Guest dlalonde Posted April 29, 2002 Share Posted April 29, 2002 Anyone else notice an inconsistency in smooth shading display mode? Sometimes smooth and fine and gorgeous, and sometimes grainy and dithered. Same Ironcad file, just seems random. Not my hardware or os, still happens on the new box with everything different. Occurred with IC4.2, still happens with 5.0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Khenkin Posted April 30, 2002 Share Posted April 30, 2002 Yes, it happens to me quite often, I even posted a question about it awhile ago: http://www.ironcad.com/support/community/index.php?showtopic=872 , and at the time seemed like I was the only one. Here is the text of my prev. posting: "Please bear with me: I have a scanned image I apply as texture in smart paint dialog box. I use "natural" setting, it goes on as 1,1 ratio, and everything is fine. Next, I add a hole shape. This action for no apparent reason changes the smart paint scale, and I have to use now a 7,3 ratio to get the same look. I do that. Then, I change something about the part, let's say, add a blend. Whops, now it changes the scale back to the original, and my part looks like it's made of several blocks. I have to go back to smart paint and change scaling ratio to 1,1. Annoying." Does this look similar to your problem? Alex. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dlalonde Posted April 30, 2002 Share Posted April 30, 2002 I should have mentioned that the problem I see is with transparent parts, viewed with smooth shading. Found some examples, will ask Chris to put links to the images here. It's possible that the smooth/not smooth phenomena happened with the old computer but the new computer is always dithered, I haven't seen a good image yet this week. It's like Ironcad is using less colors than are available for shading the displayed image. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted May 1, 2002 Share Posted May 1, 2002 I have seen with newer computers that the "Automatic" setting in the rendering tab always finds software rendering. You might try forcing it to opengl in the Tools/Options/Rendering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted May 1, 2002 Share Posted May 1, 2002 Here are Dave's Images: Dithered Smooth Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dlalonde Posted May 1, 2002 Share Posted May 1, 2002 OpenGL rules! Had a look at my images on the forum from home, thanks Chris for setting them up. Have to admit the differences are subtle in the examples I gave. Before I left work today I found some screenshots of transparent parts taken from 4.2 on the old box with the GVX1 card and then found and opened those older product model ironcad scenes on the new machine with the as-yet-unhacked Geforce4/4400 card. Damn, the normal 'smooth shading' images from the old pro card are as nice as the 'anti-aliased realistic shading' mode on the Geforce card. Then I remembered that around 1/3 of the time the display quality of the old system dropped down to dithered with no apparent cause...with the new system it looks to be down 100% of the time. This is a problem because some scenes have smartrender times of minutes or tens of minutes, but for industrial design we're reevaluating appearance constantly and don't want to wait for good quality images to appear (especially when I Know the video hardware can do it fast). Here comes the enhancement request.....please let Ironcad use 32bit color depth and full openGL magic in smooth shading mode to get 'very smooth shading' instead of newsprint color dithering. ;o) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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