PhotoView360 Video Rendering with a Camera Path
Need to create a professional looking video render for a design presentation. This tutorial will cover the basics of rendering your model in Solidworks PhotoView 360. Beyond just creating nice images, this tutorial will show you how to use a motion study combined with PhotoView's rendering engine to make an animated walk-around of your model.
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Step 1: Start up PhotoView 360
Obviously, you've got to start by opening up SolidWorks and getting a model loaded. I'll be using one of my models for this tutorial that can be downloaded here (https://grabcad.com/library/picture-frame-16).
Start up PhotoView 360 by going to SOLIDWORKS Add-Ins -> PhotoView 360. It can take a little while to load up.
Alternatively, you could have PhotoView 360 selected to be loaded on start-up. I don't really recommend this, as you may not be using it all the time and it just adds more junk for SolidWorks to load when it starts, bogging down your computer. But hey, if you are doing a lot of rendering, maybe it makes sense for you.
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Step 2: Set up your Textures with Materials
If you are using my picture frame assembly, the textures have been set up for you already; however, if you are doing your own model, you'll need to spend some time setting up the textures.
Now there are two ways to go about this. Using materials and using appearances / textures. In this step I'll be going over how to do this with materials, including creating a custom material. If you just care about textures, skip to the next step few and we'll just use appearances.
If you are really interested in the engineering aspect of your model, you'll probably want to set up textures with your part materials. You may even need to create your own materials if the preloaded SolidWorks file doesn't have the material that you need. For many applications, this kind of detail is more work than is needed; however, if you are going to be doing a large amount of FEA and simulation, it might make sense to do this all at once.
Fortunately, for me, most of the materials for my frame were already available. I had to add MDF because that's what I'll be making some of this out of (it's cheap and I don't want to be using hardwoods for the entire thing).
Here's how you go about adding a new material. First, you will need to make a new library and Category. Do this by right clicking on in the left window and creating a New Library. Once you've got a new library, right click on that library to create a new Category. I've got a Custom Materials library, and I've added several categories over the years. Here I'm going to add MDF to my "Misc" Category.
Once you've made a new Category, you can right click on it to add a New Material. Here I'm creating a new material, MDF.
Once you've got that material added, you'll need to set up the properties. I honestly have no idea about the reputability of this site (https://www.makeitfrom.com/material-properties/Medium-Density-Fiberboard-MDF/), but it had most of the properties that I needed and I don't need to be super precise (honestly, density is the only thing that really would remotely matter to me). So that's what I used.
The thing that we really care about in this case is the appearance of the material. So we'll go that tab. This is the part that takes a while, because you have to do some digging. For the MDF I'm using, I'll just use the appearance of chipboard, and that can be found under SOLIDWORKS Textures->wood->chipbd.jpg. This will use a .jpg of a texture and apply it to this particular material. Now whenever you apply that material, that appearance will also be added to the part.
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Step 3: Set up your Textures with Appearances
If you don't want to deal with all of the material properties and assignments, you can just modify the appearance of your part. There's a couple of ways to do this, and we'll go with the quickest. Over on the left you'll see Taskpanes tab. Click on the tetra-colored icon (blue-red-yellow-green sphere) to the right of the screen.
This should open the appearances tab. This is where you'll be to drag and drop appearances onto your part (or assembly) and edit the scene. We'll work on the scene next, but for now, let's do the appearance of your part.
In the new pane, click the chevron next to appearances to get a drop down of different categories of appearances. You can look around in here for the texture of your choice, but unfortunately, in our case, that texture doesn't exist... yet.
We need to add the folder of images that Solidworks already has on file for materials. We'll do this by collapsing the Appearances drop-down we just opened and selecting the "Add File Location Icon".
The folder that I want to add is found in under Program Files->SOLIDWORKS Corp->SOLIDWORKS->data->Images->textures. I want to add the "textures" folder, as that contains a lot of the images that I would want to apply.
Once you have the folder you want to add selected, click the "OK" button. It won't look like anything has happened, but once you expand the "Appearances" drop down again, you'll see a "textures" folder available.
Open your new "textures" folder, and scroll down to the "wood" sub folder. When you click on this you'll see a variety of wood textures that you'll be able to apply. We're going to grab the "chipbd" texture and drag and drop it onto our part.
Once you drag and drop the appearance on the part, you'll see a little pop-up of options with absolutely no text, so let's talk about this:
This pop-up allows you to select at what level you wish to apply your appearance. You can apply (from left to right) at the face level, feature level, body level, and part level. The hierarchy that will be followed when applying the appearance is from left to right here, meaning that any appearance applied to a face will always override any other appearance applied to a feature, body, or part.
I generally just stick with using the part level appearance, though occasionally when I want to highlight a face, or simulate some kind of painted surface, I'll use the face level appearance.
In this case, let's choose the body or part level appearance.
Once we've done that, we may want to edit the appearance and tweak it further. This can be going over to your feature manager and selecting the DisplayManager tab.
Once you select the DisplayManager tab, you'll see options to edit your appearances, decals, and any scene related stuff. We're focusing on the appearances for now, so make sure that the tetra-colored icon is selected and you are seeing "Appearances" in the title bar.
Mine defaults to the sort order of "History", but I find that a hierarchical drop down is more useful in some cases. It will show you what level things are applied at (face, part, etc.) You can use the "History" or "Alphabetical" view to see all of the active appearances.
From here, you can always right click on any appearance that you have applied and modify its properties. Modifying these properties is beyond the scope of this particular tutorial, so feel free to explore the options and see what they do.
For now, we should be able to drag and drop and appearance onto a part or feature to apply it. If you are using my picture frame file, this has already been done, but you can mod if further if you like.
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Step 4: Setting up the Environment
You don't have to do this part, but it gives a nice finishing touch to any render. Now that your object looks as you want it to, you'll want to create an environment to place it in.
Environments are set up in the same way that appearances were. Navigate the to the Taskpane on the right, but instead of dragging and dropping an appearance, you'll drag and drop a scene into the main view window.
Below I'm apply the reflective black floor scene. But you can apply whichever scene you like.
Over in the DisplayManager, you can click on Scene Editor to modify elements of the scene. The scene contains appearances for the background and environment, any lights that are active, cameras, and any walk-throughs. Walk-throughs are an entirely difference ball-game, and not what we are doing here. In all my years of SolidWorks, I've never really had use for it.
Feel free to add any lighting that you like here by right clicking on "Lights" and selecting the desired light. This is more of a trial and error sort of thing, so have fun playing with it!
Next up, we're going to work on setting up our model to create a camera. We could just add a camera right now, but there's a few things we want to do first.
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Step 5: 3D Sketching the Camera Path
Manipulating a camera can be a pain, and creating a motion study with a camera even more so if you don't have things set up. When interpolating from key frame to key frame (don't worry if you don't know what that is yet), the camera will opt to move along a straight line, which is rarely what is desired.
So, before we set up the camera, we are going to create a 3D path along which the camera will travel. We'll do this by sketching a 3D curve.
Make sure you're back in your FeatureTree manager. Whether for a part or assembly, you'll go to the Sketch Tab and
Once you have the 3D sketch active, choose the spline tool.
In this tutorial we are going to make a simple curved path. You can make it as complex as you like, with the only caveat being you can't have self-intersection on the curve.
I have found that setting your main display into the 4 quadrants mode is very helpful for this step.
Now that we can see easily what we are going to do, I'm going to create the basic spline with two points. To make it curvy, we'll modify the tangents in just a minute. Click to place the two spline points and then hit ESC when you've finished.
Click on the spline in order to see the tangent handles.
Click and drag them until you get the shape that you want.
The nice thing about the 4-quadrant set up is that we can easily change the height of the spline as well (without modifying the other axes). You can do this by clicking in any of the other quadrants and dragging the points and tangent handles around...
Once you've got the spline the way you want it, exit out of the sketch and we'll move on to the next step: adding a camera.
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Step 6: Adding a camera
The point of the 3D sketch spline was to make a path for our camera to follow. Let's add that camera now. Navigate back to the DisplayManager, right click on "Camera" and add a new camera. I've already got one in the picture frame file, so you'll need to add a second camera.
In the new properties manager that opens, we'll be changing three things. The first is the target point. This will keep your camera locked on this point. I'm going to choose the window pane of the frame. You might find it useful to create a reference point or a piece of construction geometry for the camera to focus on as well.
Next, we are going to select the "Position by selection" box and then select the newly made 3D sketch.
Below the "Position by selection" box, there is now a numerical entry. This number represents the percent along the path. If we were to put 0%, it would start at the left most point (at least on the curve that I created). It we selected 100%, then if woul dbe at the right most point. This is the value we will be modifying in our motion study to have the camera move along the path.
Last but not least, we will make sure that our camera roll is set to 0. Sometimes this can get wonky, and I just want to make sure the roll stays constant. Though you might be thinking that this would be something you could animate later, and you can!
Next, we'll make sure our camera is see what we want it to see. Click the check to save the camera.
Revert to a single viewport in your main display, and then use the drop down to select the camera view. This will have the main viewport display what that camera is seeing.
Right click on the camera in the display manager and edit the camera. Here you can now update the Field of View parameters and see how it changes what the camera sees. Modify these values until the your model is displayed as you want it to be in the viewport. I chose a perspective 24mm wide angle camera.
That's everything that we will be doing here. Let's get onto the main event, animation!
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Step 7: Creating the Motion Study
This next step may be a complete new things for some people, so I'll try to help you get acquainted with how a lot of animation software operates. But first, let's create our motion study. Down at the bottom of the main display window, you'll see a default "Motion Study 1" tab. If you don't, just right click anywhere down there and select "New Motion Study".
When the new motion study is created, you should see an screen something like the one shown below.
Motion studies and animation software operate on the basis of a thing called "key frames". These are special points in time that the software will interpolate motion between. In our case, we will be using two key frames, one at the start of the camera travel, and one at the end of camera travel.
Key frames are shown in the timeline at the bottom of the screen. Wherever you see a blue diamond, that is a key frame. Initially, we have key frames a the beginning of our timeline.
Each element of your assembly, including cameras, lights, parts, mates, can all have key frames. For example, you may want a mate to be active only for a certain time frame during an animation. You could do this by having a key frame where it turns on or off. You may want a part to travel between two key frames. For more advanced simulations, you can even create motors and simulate gravity!
For our purposes, we are just being really simple and animating a camera.
First, we will make sure that we are using our new camera for the view port. On the both left of your screen, expand the "Lights, Cameras and Scenes" folder and right click on your new camera. Make sure "Camera View" is active.
We now have the camera view active. Let's move our timeline marker to the 10 second mark and add a new key frame. Click on the timeline bar to move the vertical bar to 10 seconds and then click the "Add new key frame" icon.
You should now have a brownish highlight between the two key frames. Awesome. We're almost there. Now we need to modify the camera position at each of these frames. Let's start with the beginning.
Double click on the blue diamond along the Camera track. You'll see the camera dialog open up.
Modify the distance along the camera position curve to zero.
Click the green check to accept the changes and then double click on the right-most blue diamond key frame.
Modify the camera position in this key frame to 100. You'll see a turquoise line show up along the brownish highlight between the key frames. This indicates that there is some kind of action happening for this item during this time frame (the camera is moving). You'll also see the display window change.
That's all we need to do for animating the camera! Let's see our work! If you haven't clicked the green check to accept the changes you made, do that now. Use the slider at the top of the motion study to rewind, and then click the "play" arrow to watch your animation in all of its glory!
If you are seeing the 3D camera path, you can always go back and hide that sketch so you won't see it in the viewport.
Let's move on to exporting your animation!
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Step 8: Exporting the Animation
The last step is to export your animation, and there are two ways to do this. The quickest way is to just export the animation with the Solidworks viewport. This will result in a video file that looks exactly like what you saw in your SolidWorks viewport. We'll do that first, because it is the quickest and most versatile.
First, click on the "Save Animation" icon.
You can save as a native AVI file, but I prefer the .mp4 format, so select the drop down and choose that as your file format.
Pick a file location to export and then press Save. Solidworks will run through the animation and save it where you specified. If you want to change the frames per second, you can, but be warned that more frames will take longer to run through. It'll be more smooth, though.
That's the fast way to do this. However, if you have a presentation and you want to use all of that fancy texturing that we did then, we can use PhotoView 360 to export our animation. This takes a lot longer, and significantly more computer resources, but it can make a really polished video.
First, make sure that PhotoView 360 is active. Then, go to the same "Save Animation" dialog, but this time choose PhotoView 360 as your rendering tool.
There are options for motion blur, but leave that blank for now. It can really mess up a short render, and it can be annoying to have your computer crunch for an hour only to spit out something unusable. But when you have time, play with it!
Set your other options as before, and then click save button (alternatively, you can schedule it to run at a different time when you aren't needing your computer).
Solidworks will run through the animation, and then a pop will appear showing rendering progress. Solidworks first has to solve the animation, then it goes in an renders each frame, calculating reflections, shadows, etc. It takes a while.
That's it! you've gone through the whole process. The mp4 file that you made should be viewable in most video software! Hope that was helpful.
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Step 9: A video of the process
For those of you that do better following a video, here's my youtube tutorial...
(to be uploaded in the near future).
