Rendering features
Over the past few months we have been working on getting some new rendering related features ready for the WIP release.
The list of features has been governed by listening carefully to both novice and expert users of the rendering feature set. I see this next phase in the development of the rendering tools as an attempt to tune the user experience for the huge number of new tools that we have added to Rhino’s visualization toolset over the last few years.
For users who know very little about rendering the intention is to hide complexity and reduce what knowledge is needed to achieve great results. Ideally, a user in this position should never see a control that they do not understand. For these users, the following improvements have been made:
- New rendering defaults result in a much better image without any settings changes.
- New material user interface reduces complexity.
- New rendering panel has all of the settings for rendering in one place.
For expert users, the intention is to remove many of the paper-cuts that prevent a smooth expert rendering workflow, but also provide new powerful features that make it possible to achieve results in Rhino that were before simply impossible. To that end, we have added the following tools:
- Per-face material assignment for polysurfaces.
- Improved decal assignment and modification tools.
- Improved texture unwrapping across multiple objects.
- New features in the base renderer.
- Tagging and filtering of materials, environments and textures.
New rendering defaults
The aim is to make a dramatic improvement to the first rendering that you get when you press the render button. We are doing this not by making changes to the rendering engine, nor by adding significant new features. We are simply changing the defaults to something that will look far better in virtually every situation.
The target is to place models into a simple “white studio” setting by default.
- The skylight is turned on by default and the image based lighting is provided by a pre-loaded studio environment.
- Reflections are provided by a pre-loaded studio environment.
- The background is a solid white color.
- The ground plane is on by default, at a height automatically selected for the model (just below the lowest object) and with the new “Shadows only” material selected by default.
- Gamma is set to 2.2 by default, and linear workflow is turned on.
Note that the early builds of Rhino WIP will not fully support some of these features in the display.
New material user interface
V6 adds a material type selector just below the material name. While Rhino 5 added the ability to select alternate material types supplied by 3rd party renderers, Rhino WIP adds the ability select from 6 new material types based on physical material properties. These are:
- Glass
- Gems
- Metal
- Plastic
- Plaster
- Paint
Although the details for this system are still to be fully worked out, the intention is that the user will only see the general V5 material user interface by choice. A white plaster material user interface will be the first page the user sees, and a choice of “Type” will be the first decision to be made. Once the type is selected, only the UI elements that apply to this type will be available. The material interface will be, as a result, radically more simple than in previous versions of Rhino.
The new “Type” selector will also work for 3rd party renderers, allowing users to quickly switch between the default Rhino types and 3rd party defined types.
Note that we intend to add some more items to this list as development goes on. In particular we’re currently working on textured materials such as wood.
Rendering Panel
Rhino WIP adds a new panel which collects together all of the various rendering settings into one comprehensive control panel. The panel is extensible by 3rd party renderer developers to ensure that 3rd party settings are found where the users expects them to be.
In addition, the Rhino Render settings panel which included some UI features not available to 3rd parties in V5 has now been built into the core of Rhino WIP.
Per-face materials
Rhino WIP supports the assignment of materials per surface on a polysurface. Previous versions have included internal support for this, but the UI has never allowed for this. Rhino WIP now supports per-face material assignment using all of the main assignment methods:
- Drag and drop from the Material Editor or Libraries panel.
- Editing or selection from the Properties panel material page (which has been extended to allow sub-object selection).
- Right-click “Assign to selection” command from the Material Editor.
All methods use the standard CTRL-SHIFT selection modifier.
Improved decal assignment and modification tools
The decal workflow and interface has been improved.
- Several dialog boxes have been removed from the start of the process so that the most common choice - picking a bitmap file - becomes the first operation.
- Picking the location of the decal is now controlled using completely standard Rhino pickers.
- Mapping widgets control the editing of the decal location after it has been placed.
- Several improvements have been made to the decal object properties page, including per-decal previews, easier to read buttons and a better texture picker.
Improved texture unwrapping across multiple objects
The unwrap command now supports the selection of multiple objects. If several objects are selected, each of the objects is unwrapped into a separate portion of the UV grid. The subdivision of the grid is currently fairly simple. Unwrapping across object seams is currently a work-in-progress.
New features in the base renderer
The number of new features added to the built-in Rhino Renderer toolset is very small, but is a direct response to the requests of users over the last few years. By far and away the most commonly requested features have been glossy reflective/refractive effects and fresnel reflection. These features have been integrated into Rhino WIP in a way that actually reduces the UI complexity.
The complete list of new renderer features is:
- Fresnel reflection
- Glossy reflection and refraction (currently called “Polish” and “Frost” in the UI)
- Custom environment for Reflection/Refraction.
- Shadow only ground plane.
- Diffuse texture alpha channel used for object transparency.
Tagging and filtering of materials, environments and textures
Tags can now be added to materials, environments and textures. Tags are added from the tag icon on the content tooltip. Tags are added to all selected content. Clicking on an existing tag name from the tooltip cause the editor to be filtered by that tag.
The new search field on the content editors allows you filter in search style format so filter the lists by name.
