Path of Reflective Image

On the PW toolbar, go to Scene, then the Environment tab, or background, depending on what you're doing.

Matt,

I think he's talking about the Realview background.

Has anyone figured this out yet

Mark

I thought I saw something in 2007 to allow that. Am I dreaming?

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:

When you say words like "render" and "photoworks" in the same sentence, people assume you mean rendering in photoworks. It sounds like maybe you're talking about using a shaded model with a Realview material instead.

It turns out that each material has its own reflective image. If you go to your SW installation directory, then \shaders\textures\cubemap.dds is the background image file. DDS files (Direct Draw Surface) are most widely used for games. The images are usually square, using a size which is a power of 2. The SW images are 512x512 pixels.

You should be able to find a dds converter without too much difficulty. When you do, you will have to take whatever image you want to use and make it square and with sides sized at a power of 2, and swap it out for the cubemap.dds file in the SW directories.

I've tried this, and haven't been able to get it to work yet, so my instructions can't be complete. It messes up the graphics, so you have to restart SW and not assign that particular material again. Make sure to back things up before you tinker. I'd appreciate it if anyone who finds a complete solution would post it. Not that I think this is a really necessary thing to know, but it is interesting.

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:

I think what you're thinking of is an image that can be put in the background of the main SW window. The functionality has been around for many releases, probably back to 98 or so, but in 2007, they moved it and made a bigger deal about it. It used to be (in 2006) available at Insert, Picture, but you had to go to Customize Menu to get it to show on the menu. In 2007 its at Tools, Options, Colors.

This is interesting Matt. How did you figure this out thus far?

Same way as usual. Stumble across something, make a few mistakes, and randomly press buttons. Shakespeare a monkey and a typewriter.

I knew the "shaders" folder was for realview, and so just got curious. Fortunately my image viewer would view dds files, and I recognized the out-of-focus scene, but the viewer wouldn't save the file type. Searched for dds info and came across several game forums that talked about it.

Good detective work Matt. I'm often asked if the default realview reflection image and be changed and I always say, "no" but you may be proving me wrong?

If the original poster is talking about PhotoWorks and not RealView then you can access the default reflective image here "C:\Program Files\SolidWorks\data\Images\textures\background" (Studio 2)

Quite interesting. To see a clear view of the picture, go to plasticshiny or water. There are also a few more that use that same pic to some degree. XnView will display them and can save a jpg as a dds. But when I tried to just replace the old cubemap file with another one, SW crashed, and even so when I modified the image file to match. So, there does appear to be a bit more to it.

WT

Well, if you're a PSP user (like me), DXTBmp the only program which I've been able to find which seems to come close in view/editing dds files?

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BTW, I have to add,.. this was a issue/request years ago which went,.. you got it, NO WHERE!! It's ridiculous that we have to go through these hoops!?!!? I mean, a Rhino licensee, environment maps have been around for a long time and it's EXTREMELY easy to use and change image maps!!! Goes to show you have SW Corp is NOT listening to the users!!

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Mark Biasotti had mentioned that the Nvidia site had some tools for this. I believe the above page has links to what you need.