Toy Car Rendering Tutorial
It’s no secret that Luxology’s Modo is my CAD rendering tool of choice for industrial design these days. I’ve used it professionally for two years, and I used it to win the 2009 Boston “Cut & Paste” digital design competition. In this series of tutorials, (view all the videos after the jump…) I’ll be demonstrating that taking a “body in white” industrial design toy car model to a fully-rendered multi-layer Photoshop file in under 10 minutes of work.
That’s right: 10 minutes of work. Don’t believe me? Read on…
Modo 401 is the best version of Modo yet, and it has some huge advantages specifically aimed at industrial designers. For the last year or so, Modo has been able to open Rhino’s 3DM files natively. This was a huge productivity boom for designers. Now SolidWorks adopted Modo as their rendering engine of choice for their built-in real-time rendering package, and as such developed an translator for SolidWorks files direct into Modo. The result is that Modo 401 can actually open SolidWorks files–parts and assemblies–natively!
I move pretty fast in this tutorial. If you’d like to see a particular part in slow-mo, feel free to request it. I’ll be happy to break it down for you step-by-step. I built this car in Modo, but it could just as easily have been opened directly from SolidWorks or Rhino.
Here’s the breakdown of the tutorial:
Video 01: Creating the floor and configuring file settings. This process is quick and easy, but I certainly don’t do this very often. Once you’ve configured a file this way, you can use it as a template for all of your future rendering projects.
Video 02: Shadowbox. To have nice-looking reflections, you’ll need something to reflect! Many people use HDRI files for this purpose, but I prefer to do things with geometry: the result is cleaner, faster, and easier to control. Plus, it doesn’t look like a friggin’ desert sunset in my photo studio!
Video 03: Materials. Modo 401 has incorporated a whole library of materials aimed specifically at product designers. Drag-and-drop integration makes them a snap to use, and they look great with very little (if any) tweaking. They’ve even incorporated all of the standard Mold-Tech textures from the MT11000 library!!!
Video 04: Applying the decal, part 1. Applying decals in any app can be frustrating and confusing. Modo is no exception. But if you know your way around it, the power and flexibility Modo affords us more than makes up for the learning curve. In this step, we’ll go through the basic setup procedure.
Video 05: Applying the decal, part 2. Once we’ve applied the decal, we may want a little more control over its appearance. In this tutorial, we’ll look at some ways to get the control we want. UPDATE: Video 05 removed due to YouTube technical issues. See video 09 for a fast overview that covers the material from video 05.
Video 06: Render Outputs. One of the advantages of Modo over many other industrial design rendering engines is the ability to render multiple “Render Outputs” simultaneously. These will make your life so easy, you’ll be worried about your job security! Forget about manually selecting things for cleanup in Photoshop: from now on, let Modo do the work for you.
Video 07: Using Render Outputs. Now that we’ve created our render outputs, I’ll show you some of the basic ways in which we use those outputs to suit our evil purposes in Photoshop.
Video 08: Animation and Actions. This is where we really pull ahead of other industrial design rendering solutions: the ability to create hundreds of high-res multi-layer PSD renderings directly from Modo, all at once. I do this using Modo’s built-in animation capabilities. This way I can render a product from 10 angles in 10 different color schemes. Then I can come in the next day, change the CAD model, and re-render the whole thing in one fell swoop. I’ve done sets of renders in minutes that would have taken a CAD rendering package user all day to do manually.
Video 09: Putting it all together. Here’s the real test: can I do it all in 10 minutes? Um… hells yeah. Apologies for the choppy video, my computer was blowing out sparks and black smoke by the end of this recording.
Hi Adam,
thanks for the modo tutorial! I am an NX6 user. Any idea how I can bring my NX6 parts into modo for rendering?
best regards,
Stjohn
Hi Stjohn:
Yes, I used to render NX6 parts frequently. Unfortunately there is no very direct way to do the translation at the moment, however. Here are a few options, each with its own limitations:
1. (best method) Export STEP file, open in Rhino, run the “mesh” command, and then save as 3DM. The resulting 3DM can be opened directly by Modo. Yes, this involves an extra step, but it saves lots of time in the long run. The whole process can even be scripted to make the conversion incredibly efficient.
2. (almost as good) Save STEP file, open in SpaceClaim. Make sure visualization settings are set to an acceptable quality in prefs (this will define mesh settings for export), then save-as OBJ. Open OBJ in Modo. SC is great because it is very easy to clean up your solid model before rendering. **Note: once OBJ file is imported into Modo, it will bring a “normal map” with it for each solid body that will have to be deleted manually in Modo, or else your renders will look terrible!
3. Export SolidWorks file [you may have to then open in SolidWorks, and hit "save"]. Then open in Modo. The disadvantage here will be that your solid bodies will all join into one big mesh, which can make things difficult for you when texturing.
4. Export STL file, and use STL import script for Modo (available here) to import into Modo. This will join all adjacent solid bodies into a single mesh, so it is best to do this for EACH distinct body separately.
Hopefully someday there will be a good method without an intermediate step (pun intended!). For now, this isn’t so bad. If you work somewhere that can afford to buy you NX6, surely they can afford a seat of Rhino as well. It’s useful to have around anyway.
Good luck!
Adam
Nice series Adam.
Looked through few videos, very comprehensive and well thought of from an industrial designer’s point of view.
Although people who are using Solidworks would definitely like to try this out, as the new Photoview 360 which is essentially a striped down version of Modo render engine is still kind of limited to do decal or masking like you demonstrated above.
One easy way to get good reflection on the surface is to apply the environment that comes with the Modo 401.
As Solidworks is dropping it’s older Mental Ray based Photoworks after the upcoming version with the Modo based Photoworks, hopefully it would include some more advanced features for decal, texture, masking, and perhaps some basic animation.
*btw the 05 – decal part 2 seems to have the audio from part 1.
Thanks, Roy! I hope it’s helpful to you. Thanks for the heads-up on the video.
Hi Adam,
Great work on your tutorial for Modo plus the one for CS4 as well. I have a question for you; do you ever have to export your files for prototypes or model shops? I’ve read that Modo will not export but with 401 out does it allow you to do so? The reason I’m asking is that I’m in the position to buy a modeling and rendering program and have no idea what to go with. I’ve mainly used Alias while I was at Ford and at school we used Form Z, but when I came across your blog my eyes open up to what Modo has to offer.
Let me know what you think. You can either email me directly or response on your site.
Thanks Adam,
John
Hi adam! can you plz send me a render picture of the mt 11000 texture, i’ve been looking for it everywhere but just can´t find it. I would really appreciate it!
Thanks!
Hi John:
Glad you enjoyed the tuts! I wouldn’t use a sub-d modeler for actual Industrial Design, unless I were designing something very blobby and freeform (i.e. pretty much never). If you’re an Alias guy, stick with that and export to Modo if you want the rendering pipeline. I do little or no modeling in Modo for my ID work.
As for a “modeling and rendering” program, it really (really!!) depends on what you’re doing with it. If you send me some examples of your work I might be able to help you choose the right tool. Feel free to email me (adam at theoherns dot com).
All the best
Adam
Adam
Hi David:
It ships with Modo 401. If you’re a Modo 302 man, however, you can just approximate it yourself with a Noise layer set to “bump” and the scale set to something small like .5mm or so.
Adam
Thanks! it worked just fine! :)
Hi Adam,
thank you! Really great. I was hoping to find a useful modo render tut. Actually this is the best ID-render tut I’ve seen so far!!
Cheers,
Martin (Berlin)
Hi Martin:
Glad you found it useful! I’ve heard from some people that the audio is mixed up on one or two of them. I hope it works okay for you! Let me know if there’s ever anything in particular you’d like to see more of.
Adam
Hi Adam,
As always, great tutorial. I’m new to Modo and have a quick question. When trying to select a Solidworks part, which I opened in Modo, nothing seems to “highlight” (I can elaborate in more detail if you would like). Do you have any idea why this would be giving me issues?
Also, to achieve smoother surfaces, do you find it helpful to increase the tessellation in SW before opening the file in Modo? The reason I ask is because this helps when opening SW files in Hypershot.
Again, thank you so much. You’re a super star!
Christian
Haha, no problem Christian. Glad you find them helpful.
Yeah, your SolidWorks part loads as a “static mesh” by default, which greatly improves performance within the app (since SW meshes tend to be heavy), but doesn’t allow you to DO anything with the mesh. What you want to do is right-click the gray static-mesh icon in the item list and select “change type > mesh item”. This will then let you do whatever you want with the mesh.
As for getting smoother surfaces, you are correct: when you open a SW file in Modo, all it’s doing is pulling the stored SW visualization mesh out of the file. If it weren’t for the Viz meshes, the SW files would be a few kilobytes instead of the megabytes that they usually are these days, FYI. Anyway, by increasing the “image quality” property in the SW tools > options > document settings dialog, you should be able to get the result you’re after.
A WORD OF CAUTION: simply cranking up the image quality on your SW files will both increase your file size and greatly increase the risk of creating a behemoth file that not even Modo will want to handle. The first thing to try when smoothing out the edges of your model before increasing the tessellation settings would be to put small fillets on all edges. By doing that, it forces SW to create denser meshes on those edges without unnecessarily increasing the weight of the rest of your model. So if you’ve got a certain edge that’s too course for you in Modo, try putting a .5mm fillet on it in SW before exporting.
Best of luck!
Adam
Hi Adam,
Thanks for the quick reply. I’m at work right now, so I’ll check out the static mesh feature tonight. Glad to hear there is a solution though.
I usually add at least a .4mm fillet to all edges before sending the CAD out, so good to know that that helps too.
FYI, I’ve followed your steps on several preset models, and have rendered some beautiful images. Finally… this is a renderer that I really click with! Hopefully I can convince my boss to give Modo a test drive. Keep up the great tutorials and thanks again!
Best,
Christian
Glad to hear it, Christian! I’d love to see what you’re up to. I’ll be posting some more stuff for you soon.
Keep me in mind if you’re ever looking for on-site demos or training. If you convince your boss to go with Modo, I’d be happy to come in and train the team!
All the best,
Adam
hi adam, is there any chance you could fix the 05 decal part 2 tutorial as the rest are very informative but like you i want to solve the problems you wanted to fix at the end of the first decal tutorial :) the audio is a repeat of part 1 and the video is scrambled :(
Hi Adam,
thanks for all your tutorials and your useful website.
Do you have made any tutorial explaining how to do this car into modo, totally polygon noob here
Thanks!