Best render option for Fusion 360 ?

[hansvaneven]

Hello,

What do you guys use for rendering ? Directly in F360 or is there an application that can load Fusion 360 files and render from there ? I tried the Keyshot plugin, but it crashes Fusion 360 so I wonder if there are other solutions out there with very nice results ?

thanks,

Hans

[cekuhnen]

Rhino was very good in the beginning and to my knowledge they lost the license for a modeling kernel and since then suffered from weak tools. At the end all the drawing tools and workflow options in Rhino are pointless when you cannot make good models the same way as in Alias. Alias has much less tools but I find it more productive in many areas. Only trimming in Alias feels a pain where Rhino is spot on.

Fusion is a pretty fantastic solid modeling toolset which is why I started to teach it in addition to Alias. And with the recent updates also the surfacing tools in Fusion caught up. There are still here and there some missing tools but in many areas it is pretty solid.

Fillets I wish would be more powerful compared to Alias but I think this often is the struggle between a true surface modeler and a parametric modeler.

I guess they all follow KS because it is like Word the most used. But it seems Simlab seems to fit your need - perfect! It also offers 3D PDF export. But buy that UI is a disaster 😉

[cekuhnen]

regarding the rendering are you using only an HDRI? That is what most KS users do and this often makes the renderings look pretty KS like. I saw that simLab also offers lights, so I would work with those the most and then add maybe a HDRI as a fill background light only.

with your product you really want to paint its shape with lights and shadows.

[hansvaneven]

Yes the UI is somehwat strange, but once you set it to white actually it has more option s then KS, personally I prefer, and the price is also better 🙂 

Hans

[hansvaneven]

Yes you're right, this was just a quick HDRi test, and of course not a good presentation, but I was really amazed with it so far,

Hans

[josephhancockdouglas]

I've just downloaded VRED PRO, and my Fusion 360 file will not open in the renderer. I've saved it as a STEP file, but no luck. 

Any suggestions? 

[TitaniumBlue]

I also have an interest in getting better control on the rendering parameters.

Here are the constraints I experience for the work I do, as a furniture designer.

1- My renderings of furniture include many parts, as many wood components need to be rendered with a specific wood grain direction. Exporting 50 pcs individually is out of question.

2- I must keep parts as separate objects in order to maintain the capability to edit the wood grain. 

3- Other brushed textures need to be painted on objects. I looked at Photoshop, but not enough to grasp the work flow and use it. But it would be great to be able to paint directly on the surfaces, like in PSD.

4- On painted textures, I wish I could have the texture "fibers" follow the direction of the parts. Imagine a hand painted texture painted on a tube that changes direction...Wood grain cannot satisfy that. Imagine a brushed stainless steel finish following the body direction...

5- I wish there was a texture editor in Fusion. There is a lot of features in the advanced pane, in the material editor. Where is the documentation?

Fusion sculpting is great for cushions. I wish there was more choice of materials offered by Fusion360 for material edition. 

[TrippyLighting]

The base functionality that is needed to have grain follow a direction such as in seam bent wood pieces, bent laminates, etc is UV mapping. The current UV mapping are Automatic, which I believe picks from box, sphere and cylindrical mapping.

That is really not the UV unwrapping that is required for proper rendering. There are also advanced systems that don't require assigning of UV coordinates such as Pixar's PTex.

Either way none of the latter are implemented, so we're a little stuck when doing renders that require this.

[San_Escobar]

Hey Folks

I know I may lost the trip here but… Interesting post seem I am facing some issues with and specific render effect I would say.

I kind of liked the KS but I have found very limited on material options/textures, also I don’t like that fact that anyone can just drag and drop material in the scene and say that they are rendering lol.

For instance I have struggled to find a very realistic carbon fibre in many render engines, but I found it in VRED provided me great satisfaction so I learnt it and ever since I never look back. WAIT!!!

Also, VRED has the power to work with HDRI images as well as lighting, UI can be simple or advanced your pick, without say that it provides a vast option to tweak the materials.

@josephhancockdouglas In regards to Fusion I have notice that if you work with Solid models its work pretty well with VRED using .STEP, but if you use open surfaces in TSpline of Surface modelling than IGES is more acceptable.

Now I am after, render a hologram and other than Unreal Engine there is nothing there that works direct with BREP or NURBS (F360) to provide me a satisfaction, any suggestion. Now I am probably looking away from my beloved VRED, but I won’t ditch VRED, soon to add a new project to my gallery.

HTH.

[cekuhnen]

@San_Escobar

I think what you observed with KS is the downside of it.

The "Easy" makes people think that they can do renderings well.

Thing is for renderings no matter what engine you need to really understand how to make a good

visual presentation - that includes working with material subject lights reflection shadow and the environment.

KS actually in a recent update got a node editor for materials. I did not work with it so I am not sure

how deep it is.

In my complete time as a professional I also never used stock materials. Sometimes they were good but

in my work I always needed to make custom materials.

Making good materials is an art of its own too.

[Anonymous]

work on Mac?

[cekuhnen]

VRed is win only I think.

Today with howfar Blender got in terms of material rendering asset management and animation I feel the other commercial render apps are just not a good value anymore.

Fusion also has a fantastic OBJ exporter now!