I would like to start by thanking the KiCad team for their amazing work on this software. I really appreciate it!
I am having an issue with the 3D view in KiCad 8. In previous versions, I was able to take a screenshot of the 3D view of my PCB after finishing the design. The rendering was very good in terms of light reflection, which helped to make the traces clear and see the board better.
However, in the new version KiCad 8, the light reflection does not appear in the 3D view. This makes the traces unclear and the board appears in a uniform color. I need a solution to this problem.
I am finding that I can change the illumination and colours. The defaults are so dim that the preview boxes show black. The colour contrast between tracks and resist is very small, so seeing the tracks is not easy
Maybe even less contrast than realtime. This could be the OPs problem.
Hello everyone, @dsa-t@davidsrsb
Thank you for your responses to my question and sorry for the delay in my reply.
I am using Windows 10 with OpenGL 4.0.
I believe the problem lies in the new V8 version of KiCad.
I have re-tested with version 7, and here are the results:
From these results, it is clear that the problem does not exist in version 7, while it does appear in version V8.
I would appreciate your help in solving this problem.
Thank you very much.
There are a few setting that can make Raytracing look like Realtime
Look at prefererences - 3D viewer.
In General is material properties Realistic?
In Raytracing Renderer is screen space ambient checked?
Shadows, reflections and refractions boxes checked with 3 or 4 samples?
When you move the board in the 3D window, are you seeing the recalculation expanding circle effect?
To me it looks like KiCad reflects (pun intended!) what you see in real life. With a black solder mask, PCB tracks are usually difficult to see on real PCB’s too.
