The “Little Things” for Life-Like Rendering

Stuart Brown creates 3D CAD renders of automobile bodies for his classic car custom restoration design firm (3dengineers.co.uk). But today, just creating a model won’t cut it: clients want to see a product come to life on the screen. After creating automobile bodies and achieving rapid design visualization with SolidWorks PhotoView 360 software (solidworks.com) Brown uses modo 401 software from Luxology (luxology.com) for the fine-tuning elements such as tire treads, lighting, interior fabric patterns and motion animation—what Brown refers to as “the little things” that help achieve better photorealism.

modo 401 incorporates the life-like features of volumetric lighting, shadowing, curve rendering, depth of field, blur control—even hair and fur—into model designs for virtual visual finishing. It combines modeling, painting, animation and rendering into one fused workflow to help Brown easily achieve seemingly every detail.

“The results showed an incredible visual performance increase, to the extent that I’m often asked whether the picture I am showing a client is real or computer-generated,” says Brown.