Hi,
I want to create some renderings for blindstamping in Cinema
and thus asking the audience if anyone has exerience in creating
clichees for blindstamping.

The results I achieve when rendering always show to sharp edges
so I guess in the analogue world it is the paper material creating
the softness.

If anyone has experience in this topic I will be more than happy
to get some tips of any kind related to it.

My recommendation for making that soft edge type of embossing would be to use a Normal Map in your render program rather than try to create it using geometry.

3D modeling will give a harsh "CAD" like appearance, even if you manage to fillet all the edges of the design.

You can make a 2D black & white drawing in MoI or a photo editor and then convert your image to a Normal Map using:

https://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/

I've done this to add raised lettering & logos to car tires. My render program (Keyshot) does a very good job. Lighting settings in the render program have a big influence on the result as you'll need some contrast and shadows to get the best effect.

I've posted one of my examples below of a spoke wheel I modeled in MoI. Not the best example here since this Good Year logo lettering has beveled edges, but you can obtain sharp, beveled, or soft edges depending on how you adjust your settings when creating the Normal Map.

Of course you can recess your design into the object using the same Normal Map. The side wall tire tread is an example of recessing a Normal Map.

Ed Ferguson

Thank you - that is surely a way to take !
Do you apply gradients in Photoshop when you need soft
edges or how is your workflow ?

I would start with a sharp B&W drawing such as the Goodyear image I posted. (In that example I did not re-draw it - it's just a PNG image taken from the web.)

Pull the B&W image into https://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/ and adjust the Blur/Sharp slider. That will define the softness of your Normal Map which you then apply in your render program.

You can experiment with height map grayscale images and blurring in your source image, but I think the sliders in the app are all you will need.

I also came up with a technique to make a repeating Normal Map pattern from a MoI 3D model and it worked very well. But I'll be doing a tutorial on that in early summer as part of a larger car model tutorial.

Ed Ferguson

Thank you.
I just compared both techniques. The 3D obviously is more realistic for
close ups (and will need those) but as you said the edges always show
up as too sharp

Continued my experiments and you are right Ed - to achieved
this soft embossing effects normal maps do work really great.

Just in case you dont know it - "Crazy bump" is a great offline
normal map converter.

I'm glad that is going to work for you. I use Normal Maps for any small lettering or repetitive detailed textures that would be time consuming or difficult to model. It's easier to modify a flat drawing than a 3D model :)

I've tried Crazy Bump, the Photoshop built-in Normal Map generator, and others. I noticed each gives a different result based on their internal algorithm, so play with them and perhaps one will work better than others for your application.

Ed Ferguson

Just discovered the Nvidia - looks like the fastest tool as you can
go on working within Photoshop.

Attached the latest test with Crazy Bump n-maps.

That looks like the real deal! Especially with the paper (canvas?) texture over the piece.

Ed Ferguson