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capnhack — Magic
Published: 2008-06-08 13:11:59 +0000 UTC; Views: 1458; Favourites: 2; Downloads: 149
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Description
This one's been rattling around on my drive for a while now so I thought I'd finish it off and upload it. Hope you like magic..Modeled & rendered in Cinema4D. Render time for the print version was 1 hour 40 mins, full version is 1920x1200 pixels and available via the download link.
P.S. Sorry about the banding, this is at highest quality and I still cant get rid of it. I've uploaded a TIFF version at the following link which has no banding. If you're on a Mac it'll just work but I can't speak for other platforms: [link]
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Comments: 25
Simple but effective - I wonder if you put a white or blue band around the hat if that would add? I haven't seen a tophat for a long time so not sure if thats a standard issue thing or not.
No matter - I think that simplicity can be as powerful or more then complex at times and it's also what I call "the never ending render" You can add to to the scene later if you feel the need for it but personally - I've always like monchrome or close to.
I like the lighting - subtle and material or attributes in refraction - great. Although it's flat or close too, Hats aren't made out of chrome which is the killer of all 3D images. It seems like so many people think that it HAS to reflect, with no regard to subject.
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Thanks
I did try with a white band but the material just didn't look right and, at this angle, it was only about half visible anyway. I have no idea whether its standard issue on all top hats but I'm pretty sure it isn't necessary for a magician's hat.
I always preferred glass to chrome personally, but that's more because of the challenge in getting it right than the aesthetics of reflection/refraction. I do like the aesthetics of those things, so I can understand why people like stuff such as chrome, but there does seem to be a little too much of it sometimes.
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Glass is more difficult since with so many different types - you have to get the index of refraction right or it ends up looking fake. Like a window that ends up a mirror or something.
But in 3D I've seen some very good ones done in black and white, the colors might grab a persons eyes at first but later it looks old. Understatement in the use of colors can and is more effective, and in the long run - the image doesn't lose it's appeal.
With the use of too many colors the focus of the composition can be lost easily...
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Yea it's certainly a tough job getting glass right. I'm still having trouble finding an efficient way to do frosted glass but I'll get there in the end..
Black and white is something thats largely underused in digital art on the whole I think. With 3D it may be because a lot of people have trouble with lighting and shadows, and those play such a huge part when there's no colour to set the piece off just right. Still, colour is no substitute for composition tho.
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Frosted glass you can't just apply an attribute but texture map/bump map (not necessity but does help depending) and then the index of refraction, mess around with. Transperency somewhere in the area 1.50 (from 0 - no transparency - 2.00 full) on transparency. So much becomes program specific and I have a generic map that I put in my stock [link] but there are the relections of red and other colors. IE: a dirty map...
I forgot where I took the photo, I usually carry around a small camera like (Canon Elph) and it has macro but also digital macro, and it works great. Digital zoom injects noise but macro doesn't.
I'm going to shoot more maps and place in stock but on the one that I have, it's too dirty for a pure frosted look. So I'm going to go the hardware supercenter and see if I can find something inexpensive, then set up good lighting and shoot.
Texture maps are so important and I have to find the link, but there was a very good free texture site I found. The quality was overall fairly good and it was from anybody who wanted to contribute. They set a daily download limit so you don't download all the maps but it's a legitimate site (or seems like it) in that all the maps are homemade and not commercial.
As far as black and white, I found this great fractal art that was done in black and white and I commented and the user admitted that the colors got so out of hand, that he decided that black and white was the only it was going work.
Color is hard but you have understand the color table -primary/tiertiary [link] and complentary colors [link] and think of the palette of colors that you want to use, and then make a reference sheet. Easy enough to do in Photoshop or any program
Most Important
1. composition
2. lighting (that runs hand in hand with 1)
3. color harmony but not overkill or
4. monochrome - a few colors and simplicity or pure greyscale.
So many little elements go into 3D - but I personally thing that understatement works well in the end, although depending on the scene some have to colorful.
Since right now (in Midwest) it's become rain season - I'm going to take this weekend and render something new and start the overhaul of gallery. I come up with some really freak things - I have to dig up my deletions, I had this rats in the sewer scene have no idea what was going on in my head 
Then I have this drawing that's been been on the backburner - it's basically a sketch of the Harley Eagle and I decided the heck with it, frustration (from injury) and it looks like (?) eagle as viewed threw the eyes of somebody who just drank a fifth/shot some heroin and did crack - I got tired so I just went nuts and really messed it up.
That's what it's all about - have to have a sense of humour and laugh at yourself sometimes....
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Yea I tried doing it with a bump map but it just never looks quite right. I don't mean the sort of glass found in bathroom windows, but the really fine frosted stuff thats used on ornaments and kitchenware, like this candle: [link]
I think perhaps I need to stop trying to modify my existing glass material and just build a new one with subsurface scattering applied instead, that may work.
I'm not a huge fan of textures because of pixellation and so on at very large sizes (like the 12000x9000 pixel prints) so I prefer to stick to procedural stuff and geometry modification wherever I can. Where I can't use those things (HDRI and so on) I have plenty of stuff from Dosch Design and a couple of packs from Arroway. The Dosch ones are very comprehensive and Arroway provide some very high res ones, but they aren't free.
The weird random scenes/pics are usually the best ones because they make you venture into some new areas and push your limits a bit. Most of my stuff tends to be random and doesn't follow much of a pattern (other than being simple) because I have a hard time finding inspiration these days, and sometimes I look at my gallery and wish it was more coherent but at least it keeps things fresh. It's all fun tho.
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I took a look at the link - that will be more difficult since that type of frosted glass is almost like sandpaper..or is in that probably was sandblasted.
So that does lead to a difficult material and if you already tried bump-mapping, from there that's where it will be difficult to achieve a photo realism.
I don't mind texture mapping but for high quality - you could use a very hi res map but then comes the problem of memory and the amount used depending on the scene/poly count.
On the commercial textures, they have some great ones but then comes cost so somewhere for lack of better word: have to sacrifice one area. As far as 3D/digital and computers have moved forward...there is a long time to go mainly price-wise. Having said that - when the price of hardware falls the software developers find a new way to push it to the limits.
I'm curious on this since it would be a nice feature: I wonder if there is a camera that has a square aspect ratio for shooting texture maps? Limited appeal except on the pro end so I doubt any prosumer camera would have that.
Good luck on getting anything close to the frosted glass look that you want, it won't be easy but it's definately possible. It would be hard to shoot a texture map (4090px x 4096px) - I would have no idea where to find a big enough piece of galass to shoot a macro in that size.
Years ago when I used to build and mod cars I had a sandblaster, so that would make it easy...but I sold all of my body working tools quite a long time back. And unless lucky - that fine of a frosted glass is pretty much for drinking glass and the such, so a larger piece would be very hard to find.
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Yea it is difficult. I think subsurface scattering with the sample size set quite low would give a passable effect tho, and perhaps a fine bump map on top if that turns out to be necessary.
I have spent quite a lot on my textures so far but now the collection is large enough that I seldom need to build something entirely from scratch myself, and that's with only about a dozen discs. You're probably right about the camera. Various lens distortions and vignetting would mean you'd need to spend more to avoid havin to re-frame it in Photoshop anyway, so I doubt there's much of a market.
Thanks for the luck, I'll probably need it
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O,o
Cap.. would you mind if this was my new wallpaper? It's been a year or more perhaps hehe since the cup of coffe which I still have on both my toys remember?
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Hehe, of course I wouldn't mind. I render these things out at widescreen desktop res so they can be used for that, and I can crop it to a different size if you want..
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yaaayyy!! 
I dlded the tiff, will convert to whatever fits best... tho a jpeg will have to suffice, to save ram
however, can you do the same that u did last time? pink it? well, only the background, instead of blue [link]
I have the pink sample square I sent you if you want it again..
Oh and the banding should dissappear if you put a small gaussian blur or a median filter in PS, havent tried but can do that for you if you want.
And the tiff looks good on PC but does show some banding.. not as much as jpeg but still a bit
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Heres the pinkified version: [link]
The banding isn't in the source images, it's in the compression. There aren't enough colours in the table for those shades to display it smoothly, so yea I could blur it but the banding would just come back as soon as its converted to JPEG again. You'll run into the same problem when you convert it to JPEG or any other lossy format so it's best to leave this one as TIFF, it won't use that much more RAM to display.
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thaaaaaaaank you thank you thank you!!! 
In short, thanx for taking the time to do it, maybe it's a small thing for you, but to me it shows the good will and friendshipness you show, and I really appreciate it Cap
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No problem. You don't have to do anything in return; helping people is what I like to do
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Thanks a lot ^_^ see u around here!
[vacations are here, so I will be doing some new stuff hehe finally xD]
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Kewl, I hope a pixie comes along and smacks you around the head with the inspiration stick then
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I like the simplicity, it works well with the background.
About the lines: Can you separate the blue background and the foreground objects into layers? (or just get a transparent background, or just import the 3D project directly into PS)
If you, in PS, take the background, and run it through the motion blue [default settings] and it should appear smooth. I'm not sure how it will make the spotlight look, but give it a try, I recently did it with one of my pieces.
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Thanks
The banding in the blue doesn't appear in Photoshop because I rendered out to a 16bit TIFF file, but the JPEG compression brings in the bands every single time. They show up in 24bit PNG too because the colour gamut just isn't wide enough. I think I might stick a TIFF version on my site and link to it, but sadly the print still has the banding so I don't know how that'll look..
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that kinda sucks, maybe the print version will turn out okay...
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Ya, I hope so. If not I'll just have to submit the prints as bitmaps which will come to about 130 megs each
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This is very good! Very simple, yet the colors and lighting just bring it out! Yay!
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Thanks, I'm glad you like it
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