thoughts on creating technical illustrations?

thoughts on creating technical illustrations?

As some of you already know, I have been working closely with a 3D printing company for the last couple of years.

They utilize STL files for their machines and, of course, some of the models are quite complex.

They asked me the other day if I could generate technical illustrations (front and side elevations, with dimensions) for over 100 products.

I thought at first that this wouldn't be too difficult, but now I am having doubts.

Anyone have any thoughts on how I may manage this? With all of the model complexity, I would think that I have to remove a bunch of the small details to keep the illustrations clean.

My initial thought was to generate DXF's of each model and then dimensioning in a CAD software, but the DXF export results in every bit of detail coming through and is basically unusable.

Is there a material shader in Cheetah that may be of use to me? The client has requested black and white, but I could perhaps talk them into something greyscale, if the price savings is significant.

Some of these models are 10 million polygons, too, so factor that into your thoughts, too.

Thanks and I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts.

Cheers, Chuck
 
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Hi Chuck,
So you've been asked to produce general arrangement drawings from stl files?
If so how were you thinking of producing them?

Andrew
 
Yep, that is the question; what is the best way to produce them?

I am attaching a sample of something along the lines of what I would like to achieve.
 

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Short answer, I don't know. When I did use a parametric modeler for 3D modeling and 2D plans I never imported geometry so I don't know if you can. Is it do'able in SU (I not really use it either)?
 
I get the models into SU, though, with some of the massive poly counts, it brings it to an absolute crawl.

I am starting to think that using some sort of an interesting shader might be the way to go. Then, I can stay in Cheetah for the rendering, and then just manually transcribe the dimensions onto the image in Illustrator.

But, I need a shader that shows detail, but not too much, and looks nice and clean as an illustration.

There is no way they would pay to have me trace around every piece, front and side, in Illustrator, and even if they did, what a brutally boring job, right?

cheers, Chuck
 
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There is now ay they would pay to have me trace around every piece, front and side, in Illustrator, and even if they did, what a brutally boring job, right?

Sounds like a bread&butter job - nothing wrong with it in my opinion. :mrgreen:

If you can load 10mill files into Cheetah3d you can try the toon shader or so.:D

Cheers
Frank

PS - can´t you just use the CAD drawing that exists already I guess?
 

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That toon render sure looks like a possible solution; I am going to render a couple of samples and see how it works for me.

Some of these designs would be almost impossible to trace in anything resembling an efficient manner; all sorts of undercutting and fine detailing would make it really difficult. I guess that it would be theoretically possible, but I would prefer a room full of industrious and cheap people to do it. Oh yeah, and they want everything in a month. haha.

Any suggestions on settings that may make the resulting render look more like a line drawing?

None of these objects exist as CAD files; they ware all generated from polygon modelers. One of the guys works with XSI and ZBrush, I use Cheetah, ZBrush, and Sketchup, and I have no idea what the others use.

I can almost always get the models into Cheetah, so that, hopefully, won't be a problem. They also want me to produce 9 renders of each object, matching the 9 different patinas they offer. I am a bit daunted by this, too, as I really haven't had any time to delve into the new node system.

Cheers, Chuck
 
I think that looks pretty good. Baring further control with the toon shader, would manually filling in some of the softer, disappearing lines be an option?

BTW- that's a pretty strange looking object. I'm curious to know what kind of product it is and what it is for.

Actually seems a bit sinister - like a piece of machinery from Aliens.
 
I would like a way to even out the line work a bit, and I am not a big fan of the black shapes formed in the interstices, but I couldn't make them go away when I was messing around with toon shader 3.

And, it's a door knob; I have a lever, a knob, an 8" pull, and a cabinet knob, plus two different escutcheons in this line.

cheers, chuck
 
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That's an intricate door knob, very cool - though I wouldn't want to reach for it after stumbling home from a nights drinking!
 
How do these look to everyone?

don't know Chuck, it seems a photocopy to me more than a clean cad drawing. if you really need something in CAD "league" maybe you could use these kind of renders, import them in your cad and draw over the image like a blueprint... I know it's a pain but it all depends how much they care (and how much you're payed for it...)
very complicated models BTW

look forward to see if you'll find a good solution, good look!

Alessandro
 
Well this doesn't exactly look like a line drawing, but would something like this work?
 

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With HDRI and Radiosity (no camera light this time), this is what it looks like.
 

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well i would not go the fake drawing path here but do a clear greyscale render, camlight style with enhanced contrast.
using orthogonal cam perspective, ambient occlusion and a material where the state node i-n output goes into diffuse and via ^2 x 0.5 into emissive too.

Bildschirmfoto 2010-02-21 um 12.41.45.png

Ohne Titel.png
 
Thanks guys, for the excellent suggestions.

I, too, was coming to the conclusion that the fake line work wasn't conveying as much information as I would have liked.

Archie, thanks for the shader info! I really like how yours is looking, especially the really even shading across the object. I had been playing around with using a simple grey, but I think yours is more effective.

Thanks again, Chuck
 
very cool shader for "clay" rendering, Archie! :icon_thumbup:

Hey Chuck, just found this surfing on the net. It seems to be Win/Linux only atm but it may be worth a try... a very interesting project and it's free :smile:

cheers,
Alessandro
 
Could you not take it so far (something like what Archie did), then play around in Photoshop? There's got to be some kind of filter and masking in there that could help you out. Then dimensions could be added later.

Erin
 
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