Digital Art Zone

Probably one of the easiest thing to model, but nowhere to be found, either as freeware or commercial mesh; classic, Tupperware like
food containers.

You’d think anyone else would have gotten the idea to enrich the CG world with this iconic piece of design, but alas, no.

After making some idle requests for this item, I got myself the free version of SketchUp 8, a free obj-exporter plug-in, and
went through some you-tube tutorials. As a first, simple exercise, i decided to model myself a Tupperware bowl.

Therefore, I am proud to show you my first masterpiece; my very first modeled object - tadaa…!

I still need to find out how to package stuff in self extracting zips or rars, and how to upload stuff to ShareCG, but if there is any
interest in this item, I’d be glad to do so.

The mesh itself is rather high-poly to make it smooth, and has a simple basic Poser 4 type shader without any texture maps.
The lid is a separate object, smart propped to the bowl, and will load as a single prop. I still need to test it in DAZ Studio.
I’m sure you can come up with better shaders than me, if needed.

Only one color variation is included (green); you can easily adjust color and size yourself. Authentic 1950s/1960s color
would be pastel pink, blue or yellow.

Shown on the pictures are (1) - A what-you-see-is-what-you-get picture, with the bare food container in a pastel green color,
rendered in the P7 Firefly render engine with some ambient occlusion added, and (2), a quick and dirty still life with 3 variations
of the bowl, rendered with the basic Poser 4 render engine.

Depending on what comes out ouf any further SketchUp doodling, I might share some more stuff in the future, but no solid promises
there…

I’d download that! There’s no end of 70s-era college scenes that could use more tupperware on the coffee table.

you need to organize a party thread too!
I will bring horse de oovers on crackers

Even if I have used Poser for a decade, I’m still a newbie as far as distributing freebies is concerned, so I will browse around
for advice on disclaimers and distributing stuff. I also need to re-size the bowl for Poser, as it did not respect the SketchUp
dimensions at import. And I still want to do a basic test in DAZ Studio 4. I also need check out ShareCG to see how to add
an item there.

Given the necessary spare time, I’d like to use SketchUp to create items I have not yet seen anywhere else, but as I’m still
quite confused about the legal distribution of generic textures. I’m not certain how much of these I can distribute freely. If
anyone knows more about this subject, I’d be happy with some advice on this matter - creating my own textures is a bit
out of my current scope.

I hope to get this food container out by the end of the weekend, and I’m planning on experimenting with a SketchUp
plug-in that does automatic curved smoothing on square edges, to add a rectangular counterpart to this Tupperware
bowl. From what I’ve seen in the tutorials, SketchUp is rather powerful, and not too hard to use. Depending on how
smoothly these models can be imported in Poser, it may be just what I needed for my modest modeling needs.

This looks great.  It’s little things like this that make a scene look more interesting and real.  Thanks for all the work and I will be waiting for the download button!

I’m still experimenting. The problem is not so much in the modeling itself, but in exporting it into a different format and have it
still look good.

SketchUp seems to have some internal smoothing tricks up it sleeve and makes even low-poly surfaces look smooth.
Once you export this seemingly smooth object into another format, things look quite differently, and faces show up in
the render.

The Poser 4 render engine is quite forgiving on my mesh, and makes it seem smooth.

Both Firefly and 3Delight seem to be more demanding, ironically even with the smoothing option activated.

A further problem with this particular mesh is, that there’s no photographic texture on top of it; a plain surface is more
likely to show its imperfections, especially when it is slightly glossy.

My original mesh looks too edgy to be usable, so I’m now experimenting on a high res mesh that makes SketchUp
choke, but will look better in 3Delight. It is based on a circle with no less then 600 sides in SketchUp as the base for
the rotation, and the polygon count is probably ridiculous - as far as size is concerned, the high res bowl is almost
9 MB. OK, modern hardware can take it, but it is still sort of ridiculous. It may be a SketchUp thing; as I am a complete
newbie as far as modeling is concerned I would not know. If any of the other modelers could shine a light on this,
please do - do Poser and DAZ Studio really need such a lot of polygons to make smooth curved surfaces, or is there
a workaround? (Probably I should better take this question to Nuts &  Bolts.)

I need to make a more accurate high res model for the bowl next; in SketchUp you do that by sketching the outer
contour and then rotating it around the axis. My poor old laptop needed almost two hours to do the math at my
previous test at a high resolution, so it might take me a while to come up with the definitive mesh.

A simple 3Delight - Ueberenvironment 2 render to show the problem - the pink version is a ‘quick’ and dirty ridiculously
high res mesh, as opposed to my original mesh in green, looking quite chunky.

You know, I honestly thought the stripeyness of the bowl was intentional. Mostly because my best friend owns a set, in that green, that actually -does- look like that on the outside. So, I’m calling that a feature, not a bug.

I’m going to play around with it a bit more, and then probably upload both a HiRez model for close range renders, and
the lower resolution prop I already made.

Then, there is my list of obscure props I always wanted to have, and nobody would, as yet, model, as my modeling skills
will (hopefully) develop. For several years, I’ve been enviously looking at the efforts of The Ness, DarthJ, Jan19 and Skip-
per25, to name just a few, and given a modeling program that is intuitive to use, it is actually fun creating new stuff - just
need to find the time.

Simple stuff like this should make me come to grips with the basic problems between SketchUp and Poser/DAZ Studio,
and finding workarounds. As soon as I have the hang of it, I will have developed a work flow, and things should be going
more smoothly. At this point in time, this is mostly about my learning curve, with some additional freebie props as extra
benefits.

My God! It’s my childhood in 3D! I think my mother had every conceivable piece of Tupperware that came out from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. Any chance you’re going to do the Tupperware “sippy” cup? That’s one piece that will be forever linked to my childhood.

Very cool…

Lord Ganthor - 25 August 2012 05:13 PM

My God! It’s my childhood in 3D! I think my mother had every conceivable piece of Tupperware that came out from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. Any chance you’re going to do the Tupperware “sippy” cup? That’s one piece that will be forever linked to my childhood.

I was a bit uncertain about what a Sippy cup looks like, did a quick google search, and had the pictures hit me like a brick - seems that I had one, too, in my earliest childhood, and it suddenly all came back to me. (Thanks!)

Seems easy enough to model in SketchUp, so I’m putting it on my To Do list.

As soon as I figure out which SketchUp modeling settings give me smooth edged curved surfaces without exploding the polygon count, creating simple objects should be a breeze. May be that I’ll do an entire line of Tupperware items, if I can find some reference.

How about the Tupperware site…  http://order.tupperware.ca/pls/htprod_wwwcan/home

Then there is Google Image search…  google image search 1

This link is for large images for a better view… google search 2

And finally what they had back in the 70’s which is when my mother started buy them…  google search 3

Here is the 60’s version…  google search4

And the 50’s though there is not a great deal of difference between these last two decades.  google search 5

Oops I almost forgot…the Tupperware toys, I remember getting these for my kids.

google search toys

links edited by a Moderator so they don’t break the forum formatting.

calieVee try [ur l=no gap between r &l, put your url here] some descriptive phrase or word[/url] so your links fit the page.

Just a quick update: I went through a lot of tutorials and forums, and found out that SketchUp is not to good in creating
curved surfaces for other applications. As a quick and intuitive modeler, it’s a dream, especially when you add some
of the many free plugins, but SketchUp has a trick to make low poly meshes seem smooth internally, and is not really
designed for making high poly objects for other applications. It can be done, but there are some difficulties. The
reason why I want to stick with SketchUp is, because it is really very intuitive to use. In the past I tried some other
applications for modeling, even Maya, at work, but so far SkechUp is the only application for me that is fun to use.

Both the Firefly renderer and 3Delight are sort of picky where curved objects are concerned, especially when you use
a combination of transparancy, refraction and reflection in the material settings - if the mesh is low poly, the faces will
show in the render, and the object will look like a poor 3D model.

I’m still looking for a compromise between quality and polygon count - I did do some smooth bowls, but they have a
humungous amount of polygons, and make SketchUp choke during the modeling process. However, I’m getting closer
to some presets that will produce rather smooth objects without breaking the polygon count.

I’m also experimenting with working in SketchUp with a relatively low polygon count internally, then import the mesh into
another modeling application that is better in dealing with high polygon meshes, and do some smoothing there.

It’s mostly trial and error, and looking what looks right in Poser and Studio. At the moment, for me it is not even so
much about the bowl, as for working out a good work flow between SketchUp and Studio/Poser; if I get the basics
right, the modeling process should go quicker in the future. The main problem seems to be in creating curved
objects; anything with straight lines is quick and easy to create, and will work fine in Poser and Studio.

At the moment, I’m mostly interested in creating simple objects that I looked for all over the web, but was unable
to find - mostly period and vintage props. Or some architecture from Ancient Babylon. What I will model, will depend
a lot on my general mood, the time available, available documentation, and mostly my modeling skills, that at the
moment are still very, very basic.

First there is the learning curve, anything else is in the future.

As Tupperware seems to be a great way in covering the basics, I’ve decided to try a few more containers -
the rectangular ones for instance are not straight, but slightly curved, and I will need to find out the best way
of modeling these shapes within SketchUp. Anyway, I’m having fun, and probably, by the end of the week,
I’ll have a small collection of Tupperware items ready for sharing.

As for the bowl - it’ll be there somewhere this week; just give me a couple of days more for getting my work
method right.

I’m glad to see someone else using SketchUp to model.
Pretty much most of my models are made in SketchUp. My personal trick is to use SU8 to export in DAE to Blender 2.57 and then export the mesh out as an OBJ… There seems to be some electro-polymorphic magic that occurs that way, but meshes seem much smoother than just exporting straight out… could be me though, but seems that works best.
Also whenever possible, try modeling using quads instead of tris or ngons and export untriangulated… you get better smoothing that way.
There are some pretty decent tutorials on YouTube for creating automobile meshes… I don’t have the links with me, but you can probably find them by googling “making cars in sketchup” or something like that… Also check out SketchUcation’s website for loads of great SketchUp plugins and information.

SketchUcation:    http://sketchucation.com

A super awesome collection of free plugins and ruby scripts For SU:  http://rhin.crai.archi.fr/rld/plugins_list_az.php

Kerkythea a great free render engine that has a plugin for SU:  http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/

The KT2SU plugin:    http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=42&func=select&id=7

If you get KT and the plugin for SU, remember to pick up the lighting setup too… you can set up your lights in SU before sending the model to be rendered in KT… always save a separate version of the model when adding lights sets for KT, so you don’t export out the light objects and cause problems in other programs later on.