Early Days in Solidworks

For these images I build the mesh in Solidworks and rendered in Photoview 360.
This model was not made to represent any object in particular, but came out resembling a mix between a tyre hub, an ash tray, and a cylindrical bearing axle. It was my first attempt in Solidworks, and so it uses most of the basic sketching and featuring tools. To name a few (roughly in order used): circle, polygon, extruded boss, fillet, chamfer, shell, extruded cut, dome, circular array.
The model is not fully dimensioned, as I was just getting used to the interface and malleable workflow of Solidworks. A screenshot showing one of the sketch dimensions is posted above.

Here I used a checkered studio material, and applied Depth-of-field to the PhotoView 360 Camera. The scene is a 3 light set up with a soft HDRI image for an environment. I feel the DOF may be too strong.





Here was my first go at adding materials, a flecked car paint. Environment was altered, and gamma slightly adjusted.




Here the environment was again altered, and I changed the focal length to enable a more realistic DOF in a later render. A bloom of 95% threshold and 4% radius was also applied in post processing.





Here is my final image. The material is shown to be the correct scaling on the mesh and the differences between the filleting and chamfering can be seen on the top faces and edges of the hexagonal extrusion. Diffuse reflections are also well shown. Bloom was added for a more "showcase" image. The render size is 1600x900.

Powerplant Study

This is one of my most complex models to date. The tanks were modelled in Sketchup, imported into Max in 3ds format. The materials (where shown) were applied to sub-object groups which I defined by hand. The pipes were built around the tanks in sketch up, and imported separately.

Materials are all mental ray, as is the lighting system (when a sky is visible). I used the architectural materials in mental ray, experimenting with brushed, satin, polished (etc.) metals. For less important parts I utilized the MR wood and porcelain templates, and modified them until they gave me the image I wanted.

One very important thing to remember is to set up many cameras, instead of moving a single one around, its just a lot more practical.
Speaking of practical, I used the Mental Ray "render region" and "render selected" to great extent in this project.

In order to develop the image some more, I referenced industrial design objects using google images, and sketched them in sketchup. These were then merged into the same Max scene. It was therefore important to keep an eye on scale. To do this I kept a 2d "person plane" visible when modelling in sketchup.

Again, I couldn't help using my orthogonal clay render technique...but I added a twist. I left the pipe material as a MR Metal, which to me really makes the complexity and design stand out.