I was inspired by some of the retro radio models people have done with MOI and posted about here on the forums, so I thought I'd have a go at it. I did a bunch of searching and found some examples. I picked the Continental model 5R30, 5R30A, 5R31A, 5R32A, and 5R34A as examples from this website, http://www.radiomuseum.org/m/hallicraft_usa_en_1.html and went from there. This is still a work in progress (I hope to model some internals as well) and I've taken a few liberties with it as well.

Modeled in MOI (except for one stubborn fillet done in Rhino), and rendered in MODO 601.

*EDIT* added internal detail renders below

That an attractive radio, Sun!
Nice work.

It turned out really nice Sun, I can practically hear some crackly songs coming from it! :)

- Michael

You know, that is seriously one of the more impressive renders that I have seen as far as realism.

Most renders look cool but are clearly renders. They get overly complex with people trying to recreate every single little detail While this render used a few materials, nice colors, and a simple surface for the object to sit on.

The part that brings it home for me is the material settings for the dial. The close up view that is somewhat isometric looks as close to real as any rendering does.

Very well done! Kept it simple, clean and not over thought.

Two thumbs to the sun for you.

Nice work.

I modeled some of the internal components as best I could from the limited source material. There seem to be several variants, so once again I exercised some "license". hehe.

There are no words at this point other than....

sexy......

Oh my... I can't stop staring at it... it's beautiful...

Of course, I have a weakness for the workings of radios, especially ones that glow in the dark.


Good job on the vernier capacitor detail!

Thanks for all the great comments. Here's my try at a glow in the dark render for Mike K4ICY. I'm not entirely happy with it, but can't seem to get it to look much better. Any suggestions? I don't know enough about vacuum tube anatomy so I just make a glowy coil (cathode heater?) for each one and punched some holes in the cylinder I had inside the tubes so the light could come out. hehe.

Oooh, the glow...

Thanks Sun! Art-wise, It looks good to me. :-)

There are so many examples on the the net, some are more yellow, and some glow a nice deep orange with a hint of violet mixed in.




A technique I use in rendering is to make a duplicate of the "emitter" material object, one is made visible and the other is made invisible.
The visible one has just enough illumination to look pleasing.
The invisible object still gives of light but is set with a brighter output.

Also, you could increase the gamma and brightness settings to yield more visibility inside the enclosure.


I did this with my lighting fixtures here with good results: The surface of the bulbs are just light enough for detail to show up. There is even more light shining on the adjacent surfaces. Though, this is not physically correct, the result looks appealing.

Yeah, I found lots of pics of glowing tubes, but I couldn't quite deduce the geometries involved. Thanks for the tips on rendering. I'll look into how to do that duplicate object trick next time. I assume there's some way to do that in modo.