No Christmas without Christ

Artwork Finished Projects
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Well, it has been more than a few months since I posted in Finished Projects :slight_smile:

Since my last post here I’ve been working on many new Blender projects, a portion of which are at my website.

This is one of my latest works, a timely little meditation called “No Christmas without Christ”:

http://www.artofinterpretation.com/images/nochristmaswithoutchrist-web-byrjt2009.jpg
nochristmaswithoutchrist-web-byrjt2009.jpg1028Ă—772

(direct image link)

I had wanted to create and complete this for last week’s weekend challenge (“nightmare” theme), but I decided to take more time to finalize it because I felt it was too important to be rushed.

Some technical notes:

  • As always, Blender internal render was used.
  • Particle emitters were used for tinsel, and the sphagnum moss on/in the stable.
  • One buffered shadow lamp was used in conjunction with five omni lights placed throughout the scene.
  • Only procedural textures were used.
  • Lights were illuminated by placing white blurred dots on a secondary render layer and combining layers with an Add node and Glare filter.

Thank you for viewing my work.

RobertT

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Wow, that’s amazing! You said particle emitters were used, could you elaborate? Are you using the hair particles? How do you cast shadows on them and have them cast shadows?

Once again, I love the style, borderline realism with an edge of stylized cartoonish look. Great stuff

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Nicely done Robert, you refere i imagine to the nativity shed being empty of Jesus and of course you probably had a dozen different meanings going on at the same time.

I’m not a big fan of your wood shader and texture but everything else is very nice.

As for your newer works, what do you actually do for a living? You seem to spend an incredible amount of time on personal projects, your portfolio is getting huge!

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Wow! I love the image and I love the meaning. I also thought that the lights looked eerily like a crown of thorns.

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How did you do your glitter texture/material?

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-[Killer]-: Thanks! Yes, these are hair particles. I have the particles set to use Tangent and Diffuse shading (in the material panel). The Brownian Motion (in the particle panel) factor is set around 2.5 for the tinsel (.3 for the moss) with Render steps (also in particles) set to 5.

TheANIMAL: Good to hear from you, and thanks! The Nativity wood is meant to appear artificial. There are several other things going on in here as you might have noticed :wink:

qazplm123890: Thanks for the response! The resemblance is not accidental (there is a shadow of a crucifix within the manger) projected by the middle pole.

jackblack: Hi! I used a cloud procedural texture set very small to affect the Nor and Spec channels (Add mode used). WardIso was the specular shader used mainly for the glittery elements.

RobertT

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noob here - how did you get the color of the materials to look like they were being reflected onto the wood. I normally do that in an external renderer, but don’t know how to do it in side of Blender.

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Very nice scene, love the realistic sparkles and glitter.

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Very nice scene! I love the tinsel, and the wood for the stable.

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Away - in a manger…wait, where’s baby Jesus!? Nooooooooooooooooooo.

Beautifally done piece, and should be one thing to use to remind people that Jesus being born as a result of the holy spirit impregnating Mary is the whole reason we have Christmas.

Also, did you know the Bible doesn’t specifically say Jesus was born on the 25th, or even during the month of December? The date of Christmas (the date that was chosen to celebrate Christ’s birth) was put where it is now as a result of Early Church tradition.

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I think I’ve heard that that early church tradition was an attempt to disrupt a heathen celebration which took place on Dec. 25.

Robert, awesome work, awesome idea! Great render :slight_smile:

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i specially like the electric plug you put in the background,

cool stuff

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Yeshua was born in September, the Roman Empire during the Constantine era had the Counsel of Nicea decide that the 25th would be the day day He was born.

Passover isn’t celebrated the days that we have it on our calendars either.

Mainstream Christianity knows nothing of Christ.

Otherwise, good work Robert.

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Actually Christmas wasn’t even the day Jesus was born… I know we aren’t supposed to discuss religion, but to be honest the bible says that Jesus was born in the months of the harvest, and where he was born got very cold in the winter (killing all crops) the bible doesn’t state the exact day, but it was some time in the september/october months.

Also, Christmas is actually a VERY pagan celebration that as roboguy brought out, Christmas is nothing but a “Church, Pagan Tradition” to “mask over” the pagan celebration.

Do you want to know what halloween is? Halloween is a celebration of the demons, it was the day that the Celts thought that evil spirits were released on the earth and the living dead were active that night, they also worshipped the “god of death” on that day (satan)… The reason kids say “Trick-Or-Treat” is because it was said that if you didn’t feed the evil spirits that they would torment you (or play tricks on you) so therefore the kids dress up like these evil spirits and say Trick-Or-Treat (meaning, if you don’t GIVE GIVE GIVE, I will do bad things to you…)

Note: I DO NOT celebrate Christmas or Halloween… Do you know that easter was not Jesus’ resurrection day? That’s right… it was a day to celebrate fertility, and once again, churches masked over the gross fertility holiday with a “holy” one.

Sorry for my rant, but I’m simple saying what the Bible and HISTORY tell us… This is not meant to be offensive or anything, just informative…

Also if you have your bible handy look up Psalms 83:18… Unfortunately a lot of your guys versions of the bible have had the key name in the scripture removed, so let me give you a link so you can see what the name ORIGINALLY was (Note: Later day christendom removed the name out of the bible completely, just to hide the truth from their congregation, and also so it made their “theories” of the bible true.

Here’s the link: http://bible.cc/psalms/83-18.htm

Once again, please don’t delete this post, this was not meant in any way to be offensive to anyone; if you want to discuss this with me PLEASE don’t reply here, PM me and we’ll talk… I don’t want this thread to be locked; because even though I don’t celebrate christmas, this is a high quality piece :slight_smile:

Thanks for reading this.

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Accutally when you talked about Halloween you did not represent it corectly. Halloween (orignally known as “All Hallows Eve”) was mainly based off of “All Saints Day” which was a christian holiday where people would spend time honoring and remembering the christian saints. It was also a celtic tradition like you said, but I think you are only representing a certain side of this argument.

“Halloween (also spelled Hallowe’en) is a holiday celebrated on October 31. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of All Saints’ Day.”

Also, christmas is a holidy to celebrate the birth of Jesus. It was set to the date of Dec. 25th possibly to corespond with a Roman festival or winter solstice. And I don’t see anything wrong with trying remove pagan holidays by celebrating truth instead.

I could continue on about easter but I think you get the idea. There are two sides to this argument.

-Dawisch

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No there not… first off, the “Christian” holiday’s your talking about are really false… simply because they were just masking over these holidays to make them seem good…

ALSO, I really had to laugh when you brought up the subject on halloween :slight_smile: there’s no 2 sides to halloween… which “side” of the argument happened first (in history)… that’s right, it was a celebration of the GOD OF DEATH before “christians” “masked” this holiday… And did you not even read my post!? Jesus wasn’t even born in the winter…

What are they teaching in your “churches” these days… it’s really quite sad actually that you guys believe this nonsense when clearly if you read the bible you’d see that ALL OF THIS has nothing to do with religion… Also explain one thing, in 2 Corinthians 9:7 it says that that you should not give under compulsion… Do you know what that means? It’s like being obligated to do something, if you celebrate christmas how angry would you be if you got no gifts from your mom? You’d probably be pretty upset, but maybe she didn’t want to give you a gift because she “couldn’t afford” anything… wouldn’t you STILL be upset? That’s right, she’s forced to get you a gift because for some reason she thinks she has to (and you EXPECT gifts, right?)

That really makes no sense how the bible tells us we shouldn’t give gifts because we have to, but because we want to… and let me tell you, if I celebrated christmas I wouldn’t want to give anyone anything; it’s a lot of money spent and a lot of time spent.

Also isn’t it funny how you said “All hallows eve” is MAINLY based off of All Saints Day? That’s REALLY funny, hahahaha, I laughed real hard :slight_smile: especially because all saints day was November 1st (not infront of my calendar now, but I think Halloween is the 31st of october ;)) And saying that it’s a christian holiday is very biased… say it for what it is, it’s a Catholic holiday…

Let’s not even touch the easter celebration… because I could write you an essay on that :slight_smile:

one last thing… if you google around and try to scrawl up evidence to attempt to prove me wrong, don’t bother… because christmas and easter both are related to Jesus… you have to ask yourself something… Jesus told us to celebrate his death… show me the scripture when he said to celebrate his birth… show me the scripture that said to celebrate his resurrection… oh snap, you cant! Jesus never told you to celebrate either, now you’ll say “But he expects us to celebrate that!”, well no, if he did, why would he tell us to celebrate his death… why would he bother if he knew we were going to celebrate everything else in his life? Because he doesn’t want us to… there’s nothing significant about his birth… Yes, he was the son of God and it was a miracle, but still… he never told us to celebrate it…

Shall I go on?

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No dont go on :smiley:

lets just appreciate Roberts work :wink:

btw good to see you posting again Robert I’ve missed your talents.

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Ok, killer I guess your right about the origins of the holidays. You still havn’t answered my question though: What is wrong with celebrating Gods greatest gift to mankind instead of worshiping satan? I think you’re going way too far to say that God does not want us to celebrate his son Jesus who came to earth as man and suffered the worst possible death for us. I think this deserves celebrating and more than just on Christmas. I’m not trying to argue, sorry for missrepresenting the origins of Christmas :slight_smile: The reason it was inaccurate is because I in fact did not “google arround” around (I probably should have) :wink:

By the way Robert, that is one beutiful render :slight_smile: Keep up the good work!

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I also disagree on God not wanting us to celebrate the birth of Jesus, his birth was.

-The birth of the man who gave us the message that started Christianity
-The birth of our savior
-The birth of the ultimate high priest who abolished the need for animal sacrifices
-The birth of the one who has the power to erase your record of sin and give you eternal life and an eternal home in the New Jerusalem (in Heaven currently and then will be on the New Earth when it’s created after Satan is cast into the lake of fire and brimstone forever)
-The birth of who will come back one day to destroy the army of the Antichrist at the end of the tribulation period and at the end of this world in its current specific state and form

The birth of a man who was this great, the one who is God made into flesh, more than deserves to be celebrated.

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God… you guys didn’t read my post… There wouldn’t be anything wrong with celebrating it… IF WE KNEW THE DAY HE WAS BORN ON! Wow… read my post, and the bible. Jesus was born in the HARVEST season, last time I checked December was NOT in the harvest time. Show me the scripture that says December 25th was the birth or christ… I dare you.

And the dawish, I didn’t “Google Around” either, I’m a very religious person and I know what I’m talking about; also in my religion we have a lot of publications along with a computer program with all our books virtually. I will not name my religion on the forums (you’ll have to PM me) simply because I don’t want to start flame wars and get this thread locked.

Sorry to kinda jacking up your thread, but I hate seeing people celebrate this holiday that’s really false…

Also Cyborg, I’d like to talk to you :slight_smile: your religion sounds a lot like mine, but with some differences.