Objects are what indicate the form and the shadows and sometimes, can also be another source of lighting in your render.
Polyplane largely to this point has focused on NURBS as the modeling medium in 3D space. If you remember from the Mesh VS. NURBS video, I talk about the differences between the two as far as surface resolution and scale. This goes out the window when modeling because the computer is going to mesh what ever you are modeling for display purposes so again, think about intent when modeling.
In a lot of programs, however, you can change up the surface resolution via adjusted subdivisions (if you are still working with a parametric object). Ultimately, this will save you some time and rendering horse power on the backend.
If you have two forms in the scene space and they are staggered in space, the one closer to the camera is going to show more detail while the one in the background is going to be less detailed.
When your brain knows what the objects are, it naturally fills in the details for you. This is known as gestalt.
This same principle works perfectly in a rendering if you do a few of things:
A. Inform the viewer of what they are looking at.
B. Repeat the form in the background if it is needed — the foreground element will inform what the background object is if they are the same. If they are common items like a wallet, a knife, or other objects that are common place, the brain takes what it knows, and will inform the eye of what the background elements are.
C. Change the subdivisions if the object depending on if it is closer or further away from the camera. This can be achieved with relative ease in programs like Cinema 4D, but in programs like Rhino, where rendering plays second fiddle to modeling and execution, you’ll be working with a global scale, so changing your mesh settings in the document properties acts on a global scale rather than per object.
The more simple you keep your renderings as far as material selection and camera angles, the easier it is going to be for the person looking at the rendering to understand what it is they are looking at. Context is key.
Context can be given to your form by putting in a place where it has scale.
Next week, we’ll talk about materials and how they play a critical role in indicating mood, tone, scale and quality of your rendering.
