Recipe for a nice rendering

With this document, I´ll try to share my rules of thumb which I follow when I work on a PhotoWorks-
Rendering of SolidWorks-Models. It is specially related to the making of a series of renderings of
simple lighter.

Apart form all the technical stuff, I think that the most important prerequisite for a good result is to have
an idea of what the finished rendering should look like.

Scene-1
First of all, when considering a Rendered Image of a Solidworks-Model I´m defining the viewpoint and
the field of view. Save that using either a user-defined view or the new camera-functionality (which
provides more control but requires a little more tweaking). In case of the lighter, I used a camera. If
you use a userdefined view, activating perspective is a must (perspective can be modified under
view/modify/perspective, values smaller 1 are possible but be sure to use a “.”) !

Geometry
Technical 3D-Models often lack realistic visual attributes and details. The human eye is well trained to
spot these insufficiencies and will identify an image as appearing unrealistic. So it is important to add
those little details for a nice result. In order to preserve the original condition of the model, I use
configurations when adding features. On the other Hand I use assemblies to add objects to the scene.
Imagine a lighter (or buy one..) and you´ll find some differences to the model provided for the
rendering contest. The real lighter has almost no sharp edges. The clip is a very thin, shiny sheetmetal
part. It has a Scale at the front and some indents at the sides. The tank is filleted both inside and
outside. There is liquid gas inside the tank, that has some magnifying effect to the uptake. And finally,
when you use the lighter, a nice flame pops out that has the shape of a drop with a yellow shell and a
bluish core.
I had an arrangement in mind that would show the lighter from different perspectives with a black
background to emphasize the translucent appearance. To be honest, I don´t like stilllife-style
arrangements, as it is easy to overdo and often distracts from the object.
For the lighter, I made one assembly to add the Flame-Part and the Gas-part. Then I used several
copies of the first assembly in a second one to create the desired arrangement of the three lighters.
This required some re-adjustment of my camera-settings.
The Flame is a Surface model which I Split in half in order to reduce the density. It contains one face
each for the shell and for the core. The Liquid Gas was modelled incontext. First I copied the inward
faces of the tank and trimmed them back. Then I used surfacefills with guidecurves to create the
topface and turn it back into a volume.
I filleted the Tank and did some modifications at the clip, which originally had a dirty fillet running
around the top edge. I replaced that fillet, added the indents and the scale, filleted those to and finally
added a shell features in order to reduce the wallthickness down to a realistic degree. OK, modelling
done.

Scene-2
Ok – before I start with the materials, I make some basic adjustments to my Scene. Most of the time, I
use a spherical, grey and black Scene (Scene-Properties) and indirect illumination (PhotoWorks-
Options). It makes reflective Materials appear more realistic and renders quite fast. I have learned this
Trick from Mike Wilson on http://www.triaxialdesign.com/tip_tricks.html , so thanks Mike for that one.
Make sure, the diameter of the virtual sphere is 10-50 times bigger than your model and the floor is
aligned to the proper plane. Be sure to activiate “Indirect Illumination”in the Illuminations-Tab of the
Photoworks-Options. If you experience spotty shadows, increase the radius and the “amount of
indirect illumination”.
I have created that environment once (it is derived form the “sphere sky environment”) and saved it
along with all the materials into my “treasurebox of userdefined materials”.
If a shadow of the model is desired without any impact on the environment try the “gradient floor” form
the misc/Studio Materials Folder – it is 100% transparent, so all it does is creating a face to cast the
shadow of the model on, great with background-images (see sample-image) !
In general I´ll only add lights to scene if it is inevidible (though this is quite often the case…) as this
dramatically increases rendertime.

Materials
I´ll start with a Standard-Material, modify it as needed and – most important – save that into my
treasurebox of userdefined materials. I cannot emphasize the importance of saving the materials often
enough – this is essencial, else you want to tweak til the end of your days. Don´t forget to save it
again, if you made some changes !

Render
I always start with the big parts of my model and do some testrenderings. When doing so, I´ll decrease
imagequality and resize my graphicswindow to about a third of the original size – this makes rendering
faster. I even hide geometry when working on details like the flame. The safest way is to save each
test into a file, so I can easily compare the results after some change to lighting, material-props or
scene-settings. Be aware that both lighting and property-settings have a big influence on the result.

SolidWorks-Model rendered with background-image, gradient floor and spherical environment

Allright, now all you have to do is render, tweak, render, tweak, render….until your satisfied. It si a
good idea to ask somebody “non-technical” to judge the result… A good render takes me about 30-40
testrenderings, so don´t give up to early ! Be sure that your use the highest imagequality (both in
SolidWorks and PhotoWorks) . Turn shadows to transparent and use soft-edges (This is done in the
lightings-tab of the scene-settings - I use a medium value and 8 for quality which seems a good
compromise on rendertime). Use shadows only for the main lightsource, switch it of for the highlights
(Point Lights) – this can be done using the photoworks-properties inside the light-properties.