A Start at Materials

Posted on July 18, 2014 by SusanG

I decided that things were looking a little to plain when I rendered them for review. And, once I stacked the dishes, I was afraid they would be difficult to differentiate. To fix this I decided to add some more interesting materials to the dishes. Then I realised they were still pretty boring just floating in space so I added a surface for the dishes to sit on.

Adding the surface for everything to sit on gives a bit more spatial reference. Of course it needed some sort of interesting material as well. I didn’t want just a basic material. I wanted something with a little more detail to it. So I tried adding a map to the material I chose. I wanted the tile to not just show the texture appearance, I also wanted the difference in colors. I was able to plug the texture into the bump map slot for the material and it would show like it had the grooves for the grout and the tile was raised. But I couldn’t get the color to show. I tried applying the color on the material, but that wasn’t working. I could get the colors to show in the texture component (the map). I couldn’t get the colors to flow through onto the component. I finally plugged the same texture (map), with the coloring into both the bump map slot and the diffuse color slot. Finally, I got what I wanted.

4 piece square dinner setting

 

 
It probably isn’t the correct way to do that. It worked though. So I’m going with it for now. It think it looks cool.

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I Finally Committed

Posted on July 12, 2014 by SusanG

I interrupt my normal schedule of posts to inform you of something I meant to tell you about earlier in the week.

I have finally committed.

No, I have not been committed. Which is how my co-worker chose to read that statement when I shared this news with him.

I have committed to the 3D modeling software I want to use and I am no longer using a trial copy of anything. I have signed up for my subscription to 3DS Max!

Yes, those of you who have been following the saga of my trying to decide on software will likely be very happy that that issue is resolved. Going forward you, hopefully will be getting many more posts on what I’m creating with 3DS Max and the experience of using the software instead of me pondering over which software is better.

At the same time I signed up for a subscription to Mudbox. Don’t worry, I still have my trusty and wicked powerful Zbrush 4R6 and will still be using it as need or desire arises. I just like some of the additional or different tools in Mudbox and at $10 a month I thought it worth the investment.

I thought, since you have been so patient with my mulling over the software problem that I would reward you with a look at the dishes project a little farther along from the last post so you have an idea of where it might be going. And no, it’s still not done.

Dishes on table in front of window with light outside window

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Now for the Plate

Posted on July 11, 2014 by SusanG

Once I cleaned up the corners on the bowl I had a bit less trouble with the plate. Mostly it was a matter of taking a copy of the bowl and then scaling the height down and scaling it out wider in both directions. Not too much trouble. Except, I still had some odd folds in the lip of the plate.

This time the folds were more do to a few too many of the edge loops. I removed one or two more and that tidied things up. I’m still getting some odd shadows in my perspective window but when I render they tend to go away so I’m not sure what is really happening there.

Square cup, bowl and plate
Here I have the three pieces modeled so you can have a look. I’m just rendering with the default lighting and a soft sort of bisque type color material.

 

 

 

4 piece square dinner setting

Here I have the second plate modeled and I have stacked the dishes and arranged them as if for a fancy table. I also created a table top to put everything on to get some context. I adjusted the color of a couple of the pieces to get some contrast so they are more distinct.

 

 

In another post I will discuss trying to get the materials to work as I wanted.

 

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A Little Further in 3ds Max

Posted on July 3, 2014 by SusanG

When we left off I told you about my really basic, square shaped cup that I modeled in 3ds Max. And that I had chosen to leave the corners as they were even though I knew it wasn’t correct. I also acknowledged that this would cause a problem later.

Because I placed my edge loops so close to the corners, for stylistic reasons, when I applied turbosmooth I had a bit of bunching and the corners ended up raised. I like this in the cup. And for the cup it’s fine. Where it became a problem was when I went to create the bowl. In the interest of efficiency and scale, I decided the best way to make the bowl was going to be to base it off the cup. A bit of scaling up to make it wider and down to make it shorter and then pull the edges out to give it a wide lip. Sounds easy enough. And for the most part it was. Cool.

Then I tried a render and something was off around the edges of the lip. I was getting these funny folds. I did not save a render of this. I know it would have helped you understand what I’m saying. Anyway, these folders were annoying. I had applied turbosmooth so maybe that was it. Honestly this all by itself was an issue.

Apparently I had not been paying close enough attention when watching the modeling tutorials. I had missed the part where when the instructor went to edit something after applying turbosmooth, the specifically clicked back on the editable poly item in the modify list. This is really important, really important. It turns out if you don’t do this and then you try to make changes you can end up with an additional editable poly item and a really big mess. I suppose there may be advanced methods where this is exactly what you want to do. Trust me, for this, it was not. This is something I keep forgetting so I think I will have to have it tattooed on my brain, or the backside of my eyelids.

Back to the corners of the cup or better yet the lip of the bowl. What I decided to do was to take off the turbosmooth and have another look. I could see how the corners were sort of angled up in a bit of a bunch, sort of like a knot. Or like the corner on a hem of say a cloth napkin. My solution was to spend the time to adjust each of the vertices around the entire lip of the bowl to even everything out. I think I may even have removed an edge loop to make a bit more space for the existing loops that I had. It was tedious work and as I’m just getting started there may have been a better way of doing this. For now it gets the results I want.

So have a look at the cup and bowl together.

3d cup and bowl

 

 

 

 

 

 

My plan is to create a small, salad plate and a larger dinner plate as well. I should be able to use the bowl to make the first one and then the small plate to make the larger one.

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Getting Started in 3ds Max

Posted on June 27, 2014 by SusanG

Now that all the detailed narrative of me choosing software, trying to make things with it, and all that has been covered, and is out of the way, let’s get down to the more interesting stuff.

For my first item to model I decided to go with something out of a basic shape. I have these small coffee cups that are sort of flared, a bit like a squashed upside down cone. They are round and have a handle which I decided might be a bit much on a first attempt. I do much better when I can see positive results fairly quickly, even if it is relatively basic.

So instead of going for round and a handle I chose to create a square-ish shaped cup/glass sort of thing and see how it would go.

The cup worked out pretty good. I had a little trouble at first getting the center extruded in and then finding the edge loop option. As you can see, my corners bunched up a bit and so are a little higher than the rim. I chose to leave then like that as I felt it made the cup more interesting. It would however become and issue a little later.

3D model of square like cup

So here it is, my square cup in 3ds Max.

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