ADI802A Produce photo-realistic images from an Architectural 3D model

Topic 3 Material library, finishes and basic lighting

Exercise 2 Building a shop using basic geometry

This exercise will look at creating a shop using basic geometric shapes and some simple lighting techniques. The following images gives you an idea about the space.

 

1.To begin use the top viewport drag out a box. Don't worry too much about the size, we will us the modify command to edit it. Use the Modify command to edit the size to 10 000 x 5000 x 100, change the name from Box 01 to Floor

2. Add the side wall using the box command, edit its size to 10 000 x 100 x 3000 and rename it left wall.

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3. Use the move command while holding down the shift key to duplicate the wall and position in place. In this case use the copy option.

4. Copy the floor to the ceiling as you did the walls, rename it ceiling. Then add the tubes 1075 to 870 x 200 high as shown below and place as indicated. Now we can add a camera, you will find it easiest to place in the top viewport. Once drawn you can move the camera and target together by clicking on the light blue line that joins them, move them up in the front view as shown below. To see the camera view click in the perspective view and type C on the keyboard, you camera view will be shown. Move the camera in the top view to the right hand side and using the modify command change the lens to 15 or 20

5. All we need to do now is to add some furniture from our library, we can also make the dividing wall more interesting by subtracting a cylinder from it. we can then clone and rotate it, then move it into place. You can try the mirror command and do it in one action if you like. The image below shows the shop geometry in place.

6. Lets have another look at the materials library to get some materials in place. You can try a range of colour schemes if you like. Open the materials editor and link through to the material libraries shown below using "Browse From Mtl Library". Choose the most appropriate, I will show you in class how you can edit them and make your own. For this exercise we will use the default world mapping (scale the material is displayed).

7. Keep the material choice simple, you will achieve better results that way. Choose a suitable material and assign to the relevant object in the scene.

8. For the lighting we will use 3 spotlights and one omni as show in the image below. My final image at the end of this page used mental ray area omni and spotlights, but you will need a little more skill to be able to use this (we will tackle this topic later). Mental ray allows light to bounce off the surface materials so you get much more realistic lighting effects, but this does increase rendering time significantly.

Here is my completed example.