Let’s cover rendering in AutoCAD.
The product has a very powerful rendering engine, which can produce photoreal renderings of your 3D models. Of course, if you are looking for the ultimate quality and power in rendering, it will be smarter to import the dwg into 3ds Max, but for a certain amount of users, AutoCAD’s quality may be enough, or may choose to only move to Max for the final renderings, and spend some more time visualizing the development of the design in AutoCAD. Remember, it’s never about one tool or the other, but about when to use a specific product.
I will divide this document in different parts, which will cover varied aspects of rendering in AutoCAD:
· Creation and editing of materials
· Creation and editing of lights
· Creation and editing of cameras
· Animations in AutoCAD
But first of all, I’d like to make sure that we are all in the same page on something: the purpose for rendering a still image or an animation is to communicate a concept. So you are actually telling a story, even if it is only an image.
For example, a camera targeting a building from the ground level, looking up, and with a very wide angle (first image below), will convey a sense of drama and scale very different to the same building captured from a bigger distance and with a narrow angle (second image below), which will almost produce no deformations at all. But the latter may be better to explain a master plan, or the position of the building in a specific context.
The use of a wide angle in a room will make it look bigger. There are many of these tricks that probably any photographer or film director know, and they are really important for you to understand. It is always a good idea to check photographs that you like, and try to understand which type of camera was used, understand the lighting, how you can introduce an object in the scene without really showing it.
I hope this is getting interesting.
There will be several postings about this topic, so stay tuned!
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