2008 PhotoWorks Guide: What's Inside part 1

Let me first start off by saying the 2008 PhotoWorks Step By Step Guide is available for preordering.  You can preorder your guide by visiting www.robrodriguez.com or clicking the image to the left.  I don't currently have the physical book on hand but it should be ready for shipment around June 1st.  Once the book is available for shipping you'll also be able to purchase the guide from most of your local VAR's.

This is the second installment covering the release of the 2008 Guide.  The first installment announced the book, talked about the books evolution and gave you some information about the co-author Jim Boland.  In this post we're going to actually dive into the book and see what's inside.  Let's get started.

My first step in re-writing the 2008 Guide was to analyze the 2006 Guide and determine the current information needing updating, what information needed to be added to bring the book up to date, decide if the overall flow of the book worked, pinpoint where new rendering exercises were needed and which current renderings needed updating.  This was quite a process and ultimately lead to a complete re-arrangement for the 2008 Guide.  I felt the 2006 Guide lacked an understandable flow to make it easy for the reader to follow.  The guide is geared toward the beginner and intermediate user and it needed to allow the reader to clearly follow the rendering process.  There was some great information in the 2006 Guide it was just organized incorrectly.  To re-arrange the guide I literally pulled off the binding and began laying out the individual pages in an order I felt made sense.  I wanted the reader to step through the chapters in the same work flow as they would creating a rendering.

Chapters 1 & 2 give an overview of rendering, photoWorks and the guide.  You'll be introduced to the PhotoWorks interface and some of the adjustments you should make before you begin rendering.  All things the first time PhotoWorks user needs to know.

Chapter 3 covers the Render Wizard and PhotoWorks Studio.  Both are tools geared to the more novice PhotoWorks user and their intent is to help you generate good quality renderings quickly.  Intermediate users might even find themselves using PhotoWorks studio as part of their typical rendering work flow.  Chapter 3 also spends time talking about RealView, how it differs from PhotoWorks and the different levels of realism and control from the different display modes.

Chapters 4 & 5 cover appearances.  For those of you who don't know, what used to be materials in PhotoWorks are now re-named appearances in 2008.  This chapter was originally one large chapter and it was just too BIG :)  Jim and I decided to split the one chapter into two.  The chapters cover everything related to appearances. You learn the differences between the types of appearances available in photoWorks, textural, procedural and hybrid appearances are all in there.  You'll have plenty of practice creating your own textures, texture mapping, how to create PhotoWorks appearances from textures, adjusting appearance color, modifying stock photoWorks appearances to create custom appearances linking vs embedding appearances and organizing your PhotoWorks files.

Chapter 6 covers assemblies and configurations.  More specifically, how to manage appearances with assemblies and configurations.  You'll be exposed to the differences between part level and assembly level configurations and how to use the two in conjunction to create different rendering options.  Since this chapter also deals with appearances there is also plenty more practice on the art of applying and adjusting them.

Chapter 7 covers decals.  All the basics of decals are in this chapter along with a couple of more advanced decal techniques.  Have you ever wanted to be able to fade from one appearance to another?  This chapter shows you how.

Whew, seven chapters down, seven more to go.  There are a full 508 pages in the 2008 PhotoWorks Step By Step Guide and that doesn't include the rendering gallery!  Stay tuned for "What's Inside part 2" where we'll cover the seven remaining chapters and talk a bit about the intermediate to advanced topics in the guide.

Survey Season

It seems every spring there is a new crop of SolidWorks surveys to fill out.  Every portion of the SolidWorks experience (not to be confused with the Jimmy Hendrix experience) has it's turn at a survey at some point and it's currently time for the SolidWorks Community survey to pick your brain.

With some of the surveys served up during survey season (say that three times fast) comes controversy and discussion.  The SolidWorks Community survey is in the spot light of many a SolidWorks blogger and the SolidWorks discussion forums.  Matt, Gabi, Richard and a host of others have been talking about the merits of the survey.  With words & phrases like transparency, social networking and read between the lines how can you not be just a little bit interested? 

I haven't taken the survey but it's on my "to do" list.  I've actually given a fair amount of feedback to SolidWorks directly (no survey middle man) over the last couple of weeks about the SolidWorks Community.  What did they ask?  What were my answers?  Well, my NDA won't let me tell you but you'll see for yourself soon enough.  Take the survey!

The Highest Credit Limit

Congratulations to Lin Shaodun on wining the April PhotoWorks Rendering Contest!  We had three good entries this month but Lin's card must have had a higher limit than the rest.  Speaking of cards.  you may notice Lin was able to create an nice fade to transparent effect on the AMEX card used in his image.  I've had a number of people ask me how this is possible without the use of PhotoShop.  It's actually a decal trick I've shown in a few of my PhotoWorks presentations.  Even better, Lin's wining files are avaialable for download in the PhotoWorks area of my website so you can see exactly how he did it.  If that isn't enough the new 2008 PhotoWorks Step By Step Guide also has a couple of excersices explaining the technique.  Nice job Lin.  For wining the April contest Lin will recieve a SolidWorks World backpack which holds a 17" laptop very nicely.

The March PhotoWorks Contest has already started.  Download the model and create your image now.

Charge It

The images for the April PhotoWorks Rendering Contest have been posted for voting.  This months model was a credit card reader which could be your best friend or worst enemy. :) The entries are a little light this month but the submitted images are great quality and show good imagination.  After you've voted for your favorite image don't forget to download the model for the May Contest.  You'll also want to check out the preview page for the soon to be released 2008 PhotoWorks Step By Step Guide.

The New 2008 PhotoWorks Step By Step Guide!

While on vacation a couple of weeks ago I reported I'd have some exciting news to announce when I returned home.  I asked readers to guess what the news  may be and everyone was correct when they guessed a new PhotoWorks book was on the way.  I actually didn't think the news would be so easy for people to figure out.  I must be really transparent. I have to admit Matt Lombard's guess "Jon Banquer in a hawaiian shirt wrapped in duct tape and about to be dipped in boiling canola oil" may have been a bit more exciting. :)

Most of you guessed I had written a new PhotoWorks book but that is only partially correct.  I'm actually the co-author of the 2008 version of the PhotoWorks Step By Step Guide.  The PhotoWorks Step By Step Guide was first written in 2005 by Jim Boland.  Jim revised the PhotoWorks Guide in 2006 and that's been the latest version of the guide even though SolidWorks & PhotoWorks had moved on to the 2008 version. In December of 2007 SolidWorks approached me about working on the re-write of the 2006 guide to bring it up to date with the 2008 version of the software.  I of course jumped at the chance and 3 months later the book is close to being released.  Very close!  As I said this was a collaborative effort between Jim and myself.  I must confess Jim did all the actual writing.  My role was finding suitable models, creating new renderings, reworking old renderings, adding new information, updating old information, creating new case studies & practice exercises and re-formating the guide for a better flow.

This will be the first in a series of posts about the new guide.  My goal is to give you information about the book's author's, the evolution of the guide, changes for the 2008 version, a sneak peak under the cover and where the guide can be purchased. Before I start talking about what's inside the 2008 PhotoWorks Step By Step Guide I thought I'd give you some information about Jim and the evolution of the guide. 

Jim Boland resides in California which was his final stop on a long Naval Officer career which ended about 15 years ago.  Jim holds a Master's Degree (which makes him much smarter than me, on paper at least) in Mechanical Engineering and is a Licensed professional Engineer in California.  Since Jim is the writer of this duo I'm going to let him continue.

I’ve worked for three different SolidWorks VARs over the years having jointed the first one as an AutoCAD instructor and then learned SolidWorks, starting with SolidWorks 97.  I’ve been teaching SolidWorks since 1998.  Now, I’m just an independent contractor following the “Golden Rule”.  I’ve been writing SolidWorks training manuals as a contractor since 2000 when I first wrote the PhotoWorks book on speculation.  That lead to the Animator book, followed by File Management and the PDMWorks Workgroup series.  While I wrote all of those manuals from scratch, I also put together the PDMWorks Enterprise training manuals from existing materials and wrote the questions for the PDMWorks Workgroup certification test and the File Management portion of the support technician’s exam.

I also wrote the Mountainboard course for the educational market.  It is designed as a full year course for High School students where they build all the parts, assemblies and drawings for a Mountainboard (one of those large skateboards with inflatable wheels that guys my age should stay far away from).  They not only learn about SolidWorks, but also the process of engineering design, design intent, design review and basic engineering.

My next project is another Step-by-Step book which will be about administering SolidWorks.  It will be something like Greg Jankowski’s CAD Manager Boot Camp at SolidWorks World but will draw from additional resources.  The intended audience will be both people moving to SolidWorks that need to know how and what to do, and people that have already moved to SolidWorks, but maybe aren’t using it as efficiently as they could.  Hopefully that book will be out later this year.

As for the PhotoWorks book and how it evolved; when I first approached the SolidWorks Training Manager about writing training courses, there were only two training manuals called “SolidWorks Parts, Assemblies and Drawings” Volume 1 & 2.  While these were really good training courses, together they were a SolidWorks Essentials course.  If you looked around the commercial market, there were only a few books available and they too were basically essentials books. There were no “advanced” books and there was nothing outside core SolidWorks.  Back then, SolidWorks was releasing a new version every six months, so it was pretty hard for people to write books, have them reviewed and published before the next version was released.  Having just been an instructor and tech support guy, I found that the only way to learn things like PhotoWorks and Animator was to read the Help system and to me that was just not a good way to learn.  So, I proposed that I write a manual for PhotoWorks that was all encompassing, starting with a person that knew nothing about PhotoWorks and moving them through to the intermediate/advanced level.  The first several versions of the book (the first was with SW2001) were classroom training manuals just like the current classroom books.  As a side note, it was the first PhotoWorks book that is responsible for having all the SolidWorks training manuals being printed in color.  Before the PhotoWorks book, all the training manuals were in grayscale.  When we looked at the PhotoWorks book, it didn’t make sense to print a book in grayscale that was about photorealistic rendering.  So, that first book lead the way for all the training manuals to be printed in color.

In 2005, the classroom training manual was scrapped and replaced with the Step-by-Step series as a way to make the material more accessible to all customers.  The book was expanded to include all the material the instructor would have covered in a classroom environment and allow the book to stand on its own as a self paced tutorial.

As you've just read Jim is more than qualified to put words on paper.  That's why he's in charge of writing and I'm in charge of rendering :)  Stay tuned. We'll be diving into the 2008 PhotoWorks Step By Step Guide in upcoming posts.

Mark Biasotti Brings Surfacing To Vermont

Thursday, April 17th is the second meeting of 2008 for the Northern Vermont SolidWorks User Group.  NVTSWUG members are very fortunate to have two SolidWorks employees in attendance.

The first member of the SolidWorks team to talk at the NVTSWUG meeting will be Mark Biasotti.  Mark will be using the game controller shown on the left to cover a variety of surfacing topics which will include:

• Sketch pictures – how to use design intent
• Sketch splines
• Sweep with guide curves
• Boundary
• Fill
• Freeform
• Trimming, extending knitting
• Multi-bodies and deriving
• Questions and answer period

The next SolidWorks team member will be Don Swavely.  Don is an engineering Analyst with Supplier Source.  Have you ever wanted to find a supplier to manufacture, design, render, purchase a product from?  Are you a supplier that would like to list your services to thousands of SolidWorks professionals?  Don will explain how.

We'll also have all the latest SolidWorks news, some great give away prizes and a little fun.  If you're a SolidWorks user who'll be in the Waterbury, Vermont area on Thursday from 6:00-9:00 stop by the Best Western.  You'll be glad you did :)

A Little R & R

Here's the view from our balcony in Cancun, Mexico.  It's slightly different than the 30" of snow we left behind in Vermont!

Since SolidWorks World ended life has been non stop for me.  I've been working on a large project (more than one actually) and it's finally complete.  Just in time I might add since we've just left for a family vacation planned last fall.  As you can see from this post even though I'm away I just can't seem to escape from the Internet and e-mail.  The sign of an addict I suppose :).  When I return in a week or so I have some very exciting news to share.  I don't want to reveal the news now but I will give some clues.  It's been a long process, it's thick, colorful and I think a lot of people will find it helpful.

Anyone care to venture a guess?

Soaring To New Heights

Pawel Keska's "Apache" image been voted the winning image for the March PhotoWorks Rendering Contest.  Winning the March contest has also given Pawel distinction of being the winner of the most PhotoWorks Rendering Contests with (4) wins to his name.  Way to go Pawel!

Download the model for the April contest and See if you can keep Pawel from making it 5 wins.

Hit Me

The Design News Blog has an interesting post about the soon to be released movie "21" and it's connection to the CAD world.  Specifically it's connection to SolidWorks co-founder John Hirschtick.

March Voting In Progress

I've been incredibly busy over the last week and I'm a little late in posting the March PhotoWorks Rendering Contest voting announcement.  Sorry :) 

So, the images for the March PhotoWorks Rendering Contest have been posted for voting.  We have 6 entries this month of the Apache helicopter model.  Each entry has taken a different approach to the rendering, decide which one you like best.

I've also posted the "Card Reader" model from 3D Content Central for the April Contest.