Here is the first render of my Yamaha acoustic guitar - yes it’s a lefty. I will be posting another render soon. As I’m posting this I’m noticing the high e string is way too thick. But other than that, please tear it apart!
looks good, but change the wood textures and the wood material. Make it more glossy. Currently it looks like sharp wood and there are no such guitars. 
tear it apart? ok:
- the wood tex is too sharp like aras said
- the ring around the hole in the guitar looks like metal, which i dont think guitars have
- the scratchy pad or whatever you call the plastic part where the pick hits has a wierd texture, usually they are just black, but then again i havent seen your guitar
- on the bridge by the G string there is something funky
- the twekaing nobs look too far down the neck of the guitar, but i think this is because of the angle, so i would give a more flat-on view
- the DoF is a bit much, which is a bummer because the bridge looks very detailed but its so blurred that you cant really tell
- around the neck there is a light brown strip, which looks too much like plastic, but then again the real one might have that too
modeling, especially around the bridge, though, is AWESOME!! but one last thing: in the second pic, you see ‘YAMAHA’ printed on the head of the guitar, but wouldnt it also have the logo?
1.wood isnt glossy enough.
2.the inner ring has the same texture, and seems too rounded.
3.too much visual effects to see the guitar itself good.
f3l1x, point 3, thats normal to have a texture instead of black
is this your guitar? now i see where the logo is, pardon that crit [about the logo missing]
if it is, the wood tex needs to be much less scratched up, and the scratchy pad needs to be even more messed up. also, you can delete the metal ring around the hole and replace it with a thin stripe. other than that spot on! i would love to see a raw render of the guitar with a view like the reference.
source: google
looks good, but change the wood textures and the wood material. Make it more glossy.
Agree,better wood textures would be greatly helpful for improving this work.
It is a very good start, but there a few things that draw my attention.
First, as others have stated, the wood texture on the soundboard could use some attention. While most acoustics have a glossy finish, not all do, my Larrivee has a satin matte finish, but even without the gloss it doesn’t look near as rough as your wood. Probably just need to tweak the shaders a bit.
The rosette looks way to shiny. Even if your guitar has a rosette that shiny it may be worth it to substitute a more traditional appearing rosette for your render.
The tortoise shell pick guard looks ok in my opinion although the depth of field kind of obscures the pattern, however it doesn’t appear to have much thickness to it, could just be lighting, but it looks painted on almost. Also lowering the dof will show the compensated saddle a bit more, getting rid of the weird reflection near the G string.
Neck binding and frets look ok, though the spacing my be a tad off in spots. Gap seems a bit wide between the 14th & 15th, and 18th & 19th rets (but that is getting really picky)
Now with the minor stuff out of the way the two biggies I see is the fingerboard is slightly elevated above the sound board. I don’t think I’ve seen one with a gap like that before (I pulled mine out to be sure and it’s tight). And the other is up on the headstock and neck joint your nut appears to be elevated above the headstock. The headstock is curved back, which is normal, but the fingerboard and nut should not be floating up in the air like that.
Other than that I like how the headstock area turned out. I might have chosen a different environment image though.
All in all a great start, and I anticipate a great finish when you get it done. Way better than I can do. My critiques are just based on 30 years of playing.
Good luck and keep at it.
Thanks alot for the detailed feedback. To be honest I didn’t even notice the floating fingerboard and nut. Also Im struggling to figure out a good background and environment image. What would you do if it were your project?
Also, the weird reflection on the bridge at the G string is just due to its shape like this picture below. Although I realize I reversed the angle fo the bridge on the wrong string. It should be the B string
Attachments
Here is a more straight on view. I went a little overboard with the contrast on the wood texture
Attachments
DonCrone,
As for the choice of an environment texture I will leave that up to yourself or others. Your 3D skills are way above mine. My critique of the original is with it being an outside image and the angle of the render and all it looks like the guitar is just hanging out in mid air. But the color and reflections are nice.
One more think I noticed with the front view is the grain pattern on the wood for the soundboard has a repetitive pattern to it, while on most guitars the soundboard will be “bookended”, which means cut down the middle and one side flipped so the upper and lower sections will be mirror images.
And with the front image i can now see the compensation on the saddle is on the incorrect string as you point out.
i would say fix the few things mentioned and try rendering again with a little dof and you will have a nice product.
Here’s an update. Shinier wood texture, different hdr, some more detail inside the sound hole. what do you think?
Looking very good! I do think it could use more lights to bring out the glossiness of the wood (in some places).
the texture is still too rough (but it looks a lot better). look at the reference! there is almost no contrast. the “beam” inside the sound hole really added i think though.
but i think the colors are a bit off. the outer ring of wood (the dark bit, not the bridge!) is very very dark and almost green looking, same for the neck. love the texture on the bridge though! i think youre done modeling, just need to tweak the colors a bit
p.s: is my reference really your guitar?
the dark ring around the guitar is definitely too green. i looked at a pixel in gimp, and there was almost as much green as red. heres 2 squares showing your color and the references color:
No one has mentioned this yet, but the strings running from the tuning pegs to the nut appear to be slightly bowed. They should run exactly straight, under tension, from the point of contact on the tuning peg to the slot in the nut. This isn’t visible in most of the renders, just the close up of the tuning pegs.
Thanks for the feedback. Yea that looks just like my guitar, but I think that photo makes the contrast of the wood texture look less than it does when looking at the guitar itself
hmmm… i just looked at my own guitar and you may be right about the contrast, but my guitar has very “clean” wood, ie the stripes only go one way, there is almost no horizontal scratching. hopefully that helps if you want i can give you a pic of my guitar (although its probably very different than yours and small)
