The orientation of surface normals are import for many aspects of visualization and modeling in Alias. Whether you are offsetting surface or calculating Ambient Occlusion, your normals need to point out. The Set Surface Normals Tool allows you a quick and easy way to make sure everything is orientated properly.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
The Move CV tool is extremely useful for manipulating CVs in a controlled manner. In the video I will demonstrate how I use to tool to bring my CVs into alignment.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
Alias allows you to create animations of your products using key frame animation.
Key framing allows you to capture movements over a period of time. This very useful for visualizing the functionality of a product you are designing.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
Alias comes with a bunch of command line rendering tools, such as renderer, raytracer, powercaster, and powertracer. These programs allow your to render without Alias running in order to take advantage of all the horsepower you machine has to offer. These programs have been around for a long time and were a favorite of mine back in the Unix days. I would remotely log into machines that weren't being used in the studio and run my renderings on those machines.
So today I will walk you through this process. To start we need to save an SDL file out of Alias. This file stores all the rendering information from the Render Globals, Shaders, Lights, etc. needed to render the file.
Go to File -> Export -> SDL
Next we will need to open up a Command Window.
Go to Start -> Run -> type Cmd -> Enter
Once in the command window navigate to the appropriate project directory.
Next we use one of the following commands to render the sdl file I named test_01:
renderer - this renders a raycast image
raytracer - this renders a raytraced image
powercaster - this renders a raycast image on all available processors
powertracer - this renders a raytraced image on all available processors
Type the appropriate command: renderer sdl/test_01
This tells the computer to use the renderer program to raycast the file "test_01" in the sdl directory.
Once the file is rendered you can view the results by using the fcheck command.
Navigate to the pix directory
Type the following command: fcheck test_01.tif
You image will appear in a new window.
That is all there is too it. Not to bad. If you want to get even more indepth there are many options you can include in the rendering commands. You can view these command in the Alias Help docs under Command Line Options.
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
Autodesk Showcase will allow you and your company to leverage your 3D CAD data with the benefits of high-end visuals.
Let our visualization team show you the power of Showcase by creating an image for you free of charge!
The Global Surface Intersect Tool is a great time savings Plugin. Using the traditional Intersect tool you would have to pick multiple times to intersect multiple surfaces. The Global Intersect tool allows you to do this much faster.
Click HERE to watch the video...
Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
The Symmetry Plane Align tool makes it easy to model across center line while maintaining continuity. The tool automatically adjusts the tangent row of cv's on a curve or surface to be tangent to the symmetry plane.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
Layer Symmetry allows us to visualize what our complete model will look like when we are only building half of a symmetrical part.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
In this weeks post I will show you how to work with solids in Alias.
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Created by Aaron... your Alias CAD Geek!
The Tube Flange Tool allows you to quickly finish off the edge of a surface by creating fillet and flange surfaces.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
This week I will talk about the difference between Radial and Chordal fillets in Alias. I will also talk about one of the new features of the surface fillet tool in Alias 2010.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
Curve Networks are a really simple and fast way to build concept models within Alias. All you need to do is layout some curves that aproximate the shape you are after and Alias does the rest.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
Layer Categories are a way to organize you layers into groups. This can help you clean up a cluttered work space as will as hide layers that you don't need at any moment.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek
In this weeks video I will show you how to use the Check Model Tool to determine if you have any duplicate surfaces in your model. Then I will show you how to easily separate them from your model so you can delete them.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek
Anti-Aliasing is a method of smoothing the edges of a rendered image. Alias allows you to activate Anti-Aliasing while in Hardware Shade mode to enhance the look of your model. It can also be used to smooth out the look of your wire frame. I will demonstrate these settings in this weeks video.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
In this weeks video I will show you how to add custom backgrounds to you Hardware Shaded images.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek
The Alias help docs state "Ambient occlusion calculates shading based on a theoretical ambient light source to create general areas of shadow on your model." So what does that mean? Basically, the process looks at the parts of your model and based on they proximity to other parts you will get lighter or darker shadows. This video will show you how to prep your model and apply Ambient Occlusion.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
The lonely prompt line just sits there doing its thing. Rarely does it get any credit as being a gotta have tool or vital to a work flow. But... it has a lot of power if we would just stop and READ what it is telling us.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek
This weeks post talks about importing Alias data into Showcase as well as how easy it it to update your Showcase scene after changes are made to the Alias model.
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Created by Aaron... Your Alias CAD Geek!
The Bend Rig is an awesomely simple and powerful tool! Have you ever had to model up a part and then someone comes along and says... we need some crown, bend, shape, etc. in that part. Now you can stop grinding your teeth and just smile knowing that it is an easy change!
Click HERE to watch the video
Created by Aaron... your Alias CAD Geek!
