I was wondering if there is a limit to the geometry for which the edge softening tool will work - i love it, it has helped me on numerous occasions with regards to Architectural Rendering and Interior.
However, some of my jewelry pieces don’t seem to take on the settings, for example:
this is a bit disappointing, as this picture would look miles better and more realistic if the geometry were softened, but doing a filet along all these edges would be a big pain in the butt!
looking forward to your answer.
thank you and kind regards
Eve
Hi Eve- my guess of the moment is that the edges are being softened but at a very tiny ‘radius’ If you ExtractRenderMesh and look closely you may see this.
There will be a new edge softening engine included in the next service release of Rhino (SR8) that should resolve these kinds of problems.
If you have problems with some specific models, we’d love to take a look at them to ensure that the new tools meet your needs. Feel free to send the models to me at andy@mcneel.com.
I’m already getting pretty good results with the old version of the Edge softening tools on this model. The key is that Jewelry has much smaller details and so will need much smaller fillets. I find this model works pretty well with a setting of 0.01. 0.02 will also work fine - by the time you get to 0.03 you’re getting a fillet that’s bigger than many of the details.
Make sure you have SR7 of Rhino - there are already some important fixes in that version.
You were reading my mind - thanks!
I tried the above suggested, to no avail. I will send you a model or two in the coming days.
It has nothing to do with the radius, as attached you can see 0,1 should not be too small to see. (model on left is the extracted mesh) + i am working with the mesh setting ‘smooth and slower’
Hi Andy,
Could you, please, briefly describe how the softenedge works?
This can help us better understanding what parameter to insert. It’s anything related to the Cartmull-Clark subdivision?
Thanks.
Nope - it’s not related to Catmull clark. Displacement is - but not Edge Softening.
All that happens with Edge softening in Rhino SR0 is that we find edges on the mesh and then move the edge vertices back along the plane of the mesh equal to the softening distance. This means that the softening is restricted to a factor of the smallest mesh face you have along that edge. The gap is then filled with either a faked mesh fillet, or a chamfer.
The new version that we have in development actually cuts the mesh along the edge, offset along the mesh by the softening amount. This means that we can actually remove the small faces and the softening is now only restricted to the smallest feature on the mesh, not by the face size.
