3D Modelling Special Interest Group – February 2016

Topics Covered:

• Creating Soft 3D Clothes
• Differences between OpenGL Rendering and Final Quality Rendering
  • OpenGL rendering options
  • using the render bitmap tool
• Window Numbers on Elevations
  • 3-D text on cabinets
• Creating a Strip Light
  • creating a glow texture for lighting
  • creating a line light

Creating Soft 3-D Clothes
Creating soft 3-D clothes can be challenging. Soft 3D close suggests that there will be smooth edges (which means a lot of polygons). In earlier versions of Vectorworks this was a real challenge to carry out, but using subdivision surfaces this should be a lot easier. We looked an examples of websites from Vectorworks designers that used simple 3D clothes and also complex 3D drawings that have been traced over a simple Vectorworks model. We did not spend a lot of time with the subdivision modelling to create soft clothing.
Differences between OpenGL Rendering and Final Quality Rendering
One of the users brought to our attention a project where the recession plane rendering appears different in OpenGL and in final quality rendering. We used the project that has been drawn Vectorworks 2016 and we use the render bitmap tool to render different views of the project. We tried different rendering settings to see if we could replicate the users problem. We were unable to create a substantial difference between OpenGL rendering and final quality in terms of the volume of the building that penetrates the recession plane. While we were looking at OpenGL rendering we went through the OpenGL options and we use the render bitmap tool to create views of the model the could be laid on top of each other.
Window Numbers on Elevations
If you use standard Vectorworks windows or a few use the Australian window system Windoor, you can use the Object Info palette to activate the number of the window in 3-D. This is usually a long way down the Object Info palette and it usually has an option that says that this window will be On Schedule. Activating this option and activating the option for showing the 3-D text should allow you to see the window number in elevation.
If you wanted to show the number or text related to cabinetry, then this is completely different. There is no tickbox on the Object Info palette that will do this. Instead you can activate your automatic working planes and draw directly on the face of your cabinets to assign the text that you want. Don’t forget to use classes to give you control over when you see this text.
Creating a Strip Light
We finished off the session by looking at options for creating strip lights. One way of doing is to create an object called a line light. The downside of the line light is that it often leaves a spotty appearance in the rendered view. One of the users pointed out that you can use the glow texture, and set the glow amount to 200-300%. If you use one of your high-quality render styles, then this texture will add what appears to be a light in the project.
3D Modeling February 2016
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