Im new to 3D modeling. In the past I’ve downloaded free apps, but never gave any effort. I began in earnest in early July 2002, after seeing the conspiracy games web site. I started with Anim8or, which is great, but as the developer admits isn’t intended to be on 3ds Max’s or Lightwave’s level. So I turned to Blender. I saw that people were doing comparable work in the app (to afore mentioned apps) and decided to give it a try. Let’s just say I’m hooked.
I purchased the 2.0 Guide after playing with it on my own for a week, and searching for tips, tricks, tutorials online. I highly recommend the book.
Well here is my Light and texture study, including an attempt at GI (Thanks Tommy5) and chrome like reflection using pivot points as ‘cameras’. This builds from the Chrome reflections tutorial available on this site (Thanks Chris Plush). Instead of having the pivot reflect the inside of the ball, I moved the ball off its pivot in edit mode. I positioned it where it ‘needed’ to be based on the camera angle etc.
What do you think? I fought alot with this! I know I have a LONG way to go and there is MUCH room for improvement.
nice render for somebody just starting with blender. only suggestion is get rid of the halo in the spot lights, it makes the reflections look bad when the envmap is calculated, other than that, it looks great.
Yeah, really awesome render even for someone who has been using the program a while. As scrappy said, turning off the [halo] value on the spotlights would look much better but other than that - keep on blending and stick with it.
Thanks for the replies and comments. You both have great galleries.
Here is an updated render minus the halo on the spots and the original settings for the rusty cube and apple. The funny thing is my wife said the box in the intial image looked like it had a light in it, and my folks thought it was cheese (mom said molded cheese ; Too much tweaking on my part.)
whoa thats such an odd scene, i really love it! that reflecting sphere(?) in the back is so coolthe texture on the cube is really interesting and i like how some spots glow…
is that an apple? i think so, the texture seams a lil plain, but nice anyhow
Thanks. Your reflection tutorial led me to see how to manipulate the pivot-point to the env maps advantage. The apple is a struggle. I used a Nurbs curve with a 360, 9 step spin, but cannot get it quite right. It lacks a stem.
The link above this post was my attempt at having mutiple reflective objects (well, two) with near true reflections. Weird apple eh? Was playing around. Click link ^above^.
No the apple texture is here to stay! I wanted to see if the method I tried out could be duplicated with multiple objects. I did read your tutorial, its very good. I just thought that if Chris Plush’s reflection tutorial used the pivot point to reflect the inside of an object on it’s surface, why couldn’t I move the object off its pivot to reflect the environment? That is what’s going on with the ball (and reflective apple) in my renders. You cannot move the pivot, but you CAN move the object off its pivot in edit mode only. That way you can use it like an empty, but the pivot sees all 360 dgerees (right?!?!?) BTW is the block more rusty?
Nice texturing and lighting.The reflection positioning is excellent too . I also started in anim8or, but progressed to Blender, the user interface had me confused for months…
The texturing takes time but I feel that is the key to photo realistic looking models. I’m trying to start with simple objects. The funny thing is the apple is the first thing I learned to make using the lathe tool in Anim8or, so I knew the same rules applied once I started with Blender.
The box was just an attempt to make a rust like texture. The procedural textures are SO powerful.
I wanted to use the sphere to reflect the scene. By setting up the Sphere’s texture to use an EnvMap, with the Sphere as the Ob:, the pivot point acts like a ‘camera’. You can reposition the object in edit mode by grabing and moving it, in relation to the pivot. Then in object select (?) mode when you grab and move the object, both the object and pivot move. That way you can set it up to see what it needs to see.
If I ever get off my duff and build a web site I will make a tutorial for it.
The more I work with this app the more I am thankful for Nan’s hard work.
Anim8or is a excellent app for people new to 3d modeling and concepts. I still plan to use it as it gets better.
However the only free modler I saw that had the capabilites to do some of the things I wanted (reflections, env maps, detailed texturing etc.) was Blender. I had heard about and read a little on it, and decided to really take the time to learn it. If you haven’t pick up the 2.0 guide, pick it up for reference. I cannot stress that enough. The community is excellent too!