Insect Screen for 3D Renderings

[Bill Tillman]

Anyone have a suggestion on how to include insect screen material for 3D renderings. I just need the standard screens that come with residential windows.

[ReMark]

Why not create your own material? There are directions on doing so here at CADTutor in the Tutorials section.

[Jack_O'neill]

draw a .005 diameter circle and extrude it the length of the window. then array that a kazillion times at .032. Then copy one and turn it perpendicular to the others and array it a kazillion times. Then union them to make one entity. Then see how many of them you could put in your drawing before a big hand comes out of your computer screen and punches you in the nose!

[Bill Tillman]

Hey that's not a bad idea. I could use a good punch in the nose...Actually I'd like to do just this until a big hand comes out of my customers' computer screen and punches them in the nose a kazillion times. I submit four different redering views and explain they have to use their imagination a little and they still complain with stuff like, "What would it look like if you put the screens over the windows....Can you move it 2 inches to the left...Make the paint a little darker...?"

[ReMark]

The customer is always right.

[Jack_O'neill]

Hey that's not a bad idea. I could use a good punch in the nose...Actually I'd like to do just this until a big hand comes out of my customers' computer screen and punches them in the nose a kazillion times. I submit four different redering views and explain they have to use their imagination a little and they still complain with stuff like, "What would it look like if you put the screens over the windows....Can you move it 2 inches to the left...Make the paint a little darker...?"

 

My wife watches the DIY shows about selling houses quite frequently and you would be amazed at the number of people who have no imagination when it comes to stuff like that. If the person who owns the house has used a spare bedroom as an office, the potential buyers will make remarks to the effect of "how would I ever put a bed in here?" So in comes the host of the show and they "stage" the house properly. Office furniture out, cheap bedroom suit goes in, lick of paint here and there, and the same buyer will "oooh and aaah" as if it was a completely different house.

 

Rendering packages should have tool bars that have every color you've used on a flyout. Then you could just click the color and a slider would appear and you could lighten or darken right before their eyes.

[David Bethel]

Does autocad support alpha channel in materials? Simply mask a mesh with transparency?

[JD Mather]

Does autocad support alpha channel in materials? Simply mask a mesh with transparency?

 

I know Inventor does, and now with 2012 all of the Autodesk products use the same material library.

Might be worth some experimenting in AutoCAD 2012.

[arjun_samar]

hello bill, david is 100% correct, you can use these map as your alpha map

[Bill Tillman]

Ok, cool, I'm ready to give it the old college try. I'm not sure how to carry out this task as I'm still new to things like alpha mapping. I'll search for some tutorials on this topic.

 

I download a trail version of 3DS Max so I've got 30 days to learn all I can about that package as well.

[David Bethel]

Here's 1 that I use:

 

-David