Autodesk Showcase 2011
Readme
Autodesk Showcase® 2011 visual communication software helps
designers, engineers, and marketing teams evaluate designs in context,
more rapidly explore alternatives, and tell the stories of their designs
with vividly immersive 3D presentations and renderings. The software
features storyboarding and movie creation tools, new environments, and
an intuitive UI and navigation techniques.
This readme describes known limitations and issues in Autodesk
Showcase 2011. It is strongly
recommended that you read this document before you install this
release. For reference, you should save this readme to your
hard drive or print a copy.
For further important notes and workarounds, see the Showcase Knowlege Base at http://www.autodesk.com/showcase-support.
Contents
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The directions for installing Showcase are
found in the Showcase Installation and Licensing Guide. You can find
the guide on the Showcase DVD or at http://www.autodesk.com/showcase-docs.
Important: If you are
installing Showcase Professional or Showcase Presenter with network
licensing, you must follow a procedure to enable Professional or
Presenter features. This procedure is found in the Showcase
Installation and Licensing Guide in Chapter
2, Showcase Installation > Install Showcase > Enable Showcase
Professional or Presenter after a Network License Installation.
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For system requirements, go to:
To see the Showcase Learning Path, go to:
For a summary of new features, see:
- "What’s new in Autodesk Showcase 2011" in the online help.
For an updated copy of this readme and other documents, go to:
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The following are known feature limitations and notes in Autodesk Showcase
2011.
Opening and importing files
- File open and import failures while running multiple
releases of Showcase: If you cannot open files or import geometry, there
may be a version
conflict of Autodesk DirectConnect introduced by launching and running
an earlier version of Showcase at the same time. Workaround: Exit all
other releases and versions of Showcase before starting another version
or release on the same system.
- Showcase cannot initialize the DirectConnect file
translator: In some situations, DirectConnect cannot be initialized by
Showcase, and will have an error when trying to open a scene file or
import parametric data. Workaround: Make sure that only one instance of
Showcase is running. Confirm that DirectConnect is installed and is the
correct version. Reboot the system.
- (Limitation) 32-bit versions of JT DirectConnect and UGS NX
DirectConnect installers do not work on 64-bit versions of Windows.
Workaround: Run the 64-bit version of the installers to license both
the 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Follow the standard instructions for
installation and activation. This does not affect non-licensed
translators.
Graphics card
- Graphics card must be qualified: If you experience
problems with viewing a scene (no shadows, materials appearing flat or
black), your graphics card may not be qualified. Check system
requirements at http://www.autodesk.com/qual-charts.
- Display
becomes too bright and peformance is reduced due to FSAA and HWAA
conflict: If the display becomes too bright after loading a scene or
performance is greatly reduced in all scenes, the graphics card may be
unable to anti-alias the scene with both full-screen anti-aliasing
(FSAA) and hardware anti-aliasing (HWAA) at the same time. Workaround:
Turn down or disable hardware anti-aliasing (HWAA) in the graphics
driver. For NVIDIA control panels, this is under “Adjust image settings
with preview” set to Use My Preference Emphasizing: Performance.
- Disable SLI for hosted sessions: When using the Hosted
Session feature with the QuadroPlex graphics hardware, disable SLI to
enable good performance.
- Hardware shadow quality degrades after long idle times: Leaving
Showcase running and idle for a long period of time (overnight) may
cause shadow quality issues when resumed. Workaround: Avoid leaving
Showcase running while the workstation is idle. To fix the issue, exit
Showcase and restart the application.
- Full Screen mode does not work after graphic card settings
changed: If you change graphic card settings while running an Autodesk
Showcase session, Full Screen mode may not work properly. Workaround:
Restart Showcase.
- Increased antialiasing may reduce performance or create visual
artifacts: If you increase the antialiasing in the scene, you may
experience reduced performance, ghosting or other visual artifacts
while the antialiasing is being performed. These effects will
depend on your graphics processor and the complexity of the scene.
Workaround: If you encounter these conditions, reduce or disable
antialiasing. (Select Options > Performance and Quality.)
- (Limitation) Showcase requires a large amount of graphics memory
(RAM on the graphics card) to render images with bloom. If you enable
bloom and attempt to save a large image you may experience a crash.
Workaround: If you encounter a crash or graphics driver reset when
attempting to save large images, try saving at a lower resolution or
render the image on a machine with more graphics RAM. The maximum image
size will be determined by the amount of available graphics memory.
(For example, an A1 format image is over 9000x7000 pixels. This would
require over 1GB free graphics memory to render.)
Scene authoring
- Hardware shadows not appearing in side-by-side compare
mode: Hardware rendering shadows may not appear in side-by-side compare
mode, upon entering or exiting the mode. Workaround: Use Scene > Show shadows to toggle shadows off and then on again. When reset this way, shadows will render correctly.
- (Limitation) Small objects disappear in Ray Tracing with
very large models or environments: Very small objects in Ray Tracing
mode may not appear at all if the overall model has large physical
scale or is very spread out, or if the environment is very large. This
is independent of the camera location or zoom amount. Workaround:
Decrease the scale of all objects in the scene or the environment in
Scene Settings by a factor of 10. Repeat if all objects are still not
drawing correctly in Ray Tracing mode.
- (Limitation) X-Rite materials applied as decals cover the
entire object: X-Rite Measured Materials do not support decal mappings,
and will ignore the Decal parameters when applied as decals.
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Autodesk, FBX, Revit, and Showcase are registered trademarks or
trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates
in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product
names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk
reserves the right to alter product and services offerings, and
specifications and pricing at any time without notice, and is not
responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in
this document. © 2010 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.