Cannot Render Decal Surface With Lighting

[erikgreif]

Inventor Studio has rendered brilliant pictures of a prototype I am designing, but once I added decals to the front face of the product, that entire face refused to light correctly in the PNG render.  Size of the render does not change the outcome.  Lighting is not matching faces on the exact same plane.  It does not matter whether the decal covers the entire face or just parts of it.  The decals are monochromatic.  Only black and white, no color values in-between.  I am keying out  the white as transparent, but even when I turn that off the surface fails to light correctly.  The lighting is working brilliantly for everything else, as you can see in my picture of the open model.  On the second pic, the dark lighting on the left panel is accurate due to the angle, sorry if it also looks darkened erroneously.  On the first picture I changed the render lighting to the outdoor preset and thus all sides except the faulty one are very bright to show the contrast. 

Anyway, if anyone could help me scrape this sunburn off of my model renderings, it would be amazing!

Thanks in advance

[mpatchus]

Not sure if it is just my box, but I can't see any of your images here.

[JDMather]

What version of Inventor?

What Service Packs and Updates?

I am going to assume you are on 2014 SP1 Update 2

How did you create the decal?

I would create a very thin solid the size of the decal and then create the decal feature.  (note that I have seen bleed through with very thin parts - you might also add a bit of air-space in the next step)

I would then place that decal part into my assembly in the desired location on the face of the part (just like the real world).

It sounds like you are placing the decal directly on the face rather than as a separate part.)

Does that solve the problem?

[erikgreif]

Inventor 2013 64-bit, build 138 (if that helps).  I don't have any option to change my software version, it has to remain consistent with other systems. 

When I create a separate part, I am unable to make that part transparent, so it looks like a large ugly sticker instead of a black transparent logo.  Maybe I need further instruction?

[erikgreif]

It's probably your machine.  You can view the images at the following links. 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57282495/forumcontent/FullClosedRender_WithLogo4.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57282495/forumcontent/FullClosedRender_WithLogo3.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57282495/forumcontent/ImageRender.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57282495/forumcontent/Comparison3.png

[JDMather]

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@erikgreif wrote:

When I create a separate part, I am unable to make that part transparent...

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Can you attach this *.ipt file here?

[erikgreif]

Attached the Logo Sticker .IPT file to this post as well as the dependant image.  I also tried leaving the image offset as a sketch, and while it shows in editing mode, when rendered it disapears completely.  I guess I just don't know what it is you are suggesting.

[rdyson]

This is what I get when I render your file unchanged in Studio using stock global lighting. 

[erikgreif]

It seems fine at first, until you view the difference between the render with and the render without the decal.  Here are two renders, same settings, same everything except the logos are turned off in one. 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57282495/forumcontent/Render_NoDecal.png

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57282495/forumcontent/Render_Decal.png

Pretty weird, huh?

Also I can't help but wonder why my red LED's turn white...

[erikgreif]

Well, since I am not getting any more reponses... I might as well tell of the temporary and crude work-around that I have been forced to use. 

I render the image, then turn off the decal graphics, render it again, and photoshop the graphic from one to the other. 

Yes, ridiculously difficult for so little return but considering the amount of exports I have to do, it is feasable. 

For the sake of other people, I would hope that at some point int he near future somebody will present to me and follow through on an actual solution to this issue.

Thanks

[sam_m]

In the past, when I've had weird problems with decals, I've resorted to extruding/embossing the logo...  It will only work with single colour logos/images, like your's, but complex logos (like your's) can slow Inventor down a fair bit.

for ref, a how to:

1) find a large (1000+ pixels) image of the logo.  Ideally without any anti-aliasing, so the edges are nice and crisp.

2) use an "image to vector" tool to convert the image to a dxf.  (I use CorelDraw).

3) use the dxf to extrude 😉

For logos I'm going to use regularly (e.g. my company's logo) I have converted the vector to a font file, so instead of needing to import the dxf each time I just type a letter, e.g. "1" and change it to my symbol font and tada, the logo which is far easier to move about and scale than a massive sketch.  But...  more complicated logos may not be able to be converted to a font - I'm not sure the limitations, but I've had some problems in the past, so it's not a guaranteed option.

[erikgreif]

Excellent idea... I could not figure out how to emboss it up to this point.  I will post pictures later today if this works. 

EDIT: Yep, I can't get a propper vector DXF to export from Corel, and I can't get it to import without it showing a file icon instead of the content...

Oh dear, what more...

[erikgreif]

Please, if you could tell me how to do this it would help a lot.  I finally did get my logo vectorized in Illustrator and exported to DWG and to DXF, both of which I could import, but then it produced such severe lag when I tried to select the entire import, and I was unable to move the entire import to the correct location.  Nothing causes lag on my computer except this thing, I've got enough power behind this. 

I've not had a chance to try an emboss because this just doesn't work.  I like the idea of making a font but I don't know how.  

[JDMather]

Your logo is not all that complex, rather than trying to vectorize an image - you could recreate it using native Inventor geometry.

Yes, it would take some time, but once done - the results should be excellent and it is done for all future use.