Point cloud visibility in viewpoint animations

[Anonymous]

Is there a setting I am missing.   I am trying to do a fly through of a model containing solids and a point cloud, but when I export the animation, the resulting video only shows the solids.  The point cloud is not visible at all

[dgorsman]

No, that's correct.  The points are infinitely small with zero surface, so they cannot render with materials.  I've been able to render without materials (viewport, not Autodesk render) but the results are less than ideal from a presentation perspective because of the slight mismatches between the cloud and model, as well as the virtual transparency means the cloud won't hide anything "behind" the surfaces it represents.  I've had some success using a couple of techniques, one being "picture-in-picture" or "split-screen" with separate model and point cloud in each, the other being a stationary cross-fade transition between point cloud (no model) and model (no point cloud).

[Anonymous]

Ok, wish list I guess.   I started making videos out of recap now that you can bring the nwd into the realviews.   It looks good, but you have to jump from realview to realview, can't pan around.     Thanks

[Patrick_Aps_9121]

No, that is not correct at all. I am able to create Xvid compressed video's from Navisworks with the Recap cloud attached.
I used viewpoints to create the video. In the selection tree, you can hide all scan positions of the Recap Project indivually. In the 1st viewpoint all scans were hidden, in the 2nd only one was unhidden and so on.
This way, I was able to let the cloud appear in the video.
Also Clipping boxes work in the Viewpoints that make up the Video.
also Walking trough works.
I used version 2015 to make the video.

[Anonymous]

Ok, that's good news.  what were your settings in the export animation window?   Could you post a snip?

[Patrick_Aps_9121]

I work with Simulate 2015 SP3

version 12.3.0..115750

Here are my Export Animation settings in a screenshot

I have installed Xvid 1.3.3

My Options -> File Readers -> ReCap are:

Voxels

500000

0 MB

100 % Density

Scale Interactive Point Size

Max Interactive Point Size: 8

No Lighting

On Publish Embed Xrefs: Fast Access.

[dgorsman]

That's using the viewport renderer though - it doesn't work with the Autodesk renderer, so no materials, lighting, and so on.  I probably should have mentioned that earlier. 

[Patrick_Aps_9121]

That indeed could be a limitation. I'm not interested in materials and lighting, just in free space and clashes.
But it was not mentioned in the original post so maybe Jason does not need it either in his animation.