A:M Promotion for FREE!!
2 messages in this thread
Andrew,
I checked out prftab.jpg. That's a really nice piece of work. I'm sure
that I'm not the only one that would like your settings for the glass; it's
some of the best I've seen. Most of the stuff I do doesn't call for glass like
that, so I haven't messed with it, but you seem to have it down. It looks like
you are using the default wood setting. Wood is not that easy to create
convincingly. Every now and then I sit down and spend 5-6 hours just rendering
different wood textures – I use a sphere, a plank, a round column and a square
column to see how the grain renders on different shapes. Right now I'm about
half finished with a very detailed Grandfather clock.
There are a couple of ideas that I would try adding to the scene if it were
mine. The first would be to use an app like CorelDRAW! to create a doily for
the vase of flowers, then export out, and use the graphic with the cookie
cutter. Then, still using Corel, I would create a circular floral pattern to go
on the blue rim of the plates. Using MATERIAL, I'd create a marble pattern to
replace the blue, one that was different shades of pastel blues, with some
speckling. Then I'd imagemap the the circular design on top of it.
If you were really feeling adventurous, you could use Corel to design a
pattern that would be carved into the wood on the backs of the chairs, then use
it as a bump map. You could also create a pattern to bump map the the glass
vase, or one to imagemap on as an etching. One other thing might be to use your
glass material to create a pattern of crystals for the light to shine through
down onto the table.
Again, it looks great. Add some more detail, put some pictures on the
wall, move the camera back a little, and you'd have a graphic that could make
Graphic of the Month.
Michael S. Flynn
Mike,
Glad you liked the pic! I had a lot of problems with the glass at first, but
asked Steve for his advice. With his help I decided on these settings which
worked very nicely:
color = black
Ambience = 20
Trans = 95
Mirror = 0
Spec = 100
Refract = 11 (think 3-5 is more realistic, but I like the effect of 11 <g>)
Just make sure to have something behind the glass besides a solid color!
It takes a LONG time to render glass, so use tem sparingly in animations! But,
it does add a great touch of realism to any pic.
I did use the default wood setting (OAK.MAT), and have not tried to create any
of mine own. I hate using the material editor!!! You just can't get a feeling
of what the material will look like until you render it (a long process!). If
you have some good wood materials, PLEASE upload them! I love using wood in
pics.
There's was to be a marble clock on the wall (they are too plain), but somehow
my computer ate it (not Hashes fault)! I just left it as is after that. I also
tried to add a image mapped texture to the wall for wallpaper using Character,
but it never "took hold". Do you have any suggestion?
I WISH I HAD CORELDRAW!!! Being on a college income (always a negative),
CorelDRAW is way out of my reach. I'm lucky enough to have a dad who felt
Playmation would boast my education, and purchased a copy at SIGGRAPH '92
(which I upgraded to a:m) Asking for anything more would be an insult.
Thanks for all the suggestions! You sure have a talent for seeing and adding
details! I'm still very new to using a:m (maybe 6-10 different pics to my
name), and modelling is where I've been focusing my efforts lately. I am
starting to see the plusses of good texture mapping to hide non-detail models,
but they are hard to come by using Windows paintbush and DR. HALO <g>.
BTW, have you entered any of your pics in the Graphic of the Month?
-ANDREW