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Referring to http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kmcrane/Projects/DGPDEC/paper.pdf

The document includes numerous geometrical object that are illustrated in a very particular style that is appealing. Can this be replicated via Blender?

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mu7z
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  • Hello and welcome to the site! Could you please elaborate and explain what it is that can be seen in the images? The document you posted is over a hundred pages long and if the link breaks, no one will be able to read explanations of the images, even if they'd be willing to read through that many pages. – palkonimo Oct 23 '19 at 18:52
  • I have studied differential geometry, but it is a very broad subject: it studies the nature of geometrical entities in N dimensions. What you want is probably a surface in 3D, which is probably the most studied geometrical entity in the field. In general, Blender is not made for mathematical topologies, since it is based on vertexes, not on absolute functions, but you can still get an approximation of it. In this case if you studied numeric analysis you are absolutely able to to it (even if you didn't, but it helps you build more precise approximations in Python). In short, give us more info – Tareyes Oct 23 '19 at 21:29

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It certainly can. If you want all the details, though, the question might be a bit broad for BSE, because the style involves quite a wide range of Blender's capabilities.

enter image description here

So just a quick rundown:

  • Objects .. all easily created in Blender. There is support for mathematical surfaces, either directly, through scripting, or via import.
  • Material for the surfaces. here, faintly blue, specular, tweaked against the renderer, EEVEE. Backfaces set to a more neutral hue.
  • Lighting A faintly Blue world color, not in final render, just for providing ambient light, the color in shadows. A spot key-light, white, size and specular intensity set to provide soft highlights.
  • Black Line: Freestyle: 2 Line sets: One to pick out object external borders and Freestyle-marked edges, One to pick out 'Silouhette', which gives the overlap in the curved outline in the surface at the back.
  • Black Line: Black Objects: the dots and the arrow are actual black objects in the scene, as is the text. It would probably be better to render typography in a 2D vector-based application- the sampling in a 3D render doesn't do it any favors.
  • Rendering: EEVEE, for speed, and because we don't want physically-based photorealism, and all the computation that would take. At the moment, though, for quickly developing Freestyle sets and styles, it could be better to go back to an earlier Blender, so you can use the old Blender Internal renderer to get previews in the viewport. EEVEE doesn't do that yet.
  • Compositing: the renders are on transparent film, so the result can be laid over any 2D background. The Black objects are rendered in a separate View Layer so they be laid over the surfaces in 2D, and not be occluded by them.

This sounds a lot, but it only has to be set up once. When the components are set and tweaked, your kit is in place to render in this style. All that's left is modelling.

I'm not saying this .blend is exemplary.. you will probably be able to think of better ways to do things. Maybe, though, playing with it could give you a kick-off, and provoke narrower technical questions.

Robin Betts
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  • Remarkable, I need to grok over all this and hopefully be able to implement these in lecture notes. – mu7z Oct 24 '19 at 23:01
  • @mu7z .. Very kind of you to come back after all this time to accept! Hope it all goes well. – Robin Betts Mar 13 '20 at 21:58
  • Yes sorry it took so long. I actually thought I already accepted months ago, but it seems like I forgot! – mu7z Mar 14 '20 at 05:00