Hello everyone!
I’m a newbie in Blender. Coming from a Solidworks & Keyshot workflow for generating simple industrial animations. I’m switching to Blender because Keyshot can’t animate scaling of objects or other transformations except rotation and fading.
After figuring out the first step of importing the CAD data in Blender while keeping the scene hierarchy, the next in the list is the material setup.
I’m currently after a rubber material with a steel reinforcement for a hose.
Using the BlenderKit’s preset materials I applied a rubber material that I like to the hose and moved on to the small “channels” along the length. I tried using the Wave texture but I failed at mapping it correctly as the “channels” weren’t even all around the circumference as if they were applied to a box, not a cylinder.
That’s why I did my own texture in Photoshop and managed to get better mapping with it but unfortunately it was still not mapped correctly on the bevels. I assume it’s a matter of proper UV unwrap but after following few tutorials I didn’t get any good results on the unwrapping.
The other issue I’m facing is that the custom texture displacement map doesn’t displace the material and it looks like a striped color material.
With all that said I’m posting here to get guidance from the experts and solve the issues that I’m facing.
As a new user I can’t upload the scene file directly, so I’m sharing it via Dropbox - link
In the same Dropbox folder I uploaded few screenshots along the process as again I can’t upload more than 1 file and/or 2 links.
Thank you in advance.
Hi again,
thanks for the explanation. I did a lot of testing in the past few days.
I started with trying to improve the mesh using Blender’s clean up tools. I kept getting no or weird results by converting tris to quads, merging by distance, dissolving or using PolyQuilt to cut all edges that are not needed.
Then searched for options to improve the mesh in Solidworks before exporting. I found an option to convert the model to mesh body thanks to this article. That gave promising results improving the mesh from this:
I also read about getting good results if importing from apps that support both CAD/Solidworks native files and mesh. I did some trials with Cinema4D and 3DS Max. Both delivered pretty good mesh that can be easily cleaned afterwards in Blender with a slight advantage for 3DS Max.
For easier comparison I put all the imports in this file and this time with all the materials’ assets included :). I also added the one you modeled in Blender and to be honest I think it’s the best looking one and the easiest to work with.
After getting satisfying results for the mesh I moved on to doing the rubber material.
My best result is on the hose named “Kim + Bevel”. I did an extra test by removing the fillets/bevels from the models and adding them as a Bevel modifier later. It gets better results with the texture mapping on the fillets which look weird when the hose is inflated (inflation animated for a couple of the hoses in the file).
With all that info as a background the next challenges that I’m facing are:
The material on the fillets doesn’t look right when the hose is inflated (marked in red below). I assume it’s due to the fact that the texture was mapped in a deflated state.
Here is a comparison (deflated - left; inflated - right).
The grooves/channels don’t have depth and look like painted over.
I did another type of rubber material with an angled channel wrapped around the hose’s body. The channel is lacking depth and it looks weird on the bevels.
Look a bit closer. the lighter colored areas that are also on a 5 - 8 deg slope (in the original reference image rubber) seem to all be the end of short tubes.
It looks like a Geometry Nodes task.
You can use Mesh > Transform > Shear > Y (From the front view - Y is to give it a shear along the z axis) on the hose mesh (or a copy). May be easier than noding the slope in.
Thanks for fixing the issues. The suggested approach for the Bevel modifier is great and will save me a lot of time compared to the Vertex group I’ve used initially.
Both materials look pretty good and I can move on with my project.
Thank you!
