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Realistic Looking Bearings

Question asked by Dougal Hiscock on Jul 19, 2010
Latest reply on Sep 17, 2010 by Greg Van Arsdale

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Hi Guys

I'm trying to get some deep groove ball bearings (the complete unit, not the balls) to look realistic and I need some help.

The outside cases are fine ground steel, the seals are black plastic or rubber. It all sounds quite simple, but I'm wasting a lot of time going in circles.

My main problems are trying to get the outer case looking bright and the seals looking dark. I've been starting wtih the "brushed steel" appearance and trying to modify that but it's like I'm trying to render a black hole.

The second problem is the seal washing out to grey instead of black. I've attached a picture.

This is with ambient light at 67%, directional light above and to the left. The real problem is realview keeps getting lighter and lighter with the changes I make but photoworks doesn't care.

What is the significance of the two colour boxes provided for some materials? For this one they're both set to a custom light grey, I've tinkered with those a bit but can't find consistent enough behaviour to know what they do.

Ryan Petersen Jul 20, 2010 7:25 PM

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Here it is. Since you are making a production level image, I changed a couple other things you will want to experiment with.

Antialiasing on high - helps with that ground steel appearance

Shadows set to soft

Notice the position of the lights

Image quality turned up in document properties

Adjust the appearance mapping style and scale on your ground steel.

Ryan

First time I noticed this but even though you embedded the appearance files, solidworks still says file not found. Despite it saying this, the appearance was in fact there and looked correct. oh well

See the reply in context

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bearing dark.jpg20.0 KB

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Deepak Gupta Jul 19, 2010 12:13 AM
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Did your tried using PV360
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- Dougal Hiscock @ Deepak Gupta on Jul 19, 2010 12:30 AM
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  Just tried it now, it looks very average. It's also no good for exploded views.
  
  The end result I'm hoping to get is an exploded view showing 3 bearings (2 different configurations). As well as the struggle to get one looking right, photoworks refuses to display the two different configurations correctly.
  It wants to render one of the two configurations as polished plastic at any one time. Open the bearing on the other config and it swaps around.
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  - bearing pv360.jpg95.8 KB
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Dougal Hiscock Jul 19, 2010 12:35 AM
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This is what I'm aiming for. It's the same file about two months ago. For some reason now it looks nothing like that.
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- Monocrome Bearing 6804.jpg303.7 KB
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- Deepak Gupta @ Dougal Hiscock on Jul 19, 2010 12:53 AM
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  Check this thread dedicated to some of the coolest rendering on this forum: pictures of solidworks projects
  
  I believe you need to learn some basic things on the rendering. Check Rob's site for plenty of good info on rendering.
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  - Dougal Hiscock @ Deepak Gupta on Jul 19, 2010 1:56 AM
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    I've been through both that thread and Rob's site before, but the most promising link on Rob's site was broken.
    The "october tricks and tips" link on here: http://robrodriguez.com/wordpress/?p=206
    
    I'm having all sorts of issues with solidworks today. After a save and restart the same part opens up with a lot of appearances that weren't visible in the tree before.
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    - Dougal Hiscock @ Dougal Hiscock on Jul 19, 2010 2:13 AM
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      Compare these two.
      The light one is a captured screen rendering, the dark one is exactly the same part rendered to a jpg file.
      
      Why the difference? I'd be happy if I could get jpg renderings that look like the screen grabs, but each render to file comes out too dark.
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      Bearing Photoworks Screen.jpg153.8 KB
      Bearing Photoworks.jpg49.2 KB
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      - Rob Rodríguez @ Dougal Hiscock on Jul 19, 2010 8:56 AM
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        If your happy with what you have but it's just too dark when rendered do this.
        
        Render the image to screen, when finished open PW options, go to the document properties tab and adjust the brightness, contrast saturation settings at the bottom. Once you have the levels where you want them (brighter image), render to file.
        
        Sorry about the brrken link. I don't have control of information I link to. It must have been moved.
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      - Jeff Mowry @ Dougal Hiscock on Jul 19, 2010 2:14 PM
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        Within PhotoWorks, I remember there was a setting for gamma that would change the brightness between screen and file renderings. Make sure that's set to 1.0 to make them the same. (I think it's in the PhotoWorks Options setting somewhere.)
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Ryan Petersen Jul 19, 2010 1:14 PM
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The first thing you might try is turning up the "diffuse appearance brightness" in the environment tab, that should be the easiest way to brighten it. If the bearing seals are too bright after that, you can turn that appearance's diffuse brightness down in the advanced tab within the appearance manager. Some other things to check include the postion of your bearing in the model and the type of environment image you are using. If the bearing is postioned off to the side or something, the lights won't hit it the way you expect them to. I use the conference room alot because I like the highlights, but it can make areas too dark as well.

Ryan
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Dougal Hiscock Jul 20, 2010 2:24 AM
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Thanks for the tips guys.

Gamma appears to have sorted out the difference in lightness between screen and file renderings. It was set on 1.5.
The diffuse appearance brightness didn't seem to do much.
I'm using the Plain White background, the shadow throw tells me the lights are pointed in the right direction, but the second directional light and ambient just seem to overexpose the already reflective part instead of brightening up the near side.

The brightness and contrast controls do a good job of modifying the whole image, but it appears I still have lighting issues.
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- Bearing Photoworks4.jpg109.2 KB
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- Greg Hynd @ Dougal Hiscock on Jul 20, 2010 5:17 AM
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  can you post your part to try?
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  - Dougal Hiscock @ Greg Hynd on Jul 20, 2010 6:12 AM
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    Sure, I've ticked the "save photoworks data in file" but I've never tried this before so let me know how it goes.
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    Bearing Photoworks.SLDPRT.zip5.2 MB
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    - Rob Rodríguez @ Dougal Hiscock on Jul 20, 2010 9:35 AM
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      Here are a couple of quick PV360 renders of the part. Real quick, less than 3 minutes quick. One uses the daytime environment the other uses the soft box environment. I could duplicate this in PhotoWorks but not in 3 minutes.
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      - Neil Larsen @ Rob Rodríguez on Jul 27, 2010 5:39 AM
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        This has nothing to do with PW or PV360 but here for general community interest is a render done in Octane via gpu.
        I used the sw prt and exported as vrml to Blender where I set up the basic scene for export as .obj.
        This is a little clumsy atm but Octane will have collada support soon and hopefully that makes it easy to get uv's and textures out of SW via the SWlabs plugin.
        I messed around in realtime with the materials, view, hdr lighting etc in Octane until I was happy and then let it render. It turned out 'ok' I suppose - the thin film might have been a bit off...I guess I need more practice
        Time = 3mins on 2x GTX480...thats equivalent to about 25 quad-cores working on it. Yeah unbiased is pretty calculation intensive...
        BTW I've downsized the pic 50% for posting here.
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        bearing_gpu.png100.2 KB
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    - Ryan Petersen @ Dougal Hiscock on Jul 20, 2010 12:27 PM
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      This one is done in photoworks, basically I used a brighter environment, the "abstract studio", and also turned up one light for the highlight.
      Not sure if you know, but the environment has just as much influence on the lighting as the lights do. You can light the model with either one or both. Environment reflections slider controls the brightness of that type of lighting.
      
      Ryan
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      Bearing Photoworks.jpg115.1 KB
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      - Dougal Hiscock @ Ryan Petersen on Jul 20, 2010 6:01 PM
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        Thanks Ryan & Rob. I need the photoworks texture as this is for marketing literature and I want the bearings to have that sparkley ground look that new bearings have. The photoview looks more cartoon like which is good for some applications but not what I want for this one.
        Is it possible for you to save the bearing with your photoworks scene and attach it so I can see how you've done it?
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        Ryan Petersen @ Dougal Hiscock on Jul 20, 2010 7:25 PM
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        Here it is. Since you are making a production level image, I changed a couple other things you will want to experiment with.
        Antialiasing on high - helps with that ground steel appearance
        Shadows set to soft
        Notice the position of the lights
        Image quality turned up in document properties
        Adjust the appearance mapping style and scale on your ground steel.
        
        Ryan
        
        First time I noticed this but even though you embedded the appearance files, solidworks still says file not found. Despite it saying this, the appearance was in fact there and looked correct. oh well
        Attachments
        Bearing RP.zip461.1 KB
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        Dougal Hiscock @ Ryan Petersen on Jul 20, 2010 8:40 PM
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        Argh, future version. I'm on SW2090 SP5.1
        But thanks anyway.
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        Chris Kamery @ Dougal Hiscock on Jul 26, 2010 2:10 PM
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        Wow, SW 2090? What's it like? Do you move things around with your hands? or is it linked directly to your brain matrix style?
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        Dougal Hiscock @ Chris Kamery on Jul 26, 2010 11:33 PM
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        It has no modelling, drawing or rendering abiliites, but sustainability express is now on version 84.
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Dougal Hiscock Jul 22, 2010 6:46 PM
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Here's one of my final results. Much improved.
The scene made all the difference, I still don't understand what the difference is in the scene as walls and lights appear similar, but it's now working well enough.
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- Bearing 6320 FC.jpg134.3 KB
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- Ryan Petersen @ Dougal Hiscock on Jul 26, 2010 12:39 PM
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  Oooo, that ones pretty. Nice. I know what you mean, I was confused first about environment versus room. The room is what you see in the rendering, but the environment, or scene, actually lights up the model. I thought it was like counter intuitive because we are making photorealistic images but you can set up unrealistic situations like daylight in a dark room. Ends up being more powerful though I suppose.
  
  Ryan
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Greg Van Arsdale Sep 17, 2010 12:47 PM
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Hi Dougal,

I have not played with PV360 very much but I have a bit of experience with PW.
I never allow the ambient light setting for any light source to be above 0.1 because it just washes things out and diminishes the effects of the lighting that I place and set stategically for the scene.
Approach your rendering as if you were a photographer... you start out in a dark studio, your model poses for you, and you set up your lights so that she looks dramatic.
I'd be interested to hear if the ambient settings are what was vexxing you.

Enjoy this day,

Greg
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Realistic Looking Bearings

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