first render questions

Hi all, This is my first render that I’ve been happy with aftering picking up Blender about 6 weeks ago. Was debating whether to stick it in the WIP forum, but really I’m more interested in having a couple of general questions answered than having it critiqued, (Though comments and critisism are welcome too :wink: ) and I’m sure the mod’s will move it if need be.

http://img114.exs.cx/img114/6580/window_blender.jpg

http://img114.exs.cx/img114/6089/window_pshop.jpg

For all the tutes I’ve looked at recently, they all tell me how to use individual tools and features but not a start to finish procedure for creating something - This model is very simple, its mostly right angles and I worked by putting down a cube or a plane and then started extruding, cutting, adding points, faces and so on… I’m sure there are many ways to get from start to finish, but is this most people’s workflow? - starting with primatives and going from there?

Just a couple of times I drew a bezier curve and converted it to a mesh then extruded it. I have lots of experience in freehand (vector illustration program, equivalent to adobe illustrator) so I was very comfortable working this way. Unfortunately converting to a mesh left me with lots of triangle faces, which I understand are not desirable, esp for subsurfing. How can I work to avoid this?

specific to the images above: How can I do a better curtain? I made mine by applying the wave animation effect to a plane and subsurfing the result. It still looked too angular at that point so I used the new hook features in 2.35 to distort it a little. Its a pretty ugly little curtain…and It would be nice to not use the animation effect too…

The first image is a render the second one is a quicky modification of that render in photoshop. How could I use blender to get the lighting effect I’ve added? (halo lighting maybe??)

thanks…

At first, let me say that these are a very nice pictures.

A good tutorial from start to finish is in the Blender documentation. Look for Your first animation in 30 + 30 minutes.

Most people start from primitives, mostly cubes/boxes - that’s where term “box modeling” comes from. Then they subdivide, move vertices, extrude and so on. Of course that is not the best technique for all purposes. Starting from a curve is also fine, if you think you can get the desired result faster. A lot of experience is required to decide what workflow is best for a certain model. So, all I can say is: practice, practice, practice.

If you start with a curve or surface which you later convert to a subsurf mesh, you can decrease Resol U and V in Edit mode to reduce the number of resulting faces.

For the curtain you could do your technique: starting with a wavy curve, convert to mesh and extrude it. For large scale distortions you could use a lattice.

The light effect can be achieved by a halo indeed. Place a spot light inside the room pointing out of the window. Then turn on Halo in the “Shadow and Spot” panel and play with the values until you are satisfied.

if you have two adjacent tris, you can use [j] to convert them into a single quad

the tutorial that Usagi is good, but it is out of date and it can be a bit hard to follow.

curtains, as of now, are rather difficult to do, as well as and sort of cloth. you can use the curve-converted-to-mesh, or i like to use a mesh and the [o] (proportional edit) to make a wave, then extrude

i hope this helps

~Delta

Why is it out of date?