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Bevelling/Rounding Question
count23
361
Posts: 781Member
Ok, this is for all the pro's out there who can give me an idea how the hell to answer this question once and for all.
For those of you who are on LWG3D.org as well, you've probably seen me ask similar questions over there, but I want opinions from non LW users as well.
When is it appropriate to Bevel? Specifically, let's take the example of simple room you'd find in a house, a bedroom maybe. Now, i've been told everything from bevel every edge in existance, to only bevelling a few select parts.
Here's an example. We have our bedroom, is it appropriate to bevel where the skirting board (made of wood or plaster) meets the gyprock wall? Or should it be left as a sharpish edge. Now i know that nothing in nature has a pure 90degree intersection, but any bevelling at this point implies that the wall and skirting are the one object, rather then a piece of wood/plaster that's been attached to gyprock with glue/nails.
Here's another example, say you have a flat bottomed bowl of fruit sitting on a tabletop, should the faces of the fruitbowl be bevelled on the tabletop where the surface of the table and the bowls base meet? Again, it implies that the bowl and the table are the one object, especially close up.
I think that the correct solution in both cases is to bevel the skirting edge and the bowl base back on themselves and offset them from their complementary surfaces (ie the wall or the tabletop) to use shadows to imply that they're not completely flush with each other, but i want a second, third, fourth and possibly fifth opinion on this matter. This question's been bugging me since i started doing CG interiors.
Thanks in advance.
For those of you who are on LWG3D.org as well, you've probably seen me ask similar questions over there, but I want opinions from non LW users as well.
When is it appropriate to Bevel? Specifically, let's take the example of simple room you'd find in a house, a bedroom maybe. Now, i've been told everything from bevel every edge in existance, to only bevelling a few select parts.
Here's an example. We have our bedroom, is it appropriate to bevel where the skirting board (made of wood or plaster) meets the gyprock wall? Or should it be left as a sharpish edge. Now i know that nothing in nature has a pure 90degree intersection, but any bevelling at this point implies that the wall and skirting are the one object, rather then a piece of wood/plaster that's been attached to gyprock with glue/nails.
Here's another example, say you have a flat bottomed bowl of fruit sitting on a tabletop, should the faces of the fruitbowl be bevelled on the tabletop where the surface of the table and the bowls base meet? Again, it implies that the bowl and the table are the one object, especially close up.
I think that the correct solution in both cases is to bevel the skirting edge and the bowl base back on themselves and offset them from their complementary surfaces (ie the wall or the tabletop) to use shadows to imply that they're not completely flush with each other, but i want a second, third, fourth and possibly fifth opinion on this matter. This question's been bugging me since i started doing CG interiors.
Thanks in advance.
Post edited by count23 on
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No Bevel. In fact, you don't really combine these two objects or in lw terms you would most likely have them on different layers.
No. The fruit bowl isn't connected to the table and there's certainly nothing bevel-like in this situation in nature. Combining them and beveling the connecting edge would be downright stupid
The advice of "Beveling every edge" does not really mean beveling every single edge in your scene, but rather every single edge where it makes sense. It is true that there's no 90° Angle edge out there. However, some of these "bevels" are just so infinitesimally small that you shouldn't care about them. There's just two important questions: How close will i get? Will the bevel catch a highlight when I'm that close or not? If the answer to the second questions is yes, bevel. If not, don't. No need to waste polys on something you'd never see. On a typical high-res model that will result in a lot of beveled corners (which is good) but don't just go crazy with bevels. In your two examples they would not make any sense at all
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Stay you're doing a sci-fi like room, or something that involves a lot of sharp edges like the bridge of a naval battleship. Both the roof and the wall, and the wall and the floor are all metal, is it appropriate to bevel in those instances where they interact with each other? or should they also be left as flat intersections.
As well, if you were to do a close up of any of those parts of the roof/wall or wall/floor interactions, what would be the most appropriate method to detail them? leave a small gap where they meet to imply that the metal are bolted together, or use some sort of jitter/disruption effect to imply two welded parts?
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Depends on whether they are welded together or not. If a straight intersection looks bad, I'd go with a bevel (small!) even though there might not be one in real life…99% of the times I'd go with the look of the original parts though which will most likely be the roof stacked on top of the walls.
That would also depend on whether they are bolted together or are welded together
In the case of the bowl on the table, no, you wouldn't bevel the bowl/table edge. You'd just make sure you have a slight roundness to the bottom of the bow where it hits the table, not a sudden _ shape. If there isn't already a curved surface, you want to bevel it a bit.
Lets say you have this:
You'd bevel it like this:
See where the sharp has been rounded out? That'll catch the light/shadows right, but without making it look like the bowl is melting into the table.
In the case of the metal scifi room, every single wall edge should be beveled. How much roundness you add depends on the type of joint... surface welds would be fairly rounded, while a sharp edge would have just a slight one.
Hopefully i can stop wasting time on my rooms now and get progress on em instead of fiddling about.
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a while ago i built a few sets for my friend's movie, we were experimenting with what we could and couldn't do with CG, the original sets looked impressive enough, especially using photorealistic textures we'd created, but they looked obviously CG (I have never used photoshop before, so that was out of the question at the time. And since it was just a "fun" video, detail wasnt too important).
As part of the finished product, i went and rebuilt these sets making sure that i bevelled, either severly or very slightly depending on the situation and it made them turn out much better. But i was concerned when a few "veterans" told me to bevel everything in sight, i knew that it wouldn't make sense to bevel a join between two seperate objects, but they weren't specific in their explanation.
Here's an example of some of the stuff i've been doing, now i know it's missing things like bump and specular maps in a few surfaces, but since the film was being graded in a certain way, the details were lost or produced unfavourable results.
This was also my first CG set, so i was still figuring out what looks best in such an environment. As you can see, the bevels did wonders for the work, (so did the changes to the lighting like Ray Tracing Shadows on :P ). But there were certain things i didnt bevel, like the intersection between those "struts" and the walls/roofs.
I also wasn't certain whether i should be bevelling on objects like the white of the light panels meets the grey frames they were in.
Current Projects:
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Current Projects:
Ambassador Class