Using Alan Sinclair TOS .dwg for my project
- Thread starter circusdog
- Start date
Nicely done 
Nicely done
Thanks, guys!Ditto. Nice going circusdog
You made the Enterprise a Transformer???
Okay, I've gotta ask... how did you manage that?
So, like a fan flick? Sam Witwicky meets Captain Kirk?
Would the Enterprise be a [Autobot] or a Decepticon?
Autobot
Astrotrain would get his ass kicked.
--Alex
So, now you get to make a choice... continue to work in your CAD package, or export it to another format and play with it in some other (better-rendering) package.
My biggest gripe with Inventor was always the, frankly, terrible rendering capabilities (and the relatively low accuracy bounds, compared to other packages I've used). But the actual MODEL is much nicer than what you can see here, now.
If memory serves, you do have the ability to export to an OBJ file, don't you? I recommend taking it out of there, as an OBJ, and putting it into a nicer rendering package. You can work with something free, like Blender or Truespace, and get pretty damn nice results, honestly.
You can model your windows... or you can just do them later as part of the surfacing (ie, glowing elements of your surface textures).
If you're planning to do this, you can also create textures (including bump maps or, even better, "displacement maps" as part of your textures) to create the ribbing and "screen textures" which are mainly found on the engine nacelles and pylons (but also found on the impulse engine protrusion at the aft of the primary hull, on either end).
You can make your windows glow either through "luminosity maps" or you can make separate surfaces to represent these.
There are a LOT of little details still to add... so the real question is "what do you want to do with this?" You're not going to get a gorgeous render from within Inventor, I'm afraid... but you can make some damned nice drawings if you like!
In my case, I've done most of my "nice" rendered shots using something called NuGraf, from Okino. It's really a combination translation package (called Polytrans) and a passably nice renderer. The reason I've done most of my shots using that is that it can work from my native Pro/E files without translation. Eventually, I'm still planning on taking my stuff out of there and into a better rendering package (Maya, still, is most likely, but I haven't really used Maya in almost a year now, so...)
My biggest gripe with Inventor was always the, frankly, terrible rendering capabilities (and the relatively low accuracy bounds, compared to other packages I've used). But the actual MODEL is much nicer than what you can see here, now.
If memory serves, you do have the ability to export to an OBJ file, don't you? I recommend taking it out of there, as an OBJ, and putting it into a nicer rendering package. You can work with something free, like Blender or Truespace, and get pretty damn nice results, honestly.
You can model your windows... or you can just do them later as part of the surfacing (ie, glowing elements of your surface textures).
If you're planning to do this, you can also create textures (including bump maps or, even better, "displacement maps" as part of your textures) to create the ribbing and "screen textures" which are mainly found on the engine nacelles and pylons (but also found on the impulse engine protrusion at the aft of the primary hull, on either end).
You can make your windows glow either through "luminosity maps" or you can make separate surfaces to represent these.
There are a LOT of little details still to add... so the real question is "what do you want to do with this?" You're not going to get a gorgeous render from within Inventor, I'm afraid... but you can make some damned nice drawings if you like!
In my case, I've done most of my "nice" rendered shots using something called NuGraf, from Okino. It's really a combination translation package (called Polytrans) and a passably nice renderer. The reason I've done most of my shots using that is that it can work from my native Pro/E files without translation. Eventually, I'm still planning on taking my stuff out of there and into a better rendering package (Maya, still, is most likely, but I haven't really used Maya in almost a year now, so...)
I hadn't thought about it. It was supposed to be an Inventor learning experience. I even got my boss to buy into the idea so I could use my work PC.
The Inventor model, or the Enterprise model?
I'll look Monday.
I managed to get Emboss to work for the windows, then I went back and deleted the Decals (images) and made them an Emboss as well. Looks much better, and they are smaller files now.
The screens on the pylon struts, nacelles and nacelle pipes (?) are still left to do. I had such a time making the ribs on the nacelle ends and the intercoolers (?) that I will not use extrusions for that unless placement accuracy forces me to do so. I think a surface texture would mean a random start/end and element size.
Mmmm! Glowing windows! Huhuhuhuhuhhhh (drools)!
I definitely want to figure out something for the nacelle domes. I know orange isn't right.
I wanted to make the primary hull beacons have a transparent cover over a red or green ball. For some reason, they wouldn't show what was inside them. Maybe it is an Inventor problem.
I made a test part and it seemed to render correctly. Maybe it just inherited something from the base part. It should be simple to make a separate part and assemble it ot the primary hull. That is what I ended up doing for the impulse drive.
I made a test part and it seemed to render correctly. Maybe it just inherited something from the base part. It should be simple to make a separate part and assemble it ot the primary hull. That is what I ended up doing for the impulse drive.
Wow, faux pas, Maximus! My apologies.
It IS an "inventor problem." As I said, Inventor's rendering engine is pretty crude. Enough so that I used to have to export to other packages to show proper "fit" images sometimes... even though the MODEL was really very accurate. The excessive tesselation of the renderings, even at "best quality" settings, made the Inventor-rendered shots pretty much useless in those cases.
But the model you've created is really a very nice nurbs-ish model. If you can export to an OBJ file, you'll be transforming into polygons, so you'll want to set it up to be a pretty fine mesh. Alternatively, you can try to export using some other tool directly into a renderer (again, Okino's software is the ONLY thing I've found that actually works, at least so far, to bring in nurbs surfaces from CAD into a renderer package).
By the way... I meant that the model you've built is actually much nicer than what you're able to see from Inventor's subpar "supplied rendering engine." You really want to do your rendering from someplace else... if you want this to look nice.
Pro/E's built-in display mode looks much better than Inventor's but you can easily tell, when reviewing my own model, which images come from the CAD package and which ones are proper renders, can't you?
Yeah... that's not a bad idea, as a rule, anyway.
I suspect that the issue with your problems is related to surface normal direction. I'm assuming that you do everything as solids, and aren't using surfaces at all... correct? Well, even if doing so, it's easy to get a defect in an Inventor model where you don't have a full-closed curve and as a result you get a surface instead of a solid. (Pro/E is much more robust in this regard, insofar as it REFUSES to allow you to create features from improperly defined sketches... which is, as far as I'm concerned, one of its greatest strengths, albeit one which lots of people like to bitch and moan about!)
Even the smallest gap in your feature will result in an "unclosed sketch" and an open "surface" based feature... which I've seen behave as you've just described.
Yep.
Yes, that happened when I first did the revolve for the primary hull. However, you can easily tell the difference between a surface render and a solid render in trhe preview, since the surface result looks like a plane (transparent yellow) and the tool won't even allow you to select the solid option. You also get a red cross to tell you there is a profile problem. Long story short, I have been cleaning all that up as I go.
The last three shots I posted were made from my home PC connected via VPN to work, so we can discount those images as gritty by low quality hardware (no DirectX, no 32-bit color, etc). Also, I made them 256 color gifs to save bandwidth. I'm not defending Inventor, just saying they are to some extent limited (purposefully and hardware-ily) in quality due to my hookup. It is murderously painful to do anything detailed by VPN. One errant touch of the mouse wheel will put you far away from your intended work spot. What takes minutes at work can take 10-20x longer at home.
My choices are CATIA V5, IGES, JT, Parasolid, Pro/E, SAT, STEP, STL, XGL and ZGL. Any of these sound good?
Well, it actually doesn't look any better on the work PC. So, I agree that AutoDesk doesn't do very well on rendering.
I learned a lot, though. Mostly how to yank Inventor around to do what I want it to do. It is particular about the order of things. It wouldn't emboss the windows on the superstructure until I totally isolated it from the rest of the primary hull. So I ended up taking it out and making it a separate part. Maybe a good idea anyway.
I learned a lot, though. Mostly how to yank Inventor around to do what I want it to do. It is particular about the order of things. It wouldn't emboss the windows on the superstructure until I totally isolated it from the rest of the primary hull. So I ended up taking it out and making it a separate part. Maybe a good idea anyway.
Actually the render engine in AutoCAD isn't half bad. It just takes forever and a day to render something.
It's not that "Autodesk" doesn't do well in rendering. It's that they provided a poor-quality "default" renderer, because they're encouraging you to use a separate package (also bought from Autodesk) to do your "nice" renders.
There are a number of rendering packages out there, usually integrated into a "parent application" but able to be replaced within that application. I learned 3D, primarily, using Maya (which is now, by the way, owned by Autodesk). I've worked on getting familiar with "Mental Ray," the default high-quality renderer in Maya (at least in the version I have... I don't know if they replaced it since 2008).
Seriously, there is no legitimate reason for Autodesk to provide such a poor-quality renderer (one that actually makes TECHNICAL PRESENTATION work difficult, not just "pretty picture rendering") except that they're trying to "upsell" you on another package to complement it. They could easily just stick Mental Ray, or some other nice 3D rendering engine, into Inventor Suite, with pretty much zero pain from their standpoint.
There are a number of rendering packages out there, usually integrated into a "parent application" but able to be replaced within that application. I learned 3D, primarily, using Maya (which is now, by the way, owned by Autodesk). I've worked on getting familiar with "Mental Ray," the default high-quality renderer in Maya (at least in the version I have... I don't know if they replaced it since 2008).
Seriously, there is no legitimate reason for Autodesk to provide such a poor-quality renderer (one that actually makes TECHNICAL PRESENTATION work difficult, not just "pretty picture rendering") except that they're trying to "upsell" you on another package to complement it. They could easily just stick Mental Ray, or some other nice 3D rendering engine, into Inventor Suite, with pretty much zero pain from their standpoint.
I'm going to recommend you download a copy of Blender, and start playing around with this. You'll be able to find some way of getting your model into the Blender rendering environment, and you will be amazed at what your model looks like when rendered well.
It's free, so it's not like it's going to cause you problems to try...
http://www.blender.org/
It's free, so it's not like it's going to cause you problems to try...
http://www.blender.org/
I found out from an AutoDesk forum that you can export parts (but not assemblies) as .stl files from Inventor and import to Blender. I installed Blender and am watching the tutorials.
I'm not an artist, just a techie, so a lot of the ideas are over my head right now. Maybe I'll get it at some point. Or, I might get my wife to play with it. She is the artist in the family.
BTW, I found out that the company has a license for 3ds but it hasn't been installed yet. We're waiting for a new server to install Vault and then upgrade to 2012 at the same time. Then I'll have an excuse to try it out with the grey lady.
