Overview

Making things look presentable or realistic is an important skill for many designers and engineers and they use a huge range of different skills and techniques to achieve the correct look.

In this unit of learning, pupils will develop skills in creating attractive illustrations and renderings using bot manual techniques and 2D and 3D computer work. 
Typography Task
Course Presentation

Simple scene renders

In these tasks, a simple scene has been created using 3D CAD. It has been saved in both IGES and STEP formats.

You will quickly discover that the 3D models have been simply assembled - not realistically at all! This is fine - it is only for illustrative work. This is a technique used by designers to cut down on production time.

You will learn about material and texture mapping, lighting, decalling and rendering a high quality output.

You are tasked with creating a pleasant illustration to this simple scene. If you are feeling confident you can add further models to the scene to increase realism.

A4 worksheet

A4 Drawings Pack

Course Presentation

Home office scene

Material resource pack

  • Resource coming!

Resource coming!

Typography Task
Course Presentation
Section divider type: tilt -- position: top

"Inspiration comes during work, not before it."

Madeleine L'engle (1918 - 2007)
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Texture & Bump Maps

Textures and bump maps can make a scene come alive. Here are some textures and bump maps to get you started. These work with any software that uses image-textures. Not all these textures are seamless.

Pine image texture

Pine bump map

  • Brick image texture

  • Brick bump map

Metal image texture

Metal bump map

  • Concrete image texture

  • Concrete bump map

A4 worksheet

A4 Drawings Pack

Course Presentation

Typography Task
Course Presentation
Section divider type: tilt -- position: top

"Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice"

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)
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CAD Render | Tutorials

Creating Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) is a huge industry all on its' own. In Graphic Communication you will learn some of the basics of this field.

Here I provide video tutorials and supplementary files so you can render CAD challenges, using Blender 2.8 or above. 

Blender is completely free software, which is incredibly powerful.

Scene example 1

Scene example 2

Video Tutorials
In this first rendering task, I provide a lighting rig and a supplementary model. This will help you with some of the very basics of Blender 2.8, and able to create some of the renders shown in the gallery. 

You will soon want to edit the strength and position of lights, and some of the camera properties. 

Remember to DOWNLOAD the files below!
Scene Files

  • Tutorial Files

  • Brick bump map

Scene example 1

Scene example 2

Video Tutorials
Video #1 | Importing models to the scene
Video #2 | Lighting the scene with HDRI
Video #3 | Applying materials to the scene
Video #4 | Applying materials to the Vee-Block
Video #5 | Camera and render settings
Scene Files

  • Tutorial Files

  • Brick bump map

A4 worksheet

A4 Drawings Pack

Course Presentation

Typography Task
Course Presentation
Section divider type: tilt -- position: top

"Anxiety is part of creativity; the need to get something out."

David Duchovny (1960 - )
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Assessment ​

The following materials have been created to assess learning in this unit.

​They are only for teachers and are password protected. Passwords are only for supporters of DesignClass.

A4 worksheet

A4 Drawings Pack

Course Presentation

Level D render assessment

Level C render assessment

Level B render assessment

Level A render assessment