The Visualisation Render function provides a comprehensive toolkit for creating rendered animated walk-throughs of your 3D solar models, including shadow animation. You can generate walk-throughs using wire-frame, hidden line removal, or shaded images to showcase your solar installations professionally.
🧾 What you need
To create a walk-through, you need:
Your completed 3D solar model
A single curve entity describing the camera path (Bezier curves work best)
Sufficient storage space (animation files can be very large)
Important: Real-time playback performance depends on model complexity and system capabilities. Ensure adequate disk space before creating .avi files.
🔧 Render controls
Function | Description |
Render | Creates animated walk-throughs following a selected curve path with wire-frame, hidden line, or shaded rendering |
Change View | Adjusts eye point for current perspective view - select U(p), D(own), L(eft), R(ight), I(n), O(ut), C(entre) |
Change Textures | Selects different textures for roof or wall planes |
Change Lights | Modifies ambient light settings |
Manage Textures | Creates and manages texture library - images must be TIF format in User folder |
🛠 Setting roof and wall textures
Apply realistic materials to your solar installation surfaces using texture files in TIF or BMP format. These might represent roofing materials, solar panels, brickwork, or tiles.
For planes: Define three points - origin (where tiling begins), X direction (bottom right of image), and Y direction (top left of image). This creates a grid for texture placement.
For surfaces: Surfaces use parametric space coordinates (u, v) from 0.0 to 1.0, mapping any surface shape to a flat square. Enter coordinates manually rather than using mouse selection.
Example: For a 5×2 tiled pattern on a surface, use:
Origin: (0.0, 0.0)
U direction: (0.2, 0.0)
V direction: (0.0, 0.5)
🔧 Setting perspective views
Perspective views are ideal for walk-throughs and require two location points plus orientation.
To create a perspective view:
Split screen to show Top view and Perspective view
Select the view to change
Click eye-point location in Top view
Click reference point (focal point)
View components:
View reference point: Where you're looking (focal point)
Eye location point: Where you're standing (vantage point)
Orientation: Angular relationship as x, y, z ratios relative to active construction plane
Common orientations:
0 0 1 = Vertical perspective (standing upright)
0 1 0 = Looking along z-axis with y-axis vertical
💡 Lighting setup
Set ambient light sources to ensure proper illumination of all surfaces. Ambient lighting provides background illumination and its position doesn't affect the result. Use only one ambient light source for best results.
🌍 World environment
Function | Description |
Insert World | Adds ground plane and sky hemisphere for realistic visualisation context - apply appropriate textures for best effect |
Delete World | Removes previously placed hemisphere and ground surface |
Rotate Panel | Rotates plane order for correct texture orientation |
⚠️ File management tip: Animation files can be extremely large. Monitor available disk space and consider file compression for sharing rendered walk-throughs with clients.