topic Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering? in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

Anonymous — Sat, 27 Dec 2014 22:25:31 GMT

Are there any cost effective tools out there that really handle wood grain rendering well?

It seems like there's no way to render the true nature of woodgrain. It seems like you'd need a 3d texture but I've never heard of such a thing.

Any wisdom regarding this?

Thanks 🙂

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

TrippyLighting — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 00:24:29 GMT

The are a number of very good tools out there but they don't interface (yet) with Fusion 360. I am sure keyshot can do some of that but I am also sure that the Fusion 360 internal renderer cannot do that.
For modeling the stuff I render I use Blender and for rendering I use Indigo Renderer. These were the tools I used to model and render this chair:
http://www.indigorenderer.com/images/rocking-chair-david-haig-close
http://www.indigorenderer.com/images/rocking-chair-david-haig
I also created this table on the Arroway website was also created with Blender and Indigo Renderer:
http://www.arroway-textures.com/en/gallery/concept-design-coffee-table

Aside from the normal use of tools, you need a number of skills. Your crossbows are very sculpted and not simple objects. I am guessing you have figured out by now that modeling with T-Splines is very different from the usual feature based modeling in CAD software.
The next step to a well textured render is UV unwrapping/mapping A. as a skill and B. As a tool. I don't think that Fusion 360 offers UV mapping and again, I use Blender for that as it is renown for its UV mapping tools.
UV mapping in general terms is method to map a 2d image - the texture map - onto a 3D structure.
Once you have UV mapped/ unwrapped you 3d structure you will need some good textures. By far the best Wood textures you can get are the ones from Arroway.de. These are not cheap but are Recognized for theit quality by many professional visualization artists. The chair and the table use these textures.

Now let's talk more about the textures themselves. In order to have the wood grain look like wood grain, despite the fact that your model surface is smooth as glass more than one textures is needed and for close up's showing off the wood grain it better be high resolution. Also for a single piece of wood, you need more than one image mapped onto the same surface. You need a diffuse/albedo map that defines the color, a specular/ reflectivity map and a bump/normal map. These are variations of the same image each for a very specific purpose.

While the last paragraph in respect to the differnt textures sounds complicated, it's actually reatively simple. Many render engines have a material library that helps to get you going pretty quickly. For both, the table and then chair I spend most of my time UV mapping. The chair was particularly challenging for my UV mapping skills.

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

113746 — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 08:33:40 GMT

Hi Luke,

Can you find any wood materials in Fusion that match what you are looking for? We enhanced materials and rendering a lot in middle of this year, below are some good example of wood materials in Fusion and how to set orietation of woodgrain. Please take a look.

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/design-differently/enhancements-in-fusion-360-make-visualizing-diverse-textures/ba-p/5227555

And you can find and download more wood materials from Exchange Materials.

Thanks,

Yanhua Li

Fusion 360 Quality Assurance

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

Anonymous — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 23:12:18 GMT

Hi Yanhua,

I didn't know about texture map controls. I will request that this feature is more visible for other users. It has improved the quality of my renders greatly! Good enough, anyway, for me to not worry about finding another rendering solution. I'm very pleased.

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

anavaidya — Tue, 06 Jan 2015 01:18:16 GMT

Hi Luke,

Here's another method to setup wood material in Fusion: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/post-your-tips-and-tutorials/method-for-creating-wood-material-in-fusion/td-p/5459477

I hope this helps. Thanks.

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

MichaelAubry — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 01:22:22 GMT

Hi Luke!

You've inspired me to create a blog post on the subject. Looks like you're well setup but I've created a tip video for others like you. You aren't the first to ask that question!

Go WITH the grain! Make your wooden masterpieces even better.

Very Best,
Mike

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 01:58:19 GMT

Looks good, Michael! Here are some of the renders I was able to do with the "planar" command.

I'd also like to know how you got such a good looking leather seat pad in that model.

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

TrippyLighting — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 02:05:44 GMT

Hi Luke,

Thanks for that video!

F360 T-Spline modeling and even some of the loft features would allow for wooden geometry that with the current tools cannot be rendered properly. Luke may be happy for now, but once he's taken some more of that rendering coolaid he'll want more 😉 I know from personal experience that this rendering stuff is quite addictive.

What can already be seen in your tutorial are the limitations on terms of texture mapping. The Hans Wegener Round Chair is quite sculpted but in the end it is made from discrete pieces of stright wood that are glued together. However, once you start getting into steam bent wood, a very common technique quite often used particularly for chairs and as shown in the renderings that I posted previously in this thread you'll see hat the grain of the wood will need to follow the bent shape and that cannot be done with the current texture mapping tools. So the question is there something in the works (UV mapping) ?

Also, instead of the two number fields for the texture coordinates, how about a little handle similar to the cordinate sytems for the "move" tool or the "align" tool ?

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

TrippyLighting — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 02:17:45 GMT

@Luke,

If you have a bump map for that wood texture, use it. It will make a substatial difference!

If you don't have one, use photoshop, pixelmator etc. and create a high(er) contrast greyscale image from the existing texture/image and use that as the bump map. 

@Michael,

I know it's not really the point of your video but I could not help providing a bit of feedback as to what the grain direction in a chair would have to look like in order firthe thing not to crash when you sit on it 🙂

Sorry, but the woodworker in me could not help himself.

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

MichaelAubry — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 02:36:05 GMT

That's the glossy black leather material on a sculpted seat cushion. Paul Deyo did a great job on this model.

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

MichaelAubry — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 02:37:05 GMT

Excellent feedback. Thanks for writing it. I'll be sure to send it to the development team.

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

TrippyLighting — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 02:43:27 GMT

Thanks! I also need to take back what I said earlier. I had misaken the image controls for being able to load external images and textures.

I don't think thas currently possible but that would be tremendously helpful. For the renders I posted links to in a previous post I used textures from Aroway.de.

Their textures are absolutely stunning!

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

MichaelAubry — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 02:47:35 GMT

Those are great!

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

MichaelAubry — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 02:49:18 GMT

Ah I knew it looked cool but off somehow. Consider me educated and thanks for the pointer. Shouldn't be collapsing chairs simply for style!

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

MichaelAubry — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 03:03:05 GMT

You can load custom images but it's a bit hidden. Just click on the file name of the referenced image and you'll get the screen to choose a different image.

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

colin.smith — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 12:33:31 GMT

Hi Trippy,

You are correct in your observations that projection mapping of textures doesn't alwasy give you the result you need and there are instances (like the one you point out on the chair model) that UV mapping would be more appliciable, or at least an option that is missing today. That is a feature we hope to be able to release in the coming year as we continue to improve the rendering capabilities in Fusion 360.

Thanks for your feedback!

Colin

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

cekuhnen — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 15:18:47 GMT

I worked on many projects where I designed and then also needed to render the product with a wood material.

Rendering real wood is a challenge still today because unlike many most render materials which are flat wood is actally a 3D volume

and that is hard to replicate.

In the images below you see a line of bent plywood seat shells and basically this are boxes (top bottom face, and side faces).

This is ideal for texture mapping because you can nicely glue different textures onto different sides and give the viewer the illusion of in this

case a layered build material with a top veneer laminate finish.

But when you cut through wood or carve it things gets quite more complex. I did a lot of research in this area and still today there is no real good one click button solution.

3D wood materials have to be procedural materials meaning you use noise textures with various patterns to simulate rings, grain, pores and such. Because they are math

based the texture will not work in 2D but 3D space.

Here for example is a screenshoot of a quite complex material, it simulates variations, waves, noise and color changes. If you zoom in you clearly see this is artificial - but from a distance and put into a scene with a glossy coat and specular map you will easily be fooled.

The example below makes use of a lot of math equasitions with 3d vectors to distore such procedural patterns.

Here is a simpler example which uses no math formulas but simple textures and adjusted values inside the mapping module to stretch / distore textures.

I broke the building blocks down for you into

Wood base colors (bright dark textures) which are mixed together via a wave texture to simulare the rings. The wave texture is also stretched inside the Mapping module left.

Later I add another texture that looks like dots and this one can use to simulate pores.

As you can see the results are quite good, not 100% real. Wood is hard. What I did here via the node network can also simply wirten as a procedural material that includes all those options as a material for Fusions render engine.

But you will never get the same natrual chaos and iregularities of real wood. Wood knots for example are a pain to do thsi way.

So this appliction is limitated to only certain visual needs.

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 15:33:36 GMT

This is what I had in mind when I originally asked for "3d textures." What software is pictures in your screenshots?

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

cekuhnen — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 15:46:34 GMT

The software with the screenshots is Blender,

but basically every other render engine that supports some sort of modular approach can do this, and that includes Maya (VRay - Mental Ray) Modo and such.

Blender however is free 😉 But it takes some time to get used to it and procedural shaders are a tricky thing.

If you are interested however I can email you the materials for the wood.

Re: Anyone here an expert on wood grain rendering?

TrippyLighting — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 18:23:11 GMT

Blender yet again 😉

I would like to say, however, even with the very nice node setup in Blender procedural textures are not for the faint hearted. Setting up the procedural noise nodes to produce visually appealing renders can be a lot of trial and error and producing natuaral looking color gradients is another challenging area.

I'd also be very interested in that node setup per email!