Well, here’s some science fiction hardware. A laser platform. So far, everything is Blender Internal with no nodes. I am planning on doing something to this using nodes, which so far I haven’t touched, so any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
[edit1]Per meschoyez’s suggestion, I added some plates and rivets to the ring.[/edit1]
[edit2]Added some dents and raymirror clouds to the ring, and worked on the laser. This is the Problem Child render[/edit2]
[edit3]Composits nodes used correctly this time, thanks to enhzflep’s good advice. [/edit3]
[edit4]New image with new camera angle to reduce reflection off ring, improve compostition [/edit4]
[edit5]Scratch texture added to rings and brass reflector [/edit5]
Thanks for the suggestion, meschoyez. The rivets give it a sense of scale it didn’t have before. It’s fairly small, as science fiction space hardware goes. I could make the whole thing look larger by shrinking the rivets (and probably adding a few more of them.)
Love the electrical wires and the part that the laser emanates from.
Perhaps a bit of micro-asteroid damage would add variety to the surface of the rings.
Too bad you can’t actually see lasers in space.
EDIT:
But, as artwork - it should look pleasing to the eye. In our atmosphere, the center of the beam is the same colour as the edge of the beam. It is also of the same intensity. - there is no ‘soft-zone’. For the sake of realism, if you want to avoid a hard edge on the beam, you should use DOF effects.
for the laser it would be better to make it a solit white tube (turn shadeless on) and then go into the composit nodes. Here is my laser setup. Hope it helps http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=7565173
I sort of expected a bit more red light illuminating the front of the laser emitter. This might not be realistic, but one sort of expects the laser beam to illuminate the objects around it.
I love it. Could you just make the rivets smaller…possibly adding more of them. Right now it seems as if I could pick this thing up with 2 hands. If that’s what you intended…then great…thats the feeling I got. But if its bigger than that in your mind…the rivets are misleading me.
I’ve added some dents to the ring, and a texture to fuzz up the high reflectivity. I’ve also done my first try at nodes, and I have some problems. Here’s my set up
and here are some of the problems.
I couldn’t get the background image to appear properly. Eventually I added it as an image node, but it is on top of, or mixed in with, everything else, instead of being behind. How do I manage to get the background image back into the background?
The laser tube has an unfortunate intersection with the reflection on the ring, at the top of the image. It looks like the reflection is crossing over the laser, it should be the other way around.
In general, has anybody seen a good tutorial on workflow with nodes? And an explanation of the nodes? And compositing? Help, help. :spin:
(HouseArrest–it’s supposed to be pretty small. A communication laser, or maybe a beacon of some sort, not a weapon.)
You should use an Alpha-Over (Add->Colour->AlphaOver) node to combine your work with the background.
The background goes into the upper input and the foreground goes into the lower input.
I’d probably use one of these to put your blurred laser over the top of your platform. I’d then use another one of these nodes to place this composite over the background.
Cool, then you pulled it off nicely with the size visualization. I figure once you get the node set up down this will be a perfect piece!!!
Seeing as you say this is first attempt with nodes…can you point me to your source of education. I’m about to dive into them myself and am a bit shaken by the appearance of many of these “beginning nodes” tutorials lol.
Thanks for the advice, enhzflep. Worked great. I put some dents in the ring, but it still looks too shiny. I think it needs a scratched up dirt texture on it. I tweaked the lighting a bit (turned down the key light) but may do some more tweaks. Is there an “adjust the lighting” node?
Explored different camera angles, this one looks better, I think. It’s gotten rid of that bright reflection from the ring, and has a bit more of that mysterious quality blenditall asked for. Still need to work on the scratches: a small object, seen this close up, would show more of the wear and tear of traveling through space.
Still looking for some kind of definitive document or tutorial on compositing nodes. Anyone know of any?
(orclord, I did try it with the solid white tube with red blur, but I like the way the red on red looks.)
Yeah mate, been trying to find this tute again for a while now, it’s the one that helped me understand what on earth was going on with nodes. It shows how to take the first image and turn it into the second image using nodes. Part 2 of the tute makes it look like it’s been sketched with a pencil, that’s good value too.
(click images 2 or 3 for tutorials)
I think It’s finished. I’ve added a scratch texture to the rings, and to the brass parts on the laser assembly, so it looks less like a shiny new toy, and more like a piece of working space hardware, out there doing, well, whatever it is laser platforms do.
enhzflep, thanks for the links. I’d seen that before, but hadn’t worked through it, and sort of forgot about it. I’ll take the time to work through it. I’m sort of catching on to nodes, but I know I’ve barely scratched the surface.
And thanks to everyone for their comments and suggestions. Appreciate it. :yes:
