Magic Eight Ball Display

Hi all,

I’m totally new to Blender, but loving it so far. I’ve been seriously playing with it for only a little more than a month now, mostly just following tutorials and getting familiar with the interface and with the basics of Cycles.

The image is meant to be a Magic Eight Ball in a decorative wood box. There are spaces for two more, but I may just shorten the box so there is only space for one. This is my first full size test render of the scene, it’s 1,000 samples and the lighting is just an HDRI and a single mesh light.

Lots still to do: I want to add some scratches and wear in the wood and on the plastic of the magic eight ball and add some metal detail pieces. I also need to redo the cushioning that the magic eight ball is sitting in - I made the three spaces using a boolean modifier and the geometry is so jacked up that I couldn’t put in the little wrinkles I wanted to add, so I need to start over from scratch on that piece. The plane the box is sitting on is meant to be cloth too, so I think that will need a little work.

Any comments, feedback, tips (especially on using the BDSF Velvet shader) or constructive criticism is very much appreciated.

Thanks!
Mark

First Draft


Final Version (copied from end of thread)


I made some changes: I cut the box down to size, changed the padding material so the ball isn’t so lost, changed out the surface texture, made some tweaks and added some details to the box and added a little bit of DOF to the render.

I am still having a really hard time getting the reflections to look good on the eight ball itself - I think I am going to have to break down and go watch all of CynicatPro’s videos on physically based shaders.


I made a few more changes: I fixed some uneven parts in the box mesh, copied the padding to the top, scapped my metal shaders and replaced them with a much simpler base, added a table and a note to the side.

The note says “For fynally, Fortune, I thee defye” which is a quote from Fortune Poem by Geoffrey Chaucer. I like the idea of this as it adds a layer of meaning to the image, but don’t like it just sitting there on the table because it is now splitting to focus. Not sure what I’m going to end up doing with that.

The final thing I added is some metalwork. This is roughly based on some images of an Art Nouveau design I found online. I’m pretty happy with the way it came out. I blocked in one section poly by poly and then used solidify, subsurf and array modifiers to create the whole thing. I could probably have done this more quickly with curves, but I’m not very confident with them yet and I like the rough and slightly uneven way it came out - I think it looks more like it was actually made by hand. I’d love to hear some opinions on this part of it.

Next steps: roughing up/dirtying my materials, adding some simple background details (I think I am going to use the cloth from the last WIP I posted on some table mats), finalizing the lighting and composition and deciding how I want to incorporate the poem quote.

This render is only 250 samples - just giving an idea of where I am at.

Attachments


I think this one is more or less complete. At least until I learn how to use the compositor to adjust the final render better. :wink: I finished the metalwork, but decided to leave it clean and polished looking, added a bevel to the table and made a few other tiny little tweaks. I moved the poem quote/note off the table and pinned it inside like a fortune from a cookie - it’s a little hard to read unless you know what it says already, but I’m going to just live with it.