MYP Design Rendering and Visualisation Notes

A Render Is A Photograph Of Something That Does Not Exist Yet

1. Rendering is the software working out what your CAD model would look like if it were real, lit by real light and photographed by a real camera.
2. The computer traces rays of light from the lamps you place, bounces them off the surfaces you chose and works out the colour of every pixel.
3. That maths is slow, so a render takes seconds to minutes while a normal CAD view redraws instantly.
4. Nothing about the geometry changes when you render, only the way it is shown, so a bad idea rendered beautifully is still a bad idea.
5. Fusion 360, SolidWorks Visualize, Blender and KeyShot all do this, and most school CAD packages have a render workspace built in.

Materials Do Far More Than Change The Colour

1. A material in CAD carries a colour plus a set of surface properties, and those properties are what make plastic look like plastic.
2. Roughness controls how sharp reflections are, so polished aluminium mirrors the room while brushed aluminium smears it into streaks.
3. Transparency and refraction let light pass through, which is how 3 mm clear acrylic reads as acrylic rather than as white plastic.
4. A texture map wraps an image onto the surface, which is how you get oak grain running the right way along a shelf.
5. Apply materials per body or per face, so a single product can show a birch ply base, a matt black rubber foot and a clear lid.
6. Pick the material you can actually get, because rendering the school project in polished titanium is a lie about what you will build.

Lighting Is What Decides Whether It Looks Real

1. Most CAD renderers light the scene with an environment, a photograph of a real place wrapped around your model as a sphere.
2. Choosing a studio environment gives soft even light and a plain backdrop, while a warehouse environment throws window shapes across the surface.
3. Rotating the environment moves the highlights, and a highlight running along an edge is what tells the eye the edge is rounded.
4. Shadows anchor the object to the ground, and a render with no shadow looks like it is floating in milk.
5. Turn the brightness down until you can see the form, since a blown out white render hides the shape you spent hours modelling.

Camera Angle Is A Design Decision, Not A Default

1. A three quarter view from slightly above shows two faces and the top at once, which is why product photos nearly always use it.
2. A low camera makes an object look bigger and more serious, while a high camera makes it look small and handleable.
3. Focal length changes the feel too, so a 35 mm lens exaggerates depth and an 85 mm lens flattens it out.
4. Leave space around the product rather than cropping tight, because a client will want to imagine it on a desk or a shelf.
5. Add a familiar object such as a pencil or a phone at the same scale when size is the thing people keep getting wrong.

Renders Persuade, Technical Views Instruct

1. A photorealistic render answers one question, which is what the product will feel like to own.
2. A technical view answers a different one, which is what size everything is and how it is put together.
3. Nobody can build from a render, because reflections and soft shadows hide exactly the edges a maker needs to measure.
4. Your design folder normally needs both, a render to communicate the idea and dimensioned orthographic views so it can be made.
5. A shaded view with visible edges sits between the two and works well when you want form and geometry in one image.

Exploded Views And Animations Show How It Goes Together

1. An exploded view pulls every part of an assembly apart along the line it would travel when fitted.
2. Thin lines between the separated parts, called trails, show which hole each screw belongs to.
3. An exploded animation plays that apart and back together, which explains an assembly sequence faster than a paragraph of writing.
4. Ten seconds is usually plenty, and a slow rotation at the end lets people see the back of the product.
5. Export it as an MP4 and pull three stills from it if your folder needs images rather than video.

Using A Render To Get A Useful Answer From A Client

1. A render lets a client react to a finished looking product months before any material is bought.
2. Show two or three versions that differ in one thing, such as colour or handle shape, so the feedback is about that one thing.
3. Ask questions the render can actually answer, for example whether the lid looks easy to lift, not how strong it is.
4. Say what the render does not prove, since a client who thinks it is a photo of a finished product will be disappointed later.
5. Record what they said and what you changed, because that trail is worth more to your evaluation than the pretty picture.

Honest Visualisation, Not Flattery

1. Renders hide the things that go wrong in making, such as glue lines, 3D printed layer marks and scorched laser cut edges.
2. Photograph the real prototype next to your render when you evaluate, and name the differences.
3. Keep tolerances and fit out of the render conversation entirely, because a screen cannot tell you whether a 6 mm pin fits a 6 mm hole.
4. Time spent perfecting reflections is time not spent testing, so set yourself a limit and move on.