Industrial designers need flexible and accurate tools in order to see new concepts for themselves and present ideas to others. Designers must explore shape and styling in a typical customer environment, making informed decisions regarding such issues as materials and finish. Marketing and sales desire to review conceptual images early to determine product appeal and to establish promotional strategies. In short, visualization is a focal point for the entire design process.

NX makes real-time visualization and sophisticated rendering a valuable asset for everyone involved in the conceptual process. It offers speed, accuracy of detail, and the assurance of data integrity in downstream activities. Concepts can be rapidly visualized, with the designer setting scenes and lighting, assigning materials and textures, determining perspective, and choosing environments and special effects. The resulting high-quality images can be used for product prototypes, marketing visuals, or simply as superior communications tools. Then, when photorealism is required, additional algorithms can be employed to render images that truly bring a product concept to life.

Dynamic rendering

NX Visualize provides a variety of methods and control options to rapidly create high-quality images. Standard or customized drag-and-drop templates serve as an easy starting point. The designer can then apply numerous materials, textures, finishes, light settings, and so forth, viewing the effects in real time. Using predefined environments, such as the NX Shape Studio "showroom," or self-styled environments, the designer can create aesthetic 3D atmospheres for product presentation. In addition, the designer can utilize special visual foreground and background effects, such as fog, snow, depth cueing, clouds, graduated colors, or imported background images. Dynamic rendering is an effective tool for real-time analysis using real-world environmental parameters. It offers viewers a concrete basis for evaluating shape and style prior to creating a final model.

Photorealistic rendering

When it’s time to produce an accurate, photorealistic image of the product concept, NX Render provides a broad range of tools to refine the aesthetics of the design in a virtual, even animated, environment. Using advanced rendering algorithms, NX puts the designer in full control of such complex, real-world qualities as lights and shadows, transparency, perspective, anti-aliasing, and radiosity. Images can be imported and used as environment walls, foregrounds, backgrounds, decals, and patterns. The designer can also generate artistic renderings that emulate such media as hand sketches, pencil or ink drawings, stipple images, or even paintings. These capabilities are used when a designer wishes to convey styling or the "look and feel" of a concept without a finished appearance.