ancient buddhist statue

my new work in progress. tell me what you think! …its like my 3rd real project now so im a bit of a newbie, so advice on lighting or textures would be cool. thanks!:eyebrowlift:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b273/exposedcircuitry/buddha1.jpg
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b273/exposedcircuitry/buddha2.jpg

The model looks pretty good on the first look. Nice and clean (a wire would help a lot though).

The renders are much too dark, try some hemi or sun lamps combined with spots and normal lamps. It looks like you already have Ambient Occlusion turned on - if not, do it"

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b273/exposedcircuitry/buddha4.jpg
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b273/exposedcircuitry/buddha4wires.jpg
ok, i put a hemi lamp on and Ambient Occlusion and it brightened it up nicely. and here are the wires, its the first time I tried to do cloth in 3D, although its stone cloth so im not sure if it counts :). I am thinking about adding more folds in sculpt mode, but I really don’t know how to use it yet.

I think that the cloth looks really nice! Great job. And it looks a lot better with the hemi light there. And I do think that a few more folds would look nice. Good Luck!

Looks great, I really like the material, and the mesh is nice and light and clean, people making statues (something that doesn’t need to be rigged) often go overboard with too many verts, but this is good for including as background in a asian themed animation.

speaking of asian themes, I’m living in South Korea at the moment and I’ve had a chance to see dozens of Buddhist statues since I got here, this is of a much higher quality than most that I’ve seen.

Also your Buddha looks happy, perhaps too much so. Asian art generally shows men, especially Buddha with a sort of annoying smugness and what is apparently “inner peace” (the sort of inner peace that you only get from being a smug arrogant bastard).

I prefer your interpretation of inner peace, it looks like he’s just cleaned the living room and done the dishes and knows that everything is right with the world, and he’s just sitting down and thinking about tucking in to a lovely veggie curry.

Thanks! I messed with the texture a bit more and had fun with the ivy generator for this new render…i think I might have over done the worn stone textures now. Do you like living in South Korea smoking_mirror?
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b273/exposedcircuitry/newIvy.jpg

Looks great!

Yeah I really like South Korea, but it was a bit of a shock, I’ve kind of been in to Buddhism for a long time, but when i got here it seemed as fake and commercial as Christianity is in Europe and the US. I guess they have to make money in order to carry on the religion but that side of religious organizations has always been a real turn off for me.

Still, there are some nicer, non-tourist shrines and temples if you look hard enough.
I think you’ve got the stone spot on, though it’s usually smoother and harder stone if it’s a new statue or softer more worn stone if it’s an old statue. Some of the older statues just look like a half formed fat guy they’ve been weathered so much. :slight_smile:

Is the head a separate mesh?

It looks like you are using a procedural texture with the mapping set to “Object” because the mottling looks tall and thin on the head and more regularly blotchy on the rest of the statue.

Looks nice. Very nice. I agree with Smoking_Mirror, though. He shouldn’t be smiling quite that much. I live in Cambodia and I’ve seen plenty of Buddhas.
Of course, they change from country to country.

I love the cloth. Very well done!

Cool! Just the thing I have been trying to do (modeling Easter Island statues for my 1st attempt). Might have to ask you for some pointers about the texture. Just getting the hang of shapes. Textures fox me. Especially getting the stone to look like it is carved, now smooth like skin.
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Thanks for your comments.

-smoothfluid I used procedural textures for this, as I am still afraid of UV mapping. I got the idea for the texture from the rock section of the waterfall tutorial, and then I just kind of went my own way with it. The information is here. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Materials/exercise_2#Rock_texture good luck with your easter island statues, I hope to see them here.

-Livewire I understand what your saying about the smile not being accurate to most depictions of the buddha. I guess the problem is that I could not decide if I wanted to model Budai Luohan or Siddhartha so i took the idea of a bald head and smile from Budai Luohan and put it on Siddharthas body and I feel that the mixture represents how I feel about buddhism even though it is not perfectly traditional.

-Smoking Mirror thats cool that you like Korea, I have been seriously considering teaching English there for a while now. I want to see some of the world while I’m still young. I would appreciate any advice that you might be able to pass along. If you would care to share any of your knowledge on the subject via private messages.

-J0lly r0ger I modeled everything separate and hoped no one would notice :smiley: would connecting the polygons for the head and body even things out, or do I need to change the mapping?

Wow the latest render looks really good. what about some black chinese symbols in the back?

Joining the meshes into one would probably the quickest and easiest way to normalize the mapping. You don’t actually need to join up verts, just select all the meshes and type ctrl-j then the separate meshes will be one object.

Then the mappings should automatically be the same.