Hello,

I have a lot of old models of products that we would like to put on our website so that customers can look all around them in 3D rather than just flat images.

I've played about with some online viewers and getting the models in is easy enough but I don't know how to get the materials in. All these models were done in the standard renderer and most of them use procedural materials. Each model typically uses between three and five materials. I've heard something about 'Baking Materials', is that what I need to do? If so how do I go about doing it?

Many Thanks
David

Oh no! I will certainly miss you Dr Sassi, you have helped me so much and got me out of some sticky situations with your invaluable advice. I wish you the best and really hope you will return someday.
Very best wishes, David

Hi Dr Sassi,

Thanks again, I used your suggestion for stopping them where I liked where they fell and froze them and got my project done
Howvere I noticed something strange on one occasion (I did the same thing with a few different scenes) On one of them, I cached it and stopped on a frame where I liked it, but I forgot to do current state to object. When I rendered out the current frame, it was a different one to the frame I stopped at in the timeline. Why would that be? It's not a problem since I got my project done but I'm curious, so I understand whats happening.

Kind Regards
Dave

Hi Dr Sassi,

Thanks so much, that worked Are you supposed to set the hierarchy level according to how many objects you have that you want to act as one? Initially my object broke up. It's made of three objects so I set that level to three and it worked.
Just one more question if I may? This is actually for a still scene, I just want some objects to fall to the floor and stay still where they land. I set the friction, bounciness and stickiness to zero but they still slide around the floor after they have landed. What else do I need to set to make them drop and stay still where they land? Many thanks.

Kind Regards
Dave

Hello,

Has the Rigid Body tag been changed in the latest release?

I have an object (which is a collection of a few objects grouped into a null) and I need it to fall to the ground. However it isn't working. I have done this before with the same kind of object and I think I had to change to 'Moving Mesh' but I don't see it anymore?

Kind Regards
Dave

Hi Dr Sassi,

Just to say, I got my project completed on time and it turned out just as I had imagined it. (and the boss loved it!) I wouldn't have achieved it without your superb advice so a big thankyou to you Dr Sassi

Kind Regards
Dave

Oh wow that is such a fantastic explanation! Thanks ever so much Dr Sassi, I'll let you know how my project goes

Kind Regards
Dave

Hello,

How can I use the Voronoi fracture to break an object into two equal halves? I've used it many time before but in the past I've always been happy with the random breaking and multiple pieces. This time though, I only want two halves with the object being split horizontally. I've tried reducing the points to give me only two pieces but I cant make it so that the break is along the horizontal axis. I also want have random jagged edges of the break.

Kind Regards
Dave

@ericsiegel Hi, thanks that's very helpful. Yes in my case the end result is only for making product imagery and videos of those products. I don't need to collaborate in any way with other companies on the 3D side of things, it's purely all about making them look as good as they can for promotional purposes. I think I should experiment doing them much larger and see if it makes things easier, thanks.

Kind Regards
David

Hello,

What's the best advice for the size and scale of models? I've seen it said in some tutorials that its better to model at real life scale, however I've seen some where people have modelled at a much larger scale than reality.

In my case, many of the products I need to model are very small in reality and I've always modelled at life size to try and maintain as much accuracy as I can, but sometimes I feel its very difficult to get the lighting to look good at such small sizes, and sometimes the materials too. So is modelling small objects at a larger scale recommended or is it better to keep everything at real life scale?

Kind Regards
David

Hi Dr Sassi,

Just to say I got my project done using the technique you showed me, thanks again its very much appreciated

Hi Dr Sassi,

Oh dear it seems I didn't notice the selection That's why it looked different on my model, I'm such an idiot
Once again thanks so much for your advice, I was pulling my hair out on this one.

Kind Regards
David

Hi Dr Sassi,

Wow that's amazing! It's pretty much the result I'm after. I just need to make a few alterations to mine to get it to look the same. On your model in the example, that's practically there what I need, but when I put those materials on my model, the bright green colour is too strong and doesn't look as transparent as it needs to be on the flat surfaces. Is it possible to turn down the effect of the bright one, rather than turning it off?

I haven't encountered these RS Open PBR and Ray-Switch nodes yet, I will need to read up on these and do some study on them Thanks very much for your advice

Kind Regards
David

Hi Dr Sassi,

Thanks for the advice I didn't know about Bloom, that could be very useful in future.

I've still not managed to nail the material yet. I've almost got there but not 100% The plastic I'm trying to emulate is transparent with a slight colour. On the large flat surfaces the colour is very weak, but at the edges the colour is much stronger, almost as if the light is bouncing around inside and exiting out of the edges and concentrating the colour. It does this in ambient room light but it really looks like it's illuminated from within, almost like it's radioactive!

The attached image is a sample of it that I took on my table in just normal room light.

I tried using Transmission and set the absorption colour and distance according to the manual, and it almost gets me there but, on mine the edges are dark and not bright like the real thing. I tried putting a bit of luminance in but it makes the whole thing look illuminated (not just the edges) and adding glow just creates a glow around the outside of the object. I'm not sure where to go from here?

Kind Regards
David

Hi Dr Sassi,

Thanks for these, that certainly gives me some more avenues to explore. I didn't know about the mesh checker so I had a look. I didn't understand a lot of what it was reporting, and how I could go about fixing it. It did report that there were lots of bad polygons, but unfortunately I couldn't see how I could correct them, the mesh from the conversion looks quite messy. For now I've got by with retouching the blemishes on the still shots in Photoshop, although this will be a problem when I need to animate them. My best solution will be to remodel them from scratch in Cinema, if I can just get the time to do it

Kind Regards
David

Hello,

How can I replicate coloured translucent plastic that appears to glow at the edges? We have this plastic material that almost looks as if it's being illuminated from within and the edges appear to glow, even though it is only the ambient room lighting illuminating it. I'm doing this in the standard/physical renderer and I've tried playing with transparency and the absorption colour. It almost gets me there but it doesn't quite achieve the glow effect at the edges. Any tips or advice would be much appreciated thanks.

Kind Regards
Dave

Hi Dr Sassi,
Thanks for your advice. I'd love to share one of the models in question but it is a product not released yet so I might get in trouble It would sure make it easier if you could see one. I do always try to model as much of them myself as I can, it does produce much better results modelling from within C4D. It's simply down to time constraints really why I can't do all of them, my boss gets CAD files from manufacturers, I think they use Siemens NX . I convert them to OBJ and then bring them into C4D. Do you have any tips or advice for getting better exports? Is there a better way? Many thanks.

Kind Regards
David

Hi Dr Sassi,
Thanks very much this, I had a go at it on one of the actual models that I have to work with. I found that the geometry makes a big difference as to how well it worked. Some of the models aren't made by me, some are sent by the manufacturer which are converted from CAD files so they don't always work that great, unfortunately I don't have time to re-model them

Kind Regards
David

Hello,
Where is the correct place to put a surface imperfection image in the standard/physical render materials? I have a transparent material that I want to have some surface imperfections on, such as the si-v1_smudges_05_15cm_1k from the assets browser. I've tried putting in various places in my material but nothing ever shows up.

By the way, I see this sort of thing looks a lot easier in Redshift with the node based materials but as yet I can never get what I want out of Redshift, things just don't seem to work for me. I'm a good few lessons away from switching over yet so in the meantime I need to do it the standard and physical renderer. Thanks.

Kind Regards
David

Hi Dr Sassi,

Oh that's great news! I don't have any plug-ins so I should be safe. I'm still struggling with the basics so plug-ins is advanced stuff for me haha! Great to know I can safely delete the old ones and save on some disk space, and to be able to double click on any file and open with the right version Thanks Dr Sassi

Kind Regards
Dave