Overview#
Photorealism is the sum of small decisions. Fusion's renderer is physically based: if geometry, materials, light and camera resemble the real world, the picture resembles a photograph. If any one of them is simplified, the eye notices. This page is a checklist, ordered by how much each item typically improves a render, drawn from the earlier pages in this section.
Nothing here requires special features. Most of it is restraint: fewer extremes, more variation, and imperfections.
Where to find it#
The settings are spread over the Render workspace and Design workspace:
- Geometry: Design workspace (fillets, chamfers, modelling details).
- Appearances: Setup > Appearance (or Design > Modify > Appearance).
- Decals and textures: Setup > Decal and Texture Map Controls.
- Environment, ground, exposure, depth of field: Setup > Scene Settings.
- Preview: In-Canvas Render. Final: Render (Local Renderer or Cloud Renderer).
Step by step#
A repeatable workflow:
- Prepare geometry. Add real fillets and chamfers to every edge a person could touch. Perfectly sharp edges do not exist and do not catch light.
- Assign physical materials for correct mass, then appearances for look.
- Set the scene. Choose an environment, adjust its Position, set a plain background, and enable a subtle ground shadow.
- Frame the camera at a flattering angle with a modest field of view.
- Preview with In-Canvas Render. Iterate on roughness, color and environment Position.
- Test render locally at Draft quality and a small size.
- Final render, local or cloud, at target size and higher quality.
- Post-process lightly in an image editor if needed (crop, slight contrast, sharpen).
Options reference: the realism checklist#
| Area | Do | Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Edges | 0.2 to 1 mm fillets on small parts, larger on consumer goods | Razor-sharp edges |
| Color | Slightly off-white and off-black; desaturate a bit | Pure 255 white or pure black |
| Roughness | Vary between parts; add small roughness to glossy surfaces | Perfect mirror everywhere |
| Metals | Use metal appearances with brushed or satin finish | Flat gray plastic standing in for metal |
| Glass/plastic | Real thickness and correct refraction | Zero-thickness surfaces |
| Lighting | Soft environment with one dominant highlight direction | Evenly lit with no shadows |
| Ground | Soft contact shadow and faint reflection | Floating object with no shadow, or a mirror floor |
| Camera | Three-quarter view, mild perspective | Extreme wide angle |
| Depth of field | Low blur value (general guidance; API range 0.001 to 2.0) focused on the hero feature | Heavy blur on small objects |
| Texture | Subtle bump, grain direction aligned to real use | Tiling patterns visible |
| Resolution | Final render at needed size, high quality | Upscaling a small render |
| Background | Matches the environment tone | Pasted-on harsh backgrounds |
Tips and pitfalls#
Tip: Fillet first. The single most effective realism step is modelling the tiny edge radius that catches a highlight along every edge. Without it, objects look like CAD.
Tip: Apply imperfection sparingly. A bit of roughness variation and a slight bump on plastic reads as manufactured. A fingerprint texture on glass is a classic extra, but keep it faint.
Warning: Overly bright emissive parts bloom and wash out neighbors. Keep emission values moderate.
Warning: Do not use pure black appearances. Real black plastic reflects a gray-ish environment; use very dark gray with some roughness.
Tip: Match scale to reality. Texture sizes, depth of field and shadow softness assume real dimensions. A model at the wrong scale looks like a miniature.
Tip: Separate small details into their own bodies and give them their own appearances (buttons, seams, gaskets, labels). Different materials side by side is what makes a product look assembled.
Warning: Check your render at 100 percent zoom before delivering. Noise, aliasing on thin edges and tiny decal blur hide at thumbnail size.
Tip: General guidance: keep a simplified copy of the design for previews and final renders.
Additional practice:
- Glossy surfaces need something to reflect. Use environments with a few distinct bright shapes, so reflections show structure rather than a blank gradient.
- For a clean studio look, use a pale solid background, the ground plane shadow, and a bright softbox-style environment rotated so a long highlight sits along the top.
- For dramatic shots, choose a darker environment, brighten only a rim of light, and use shallow depth of field.
- Use contrasting materials: a matte body with a glossy accent, or a dark body with a brushed metal trim.
- Add context cheaply: a plain surface, a simple second object for scale, or an offset ground reflection. Too many props distract.
- Use consistent camera settings across a product family so a catalog looks unified.
- When a render looks flat, change the lighting angle before changing materials. When it looks fake, add edge radii and roughness variation.
Troubleshooting#
| Symptom | Likely cause | Remedy |
|---|---|---|
| Plastic look on metal | Roughness too uniform | Use a Metal-type appearance, vary roughness |
| Flat image | Environment lights from front | Change Position for side or top-back light |
| Noisy shadows | Quality too low | Raise render quality |
| Glass looks gray | No thickness or wrong refraction index | Model thickness; set about 1.5 |
| Floating object | No contact shadow | Enable ground plane and shadow |
| Text unreadable | Decal too small or low-resolution | Larger or sharper image |
| Colors look dull | Overexposed or washed environment | Reduce brightness or exposure |
| Reflections distracting | Bright window in the environment | Change the environment Position |
Delivery#
Capture Image saves PNG, JPG or TIF. Keep the original design; the Rendering Gallery stores renders and can re-render them. Personal-use rendering limits are not confirmed in Autodesk's documentation.
Worked example: from CAD to photograph in five edits#
Take a handheld enclosure, 120 x 60 x 25 mm, modeled with sharp edges and a single grey plastic appearance. Applying five edits in order shows how much each contributes.
- Fillets: add 1.5 mm fillets on the outer edges and 0.4 mm on the button edges. The enclosure suddenly catches thin highlights along every edge. This is the largest single improvement.
- Split materials: make the buttons, the screen bezel and the lens separate bodies, with a satin plastic body (roughness 0.4), a soft-touch rubber button (roughness 0.8, a very dark grey), and a clear lens (refraction index 1.5, 1 mm thick).
- Environment: switch to a studio softbox environment, rotate until one long highlight lies along the top edge.
- Camera: a three-quarter angle at a longer focal length (85 mm) with a very mild depth of field focused on the front button row.
- Ground: a faint reflection at roughness 0.3 and a ground offset of 0, so the shadow touches the case.
Each of these takes a minute or two. Skipping the first, however, makes the others almost pointless: no lighting setup makes a sharp-edged box look molded.
Fillet sizes by scale#
Realistic edge radii follow the manufacturing process, not preference.
| Product type | Typical outer edge radius | Inner or small feature radius |
|---|---|---|
| Machined aluminum part | 0.2 to 0.5 mm break edge | 0.1 to 0.3 mm |
| Injection-molded consumer plastic | 0.5 to 2 mm | 0.2 to 0.5 mm |
| Large sheet-metal enclosure | 1 to 3 mm bend radius | 0.5 mm |
| Furniture, bulky parts | 3 to 10 mm | 1 to 2 mm |
A rule of thumb for renders: if you can see the radius at the planned resolution, it should be at least 2 to 3 pixels wide at that camera distance. At 1920 pixels across a 200 mm product, one pixel is about 0.1 mm, so a 0.3 mm radius is visible as a thin highlight and a 0.05 mm radius is not.
Common failure modes and fixes beyond the table#
- The image looks like CAD despite good lighting: edges are sharp. Fillet and chamfer exposed edges, split bodies at real seams, and add a small gap (0.2 to 0.5 mm) between separate molded parts so a shadow line reads.
- Everything looks plastic: every material has the same roughness. Vary it by 0.2 or more between neighboring parts.
- Seams z-fight or flicker in the preview: two coincident faces from overlapping bodies. Offset or merge the bodies.
- Metal looks gray: there is nothing to reflect. Use an environment with bright and dark shapes, or put a simple lit card in the scene.
- Text on a screen looks dead: use an emissive appearance with moderate luminance, not a bright flat white.
- Glow washes out neighbors: reduce the emissive luminance and raise the environment slightly instead.
Pre-flight checklist before a final render#
| Check | How |
|---|---|
| Design is saved as a version | Save before submit |
| Named View is current | Restore it, do not trust the canvas |
| Aspect ratio and size correct | Check Scene Settings and the render dialog |
| Hidden bodies not rendered | Toggle Browser visibility |
| Decals legible | Zoom to 100 percent in the live preview |
| Quality matches purpose | In the API Final is 75 (the default) and Excellent is 100 |
| Background and ground behavior | If using a transparent background, check the output on a colored backdrop |
Workflow advice#
Do the work in layers you can evaluate separately: geometry, materials, lighting, camera, output. Resist adjusting several layers between tests, since you will not know which change helped. Save a Named View at each stage ("v1 geometry", "v2 lighting") so you can compare side by side. When a render is finished, save the settings you used in a short note alongside the file, because the exported image does not record the scene settings.
Practice exercise#
- Model or open a handheld enclosure about 120 x 60 x 25 mm with at least two buttons and a screen opening.
- Before changing anything else, capture a baseline in the live preview with a default grey appearance and sharp edges. Save it as "v0".
- Add 1.5 mm outer fillets and 0.4 mm fillets on the buttons. Capture "v1" and compare the edge highlights.
- Split off the buttons, bezel and lens into separate bodies and give them three appearances with roughness 0.4, 0.8 and 0.05. Capture "v2".
- Choose a softbox environment, rotate for one long top highlight, set a light grey background and a ground reflection at roughness 0.3. Capture "v3".
- Frame a three-quarter hero at an 85 mm focal length with a depth-of-field blur of about 0.1 focused on the front buttons. Capture "v4" at 1920 x 1080.
- Run a final render at the default Final quality. Check it at 100 percent zoom and list any three flaws you see.
- Expected result: five images showing the incremental effect of each step, with the fillet step visibly the largest, and a final image with distinct materials, a grounded shadow and a flaw list for the next iteration.
Related#
- Appearances and Physical Materials
- Scene Settings and Environment
- Local vs Cloud Render and Render Quality