[sdiy] Best program for photo realistic renders of synths?

[dh at atoav.com]

I will expand a little bit. Blender might give the best results, but has 
a bit of an learning curve. Judge yourself.


My workflow looks as follows:

--------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Knobs, Buttons, Screens, Jacks (once)

- Model them (to scale!) either in Blender or somewhere else

- Make sure the coordinates are good (origin should be at a sensible 
place. e.g. for jacks at the center point right on the surface of where 
the panel would be, for knobs at the center right on the surface of the 
panel again). The goal is to have a library of parts that have such 
coordinates, that in the end you only need to work in 2D, because the 
vertical coordinates are already in the parts.

- Create and apply Shaders to the parts (or find shaders that work)

- Store them in the new Blender 3.0 asset manager or as files on disk.

- Sometimes you also find CAD models online and then you need to 
navigate the 3D-file-format-jungle to somehow (TM) get them into Blender.


---------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Illustrator preperations

- ensure your illustrator panel is both to scale and has the origin of 
the coordinate system at a sensible place (e.g. upper left corner of the 
panel). The illustrator 2D-coordinates can be directly copy pasted to 
the parts in blender IF your coordinate systems have been taken care of 
as described above.

- export the board outline as SVG

- export the board graphics as PNG (one for each type of material. If 
you only use print color, one layer is enough, if you e.g. have shiny 
metallic parts or something, put them in a seperate file).

- Updates: if you change the board shape you need to reimport it again 
in Blender. If you overwrite the images, and they are named the same 
way, Blender will reload them automatically when you open it the next time.


------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Board Setup (Blender)

- Import the outline in Blender as SVG (File > Import > .svg). If you 
don't see that option enable the addon in the preferences. If the format 
does not give you good results, you can try the same with DXF.

- Go to the scene settings and change the length units to millimeters 
and check if the imported shape has the right dimensions in the n-panel 
(which you can open/close by hitting "n" on the keyboard and selecting 
the shape). If the scale is wrong it is _typically_ off by factors of 10 
so you can just scale it up or down by that factor and you are good. If 
your shape is not one part, you might want to fix it in Illustrator 
(using Pathfinder and such to merge and subtract shapes till you are happy).

- With the shape selected, convert it to a mesh (Object > Convert > Mesh)

- Clean up the mesh by adding a Decimate Modifier (blue wrench icon > 
Add Modifier), setting it to "Planar" and clicking on V > Apply

- Add a Solidify Modifier and set the thickness to your panel thickness 
(e.g. 2 mm) – now the board should have the right geometry

- Open a Material Panel (after familiarizing yourself with the way the 
genius panel system in Blender works) and and create a Material. In the 
Shader Node Editor you can then add a Texture Input Node, where you can 
load up your image and connect it e.g. to the Color-Input of the Shader

- Should your image not align (likely) you need to do UV-Mapping. This 
is a topic in itself, if all scales are correct, this should take no 
longer than 10 seconds (change to Ortho Top View, Go to Edit Mode with 
tab, select all with "a", unwrap with "u", select project from-view 
(Bounds)"

- Adjust shader to taste, maybe even with subtle smudges on the 
roughness for realism etc.

---------------------------------------------------------------
4. Mechanical Parts

- Place the mechanical parts at the coordinates where they would be in 
illustrator by copy/pasting the coordinates from Illustrator to Blender. 
If the parts and the Illustrator artboard have been set up correctly, 
this should be done in a few minutes.

---------------------------------------------------------------
5. Render

- setup render format and resolution for your target purpose

- setup camera, light and environment if needed (this is also 
potentially a step you only need to do once, there are also finished 
"Studio" scenes that you could place your model into that you can find 
online).

- adjust render settings for speed by e.g. adjusting the max samples in 
the render panel (optional)

- render and save the image


This is more or less it. The longest part by far would be modelling the 
knobs etc. But unless you use different knobs for every modelue this is 
something that you only need to do once. Of course Blender is NOT a 
simple software and you need to grasp a few concepts to get clean 
results. But if you are not afraid of learning a new thing and have a 
bit of time it should be doable. Blender has a bit of a learning curve, 
but the potential is huge and it got a lot better with the UI-Overhaul 
since version 3.0.

Have a nice evening,
David/atoav


On 2022-10-31 20:59, dh at atoav.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> in a former life I was a VFX-freelancer. I'd agree that Blender would be 
> the best choice for this. I tend to also use Illustrator for panel 
> graphics. You can export vector graphics to dxf and import them into 
> blender giving you a polygon shape if you need panel holes and such.
> 
> For prints I would just use an image texture (e.g. export a PNG from 
> illustrator and map it onmto the panel geometry in Blender). The 
> important concept to learn here would be "UV mapping" (this is the same 
> in nearly every 3D-software, so learn once apply everywhere).
> 
> Then you need to model jacks and knobs and such, which you can reuse on 
> every model. Blender allows for python scripting so you could also 
> script something up to automate this.
> 
> If you are curious, here are Blender renders for my upcoming module: 
> <https://n.atoav.com/s/PDNcdxELdTENZ3d>
> 
> Cheers,
> David/atoav
> 
> On 31/10/2022 20:49, Davide Romboli via Synth-diy wrote:
>> +1 for Blender ... free and Open Source
>>
>> Il giorno lun 31 ott 2022 alle ore 18:10 Danjel van Tijn / intellijel
>> <danjel at intellijel.com> ha scritto:
>>>
>>> I want to start making photo-realistic renders of synth projects but 
>>> I am trying to choose which program is worth focusing my learning 
>>> efforts on.
>>>
>>> We do all our 3D CAD work in Fusion 360 (PCBs are in Altium) and all 
>>> our panel graphics in Adobe Illustrator.
>>>
>>> One step that is really important for me is to be able to take my 
>>> panel graphic from illustrator and add them as decals to the 3D 
>>> models. This needs to be precise in scale/position and should be easy 
>>> to do or else it will be a real bottleneck for productivity.
>>>
>>> If I import graphics to Fusion, it is a real pain to try and scale 
>>> them to the correct size and there is no option for 1:1 import. 
>>> Fusion has very poor tools for this; they only allow coarse, 
>>> concentric scaling (unless you manually try an enter scaling values 
>>> but then you are just guessing) and it is very slow. Also, Fusion 
>>> does not allow the import of vector images.
>>>
>>> I have taken a quick look at Blender and Rhino so far as 
>>> alternatives.  Rhino allows for import of native Ilustrator files and 
>>> will import at the correct scale.
>>> Blender will allow SVG import but not at the correct scale. The 
>>> scaling too is a bit easier to use than Fusion but it is still not 
>>> ideal.
>>>
>>> In terms of Blender vs Rhino,  it is difficult to know which one is 
>>> worth the time investment. Blender seems deeper in features, is free 
>>> and has a large support community. Rhino at least offers a one-time 
>>> purchase option that is not unreasonable and I like the interface 
>>> better but the user community seems a lot smaller and I need to 
>>> understand the NURBS approach.
>>> Also, a lot of people, whether they are using Blender or Rhino, seem 
>>> to do the final rendering in Keyshot (which is quite expensive).
>>>
>>> Does anyone have experience with these or another program?  What 
>>> would you recommend?
>>> I still need to make photo realistic models of UI elements like knobs 
>>> and switches and for this, I am probably always going to be more 
>>> familiar with the parametric cad modeling approach.
>>>
>>> thanks!
>>>
>>> Danjel
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>>
>>
>>
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