Hy,

I have to make "nice pictures" for a presentation and for plots on paper 0,4 m x 0.3 m of our results of flows in turbomachinery. We use FLUENT. What is the best file-format for this purpose and which resolution do we need ? We think to plot path-lines and shaded geometry with lights on. Do you have hints for "impressing" plots ? or do you know web-sites with such great pictures ? How do you create "photorealistic" pictures and which software (freeware ?) do you use ?

Thank you a lot.

This problem is not scientific, but the people who have the money want to see such pictures.

Thank you

(1). You need to talk to the printer shop about this. I mean the color postscript file and the large color printer. As long as you have the file with right format, they should be able to print it. (2). There are two other methods I have been using. (3). the first one is to take the picture directly from the screen, and print it at the photo shops. I like this approach because I have good camera systems and I can cut and paste the picture on the report. It is much better than the flat picture from the color printer, and the colors are also more accurate. It is still very hard to get the photo quality from regular color printers. (4). The other approach is also very good. This is a real example, and I created a 2x3 FT poster size of flow over the turbine blade with color fringe contour map to show the Mach number distribution. I created one a few years back using Fluent. What you do is divide the full picture into say 2x3=6 pictures, zoom in and print the picture. Once it is done, cut and paste together to form a large one. You don't need any other help or equipment in this approach. But you have to control the size so that each will be the same. (you maybe able to include a help mesh or geometry object to guide you, but I didn't use that extra care. As an Art object, I don't want the perfect alignment.) (5). As for the photo-realistic models, I have been using two softwares extensively to do product design (for presentation to clients before CFD analysis and production). These are POVRAY/Moray and 3-D STUDIO. The first one is shareware/free ware, which produce the best quality one can get using "ray tracing" technique. The 3-D STUDIO is also very close to it and is a commercial code (in the 3k to 4k range) used widely by animation studios. Some CAD programs also have add-on modules in this area, but you need to check. (I used the Moray and 3-D modelers of 3-D STUDIO to create the models directly, so you need to find out whether you can import the model from Fluent into the codes first.) (6). There are also several other photo-realistic programs on the market, from several hundreds to over ten thousands to choose from.