Twelve ways to see a model: comic, oil paint, watercolour, aged and more

Not every picture should look like a photo

A photoreal render is the right answer to "what will it look like". It is the wrong answer to "what is the idea", and a poor fit for a concept board, a children's book or a poster. The 3D view now has twelve render modes, and each one works live: you can orbit, walk and keep editing in it.

The modes

• Shaded, the everyday working view.
• Lights only, lit by your real light sources alone: the honest preview of what will render.
• Toon and Wireframe.
• Sketch: pencil lines from the model's edges and creases, in black and white, watercolour, tinted or full colour, with Ink and Colour sliders.
• Clay: everything in one colour, white or clay, so you see the form.
• Comic: ink outlines, cel shading, halftone dots and bright colour. A Colour only style drops the outlines.
• Oil paint: brush strokes that follow the forms, raised paint, canvas weave and rich colour.
• Watercolour: transparent washes on paper, with pigment pooling at the edges.
• Graphic art: a Japanese woodblock print, a black-and-white woodcut or a stone mosaic.
• Sci-fi: a glowing grid over every surface, a cyberpunk night, a hologram or night vision.
• Aged: years of weather, with grime in the corners, worn edges, rain streaks, moss, lichen, dust, cracks and faded colour. Dirt and Age sliders set how far gone it is.

They are measured, not painted on

The stylised modes work from the model itself rather than from a flat picture of it. Oil strokes follow the direction of the surfaces, and the Aged mode measures grime in real millimetres, so a streak under a window sill is the same size whether you stand close or far away. Dirt gathers in a band at the foot of the walls.

Saved, published and path-traced

The render mode is saved with the scene. Publish a model in Comic and visitors see a comic. The heavier modes also work in the path tracer, so a final render in Oil paint or Clay gets real light and shadow under the style.

A sharper everyday view

The ordinary view improved too:

• Reflections: polished floors, water and glass reflect the scene, and metals reflect in their own colour.
• Ambient occlusion is tighter, steady up close, with no dark halo copied off thin things like taps and handles.
• Bloom has Radius and Threshold sliders, and depth of field blurs through a round lens.

Moving pictures

Play tour flies from saved view to saved view as a live animation, at any speed. Turntable circles the whole scene. Camera animation renders a path-traced sequence along your saved views and saves it as numbered PNG or JPG frames, ready for a video editor.

Find all of them in the render mode menu of the 3D view.