I could render the animation specifying rendering frames as images, then pick the one I like the next day.

Combining Color, Texture, and Bump Map for the full effect

 When setting up your components for a more realistic render, take time to explore the combined use of color, texture, and bump maps. The difference can be dramatic. Take this model for example, it was inspired by a dried flower, potpourri to be exact. Initially, it was modeled in standard Inventor colors and taken into 3ds max and rendered with a smoke background.

I explored the texture images from 3ds Max and found one called OLDMETAL.JPG. 

In Inventor Studio, I did the following:

Assigned the image as a texture and bump map (an option in the Inventor styles dialog box) for a new color style. Note, if the bump looks wrong to you, try inverting the bump effect (an option). 

To round out the scene, a box-shaped component with a translucent top face was added, then a light placed inside the box to provide illumination from below. Next, an overhead spot light was added. Light decay was turned on. The model was rendered in Inventor Studio with this result. A sort of museum exhibit effect.

Creating and Applying Bump Maps

Bump or displacement maps are images with contasting areas, usually black and white. One color (usually white) causes the appearance of a raised surface, the other (usually black) causes a depressed appearance.

Let's say you've found this cool image and want to use it as a texture on your components. In the image there are definite high and low spots. Here's how you do the bump map for your texture (diffuse) image:

1. Open the texture image in an image editor, do a Save As and give it the bumpmap filename you want it to have. As an example, I will use the OLDMETAL.JPG image to show how the above was done.
2. Change the image to grayscale.
3. Use the brightness/contrast tools in the image editor to increase contrast. Here are two examples taken from the OLDMETAL.JPG image:
    

   

4.  50% contrast
   

   

    70 % contrast.

5. Save the images to the Inventor install directory {installdir}\Textures\bumpmaps.

6. Use the styles or Studio surface styles editor to assign the texture and bumpmap images to a color style. Then select that color style for your component.

Creating Inventor Studio Images for Compositing

Once you output nice looking images in Inventor Studio, you may encounter the request to provide an image that can be composited with a photo to create a nice marketing piece. Here's the quick and easy way to get it.

1. Do all the necessary things and render your image.
2. Click the Save command in the upper right corner.

1. In the dialog box, set the Files of type to .png
2. Click the Options command.
3. In the Options dialog box, set the Dots per inch (dpi) to 300. The higher resolution will result in a more detailed image.

   

4. Tick the Alpha Channel check box, this is a critical step. Click OK.
5. Specify a name for the image if you have not already done so. Save it.

You now have an image with a transparent background (see below). As you can see, shadows are saved with the image.

Now it is up to the Marketing folks to do something interesting with it. One of the effects you may have seen is to have the product image emerging from the picture (below). This is pretty easy to do if you have image editing experience (think layers).