Well, after studying long hours/days, going over tutorials, watching videos, asking lots of questions, getting depressed over an article I read and doing nothing for several days, etc, etc…here finally, is an actual project I have begun to work on.
I’ll call this piece “The Quiet Room” because it looks just like the padded cell my ward attendant put me in before they strapped me into a straight jacket and pumped me full of thorazine back at the psych ward…(hehe, just kidding folks)
Anyway, praise, crits or even the opportunity of a lifetime to yank on my golden locks until I scream “uncle” are welcome. The piece is still very plain and only the beginning of whatever it turns out to be in the end.
I will probably add a small table in the corner and ray-shade it, maybe add a light fixture on the ceiling and who knows what all else but I’m still a noob and at least it’s a start
I did away with the ray-shade within the lampshade and I opted against subsurfing the lamp base because it just did’nt look “right” to me but that’s just personal preference:-). I still have miles to go. I think my next project will be a wishing well. I have always wanted to do one of those. Again, lemme have it…hehe…
One good way to make a lamp
is to add a bezier curve and make the outline
of the lamp and when your done hit
alt + c and convert it into a polyline
then use spin to finish it.
The bottom of your lamp is too pointed
and looks like it would just fall over.
Also the middle looks to thin IMO.
I think the camera is to close to the walls.
Your right about the lamp. The center is too thin and there is a sharp “tip” where there should be a flat base. I’ve never had much luck with or even understood bezier curves. I draw a bezier line but when I try to stretch it, it just makes lots of loops and I don’t understand what the purpose of that is or how it could be useful but I will give it another try. UPDATE: Hmm…the “spin” and other features don’t seem to be available via F9 when using bezier curves even though I converted to a poly. ALT+C does nothing either (I’m in the edit mode). What to do?.
Something my room mate suggested to me a little while ago is that I change the color of the floor (perhaps add carpeting) and maybe even change the color of the ceiling. To answer your last question with respect to how long I’ve been doing 3D, it’s been about 4-5 days but compressed into actual time spent learning, I’d say closer to 2-3 days. This is the first time in my entire life I have ever used a 3D modelling program and it fascinates me the more I learn and create.
Well, off to bed but I’ll do some more tomorrow. Thank’s again for all the praise, crits, suggestion and advice!!
PS: I’ve updated the above (third) image rather than to keep posting minor changes. I flattened the lamp base, added a floor face/material and lightened up the sky a little.
Start a new blend file.
Press the num 1 key.
Press the space bar.
Add - Bezier Curve.
Press F9.
In Curve Tools you will see a button
named - Poly Line.
Hit that button.
Now move the verts into the shape you want.
You can select a vert, hit the E key and extrude out
another vert.
You can also hold down the Ctrl key
and click on different spots of the grid and add more verts.
When your done and have the basic shape you want
hit the little button in Curve Tools named - Bezier.
You will need to have atleast one point selected before
Blender will convert it back to a bezier curve.
Now use the control handles to make the curves.
Just experiment for a little bit till you get used to it.
Now finish up the shape you want and hit the TAB key
to get out of edit mode.
Hit Alt + C and convert to mesh.
Now hit the TAB key to go back into edit mode.
Press the num 7 key.
Press A key so all verts are selected.
Now what you want is to spin the around the cursor.
Put the cursor where you want the center to be and under
Mesh Tools set Degr to 360 and Steps to 32 and hit Spin.
Hit A key so that all verts are selected and
hit the Remove Doubles button under Mesh Tools.
Now press Ctrl + N to recalculate normals outside.
Good start! I think you should add a slight bump to the wall. Unless it is glass, or painted with some future-super-smooth paint, there should be some distortion to the specular area. Just use a cloud map, the defaults would probably be fine, and have it affect the Nor value. Play around with how strong it is until you get what you want.
Also, where is that specular spot coming from? Maybe you should either tone it down, or add a visible light source.
Again you will need a bump map. What is the floor made of? If it is something soft, like carpet, add a very fine bump map (cloud textures almost always work for this kind of thing), or if it is tile, make a simple map of a grid with large white squares and thin dark grey lines.
Well, I was’nt going to post a new image every time I made a slight change but I’ve made enough changes this time that I thought a fresh image was due. As usual, praise, crits are welcome. Many thank’s go out to all of you:-)
I have a question. The stars are different colors, how did you do this? I havent used the “star” settings much, And I like to know how you had green ones and blue ones and yelow ones at the same time. Are these separate meshes? It’s just bugging me, and I dont feel like messing with the star thing right now…
Ongnissim: Raise the “ColNoise” value in the world buttons.
GreyGoose: Looking pretty good for a first project; only things I’d suggest would be to make the objects higher poly, and do something with the light from that lamp :P.
What are “nor values”, “bump maps” and “higher poly” and what do they do?. Several people have suggested I use these things and I would like to but I can’t seem to locate anything like that in Blender. Bump maps for example, would help me out a LOT and so would the other two!.
Thank’s for the kind words by the way. I had a lot of fun creating that scene and even blew it up to an 800 x 600 wallpaper and used an “oil canvas” filter on it in the GIMP and it turned out pretty decent as a wallpaper but like anything else, you work with a project long enough, you get bored with it and it’s time to move on so I will probably spend another day or two on this and then start on my wishing well scene
If you search the message board you will find
all kinds of messages that explain how to do
the stuff your talking about in blender.
There are lots of tutorials out there all you have to do is look.
It took me a bit to write out that mini tutorial
on bezier curves and spin and from what I can tell
you didn’t even use it.
Why not?
If you are all ready getting bored with your scene
then I suggest you do what a lot of people do
and get a couple projects going at once.
Here is a good tutorial on how to make carpet in Blender
