fryrender SWAP F.A.Q.
1.- General Questions
Q.- Is fryrender SWAP an add-on for fryrender or a full product?
Q.- Do I need to make any changes in my scenes to use them with SWAP?
Q.- SWAP works in real-time... So, is SWAP the same thing as RC5?
Q.- How can SWAP change materials without re-rendering?
Q.- Is there a quality loss when a material is swapped in fryrender SWAP?
Q.- Is there a downloadable DEMO of SWAP?
2.- Installation Questions
Q.- The Load and Generate buttons are disabled when I run SWAP
1.- General Questions
Q.- Is fryrender SWAP an add-on for fryrender or a full product?
A.- fryrender SWAP is an add-on for fryrender, and is sold as a separate product. As such, you will need a fryrender MASTER license in order to use fryrender SWAP.
Q.- Do I need to make any changes in my scenes to use them with SWAP?
A.- No. SWAP uses the fryrender scenes resulting from the exporting plugins, and generates its own data. You don't need to modify your scenes at all to use them in SWAP.
Q.- SWAP works in real-time... So, is SWAP the same thing as RC5?
A.- No, not at all. The compositing engine that makes fryrender SWAP react in real-time does not have anything to do with our Virtual Reality engine RC5.
Q.- How can SWAP change materials without re-rendering?
A.- fryrender SWAP is based on a smart combination of render layers which makes it possible to compute a visualization of the same scene with different materials. Such combination is a compositing process similar to the layer compositing process a user might do by hand in Photoshop at the expense of hours of fine work.
SWAP automates the process of generation of those compositing layers, and it also automates the process of compositing and rasterization of the geometries being material-swapped. The material-swapping process happens in real-time, saving hundreds of hours of render, and letting you explore as many variants are you wish without any extra effort.
Q.- Is there a quality loss when a material is swapped in fryrender SWAP?
A.- All the important features such as reflectance, color bleeding, glossy reflections, etc... are preserved. So even though the scene is not re-rendered, under all realistic scenarios, the differences between an actual unbiased re-render and the compositing made by fryrender SWAP will not be noticeable to the naked eye.
Q.- Is there a downloadable DEMO of SWAP?
A.- No, there is not, sorry. However, SWAP is a very easy-to-use tool, designed to do one task (material swapping) very efficiently. The videos hosted in the main page are live captures of real sessions of use. They explain very clearly what you can do and how to do it with SWAP.
2.- Installation Questions
Q.- The Load and Generate buttons are disabled when I run SWAP
A.- You need to activate your customer copy of fryrender SWAP in order to use it. Click the License button and then select Request a software activation. This button will lead you to a web form where you will be prompted to type your customer details and your License ID.
Q.- SWAP says it can't create the DirectX 9 HAL
A.- SWAP is a very modern DirectX-based application, so you may need to upgrade your computer to a newer version of DX9c. Any recent version of DX9c should do the trick, but for your convenience, the versions available through the links below have been tested and are more than enough to run SWAP:
Microsoft DirectX 9c (November 2008) from www.microsoft.com
Microsoft DirectX 9c (March 2009) from www.microsoft.com
