I was experimenting with Approximate AO and glossy reflections in Blender 2.46RC1 on the weekend was quite surprised at how well it can look. The following turned out about as well as similar renders I’ve done with Indigo, without taking days. I can’t wait to do some test animations!
Harley
Very nice, except… The AAO is too dark for my taste. Did you increase the ‘pass’ count?
Yeah, the AAO is over done, but other than that, really beautiful!
Nice and clean. Eye candy. How’s the rendertime (and system specs)?
Looks great, is there any meaning to the words underneath?
I think it means:
Let whoever earns the palm bear it.
Really?
What language is it in, looks Latin.
why would I want to bear a palm, and why would I want to earn one in the first place?
I think it means the palm of some ones hand.
e.g.
“Are you giving me cheek boy? You’ve just earned my palm” slaaap
Yep, pretty much that :evilgrin:, and it is Latin.
Anyway, back to the topic :]
Did you use curves to make the shield and decoration?
I personally find curves annoying, I can never get them to look right, they’re always wonky.
U of Southern California’s motto. :eyebrowlift:
Meaning? :S
Thanks for the kind comments.
I definitely agree that the AAO is overdone, but that is really the only reason for this render. It looks substantially the same with no lights in the scene at all – lit entirely with AAO set to an energy level of 1.5, passes at 0, “use falloff” enabled, and just “add” and “plain”. Nothing special, just lots of AAO. I later added one spot lamp but it’s not doing much.
It rendered quite quickly at first while I was checking out how much AAO added on its own. When it became obvious this test was going to look nice, I “cranked it up to 11” and added transparency to the materials. In the end this image took about 6 hours to render, which sounds pretty excessive, but I just let it go over night.
The words are the motto for my employer, a 100 year-old private school. Many other organizations have used the same phrase. You can translate ”Palmam qui meruit ferat” as “He who has merited (earned) the palm (reward) shall bear it”. You can see the usual 2D version of our crest at the top left of every page here:
I started with a high contrast black & white version of the crest, used Inkscape to auto-trace it into a vector image and then imported the svg into Blender. I then used the “Curve and Surfaces” panel to extrude and bevel it, then converted it to a mesh. I separated into distinct pieces that were going to be different materials, and then added the gold layer as those sections would have been see-through otherwise.
Harley
Hi!
I am new to Blender and to this forum. :eyebrowlift:
You’re image looks stunning!
I was wondering if there is a tutorial or some documentation about how to the new glossy function works!? Could you maybe say some words about how you have achieved this look?
Cheers, Oliver
