If there’s one thing I’m learning is that, for the most part, it takes a good model to produce a good rendered image. Even with the greatest appearances and scenes, if your model’s features look out of proportion or have oddly sharp edges were there should be smooth transitions, then the rendering is not going to look very realistic. As an example, take a look at this model of a soda can that I found in the 3D content central. It looks OK, but the top could use a bit more work in order to look just like the real thing.

Other times, all you need to do is get a little creative with surfaces and you may be able to achieve great results even with the simplest of models. For instance, let’s say you are trying to create a fancy floor tile. You may start with something simple, such as this.

Then sketch your design on a plane or on the face of the tile where you want to place it. We’ll use this sketch to split the surface of the tile and be able to apply different appearances to each of the new faces we’ll have as a result.

A surface can be split using a plane, line, spline, closed sketch or other surface, and it’s usually not difficult to do, just go to Insert, Curve, Split Line and select your options, according to your needs.  To split a surface using a sketch  you would usually select projection as the kind of split, then, in the first field (pink) select the sketch you’ll be using, and lastly, in the second field (blue) select the face(s) to split. Notice that this sketch in particular contains nested contours, so we can’t just use the whole sketch as it is to split the surface; we’ll select contours, instead. In order to do this, we need to right-click on the contour of the sketch we want to select and look for Start Contour Selection from the menu that will display.

That will turn the contour selection tool on. Notice how the cursor changes and a different contour of the sketch is highlighted as we hover over it.

Once we have selected the contour, we can now select the surface to split. In this image, the selected surface appears highlighted in blue.

We can repeat the same operation with the next contour. Notice how, since this second contour is nested inside the first one, now the face to split is the one we just created.

After we’re done with all the contours in the sketch, we can apply different appearances to all the faces in the tile.

It’s all about being creative! A spherical face, for instance, can be split into two faces by using a plane.  In the following image, we are using the Front plane to split the spherical face. The type of split is silhouette and the Front plane is selected for the Direction of Pull field.

Here you have the result; the original face has been split into two and we can apply a different appearance to each one of them.

Now combine this with some snazzy appearances and you can easily achieve beautiful results even if you start with the simplest of all models. Neat, isn’t it?