Lesson video

Hello, thank you for joining me for your design and technology lesson.

My name is Mrs. Conway and I will be guiding you through your learning today.

So today's lesson outcome, I can add render to a 3D sketch to show material texture.

So we are now looking at how to make our 3D sketches more realistic by applying texture to them.

And these are our keywords, rendering, texture, shading, and tone.

I'll be going through each one of these in more detail as we work through the lesson.

So firstly, we're going to look at rendering tone and texture.

Now, when communicating a design idea, it can be important to show what materials it will be made from.

What this does is it helps to communicate how the product will look, feel, and also work.

By adding tone and texture to the sketch through rendering, we can show how the object will look and feel.

Now to explain that texture is how a product feels when you touch it.

So it could be for example, hard, soft, rough or smooth.

So let's just do a quick check for understanding on that.

Why is it important to show what material a product is made from? Is it A, to make the design look more colourful, B, so people can understand how the product will look, feel, and work, C, to make the design more complicated, or D, so the product is more expensive.

Feel free to pause the video here just to take a moment to think about your answer.

How did you get on? The correct answer was B.

So it's important to show what material a product is made from so that people can understand how the product will look, feel, and also work.

Now we can identify the important features and highlights to be recreated whilst rendering so that we can recreate a really realistic material look.

I've got three examples here, and the three photographs show different textures.

I'd like you to take a moment, just have a little think and also discuss any important features and highlights that you can see of these materials.

Try to think of describing words, how to describe the different textures.

Just pause the video here to take a moment to think about this and discuss it with people next to you.

So the first one we had was timber.

And these are the kind of words you might have come up with, but you might have also had different ones.

So things such as rough, grainy, rustic, or weathered.

The next one was a polymer, and this is completely different texture.

Now what you might have picked up on is it does have highlights on it, and you can just see those just at the top of the bottle.

Now the highlights are there because it's a very smooth surface and quite reflective, so it's going to reflect the light hitting on it.

You might have also picked out some words such as translucent, smooth, glossy.

And the last one there is a metal.

And again, just like the polymer, you may have picked up on the fact that it's got some highlights where the light is reflecting off the material.

You might have also picked up on words such as smooth, shiny, hard, and also reflective.

Now again, you might have different one to these and that's great.

Now the two images below are a computer-aided representation of the same product.

One of them is rendered and one is a line drawing.

Now both are useful in design.

Again, I'd like you to take a moment just to think about this question.

Why might each of the images be useful when designing and making? So why would a rendered image be useful and why would a line drawn CAD image also be useful in the design process? Feel free to pause the video here, just to take a moment to think about that question.

So the rendered image would help us to actually kind of inform what the product would look like once it's been manufactured.

It's a way of seeing it before you've made it to be able to get an idea of whether the materials will actually work for that particular product.

Whereas the line drawn image would actually help us to inform how to make the product.

So that would be incredibly useful as we start to manufacture that product.

So two completely different uses, but both very, very important and useful.

Let's just do a quick check for understanding on that then.

True or false? A rendered image can be used to show what a design would look like before it is made.

Is that true or false? Pause a video here just to take a moment to think about your answer.

And the answer was true.

It's incredibly useful to use a rendered image to get an idea of what that final product will look like before it's actually being made.

And the reason we do that is it actually saves money by not wasting any expensive materials so as to make the product and then realise afterwards that that's actually the wrong material and we should have made it in something else.

So it's a way of kind of foreseeing what that could potentially look like.

Well done if you got that right.

Now, rendered representations can be used to show alternative materials to a user as well.

So these rendered representations aren't just for us, the designer, it can be really useful just to be able to show our idea to the user and to get some feedback from that user.

And by doing it in a rendered representation, we can actually do that before we have to have that final material decision.

So again, we've got that same object here shown in different material choices.

You can see one is in a metal, one is in a sort form of polymer and the other one is in a form of timber.

And being able to show that to a client and get that feedback is really helpful to help us make our final material decision.

So let's have a little look at how we can actually now create texture using a pencil.

And we're gonna look at creating the texture of metal.

So the first thing we do is actually draw diagonal lines across the shape so as to create highlights.

I'd recommend drawing these quite lightly because you don't wanna be able to necessarily see these harsh lines at the end.

We're then gonna get our pencil and press on quite hard with the pencil from the corner.

And you can see that just at the top it's a lot darker at the very top corner.

So we're gonna press quite hard and as we kind of move down to towards the highlight, the diagonal highlight, we're going to release some of the pressure on the pencil.

Once we've done that for each kind of section before the highlight, we're then gonna blend along that diagonal just using our finger so as to create a really smooth even finish.

We then take a razor and lighten the highlighted areas a little bit further.

Now we do that because it might have got a little bit smudged and it might have got a little bit dirty on those highlighted areas.

And we wanna pick out those highlights really clearly.

And lastly then we are just gonna define the edges of the shape with our pencil just to sharpen up those edges and make sure it's really nice and clear.

Right, you guys are now gonna have a go at this.

So your first task is to sketch a 3D shape.

And then only using a pencil and an eraser.

You're going to apply tone to your shape to give the appearance of metal.

So we're just focusing on tone here.

Let's just remind ourselves of our success criteria, thinking about the example I just showed you of how to go through this process.

So let's pick up that success criteria.

The first one is the shading is evident across the diagonal of the shape.

So remember I showed you how to draw the lines diagonally across the shape.

We also wanna make sure our highlights are clear as well.

And to make those really nice and clear we need to go back over at the end with an eraser to pick out those highlights.

We also wanna make sure that the tone is blended.

And again, if you remember, we were using our finger just to smooth out that tone and blend it really nicely to create that really smooth finish.

And then the last stage, we wanna make sure the edges of the shape have been defined as well, just to sharpen it up and make it look really neat.

Okay, you're now gonna pause the video here to have a go at this task and good luck.

How did you get on? Now there might be the first time you've actually tried to apply tone to show metal.

So don't be too hard on yourself, these things do take practise, but well then if you've done it really well as well.

Let's just remind ourself of the success criteria.

Now as I'm doing this, have a little kind of check against your drawing.

Have you met each of these points on the success criteria? And you can also compare your drawing to the example on the left hand side as well, just to see how those compare.

So the success criteria was; the shading is evident across the diagonal of the shape.

Have a little check against yours, have you got those diagonal lines? The highlights are clear.

Did you remember to use your eraser to really sharpen up those highlights at the end of the process.

The tone has been blended.

Did you use your finger just to to blend that down? And did you do enough blending? Sometimes we kind of maybe don't go quite far enough with our blending and we don't quite get it exactly how it looks.

And the last then is the edges of the shape have been defined.

So did you remember to sharpen up those edges? Well done with that task.

We're now gonna look at rendering materials in a bit more detail by looking now at rendering a polymer.

So when we're rendering a polymer, we're gonna still have our cube.

We're gonna start with the front face As you can see in the drawing that I've shown you there.

And we're from working from the top and the bottom corners, we're gonna apply really heavy pencil pressure, gradually releasing until you get to the centre.

Now you can see with this one, I've actually used a coloured crayon to do this rather than a pencil.

We're now gonna do exactly the same on the side face of the cube coming in from the opposite angle.

And this time we're creating kind of like an arrow shape in the cube centre.

So if you can see my two kind of angles are going like this in the centre of that cube.

Next we're gonna work on the top face of the cube.

We're gonna do exactly the same as we did with the front and the side, but this time much, much lighter.

And we're gonna leave a large white band across the cube.

So we're not gonna apply as much pressure and we're gonna have much more of a larger white band section.

And then we're gonna move on to using our eraser just to emphasise all the highlights on the three different sides of the cube.

And for that last little bit of detail, we're gonna erase a line in the opposite direction on the front and side faces of the cube.

And then lastly, similar to what we did with the metal, we're gonna darken the outline with the pencil just to sharpen up that whole image.

Okay, let's just do a quick check for understanding what is the eraser used for when creating a polymer texture on your design? Is it A, to add a shadow, B, to darken the texture, or C to add a highlight? Pause the video here just to take a moment to think about that.

How did you get on? The correct answer was to add a highlight.

So we used that eraser after we finished adding the tone, just to really pull out those highlights and to kind of work on top of those highlights that we originally picked out.

Okay, so let's look at timber.

Now wood grain is the pattern that you can find on the surface of timber and these are created by the trees growth rings.

And these rings form lines and textures that can be straight ,wavy, swirly.

They're quite organic in nature.

There's not kind of a one size fits all for wood grain.

They all look completely different.

Now you also sometimes get knots on wood and you can see the knot in this picture here as well.

That bottom line is pointing towards the knot and knots of circular or oval marks where branches once grew outta the tree.

And when a branch falls off the tree then grows around the spot forming a knot.

Now you'll get knot on lots of different types of natural woods and those natural woods and timbers will have different kinds of, sorry, different amounts of knots.

So for example, pine is quite a knotty wood and would have a lot more knots than something like oak.

You can see what I've also done here is you've got kind of a line sketch of how you can represent those grain lines and also those knots as well.

So for rendering timber, then we need to take those grain lines and the knots into consideration because those are important texture that we want to try and get across in our rendering.

So let's go through this step by step.

The first thing we're gonna do is give our cube an even base colour of yellow.

So we're using crayons again for this.

We're then gonna take a light brown pencil to draw the grain of the wood.

And you can also add in some knots here as well.

Remember, don't be too uniformed in this.

This can be quite organic.

Now the top and side of your cube should then show the long grain of the timber while the front face should actually display some or all of the rings of the tree.

Next, we're then gonna take a slightly darker brown pencil and you can add then in further wood grain and depth to your cube.

You can if you want to also experiment with other brown tones.

And sometimes I also like to add some orangey tones into there as well, depending on the wood that I'm trying to show.

Remember, we use different tones of brown here because we're trying to display texture and depth to this.

And then lastly, we're just gonna blend those colours ever so slightly with our finger and then we can then define the edges of the cube with the dark brown pencil just to help it pop and sharpen up and stand out a little bit.

Alright, quick check for understanding on this then.

True or false? When applying a rendered texture to a drawing, you no longer need to add tone.

Is that true or false? Pause the video here just to take a moment to think about that.

And the answer was false.

Tone is really important when creating texture and design work as it helps make the texture look more realistic.

So tone and texture work hand in hand with each other and are equally important to kind of help each other look as realistic as possible.

Right, onto your next task then.

This time you're going to apply render to the 3D cube to give the appearance of timber.

And you're gonna use the example and the step by step that I've just given you to help you do this.

I'm also gonna give you success criteria just to remind you of the key points here.

So the first success criteria is a base colour has been applied.

Remember we did that with a yellow crayon.

Also, grain lines and knots have been added to help show the texture.

Tone can also be seen where the pencil pressure has been applied gradually and the colours have been blended.

And lastly, the edges of the cube have been defined with a pencil or that dark brown pencil.

Okay, see how you get on with this task.

Pause the video here to have a go and good luck.

Alright, how did you get on? Now again, this is probably the first time you've done anything like this, so well done for giving this a go.

Let's just remind ourself of our success criteria.

While I'm going through this, again, just like you did with your metal drawing, just review against your drawing and kind of give yourself a bit of a checklist.

Have you met each of these success criteria points? You can also compare your drawing to the example on the left hand side there as well and see how it compares.

So the success criteria was, a base colour has been applied.

We were doing that with that yellow crayon.

Green lines and knots have been added to show texture.

How did you get on with those green lines? Did you manage to make them look quite realistic? Tone can also be seen where the pencil pressure has been applied gradually and the colours have been blended.

So we talked about adding tone, especially through those grain lines to add a bit of depth and texture to them, and then blending those just to soften them up a little bit.

And lastly then, the edges of the cube have been defined with a pencil, and I recommended using a dark brown pencil just to help define those edges.

So just take a moment to review yours against the example and against that success criteria.

So let's summarise today's lesson.

Today we've been looking at realistic rendering techniques and our rendering makes drawings look more real.

We do this by adding colour, shadows and also textures.

And texture shows how something feels.

So we'd be talking about rough wood or smooth metal or soft fabric, for example.

The purpose of rendering is it really helps people to understand what a product will look like and also feel like before it's been made.

And that helps us as the designer, but can also help the client or the user as well.

And lastly, shading highlights and blending can help create a really realistic texture effect.

So shading and tone and texture all work hand in hand to create that realistic 3D drawing.

Okay, well done on the lesson today.

Again, some of the techniques you've been using today may be the first time you've used them.

Don't be afraid to practise these in your own time to just improve and get better and better at using these techniques and your 3D drawing.

Thank you so much for joining me for the lesson today, and I will see you soon.