Contents:
Modeling Tip: Using Sew Tolerance to perform Round
In some cases, the Round modeling tool does not highlight some of the edges that you would like to round. This can happen because there are gaps. As a consequence, you cannot apply radii to these edges.
To verify the presence of gaps, click the ESC key to close the Round tool and use the Tolerance Check tool (see image below).
In order to solve the problem, the best way is to first verify the geometry and then close the gaps by taking advantage of the ConstructionTree™ structure that will allow you to apply changes to the model and update the geometry.
In some cases, you may also prefer to perform the operation without fixing the geometry.
To do this, choose the Round tool, then select the object. Now, use the CTRL+ENTER shortcut to close the tool without adding radii (They will be added later). Increase the Sew Tolerance as displayed in the image below.
You should increase the Sew Tolerance by small increments until you get the following panel (see image below). This panel informs you that the number of edges has changed. Just click OK.
Now, by using a bigger value for Sew Tolerance (see image below), all the edges are highlighted.
At this point, you can click the Insert Radius checkbox to add the radius you need.
Remember that in order to perform the operation, you will need to apply radii to ALL the edges that had gaps (they were displayed in yellow when you used the Tolerance Check). Of course, you can also add any other radius that you need.
Find more modeling tips in the solidThinking Blog.
Rendering Tip: Lighting an interior with just one light
Lighting an interior that only receives natural light through doors or windows can be a difficult task. In fact, for the most part, the lighting of the interior comes from the light bouncing off the walls, floor and ceiling. In order to achieve a good result, this 'bouncing' must be handled properly. Here is a tip on how to obtain good lighting with just one light source in a scene like the one represented in the image below.
This scene does not contain any light. In order to simulate the natural light, follow the below steps:
- add a light to the scene using the Light tool that you find in the modelling toolbar;
- place the light anywhere in the scene;
- open the Shading panel, right-click on “Light [none]” in the shader tree and choose “simple sky”.
Now we need to adjust intensity and shadows. Set them as in the picture below.
At this point, if we render we can have an idea of where the direct lighting hits the floor (see image below). The scene is dark because we have not yet activated the 'bouncing' of the light.
In solidThinking, there are different ways to activate and control the light's bouncing. In this case we will use a method that provides extremely fast, high-quality and natural-looking results.
We use the Final Gather algorithms that we can activate in the Rendering section of the Shading panel. Once it is enabled, we just need to control and adjust some parameters, as shown in the images below.
Once we have set these parameters, we can render and see the final result (see image below).
Find more rendering tips in the solidThinking Blog.
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