Some of my latest renders

[nickw]

As we're posting renders at the moment here are some current ones of mine. 2 no alcove units and a window seat with slidy-open storage underneath.





Also a room divider with two fixed side panels and two doors









And here you should be able to see that I have made bevel-edged glass.





The view out of the front windows was screen captured from Google Earth street view, and is pretty much what they see in reality. The view out the back is a generic greenery scene. Renders made using Podium.

[jfc]

Even the view out of thier window Amazing !

[daver]

Nice work, Nick.

[woodsmith]

Absolutely Fantastic!

[hammertime]

Speechless

[mark270981]

Speechless

ditto

[daver]

Nick, why aren't you teaching SketchUp here? You should be.

[promhandicam]

I struggled to find any evidence that these weren't photos they are so good. Only thing is on the 5th image down - the view through the window isn't quite right. Other than that, really hard to tell that they're done with SU. Brilliant.

[daver]

The tip offs for me are the infinite depth of field, the repetition of the wood grain on the floor and the lack of dust. I expect most clients wouldn't catch any of those things, though.

[simuk]

Very nice renders Nick , how long did it take?

[nickw]

The distortion in all the images, but which is particularly noticable in the ones shot through the glass doors, is largely due to the short "focal length" (18mm) that they had to be rendered at to get enough of the scene into the view.

Those renders took around 5-10 mins each on my laptop with i7 (4-core, 8 processor), 8GB RAM, 32GB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce 640M, Win 8 Pro 64 bit.

Re the teaching, I'll help where I can, but Dave, you usually manage to get in way before me. I don't know if you ever sleep, but from your response times you seem not to have a job or any other distractions.

[daver]

I don't know if you ever sleep, but from your response times you seem not to have a job or any other distractions.

I don't sleep much, that's true but I do have a day job (40-50 hours/week) and I also have a second, nearly full time job doing drawing work for clients.

[hammertime]

Is there any youtube videos of how to render ? Id love to see the process

[nickw]

If you google SUPodium I'm sure you'll find some videos somewhere on their site. Most of the work is in applying materials and setting up lighting ( after the model is made). The rendering process is then just a question of pressing a button, and making a cup of tea.

[nickw]

I meant to ask, do the rails on the doors look man enough for the job? They are currently 125 top and 200 bottom with 90mm stiles, thickness 32mm. Door width is 712.

[karl]

Excellent work Nick - I can see how being able to produce images like that would not only make it more likely that you'll get the job, but be able to charge a premium too.

[PAC]

Rails look fine. Rendering is brilliant says a man who is not even able to get beyond half an hour of frustration on SU but would love to find the time to follow the inspiration currently on this section of the forum. I think this will be one of the great areas of this forum. Well done to all.

[hammertime]

If you google SUPodium I'm sure you'll find some videos somewhere on their site. Most of the work is in applying materials and setting up lighting ( after the model is made). The rendering process is then just a question of pressing a button, and making a cup of tea.

Thanks nick

[daver]

If you want a freeware rendering application, you might take a look at Kerkythea. Very powerful and more than up to the task. Lots of tutorials available on the site, too. Probably more on YouTube.

[nickw]

Is it just me, or has the Kerkythea site gone awol?

[daver]

It appears it has. Odd. I was just on the site last week.

[nickw]

I wonder if it has been discontinued/replaced by the paid for Thea Render?

EDIT: or maybe not?

[daver]

Yes. I did some checking, too. And got confirmation that they are working on getting the website back up and running.

Thea is definitely not a replacement for Kerkythea although many of the people who were on the dev team for KT worked on Thea. From what I've seen of Thea, if a person were comfortable with KT, they'd roll into thea easily enough. I was given a copy of Thea but haven't installed it yet.

[daver]

The Kerkythea site is back online.

Here are some interesting renders in KT of SketchUp models by a friend of mine.






For a freeware application, I think Kerkythea is plenty capable.

[hammertime]

Oh my word I'll be downloading it later. Thanks Dave

[woodsmith]

Incredible, the bike in particular, it's hard to get my head round how he drew it.

[hammertime]

Incredible, the bike in particular, it's hard to get my head round how he drew it.

I think there all taking the pi** and just posting photos now

[daver]

Incredible, the bike in particular, it's hard to get my head round how he drew it.

I think there all taking the pi** and just posting photos now

Pretty cool stuff, isn't it? You can click on the images and see more of his excellent work. Some of it isn't rendered out and you can tell it's SketchUp.

[nickw]

OK, so I've just installed the first part of the project shown at the top of this posting, and you can now compare the model with reality, or vice versa.














The cabinets are in painted beech (delivered primed only, as they want "their" painter to do the top coat) with elm counter tops finished in BLO followed by PolyX. The skirting is made to match their existing stuff, and the crown is a double copy of their existing picture rail, custom cutters courtesy of Whitehill. Knobs from Armac Martin.

I'll try to get some better photos once all the pieces are installed and have been painted.

Next up is the window seat which I have templated following the Pinch (at least I think it was Pinch who posted it) methodology.

[nickw]

So, the window seat....


Here is the mould for the front, which, as you will see, will also do the skirting and top rail. This is 2800 long, 550 wide and 600 high which only just fits into the largest bag that Airpress do when loaded with laminae. I have applied parcel tape the the edges to prevent squeeze-out sticking the panel to the mould.


The front panel is a lamination of MF hardboard at the back/bottom, 2 layers of 8mm bendy ply, and a face of bendy MDF. The masking tape is to hold the pieces roughly in place while loading the bag up. For this part the glue is Casamite. You can clearly see that the whole lot only just fitted in the bag!


The skirting/top rail blank is made from 10 layers of 2.5mm constructional beech veneer. This is formed over the main blank which I had applied parcel tape to so that I wouldn't get the two parts sticking together. I only did 3 or 4 veneers at any one time as the bag pressure would not be enough to bend all 10 at once. The glue is this case is Titebond 3 because this will be going through the spindle, and I didn't want to completely knacker the knives by using Cascamite.


Once the laminations were complete I attached the mould template to the side of the mould and shimmed it so that it was flat. This gave me a surface to run a bottom bearing guided router cutter against to get a flat edge to the main moulding.


Because of the curvy shape of the panel I needed a false base on the router so that I could properly control it while making the cut. The top edge of the main panel was done on my construction platform (which I don't have photos of - yet).

The skirting/top rail blank was split lengthwise with a jigsaw and the top and bottom edges of those were straightened using the router run against the matching edges of the main panel.

The skirting profile was done on the spindle moulder. I made a carrier of 12mm MDF that the skirting (upside down) could be attached to using the gussets that you can see in the photo. Note the placement of the screws to avoid the area to be shaped. The cutter is a custom one complete with custom ring bearing (at the bottom) from Whitehill, to match the existing skirting. This combination only fitted on my spindle after I made some extra long pins for the cap and found a longer than standard bolt. Even so the cutters weren't quite wide enough to be able to do the top chamfer - I will have to apply that by hand.




These, as you can see, are staged photos after I had actually completed the moulding. Boy was that scary! All that in one pass with no room for error! I has the Mrs sitting in the workshop, primed on where the emergency stop buttons are, and with phone in hand while I was doing that, just in case something went wrong.


Here is the skirting profile (minus the top chamfer). You can also see the construction of the main piece (this edge will be filled and sanded before being primed) and the laminations in the top rail.


And here it is in place on the construction platform. The top rail will have a simple moulding on its bottom edge.

More later.

EDIT: I should also say that the design has changed a bit from the renders above. The pull-out drawer is no more. There will be three lift-up flaps in the top instead.

[promhandicam]

That looks fantastic Nick - not surprised you had your wife on hand just in case things went wrong - rather you than me!

[mailee]

That is absolutely awesome! I just can't get my head around how those renders are done? Surely it must take a long time to learn how to use the rendering program?

[houtslager]

Speechless

ditto

ditto here too

K

[PABLO123]

Fantastic work that Nick

Paul

[Caleb37]

You're an incredible artist, Nick. I hadn't seen the rendering pictures until now and I'm just amazed. Although it's not just that, the latest photos show the artist you are. I'm envious

[nickw]

Thank you all for your kind comments.

[nickw]

OK so some more progress.

First I promised more of the assembly platform, which also doubled as the rod for this project

The backmost line is the wall profile taken from the template which I showed a few posts back, offset from this is the line of the face of the skirting. The three sections at the front are the main panel, the skirting/top rail of the front and the overhang of the top. These curves were made from the half-template show here:

I also used this half-template to create the full template for the foam former shown earlier.


Here the wall template has been positioned on the completed top ready to mark the wall outline. The cuts were made with a my tracksaw.


I must learn to hold my phone still when taking photos.


A decision was made along the line somewhere to not have a pull out drawer, but instead lifty flaps to get at the internal space, and the radiator which is under the window. Battens on the underside of the flaps are to help keep them flat.

I'd had a bit of a let down with the Elm I originally had from my usual suppliers. I knew it was a bit sap-woody, but when I started planning it up it turned out to be almost entirely sap, and also too bent to get the required thickness out of. Luckily Carl at Nelson Butler had some really nice stuff, and was very helpful when I went up there. My usual supplier is now off my list of suppliers.



Various bits primed and ready for installation.


More bits ready to go. I am supplying the painted bits primed only - the customer's painter is going to finish them off. The elm has a coat of BLO followed by three of PolyX.


Here is the main panel in my "spray booth".


I pre-scribed the ends of the skirting which saved me a bit of time on site, and meant that the whole thing went in in about 2 hours (plus filling time ).








The row of holes along the back, and the cut-outs on the front are to provide ventilation for the rad.


And here it is with one of the bookcases.


Now for the internal glazed doors.

[daver]

Where's the 'Like' button? Nice work.

[senior]

Top notch.

[karl]

Great work there Nick - looks fantastic.