RhinoGold 4.0 -The Channel Studio
The RhinoGold Channel Studio allows you to create channel rings and half channel settings from curves. This is a very powerful feature. Please watch the short video to see it in action.
RhinoGold 4.0 Demonstration – Bezel Studio
The Bezel Studio is now more intuitive and faster than ever. Unlimited bezel shapes and profiles, with bezel shapes that are automatically created to match the shape and size of your gem.
Maverick Render Studio for Jewelers
Are you like many Rhino 6 users, who have been struggling to achieve photo-realistic rendering from RhinoGold 6.6 or MatrixGold?
Rhino 6 Cycles Render is suitable for product rendering, but not for jewellery.
You may have noticed that the colour & light dispersion in gemstones & metals rendered in Rhino 6 look quite flat & dull. Cycles render which is used used in plugin’s like RhinoGold & MatrixGold, does not support caustics & dispersion which is required to generate photo-realistic rending of gemstones.
Maverick Render is from the same company who developed Arion Render (which is included in RhinoGold 5 / 6). Random Control is a pioneer in the development of light simulation technology for 3D rendering. In 2006 they were the creators of Fryrender (one of the first physically-based render engines in the world), and in 2010 they released Arion Render, one of the first nVidia-accelerated render engines. Maverick Render is the result of those 15+ years of experience in the field of light physics simulation.
Maverick has been built to run on NVIDIA graphics cards, & you can expect a tremendous performance leap (5-10 x over CPU only-rendering solutions).
For users who are familiar with product photography, the camera’s in Maverick Render are physically based with the usual controls for focal length, f-stop, shutter speed, ISO, etc. Depth of Field can also be controlled via a simple slider.
The software is updated every week or so, and there are some amazing feature planned. So what’s coming? Animation capabilities with easy options for basic turntables, object explosions in their parts, camera paths, etc…and a classic timeline with key framing capabilities.
We invite you to download and try the 30-day trial of Maverick Render.
The short video below show some of the features of Maverick Render Studio for people looking for a photo realistic rendering solution for 3D Jewelery Design.
Jewelry Terminology & Design Guide
After studying traditional jewellery skills & techniques at a Technical college, and then learning CAD I’m convinced that it is easier to learn CAD with a jewellery background. Now this does not mean a person without traditional hand-making skills cannot learn CAD, but what I have seen from over 11 years teaching CAD for jewelry design, someone who does not know how to fabricate a piece by hand has a steeper learning curve than someone who has studied or worked as a jeweller.
The Basics of Jewelry – Terminology & Design Guide is a useful resource to have whether you have jewelllery experience or not.
You can download the 82-page PDF here which covers things like The Anatomy of a Ring
(Shank Styles, Ring Profiles, Ring Styles, Prong Styles, Setting Styles ,etc) as well as covering earrings and neck pieces. The back section of the book covers Stone shapes, cuts, Diamond size charts, and a glossary of jewelry terms.
3D CAD Jewellery Design Best Practices
Applying jewelry “best practices” for your CAD design & manufacturing processes, can make a huge difference to your casting results. Most of the time, your 3D design looks great on a your computer screen, and your 3D printed STL model looks perfect; but your casting results may be disappointing, or worse, the cast fails.
So how can you fix this? Are there any guidelines for getting consistent casting results from your 3D CAD designs?
Whether you’re an experienced CAD jewelry designer or you’re just getting started, there is always someone with more experience than you, of with more specialised skills than you. For jewelry designers just beginning with CAD, is important to follow the guidelines to ensure you get consistent results.
Episode 1: Prongs & Walls
Tom Manos is the CAD/CAM Director of Carrera Casting. In this video he shares his real world expertise & knowledge to highlight important CAD design considerations for prongs and walls.
- What is the optimal height to width ratio for prongs?
- Why tapering or drafting (pyramiding) of the prongs in important.
- How the gap tolerance between prongs & walls, or between prongs impacts your casting results.
Episode 2 – Logos & Stamps
Learn the best way to implement your logo and lettering into your jewelry design to survive the casting process. In this episode you will learn about:
- Draft angles
- Recommended depths for logos & stamps
- Use of block or sans serif fonts to maximize casting quality
- Creating the best logos & stamps (laser engraving)
How do I make a Knife Edge Band in RhinoGold?
A number of customers have asked this question, so we have put together a short video below which explains how. The video is under 8:30 minutes long, and shows how you can create a custom ring profile, then add it to your library of shapes for use with the RhinoGold Ring Wizard. The great thing with the Ring Wizard is that you can use different ring profiles or your ring, so we show you how you can use a half-round profile at the bottom, and a knife-edge for the top of the ring band. It’s easy.
Watch the video below:
RhinoGold Channel Tool – change the quantity of stones
The latest version of RhinoGold gives you several ways to control the quantity of gemstones in you ring channel. The default is that the software automatically calculates the number of gems based on the gem size and position in the channel, however you can manually increase or decrease the quantity of stones.
The short video below shows you how:
RhinoGold Channel Tool Improvements
Question: Why is my channel flipped on it’s side?
The functionality of the RhinoGold channel tool has changed since we recorded some of our training videos.
We suggested a change/improvement to the way the channel tool works, which has now been implemented in the current release of RhinoGold 4.0. The screen shots below show you what to do.
The last field in the channel tool allows you to set the “rotation” of the channel, so if you rotate it by 90 (ie: 90 degree) it will flip the right way up.
This tool is now very powerful as it can be used to create “halo” ring settings as you will see in the last image below.
RhinoGold Render Studio for Brazil
Top jewellery designers and artists from a variety of industries rely on RhinoGold Render Studio for Brazil for their 3D rendering work. Whether showcasing your latest jewelry designs, visualising a new ring, or generating images for your latest catalogue, Brazil can create photo-realistic images and renders quickly and easily.
So what exactly is 3D rendering?
3D rendering is the computer graphics process of automatically converting 3D CAD models into images with 3D photorealistic effects on a computer. Rendering jewellery can be quite difficult, especially if you want to have the final results on a white background, with photo-realistic reflections and shadows. Rings, earrings, bracelets, and jewelry incorporating diamonds and other gems are the most difficult things to photograph and also to render correctly.
Brazil Renderer is capable of rendering the hard-metalic surfaces of gold & platinum. Realistic lighting is created through reflections and refractions to recreate the complex light interaction of diamonds, emeralds, saphires, rubies and other gemstones. Diffusion in materials together with
HDRI lighting create brillance in gemstones to simulate the real-world and create photo-realistic images.
The 3D jewelry designs you create in RhinoGold can be rendered using a customised studio environment using backgrounds and lighting setups that works for your design. You can customize the look of your images and videos based on your needs. Just like professional photographers, lights and reflectors are carefully placed directly in the 3D scene, to match a photographer’s studio environment. The 3D models can be rendered using a custom background, colors and shaders, and lighting setup. Brazil uses advanced camera features like depth-of-field, help show scale and make your 3D jewelry renderings look like like real photos.
High resolution images and videos are rendered to produce the most visually stunning representations of your jewelry. Best of all, the images and animations can be printed, email to customers, or uploaded to your website.
Review of Rhino 5.0 on-line training at lynda.com
The Rhino 5.0 training on lynda.com is comprised of around 60 separate videos organised into 12 chapters, with a total running time of around 6 hours. The pace of training is good, and the clarity and the flexibility to learn at your own pace; as well as being able to re-visit completed lessons make the training a must have resource, especially if you are new to Rhino 5.0.
Rhino 5.0 is one of the most organised 3D software programs on the market, but if you’re nervous about learning CAD, here are some tips that might help shorten your learning curve and reduce your fears. Firstly, it really helps a lot if you can visualise in 3D, and being able to sketch is a bonus as well. Secondly, if you have ever used programs like Adobe Illustrator or PhotoShop, then you’re already familiar with the same type of tools that Rhino 5.0 uses. Thirdly, any experience with 3D design software is an advantage but it’s not required. So if you’ve used a 3D design program before, even something like Sketch Up, then the process of learning Rhino 5.0 will be much easier for you.
Lynda.com is a treasure trove of lessons in design, & they offer training in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, & lots more. You also get access to the video training on Desktop, mobile, and tablet devices via free apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.
Best of all you get access to all of the lessons for FREE for 7-days, after that rates start at US$25 per month which is great value given to large amount of content and video training available. In fact they now offer nearly 2,500 video training courses on-line, with new courses added every week.
About the Trainer
Dave Schultze is an industrial designer and trainer, who has developed products for companies like LG and Microsoft, and he’s won quite a few industrial design awards in the past. He has lectured at Otis College of Art and Design in L.A. for the over 10 years. He delivers training in an easy to understand style. George Maestri, Associate Program Director at Lynda. com, said “He’s terrific at making complex topics seem simple, and his visual skills make his courses engaging on a creative level as well.”
About lynda.com
Back in 1994, when Lynda Weinman couldn’t find a book to recommend to her students, she decided that she’d write the first book on web design. The book went on to become the de facto textbook for web design of that generation, and it was adopted by many colleges. The book sold 100’s of thousands of copies, was translated into lots of languages, and really put lynda.com on the map.
“Rhino for Jewelry” Book Review
I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to get started, or wanting to further their knowledge of Rhino 5.0 for jewelry making. The step-by-step instructions in this book are thorough, detailed, easy to follow, and more importantly easy to understand.
“Rhino for Jewelry” is an excellent resource & guidebook to learning some of the core modeling concepts in Rhino 3D. The information you’ll find inside covers key modeling concepts specific to jewelry making. Each tutorial is well thought out & thorough with each lesson introducing a new set of essential modeling commands and techniques. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to learn the basics to more advanced modeling concepts & functions in Rhino for jewelry making & product design.
HOW TO USE THE BOOK
Go through this book from the beginning, and go through each of the chapters step-by-step. If you feel that you struggled understanding an exercise, I recommend that you repeat it. Trust me, the extra time spent will pay off! Try to use Rhino in your own design work as soon as possible. That is the way you will really learn it. Also you should consider combine the learning from this book with some Rhino training courses. You will always learn something more with each course that you take. We offer RhinoGold Essentials for beginners, which is a great starting point.
About the Author
Dana Buscaglia has had many years of experience as a designer for the jewelry industry, both in-house and freelance, and has been teaching CAD for jewelry since 2004. In the late 1990’s she became interested in the possibilities of CAD for jewelry design. Since then she has used Rhino 3D software, both as a designer and as a model maker, creating models for 3D prototyping. Dana has been teaching CAD for jewelry since 2004.
If you would like to purchase the book I can thoroughly recommend it. It is available via the link for US$67.50.
Create relief’s & engravings with RhinoEmboss
What is RhinoEmboss?
RhinoEmboss is a plugin for RhinoGold that allows you to create relief’s, engravings, sculpture and textures.
The software enables you to create 3D models from images such as black and white clip art, logos, etc for different industries such as: jewelry, gifts, awards and trophies, medallions, furniture, ADA signage, and more.
For the Jewelry industry it can be used for filigree work , signet rings, family crests, corporate logos, etc.
RhinoEmboss is bundled with RhinoGold 4.0 or can be purchased separately and it requires Rhino 5.0. If you are an existing RhinoGold 3.0 user, you can upgrade to RhinoGold 4.0 which includes licences for RhinoEmboss and Clayoo (valued at: 495 Euro each).
Features
- Advanced tools to create relief’s from clip-art, logo’s, etc.
- Advanced Profile and Brush Editor
- Enables you to create raised or etched relief’s.
- Over 70 brushes available, and ability to create more.
- Speed up the creation of your designs using the Raster to Vector tool, this automatically extracts the outline curves from clip-art or scanned drawings rather than you having to create the curves manually.
What Type of 3D Printer Do I Need?
This is a question we get asked all of the time regarding 3D printers, and it really depends on what you are looking to make. We recommend that people initially get started with a service bureau to 3D print their designs, typically the bureau will be able to cast your designs in your metal of choice as well. So for jewellers who do not do their own casting it is the easiest choice.
If you are designing pieces for a production range, typically with these type of designs a “master” is made, and then a mould is made to produce replicas in wax for casting in metal. The “master” can be printed in resin from an inexpensive 3D printer with resolution/quality less than 100 microns. That type of printer is approx $4,000 – $7,000 at current prices and there are some great offering using DLP (Digital Light Projector) technology like the B9 Creator and ASIGA machines. Unfortunately you can’t get away with a $1,500 3D printer, as the quality of the finish is definitely not suitable enough for jewelry sized objects.
If you are designing “one-off” pieces, like engagement rings, wedding rings, etc, then they are typically 3D printed in wax and direct-cast (lost wax cast). You need a 3D printer that can print in wax, you cannot use a resin-based 3D printer for reliable direct-casting in resin. The price for 3D printers suitable for printing in wax are still in the $25-30k ballpark as they are production-level printers aimed at people producing a minimum of 3-4 designs per day. The Kevox is one option, and we will happily arrange a print sample which you can cast to see the quality of finish.
So really to answer your question as to what type of 3D printer you need. If you are getting started with CAD, we would recommend using a 3rd party bureau to start with. There are plenty of them to choose from. Once you get some experience with the software, say 6-12 months from the start, you need to chose a 3D printer based on your work; one-off or a production range, and based on your weekly/monthly volume requirements. The good news is that the price of the technology is constantly being driven down with an increase on the number of manufacturers and obvious demand.
RhinoGold 4.0 Training – Setup Preferences
I’d like to point out some of great features that are in RhinoGold / Rhino 3D, but not many people know of, or even use for that matter. The video below shows you some settings options I like to use. This is not the definite list of all the options and settings, but it’s a handy list nevertheless. The video covers tips to increase the max number of undo’s and the setup of cursor tool tips and modelling aids to assist you when designing your jewelry in 3D using RhinoGold 4.0
