Digital Clock

[guido732]

Some practice renderings for a digital clock I modeled in solidworks as practice for surfacing tools.

[LayC42]

(OK, where to start?)
You're on the right track. I have a  few things to suggest and to ask.

First belong to KeyShot. I'm wondering about the light reflection on the glass front. In my opinion it is too much reflective. It looks like the alarm clock were standing on a floor of a huge empty hall with strong light from the ceiling. What is the natural environment where we will find that clock? How does it look with an apartment environment? Or maybe you can try a basic studio environment.
I would reduce the reflection of the front glass material, just a touch. 'Cause clear plastic isn't that high reflective. This would effect the side walls as well.
The plastic body parts needs some bumps. You can play with the Mold Tech materials or add a tiny noise (texture) procedural to the current plastic.

And I have some tips to the SWX model. Kick away these technique to model a half and mirror the geom and add a big fillet on the edges of the spine. In a parametric view, that didn't work quite well. The shape of the surfs could be better if they go from left to right.
And I would add some tiny fillets on the edges of the front surfs to the side walls. That brings out some nice reflections in the render. (there is a very useful webinar from Esben Oxholm to this topic - watch the video with the wristwatch)

You made a good job so far. And you can push this much further.

Last, I apologise for the short form of the sentences I've written this on a mobile phone.

[guido732]

(OK, where to start?)
You're on the right track. I have a  few things to suggest and to ask.

First belong to KeyShot. I'm wondering about the light reflection on the glass front. In my opinion it is too much reflective. It looks like the alarm clock were standing on a floor of a huge empty hall with strong light from the ceiling. What is the natural environment where we will find that clock? How does it look with an apartment environment? Or maybe you can try a basic studio environment.
I would reduce the reflection of the front glass material, just a touch. 'Cause clear plastic isn't that high reflective. This would effect the side walls as well.
The plastic body parts needs some bumps. You can play with the Mold Tech materials or add a tiny noise (texture) procedural to the current plastic.

And I have some tips to the SWX model. Kick away these technique to model a half and mirror the geom and add a big fillet on the edges of the spine. In a parametric view, that didn't work quite well. The shape of the surfs could be better if they go from left to right.
And I would add some tiny fillets on the edges of the front surfs to the side walls. That brings out some nice reflections in the render. (there is a very useful webinar from Esben Oxholm to this topic - watch the video with the wristwatch)

You made a good job so far. And you can push this much further.

Last, I apologise for the short form of the sentences I've written this on a mobile phone.

Hey! First off, thanks for your input, very much appreciated!

The glass in the front is very reflective but I compared it to the real thing to have a better reference and it's actually not 100% bright in the renderings, but it could be a little less bright overall. The enviroment wasn't meant to be realistic either, it was just some fun with materials but a better enviroment would look way better to make a composition to show a more compelling image overall.

The plastic does indeed have a procedural noise texture but it's very low in bump height, It's only really noticeable in closeups but it's there, higher bump heights left an unrealistic looking rough material which is not completely the case, the material is rough but not bumpy.

For the model itself I found that I rendered the model that hadn't tangency adjusted in the middle line so there's some edges visible which I tried to hide with camera angles, final model doesn't have that. Besides that, why do you say mirroring isn't good? in my experience some surfaces have better results and are easier to model that way rather than having to model the complete surface mirroring each sketch onto the other side. Is there a particular reason behind it? (or an easier way to do it?)

On the front to side edges there are fillets but they ended up being too small to be noticed, I'll just increase them on the model to get better reflections, that's something I missed.

Thanks again!

[LayC42]

(OK, where to start?)
You're on the right track. I have a  few things to suggest and to ask.

...

Last, I apologise for the short form of the sentences I've written this on a mobile phone.

Hey! First off, thanks for your input, very much appreciated!

...

For the model itself I found that I rendered the model that hadn't tangency adjusted in the middle line so there's some edges visible which I tried to hide with camera angles, final model doesn't have that. Besides that, why do you say mirroring isn't good? in my experience some surfaces have better results and are easier to model that way rather than having to model the complete surface mirroring each sketch onto the other side. Is there a particular reason behind it? (or an easier way to do it?)

...

Thanks again!

There are plenty of reasons to choose a right modeling technique. Like a German phrase that says "doin' right is always faster". So, IMHO an overall shape should bring smooth results. But if you prefer to mirror the geometry, then make sure that the surfs ending normal to the mirror plane. Otherwise the edges were noticeable.

[guido732]

Yeah I know, thing is I DID check tangency while mirroring and sketches were normal to plane, but the model I rendered was an older version (screws are missing, some fillets too and geometry details)  so tangency was NOT correct on the rendered models 

Do you happen to know a way to avoid doing double the sketches? as far as I know there's no mirroring sketches or 3d sketches, only doing symmetry point by point.

Coming back to keyshot, I'll make some corrections and give this another shot considering your tips 

[Will Gibbons]

Yeah I know, thing is I DID check tangency while mirroring and sketches were normal to plane, but the model I rendered was an older version (screws are missing, some fillets too and geometry details)  so tangency was NOT correct on the rendered models 

Do you happen to know a way to avoid doing double the sketches? as far as I know there's no mirroring sketches or 3d sketches, only doing symmetry point by point.

Coming back to keyshot, I'll make some corrections and give this another shot considering your tips 

You can mirror sketches in SW no problem. Also, there's nothing inherently wrong with modeling with symmetry... lots of companies do. You just need to look out to avoid non-normal curves or surfaces at the mirror plane. The renderings look good. Thanks for sharing!

[guido732]

Yeah I know, thing is I DID check tangency while mirroring and sketches were normal to plane, but the model I rendered was an older version (screws are missing, some fillets too and geometry details)  so tangency was NOT correct on the rendered models 

Do you happen to know a way to avoid doing double the sketches? as far as I know there's no mirroring sketches or 3d sketches, only doing symmetry point by point.

Coming back to keyshot, I'll make some corrections and give this another shot considering your tips 

You can mirror sketches in SW no problem. Also, there's nothing inherently wrong with modeling with symmetry... lots of companies do. You just need to look out to avoid non-normal curves or surfaces at the mirror plane. The renderings look good. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you Will!

[LayC42]

I'm sorry if my answers were to critical. Maybe the 15 years CAD trainer and consultant plus 6 years as a mold maker speak out of me. Choose any technique you're happy with. I'm out of the SWX business. In creo parametric I prefer the skeleton method with overall shapes. That gives me clean surfaces. Most time I try the 80/20 strategy. So that 80% of the geometry is driven by 20% of the features followed by the details like cut, fillets, etc.

And one idea left for the screen. Perhaps a very tiny mesh (squares with a small gap) should bring a pixel like look?!


Good job so far.

Cheers
Marco

[guido732]

I'm sorry if my answers were to critical. Maybe the 15 years CAD trainer and consultant plus 6 years as a mold maker speak out of me. Choose any technique you're happy with. I'm out of the SWX business. In creo parametric I prefer the skeleton method with overall shapes. That gives me clean surfaces. Most time I try the 80/20 strategy. So that 80% of the geometry is driven by 20% of the features followed by the details like cut, fillets, etc.

And one idea left for the screen. Perhaps a very tiny mesh (squares with a small gap) should bring a pixel like look?!


Good job so far.

Cheers
Marco

Nah man, no worries, I just genuinely ask if there's better ways to do stuff and what are they since I know there's ton of experienced people around and I certainly don't know it all.

I know mirroring is a technique but by no means the only one around, I just didn't know there was technically a better one , solidworks has tons of ways of doing the same stuff, some more effective than others, mirroring has that one thing that everything hast to be normal to the mirroring plane otherwise it looks weird (or you need to fillet which is no better) but has proven to be very effective to me and most tutorials of advanced surfacing usually do that when teaching (just saw a whole lynda series for a bycicle and mirroring is crucial).

I like that grid idea, I'll give it a shot once I've corrected all the other stuff and see if it works out