January 2014 Video Tutorial : Drawing Plastic and Chrome What's the Diff?

Drawing Chrome & Plastic: What’s the Diff?

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A lot of Xara artists (especially Ron Duke, our Featured Artist!) like to draw shiny, complex, reflective shapes. So what is that shape made out of so it reflects? Plastic? Chrome? Swiss cheese? This month Gary takes you into both a physics lesson and an artistic workout as you learn how to draw stuff that looks like plastic and other stuff that looks metallic.

Nuances are everything in the competitive field of art. And face, it: you really want to learn how to draw chrome! C’mon along!

Watch the video and get the resource files.

Then show us some shiny stuff in this thread!

I really like this month's subject I've always had a hard time capturing that very shiny metal look without resorting to live effects. So here is an attempt at a metal ball. I'm not sure I have the look quite right.

You did good, Frances, especially considering I forgot to give away a still image of the "softbox" lighting on a metallic sphere.

Suggestion here: don't reflexively put a highlight in front of the ball at 11 o'clock when the reflections of your room don't indicate there's a light in that location. And the highlight should be less fuzzy around the edges. Highlights and reflection need to work together when illustrating metal. If the metal shows a blurry reflection, the specular highlight must be soft, too, and vice versa.

It's impossible to make out, but the soft room model has four bare lightbulbs on the ceiling, and that's where the hot spot (highlight) is reflecting from. Also, it might be nice in an illustration to capture the wall behind the camera, or black space as a photographer's studio would look, and perhaps even a camera and a photographer in thje reflection to add photorealism.

Because I'd like this month's tutorial to be larger than "how to draw a chrome sphere", attached are four more images with a big thumbnail below (a toenail?). I created a 3D squiggle and I'd like everyone to check out the distortions on the surface when put in the softbox room which the checkered floor.

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Frances, you drew the floor and the walls quite well, congratulations! It's great when members improvise.

My Best,

Gary

An interesting tutorial, Gary.

Quick question (I think). You did an excellent job of explaining the difference between the plastic ball and chrome ball reflection. But what about the floating crystal ball? How does that differ from the chrome ball? Instead of reflection, it would have diffraction (if I got the technical term correct).

Regards,
Alan

I’m sorry, Alan, but your quick question necessitates a less-than-simple answer.

First, there is no “instead” when describing the light-bouncing characteristics of objects we see in real life, and then attempt to draw. A crystal ball, as per your example, lets a high degree of light through it, reflecting only a small percentage of available light in the scene.

Now, I did not want to get into how to illustrate glass, or other semi-transparent object this month—or probably any month—because it’s a study in physics and light, and not a Xara tutorial, as pedestrian an excuse as that might sound! Glass is a phenomenally complex material because it both passes light through it, and it bounces light back at the viewer.

Just about all materials we see on and through real world objects have one or more of three common attributes: Diffuse, ambient, and reflective lighting, the last of which is described by a highlight and a coherent direct reflection. If you assigned these properties a percentage, almost all real world objects would have a sum of 1.0 total lighting. So most materials can be described by %Diffuse, %Ambient, and %Reflective lighting.

Transparency is a higher-order of material description: it incorporates %D, %A, and %R, but transparency itself is like “shininess”; shininess gets its characteristic from percentages of material reflectivity but we cannot attribute shininess to a substance’s makeup.

Instead of comparing glass to metallic reflections, Alan, let me try to describe glass characteristics so they are meaningful to an artist, and perhaps our audience here on tg will find it easier in the future to illustrate a wickedly complex surface using Xara.

First of all, glass and other semi-transparent materials refract light, just like plastic tends to do, except, depending on how transparent the glass is, we will see objects through the glass (as with a magnifying glass) “bend” light, and that’s why when viewed straight on, a glass of water with a spoon in it looks as though the stem of the spoon is broken and moved over a little.

How little? It depends on the Index of Refraction of the fluid, and that’s why I didn’t cover this aspect in this month’s tutorial! It’s too science-y and not art-sy enough! I’ve attached and posted two images of a sphere, with a high and a low index of refraction here. The higher an index of refraction, the shinier a material is (air is 1.0 ior, and metal can be as high as 20), and when you tip transparency into the recipe, the higher the ior, the more light is bent as it reflects. And all of this stuff depends on your point of view on the semi-transparent object.

By the way, in the real world, invisibility is not the same as transparency. Glass, for example, can be 99% transparent, and yet it can tint light as we see it, and it can have a specular highlight. The Invisible Man, on the other invisible hand, had no highlights and didn’t bend light as it traveled through him.


When a waterdrop, as another example, is viewed, it appears to magnify what’s under it (like a leaf), and very little light is transmitted through the droplet so the reflection of the leaf on the opposing side is crisp and easy to make out. Specular highlights are particularly evident on waterdrops because there is only one way for the highlight light to exit; toward the viewer, the other side is blocked by the surface. Edges of a waterdrop are dim as light has to travel farther, and at an angle to travel back to the human eye.

Glass can also act as a lens, especially when the surface is curved. So we’d expect to see a bright interior when an artist draws a photorealistic waterdrop or magnifying glass.

Finally, the reason why reflections appear upside-down in glass is because the far side of something such as a crystal ball is convex; it inverts the reflected light, and the near side of the ball lets the lightwaves come back at the observer upside-down. Which is the same visual phenomenon as a spoon or other metallic bowl-shaped object showing you an upside-down reflection. Reflections might be reversed, but specular highlights aren’t, and that’s an important point to keep in mind when you draw this stuff.

I hope this helps, I know it's too long for Twitter (!),and here are two rendered models from two different programs that use a physically-based modeling system, that closely mirrors (pun intended) what we see in the real world.

Thanks to Alvy Smith for putting up with a stranger’s questions, and the advice and some of the PIXAR RenderMan background info.

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My Best,

Gary

Very interesting Gare. The top image looks goofy but shows the principles you describe.

The top image looks awkward because 1.) I spent zero time setting it up, and 2.) Vue doesn't have as good a rendering engine as Luxology modo does.

And there's a 3.)

3.) The viewing angle makes it impossible to tell whether it's transparent or perfectly reflective. The important thing about the top outdoors image is that it shows light accumulating in its shadow, similar to holding a magnifying glass on a piece of wood to do woodburning.

-g

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gare

Just about all materials we see on and through real world objects have one or more of three common attributes: Diffuse, ambient, and reflective lighting, the last of which is described by a highlight and a coherent direct reflection. If you assigned these properties a percentage, almost all real world objects would have a sum of 1.0 total lighting. So most materials can be described by %Diffuse, %Ambient, and %Reflective lighting.

Transparency is a higher-order of material description: it incorporates %D, %A, and %R, but transparency itself is like “shininess”; shininess gets its characteristic from percentages of material reflectivity but we cannot attribute shininess to a substance’s makeup.

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Gare that is very interesting summary, thanks very much.

Also the tutorial is great, already started but stucked somewhere (concretely was not able to mould? the chess table pattern in the sphere :D), but maybe on the weekend will have a chance for a next run on it

Well guys this is as far as I've got with the tut. but will have ago at the next stage of inserting the chess floor image into a drawing. If you were drawing a room with walls, ceiling and floor would you see in the chrome drawing the two walls, ceiling and floor plus whatever was facing front on to the sphere? I mean like another wall with a door perhaps ? :rolleyes:

Stygg

I also tried today, but the drawing took the control over me and some not existing reflecting material came out :D

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So let's say something abstract :) That chess table pattern sure mould but still was not able to reproduce that kind of magnify effect to the middle

Those look great Stygg and csehz!
I don't have the ability to view Gare's video tute unfortuantely with my extremely slow dial-up connection. Instead I used Gare's info from his "Xara Extreme 5 The Official Guide" book (pgs 154-159) on creating chrome and created another chrome ball based on that using Xara Extreme 3.

Hi Csehz and Maya, really good efforts from both of you and Csehz I like the abstract :D From following the guide book Maya I'd say that's pretty good, I use to have the guide books but can't find any of them now. Will make an attempt at the sphere and room later to day, both of your posts will help. :D

Stygg

Maya your chrome ball and generally your drawings are so beautiful that we have to do something with that slow dial up connection :D How you will upload your Tips&Tricks tutorials to XaraXone in this way, for example how to create an eye? :-)

I also got up in the morning and just sit beside of the yesterday's abstract sphere, well it sure needs evolution :-) Maybe for the magnify effect came up with this idea to do a double mould, first a circular envelope and then a perspective

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Thanks Stygg sure you will have better luck with the chess floor

Maya do you think Csehz was giving you a hint about the eye drawing, would make a great Tips and Trick though ;)

Stygg

Thanks for the tut. Gary tried it and it looks good. I want to stay on topic here but in my job I have to use many metal gradients none of spheres but a few in chrome and many in gold. Well the gradients have piled up both used in Xara & Illy and as it is easier to save them to my swatches library in AI that's where they reside. If you think this is the place to make them available fine if not either shift or delete this post.

Albacore you are very generous to share this fill collection, really thanks and already would like to try them with some copy and paste with CTRL - SHIFT - A :)

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Originally Posted by Albacore

If you think this is the place to make them available fine if not either shift or delete this post.

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Peter, you're very welcome for the tutorial. Thank you very much for all the shiny presets, and I will leave your post here—it's relevant.

But just so no one sees the XaraXone thread on TalkGraphics as exclusive or an island, I'd appreciate it if you also gave them away on the ClipArt forum; can you just copy your link and refer it on the ClipArt area?

Here's the link

Thanks, and great work!

Gary

Thanks for your kind comments Stygg and csehz! :) I wish I had a faster connection as downloading at 3 Kb/sec and frequent connection drops makes a lot of things impossible.

Albacore -- thanks so much for sharing your gradients, those are a big help! :)

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Originally Posted by stygg2003

Well guys this is as far as I've got with the tut. but will have ago at the next stage of inserting the chess floor image into a drawing. If you were drawing a room with walls, ceiling and floor would you see in the chrome drawing the two walls, ceiling and floor plus whatever was facing front on to the sphere? I mean like another wall with a door perhaps ? :rolleyes:

Stygg

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Stygg, you're being too literal with my instructions. Don't follow my example to the letter—your reflections are a little too details, when the emphasis should be: sky at top, horizon in the centre, and ground on the bottom. There is no single formula for drawing metallic spheres, and I'd suggest you concentrate on the metallic and take a pass on doing the plastic version for the moment. I think I overwhelmed some members with Too Much Information (TMI) :(.

Let me back up and provide some more examples. I did this years ago; a chrome logo for The Administrator and me. I've attached the Xara file.

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You see, it's all about "sky on top, grounds on bottom", at least this is one tried and true visual solutions. I have a friend Rod Norman who taught me how to draw this stuff with makers in the 1970s and I'm pleased that I even came close to the work by Airbrush Genius Charles White III.

This might have been in the Xara Xtreme Official Guide; I don't recall. You can see the entire process in the attached file.

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And here's another volley of "chrome versus plastic":

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The interesting thing is that if you take the eyedropper tool and sample what appears to be the red herringbone reflection in the bottom of the green plastic sphere...it's not red, although it looks that way, doesn't it? Optical illusion: it's olive colored!


@stygg—you've demonstrated time and time again that artistically, once you "get it", you understand the essence of an artistic principle, you fly, man...you fly. So take it slow and easy with the chrome, remember "sky, horizon, and then ground", and let's see what you cook up, okay?

@ csehz-You are soon going to become a Professor at Xara Academy! (we actually registered the domain name a few months ago, but there's nothing there right now). I love your approach to the tented studio reflections!

@ Maya—I think I'm going to ask you to be the Featured Artist at XaraXone this Spring. Get your portfolio together, okay? I'm serious: you draw hit after hit like a good FM station!

My Best,

Gary

Gary, that's very kind and I'm flattered you'd consider my work, but there's so many others here who can offer far more in Xara art and techniques than I!

I won't listen to that!
Hands over ears: La-la-la-la-la....

:) Really, though, if this is about wanting the .xar files for my eye drawing, etc., I'm happy to send them to you Gare. I'm not the person to ask for tutes, as you will see, since I rarely even use layers with Xara and just "wing-it" as I build an image pretty much on the fly.

We'll take this discussion private, okay, Crow?

Thanks!

-g

+1 for Maya to be the Featured Artist once, +1 to see also tutorials from her :-)

You know Maya that eye in Art Gallery immediately made me your fan, seeing that you registered in 2001 in TG of course also clicked on your profile to look there the galleries. Searching also after past posts realized, that you are one of those vector heroes from the beginning, who drew better with Xara Xtreme and posted better in 2002, than I will with Xara Designer Pro XX in 2020 :D

So hopefully Gare will just convince you in private and neither will be technical issues. It is not about the .xar files, that eye is your copyright. And we have seen a lot of .xar files already, it is much more about your working/translating process, even would read happily a similiar interview on XaraXone with you like Ron Duke had last month.

Anyway I will try these chrome spheres yet

I agree with all Csehz said in #24 Maya, I'm definitely one of your fans after looking through your gallery, brilliant, and a tips and trick tut. would be great. Saying to Gary you'd be no good at doing one because you wing it, well that was my excuse when I did the Alien sky T&T but believe me Gary is great with guiding you through the process and never loses your particular style of delivery, believe it or not, it is enjoyable. Go for it Maya =D>

Stygg

Thanks for the file Albacore much appreciated.

Stygg

Gare, I don't mean to high-jack your video thread I just wanted to reply to:

Csehz and Stygg -- Thank you so much for all your kind words and encouragement, it means a lot, and I will get my work ready for Gare/Xara Xone. :)

good stuff guys, bookmarked

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Originally Posted by Crow Haven

Gare, I don't mean to high-jack your video thread I just wanted to reply to:

Csehz and Stygg -- Thank you so much for all your kind words and encouragement, it means a lot, and I will get my work ready for Gare/Xara Xone. :)

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Excellent Maya, looking forward to your art :D

Stygg

Hi everyone, just had a look at the two xar. files Gary posted, chrome ball and The Boutons, whoa! there's a lot going on in both of them so before I even attempt to have a go at the chrome ball, I thought I'd do the same as Francis and Csehz and make a softbox with sphere to bring me up to speed to see if I'm capable of tackling that chrome ball :rolleyes: Besides, I enjoyed making my own box and sphere :D Please forgive my Dalmatian floor ;))

Stygg

@ stygg— I almost can't think of anything I've talked about up to now that you missed, stygg. This is a dramatic improvement in concept and technique, and I knew you could do it if you just got a gentle nudge in the right general direction.

By the way, the floor looks like fun; more like a black and white version of the game "Twister" than Dalmatian!

Here's a visual suggestion, attached in XAR format, too: When light reflects, even from a highly "focused" surface, there's a law of diminishing returns going on because the atmosphere absorbs and slows down the reflected light. So even a mirror-like chrome sphere would be slightly duller than the origin of its reflections.

Another thing (sorry!) is that almost nothing in the real word is perfect. Therefore, a nearly perfect 6 foot tall chrome sphere in a room (!) would exhibit just a little ambient and/or diffuse lighting, in addition to the massive amount of specular lighting. So I gently shaded your work to make the sphere more sphere-like and less 2D, which is a natural occurrence when something is highly reflective in a somewhat sterile atmosphere.

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Oh, and as long as this might be my only post today (cheering heard throughout TalkGraphics), I might as well go for broke here: because spheres distort as a mathematical power function, the progression of a "regular" pattern on the floor will not travel linearly across the reflective surface. In PlainSpeak, the dots on the floor will be distorted somewhat like this image here, and they also will be distorted on the floor, they will not progress in an even fashion because you're looking into the room at an angle, producing a "vanishing point" for the pattern. The images probably will make more sense than my writing here. On sphere is mirror-like and then I did a slightly rough version just to show everyone an option: to slightly blur the interior of your drawing to simulate sand-blasted chrome or whatever.

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I tend to make this sort of scene deliberately asymmetrical, so the ball is a little to the left, because with a white room and a highly reflective ball, the scene just looks too perfect as a symmetrical composition, thus phoney and uninteresting.

Here's an answer to an un-asked question this month: why did Gary begin us all with reflective spheres?

A: two reasons. 1.) reflections are phenomenally complex and the simplest form to replicate is a sphere because it is predictable in its reflections. A cylinder less so, and a reflective textured surface...good luck! :)

2.) "Straight" mirror-like surfaces—planar ones—are visually boring because essentially they are a mirror. Additionally, planar reflective surfaces place a lot of limits on what is reflected to give the character to the object. A sphere distorts the surroundings, making reflected objects look bigger and smaller, and spheroids are just inherently visually interesting when they reflect their surroundings.

I did a brief animation on my YouTube channel, which I'd originally done for this month but ran out of time (no kidding, Sherlock!). Notice how boring the planar surface of the guy's body is, compared to the right detail in the spherical head.



Thanks for your work, stygg! You are a terrific student for an appreciative teacher!

My Best,

Gary

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If anyone would like to take a crack at an exceptionally weird floor pattern, this is all vector.

My Best,

Gary

Thanks for the feedback Gary and all the measures I need to do to make the image less clinical, I agree it looks more realistic with the changes and thanks for the files, will implement them into my drawing, also the extra information on layout of this type of image, much appreciated.

Stygg

Reduced the size of the 6ft sphere, which reminded me of the giant glass Egg did a while ago and used the Xara Offices in England as the background.:D Anyway shrunk it down and implemented the changes Gary had shown and I think it looks better for it:rolleyes:

Stygg

I think that looks great, stygg, and I recommend you put it in your gallery!

My Best,

Gary

P.S. I know that the Xara Group offices have a snooker table. Details, details...

Gare thanks for that vector pattern, it reminds me to the camouflage pattern which Bob showed once on XaraXone.

Stygg you are so diligant I always admire that, sorry just for one comment as tried to count the dalmatians in your room and realized that if there are 7 spots in one line then how the reflections have 12 :D But if it is abstract then okay and sure somehow the 101 come out once :D

Your absolutely right Csehz I never noticed I had 12, not so diligent after all! I was to busy trying to get the mold into the sphere but I'll settle for what you say, it's abstract, well that's my excuse! :D

Stygg

Ignore Csehz, stygg!

If you're short a few dots, I can help, here:

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@Csehz: Ignore stygg. :) There, you're all set.

Seriously: that pattern you think looks like camouflage was originally a bitmap that did not seamlessly tile. I sort of fixed it in Photoshop, but some of the edges became unacceptably blurry. So I went through all this to bring you the silly pattern:

I used the Threshold command To make the thing black or white.

I used Vector Magic to auto-trace the result. Which took several tries because any Threshold command is going to produce aliasing which any auto-tracer interprets as unwanted jaggy lines.

I imported it as a PDF to Xara where I manually did a few things. you'll see that this is a Clip Shape, hiding areas of the smaller pieces that didn't perfectly align to the edges.

Ah, it's all a labor of love.

My Best,

Gary

@ Csehz, since you pointed out there was 12 shapes in the sphere mold and seven in the box floor its been driving me mad :D so I've altered it and now there are seven, but this time after making the sphere floor mold I made a bit map copy of it, made a mask and blurred the two top rows then clip viewed the lot and gave it a little more blur plus the trans. ellipse on top Gary suggested to make it less 2D. I've not got round to doing the pie chart yet so think I'll attempt that next and then back to a black sphere and shadow Gary posted a while back, it's really good so will attempt that. Your never stuck for work in the Xone :D

Stygg

Sorry guys meant to post this in #39, I think the sphere looks better off centre, less clinical.

Apologies Stygg