From the course: Rhino and V-Ray: Product Design Rendering

Modeling tips for awesome renders

From the course: Rhino and V-Ray: Product Design Rendering

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Modeling tips for awesome renders

Okay, in the previous videos, we talked about how to make great renderings and how not to make a lousy rendering. In this video, I'm going to share with you how to make your design model more realistic and, therefore, better for rendering. Now in the prior videos, those were also about strategy. Here, I want to get a little more specific. So we've mentioned this before and I'll mention it again, fillets and chamfers, we want those at all exterior edges. So let's just take a quick zoom zoom tour here and you'll notice wherever there's an edge there is a fillet, chamfer or both so here's a little bit of rounded radius and then there's kind of a 45 degree chamfer there. Even, kind of edges that don't look like they would be a problem being sharp, I still put fillits there. So, it's pretty much everywhere you see an outside edge is going to have a fillit or chanfer. Inside edges it's not as critical. So you'll see this is kind of a sharp seam there. Not that big of a deal. Also, we come around here, And you'll just see all kinds of fillits. Pretty much everywhere you look, no matter where. Now, fillets are great for final renderings when the model is just about done but what happens when you are half way through and you, you don't if where fillets are going to go and how big. Well in that case, there is a great little solution. Zoom over here, And we're going to explore this letter f, which is for fill it. We're going to use a command built inside of Rhino. It's not really a V-Ray command. So it's on the render tool toolbar. About halfway down here. It's called edge softening. Now, it's got a couple questions first. So it, nothing will happen until you kind of review here. I want to make this a little bit bigger, And then just right click to accept all the other defaults. So check this out, It actually rounds those corners. It doesn't do the world's best job, but if you just want to avoid having it look incomplete or way sharp, this will actually get you some decent highlights, and it's quick and easy to do. Even better is, we can change this at any time or turn it off. Just select the object go to the property side bar here and there we have an entry for edge softening. I could recognize some of the other symbols and we can turn it back off or on, or even just switch it to a chamfer and change the size. So if I zoom in here you can see those are more than 45. The original geometry is not really modified at all, we're just modifying the mesh that is displayed in the view port. So it's a pretty good tip for making your model look like it's more done than it really is. Let's resume with our list. Zoom back the original view here. So next up we want to talk about openings which would be either for vents or speakers, or anything like that. So we've got some of those over here. You'll notice this is for the speaker, actually modeled the cone inside, And even though these are pretty small, I just throw at least a champer on there. Now, sometimes if you're so far away you won't even notice the highlights you can kind of just leave those off, but if you're going to zoom in you gotta have something, and at the bare minimum I think a transfer looks great. So I've kind of got a mixture on this particular design. So let's talk about display screens. We've got several of those here. Start up with this guy at the top. So I've got a piece of geometry there and here is where the opening in the case is. I also kind of made this extra little trim just so the two wouldn't have like a collision. There's more of like a gasket or something to indicate it's manufactured and the parts are assembled. So that is one thing to be aware of. You'll notice this screen here is in a bit of a recess, so I try to avoid flush conditions from, for different objects, just kind of a person preference, but at least show some indication of how things would assembled or held together. Okay, next on our list is buttons, we have a few of those right down here. So notice there is our chamfer on the edge, but what I want to point your attention to is, we have an opening in the case, and that opening actually has a little small chamfer on it. So it's totally okay just to have buttons go straight on through, and you can worry about it later. But when you're getting close to the final renderings, you definitely want to show that there's room for the parts to pass through like they're intended. Okay, next item is graphics or text. So we have a, kind of a screen here. Let's go back to render view. I'm using the shortcut, but you can also use the label here and switch or pick rendered. So we got a nice graphic on the screen, which'll give it a lotta detail, but also there's graphics up here. I kind of labeled the controls. So we've got some on that side. We've got a few over here, and then we've got some graphics, kind of like a little, little label here. This is actually, it's a solid geometry. It goes inside, mostly, and then this is a great technique also if you want to move it in or out or even change the size, it's not connected to anything. So it's a great way to handle some of the text. Finally on our list. Let's talk about scale items. You know, a lot of projects it can be difficult to tell. Especially when you're going with a minimalist style. How big is this? Is this an iPad or an iPhone? Is it, you know. How large is it? So without details or scale items, it might be difficult to tell. So I've got some little phillips head screws here. That goes a long way to helping. We have got buttons which are kind of finger size but we don't have anything more than that. You might want to select something that is a related object for example, you can flash drive in your bag, sometimes I use a coin or even a CD whatever the object requires you can put kind of that other element nearby that would really help. In mentioning scale items one great way to do it is use hour codes. I'm going to switch to wire frame here which is also again on the view port label. So, I'm going to point your attention, this is a strain relief. Just kind of coming in and out of the case. I've got a construction line here. So what I want to do is just use a control point curve. We want to have it come out using this construction line, kind of 90 degrees or perpendicular from the case. Look all realistic but then pretty soon I want to have a drop down because of gravity and kind of wiggle around on this table top. So, let's go to the standard toolbar. That's where this control point curve. Now, I am going to make sure, I've got like end and near snap here. Those are covered. I'm going to kind of zoom in here, I'm going to make a couple snaps. I want three or four snaps. I'll give me this control, so it comes out 90 degrees. Now, with nothing to snap to, you should remember that we're going to hit the construction plane, and that's where our tabletop is. So I'm just kind of getting bigger and bigger and farther away. You want that to go kind of off of the camera. Now we're almost there, but this is kind of a beginner mistake. We have got this hitting the ground, which means if we go ahead and pipe it and give it some thickness, it's going to be half above the ground and half below. Not a good look. So I'm just going to go ahead and quickly do that and I'll show you how we solve this problem. It's actually pretty easy. I'm going to go to solid menu. Pipe it. I'm going to use diameter, and we're going to use two millimeter diameter. So that's pretty much it. It's just going to right click a couple of times just to accept. There's our cable coming out and moving around. Like I said, if I go to the, one of the other viewports, and we'll see that it is halfway above and halfway below. This our ground plane here. So let's undo this cable here. I'm just going to actually select the pipe. Hit Delete. That's what I need you to do with the maximized perspective viewport. So I'm going to turn on the control points with F10. Now we only want to select those that are interacting with the floor. So the first four I did we're going to leave alone. We're just going to grab this whole group that are on the floor. They are currently selected. Now I'm just going to bring them up vertically. Exactly half of the cable thickness. Now, that would be two millimeters. So they come up one, and I've got my cursor set up so we use the page up to go Z direction. So I have actually just done it in one click. We can hit F11 to turn those control points back off. I'm going to select that curve again and just do the solid pipe. I'm going to use the same numbers which will still be in in there. Now if we had a floor here, this would sit exactly on the top of it and also would come straight out very realistically. In fact, if we go to shaded view it might look a little bit better here. So just remember, whatever diameter you decide on, maybe a power cord for a larger appliance would be, maybe, a larger diameter, so just move it up half the diameter, or one radius, and then that will hit the ground plane perfectly. Okay, let's go back to our original view. So most of these tips that I've shared with you were very simple and easy to implement. So the key is to just kind of slow down, and pay attention. Plus, you should be thinking about these design details anyway. In the 3D class I teach every semester,. We have a saying, when in doubt please add details.

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