Challenge #746 Voting CLOSED

This week’s theme: Natural crystals

After 2 days of voting, a winner is declared: The voting will close on Wednesday.
The winner picks the theme for next week.

[ If the winner doesn’t supply a theme before Thursday 22:30 GMT, the organizer will select the theme. In this case, the winner’s theme will be used the next time we are lacking a theme on Thursday 22:30 GMT. :slight_smile: ]

Having selected the theme, the winner will not be eligible to enter that week. They may however still submit an image, but it won’t be included in the voting.

Pure Entries

  • didierv
    Ice crystals on a branch
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=500874&thumb=1

  • joshwinkler3d
    Cave of Glowing Crystals
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=500981&thumb=1

  • RayVelcoro
    Scarlet Andara Crystal
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501006&thumb=1

  • MACEPRODUCTIONS
    Crystal11
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501005&thumb=1

  • PyBlend
    Programmer Art
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501057&thumb=1

  • yashwanthCB
    pre3
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501021&thumb=1

  • astiero
    Kida
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501092&thumb=1

  • KyleSan
    Found it, Kupo!
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501100&thumb=1

  • Fulip
    kristal
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501115&thumb=1

  • Sci-fi-Guy
    Cave of Crystals
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501166&thumb=1

  • Millani
    Kaboomtonite
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501167&thumb=1

  • paddywwoof
    natural_crystals
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501173&thumb=1

  • fdo
    crystal cave
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501175&thumb=1

  • mattthecat
    The Turtle
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501176&thumb=1

  • purbosky
    Hatchery
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501177&thumb=1

  • david.speer
    Fluorite Islands
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501188&thumb=1

  • FlyingBanana
    Look at the pretties
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501197&thumb=1

  • usernew
    Crystal
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501201&thumb=1

  • skadoosh
    (Philo)Sophie’s Heart
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501221&thumb=1

  • robproctor83
    ba-crystal-final
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501225&thumb=1

  • fcharr
    Cavern
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501226&thumb=1

  • M2o
    v1_ok
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501234&thumb=1

  • Photox
    The Great Monopoly Heist
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501243&thumb=1

  • bazevedo
    Professor Farnsworth’s Healing Crystals
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501244&thumb=1

  • DM9
    Chrizzy
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=500991&thumb=1

  • Mastermind!
    Crystals
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501259&thumb=1

  • BladeManEXE
    Flame Sword
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501194&thumb=1

  • NadirP
    Amulet
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501267&thumb=1

  • str11
    Amethyst Crystals
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501274&thumb=1

  • Miatpi
    Rough diamond
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501277&thumb=1

  • NATIVO
    renderFinal
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501278&thumb=1

  • appie.123
    Lost crystal
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501172&thumb=1

Open Entries

  • caz747
    It’s cold outside.
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501245&thumb=1

Non-competing Entries

  • DM9
    Cover B
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=500993&thumb=1

  • OLG
    Alien crystal hive
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501014&thumb=1

https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501015&thumb=1https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501059&thumb=1https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501128&thumb=1***

  • RobertT
    AGATOID
    http://www.artofinterpretation.com/images4/wc746-thumbnail-byrjt2017.jpg

  • Helge
    The Gemcutter
    https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=501184&thumb=1

cast my vote!

Great entries everyone!
And we have new entry records (again):

New 2017 records:
Total entries: 40 (#746 “Natural crystals”, theme by HIST0R)
Competing entries: 33 (#746 “Natural crystals”, theme by HIST0R)

Still standing:
Non-Competing entries: 7 (#732 “City Lights”, theme by Photox)

Nice!

Ooh I see I made a mistake,
I said that my image was open, but it is of course pure despite the Ivygen used.
A well… doesn’t really matter I guess

Does anyone have any criticism or points for improvement for me btw?

Changed. :slight_smile:

I hope you don’t mind, and since you have been asking, I thought I’d give it a (rather quick) try:



Things I touched: framing, contrast, saturation, vignetting, crystal lightness, a little (probably too much) halo.

I tried to force the focus onto the crystal a little more and to enhance the kind of magical atmosphere of your cave. It must be quite a sight if you walk around the corner, exploring, and discover this spot.

(If you plan to remove/steal the crystal from the cave, Id suggest to replace it with something of equal weight - and run like hell.)

As someone already said the quality of the entries has skyrocked! Acouple of months ago I won with that flying teapot, I doubt I would have any votes now :stuck_out_tongue:

Some might argue that the focus of my entry was the sword and not the crystals.

…Carbon steel is a crystal.

But is it a natural crystal :slight_smile: ?

@Miatpi I wanted to comment on your entry, I think it’s really awesome. I definitely think your getting better with each entry too, but this last one is really cool. I like the spark effect too, very good. The crystal shader and the motion blur on the hammer are also both very good. My only real critique would be the bottom of the hammer, not sure what is going on there. That black plastic looking gear thing is what I am referring to, what is going on there? Your background is also a bt bare, but I like that you added a touch of atmospheric lighting, so I think it works well, you also picked a good color/gradient for it. So yea, very cool. I’d be interested in hearing how you made those sparks if you got a minute and don’t mind divulging your secrets.

Oh one more thing, I was talking about the challenge with a co-worker and he mentioned that I should have done a bismuth crystal, have you guys seen this before? It’s really cool so I figured I would see what I could come up with so last night I tried to create a shader for it but no luck. After some research and digging I wasn’t able to find anything.

Do you guys have any thoughts on how to create an iridescent materials? I tried a bunch of tutorials blend examples but I only found stuff for light colors and soap bubbles.

I’m looking for something like this


try this thread

My vote went to photox “Monopoly heist” … The image is still too funny and apart from that also a very well done scene and rendering.

@robproctor - I believe the “hammer” in Miatpis image is a rotary tool in the process of cutting the facets into a diamond.

Wow, that looks a lot better.
Thanks for actually taking the time to help me out.

The halo and glow effects really add tot the atmosphere, could you show me the node setup you used? Or didn’t you use blender for this?

@robproctor83: Thank you very much for the feedback, which I must say is suprisingly positive. :eek:
To be honest I got a little lazy with this one and kind of threw it all together… so cool that you liked it.

Yeah about the sparks, they are actually quite simple to do. It’s a particle system blowing particles around, rendered with a motion blur to make them all appear like streaks.
The particles are spheres with this material:


Really all nice jobs! :yes:

Correct! :smiley:

I do like ur entry Miatpi, it got my vote!

Thank you! :smiley:

Wow, it must be the third time in the last few weeks that we broke the record on the number of entries. And it seems to be growing quite fast. Soon we will be needing tiers :stuck_out_tongue: