A 'non destructive' beveling ruby.
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Hi all,
This feature is on the wishlist for many people that use external rendering applications.
The drawback using sketchup in SU to Photoreal rendering is the fact that all edges/corners are too sharp.
This compromises the sense of photorealism.
I know there is a bevel ruby around that can help in this matter. Downside to the current bevel option is that editing objects after applying get's very difficult.Maybe we could have another sort of 'beveling/chamfering' in Sketchup. One that works like the 'smooth/soften edges' option in sketchup,meaning a non destructive bevel option that can be applied to an object/group/component.
The idea for this was launched in this gallery thread:
http://www.sketchucation.com/community/forums/suc/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=647&p=5318#p5318What do you guys think. Can this be made possible?
Thanks,
Kwistenbiebel -
I think this is a really interesting idea! I could definitely see this as being quite useful.
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I'll keep an open mind on this, but when I worked as a Max monkey for (ahem) Someone-who-had-me-sign-an-NDA, I really never worried about this issue. Every render we made was layered in Photoshop/After Effects with an ambient-occlusion "dirtmap" and sometimes even a hidden line render, blurred and pixel-scrubbed obsessively, and I believe that obviated the need for polygon-adding bevels in most cases.
--Lewis
[Lewis Wadsworth]
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Lewis,
Can we see a sample of one of these obsessively scrubbed renders? You've piqued my interest here. Was the dirt occlusion mapped rendered separately or was this some sort of generic dirt filter? -
Thinking of the way the SU2POV exporter works gave me an idea.
The SU2POV exporter basically explodes all in the model when exporting so all groupings etc are lost, but creates a backup (kept in a specific place) of the original BEFORE exploding all.
What if a ruby is written that utelises the existing ruby (that seems to be working to satisfaction, except for the destructive bit) but creates a backup before the process gets underway and automatically restores the backup as the original afterwards? It might mean that you'll have to close / open SU between exports though, but only the scriptmasters will be able to tell us that.
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@unknownuser said:
Lewis,
Can we see a sample of one of these obsessively scrubbed renders? You've piqued my interest here. Was the dirt occlusion mapped rendered separately or was this some sort of generic dirt filter?Let me see if I can dig something up when I get home that doesn't violate my agreement. I actually don't use Max at all any more, pretty much because I worked for these guys and came to rather dislike certain of their practices and the way they used that program...I refuse to install 3D Studio Max on any computer I own. But the lesson of doing as much as possible post-processing was a valuable one...the idea was to use the renderer (a customized version of Max with VRay with some Mental Ray renders for layering)as little as possible, and Photoshop (if it was a still image) as much as possible, just to keep production times reasonable. It was always faster and less like Russian roulette to use Photoshop! And I still do this in other situations.
But to answer your question, yes the dirtmap was rendered separately, using Mental Ray but the same camera and frame resolution as the main full-blown VRay rendering. Then the dirtmap (which they produced using a script on Mental Ray, but which newer versions of Max can produce with just an ambient occlusion-only grayscale render)--and sometimes a hidden-line render as well--would be placed on a Photoshop layer above the VRay render with transfer method set to Multiply...and we would "scrub" the dirtmap as much as necessary using the Photoshop tools, layer masks, blurring filters, and transparency.
It's been almost two years since I've worked there, so please forgive me if I'm getting my Max terminology a little confused with other program's terms.
I will try to find some examples for you, as I said, but I have to do some "real" work now.
--Lewis
[Lewis Wadsworth]
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Just a note: I haven't forgotten that I promised to find some examples of the pixel-scrubbing alternatives to mesh beveling. I don't seem to have any files left where I can show this technique in an obvious way, but I just did some checking and it looks like I can duplicate the Max technique I used at (ahem) with Blender and Yafray...this gives me an excuse to learn a bit more about Blender, anyway. Ever more impressive program, and it's free.
Blender - The Free and Open Source 3D Creation Software — blender.org
The Freedom to Create
Blender (www.blender.org)
--Lewis
[Lewis Wadsworth]
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I too am looking for an easy and quick way to bevel, fillet chamfer. I've downloaded the chamfer ruby but for the life of me can't figure out how to use it.
Desperately want a good fillet/chamfer ruby!
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