Ormulu Belle Epoque Mirror

[digman]

You will be a 3Dcoat pro before long. The mirror looks excellent...

[Tony Nemo]

A gorgeous ensemble, sparkling new. Ambient Occlusion with a tarnished gold color and something to attenuate the perfection of the mirror (as per your suggestions) will make something of museum quality.

[L'Ancien Regime]

A gorgeous ensemble, sparkling new. Ambient Occlusion with a tarnished gold color and something to attenuate the perfection of the mirror (as per your suggestions) will make something of museum quality.

As I said I think I can make pretty good tarnish bloom between the glass and the mirror silver coat but irregular dust on the mirror..how to do that?

[Tony Nemo]

A 'dusty material' controlled with an alpha channel so that only the edges of the mirror appear occluded.

[L'Ancien Regime]

A 'dusty material' controlled with an alpha channel so that only the edges of the mirror appear occluded.

Like an alpha that's a circular gradient?

I was thinking of doing this tutorial on how to put dust on glass;

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/products/tutorials/jen_series/

[Tony Nemo]

A circular gradient may occlude more than necessary. I was thinking of a narrow gradient around the periphery of the plane or visible parts thereof.

[L'Ancien Regime]

A circular gradient may occlude more than necessary. I was thinking of a narrow gradient around the periphery of the plane or visible parts thereof.

hmm...not sure how to do that...just hand paint it with a spray brush?

[Tony Nemo]

Yes. The occlusion could even have minute scratches and your tiny signature down in the lower right corner.

[L'Ancien Regime]

So essentially my mirror project is complete with a few small alterations. I accomplished everything I set out to do and learned a lot of stuff along the way. In hindsight I think I would have taken the five constituent pieces of the mirror frame and retopoed them individually, and I would have AUTOPOed them too. I didn't like the errors that cropped up in AUTOPO but in retrospect I would have simply deleted the handful of offending polygons and replaced them by hand to remove the errors. I didn't realize that could be done. Now I do.

I spent Monday and Tuesday worrying about the way the Normal and Displacement maps were working...they weren't smoothing out the base mesh, even though they were obviously having an effect.

Finally on Tuesday afternoon after trying endless renders I found the SMOOTHING control in the OBJECT PARAMETERS panel of Maxwell Render. What joy.

Today I just finished off hand painting all the repetitive geometrical ornament in Photoshop. Maybe I could have done it in 3d Coat but I knew how to do it in PS so that's how I did it. I feel it allowed for a lot more precision.

I didn't have much faith in the Occlusion Map either...It looked ugly in Photoshop, lying there as a 2D map and frankly it looked pretty ugly in 3d Coat Paint Room too but in the event it was invaluable. It seemed to work like a meta pinch tool making everything more slender, less toylike. In the end I made it as a separate layer with 40% to the Occlusion Map and 60% to the Gold map.

Also I want to offer thanks to digman for all the invaluable help he gave me. I honestly could not have completed this project (the most complex project I've made to date) without his generous and excellent advice. Thank you Digman.

And finally I want to say one last thing about 3d Coat. There's a tendency for people to sort of scorn it, or say they like it's retopo tools but that's all. I disagree heartily. I've worked with Mudbox and I like it. It's good. And I've worked with Zbrush and I like it too. But 3d Coat is every bit as good as they are overall, and in some areas it's even better. Definitely it's ergonomic feel is superior.

[L'Ancien Regime]

Well it's not complete after all. In fact when I tried to reopen and use this project in a render it really wasn't quite right at all (the displacement map was impossible to implement again) and this set me on a path of discovery in 3d coat.

 

Originally I'd had to hand retopo this monster after I'd fused all its pieces into one big solid chunk. Big mistake. I paid for it with over a month of laborious hand retopo work. Crazy and stupid on my part.

 

http://i.imgur.com/tRZ5K3N.jpg

 

More recently with the coming of Andrew's new autopo and with the  problems I was experiencing with my displacement map rendering properly I decided to get to work on learning how to get the most out of Autopo. With its convoluted multiple toroidial topology this particular model seemed to me to be the ultimate test for Andrew's algorithms.

 

I took just the main frame layer and turned off the other accessories like the sphynxes and the scrollwork.

 

Autopo in 6A worked really good, much better than back in Oct 2011, I was pleasantly surprised. But there were troubling anomalies that arose on closer inspection. It was almost like the surface wasn't even manifold

 

http://i.imgur.com/flxGoDq.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/uBx4Fcs.jpg

 

I tried everything to try to rectify these messy problems but nothing seemed to work until finally the light went off over my head. There were big bubbles and invisible caves inside my voxel sculpt. Don't ask me how they got there, I can't think of anything I did to produce those.

 

http://i.imgur.com/jnkHNnF.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Qik7HS2.jpg

 

I'd had this problem in the past with UV mapping and finding all sorts of weird topology crumpled up in the corner of my UV maps which were in fact mapped surfaces of internal voxel bubbles, but I hadn't expected the problem to crop up here.

 

So I played around with CLOSE INVISIBLE HULLS and then FILL VOIDS before hitting Autopo, (with edge loops! Edge loops work really well in 6A)

 

http://i.imgur.com/go0Am4C.jpg

 

The results, which while not quite perfect are almost perfect. After I closed Invisible Hulls and Filled Voids all the bubbles and caves in the voxel sculpt were gone.

 

http://i.imgur.com/UX754Lb.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/HUTG37w.jpg

 

I mean being able to do an autopo on a convoluted topology like that just blows me away and the edge flow is superb for the most part.

 

Remember, before you autopo, hit W and check for internal voids and hulls.

 

So I got a much better autopo in 6A with no anomalies save for one minor one that was solely attributable to doing the autopo on Symmetry.

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/TJ2V6xX.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/0xyue2A.jpg

 

But now I'm on the right road.  This will be an easy problem to rectify I think. The next step is to try 7A on my cleaned up voxel sculpt and see if I can wrestle it into shape. The last attempt I made with 7A turned out like this;

 

http://i.imgur.com/DEeemYp.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/s0ZLdKl.jpg

 

I think 7A can do a lot better than that if I just learn how to handle its controls and give it a decent  manifold voxel sculpt to work with. With that garbage in the voxel model my computer would just hang for ages, not responding. Now it just blasts through the task in under 5 minutes, and that's with 110,000 polygons.

Edited September 19, 2013 by L'Ancien Regime

[Pix Jigsaw]

Thanks for sharing what worked and didn't work for you.  Very good write up.  I learned a lot.  As always, I admire you work very much.

[L'Ancien Regime]

So I got sick and tired of trying to do a autopo mesh for the entire mirror in one go, and the hand retopo thing was an immense waste of time. Finally after a lot of experimentation I decided to strip away all ornament and just do the bare frame alone then add in the ornaments as individual merged layers.

 

http://i.imgur.com/7NyGPUW.jpg

 

And that allows me full reign to work in the greatest detail I could desire without technical compromises. You just have to work out for yourself what this medium can do.

 

http://i.imgur.com/BEiRH65.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/TnrzvZp.jpg

 

7A

That's about 37k polys. Hell, I've got all the time in the world to render...

Edited September 22, 2013 by L'Ancien Regime

[L'Ancien Regime]

Now that I know that I can autopo everything to the level I wanted, and I've figured out Maxwell's autofocus so that I can swiftly even go in and use it as a macro lens if need be, it's nice to go back in and rework all the details to the standard that I originally desired.

 

http://i.imgur.com/5Ex9ape.jpg

Edited September 22, 2013 by L'Ancien Regime

[Tony Nemo]

Looking very good and your standard is impeccable.

[L'Ancien Regime]

Looking very good and your standard is impeccable.

 

 

I'm really struck by how much autopo has improved since 2011.

[L'Ancien Regime]

Just pulled a 8:00 AM Sunday to 7:00 AM Monday trying to get it all down to where I wanted it. I couldn't stop for anything, now that Autopo and yes auto UV and auto focus have just made my life fantastic.

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/wA1M0MM.jpg

 

I've cut up everything and I'm going back over it and reworking it where it needs it.

 

http://i.imgur.com/NugcmvB.jpg

 

The autopos with symmetry were terrible last night so I switched to non symmetry autopo and hand UV mapping.

 

http://i.imgur.com/p3U6ipE.jpg

 

Some problems to work out but basically I get to go to bed contented with a very enjoyable night.

Edited September 23, 2013 by L'Ancien Regime

[Tony Nemo]

Such stamina and perserverance are beyond my imagining!

[L'Ancien Regime]

So I pulled another all nighter last night from 8:30AM Friday to 5:30AM Saturday and as always it was because I couldn't stop  having fun.  This is like the book you can't put down, all you can do is keep turning the pages until the book is finished.

 

In the process I discovered there's TWO kinds of normal maps

http://i.imgur.com/33559zA.jpg

 

I got the ambient occlusion going

http://i.imgur.com/gvIwPNw.jpg

Which in the final render on top of the gold layer with it's normal map and displacement map meant laying down the dirt occlusion as a diffusion map then reversing it to a negative with a lot of contrast to create a transparency map that masked it out so that it was largely transparent to the gold below allowing it to shine through everywhere where the dirt occlusion was not. If you'd seen all the outrageous  messes that resulted from attempting this in the last two days you'd understand my relief and satisfaction when I finally  made it work.

 

And I finally wrestled control over the autopo/UVmapping/Rendering side of the game to the point where I could stop and say that this was what I wanted without any seams showing or any weird surface anomalies.

 

Like this final step where I recalculated smoothing from 60.0 to 70.0 to smooth out those last annoying jaggies in the polygonal surface mesh.

http://i.imgur.com/HfyFtuf.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/onlRYjG.jpg

Edited September 28, 2013 by L'Ancien Regime

[Tony Nemo]

Is the render in 3D-Coat?

[L'Ancien Regime]

Is the render in 3D-Coat?

 

 

Nope,  Maxwell. Cycles gives great renders as Michaelis and digman have shown.. and it's free.

[L'Ancien Regime]

http://i.imgur.com/arj1lOm.jpg

 

working on the frame ornament, pushing to completion.

Edited October 2, 2013 by L'Ancien Regime

[Tony Nemo]

Begs to be printed!

[L'Ancien Regime]

http://i.imgur.com/z6qL0jP.jpg

 

Cakeller really knows his stuff...using the pose tool with airbrush as a masking tool worked great.

 

http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4075

 

http://i.imgur.com/YPt4qZV.jpg

Edited October 7, 2013 by L'Ancien Regime

[L'Ancien Regime]

http://i.imgur.com/9zN4058.jpg

 

Messing around with some prototype boiserie.

[Tony Nemo]

Quite gorgeous! Some ambient occlusion with a darker gold would enhance the detail.

[L'Ancien Regime]

Quite gorgeous! Some ambient occlusion with a darker gold would enhance the detail.

Yeah there's a lot to do there. This isn't my new refurbished mirror, this is just the old hand retopo version and it's a nightmare to try to tweak out to render properly particularly the displacement map settings. I just took this as a break from finishing the detail on the mirror to play with this. The boiserie (boiserie goes right up to the   ceiling while wainscoting only goes part way up the wall) is just a quick experiment. I knew that boiserie would be a complex architectural subject in itself. Boiserie is  like an architectural concerto where you have an overall theme which gets elaborated upon in its varying details where different parts of the composition are dealt with according to  certain rules, like the way it wraps itself around the chimney piece or the way it deals with corners, or doorways or windowsills. This panel I've simply repeated is like a leitmotif but in no way is the complete concerto, the rules of which I'm just starting to learn.  But it's fun to play with. I've a more complete and elaborate wall panel in the works now, one that is more Louis XV in  accordance with the style of the mantelpiece I've made. The new base panel has more sinuous, sculpted  panel trim than these simple austere Georgian panels  do.

[L'Ancien Regime]

http://i.imgur.com/vUJlvEC.jpg

 

The new more elaborate model with variations for corner molding etc..

 

Creating space out of the void with light...this is real pleasure to me. 3d graphics is the best thing you can get into. For a thousand or two dollars you can get control over a virtual Hollywood or Cinecitta sound stage to do whatever you want.

 

http://i.imgur.com/s0jgxAH.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/IPtZSMa.png

 

 

Cinecitta;

http://www.cinecittastudios.it/en/studios/umbria-studios

http://www.cinecittastudios.it/en/corporate-events#

 

You've got Cinecitta sitting on your desk

Edited October 14, 2013 by L'Ancien Regime

[Monkeybrain]

http://i.imgur.com/vUJlvEC.jpg

 

The new more elaborate model with variations for corner molding etc..

 

Creating space out of the void with light...this is real pleasure to me. 3d graphics is the best thing you can get into. For a thousand or two dollars you can get control over a virtual Hollywood or Cinecitta sound stage to do whatever you want.

 

http://i.imgur.com/s0jgxAH.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/IPtZSMa.png

 

 

Cinecitta;

http://www.cinecittastudios.it/en/studios/umbria-studios

http://www.cinecittastudios.it/en/corporate-events#

 

You've got Cinecitta sitting on your desk

 

 

it looks really great - like a photo

For myself, I work on a rustical clock, I think that Krita is a good companion for 2D Details

[L'Ancien Regime]

it looks really great - like a photo

For myself, I work on a rustical clock, I think that Krita is a good companion for 2D Details

http://krita.org/

 

Good find. thanks.

[Monkeybrain]

Yes, ok please ... but I recomend to use Krita in Linux. For myself I did made my computer dual boot able, its easy and fine. Krita did have even some better brush settings like photoshop and I didn't use corel painter anymore, why?

 

Sorry for the offtopic