Finished at last, Bed side tables!

[TV]

Great looking tables! Wonderful design and the choice of contrasting wood (especially the birds eye) really make it eye catching. Another fine piece, DavidF.

tv

 

[Sharp Blade]

These are awesome! I love the design.

 

[NCPete]

Simply outstanding! Great job David!

 

[Sanders Fine Woodworking]

Very nice work. Is there an asian influence? Great choice of contrasting wood. Love the birdseye.

 

[DavidF]

Simply stunning! LOYL must be pleased...but what's next?

Nothing at the moment! I seem to have been working on some tricky project or other continuously for about 2 years so taking a break at the moment so as not to get too jaded. I know woodworking should be fun, but sometimes it isn't!!! Might concentrate on the turning for a few months just to get some instant gratification over a weekend. Long term, a new dining room table for us is probably next, but nothing designed yet.

 

[DavidF]

Very nice work. Is there an asian influence? Great choice of contrasting wood. Love the birdseye.

Yes there is, I like to call it "Fusion Furniture" a nice blend of English Arts and Crafts with an Asian feel. This seems to be the direction my designs are going at the moment.

 

[DavidF]

Thanks everybody again for the kind words. It makes all the effort worth it. I am hoping to get some good photos for the 2009 calendar so give us plenty of warning Steve!!!!

 

[Mike Davis]

David,

I like the design, I like the finished pieces, I especially like the CAD, it looks so real!

Can you tell us a bit about the program and how you achieved such great texture and detail in the drawing?

Keep going in your design direction, I see many more great things in your future.

 

[DavidF]

David,

I like the design, I like the finished pieces, I especially like the CAD, it looks so real!

Can you tell us a bit about the program and how you achieved such great texture and detail in the drawing?

Keep going in your design direction, I see many more great things in your future.

Thanks Mike. The s/w I use is SolidWorks with the PhotoWorks plug in. The secret that I finally found out a few years ago is not so much the lighting on the model, but the material properties used in the environment! The standard "studio" I use is actually a sphere with "plastic" walls that produce even illumination but don't reflect the model. The floor is "marble" with quite a high reflective index. The other setting is to use the "indirect light" algorithm for the Ray tracer that calculates the light reflecting off of the environment on to the model. The materials for the model are created with properties that are similar to the real world IE finished wood does reflect light a little, but not much. All the wood has the same properties, just a different skin, which is just a jpeg wrapped around the basic material. Shadows are kept soft and feathered at the edge to create a more realistic look. Hard shadows are more dramatic, but not so real looking. I takes many iterations of the various setting to get it to look right, but now I have the basic studio set up it looks much better right from the beginning. I think this type of control is what sets the high end packages like this apart from the run of the mill stuff.

That may be more info than you were looking for:swoon:

If anyone out there has a sketch they want turned into a rendering like this, let me know and I'll give it a go.

 

[Mike Davis]

By "High end" do you mean a several thousand dollar software package?

I have used Auto CAD several years ago and investigated several 3-D packages about 15 years ago for a company where I was working. At the time anything that would produce this quality was $50,000 and ran on a mini-computer, Sun/Solaris work station or multiple networked Macs sharing the rendering overnight.

I guess with the advances in chips and software a standard box will render in a few minutes now.

 

[DavidF]

By "High end" do you mean a several thousand dollar software package?

I have used Auto CAD several years ago and investigated several 3-D packages about 15 years ago for a company where I was working. At the time anything that would produce this quality was $50,000 and ran on a mini-computer, Sun/Solaris work station or multiple networked Macs sharing the rendering overnight.

I guess with the advances in chips and software a standard box will render in a few minutes now.

I seem to remember that a SolidWorks license is around $4,500, not sure what the PhotoWorks plug in is. Runs on my laptop with 2Gb Ram. That image rendered in about 2 mins.

 

[PurpleThumb]

Nice design, David, I really like the split disc on the face of the drawers. Great work!!!!:icon_chee:icon_chee:icon_chee