Inventor Studio 2012 - Rendering not "shiny"

[RayNeudorf]

Hi,

I have been creating some graphics for use at work and with the new version of Inventor (2012), the results are not reflective or shiny. They look like a dull gray.

I have attached a view of my screen which shows the "chrome" texture applied and a sample render file that shows the output.

There is an option for "True Reflection" in the render dialogue that I have checked.

I have kept the workflow from Inventor 2011, but the output is not what I am expecting.

Has anyone noticed this, and does anyone know of a work around?

Thanks!

[blair]

Check the "Reflectance" of the material, most stock material styles have a low reflectance. Adjusting this to at least 60% should solve the problem.

[RayNeudorf]

I cannot find "Reflectance" but I did find Shininess. For chrome it was set to 86%. 

If you look at my output you may notice that the colour of the output does not match the colour of the texture (nevermind the shininess). It is almost like it is being ignored?

[blair]

I might try re-appling the surface material within Studio. It looks like it's rendering the default material.

[RayNeudorf]

I think you might be on the right track with this!

See attached file. For the reflection map on this texture it isn't finding it.

Could you look in your copy of inventor and see what it is supposed to be using here?

Thanks!

[blair]

Something looks funny with your Style Library

[RayNeudorf]

You are right! My style library is messed somewhere.

I went to Manage, Style Editor, and found that everything looked right (I think), but in Inventor Studio none of the surface textures are attached.

I am going to look at some options for reinstalling...not sure where I could edit a path to point to the right folder on my C:\ drive.

The folder I want the program to look in is:

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 2012\Textures

Everything appears to be here, but it isn't looking there. Any ideas on where that setting is held?

[blair]

You didn't change/edit your Project file to be different than the default? If your Tools>Options>File setting look correct

[RayNeudorf]

We recently added another designer here, so I tried to centralize our information on our server.

See attached file for our paths on our information.

I have changed nothing in the individual Project files...what information can I show you so we can see how badly I messed this up? And perhaps fix it?

And I really appreciate your help so far, by the way. 🙂

[blair]

Send me an e-mail at:

blair dot stunder at arcticmfg dot com

I should have a couple of PDF files that may help.

[RayNeudorf · Accepted solution]

I figured the problem out.

When I changed my paths to look at the server, I did not copy some of the information.

This is the location of the contents of the design data information:

R:\Cadfiles\0000_InventorProjects\0_DesignData\

Previously this folder was in

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 2012\Design Data

So I copied the information from inside the Design Data folder from the C:\ to the R:\ drive.

Of course this broke the location of the textures...but it shouldn't have, at least from what I could see.

The textures are located in a folder at the same level as Design Data, but not inside Design Data

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 2012\Design Data

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 2012\Textures

So I tried moving the Textures folder to the server to this location:

R:\Cadfiles\0000_InventorProjects\Textures

And now it works.

This is a consideration when moving from locally stored information to a centralized location for more than one user.

Thanks for your assistance in this matter blair!