By purCAB
#276553
I have been experimenting with aligning the camera's view of the world with that of the viewport, but I don't seem to be able to toggle the Camera Heads-up display mode. I have added an SW camera, I have checked and unchecked the Lock Camera and Camera View options in SW, toggled Show Camera, but no matter what I do, I don't see any change when toggling the Heads-up Display Mode.

I'm sure there is something I've missed, but I haven't been able to figure it out. SW2008 SP4, Maxwell Plugin 1.7.

Thanks,

Ken
By JDHill
#276554
Hi Ken,

If the associated Maxwell camera is set to 'Viewport' size mode, then the plugin is constantly adjusting the film-size to match the aspect ratio of the viewport and you will probably not notice the thin outline frame, which would be exactly as large as the viewport. Once you specify a custom film-size or lens-shift (this will logically switch the Maxwell camera into 'Manual' mode) you should be able to see the film framed over the SW viewport when you toggle on/off the heads-up display.

Here, the feature is enabled, but the frame only becomes visible when it does not match the viewport size/aspect:

Image

Let me know if that helps - it's always possible that there is some other OpenGL-related issue, though I'm not currently aware of any.

JD
By purCAB
#276585
JD -- Although I didn't mention this in the prior post, I also tried various camera settings -- manual, 1024x768, 1280x1024, etc. and none of these had any effect.

Based on your comments, I also tried setting an offset to see if the frame would show up. It did not. Finally, I turned on Software OpenGL in an attempt to minimize any graphics board/driver issues. This did not work either. Since no one else is reporting problems, it's likely something I'm doing, but I can't determine what.

Thanks,

Ken
By JDHill
#276614
Hmm...that seems a bit strange - the plugin just uses the standard OpenGL hook that SolidWorks provides to make some simple drawing calls. I'd be curious to know, what happens when you try to use the plugin's viewport-sun (Scene Manager > Location Settings toolbar > Show Sun in Viewport) function - does that show up?

Thanks,

JD
By purCAB
#276632
Yes, I can toggle the sun on/off and it behaves as expected.

Ken
By JDHill
#276634
Thanks for checking...that is really strange; the code that takes care of them both is quite simple and it even gets called from the same function, i.e.:

if (showSun) drawSun;
if (showSensor) drawSensor;


These don't really use any exotic funtionality - I will have to think about what could be causing one to fail and the other to succeed...

JD
User avatar
By Eric Lagman
#276639
I had the same issue also. I found it to be with older files that used previous versions of the plugin. Did you try opening a completely new file and see if it works then?
By purCAB
#276642
Eric, thanks for the suggestion. I was using an older file, so I tried testing with a new file, but there was no difference.

However, I did stumble into getting the frame to show. The frame became visible when I reduced the film size (changing resolution did not matter). I'm not sure if this is working as intended given the commentary about viewport/resolution indepenence, etc., but it appears that with the film size set to the default of 32 mm x 24 mm, the frame sits outside of the (SW) viewport. Reducing the film size via the Camera LCD panel allows the frame to come into view.

Upon rereading, JD's prior post perhaps this is the intended functionality. I'm confused about the need to change the film size in order to see the "frame".

Ken
By JDHill
#276646
I'm confused about the need to change the film size in order to see the "frame".

The frame shows the relationship of the Maxwell film sensor to that of the SolidWorks camera (really, viewport), which operates with a fixed theoretical film size of roughly Nmm x 24mm or 31mm x Nmm , depending on whether it is under- or over-square (you can observe this by setting a camera to Viewport mode and changing the aspect of the related viewport). As such, making the Maxwell film larger than that of the SW camera necessarily means that you cannot see the frame. When a portion of the Maxwell film lies outside the viewable area (whether by size or lens-shift), the frame will be drawn in red, though it is not possible to observe this when the whole frame lies entirely outside of the viewport.

Let me know if this explains it sufficiently,

JD
User avatar
By yolk
#293518
thanx JDHill..had the exact same problem..created a camera with a 2:1 aspect ratio..but my viewport was less wide. so the rendered image was never the same as the camera heads up display. so i changed the vertical height of the filmplane to 24mm (which makes the horizontal automatically 48mm at 2:1) now it renders what i see.
i think i got it..if i would want to render an image of 2000x1800 (almost square) i'd habe to adapt the width to 36mm and set the aspect ratio of 1:0.9 - then the vertical filmplane will measure 32.4mm.

why are we restricted to the standard filmsize of 24x36? i could not simmulate a hasselblad (55x55mm) right? i'd have to go to studio
By JDHill
#293523
I can tell you're using SW2009, since the aspect-ratio capability was not present in 2007/2008. That's why things work as expected you set it to 1:1 - it works because when you do that, then you're seeing what the plugin thinks you are; otherwise SW is showing you things that the plugin is not aware it is capable of showing you. It's nice that they're improving SW's camera functionality, but this one actually complicates things for us: in Maxwell, we think of things in terms of absolute film size, not simple aspect ratio. To show you something like your 55x55mm in the viewport, SW will need to give us more specific control than just aspect-ratio. As far as the plugin goes, as long as SW's aspect ratio is 1:1, the heads-up-display can show you 55x55mm, except that it will be entirely larger than the SW viewport, meaning, you won't be able to see the whole image frame. In cases like this where any portion of the rendered image lies outside the SW viewport, you may have noticed that the heads-up rectangle and the cam params printed at the bottom of the viewport are shown in red.
User avatar
By yolk
#293526
thanx alot for the clarification

any news on the texturing side? id love to have a box, sphere or cylinder projection directly out of swx..rhight now all the maps get scaled according to the size of each face of a body when i use an mxm with maps
By JDHill
#293527
As of yet, no. The api doesn't actually provide us with the UVs generated using those mapping primitives, just the description of the primitives and their conceptual locations, so it's become quite a bit more involved than I had previously assumed. Regarding scale, have you tried enabling Real Scale in your Maxwell materials? This should provide you with object-independent texture scaling.
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