In the last month, I’ve started learning about Blender and trying things. I decided to create a list of items that I should create from scratch in order to help practice. This is one of the first ones:
I used radiosity, but obviously not very well. The peanuts are just simple meshes that I made and then applied a 1 level subsurf too. I’d still be curious to hear some feedback.
Wow. this is nice. though I suggest you try removing the texture on the floor, it looks nicer that way, and try doubling the vertices for the floor mesh so as to create smoother shadows.
Interesting, so the verticies in the floor control how smooth the shadow is? I used 16x16 samples in an area lamp to get the effect in the image. But the floor is just a 4 point plane (1 face). So should I subdivide it like 5 times or something?
I did try it at first without the floor texture, but didn’t really like it. I think this one is not what I want either, but its only practice for now. I’ll improve it for the next object I make. :eyebrowlift:
If your using radiosity the vertices control how smooth the shadow is but If your using lamps it doesn’t matter (with radiosity you shouldn’t need to use lamps, the meshes become lamps as you add the their “emit” value in materials). Also, if you are going to use radiosity, to save CPU you should probably add a subsurf modifier and change it from “Catmull-Clark” to “Simple Subdiv.” instead of subdividing in edit mode. This way it still subdivides it but doesn’t affect the shape and the mesh is easier to work with.
Hope that helps and good start so far!
Interesting project. Best of luck. Your box looks really good. The lable adds a lot to the realism, as do the packing peanuts. While posting in finished projects won’t stop people from offering suggestions, you might consider posting some of your work in work-in-progress or focussed critique.
I think you have a good approach to learning the software, but I would suggest not being totally dogmatic about not using tutorials, especially as you get to the intermediate stage. Some Blender techniques are not intuitive, and there’s no sense in reinventing the wheel.
