A Square Peg to Create a Round Hole.

Posted on August 17, 2014 by SusanG

The salt and pepper shakers were a little different to model. I am not sure I did it most efficiently. I did it the way I knew I could make it work.

What I knew I wanted was to have holes on the top. Actual holes, not just a texture of them. Of course that all by itself would have been a challenge since I have not ventured near UV maps yet. Back to my holes.

I figured out that if I used small square shaped cavities and did not add extra edge loops then I should be able to get round looking holes.

Because I wanted to use square shapes on the top I decided using a cylinder would not work very well for me. Instead I created a tall box. By using the box I could add edge loops so that I had the spaces for the holes on top and the I could extruded them into the object.

This all actually worked out pretty well for the most part. It got me the holes I wanted when I applied the turbosmooth modifier. Unfortunately it left the objects still relatively square shaped instead of round. As a result, to get that worked out, I spent quite a bit of time tweaking and fiddling with some of the edges to move them around enough to make the objects rounder.

As much time as I spent on the tweaking, I was smart about it and only did it to one of the shakers. I created the one block and did all the modeling right up to being ready to create my holes on top. Once everything else was done then I copied the item. For the holes on top I went with a concept that I have seen in real life and that is, that the only thing that differentiates the salt from the pepper, as far as the shakers are concerned is the number of holes in the top.
Salt and Pepper shakersSo here are the salt and pepper shakers without texture.

 

 

 

 

Salt and Pepper Shakers and Candle holder
And here they are once I decided on a texture for them. As you can see, I also changed the material for the candle holder.

 

 

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Lights That Look Like Lights

Posted on August 14, 2014 by SusanG

I got the brilliant idea that I wanted to see a street light through the window. Then as I tried to get it to look just right I started to wonder just how brilliant that idea was.

Modeling it was challenging enough. I don’t have any interesting street lights near me for reference, though I did go outside and look at how they stood in relation to the height of my building. So the style of the street light, may or may not be something that exists. I mostly took bits of ideas and put them together. Lots of edge loops.

My biggest challenge was not in getting it to cast luminencense. I could do that. I just put an omni light inside the globe and gave it a near transparent frosted look. However, when I rendered it, it didn’t look like it was providing light of any kind. The globe looked dull.

Street Light

 
I had to find a material that was self illuminating to get it to look like it was a light that was on.

 

 

 

Once I got a self illuminating material the trick was to set the lumes just right so it wasn’t too bright or too dark.

Street Light Lit

 
I suspect as I learn more about materials and lights that I will find a better way to do this. For now I’ve learned that if I want my light to look lit and provide texture to the scene as well as provide actual light as a light source, then I need a self illuminated material as well as an actual light source.

 

When I went to do the ceiling light, I had learned this already and it was much easier.

Ceiling Light Lit

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PointPusher – Danny Williams

Posted on August 12, 2014 by SusanG

One of the highlights of the Zbrush Summit was the presentation by artist Danny Williams.

He has a really great, relaxed style. He is a good teacher. Inspiring and informative and really into learning how to do things as well as showing others how to do things.

And his art is cool too! Check out his site at: http://pointpusher.artstation.com/ and check the Pixologic site for a little more information about him:  http://pixologic.com/summit/presenters/#williams

 

 

 

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Zbrush Summit — Good Job Pixologic

Posted on August 11, 2014 by SusanG

This past weekend Pixologic held the first ever Zbrush Summit and it was free. It was also really awesome.

There were a lot of really great presenters, from a variety of industries, with some great stories and techniques. The talent was amazing. And some of the information and instruction that was passed on was just excellent. There are not enough superlatives to adequately convey what a benefit this summit was to those that are working with or learning or trying to learn to use Zbrush, or are trying to get into a number of industries
that utilize Zbrush. And I am sure that there are many people comforted by the knowledge that they are not the only ones who have to get over the stage where the work they produce just isn’t as good as what they usually create in other mediums.

Each of the days of the summit Pixologic tantalized everyone with a peak at the new release coming out, hopefully soon. They demonstrated some cool looking new tools and toys that will be in the next release. And they showed off the new Zbrush to Key Shot bridge that they have been working on with Luxion. There are so many great new
tools in the next release that other companies would have released it as a complete new version number. Not only is Pixologic only increasing the release number, so the new Zbrush will be Zbrush 4r7, it will also be free to those who have 4r6. That is truly cool! And that Zbrush to Keyshot bridge, they are planning an introductory price on it when 4r7 comes out.

A couple of little tidbits on Zbrush 4r7. It will be the last 32-bit release of Zbrush. They are also releasing a 64-bit version of it and the public beta will be available either at the time of release of 4r7 or shortly after. The demonstrations from Pixologic were of the 64-bit version and it looks good.

If you want more on the summit or the new release of Zbrush, Zbrush 4r7, then head on over to Zbrush Central at Pixologic.com.

Pixologic, you did a great job. Thanks for having the first ever Zbrush Summit and for the Live Stream of it the whole weekend. Here’s hoping you do it again.

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New Renderers – Wow.

Posted on August 11, 2014 by SusanG

I thought, when I first started this project that I had setup the nVidia mental ray renderer to be my default renderer. Apparently I did not.

I figured out that I hadn’t when looking at some of the renders I had done to show friends, family, and you lovely people, what I have been working on. I was disappointed in the renders because the edges of the objects and the shadows looked so jagged.

So I went back into my render settings and fiddled around a bit until I finally found something that would let me set my renderer. I selected what looked like what I wanted, and I would tell you what that is except that something is rendering right now and I can’t look. When I finally selected the right thing in the right spot a bunch of setting options changed. I decided to give it a go and render what I was looking at on the screen and see if there was a difference.

Oh wow!

There was a definite difference. Edges were smoother, shadows better and materials look better too.
So here is the cup from when I first started this.
Square dishes on table with omni light

 

 

 

 

 

And here is the cup now.

Square Cup

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will admit, I was too lazy to figure out how to render just the cup, without all the other components, just for this post. If I had you might not have been able to see the difference as clearly.

Changing the renderer increased resolution and polish and caused an increase in file size when I save the renders as well as an increase in render times. I went from just a few seconds to render a single frame, to a minute, 2 minutes, 6 minutes, I recently had a render that took 13.5 minutes. The initial increase in time was just due to the new renderer, however, as the project has developed and I have added more items to the scene, and more materials, and fiddled with the lights, the render time has also increased.

I have learned that the renderer makes a huge differnce in the quality of the output.

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