Hopefully ...!

long rotation phone from acorn on Vimeo.

I think,

I hope this is the final 2 renders

clay render from acorn on Vimeo.

new work

More...
a clay rotation and another high res- one.

This project appears to be drawing to a close.

Clay render loop from acorn on Vimeo.

stuff to mention.. another time, I'll post the other render too then.

~progress~

clean render... still some problems, this morning.

lots to talk about, some progress; about the setup I mentioned in the previous post, here is a texture decal render.




The concept is to have two or three planes orthogonal to their respective face on the object to model. In this way you can place reference images on the planes as a texture. You can then orbit around the object with the reference images and align them much easier.

On another note; the issue with importing and exporting seems to be coming along well...
these images are the imported obj mesh, this seems to be a good format for the export/import scenario. It seems to be a very common format ( I think it is a 'lightwave' obj). Regardless it seems to be common.


Aside from that, we have, at the top of the post, images of the base mesh (un-sub-dee'd). Five of them.

All and all coming along well...

from scratch

more work.... started from scratch again.
Rather than use the rotoscope method I used crossing planes ( will post later).
Anyway, I got better results for the holes and such but I am still getting errors.



More to mention but I am tired.

~progress?

continuing with the revamped phone, I've gotten further with this one than the previous one although there are some issues with rounding that I don't want. I have watched a video of someone
modeling a phone where they controlled the 'tightness' of the edges with additional edges. This is what I have been trying to do. BUT; they where working in MAX and this is softimage.


I think that in softimage, it is preferable to use hard
edges with "mark hard edges", but I want to
export this to various formats for turbosquid...
so I am trying to make the model as simple and portable as possible.

...backwards...

Oh well.

redid,

looks worse, aside from the proportions.. I think

some rough materials

UPDATE


...................................................................................................................

did some more cleanup and refinement of the mesh, working out the kinks of measuring in real-->3d, used an image to get the primary size and shape and now measuring (with a vernier caliper) to get the size of the phone.

The silver trim is made with a incidence in the shiny port of a modified phong shader (preset manager - a grey plastic). The black plastic on the bottom is made with the same material I used for the buttons. I modeled the ridges in the middle button,
rather than try to do them with a texture/bump map, although I think I will do that for the rest of the rough/textured surfaces on the phone.

more phone

another bit of update. :>


more work, got close to finished with the keypad.

cell phone --current

more work on my current cell phone, getting better

This took me about today to build...
I struggled with the holes and hard edged deformations. This is at Geometry Approximation; render level 2, no automatic discontinuity*. I read in the manual that it is more efficient. Not sure why but, to me, it seems obvious that if its always smooth it will be better.

vestibule

been working on this vestibule again, getting really clean renders. started working on the ceiling, on the wood planks, its a knotty pine. The key with the clean render seems to be the sampling contrast in the anti-aliasing settings- below .05 -.

back to the vestibule

I've been working on the octagon room again, getting closer to finishing- much better at working with final gathering. Recently worked on the wood for the room.

a plank with the wood that I've been working on,


Looking at it as just a plank, I think it still needs some work, but in the room it was getting there.




The doors and moldings have supports and projections

Many things in this room are coming together... as I'm having some realizations about working on it. One thing I should mention is freezing the final gathering map ( the setting 'Only use FG points from file') under Map Settings. This allows you to render much faster. So I was under the delusion that I could apply the wood texture without a projection/support, and spent alot of time getting the wood to look right. Finally I put on a projection and support and the wood looked alot better. I was reluctant because of all the texture supports I would have in the scene, it would be messy.

I have yet to get into the details of the doors and put separate supports for the cross pieces as opposed to the vertical.


I have to say, the FG-Phys.Sun/Sky-PhotoExposure-arch_material combination is great lighting.


...

some stuff -- getting more prof. look

some work on the cell phone using new ideas/techiniques.
added name bitmap to the improved phone. The improvements have yet to be finalized by welding together so there is a clear seam. Altogether though I feel better about this process.

measuring in softimage ---

I found out a neat trick today.







to measure in softimage its as easy as;

getting two nulls, putting a distance constraint on one to the other,(press shift s {softimage interaction model}) open the camera visability options, turn on relations info... to change the distance with the transforms you need to press CnsComp (constraint compensation) and, obviously, you can snap the null although snapping is a bit awkward because you can only snap the null that has been constrained to.

I am using cm as the units because its base 10 and Si seems to have its measurements in base 10. Its easy enough, though, to get a conversion @ google: "inches to cm"
groooovy.

can opener

More work on simple stuff, although I am getting better at making clean products, not to say meshes. So I parented all the parts and moved the centers with "modify object pivot" on. Had to put on "child compensation" because I had already parented the parts. To most people this would seem altogether trivial, although I am doing it cleaner and cleaner. This is vital to being able to sell a product without complaints,I think. To the left is a still from the capture(png) that I am uploading to youtube right now. In the image is an extra (what I'm calling the key of the can-opener) handle that is a subdivided version of the one that is actually on the can-opener.


Here's the video from YouTube,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCH4R4Bak9g

Knife----->turbo squid

finally put something up for sale

PHYMATEUS wing...

Before and after shots, rather, beginning and close to end-
painted in GIMP, using paths to make the streaks or bands. Really like the way it came out, the image on the right is for comparison.


I then layered blue underneath for the contrasting stripes.

the next challenge is to get the stippling right; the subtle degradation of yellow into blue/green.
You can see the green wash in the above image that is the start of that coloration but I'm not sure how to achieve the look on the grasshopper.

PHYMATEUS nymph

Some progress on the grasshopper, a rotation
rendered in HD
some progress on the painting of the textures