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Reality Server next to impossible to use

Hello. How can one select multiple faces or parts intuitively in Reality Server, in order to change the material? All I can do is individually pick surfaces or parts in a LIST, totally blind to what they actually are, applying material properties one by one. This is so difficult to use, it's like getting dressed in the dark then turning on the light every 5 minutes. What am I missing? Why is this so hard? Why is my experience so disappointing?

Comments

  • michał_1michał_1 Member, Developers Posts: 214 ✭✭✭
    Hi, did you read my "first impression" review? Here's a link: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/2432/render-apps-first-impression#latest
    Not much changed since then, unfortunately.
  • Paul_ArdenPaul_Arden Member, Onshape Employees, Developers Posts: 212
    Just to note in our latest release we added drag and drop materials (which you can also just 'paint' but clicking on parts when you have a lot to do) and in the material editor there is now an eye dropper you can use to click on objects to get their material.
  • chris_sturgischris_sturgis Member Posts: 25 ✭✭
    drag and drop materials have made this much better to use. The new interface is a lot nicer, what I am having an issue with is getting my output files. I render to disk or to onshape and no file is returned after the progress bar is completed.
  • chris_sturgischris_sturgis Member Posts: 25 ✭✭
    Update, I managed to get an output file into onshape, but it was a jpeg when I asked for a png. Also the quality is very low, output image was in kb. How can I boost the output level.
  • Paul_ArdenPaul_Arden Member, Onshape Employees, Developers Posts: 212
    I just did some quick tests myself. So, for saving to disk, first thing I noticed it that it tried to bring up a pop-up which Chrome blocked, so I had to allow that. This was because it was trying to open the image in a new tab. We have now changed that so it instead brings up a save dialog for the image (as long as your browser supports that, Chrome is fine).

    For the PNG issue, actually it is a .png when saved to Onshape however for some reason it is being named incorrectly, if you download the file you'll actually find it is a PNG file but incorrectly named. We obviously need to fix that one. However I also noticed that right now we don't output the alpha channel, which was the whole point of adding the PNG support (well that and getting lossless compression). We'll fix that shortly as well.

    For the quality issue, we'll need to know a bit more, were you using one of the presets, which resolution were you trying to render at. I'd recommend switching to the custom mode and just entering a time you want to render for (specified in seconds). In most scenes you don't need very long but it sounds like yours might be more challenging.

    If you rather just mean you are seeing a lot of compression then this should only occur with JPG saving. We'll run though and check all of that as well. If you can share any images that would also help us diagnose the problem but I understand if you can't post them to the forum, if you can email them feel free to send to our support address.
  • chris_sturgischris_sturgis Member Posts: 25 ✭✭
    I used the presets and then wasnt happy with the results (grainy) so I went custom and upped all of the values by a factor of 10 because I dont really know what they are. If you could add descriptions of what they are (at the very least add units to the time) that would be great. Also when you say to enter a time to render, the time is listed as max. In my mind that means it might go shorter based on the other variables.
  • chris_sturgischris_sturgis Member Posts: 25 ✭✭
    next issue, it seems that the rendering stops if i go away form my computer. so if im trying to render for an hour i have to stay there and stare at the screen to make sure onshape doesnt log me out. Im burning through my time on incomplete renders.
  • chris_sturgischris_sturgis Member Posts: 25 ✭✭
    I set max time to 3600 (seconds?) and it finishes in about 2 seconds. I set quality from 1 to 100, same thing. I need higher quality images.
  • Paul_ArdenPaul_Arden Member, Onshape Employees, Developers Posts: 212
    As you guess, for the termination conditions which ever is encountered first will stop the rendering. So if you specify 300 seconds, that is a maximum time, if the quality specified is reached before that then it will stop early. Same goes for the iteration count. We are adding tooltips to the options (and fixing the spelling error in Quallity!) to explain the settings a little better.

    What is confusing me is you should definitely not need an hour to render most scenes unless you are using complex translucent materials or rendering at extremely high resolutions (or if the model is especially huge there is a small chance of running out of GPU memory on the server, but it would have to be truly enormous).

    Most renders I do at full HD resolution only need a few minutes typically so something strange is happening. Unfortunately to comment more I'd at least need to see an image of what you are rendering to determine if there is a good reason it is taking so long or if something is going wrong. Having the scene would be more ideal but even just and image would give me a better idea of what we are dealing with.

    If you would like to do that privately please email us at support@migenius.com.

    For hours that you are losing through these issues, please email us on the above address and I'll let you know how we can sort out a credit for you to get those hours back.
  • Paul_ArdenPaul_Arden Member, Onshape Employees, Developers Posts: 212
    Just to note, I have created a new, generic RealityServer Q&A thread here:

    https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/8397/realityserver-for-onshape-q-a

    I would encourage those interested in RealityServer to continue discussions there since we will monitor that thread with greater frequency. As a bonus for heading over there now, there is already an answer there on how to enable the new AI Denoising feature which can in some cases cut render time by a factor of 10 (ymmv of course).
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