Wednesday 30 November 2011

Humble Beginnings...

It has certainly been an interesting journey, here is quick render of how the scene looked at the beginning of my second day of room-set production.



By this point I had roughly modelled the walls, a basic door & window and the yellow (was supposed to be gold, had only just started learning Cycles materials) box on the window sill.

Since I didn't have any scene measurements, I placed cubes roughly where the furniture would eventually be, this was for two reasons, to try and help gauge scale, also to see how the shapes and colours interacted with the lighting.

94 different modelling stages...

Call it belt and braces but I wasn't taking any chances, because work is for my BA (Hons), I didn't want to get part way through and loose everything through some silly mistake on my behalf, plus I wanted to generate course work evidence, so, instead of just overwriting the same file, every (what I felt was a) major change, I saved a new version.  Consequently I now have 94 different modelling stages saved, this do not include a few furniture items I modelled and saved separately (Hey I did say "belt and braces"!).

For those who may not have heard of the term... Belt and braces means being overcareful, you don't just rely on one source of support to hold your trousers (pants) up, if one breaks you have another method of support.  Quite an old but illustrative term.

Tuesday 29 November 2011

Welcome...

Welcome to my Blender, Modeling, Design and Render blog, this is my first real modelling and render produced using the powerful free open source 3D application called Blender.
http://www.blender.org/

The 3D room-set render below was produced as part of my BA (Hons) photography degree.

Thanks go to Ton Roosendaal and his development team for the incredibly powerful Blender open source software, also Brecht Van Lommel for coding the amazing new Cycles render engine.

6 weeks to get this far...
It has taken 6 weeks to produce this scene, the time includes learning Blender's interface, modelling tools, UV mapping (used for applying textures), physics engine (used for improving the soft furnishings) and new Cycles render engine with its node system.

There are 5 items in the scene that I didn't model due to degree time constraints.  Even so, those models were still adapted as follows...
  • Armchair (model split apart, fixed, UV textured, sculpted and new feet modelled)
  • Figurine, on window sill (lower base modelled, materials applied)
  • Flowers (adapted, simplified and materials applied)
  • Cornice (adapted, materials applied)
  • Intricate pattern (used and repeated to form part of my mirror frame model)

I carefully modelled, textured and created the surface materials for everything else.

My ultimate goal is to achieve photorealism.

Below is my main room-set reference photograph.

Thanks go to Graham Nelson at Set Visions for allowing me to prop, light and carry out the reference room-set photography within their studio.


For those who are interested here is a 'clay' render.

 Lastly, thank you minus.com for your excellent easy file hosting sharing service.