True ray-tracing in PhotoWorks release 2 allows the program to calculate the shadows and reflections on this toaster more accurately, so it looks likes it's actually sitting in someone's kitchen. Design by www.bxhdesigns.com

Improved image quality
PhotoWorks release 2 offers greater anti-aliasing controls so that your images appear cleaner and sharper-looking. Aliasing refers to the jagged or stair-shaped edges that appear when there are too few pixels in an image to represent it realistically. With its advanced algorithms, PhotoWorks release 2 is better able to remove those jagged lines to make curves and lines appear straighter and smoother. The result is a crisper, higher-quality image.

"The new anti-aliasing really allows you to crank up image quality," says Robert Wardon, product design manager at Numark (North Kingstown, Rhode Island), a company that makes audio equipment for professional disc jockeys. Better quality images means that Numark is better able to show its customers how a product is going to look before manufacturing.

"I come from a background of using high-end rendering packages like Alias|wavefront, and I was relieved to see so much more control over image quality in PhotoWorks release 2," says Wardon.

A new technique in PhotoWorks release 2 called Indirect Illumination captures an environment's indirect lighting. Imagine there is a lamp on your desktop. Even though the area under your desk does not receive any direct light, your feet are still visible due to light that is bouncing off the walls and flooring. Indirect Illumination complements direct lighting and creates a subtle modulation of light across a model's surfaces. It also makes dark areas visible without the fuss of having to place a single light in the scene.

Automation Tooling Systems (ATS), an Ontario, Canada-based company that designs standard machines, depends on PhotoWorks to illustrate its products to customers. The machines it designs consist of several work cells, poorly lit areas inside the machine where a conveyor belt travels.

Normally, illuminating those areas would require placing separate artificial scene lights inside the cells. "Indirect Illumination brightens the image naturally," says Paul McDonnell, mechanical CAD coordinator at ATS. "Now, you can put a light on top of the machine and have it light up like a room would. It allows you to see more of what's inside the cell."

Special effects
In order for a rendered object to appear authentic, it needs to reflect items from its natural environment. PhotoWorks release 2 let you do that with Environmental Mapping, a new technique that allows you to place scenery for your object inside a hemispherical enclosure. If you are rendering a car, you can place street signs, trees, and clouds inside that sphere that show up only as reflections on the car's surface. The spherical boundary eliminates edge effects that occur in a square environment.

Ed Eaton, senior industrial designer at Dimonte Group, a product development consultancy in Aurora, Illinois, uses environmental mapping to give him an edge over competition. Sometimes his company's only deliverable is a rendering. "It's very powerful," he says. "There are materials, such as polished plastic, glass, and chrome, that you can't render properly without having the world around them to reflect."

Another special effect, particularly useful for users in creating repair or service manuals, is Contour Lines, which combines edge effects with rendering to highlight a design's topography. You can create contour lines around the outer portion of an engine block, for instance, in order to highlight internal components such as the pistons and crank shaft. You can also use the new rendering technology in combinations with SolidWorks Animator to create animations of how the object works.

New Contour Rendering in PhotoWorks release 2 creates an outline of the outer portion of this engine so that internal parts are highlighted. Design courtesy of UMAZ

A familiar face
In creating the interface of PhotoWorks release 2, SolidWorks has built on the original and improved it. Users will find the new release as familiar and easy to use as ever. And in addition to the new tools above, PhotoWorks release 2 includes several other enhancements to speed the rendering process.

Materials are now treated as parent features, and the parts that have the materials as children, making it easier to change the color of a material that exists on multiple parts. So that it's easier to find materials, they are all organized in a single location. All metallic materials, for instance, are listed under "metallic," whereas before they were in several locations. Materials, scenes, and decals now share the same interface, so that selections are easier and more intuitive. PhotoWorks release 2 also provides users with a larger selection of decals and predefined scenes.

Numark's Robert Wardon has summed it up this way: "PhotoWorks release 2 just really blew me away. You still have the intuitive controls, but you can tell it's been rebuilt from top to bottom."

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