Breaking Edges on Render Only

[wyattm]

When rendering, two coplanar surfaces that joined by an edge appear to be one surface. Visualization is key to what I do on a daily basis and I love not having to use another app to make appealing renders of what I'm working on,

That said, I very often find myself applying tiny fillets and chamfers to all sorts of things so it's clear to the client where two panels meet or what have you.

Modo, a 3D app near and dear to me added a feature a few releases back where you could break hard edges in renders without changing your geometry.

This would be extremely helpful in Fusion for three main reasons (apart from the obviously already stated): 1 - reduces features a ton where a lot of components are involved. 2 - dimensioning things in drawings that have a tone of 1/64" fillets on them is a PitA. 3 - CAM data with unwanted fillets is pointless and having to remember to suppress those features or not only leads to wasted time and more importantly human error.

[lukepighetti]

Hi there,

When rendering a wood part, the hard 90* edges dont look right. But I'm not about to add a hundred 0.05" fillets to every single edge (unless there's a quick way to do this!)

It would be awesome if there was an option to "break all edges" when rendering.

[cekuhnen]

most render engines have a material based edge fillets tool - but those often then apply to all edges.

with furniture work in Fusion I just at the end select all objects at once in the timeline and add the edge fillet.

for highlights thats perfect

[lukepighetti]

Hi cekuhnen,

Have you found a quick way to add fillets to all edges? I'm at a loss.

Thanks

Luke

[cekuhnen]

so in timeline mode,

draw over all your bodies (stichted together obviously)

then then select the solid fillet tool.

this will add one fillet entry but apply it to all object edges you selected at once!

[lukepighetti]

Hi cekuhnen,

I still can't manage to get this to work. Any tips? I appreciate it.

Thanks

Luke

https://screencast.autodesk.com/main/details/965d4180-95a4-4138-9f5e-ff503138f8d8

[keqingsong]

Related to this: 

Wood grain tips

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX-RRZhDrOg

And this: 

How To Use the Max Fillet Script

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLVfYJMxsPQ

[O.Tan]

Basically what you wanted is for all edges to have small fillets and that's true as in real life, all edges tend to be deburred hence it's not perfectly square. I believe someone posted about it before so perhaps it's in the pipeline?

Anyways, a kudos from me!

[cekuhnen]

@O.Tan While that is true for rendering or presentation purpose this is sometimes not yet needed or adds extra work.

I think what he basically means is an auto smooth function where you can enter an edge degree value at which the shade smooth

will switch to shade flat the edge so it is sharp. Blender has two functions for this. One for just shading and the other actually really splits the mesh along sharp edges.

Actually all render engines I ever worked with sofar since years have this sharp edge shading setting. Fusion does not?

[wyattm]

No, O. Tan had it right. The edges are plenty sharp. Too sharp to be realistic where panels meet, etc.

[cekuhnen]

@wyattm Ok so then what you are looking for is not a break edge option but in render time fillet an edge - two very different things!

[colin.smith]

We have this in our backlog for rendering. Release date TBD.