Michael Lord

It was the start of the year just before SolidWorks World 2014 that I first became aware of the new rendering program –  Lagoa.

Lagoa describes itself: “Lagoa is a web-based platform for 3D visualization and rendering. Use Lagoa to produce stunning, high-quality, photoreal images for marketing, prototyping or creative projects – without the need for expensive hardware and software”
At that time I had very little time but to register for an Account and have a quick look around!  Which was the first interesting part from Lagoa.  There is a “Community” account, which allows free use!  There are restrictions – 5GB Cloud storage – 2Hours per month Render time!    Although I’m not too sure how set up that is at this stage.  As currently my “Statistic” show 4.5hours for 2 months use. (i.e last week/weekend February,  this week March)

I had a chance at SolidWorks World to see Lagoa in action, on their stand in the Partner Pavilion.  The Renders they were displaying were creative and impressive!  So I’ve been more than interested to try for myself.  I would have like it to have been sooner but I finally found some time over the past week to do so!  Now common sense would suggest that I would run though a tutorial or at the very least had a look at the getting started section!    But as my daughter tells me “Nobody got time for that”

With any rendering it’s about the realism which equates to the provision of the  Materials, Lights (Shadows, Reflection) and Cameras (Angle and settings).   There is a reasonably good selections of Materials.  There is also a very good Material Guide (which I discovered a few days later) which provides in depth descriptions My approach to this first use was straight forward, upload my (now reasonably old but always good to render) SolidWorks – Chess Assembly.   Add Materials, select Lights and Render.  Change Materials, Lights and Camera then Render.   Repeat as many times as time provided!   So these are the firsts of those renders.

It’s hard to be too critical of these renders and I’m reasonably pleased with the results.    Although the renders are basic most of the materials display very photorealistic.  The “Realistic Car Paint” is exceptional and I now “need” to produce a render of a vehicle.   The “Tinted Colour Glass” is again outstanding!  The “Metals” have a very pleasing mix of reflection and shadow!

These render were simple to produce and the program is intuitive to use, from the uploading of files to the adding of Materials and Lights.  Everything can be adjusted! EVERYTHING!

This was a brief (but very enjoyable) use of Lagoa and from what I’ve seen and tried it is impressive.  More importantly it does what it claims!   It produces renders that are of high quality and photorealistic.  Add to that they were produce using my home “family computer” a Dell Vostro 460, i5 – 2400 3.1Ghz 32bit 4Gb RAM not your typical Render machine!

I look forward to finding some more time to spend with Lagoa ….. now where is that model of the Zonda!