I love cupcakes:p(duh, who doesn’t), they’re very fascinating. But admiring pastry and trying to model one are two totally different fields of life. This is why I need your help. Recently I decided to challenge myself by modeling a single cupcake, but it took me a longer than I originally planned. And the results are still bad.
IMO modeling food is as hard as modeling can get. Food is shaped in a very random but yet distinctive way. If you make it too random it won’t look like food anymore(perhaps something disgusting) and you might loose your appetite. And if you make it too distinctive it will look like furniture instead. How can one find the balance between the two, and model realistic food?
Back to my cupcake, I tried modeling using curves with an extrude shape but it still looked too perfect so, I started sculpting but I couldn’t manage to get the natural shape that I wanted on the frosting.:no:
So if anyone has any tips on how to model food realistically, please comment below.
Or if you have any links for tutorials online the are specific to the subject, please help.
You’re right, food is very hard to model if you want the result to be realistic in closeup shots. It’s also hard to make materials and texture it.
It’s hard but I don’t think its different from other modeling subjects in a sense that you have to know what you’re modeling very well, how it is structured, how it’s made, what are the materials and how they behave.
In your cupcake, the biggest problems seems to be the topping (although I think you’re done very well by the looks of it). You could ask yourself questions like: What is it? Is it whipped cream, chocolate, meringue, frosting, ice cream, jelly, blood in flour? Do they put it on a hot or cold cupcake? How stiff is it when it comes out of the piping tube? Does it melt quickly? Does it cave in slowly?
Answering these questions gives at least some idea what it should look like and maybe help in finding references for a spesific look.
In general, when modeling food items, I think sculpting is your best friend to get the look right. You can smooth things nicely with it, grab portions at the time and move them, make texturing and so on. You could also try cloth simulator in some cases but particle hair might be too funny
@JA12 - I never considered using any of the simulations. Once Andrew Price from blender guru used the fluid simulator to create the frosting of a donut. But that is far from what I actually want. But I also believe that I understanding what you are trying to model and how its created in the real world is a key to creating a realistic model of food. Thanks!
I borrowed this image from Internet, and edited the photo so that you can see the Black and White version next Color. Do you see all that texture, and glossiness in Black and White side? Colored side, Color is so overpowering that image look much smoother. Don’t be fooled:
Other thing from real photo is the Depth of Field. Use it. Any thing that is small and shot close up will have Depth of Field problem. It gives hint about the size of object.
Wow, that is a big difference. I never knew de-saturating an image brings out the surface properties like this. It also helps in analyzing the object’s shape for modeling. Great Tip. Thanks.
