Studio or showcase, whats the differance?

[warrentdo]

Hello,

We are using Studio (AIP 2013) to render some animations and as usual it is taking a long time to render, 40 hours the last one.

The assemblies have about 1500 parts and we are doing the usual animation use multiple constraints.

I’m not knocking Studio as I’ve been using it for years and it does its job, but If showcase can improve on it we will use it.

Does anyone know of a comparison list that puts studio against showcase and shows the differences / limitations?

I have had a good look around, and the question has been asked a few times but still no solutions.

Regards,

Warren

[warrentdo]

Sorry abut thi spellink in the subject. It wont let me edit it twice 🙂

Warren.

[dgorsman]

40 hours could be reasonable, depending on what you are doing.  What resolution, fps, and final running time is the animation?  Are you rendering straight to format with a single rolling shot, individual segments, or to frames followed by post-production editing?

[blair]

Studio is within Inventor and Showcase is a stand-alone software from Autodesk. Both do render and animation.

Hardware spec's for you system would help. Studio does take advantage of multi-processors which helps reduce rendering time.

[warrentdo]

Hello, not really bothered about reducing the render time in studio as it is what it is, I'm more bothered about a comparison list that puts studio against showcase and shows the differences / limitations? Btw We render at 15 fps in in 1 min chunks using techsmith codec

[warrentdo]

Cheers Blair, I know what they are and have used studio quite a lot. I know they both do rendering and animations but they are not the same. I just need to compare both products as I don't have my hands on showcase yet. Both programs will run on same machine so machine spec? If you must Dell pre 5600 8 core Xeon. I just need to know what can studio do the showcase can't and what can showcase do that studio can't. Cheers warren.

[cmcconnell]

As of late, I have been using Keyshot for rendering. So far, I have been very impressed. It renders using CPUs. It can also be configured to render on a network using avaliable cores where avaliable. This is very easy to use and works very well.

I haven't done much in the way of animations yet, but what I have animated works very well. They also have a cool thing call Keyshot VR which is pretty neat as well.

Their materials are very good as well - I hate to say it, but I find it is easier to use than Showcase. (sorry Autodesk).

On my website, the images in the gallery up to and including the orange sea-can are done with Keyshot (most of them while I was learning). The first few images are of a 35000+ component IV assembly.

www.mechanixdesigns.com

Sorry for the infomercial. 🙂

[cmcconnell]

Here is a quick example of their Keyshot VR if you are interested. (hint: drag on the image after it is loaded)

http://www.mechanixdesigns.com/uploads/brimrock/Assets/Block%20Forms%20VR%200002.html

[pcrawley]

Looks like you have lots of question-avoiding-answers 

I don't believe there is a comparison matrix.  It's a tough thing to write because so much depends on what your end result is going to be.  In terms of what Showcase does that Inventor des not; Hardware-rendering, ambient occlusion, depth-of-focus.  Both do raytrace.  Showcase is much more memory efficient - Inventor is diabolical when it comes to memory management for rendering.

Sadly, at the moment, Inventor Studio is the only rendering tool that lets you take an Inventor model and animate its assembly constraints over a timeline (qualification coming in next paragraph!).  If animating an assembly through lots of constraints or parameters, then don't waste your time looking around - there are no options.

Showcase will let you animate constraints to a certain extent, but the "Storyboard" is NOT anything like a key-frame timeline. If you want mate1 animated over 50 frames followed by mate2 starting at frame 75... forget Showcase sorry.  There are a few other Showcase issues including it's dislike of large assemblies which can be frustrating - but for 'instant gratification pretty pictures', it's hard to beat.

As for Keyshot - well, it suffers like 3ds max and all the other renders out there; They can't read the animation data from the Inventor model.  You end up with a pile of components in the correct spatial position, but no relationship to each other and no animatable constraints.  (Why anyone would pay for another render when max and Showcase are in a Product Design Suite is beyond me.)  With these products, you have to rebuild the component relationship (rigging) and then animate them.  One of the many reasons professional animators charge big bucks.

The answer (don't get your hopes up!) really lies in you casting your Kudos vote here: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Inventor-IdeaStation/Inventor-Studio-FBX-Export-Import/idi-p/3766661  Giving Inventor the ability to export FBX files that support animation would be one huge leap forward for the interoperability of the products that come in the box.  You could create your timeline in Inventor Studio, or Dynamic Simulation - and then actually do something useful with it - other than watch the computer crash out of memory after rendering 20 frames.  Please add your vote!

Peter

[cmcconnell]

 (Why anyone would pay for another render when max and Showcase are in a Product Design Suite is beyond me.)

Several reasons:

-It is much easier to use than Max

-It imports data better than showcase

-Its materials are better than showcase

-It can easily work with networked machines

-and so on....

But each to their own...

[pcrawley]

Are you going for the record number of unhelpful  posts on a single thread?  

I make that 3 and counting.  

[blair]

If I need a quick industrial render, I'll do it in Studio. If I want to get a much better photo-realistic render, then I'll import it into Showcase.

As posted, the ability to alternate colors, positions and options make Showcase a much better marketing tool.

[warrentdo]

🙂 Thank everyone.

Everybody’s comments most welcome.

It look’s like I will have to set up a 2013 machine up in the corner and have a play.

Aleast I think im on the right path now.

It’s strange two programs doing similar things and an dissimilar way?

I little matrix from Autodesk would have been really useful, but never mind.

At least now I will be able to load a sample dataset in and see what happens.

Thanks again guys,

Warren

[pcrawley]

"It’s strange two programs doing similar things and an dissimilar way?"

Isn't that the truth!!  That nailed it for me.  Nice summary!

Actually, there's Showcase, Inventor Studio, 3dsd max, Navisworks, VRED...  All are Autodesk products, all produce stunning renders, all import Inventor models, all are capable of animation.  But none (other than Inventor Studio) support the animation sequences created in Inventor - and it's the weakest of all the rendering applications.  Surely this has to rate up there with one of the most significant inter-application dead-ends Autodesk has in the Mechanical field?

So come on VOTE with your mouse people - please!  I know at least 4 people are on this thread, and the Kudos has only gone up 2 since my original post.  http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Inventor-IdeaStation/Inventor-Studio-FBX-Export-Import/idi-p/3766661

Public apology to Cory 😉

[gsmith9810]

Warren,

I believe that the BIGGEST difference (other than those already mentioned) is that there is no development taking place on Studio and Showcase continues to get attention. I don't think there has been any development against Studio in several releases (I'm sure that this will be corrected if it is incorrect).

For the still renders that I have to do the fact that once I have my model in Showcase is a big plus. You have to wait everytime you want to do anything in Studio.

[blair]

Nope, Presentation files, IPN's probably hold the record for the least development work. All the work  went into Inventor Publisher. 

[gsmith9810]

It is interesting to note the progression.

In the beginning, Presentation files were the solution to being able to show an exploded assembly.

Then, along comes INV Studio. Studio gave great still rendering and provided a way to animate explosions but was incompatible with IPN's (and as I recall, IPN's didn't initially reconcile with design reps or positional reps).

Then (it gets fuzzy here for me as I was out of the loop) you got much better in-app rendering as well as the Showcase solution (applied ACROSS a majority of ADSK apps).

As more development resources were applied to corporate-wide solutions, the point solutions that were being developed on a per app basis received fewer and fewer development cycles.