#DONUT BLENDER CYCLES RENDER HOW TO#

#DONUT BLENDER CYCLES RENDER HOW TO#

The one issue which needs to be resolved is the inaccurate “mask” layer export from KiCad and I’m hoping anyone with more insight on this can tell us how to get it right. At the moment, render quality is only hampered by my very limited knowledge of Blender (about 2 weeks old) - so more experienced Blender power users will be able to do much better.Īlso, FreeCAD ver 0.19 Render workbench has a Blender option now, with Cycles rendering, but I haven’t yet got around to figuring out how to use it. So the workflow looks good now, and it’s possible to get nice renders using Blender. Importing the DAE format in Blender results in glorious color renders.Īnd now we can fine tune the colors, roughness (shininess), subsurface (internal reflectance / translucency ?) for the PCB fiberglass material (PCB edge), mask, copper, silk, adjust the lighting, change the background etc. Opening the KiCad VRML file in Meshlab produces expected results.Ī workaround to this that I stumbled upon is to use the online 3D file format converter at CADexchanger and convert the KiCad VRML file to a Collada DAE format. Here’s what the KiCad VRML import looks like in Blender.Īccording to in this thread, from Blender ver 2.8 onwards, the WRL/X3D importer has been changed causing the lack of color/texture import. KSU Tools import in FreeCAD with Copper and SilkĪt this moment, I not sure how to resolve this - so anyone have suggestions, please comment away.Īnyway, next step was to move to Blender and try getting better renders. Once again, the result was the same - the mask openings do not show up as in the pic below. I ran another test by using KiCad StepUp Tools workbench in FreeCAD to import the Board with parts and Copper and Silk layers. So the VRML export from KiCad is not a faithful representation of the board. In the VRML export, this mask window gets covered over. In the KiCad design, there’s a mask opening over these elements so that the underlying Copper/Gold is visible in KiCad 3D. Look at the “W” in the OSHW logo and the “qwiic” logo. One important difference between the raytrace render as seen in KiCad v/s the exported VRML is the “MASK” layer. So it isn’t much use for realistic renders. The STEP export from KiCad is useful in MCAD for designing enclosures and such, but it doesn’t have copper and silk layers, and no material textures too. So my next step was to export VRML and STEP file models from KiCad.

Unfortunately, KiCad raytrace option does not allow us to set lighting, floor and other scene parameters, hence Blender. There are multiple light sources (multiple shadows), and the scene looks washed out due to excess light.

This is the bottom of the PCB, so the “floor” is not visible, and the overall render looks darker than expected.Īs a comparison, here’s what the top view looks like. Raytraced render from KiCad - bottom side KiCad’s in-built ray-tracer does a decent job, but there is no way to adjust lighting, background and other parameters. I started off with the Open Hardware Summit 2020 badge (which I had a bit role in designing). My aim was to learn how to do photo-realistic renders of KiCad boards. I’ve been putting off using Blender since over 5 years, being intimidated by the complex UI and workflow, until this month when I mustered courage to go through Andrew Price’s Doughnut tutorials.

Donut blender cycles render