This should be faster, but you have to use similar options as the old one.
If you are using a board with multiple layers (and lots of zones), if you are not displaying the epoxy board, or you are in eng. mode, it will take long to compute (as it was on other version).
It also depends on if you have the option to “show copper thickness” or not.
Do you have any project that you can share to compare?
Could you play with this options and see the differences?
How did you compared it?
The 3D-Viewer is requesting anti-aliasing. But it looks it does not work properly everywhere.
If you are on Windows, usually the GPU driver will give you a manager where you can set options per application. So you can force some quality level for Kicad( pcbnew.exe? probably… )
Did set kicad and pcbnew to special for 3D, but no change so far… what is the executable for the 3D view?
Can’t find any in the /bin folder… it’s listed as running application in the task manager (besides pcbnew and kicad).
As for times… just ‘feeling’ really at the moment. Will take a measurement when I get a chance.
Settings wise I disabled the copper thickness option, but doesn’t feel faster.
Anyhow, it’s a feeling at the moment.
Btw, the OpenGL view in PCBnew looks funny in that kicad version. I take it it’s not relevant, just mentioning it:
There is a subtle difference for what is shown on the screen once I let go the left mouse button (no roll/pan anymore) and the ‘holes’ between faces get tinier and also some lines seem to blur a tiny bit. Still, any 3D game from 10-15 years ago didn’t had these afai-remember.
Maybe it already is oversampled and there is something else going on that enables me to see ‘through’ at those edges (where soldermask and pcb-material faces meet)?
But then the silkscreen tells me that there is no simple 2x2 AA going on or even higher orders… as for example the ‘EPOXY HERE BEFORE MOUNTING’ area border just doesn’t look like a down sampled 2x2 to me.
There is just not enough scaling going one between the white and black pixels there…
PS: the board in the picture looks absolutely fantastic in real life with matte-black solder-mask.
Hm… downloaded it 6d ago… must have not have renewed that page then? LOL.
OK, starting download of #6107 now.
@nickoe, yes. But must have been some old version then.
[EDIT] found #6090 that I must have had downloaded 6 days ago… the 6107 is still 30mins away.
Testing that one now.
[EDIT2] just for the record, #6090 doesn’t show 3D models for me (the VRML ones).
[EDIT3] even the Raytracing engine has got trouble that must stem from some sort of low resolution input at edges somewhere in the pipe (all raytracing options activated):
When you roll/pan the board and then stop and hold it steady the view essentially is ‘frozen’.
But when I release the left mouse button (no more pan/roll) without moving the mouse at all the rendered 3d view changes subtle… most edge jaggs move along the edge a bit, the holes between faces (soldermask/FR4) become tinier… the view seems to blur a tiny bit.
It might actually be the supersampling… just that it can’t get rid of the holes nor the jaggs really.
I did 2 screenshots.
One before I let go of the LMB and the other after (I hope PNG keeps the differences, download and view by flipping from one to the other):
Ah! That is expected
If you zoom in until you can see the thickness of the elements (silk, copper, etc) you will notice that the thickness is not rendered while you are moving. Less triangles to render == It will make the movement faster
OK, makes sense that for pan/roll you want to get it as fluid as possible, but … the 3d view should be able to render full quality if possible when no speed is needed.
I mean it’s already absolutely stunning, I just wonder if something of this leaks through to the Raytracer engine and causes that one to make jagged edges and holes as well as that’s what takes the quality of those renders down a couple of notches?
OK, #6107 is here, installing and checking if that ones does something different - then off to bed.
Thinking about this the ‘holes’ must be the bright FR4 material underneath the soldermask shining through in a low-res setting… so one pixel it makes it and the next pixel it doesn’t. If I look at the board in the 3D view from a shallow angle (if I would zoom in I would be able to see the gap between soldermask and FR4) the issue is mostly gone in that area (other bright speckles turn up then between pads and paste and silkscreen).
It’s definitely missing the AA supersampling there.
Probably similar problems for all other layers you got there when you build the board.
And this somehow makes it through to the Raytracing engine.
Btw, #6107 doesn’t show VRML models for me either.
please have a look if you have enabled SMT and TH 3D models?
These are new options and I don’t know how they are set on first run…
In the new 3D viewer have been added 3 new options for 3D models
As in the pcbnew menu:
Normal is referring to TH
Normal + Insert is referring to SMT
Virtual is referring to models related to i.e. enclosures or mechanical objects useful to show/hide designing 3d viewer Virtual option
Thanks to Mario and Wayne to have added the Virtual option/code that I had in my personal branch in the new branch
You can also reset all the options to default with a simple click.
An other option could be a problem in environment vars path but it seems to be fine in 6111 that I’m running
Maurice
I am just checking in, building the kicad from git now, (using the arch aur package). I was wondering how i use the kicad_oce_3D package? building it seems like no trouble. but where do i put the files?
You should be able to just do: make install DESTDIR=(whatever your kicad install dir)
If you want to copy the file manually, move libs3d_plugin_oce.so to KiCad’s 3D plugin directory; on Linux that’s ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/lib/kicad/plugins/3d. I think the default CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX is /usr/local.
I noticed that new 3D viewer create a lot of files *.3dc in %APP_DATA%/Local/kicad/3d under Windows. I used the 3D viewer maybe five times, which created about 30MB of these files. Are these cache files (I think) should not be deleted when you close the window/program?
