Miniature Golf Balls (Cycles Shader Study)

Artwork Finished Projects
1

First of all, I haven’t modeled or rendered anything in 7 or 8 years!

So I dusted off this old model (from 2001) and gave cycles a try. The only thing I managed to model was the holder with the stars carved in. I found that Blender has changed so much, but some things are easier to do.

It wasn’t too easy for me to get the shader the way I wanted, but I’m done with it for now.

Here’s a closeup of the dimples illuminated with a square light array:


Here’s a scene with multi-colored golf balls, like those you would find on a miniature golf course:

mini-golf-curved-light-fresnel-no-world-2000-9m38s.jpg700×350 56.9 KB

So there you have it, my first cycles render. I’ll try to be back with more stuff.

2

Looks great, Welcome back!

Would you mind sharing a wireframe of your golfball?

3

You have created a wonderful material. And I’d be interested in a wireframe too :slight_smile:

4

Thanks, guys. Here’s a wireframe rendered with freestyle.

mini-golf-wire.jpg700×512 63.3 KB

5

Thanks for the wires, scorpius. This is a far more dense mesh than I expected, but it explains why the geometry in the renders looks so crisp :slight_smile:

6

Wow very realistic

7

Thanks. I feel like I need to get away from these “studio” type shots and do something better with the background and environment.

8

How did you make those holes?:rolleyes:

9

The holes? You must mean the dimples. Well, they were done before blender had boolean operators. I used dupliverts to arrange the dimples, and a custom python script to fill in the rest of the surface.