Finishing Touches
From an idea, to a sketch, to a model, to photo real: the CAD workflow.
In our first CAD assignment we were tasked with creating a simple object. Next we were to make these objects customizable, think mass production. It’s now time to render these works in a way that a client or consumer would understand what the actual product would look like. Just as this assignment was being given I was finishing up a personal graphic design project for a new outdoor recreation non-profit. This organization is very near and dear to my heart and I knew I wanted to implement their newly created logo in this stage of design. My plan was to create three merchandise examples that this organization, Winona Outdoor Collaborative (WOC), might one day sell.
Start Small
I started by using a 3D asset already within Adobe Dimension. This simple coffee cup would be a great starting place to learn the ways to make something look photo realistic. I found a stock photo online and went to work. After inserting the coffee cup I changed the colors to match the WOC branding. With my colors set I then tweaked the complexation of the cup. A
Little roughness added to making the cup look more realistic. I then added the WOC logo onto the side of the cup, how it would be in a merchandise setting. With the cup and logo perfect it was now time for lighting. This process was much harder then expected. My background in film lighting came in play here as Dimension labels lights as key, fill, and back. With knowledge of a simple 3-point lighting setup it was relatively simple to get the right lighting intensity and shadows in play. Although the below render looks decent I found the color of the sun and tone of the image difficult to match in my lighting setup.
A Little Bigger Now
As a non-profit focused in outdoor recreation I thought that the next logical step was to create a branded tent. I went to Sketchfab and found a fantastic CAD model from the user: Tactical Gamer. Next I found a photo of an actual campsite in the very town the non-profit is located.
Adding the brand colors to this model became a much more tiresome process. The model got its color from .png and.jpeg files within its folder. I opened the main appearance .jpeg in Photoshop and began changing the colors. This process was relatively quick and yielded some fantastic results. Now it was time to just rinse and repeat the steps from early and vulah. I feel this image looks significantly more realistic and believe it is due to the harsh overhead position of the sun in the background photo.
Having Some Fun
With a general understanding of the rendering process I decided to have some fun with my final creation. I wanted to create an image showcasing what the WOC branding could look like on a pair of skis. I didn’t just want any pair of skis however, I wanted the branding on a pair of skis mid turn slashing through powder.
To start this process I first selected an image I had taken last winter. I brought this into Photoshop and removed the skis. Bringing this image back into Adobe Dimensions I imported another model from SketchFab, this one from the user: grimren13. I repeated the same coloring process as for the tent and then placed the ski models in realistic positions. After matching the lighting and rendering the photo it still felt fake. The harsh lines between ski and snow blew away any suspension of disbelief and ruined the image. To fix this I brought the rendered image back into Photoshop and applied snow spray over the top.
Looking back at the disdainful words I wrote about my first CAD assignment, I could not feel anymore different now. Seeing the finished product that these tools can create has opened up a whole new world of creative possibilities. Moving forward there are definitely some lessons I learned from this experience. For example, images with harsher or less colorful lighting are simpler to make a model look more realistic in. Secondly, I found that intentional planning in the early stages can make the final steps much easier. With good foresight into what you want the final piece to look like, the early stages in CAD can lay a solid foundation. I am excited to explore more possibilities of model rendering similar to the final photo shown above. Too often product shots simply exist in studio settings. To truly understand what a ski will look like shredding powder, one must see a representation of that ski shredding some powder.
