Twilight Render User Forum

Fletch wrote: ↑Sun Feb 14, 2021 8:19 pm We have several threads here providing perfect examples of a product in a studio.
I'm linking them below for your convenience.

This one is about shooting jewelry, but applies to all products.
Subject: Jewelry and Product Shots - the Right Light

Subject: light and material study

Subject: Pentax Camera - great model in Google 3DWarehouse

Thanks Fletch,

I really appreciate it!

ntxdave wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 8:51 pm OK - I could not resist so I downloaded a car engine from the SketchUp 3D Warehouse and did some playing around. After some messing around (I had to modify the model by fixing up problems and then move around some parts to make it look like @jeffh's), here is what I came up with.

CarEngine-1.png

Looks good,

Sorry, I didn't get the model uploaded earlier.
Here is a link to it on the Sketchup Warehouse.

https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/ ... Car-engine

Here's the camera, but you could use the engine, doesn't really matter, set without any floor or studio screen background.
Rendered with the HDR of 2 rectangles. (use Exploration render to quickly find exactly the best rotation angle for the hdr studio) and rendered with Easy 09 with Denoise AI enabled.

Then, render the Mask at twice the resolution of the final rendering.
Then resize the mask in photoshop to match final resolution (this results in very high quality anti-aliasing on the mask) and use that mask in the alpha channel of your final rendering.

Put the object you are rendering on any color background you like, white, black, or other.

Tips on rendering the engine:

(get modified file here.)

These are all the most common mistakes in nearly all beginner renderings. Please don't take this as criticism of you or your work personally.

one - too many reversed faces - all faces must have normals pointing in correct direction - refractions/reflections calculated from reversed faces will be incorrect.

two - materials - all black materials are too dark - put them at 20 lightness, currently they are at 13 lightness in the HSL material editor of SketchUp. All white materials are too white - set them at 70% lightness. Red material is over-saturated - back off to 70% saturation and 85% Lightness

three-
The model is not realistic - each corner is sharp. The fastest/easiest way to fix this is to add a bevel in the deep material editor for the metal material, or all materials where a bevel is needed - process explained in this video: (pro version required for deep material editor - for hobby users you will need to bevel your model geometry)


four - DOF (depth blur) adds to realism of all renderings. You can do it most quickly with a depth render and using the depth render in the blur layer in Photoshop. But that's not required - DOF works great in Easy 09.

proper modeling practice for 3D rendering is to make sure all model parts are "solid" (could hold water if filled up).
make sure no two faces are sharing space in 3D (no z-fighting).

This rendering created with apt-probe.hdr (referenced elsewhere on our forums - in the Pentax Camera thread).
Download apt-probe.hdr here.
Then it was masked with the technique described above (remember to set post-process to "none" for alpha mask rendering), and placed on white background in photoshop.

Here are a coupled of updated renderings using the Black, and the warm HDR files downloaded from The post Fletch made a while back.

Fletch wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 3:39 pm Tips on rendering the engine:

(get modified file here.)

These are all the most common mistakes in nearly all beginner renderings. Please don't take this as criticism of you or your work personally.

Thanks for sharing Fletch........couldn't resist doing some playing around with it a little. BTW: This one was rendered with 03 Low + but with a different HDR file.

Fletch wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 3:39 pm one - too many reversed faces - all faces must have normals pointing in correct direction - refractions/reflections calculated from reversed faces will be incorrect.

A suggestion for this issue is to set the back face color in the style sheet to something like a bright green so that when you draw objects if the back faces is showing, it will stand out so you know that it should be reversed.

Fletch wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 3:39 pm two - materials - all black materials are too dark - put them at 20 lightness, currently they are at 13 lightness in the HSL material editor of SketchUp. All white materials are too white - set them at 70% lightness. Red material is over-saturated - back off to 70% saturation and 85% Lightness

In some of my playing around, I have also found that it is a little better to just use colors in SK unless you need a unique texture that is not available in Twilight and then apply the Twilight Template to the color. Seem to get a little better results for me. Especially if shininess is the goal.

Fletch wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 3:39 pm three-
The model is not realistic - each corner is sharp. The fastest/easiest way to fix this is to add a bevel in the deep material editor for the metal material, or all materials where a bevel is needed - process explained in this video: (pro version required for deep material editor - for hobby users you will need to bevel your model geometry)

Good one Fletch.

Fletch wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 3:39 pm four - DOF (depth blur) adds to realism of all renderings. You can do it most quickly with a depth render and using the depth render in the blur layer in Photoshop. But that's not required - DOF works great in Easy 09.

Another good one.

Fletch wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 3:39 pm proper modeling practice for 3D rendering is to make sure all model parts are "solid" (could hold water if filled up).
make sure no two faces are sharing space in 3D (no z-fighting).

Another issue I saw was that there were many parts that are copied but as 'groups'. When you are creating parts/objects that are going to be used repetitively in a model, make them components. This keeps the file size down by reducing the number of faces in the object. I also makes modification of the parts (if the modification should be applied to all of them) apply to all of them. As an example, when you want to apply a material to the object, if it is a component, it will be applied to all copies of the object automatically.

Fletch wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 3:39 pm This rendering created with apt-probe.hdr (referenced elsewhere on our forums - in the Pentax Camera thread).
Download apt-probe.hdr here.
Then it was masked with the technique described above (remember to set post-process to "none" for alpha mask rendering), and placed on white background in photoshop.

Fletch, could you share this as a zip file so that I can download it. When I click on your link, it opens in the Edge browser as a text file. Would just make it easier for me.

Once again Fletch, you have provided some excellent feedback. I lost my sponsor so I have not been doing any modeling & rendering for over a year now unless I respond to something i see in a forum. However, I do enjoy seeing the responses you post. Now I have to try out the masking operation just to see if I can do it.

ntxdave wrote: ↑Thu Feb 18, 2021 11:42 pm
Thanks for sharing Fletch........couldn't resist doing some playing around with it a little.
...
Fletch, could you share this as a zip file so that I can download it. When I click on your link, it opens in the Edge browser as a text file. Would just make it easier for me. ...

That looks like good results ntxdave especially considering the render method.
I agreed with your component comment.
Edge?
But seriously - in Edge can you not right-click the link and choose "save link as"? Both methods work perfectly in Firefox.

Fletch wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:27 am
Edge?
But seriously - in Edge can you not right-click the link and choose "save link as"? Both methods work perfectly in Firefox.

I went back and tried again, and yes, when I right-clicked it did download. Do not know what happened previously.

Hey folks, thanks for all the suggestions! Your renderings look great.
I was able to use most of the info from Fletch. I don't have full access to the pro version of Twilight so some things I wasn't able to do, but I did learn a lot. Here is the final result, it's not perfect but my client likes it. I'll probably work on it a little more before sending it to be printed. There are some really good tips and tricks I look forward to trying.

Thanks, all the help is greatly appriciated.

Jeff

This has been an interesting exercise. Now I want to go off and try the aplha mask thing..........not sure I totally get what I am supposed to do but want to learn it anyway. Looks like a good trick to have up one's sleeve.

OK, I created a silly item and rendered it. I then rendered it again at twice the resolution using the Alpha Mask. I then used Xara Photo to reduce the mask back to the resolution of my original render. Now I am confused as to what steps to take next. (even though I have Gimp installed, I have not really used it so I am a little confused about what I am supposed to do.

My goal is to understand how I could take something like the car engine and produce a rendered model with a transparent background so that it could be inserted/included in another image.

BTW: Good job @jeff