Render image best practice

[hosford]

Looking for guidance on rendering images in Inventor 2018.

Image Filtering, how does this affect the rendering, are there better filters? faster filters? filter settings?

[Anonymous]

Not a professional renderer-maker-oonie, but here's my 2 cents:

Inventor Studio is still very bad (might be better in 2019, but I haven't tested it myself. I wouldn't hold my breath). Download Fusion 360. Model in Inventor, export as .stp and setup your scene in Fusion (or basically any other software, but Fusion is free, so...). Autodesk Showcase was the absolute bomb for making fast renders, but in the worst move since invading Rusia in winter, Autodesk abandonded it.

If you really want to use Inventor, there is not much to explain (unless you want to animate stuff), because there's just not a lot of options. Experiment with the studio lighting styles, this will make the most noticeable changes to your image. You can add fixed camera positions but they are hard to "visualize" what your final image will look like. I personally haven't found a decent use for them. You can also add extra lights, spots, beams, what have you, but the tool for them is absolute garbage. It's not impossible to make a decent render with Inventor Studio, but it's not worth the hassle imho.

Standard the renderer is set to "Render by Iteration". Don't do this as there's no way of knowing how long it will take. I personally use "until satisfactory", so I can leave it for as long as I like (or abort if it turns out fugly again).

The things that will have the most impact on needed render time are, in no particular order:

-resolution of output image (under render image->general)

-lighting and material accuracy (under render image-> renderer)

-Image filtering (they're listed from fastest to slowest basically. Unsurprisingly, the slowest will yield better results. I wouldn't bother using anything other than Gaussian, unless you are making images for promotional purposes. In which case you wouldn't be using Inventor Studio anyway)

I hate to **** on Inventor, because I actually love it and use it daily. It's an awesome parametric modeller. But a very crappy renderer.

[Anonymous]

I do rendering in Inventor and it really not to bad.

My best suggestion is to setup an assembly with all the props you may need, like a floor and walls and maybe a table.

Just like you would for 3Ds Max. Then go into Studio and setup your lighting. I have 2 assemblies setup, 1 for our machines and 1 for smaller assembles I want to render. The good thing about doing it this way you only have to set up your studio lighting once. After you have everything set the way you want, you can bring in you model and set it in the location you want and render away.

This is also good for doing consistent renders like for catalogs.

[kelly.young]

Hello @hosford there are many YouTube Videos going over rendering techniques, here is a thread with good information.

Inventor 2018 Rendering Aluminium & Stainless Steel To Appear `Real`

If you have an assembly you would like help rendering, attach here with Pack & Go and see if we can give you some pointers using your actual model. 

Please select the Accept as Solution button if a post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Anonymous]

I forgot to add, and this may be redundant info depending on how versed in Inventor you already are, but you can make very basic changes to your model/view before outside of the Inventor Studio environment that will drastically improve your end result.

First and foremost, pick the right materials and appearances for your parts. Experiment with these. The real-life counterparts don't always give the best result.

Go to the view tab and change the visual style to "realistic". Turn on shadows. Turn on reflections. For both of these you can tweak the settings to your liking. Make sure textures are on. 

And probably the most important one, chance the perspective from "orthographic" to "perspective".

[hosford]

Thanks for all of your suggestions, they are all helpful.

I was just hoping there would be something in text I could read to further understand rendering settings, and which settings worked best for model / assembly types.

This image is a sample of what I want to render, this is from a few years ago and is on the simple side. Note the lower bezel, this has an appearance of black, yet it looks cast.

Stop reading here for rendering.

I am dismayed with the appearance visual affects inventor has, it would seem as though out of the box inventor would have be some pretty good material representations. One of the worst representations is Nylon, Molybdenum Disulfide, I believe it was a good representation back years ago (2006?).

I would think the usefulness of Inventor should be in the designing of solids and assemblies and not in tweaking the settings each year to correct visual representations