PW2 - Suggestions for perforated stainless sheet ?

I am a bit stumped and having ahard time coming up with a decent renditionof
perforated steel like for a speaker system. All suggetions appreciated.

 

I had to do something similar once when I had to create a 2' x 4'
section of egg-crate grating for a light fixture. It really brought the
system to its knees. If you only have a small part to punch the holes
in it might not be so bad. If it is real bad, could you create a sketch
of the holes and just show the sketch without cutting the holes?

Bruce B.

 

Big surfaces. I was looking for a faux texture that I might be able to
marry to the right color and shadow to get the effect but not the " reality
"

 

In my experience, there are two main ways to go:

1) If you want to use a texture (an image based material that tiles an
image you provide automatically so you don't need to know what size
your final surface is) I saw one of my clever old coworkers (Mr Dave
H) get some good results from using a semi-transparent material, with
the 'texture' being a repeatable pattern of white areas with black
dots (or whatever shape your perf is). It is enough to trick your
audiences eyes - they can see through the material, but the dark spots
provide some occlusion. This was good enough for suggesting
pegboard, perf metal, and expanded metal screens, all of which are
used heavily in the Point of Purchase industry that I used to work
in. And remember, what you are trying to do is communicate your
intent with any rendering that you do. It is a nice, simple solution

2) Me preferred method, however, involves you knowing the size of the
area you are going to cover - * and * it involves being able to use an
image editing package, like PhotoShop (or Paintshop pro, etc)
What you need to do is create a solid image of the material base color
that is the exact aspect ratio as the area you want to fill - it is
the same X wide and the same Y high. Let's say you are doing a black
speaker grill - this image will be solid black, or better yet, a
90-95% grey (so the shadows have somewhere to get darker, depending of
course on how you like to set the diffuse and specular values for your
materials).
Then, you create a second image with the perforation pattern you
want. You need round holes? Put a bunch of black dots on a white
background. Need them to be triangular? A bunch of triangular shapes
on a white background.
Now comes the fun. Save the first image (the solid color) as, for
example, "decal_perf_solid". Then save the second image as
"decal_perf_mask".
Next, make the base material for your screen something see-through - I
tend to go with a translucent or dielectric material whose color is
set to pure white (so light passes through it without any tinting).
You have created a solid mass of air.
Then I apply a decal, with a mask, on top of it. "decal_perf_solid"
is the solid part, and "decal_perf_mask" are the holes. Please note
that you can change the illumination properties of decals to match
surrounding materials or any material you like (last time I did this I
made my decal material a steel that looked awesome).
What is cool here is that the decal renders fast, and that the shadows
cast by the hole sin the decal are accurate (or at least used to be-
haven't tried in the latest version). For instance, if you were doing
camouflage netting with this technique, the netting would cast
realistic shadows on the machinery of death hiding underneath.

There may be a third option, though I have no experience with it.
Looking at the options in 2007 (I won't check 2006 because, heck, you
can do that while I simply retire to bed) there is material option at
the top of the illumination tab called "cut hole with decal". If that
works for you, please report back to the forum.

Summation:
Option 1 is easy, but I have had trouble in the past getting the scale
to be the same when that material is applied to objects of different
sizes. Option 2 requires just a tad more up-front work, but I got the
perf patterns dead on right away, and they were beautiful. Option 3 I
will keep in mind to test for the next time I have to do this sort of
work.

All I know is that all three options blow the door off of option four,
which is to model the perforations. On a 36' gondola run of 1"
pegboard (again, POP days), you could waste an otherwise good weekend
trying to update and render your model.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes
Ed

 

One of the problemsis that the steel panel is huge and curved. I took
stainless polished and added a dimpled pattern to it. It is a raised
pattern but at that distance and size it isnt noticable. It looks like is
has a pattern on it and it also looks like a depression versus raised. It
isnt perfect but it seems to do the job.