Hi all,
a little simulation with Blender and Cycles that we made for testing the utility to use models made by photo modeling process in to a render scene. Can we think to introduce this in our daily workflow? … maybe! 
Info
Marble group of Mithras slaying the bull
Roman, 2nd century AD – Rome, Italy
British museum >
3d model by CodyW – Autodesk 123D – link >
Toys: Blender, Cycles, Gimp
not a very nice scene… poor bull.
do guys who kill bulls really wear funny hats like that?
Impressive!
what is impressive? he did not sculpt this, but used an app for the ipad, that creates the obj from a series of fotos, (he did state that correctly) as well as the textures… only the rendering was done… no, not for my daily workflow, i prefer sculpting myself…
It’s impressive that he’s managed to take photos and create this from it? I understood the OP quite fine.
hmm, he did take the fotos, yes, but see: http://www.123dapp.com/howto/catch, … i wait now what he is saying…
doris: this is a test where we use model from photo modeling techniques into a render image… the goal is not mimic the real world but use it as much as possible in our rendering workflow (photo matching, photo modeling, etc.). This is the real statue placed at British Museum, you’ll never be able to replace it by digital sculpting… Why? Because it will be simply another object.
Falkbeard: the photos were made by CodyW (see the link in the previous post).
This model was modified with Blender (to refine the topology) and rendered with Cycles.
Thanks
Bye
So basically you doing manips - photo manipulation. Big deal. I was doing that when I was ten.
Sorry don’t see anything impressive about this at all. Cheap work. Easy photo manipulation - gimp, photoshop, any of those programs can do this with ease if you have any talent and a 3D program to give an artificial 3D feel to it. Or as Doris said there’s even an app program that’ll apparently do that for you right off the bat.
If you didn’t do it yourself - essentially you’ve merely merged a bunch of photos together - than don’t take credit and… I guess I’d even say don’t defend yourself. It’s cheap and it’s tacky.
He did explain the app that Doris mentioned in her post in his OP. He’s not saying he sculpted it or anything… As he said, he’s not bragging or anything. It’s purely testing… The only thing he didn’t do himself was take the photos of the statue and merge them in 123D which he has clearly credited in his OP.
Everything else was done in blender with the exception of Using GIMP. I don’t see what the problem is… Might not be a big deal or as impressive to you, but remember this is a community and others might find it interesting.
Kuro: take it easy man… as I said, it’s just a rendering test in cycles (lighting, shading) using a 3d model picked online 
btw: Gimp was used only for adjusting the final image
Yes it interest me. 
its very handy. Not perse as creative achievement but can be used as reference, sketching, basemesh. Use the textures. cut parts of it, deform, remesh etc etc. Autodesk 123D is definitely not an instant success for what I have seen. Lot to keep in mind and a lot of tweaking along the way. Mithras slaying the bull is pretty (very) complex to model even in 123D. This representation of a sculpture does not compete with sculpting as a craft. For me it gives an idea of a sculpture from an surtend era in history and comfortably displayed.
Well
I find it impressive.
First of all, it looks accurate.
Very well done!
Thanks for posting.
(Sorry doris, what is important to you or to me is quite irrelevant)
well, seeing the obj that app created in the blender viewport now, i see your achievement is to make this poor(!) model look nice in the render. that you did indeed very well…
i would say, i can sculpt a better model in 2 days, …give me a week, and i could sculpt it that you cannot distinguish my model from the one in the british museum, even when looked at it just in the viewport … sigh… but, as said, your rendering really makes this model shine…
I guess it depends on what our goals are. This may well be a useful technique for some people, e.g. if you are making game assets then I can see a very valuable place in the workflow for producing convincing items quickly. Obviously if we are interested in creating original sculptures, then this does not help us, other than to perhaps have access to 3D references of other works if you are not able to visit these in person.
i would say, i can sculpt a better model in 2 days, …give me a week, and i could sculpt it that you cannot distinguish my model from the one in the british museum, even when looked at it just in the viewport … sigh
LOL
eeeh, this is a joke, right?
Whoever programmed that 123D Catch must be a real coding genius, i’m really impressed that you can obtain something that good looking from only taking some photos from lots of angles and having the program process them into a complete model with textures and etc…
I wish i could sculpt a better model in 2 days 
edit : on the subject of digital preservation, i ran into this website that scanned (using probably the same technique as the 123D Catch program) some sculpture that can be looked at from any angles through WebGL (if your browser supports it)
http://www.digitalsculpture.org/index.html
That’s very interesting, as it allows then people (that will never be able to go see in real those sculpture in the museum that are housing them) to go look at those pieces.
Yes, my recent favourite is in there! I found it later on during sculpting but it was a great help to get a view at angles that I would probably never get a reference photo from.
