Preview: new auto renderers

February 13, 2010

The renderer we currently use for thumbnails in the gallery and the model details pages has its limitations and we’ve wanted to improve these previews for a long time.

The reason being that we want to give everyone visiting Shapeways a better impression of what the actual model will look like. One of the limitations of the current renderer is that it lacks smoothing, which gives ugly results when triangles have large surface areas. Moreover the lack of depth perception in the rendered image, the overall dark look of the gallery and the somewhat odd camera position are things we wanted to improve upon.

For this reason we have been developing a new render solution. And we want to give you a sneak peek on where we are now. We are very curious as to what you think! Below two images: one of the old and one of the new renderings. Lots of thanks to Bart, Robert and team for making this possible. Please comment and let us know what you think!

(Renders of Bathsheba’s Gyroid)

Comments

1. Reno
   February 13, 2010 at 6:31 pm
   Great improvement! The gallery was not only quite unaesthetic, but it was also very difficult to clearly distinguish the shapes of some models. The gallery will eventually become more homogeneous.

2. Peter
   February 13, 2010 at 7:18 pm
   Well the first step is going to be to improve the general thumbs on upload.

3. Mitchell Jetten
   February 13, 2010 at 6:54 pm
   Niceeeeeeee 😀

4. Michiel Cornelissen
   February 13, 2010 at 9:23 pm
   Good step...

5. stannum
   February 14, 2010 at 12:31 am
   If the target is to give a better impression...

6. Magic
   February 14, 2010 at 11:46 am
   I agree with Stannum...

7. David Drummond
   February 16, 2010 at 2:32 pm
   Nice to see progress here. I agree with others...

8. john gomm
   March 1, 2010 at 8:21 pm
   Looks better. How about a random light pastel color...

9. Bathsheba
   March 1, 2010 at 9:34 pm
   Excellent improvement! This needed doing...