Mr Malloy,
Reading between the lines in your message, and assuming that Photoworks
wasn't exactly a walk in the park for you, as it isn't for many of us,
maybe you might want to look on my web page and scroll to the very
bottom of the "what's new" page, and there you will find a three piece
model that I made in Solidworks, but rendered in Flamingo. Flamingo is
not a standalone program, it is an add-in coded for Rhino, but for
whatever reason, I am able to get pretty close to what I am, looking
for a lot easier, even though 95% of the time, I stick with PW, if
only in an effort to increase my learning curve a little more. When I
do use Flamingo, it involves saving the file as an iges in Solidworks,
and importing into Rhino.
It is at this point that I have to disqualify myself, and say that I
am not even close to being proficient at rendering, and you might want
to ask some of the several very fine Photorealistic Rendering Gurus
that we are Privaleged to have here on this forum. People like Rob
Rodriguez, or John Layne, or Matt Lombard. I am sure that there is a
solution for you with advice from either one of these gentlemen. I
have even been told that Solidworks 2007 has made PW easier to use, so
there might be some hope for us afterall.
Good Luck,
G. De Angelis
De Angelis Tool
Valhalla Grafix
www.deangelistool.com