You need to render 10 images. Right? So if you have 32000 vertices or that amount 10 times - it really doesn’t matter. It would bring to stutter in some game or extend 3 min movie render time significantly, that’s true. You need just 10 nice images. And with a little more vertices you get it. So, use subsurf and where it ruins your forms, strengthen by adding some geometry.
On my 2 core Athlon 3000+ it renders to more or less usable image in some 30 seconds.
Some advices - never ever use light emitters less than 3 times object size; if they are small Cycles wont be able to get light rays even with increased energy - grainy, bad result. If you do not need, switch off Caustics in Render tab, that will make Cycles happier. Use Fresnel node for mixing color tones, that’s how it happens to be in real life. Never set Subsurf modifier visible higher level than for render. Usually 2-3 for renders is good so leave 1 visible - makes life easier.
Here, you probably want just your object to be rendered, rest will go to photoshoping - RGBA output and Film -Transparent gives just that.
Firstly thanks a lot for spending time on this, it’s much appreciated.
It makes me realise how much I have to learn. So you drew the knob from scratch? What you’ve done looks great, very tidy. I didn’t even know you could do curved lines!
Strengthening the geometry was how I was trying to do it before but I got distracted by edge split and mark sharp. To be fair, it was my technique that was the problem not the tools. I just need to learn how the program works more and learn to model better.
The only way I know to strengthen things is loop cut and extruding 0 and scaling in, those are the only ways I’ve found but yours is a much higher quality. Do you know of any tutorials that would help me?
Also thanks for the rendering tips, that will help a lot.
About the little lights, I was just trying to make some spot highlights from say LEDs that might be around the knob but I didn’t know about the 3x size thing.
Thanks ever so much for the file, I just wish I could have watched you do it!
I will keep searching and learning (and not bother with mark sharp lol)
This was still your file… I just modified it a bit. Frankly i did construct mine initially when i saw your first post. That involved starting by some math - counting how many degrees takes one segment, considering that making circle of n-th amount of vertices, adding one smaller forming groove, then arraying segment around centre by using helper empty. Turned out being like in picture, using only Subsurf modifier. Tick mark is done exactly as you described - selected some faces, extruded 0, scaled. Added some loops to get rid of dents caused by subsurf.
So, no tutorials needed i guess, just a bit of practice in blender :).
I like to use To Sphere - helps a lot (plus Loop Tools- Space to even out vertices ). Ctrl-e, Mark Sharp is good on cylindrical things where adding a lot of loops would be not so practical, there it works good always.
Right now scratching my head what curved things i might had used… lol… no idea, but it’s certainly available in blender, no doubt :)!
Took me a while but I got there in the end Here’s how much of a noob I am, I didn’t realise you could loop cut the internal faces of the indent!! Anyway it was an elementary mistake in the end, I was extruding downwards and that was messing up the front spline completely and I was trying all kinds of things to sort that big panel out but never got there.
It was the loop cut on your file eppo that gave me the clue, anyway after I worked that out and went in from the front it was simple to sort out with a few vertex snaps and loop cuts. Plus it looks a lot tidier…
Here’s how much of a noob I am, I didn’t realise you could loop cut the internal faces of the indent!! Anyway it was an elementary mistake in the end, I was extruding downwards and that was messing up the front spline completely and I was trying all kinds of things to sort that big panel out but never got there.
