engelhjs:
Bunkspeed and Keyshot are the offspring of when Hypershot split in twain a few years ago and are more or less the same product (I haven’t used the SW16 integrated version of Bunkspeed, but from their site it doesn’t look like it’s changed much, if at all, in terms of quality.) If you need better quality than either of those, look at Vray or Maxwell. There is a lot more time involved in creating materials and lighting environments, and you’ll have to import your SW models into another program (for a long time I ran everything through Vray for Rhino), but the potential for photoreal renderings is much higher.
My personal opinion is that Bunkspeed and Hypershot offer the best combination of speed and quality. When I ran Vray I would end up with some stunning renderings, but the amount of time I had to spend tweaking my materials and environments made it too cumbersome for regular studio work. I can get a dozen 7-out-of-10 renderings from Bunkpseed in the time it takes me to get one 9-out-of-10 from Vray.
Thanks Engelhjs - I will have a look at Bunkspeed and see what sort of quality I can get out of it and then progress from there if necessary.
moczys:
I don’t think that SW Visualize (Bunkspeed’s new name) is meant to replace Photoview 360, and at the present it is still just a stand-alone application (not integrated). From some things I read on the Solidworks boards, Visualize Standard (only static renderings) will be packaged with a SW Premium or Professional license purchase, and Visualize Professional (animations, 360 views) will cost extra. I was extremely disappointed with the initial release of Visualize. The interface is very clunky and the materials controls are confusing. Couple this with the fact that Dassault has hidden all information contained on the Bunkspeed message boards by forwarding all traffic to the Visualize home page, and it means that there is little to no information out there on actually how to use the software. I spent a full day messing around with it and barely got anything usable. At this point, from my perspective, SW Visualize isn’t worth the time to download and try teach yourself how to get good renders out of it… go with something more established like Keyshot.
On a side note, I’ve been playing around with Blender a lot recently, and am absolutely blown away by it’s versatility. The modeling approach is completely different than SW (polygon vs parametric), and the interface is very difficult to get used to at first. However, in addition to modeling, it supports scripting via python, provides real-time raytraced rendering, animation, and game-engine development. Oh, and it’s completely free and open source, so there are tons of tutorials out there to show you exactly how to accomplish anything you’re looking to do. The one downside is that the workflow from SW to blender is not that great, since you have to convert your geometry to STL data, there is no good way to update your models if the design changes. Since it’s free, there’s no reason not to check it out!
Moczys - That doesn’t sound great. Its included in our work license so I will give it a go and see i I can get on with it, but the idea of not being able to get any information on it doesn’t sound like a great feature!
