HyperShot – A Customer's Experience
Norman Hadley, Principal Design Engineer, Technomot Ltd – Every once in a while, a technology arises that propels you back in your seat in astonishment. Think back to your first time you sat at a WYSIWYG word-processor or a parametric solid modeller, or the creeping realisation that your internet search had just delivered a week's worth of library research to your screen in a fifth of a second.
HyperShot delivers the same eye-popping expansion in your understanding of the possible. It is a rendering package that transforms 3D CAD data from a blocky assortment of crude, Fisher-Price colours to an image real enough to fool the most sceptical eye.
And it's so easy to use. Within five minutes of installing the demo version, I created my first photo-realistic render and astonished colleagues were crowding round. Everyone wanted a go.
Of course, rendering software has been around a while. I had used a rival product a few years ago, but this is in a different dimension. For starters, HyperShot works in real time. You don't have to constantly re-render to see the effect of new material, lighting or environment because the screen continually updates, the focus magically sharpening while you wait. For average-sized models on a decent-spec PC, the image is as sharp as the eye will need within a second or so. This constant feedback-stream makes for a lightning-fast workflow.
Another feature that sets this package apart is the material library, a rich resource of painted, metallic, polymeric and translucent materials. These are presented in a palette, rather than a list, allowing quick selection of the right material for the job with a simple drag-and-drop. The renderer automatically attributes the same material for all surfaces with the same colour in your CAD package - a major timesaver for big assemblies. Just ensure cast faces are, say, green and machined faces are blue, and HyperShot will do the rest.
The software comes with plug-ins for the most popular CAD packages, including Pro/ENGINEER. This saves a lot of time because the render button is embedded in the Pro/E menu - there is no need to export data to a neutral format and import into HyperShot, although you can work that way.
The ease of transfer has had unexpected benefits at Technomot in that we are using HyperShot as an engineering as well as a marketing tool. When a part or assembly is ready for detailing, it is the work of mere moments to render it - a useful pre-flight check to see if it "looks right". The reach-out-and-touch-it realism can show up potential problems not apparent on the Pro/E view.
I recently had the opportunity to put HyperShot's ease-of-use to the ultimate test, when two year 10 students from Bridgewater High School in Warrington, came for a two-week work experience placement. I had no idea what the girls, Negar Karimi and Claudia Gabriel, would be capable of, only that Bridgewater is a specialist Arts college. It struck me that HyperShot could make ideal use of their artistic flair and provide a way-in for two non-technical youngsters to engage with engine design.
Engines don’t provide quite as many opportunities for aesthetic design as other disciplines, but the girls were soon designing crankcase doors, rocker covers and air ducts - the external components of an engine that give it its outward identity.
To my delight, they took to the software immediately and were producing dazzling images from the start. They both seemed to find the interface intuitive and were able to negotiate the material libraries with ease. They even managed to produce animations by stitching together still images in Microsoft Movie Maker.
So far, the support for HyperShot, through INNEO Solutions, has been first rate. When we first installed the software, we had a few intermittent compatibility issues with Pro/ENGINEER. It was unclear exactly where the boundary of responsibility laid, but Inneo's support team was very attentive in ensuring that a stable plug-in was available for download.
I would encourage anyone in engineering to take a look at this technology - in the six weeks since we ordered HyperShot, our marketing materials have come on in leaps and bounds.
About Technomot
Technomot is an engine design consultancy specialising in heavy-duty, large bore diesels and gas engines. The products they design propel ships and trains as well as driving pumps, generator-sets.
The company was founded in 2004 by Dr Esmail Karimi and has its headquarters in the prestigious Birchwood Business Park on the outskirts of Warrington.
