CAD+Renderer; What would suffice?

Rendering
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I’ve used the Rhino CAD for trial but realised it’s a completely different matter when it comes to rendering. In all honesty, the rendering on Rhino looks very…bad.

So, I’ve done my research but am confused quite a bit.

My understanding is that
CAD: models virtual objects
Renderer: makes the objects “look” in a certain way

My confusion stems from how there are what seems to be “plug-ins” and “applications”, and that there are millions of possible “materials” available in renderers; great, there are many stuff available but hey, what am I supposed to get to achieve my goal?

My goal is that I want to render my jewelry produced by Rhino 6 to a realistic one; gems, metals etc.

Aside from brushing up on my skills, what I don’t get is…essentially, what tools to get in the first place.
What’s the difference between Rhino6 + Vray(or some renderer) and Rhino Gold? Rhino Gold comes with rendering features close to what Vray can do, yes? There’s something called Matrix Gold, it seems but I guess it can’t use the same files I used on Rhino, yes?
And does buying Vray allow me to do rendering on its own, or does it need additional packages or what not to make it active? Like, do I need to purchase materials for gems and metals?

I’m just worried about money. Rhino on its own is expensive and if I buy Rhino and Vray(which is about 1,800USD. It’s within my budget), I don’t want any surprises like “oh you actually need to buy this and that for Vray to work, which adds up to 10,000USD!”

No one’s really taught me and all I have is the internet to get my answers, but in all honesty, it’s just so…obscure.
It would be great if someone can clarify this for me. Thanks

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Hi Jun,

You’re right, there are lots of options for rendering in Rhino. In fact Rhino 6 comes with two by default, there is Rhino Render which is what you’ll use if you run the Render command and then there is the Raytraced display mode. This second option is the one I’d recommend you try first. Here’s a quick Rhino 6 for Mac video showing the Rendering panel, Materials panel and Raytraced display mode. The workflow would be the same in Rhino 6 for Windows and you can add/show any panels through the Panels menu on Windows Rhino 6 or by using the similar icon shown to do so on Mac.

Here’s another video on materials in Rhino 6 using Rhino for Windows…

Essentially, I’d suggest you test the Metal and Gem materials on your jewelry models using the Materials panel. Then use the Raytraced display mode to make the renderings and the ViewCaptureToFile command to save them.

If you need or want more rendering tools after that, Vray is an excellent choice but there are many others as well and you can try evaluations/trials of any plugins that look interesting from https://www.food4rhino.com/ . Rendering is a big topic but hopefully this helps get you started with what’s included in Rhino 6.

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Hi Brian,thanks a lot for shining some light!
I’ve tried raytrace mode in Rhino and it sure does make things look a little better.

I’m still juggling through all the options available on Rhino 6, but can you give some advice on how to make things look more realistic?

Say I’ve assigned metal and gem rendering properties on my design, but it looks very matte and bland. The metal doesn’t do justice to the contours of the object and the gems assigned as diamond are just…transparent. It’s like glass and it’s not there. I can make out it’s outline when I zoom in really close.

Do these issues stem from
A. lighting and other settings on rendering?(i.e. room to improve only with Rhino)
B. limitations of Rhino 6(i.e. I’ll need other softwares and apps like Vray, and Rhino 6 alone can’t do anything)

I’m still trying to get my head around all the functions but it’d be great if you could give me some further indication on this! Thanks in advance

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If you have high reflective materials and nothing to reflect they will come out with a uniform shade. Put effort in your environment with lights, reflection panels to simulate light entering a window and your renders will get much better. Raytracing plugins are all very powerful but the nice renders come from the user experience

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Can you post a 3dm file? I’ll set it up as I would in Rhino 6 for Raytraced and record a quick video of the process. The answers to your questions could be settings or the materials or the environment…

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Hi Jun,

First off, if your gems look almost invisible, this is normal if you are in Rendered mode. Metals will look a little flat in Rendered mode too. Think of Rendered mode as a preview and then get the actual rendering out of Raytraced Mode. Don’t use the “Render” button to capture the rendering, but use “Capture Viewport To File”.

Raytraced mode does a good job with metals, and adequate job with colored gemstones, and a fairly poor job with diamonds. It can’t really handle dispersion, so the diamonds will never really have any fire. There are a few tricks to make them better using custom environments, but it’s a pain to set up and still not as convincing as other rendering programs.

If glassy diamonds are enough for you to sell your jewelry, then save yourself the money and stick to Rhino Raytracing. If you need more photorealism in your diamonds to sell your jewelry designs, then another rendering program would be worth the investment.

V-Ray does a great job with diamond renders, as well as colored gems and metals. It integrates into Rhino very well too, so you are working in the Rhino interface for both modeling and rendering. I would also recommend checking out Bella Render and Maverick Render for good results with a smaller price tag than V-Ray.

As far as a I know, there are stock jewelry materials in each of these and you can modify them to create your own, so you shouldn’t need to pay extra for jewelry materials.

RhinoGold and MatrixGold are something entirely different. The main focus of these is to add jewelry-related tools to make it faster/easier to create jewelry. Their rendering capability isn’t very different. I’m not sure what RhinoGold uses, but MatrixGold uses the same Raytracing that ships with Rhino 6. When you’re looking at these, look at them for their toolsets, not for their rendering capabilities. MatrixGold just release a new version in July with expanded tools.

FYI, RhinoGold is likely on it’s last version. It was purchased by the same company that created Matrix several years ago and the products have been combined into their new software, MatrixGold. Several of the RhinoGold developers went on to create a new jewelry plugin called Panther3D. This one is pretty new on the market.

If all you need from a jewelry plugin is the gems and a few tools to place them on objects, then also check out Ennoble from Swarovski. It’s a free plug-in that they’ve developed to help people design for their crystals. In addition to their crystals, they have also added common gem shapes to their tools and libraries. Did I mention it’s free?

But really, you can make any jewelry with just Rhino 6 and a library of gem files. It’s slower than the fancy plug-ins but it definitely works!

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