Post Your Renders - #4: A New Hope

Dartanbeck

Nothing beats a nice cow in a crystal!
I bought the mini sub for one reason; To give my lo-rez MU Workers a nice SciFi Utility Cart vehicle.
I like it a lot.

briandaz_3e696c2bd8

Extending the crystal motif...

Garstor

Experimenting with a texture map I call "crushed sapphires" and different lights. I'm thinking it might look nice covering V4 - or it might not - only one way to find out!

On the off chance that any of you like the texture, I am happy to share it out somewhere. It is 2048x2048, tileable and 6.4 MB in size.

evilproducer

Garstor said:

Experimenting with a texture map I call "crushed sapphires" and different lights. I'm thinking it might look nice covering V4 - or it might not - only one way to find out!

On the off chance that any of you like the texture, I am happy to share it out somewhere. It is 2048x2048, tileable and 6.4 MB in size.

Looks good Garstor! I've got a ShareCG account in case I make something people like and I haven't used components from something I don't have the rights to distribute. Um- if that makes sense. :-S

evilproducer

brianorca said:

Extending the crystal motif...

Like the whale! Is that some kind of porpoise in the crystal or a baby Orca?

Garstor

evilproducer said:

Looks good Garstor! I've got a ShareCG account in case I make something people like and I haven't used components from something I don't have the rights to distribute. Um- if that makes sense. :-S

I signed up for ShareCG many moons ago - but I don't really wander over to that part of the intertubes.

The thought occurred to me to create another Set on Flickr for texture maps. I'm totally gobsmacked every time that I play with PhotoShop and Filter Forge ... imagine what would result if I actually knew what I was doing! :coolsmile:

Here's V4 in the default pose. I only edited the Global Shader to include "crushed sapphires" and a normal map for it (thank-you again to Filter Forge). With a bit of love and attention, this might turn into something interesting...

evilproducer

Garstor said:

evilproducer said:

Looks good Garstor! I've got a ShareCG account in case I make something people like and I haven't used components from something I don't have the rights to distribute. Um- if that makes sense. :-S

I signed up for ShareCG many moons ago - but I don't really wander over to that part of the intertubes.

The thought occurred to me to create another Set on Flickr for texture maps. I'm totally gobsmacked every time that I play with PhotoShop and Filter Forge ... imagine what would result if I actually knew what I was doing! :coolsmile:

Here's V4 in the default pose. I only edited the Global Shader to include "crushed sapphires" and a normal map for it (thank-you again to Filter Forge). With a bit of love and attention, this might turn into something interesting...

If there's translucency or transparency you could put a backlight behind her, or even within.

Garstor

evilproducer said:

If there's translucency or transparency you could put a backlight behind her, or even within.

That would probably be extremely cool! Noted for a future scene.

What popped into my head was a reclining pose on a big block of marble...as an art gallery display. I might be able to come up with some interesting lighting options that way. Of course, this probably commits me to building more art models to display on the walls! :)

At the moment, I have a big vertex cube to act as a room. I'll play a bit more and then see if there is anything worth displaying here.

briandaz_3e696c2bd8

evilproducer said:

Like the whale! Is that some kind of porpoise in the crystal or a baby Orca?

It's a commerson dolphin. Lives near S. America and swims at 33 knots. I like watching the ones at Sea World because they are so active. (Think of a two year old kid on sugar. zoom zoom!)

Garstor

Here is the rough basics of the art gallery idea. The lighting is just a 3x3 Grid Replicator of spots, plus one other spot focused on V4.

Full indirect lighting is on, so the walls have a chocolate hue even though they are actually still the default grey. I am finding it a challenge to control the IDL this way, but I think having light bouncing around will be necessary.

I need to model actual light sources for the ceiling and create some hanging art for the walls. I also thought about trying to create some brass posts with that red, crushed velvet "rope" you sometimes see in banks and such to form queues...that might be a challenge in itself.

Included a close-up to show off the "crushed sapphire" texture...which also shows off some needed work with the pose. :)

evilproducer

Garstor said:

Here is the rough basics of the art gallery idea. The lighting is just a 3x3 Grid Replicator of spots, plus one other spot focused on V4.

Full indirect lighting is on, so the walls have a chocolate hue even though they are actually still the default grey. I am finding it a challenge to control the IDL this way, but I think having light bouncing around will be necessary.

I need to model actual light sources for the ceiling and create some hanging art for the walls. I also thought about trying to create some brass posts with that red, crushed velvet "rope" you sometimes see in banks and such to form queues...that might be a challenge in itself.

Included a close-up to show off the "crushed sapphire" texture...which also shows off some needed work with the pose. :)

I think you're going to need some highlight and shininess for your sapphire shader.

There are ways of controlling the color bleed. There was a thread in the new forums last fall (I think) about this very topic. I don't recall the name of the thread.

Garstor

evilproducer said:

I think you're going to need some highlight and shininess for your sapphire shader.

There are ways of controlling the color bleed. There was a thread in the new forums last fall (I think) about this very topic. I don't recall the name of the thread.

Some extra sparkle on it would be nice! I'll try playing with that tomorrow.

Gonna get some reading done before coma-city (nearly through another excellent book by Bart Ehrman).

Dartanbeck

Yeah, I'm guessing that EP was referring to the somewhat loss of shape and depth due to the bump. This is a very cool effect, Garstor. Creatures designed to blend in would have that lack of sheen - just like what you have. But when you get neat results like this... natural tendency is going to be to play around with it.

For instance, I wonder how it would look to duplicate what you have in the color channel into the glow channel and darken the glow to keep it from looking like a light bulb. Or perhaps, inverting the color altogether for the glow and/or color... so many possibilities. Very exciting.

Also, I really like your studio.

Dartanbeck

Just happened upon this expression while messing with my new version of Rosie (V4) in C8.1 Pro 64
I finally rebuilt her from a fresh V4. She was always based on an older one, before some of V4s updates, and before I followed 3dage and Rogue Pilot's finding on power loading issues. Anyways, the new version looks a lot more like my Rosie - and now has much better expression capabilities and other great enhancements. I still haven't applied my new hair textures to this one, and she'll be getting tweak in Shaders as well. But here she is:

Garstor

Dartanbeck said:

Just happened upon this expression while messing with my new version of Rosie (V4)

My jaw. It is dropped.

I love both images - there is so much going on even in in the first one with only a black background! The second image in downright playful.

Garstor

Dartanbeck said:

For instance, I wonder how it would look to duplicate what you have in the color channel into the glow channel and darken the glow to keep it from looking like a light bulb. Or perhaps, inverting the color altogether for the glow and/or color... so many possibilities. Very exciting.

Thanks for the props on the studio -- I hope that by the end of today I can make it look even better.

As for the shader, I'd love to see what others do with it. So I am sharing it out from my LiveDrive public folder. Hopefully this link works, let me know if it does not:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=37325789C9E93CA6!105

evilproducer

Hey, great work Dart! Love the expression on both!

Garstor, I'm anxious to look at your shader.

If anyone is interested, I have posted my simple vertex crystal and shader over at ShareCG if anybody wants to DL and play around with it.

http://www.sharecg.com/v/67244/view/5/3D-Model/Large-Vertex-Crystal-and-shader

Edit:D'oh! MS won't let me DL your file Garstor, because it doesn't like my browser.

evilproducer

I did this yesterday. I was still inspired by all the talk of Frazetta earlier.

For the orb on the staff, I used the crystal shader mentioned in my above post. Additionally, I placed a fire primitive and light bulb with light sphere within the orb. They were parented to the staff in case I needed to move stuff.

Edit: I should add that I didn't use Caustics or any form of GI.

Garstor

evilproducer said:

Edit:D'oh! MS won't let me DL your file Garstor, because it doesn't like my browser.

Oh you Mac people...always disrupting the Global Domination plans! :)

If I can remember my ShareCG login, I'll try sharing out there in a bit. Stay tuned!

EDIT: Hopefully this ShareCG link works...

evilproducer

Garstor said:

evilproducer said:

Edit:D'oh! MS won't let me DL your file Garstor, because it doesn't like my browser.

Oh you Mac people...always disrupting the Global Domination plans! :)

If I can remember my ShareCG login, I'll try sharing out there in a bit. Stay tuned!

EDIT: Hopefully this ShareCG link works...

Oh you MS people thinking that web standards are for everybody else! ;-)

Got the download just fine. I'll have to play around with it later. More lines to learn!

Garstor

New angle to show off some of today's work.

* got Victoria posed much more effectively (that sort of fine detail is actually becoming one of my Carrara peeves)
* modeled the queuing posts in LightWave and textured them in Carrara (just the default brushed brass shader)
* threw the wall boarding together in Carrara's spline modeler and converted that to vertex model (slightly tweaked Indian Rosewood shader)

The lighting still bugs me. I've got to get rid of the grid replicated spots and model up an actual light source.

Next up though, create some velvet ropes for the queuing posts.

evilproducer

Garstor said:

New angle to show off some of today's work.

* got Victoria posed much more effectively (that sort of fine detail is actually becoming one of my Carrara peeves)
* modeled the queuing posts in LightWave and textured them in Carrara (just the default brushed brass shader)
* threw the wall boarding together in Carrara's spline modeler and converted that to vertex model (slightly tweaked Indian Rosewood shader)

The lighting still bugs me. I've got to get rid of the grid replicated spots and model up an actual light source.

Next up though, create some velvet ropes for the queuing posts.

I actually love the posing in Carrara. I usually at the minimum have the feet track target helpers. The last picture I posted used targets for the the hands and feet to aid in the posing. Helps with animating as well.

evilproducer

Forgot to add that the room is coming along beautifully.

Dartanbeck

Garstor said:

Dartanbeck said:

For instance, I wonder how it would look to duplicate what you have in the color channel into the glow channel and darken the glow to keep it from looking like a light bulb. Or perhaps, inverting the color altogether for the glow and/or color... so many possibilities. Very exciting.

Thanks for the props on the studio -- I hope that by the end of today I can make it look even better.

As for the shader, I'd love to see what others do with it. So I am sharing it out from my LiveDrive public folder. Hopefully this link works, let me know if it does not:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=37325789C9E93CA6!105

This item might not exist or is no longer available
This item might have been deleted, expired, or you might not have permission to view it. Contact the owner of this item for more informationJust sayin'

Dartanbeck

Garstor said:

Dartanbeck said:

Just happened upon this expression while messing with my new version of Rosie (V4)

My jaw. It is dropped.

I love both images - there is so much going on even in in the first one with only a black background! The second image in downright playful.So you approve then?

Garstor

evilproducer said:

I actually love the posing in Carrara. I usually at the minimum have the feet track target helpers. The last picture I posted used targets for the the hands and feet to aid in the posing. Helps with animating as well.

I didn't mean to sound so whining. I do love the speed that I can setup a scene in Carrara.

But the fine-tuning work can be aggravating. Even directly entering values is hard -- it only goes out to 100ths of a foot. If you see a change in position it is either way too little or way too much. One nice thing about LightWave (Garstor ducks the spinning roundhouse kick) is that the grid adaptively changes resolution as you zoom in and out...it easily scales from kilometers to micrometers.

Garstor

Dartanbeck said:

Garstor said:

Dartanbeck said:

Just happened upon this expression while messing with my new version of Rosie (V4)

My jaw. It is dropped.

I love both images - there is so much going on even in in the first one with only a black background! The second image in downright playful.

So you approve then?

Aye! I await Rosie's next appearance in a scene or animation eagerly.

Garstor

Dartanbeck said:

This item might not exist or is no longer available
This item might have been deleted, expired, or you might not have permission to view it. Contact the owner of this item for more information

Just sayin'

Point made. I won't use SkyDrive. See post earlier in thread for the ShareCG link.

Dartanbeck

evilproducer said:

I actually love the posing in Carrara. I usually at the minimum have the feet track target helpers. The last picture I posted used targets for the the hands and feet to aid in the posing. Helps with animating as well.Okay, somebody wrote a very simple guide on how to do this. I tried it and either didn't set it up right, use it right, or something else. Would you be willing to explain, in layman's terms, how to use targets on the hands and feet to help with animations, while telling me why they help? I always move and rotate the hip to where I think that should go, and rotate everything else to how they need to respond. This is actually very easy and gives fantastic results for me. But I'm seriously interested on how this works. I suppose it's not really as useful for simple walking, but when you have a bike with pedals, you might then be able to parent the helpers to the pedals to have the feet follow? Hmmm... think think think...

I didn't mean to sound so whining. I do love the speed that I can setup a scene in Carrara.

But the fine-tuning work can be aggravating. Even directly entering values is hard -- it only goes out to 100ths of a foot. If you see a change in position it is either way too little or way too much. One nice thing about LightWave (Garstor ducks the spinning roundhouse kick) is that the grid adaptively changes resolution as you zoom in and out...it easily scales from kilometers to micrometers.

Don't worry, buddy. You've only just begun your long journey into the vast awesomeness that is called: Working with 3d! One day I want to buy Lightwave as well... so we can compare notes and model together.

Garstor

Dartanbeck said:

Okay, somebody wrote a very simple guide on how to do this. I tried it and either didn't set it up right, use it right, or something else. Would you be willing to explain, in layman's terms, how to use targets on the hands and feet to help with animations, while telling me why they help? I always move and rotate the hip to where I think that should go, and rotate everything else to how they need to respond.

I'd be interested in learning posing tricks too -- right now I am basically tweaking things by eye and hoping for the best.

Don't worry, buddy. You've only just begun your long journey into the vast awesomeness that is called: Working with 3d! One day I want to buy Lightwave as well... so we can compare notes and model together.

It is a big (virtual) world alright. Plenty of fun and plenty of ways to sink $$$ into it! :)

LightWave is interesting...definitely has its quirks. I see things in both Carrara and LW that I wish the other program had/did.

Modeled my "velvet ropes" in LW and am just now trying to set them into the gallery scene. I suspect rigging would have helped tremendously here...but I know the square-root of spit about that.