Creating Realistic Materials for Rhino 3D Modeling

This tutorial mainly introduces different methods to create and edit realistic materials for Rhino. Two parts of contents will be demonstrated in the tutorial: methods in Photoshop as part 1; methods in Rhino as part 2. This tutorial would be helpful as a short cut to create realistic texture maps for Rhino 3D modeling instead of modeling 3D details to make materials realistic (higher risk to crash the model). The model in the tutorial is Winton Guest House.

1. Methods in Photoshop

1.1 Download a texture from Google Image, and open it in Photoshop. For example, a perforated panel texture. If we wants to create denser holes on the texture, under the Image menu, click on Canvas. Then set the pixel number twice as original both in Width and Height. Change the Anchor to the up left corner. The next step will just be hold Alt and drag the texture image in order to copy three more to fill the whole canvas. In this way, we will get the denser holes condition.

1.2 We also need to generate an Alpha image for the further editing in Rhino. Add Levels to the texture layer, and use black pick and white pick tools to make the image complete black and white with a higher contrast. Then save the texture image as Perforated Panel Alpha. On the Alpha image, the black areas will become transparent, and the white areas will be opaque.

1.3 Some texture like wood after we duplicated the texture there are outstanding edges between the copies. We can select the edge and open Fill option under Edit menu. Then choose Content-Aware option for the Contents to fill. In this way the surrounding texture will be filled into the edge area to erase the edge.

1.4 We can also add different effects (original, bump, grey, normal)for the texture layer in order to create more material details in Rhino.

2. Methods in Rhino

2.1 Under the Material panel, we can add a new material in order to apply on a selected surface. Click on More Types, and choose the Octane Material.

2.2 Under Defuse options, set the Node Type as RGB Image. Then guide to the folder that contains the texture images, and choose the texture we want.

2.3 We can also import the materials from library. Under Import options, choose LiveDb. Then under OTOY options, Absolute Textures, we can choose textures from different categories. For example, we can add a Concrete Weathered texture. We can double click on the material icon to see the preview of the texture. If we want to find the source of the image, just click on the Image button under Defuse options.

2.4 If we want to add more details on the material, we can try different option menus of the texture. For example, on the wood texture, we can add Bump effect. Open the view port in OctaneRender and adjust the Power, Gamma, and Invert to get the effect we want.

2.5 We can also test different UV Transformation options to get the direction of the texture we want.

2.6 If we want the hole effect in order to see the interior of the model such as the perforated panel, under the Opacity options, set the Node Type as Greyscale Image, and guide to the texture image folder to choose the Alpha image. Then all the black areas on the Alpha image will be generate to the hole effect.