A 3D modeling Challenge

[Gare]

Cinema 4D. It really hurts my brain, with millions of options

If you'd like, Egg, I use C4D, and if you'd care to pass the file along to me, I'll see what I could do to make it easier for you.

It took me a good decade to become proficient with a very feature-filled program, BTW, to help you with perspective, man.

If you're interested, PM me and I'll send you a private email address that can take files as attachments.

-g

[Egg Bramhill]

Cheers Gary, it's no big deal, just trying to get back into 3D software. What can be acheived is amazing but a never ending learning curve.

However if you, or any other member, would like to work on the file & show what's possible that would be fine by me

LINK

[Gare]

Cheers Gary, it's no big deal, just trying to get back into 3D software. What can be acheived is amazing but a never ending learning curve.

However if you, or any other member, would like to work on the file & show what's possible that would be fine by me :)

Hi Egg,

I opened your file and snooped around. I can offer you a number of suggestions to get a better render...your modeling work is fine...but I don't think I can send it back to you with enhancements because I don't know what version of C4D you use, and the versions are not backward compatible and I use Rev 17.

The good news is: tell me what version you use, and I still have something like version 10 and up on my machine, so I might be able to match your version and send you an enhanced file. Or we can communicate via PMs. I don't want to say anything accidentally on tg that might make critiquing your work less than comfortable.

My Best,

Gary

Edit: I see it's a version 15. Okay, I can work on the file!

Here's a little glitz applied to your modeling, Eric:

[Egg Bramhill]

Excellent. R15 Gary.

I don't want to say anything accidentally on tg that might make critiquing your work less than comfortable.

Critque away Gary. I'm just a novice & hobbyist, never professing to being a graphic artist.

[Gare]

Hi, Eric—

I'm up to my ears in work right now, the exact opposite of the remaining 46 weeks of the year!—so please let me make recommendations rather than criticism (positive, not negative criticism) you can indeed learn from. Bear in mind that I don not teach Xara, I do not teach Photoshop...I teach Art, and Art has rules and priciples that you can freely ignore once you become proficient as a practioner. I'll try to post a file you can work with, and an example render on Wednesday ot Thursday.

I can’t find the install disks for version 15 right now, so I can’t really send it back several versions, and if I save in v17, I don’t think you’ll be able to open it.

Let me instead spin some observations you might adopt to get better results with the tg logo.

• Set up a camera. By doing this, you have a reference point you can come back to. Set up a camera, and then use the Default camera for fixing stuff around the scene. Then come back and render from your in-scene camera.

• Play around with using lights, and also using Global Illumination along with a Sky that has an HDR texture, then set up Global Illumination in the Render boxes. You used three point lights, none of them with shadows, so the scene looks a little “flat” without shading cascading over the shapes. Experiment with different lights, the Area Light perhaps will yield the most photorealistic results.

• In the scene, on the Materials panel, choose Create>Load Material Preset>Prime>Glass. I noticed that you have some semi transparent materials used, but you’ll get better results by using presets and working to understand what makes up a material in your spare time. Semi-transparent materials have sub-surface scattering, an index of reflection/refraction, and blending modes for a lot of the other parameters. Not to discourage you!

• If you want rounded caps instead of 90 degree beveled ones, choose Convex, set the number of steps high, and the distance low. That might give you nicer highlights.

• I put a glow on the material you used for “Graphics” because it’s black, the floor is black-> the word didn’t separate.
• Although it’s fallen out of popularity for the while, reflective floors can make your subjects look neater, especially if you put a bump on the reflective floor material, breaking up the reflection.

Eric, before you do a whit more modeling, you need to understand that what makes modeling something people look at over and over, is the simulation of reality on some level. That’s what illustrations by Ron Duke, Gary Priester, Rik Datta, and others are so remarkable to see—they all have profoundly accurate elements of photorealism in them.

Let’s limit ourselves to four inter-related areas of examination and perhaps study.

• The objects in the scene. Okay, you can have only one object in the scene (including a floor so make it two objects), and although it might not be visually interesting by itself, the other three areas can dress it up so it looks positively glamorous. So do extrudes of any path you like, but now? Pose them, so they are a little asymmetrical. Lined up stuff with less than a three-point perspective is not very visually interesting. Take some liberties with the Talk Graphics logo. Whoever designed it did a good job, but it’s celebrating its 50th anniversary this month. Tilt the letters, make them face each other just a little, make it interesting to see based on irregularities. Asymmetrical is always more interesting than symmetrical. Make your model something that MAGIX will want to use.

• The camera-The camera goes hand in hand with the pose of the object(s) in the scene. What you cannot accomplish with your object, often you ca do with a camera. Make the camera fish-ye, or make it looking down into the scene so both the object and the ground are visible. You can do in 3D with a virtual camera what you cannot do with a real camera in the real world. Trust me. Actually, if you learn about camera poses and use them as key frames, you can animate your objects, save them as an AVI or something.

• Lights and lighting. Lighting can hide or reveal stuff in a scene, especially if you have some type of shadows turned on. You can use backlighting to create drama (or a Donald Trump entrance), or overhead spot lighting to isolate one object in a scene. Lighting has a direct impact on your objects, vis a vis the final rendered scene.

• Materials. Materials have an influence on the surface of objects (especially if you use the Displace deformer along with a good bump map), they respond to lighting if you put a transparent skin on the object, and the combination of object, material, and lighting really sets the tone of your scene.

All of these guys have an impact on the scene and on each other. As a musical conductor, don’t concern yourself about how the soloist plays. Concentrate on the sound of the entire quartet and how they work together, you know?

I’ve been a PITA for all too long! I’m signing out, need to get paying work done!

Best of luck, Eric.

Gary

[Mike Bailey]

GP's August 2010 tutorial.

[Albacore]

I had to join in on this thread as it's so good! The only thing is I don't have a 3D modelling programme on H/disc bar sketchup and it's a bit poor on rendering. So what could I use? well I have got Xara, don't like to use that as it not vector, the only other thing I could use is Illustrator. To keep the tutorial theme going I looked at some of GB's and GWP's tutorials and tried to fit one into Illy. I picked 2 and started on one and thought this is not showing Illy's best feature which is mapping art work on a 3D object so looked for a tutorial for Illy.

Did a search and found this easy one that does show AI's best feature. The hardest part was the background everything else was easy. Sorry to spoil the thread with an Illy tut.

[Gare]

Ack!

Peter, the next time you want to do a book in 3D, now that you've honored Deke, can you please honor a fellow Xarist?

One of Bouton's books? Please? Please?


;)

I'm kiddinig, mostly.

Your illustration is very clean and dimensional. Congrats!

My Best,

Gary

[Mike Bailey]

Peter, I like the Tiki God in the Illystration. Sketchup is a nice modeler that is easy to use as well, there are a lot of extensions that add functionality to the program. If you make a model with it you don't have to render, a Sketchup drawing or a screen grab is fine.
https://extensions.sketchup.com/en/c...tools-freeware
https://extensions.sketchup.com/

[ss-kalm]

... I don't have a 3D modelling programme on H/disc bar sketchup and it's a bit poor on rendering ...

Peter, Kerkythea FREE works well as a rendering engine for Sketchup - Have a look at this thread ... http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...thea-Rendering