That's quite tight and attractive, Egg.
One suggestion, and it's a creative one not a technical one—wouldn't it be cool if one or more of the keys are pressed?
Just a thought!
My Best,
Gary
Printable View
That's quite tight and attractive, Egg.
One suggestion, and it's a creative one not a technical one—wouldn't it be cool if one or more of the keys are pressed?
Just a thought!
My Best,
Gary
Richard, you deserve a pat on the back, not a kick in the bum! :) Your second one, I love, love, love the volumetric lighting.
Today, I'm going to attach a PostScript version of csehz's self-intersecting polygon, and show how simplisying it my manually tracing makes the outline available to ALL 3D modeling programs.
My Best,
Gary
Tracing symmetrical images like this is pretty fast as you only need to trace parts of it and then duplicate the rest.
Here is an example of a simplified version made only in couple minutes using same technique like on that gear earlier and only about 10% had to be actually traced. Imported to Xara and from Xara exported to Realsoft 3d in AI format.
Well, you saved me the effort, theinonen. It's be more than generous of you to attached the Xar files so others in our community can experiment.
I'll take today off as part of the US's Labor Day Weekend!
My Best,
Gary
Here is the Xar file but it was done in a hurry so is not perfect.
Very good posts and ideas, actually I jumped into the depth of the Blender guides and tutorials so slowed down in posting, maybe next year will be able to do something :D
Egg thanks for the .xar file will download from home, I always found challenging to turn/rotate extrudes which have different width in un-extruded state, because somehow at the extrude slightly they need different angles to fit/place over each other.
Theinonen also thanks for your .xar
Here is the Xar file but it was done in a hurry so is not perfect.[/QUOTE]
Ah, I commend your efforts, but that wasn't was I was talking about. There is a way about the Winding Path rule tat will make extrusion results as you'd expect in every modeling program. I'll get back to this as soon as possible. The trick is to lock the design on a layer, and then trace off triangle that appear to touch one another, but are actually part of a group. This "faking it" works in 3DS, C4D, Pixar Renderman, I haven't tried Blender, but you obey PostScript conventions, you can't go wrong.
Attachment 103635
My Best,
Gary
I used bend snap just so every closed shape that I traced would touch each other. (There are some gaps as my trace was not 100% accurate, so when copied around the centrepoint it will introduce some gaps along the way on copies and those need to be tweaked by hand in that case.)
But is there really any difference as in both files all the triangles are still invidual shapes and should come out as an invidual curve when imported. At least on Realsoft 3d I get exactly similar result with both files, where every closed shape comes out as an invidual NURBS curve.
Nope, my bad and I apoligise, theinone. I didn't realize you'd grouped your trace, and it is indeed the same sort of triangles I did.
By doing this, there are no self-intersecting lines and life is good.
Sorry I was confused by the grouping.
My Best,
Gsry
I was sneaky and exported the star shape as a black & white jpeg.
Then I imported it into Cinema 4D with the Vectorizer spline tool.
It did a fairly decent job I have to say. Cinema 4D made non-intersecting splines and so it worked right away!
(Did have to remove the outer square so it would be inverted and ready to extrude.)
Since it was not specified I HAD to export the shape as a spline... I thought I could get away with it! :rolleyes:
Richard
Here is how easy tracing by hand complex symmetrical shape like this can be.
Attachment 103647
Basically just select group, set quantity and press ok button. Very fast, precise and makes drawing things like complex gears from reference pictures literally only seconds work as only need to draw single teeth.
Attachment 103648
I think functionality like this would be good addition to Xara as the reference point could be just replaced with the rotation centre that Xara already has. Another thing that would be handy when tracing rectangular objects is parallelogram drawing option for rectangle as there is less fiddling with points afterwards.
@theinonen—
Those are good improvement suggestions, and "Dear Xara" is the place to post them on tg. One's wishes don't always come true—in fact it's rare— however, I asked them for a Paint tool for several years and finally we have one. I'm not by any means saying I tipped the scales, but I'd like to believe that I was a little influentiasl, and you can be, too.
My Best,
Gary
Thanks so much for the star shape, Gary. :-bd
I could then have a play in Xara.
I so wanted to have a go at doing what dutchim had done in Post #31.
It's not an exact replica, or deadly accurate, but, I enjoyed doing it.
That's pretty close Rik!
Here is your new homework... Sorry I dropped it.
Attachment 103677
It's a little dark, dutchim, but perhaps you like the rock group Deep Purple.
Holy Crap, Dutchim, I don't know how you fractured that, but if you that in Xara, I want you to do a tutorial on that for Xara Xone!
Seriously! PM me, okay?
My Best,
Gary
Here: I didn't use Xara, but like dutchim, I did drop it...
No I wish something like that could be easily done in Xara... but unfortunately it was not.
Was all done in Cinema 4D like your animation... which is pretty cool by the way!
I did use Designer Pro to get the Spline of the letters ready for import into Cinema 4D.
Richard
P.S. Used the new 'Shadows Brightness' slider in version X10 to brighten it up a bit.
See Gare... I did use Xara in a way!
Richard
Attachment 103683
You used Xara in a very direct way, I'd say! :)
Mine is no match for yours, but I must say I gave it a thoughtful and earnest attempt, using Xara straight up, no modeling program:
Attachment 103684
I'd venture that if the concept is to fracture the logo, it can be done with more work in Xara then in C4D or 3DS, but the point is that it can be done. I must have shown at least three video tutorials on YouTube that show how to do unpredictable and neat stuff.
Jes' tryin' to maintain a balance of Xara and 3D here, and I'm one of the worst offenders...
My Best,
Gary
You could get a similar but not as good effect in Xara using a text logo, with multiple crossing lines, changed to shape, added and then slicing the original logo. Then add a 3d extrusion to all and manipulate the individual part around their axis. Requires some Put to Back operations as well.
Edit: Didn't see your new post - Cross posting.
They are both really good Gare and Egg... Considering the limitations of Designer Pro.
I had never even considered using Designer for this, But as you both have shown there is a way!
Richard
Richard, as with most pieces of art, all you have to do is have a concept in your head, and then an eye for composition.
I sliced up the X and then with all the pieces selected, I extruded them (all at once). This gave me a lot of wonderfully weird poses for the pieces, but didn't care for the overall effect. After all, "push button art" is for mobile phones, not real computers. ;)
So I moved, pushed, and rotated pieces, put some to back and kept in mind where a hypothetical ground plane would be as well as the height of a hypothetical camera, until the composition looked good. Then the floor shadow was used, and tweaked a little. If it couldn't get the shadow spot-on, I'd have used the Pen tool to create a shadow and then feather it a little.
My Best,
Gary
This thread is still exciting :) Interesting examples and inspiring ways
Just joining to Rik's approach, not the same but enjoyed it.
Attachment 103738
Tried with moulding the text to simulate a bit the collapse, that was substracted by the blend of lines with different width
Just a short recipe how to create a broken vase in Blender :D
Take a shape from Xara and export as .svg
Attachment 103955
Attachment 103956
Spin in Blender and be enough big amateur in the program like me, and see
Attachment 103954
However maybe that is not broken just some black line, or who knows, but definitely needs investigation yet how to create a non-broken vase :D
I was looking at the jpg picture and was wandering where the vase was as my eyes saw only a profile of a human head. (In Hitchcock side profile style.)
Needed second look to see the profile of a vase in there and it clearly shows people only see what they want to see.
I really like what you did cshez. To me it looks old and cracked but you did a fine job.
Theinonen thanks for perceiving that, it was intended to play with the face/vase line, even the breaking line was set finally like that.
But that breaking line was not intended at all, I need to learn more in Blender to understand why stayed. Finally from Xara a shape was exported and not a line, eventually that makes the difference somewhere in Blender
It should not make any difference when lathing a profile whether it is an open or closed path, csehz (and everyone else who likes to get into 3D) to perform at lathe or any other operation on the imported Illustrator file exported from Xara.
What I think was the criminal was a "node at extreme"; the very top of your vase profile has an extremely sharp cusp node. When you need to change path direction that dramatically, add a node at extremely high magnification so no one sees it as a butt-cap segment but instead the sharp point you're "faking" here.
Attachment 103965
Attachment 103966
I've attached the Xara file for you, csehz. There might be another problem, perhaps one that occurs in Blender when a profile is rotated not exactly 360 degrees or the x axis of the profile is a fraction of a degree off the norm of zero, but as you can see, with that little extra node, I m ight be cracked, but the vases aren't :).
-g
Gare thanks the advices, still finding it really inspiring topic to make beautiful shapes in Xara and extrude in Blender.
Just there is one problem, still cracking all of the vases.... :D
Attachment 104012
What you mentioned the 360 degrees that really found in Blender guide as:
"Remove Doubles from the W-key Specials pop-up menu. Remove Doubles merges any vertices that are in the same location. If you don’t do this step, your vase will have a nasty seam running down one side."
Super, that nasty seam so having :D Removing the double it really makes it less visible, but it is still there. At least at shapes which are imported from Xara.
Let me ask a short question, in Cinema 4D after importing the Xara .svg, do you have to convert the shape to mesh? Because in Blender I have to or rather forced to as without that not having the Spin option. And so doing that convertion the edges are going quite dense, maybe that causes and that right side one would need some cleaning?
Attachment 104011
Post screenshot of the mesh of your finished object.
But basically you have your curve and after rotating it around the axis you get the mesh. Converting the curve to mesh before that sounds wrong but I have no experience with Blender so might be wrong.
Attachment 104041
looks like this in Realsoft 3D
Attachment 104042
It is also possible to use 3rd curve to modify the shape.
csehz—
Don't export your Xara profiles to SVG. Instead, export to AI, Adobe Illustrator, first of all.
1. Position your profile in the lower left corner of the page in Xara. This is where the space zero origin is in many modelers, including C4D.
2. File>Export, and then choose Adobe Illustrator and make darned sure there's nothing else on the page. PostScript is a page description language and it accounts for everything on the page.
3. Open C4D and then Choose File>Merge.
4. Choose the *.ai file, and bring it in.
5. It should land at 0,0,0, at least I got that result. The important thing is that you're going to lathe the profile so its axis of rotation—its right side—needs to line up with the Y axis (the up and down guy) in world space in C4D at its zero point along its Y axis, or you'll get a strange shape.
6. Go get the Lathe NURB. You can see here that version 15 now calls it a Generator, but you can find it under the Create Main menu.
7. Drag the icon for the shape in the scene contents panel up and into the Lathe icon to make the shape its child.
8. Go to View 3 and make sure the shpae is lined up with the Y origin to the Lathe Generator. Click on one at a time and then look at the green lines; these are the Y axis and they should all be lined up to make the vase "waterproof", a term that means there are no seams and the object can be printed through a modified inkjet or commercially.
9. Add a material in the Scene Manager panel to the Lathe Nurbs guy.
10. Light it, render it, done.
My screen cap is way too small to show the steps, but I'll post it here, and download the attached Xara file to see full screen this mini-tutorial.
*This is the way to get the vase from Xara and into C4D and get a finished product. I don't know every modeler, so YMMV.
Attachment 104048
My Best,
Gary
Thanks for that Gary, I always have problems importing xara vectors into C4D (Not the I use it much now, I've forgotten more than I can remember).
Just one point, you state to set the shape in the bottom left of the page, but your xar shows it outside & half below the page.
I found setting the origin of the shape to 0,0 imported it fine into C4D. Am I missing something?
No, Egg, you're not missing anything.
Oh, okay I just looked at your file. you've got the goblet oriented so the Lathe generator would operate on the left and not the right side of the Y axis at 0. Csehz had designed his vase face with the axis of rotation to the right, and that's why I put it outside of the page, so the axis lined up with the page's Y at zero, see?
My Best,
Gary
Thanks for the clarification Gary.
With seamless textures yesterday I got to a great tutorial on https://youtu.be/rzXNZkEoTAk (if someone learns Blender sure knows Andrew from Blender Guru), how to modify seamless tiles for realistic texturing in 3D programs. Where he says in the video 'jumping to a photo editing software', that can be of course also Xara!
Tried that and registered the steps to remember later, so just attaching the .xar file for others who may feel the method similiary inspiring
Attachment 108120
Attachment 108119
With that luminous sphere almost touching the plane, you certainly need a bump map to make the reflections less even so you can see the detail in the tile, right?
A question: what would happen if you turned the specularity and the reflection off on the tile, and then tried rendering without the bump: will the detail on the tile come out then?
TIA,
Gary
Do you mean turning off the reflection effect from the nodes, well tried that and from different angle with different color the bumps look like this
Attachment 108137
But I would like to try it yet with some of the Xone seamless tiles to experiment, because in this way in Xara finally really easily can be produced their bump and reflective maps
I really like what you've done withe reflections off, csehz.
HERE is a challenge/idea: render both the one with reflections and the one with them turned off, same camera angle. Same size.
Then, put one exactly aligned over the other at partial transparency and see what it looks like, perhaps Bleach mode?
-g
Gare thanks that is an interesting idea, so after the render taking both results back to Xara and apply different kind of transparency on the top one.
Stayed still at the example as my computer needed some 30 mins to render in 1000 samples, but later will try with other materials. So with the 'stones' the three images, 1) is the Reflection map on directly from Blender, 2) is reflection off + reflection on (bleach transparency) on each other in Xara, the 3) is reflection off + reflection on (stained glass transparency) in Xara
Attachment 108141
I would say the bleach transparency makes the stone more 'dry' and the stained glass 'wet' :) Sure a lot of interesting try can be to modify the seamless tiles in different directions to have bigger bumps/more reflections
I like it, chesz! It definitely has different looks using different amounts of transparency! And you get three or more "looks" only be rendering once, right?
And I've almost finished something for the Infinity thread on the Xara Xone area that is a voyage through a fractal or two, and believe me...my machine is almost grinding to a halt representing an infinity recursive 3D geometry!
I used to have a "fast" machine!
Attachment 108170