Hello
We use Maya quite extensively for creating images of our engineering models. A real gem amongst the Mental Ray shader nodes is the mia Roundcorners node (see page 121 of the following document: http://www.mentalimages.com/fileadmin/user_upload/PDF/arch_and_design.pdf (http://www.mentalimages.com/fileadmin/user_upload/PDF/arch_and_design.pdf) which, as the name suggests, allows you to set a radius upon which the edges render with the illusion of being rounded. These rounded edges then catch the light and make a huge difference to the final rendered image, especially if small subtle radius values are used.
To do this in Keyshot we would have to add these subtle fillets into our geometry which has many implications.
This would be brilliant in Keyshot. If you could add a parameter in a Material, which defaults to 0 switching it off, which could induce this effect it would be great.
Please let me know what you think.
Regards
Chris
I've seen this and it is pretty cool. We will look into this to see what is possible.
I've seen this as well and it would be a tremendous time saver on complex models.
It basically just modifies the normals on edges to give the illusion of being rounded - correct?
Ed
That would be a great timesaver. We always apply tiny fillets to all edges of our models for a rendering to make them look real.
Hello everyone
I'm glad you agree with out thoughts. If we can help in any way please let me know.
We are a small team passionate about creating engaging engineering visuals. We create our models using Autodesk Inventor and then bring our assemblies into Maya for animation and rendering (using Mental Ray) using our own shader networks which create a beautiful illustrative, almost hand drawn appearance. For our photo-realistic images we are just starting to use Keyshot.
We love the 'feel' which Keyshot gives to our scenes. We just miss the flexibility and control which Maya gives us when developing shader networks. However the ease to which we can create great looking images is very appealing.
Keep up the good work.
Chris
For the record...I love this idea. I spend hours adding tiny fillets to my models. Great suggestion.
+1
hopefully not everyone thinks this is a magic fix though. It doesn't work well for very large radii, and is Only meant for extremely small edges. So basically what you'd get naturally from the material in production.
Also, it doesn't as work well on curved surfaces. The bigger the radius, the more curves are a problem.
This is a great feature, and I want it, but I would do it carefully so the users aren't confused by it. Intersections of acute angles also don't work well. Anything 90+ works great though.