Not sure how many of you have used the caustic settings, but I just started getting into using it.
My questions is if you turn it on at the Part level, does that carry across to the Assembly?
My other question is applying materials. I peronally do it at the part level. (ie make changes and adjustments) but you can also see the materials at the assembly level and make changes. Is that one and the same? Should you edit the part and then make the changes?
Lastly, with caustics you have the ability to adjust Energy, C Photons, and G Photons. What or how does that begin to translate into renderings. I definately see changes, but I guess I am looking for an explination of what they are.
I don't know much about caustics so I'm no help there but I can answer the material question.
Yes, the materials you see in the Photoworks assembly file property manager match what has been applied in spedific part files. If you edit the material in the assembly then its the same as opening the part and editing the material there. This works both ways. If you edit the material in the part file it carries over to the assembly. I also apply most of my materials at the part level. I seem to have better luck with material mapping if I do this.
snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote in news:1116597356.452851.129120 @g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
Well, if you don't get any other response, mine might be useful. I'm not too confident of my caustics knowledge, so hopefully someone else will chime in.
The caustics settings, as I understand them relate to the lights, so the part settings don't travel to the assembly. I think it has to be set up in the assembly.
Personally, I prefer to assign materials at the part level. When I get something that someone else has Photoworxed, it can be extremely frustrating to go through the PW assembly tree to figure out what part got what material, especially if the person just used features or faces to assign materials instead of parts, and didn't group the parts together into the same material folder.
"C" photons are "caustic" photons, "G" is for "global illumination", I'm guessing. The "radius" setting is for the size of the spot of light a photon makes when it hits a surface, and the energy obviously has something to do with the brightness. You want to have small radius, large numbers of photons, and adjust the energy to suit. As you might imagine, though, these settings are made to the extreme peril of render speed.
And then there's the idea that caustics are only meaningful in transparent materials.
You might consider getting the new Photoworks book from your reseller. It actually has some decent things in it toward the end. It seems to have been written by two different people, one plodding and pedantic about the simplest things, and the other more concerned about conveying useful information at a higher level. Solidworks training stuff is good at telling you "what" to do to finish the exercise, but it's not so good at telling you "why" you did that instead of this.
Anyway, check it out.
If you learn something, please pass it on. I don't think there's much depth of knowledge on this topic among SW users.
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