Another Renderer Bites the Dust

[matt]

Continuing in the "killing off products is development" vein, it sounds like DS is retiring PV360 next year. Visualize is the new go-to.

[jcapriotti]

IMO, they've spent too much time and $$$ on rendering tools. I get it, renders are sexy but in 20+ years on SolidWorks we've never utilized PW, PV360, or Visualize all that much. Nowadays models are sent to outside companies that render our products for use on websites and marketing documentation. I'd rather had them focus on mechanical design and beating the hell out of the model workflow to make it as streamlined and fast as possible. I know you industrial types (@matt @zxys001 )love it though.

[zxys001]

They could have done so much more and they (marketing) choose marketing over users. Sad.

[RichGergely]

IMO, they've spent too much time and $$$ on rendering tools. I get it, renders are sexy but in 20+ years on SolidWorks we've never utilized PW, PV360, or Visualize all that much. Nowadays models are sent to outside companies that render our products for use on websites and marketing documentation. I'd rather had them focus on mechanical design and beating the hell out of the model workflow to make it as streamlined and fast as possible. I know you industrial types (@matt @zxys001 )love it though.

Solidworks have such a huge user base that develop products who's clients want to see something look half reasonable in presentations, which really ties in with the industrial designer comment you made. TBH I'm surprised they haven't dumped PV360 before now.

I love qualified industrial designers, they keep me in business. Fixing and totally remodelling injection mould parts

[Arthur NY]

Honestly, and I'd have to dig in to find the post I did about this 10 years ago when DDS first acquired Bunkspeed after the whole HyperShot/Luxion debacle took place. It never made sense to have two rendering systems that were so close to each other in capabilities. PV360 has the underlying rendering engine from a software called Modo and it's still my favorite modeling/rendering software.

It was just basically a matter of time before Viz got totally integrated into SW that they'd kick out PV360. Even though, the materials in PV360 are still slightly ahead overall but we will see where Viz starts to go. They really need to support textures coming out of the Substance series if they're ever really going to stay relevant. Also Viz will NEVER gain any traction if it has to be purchased along side a seat of Solidworks. They MIGHT stand a chance an gaining some market share but with options like Blender, UnReal Engine, Unity, Twin Motion, and KeySH*T, Octane, V-Ray already holding down the market place there ain't much room for them to go!!!

Matt is this just what's going around the campfire or is there something a bit more tangible to read through?

[Craig Makarowski]

Unreal 5 has direct import of SolidWorks and several other Cad types as well, and you can sign up for free to use it in house. It does real time Rendering. You use the Datasmith tool to import the Cad files and assemblies, there are Plugins that stream line this but SolidWorks always seams to lag a bit on this.You can import Step files and assemblies, the trick is to use simple colors on the SolidWorks side which allows you to use the advanced textures and materials in UNreal and lighting like Lumen to get a real looking view.

[Krzysztof Szpakowski]

The development of graphics cards means that programs such as Vizualize will become obsolete. Today, you can cope without outsourcing to external companies to obtain good renderings. Recently I bought Twinmotion and... MASTER! (the some stable as UNREAL) The program is childishly easy to use, has a SW plug-in and is devilishly fast. The rederas below were not counted in hours like in Vray, not even minutes. This was rendered in 10-30 seconds. For the price of one order, you can purchase a perpetual license of a program that will give you very good results without spending hours on the project and waiting for the result. For your own use, FREE!!! The limitation is that only 2K renders are available.
Regards
K.