October Carrara Challenge WIP Thread: Create a pulp magazine cover with Chills, Thrills, & Carrara S

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  • pimpypimpy Posts: 274
    edited December 1969

    This thread has been going full tilt! Congratulations on picking a winner topic SukL!

    Going through the thread looking for my WIPS, I noticed that there were some people that have been doing some very cool things that I failed to comment on. I wish to apologize for that. There was no slight intended. My excuse is just that the thread was moving fast and I had my rehearsals weeknights, so it was difficult keeping up.

    With that in mind, here are some rather belated comments on some works by some very talented people that I missed commenting on:

    Networthy, your ship design and gun model are exceptional and really capture the feel of those old Flash Gordon comics. I do hope that you are able to get an entry into this challenge!

    Silene, your Tyra of the Tundra cover must be entered! I love the expression on Tyra!

    Varsel, I love the cool work you did on the pod things. Using the modifiers on the hoses and wires is something I will have to remember. It is very effective. The layout and colors you chose for the cover design is truly just like those old pulp examples posted for inspiration.

    dustrider, very nice job revealing just enough of the creature to spark the viewers' imagination and yet reveal the viciousness. My only critique is that there is not enough poke through in the woman's clothes! ;-)

    If I forgot anybody, please forgive me! There's a lot of great stuff to go through, and tons of useful information and ideas.

    If you've started a scene and posted some WIPS, I would encourage you to finish them up and get them entered! It would be a shame to craft such excellent components and images and not show them off!

    I agree with EP and I apologize for being absent at this time ... but I had some problems with some project work and "work comes first" ...

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    If anybody wants to play around with the Martian War Machine figure I made, I have uploaded it to my ShareCG account. I re-rigged it. It also includes the particle emitter for the heat ray. It is timed to begin emitting at 1 second and stop at 3 seconds. It is pretty easy to change that if needed. The read-me file has more details.

    http://www.sharecg.com/v/78191/view/5/3D-Model/Martian-War-machine

    war-machine-promo01.jpg
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  • sukyLsukyL Posts: 251
    edited December 1969

    diomede64 said:
    diomede64 said:
    diomede64 said:
    so this is my last wip - been a crazy adventure.

    Pretty funny diomede! Poor tentacle monster! Maybe he'd have more luck in a manga? ;-)

    One question, are the woman's eyes missing, or are my eyes going?

    scifi eyes, scifi, LOL

    Well, kind of a big deal - thank you, EP. Maybe SukyL will take another look in the magic 8-ball. Here is a version in which the heroine runaway bride has eyes. If our illustrious challenge coordinator will allow, I will update my entry.

    C'mon, magic 8-ball,don't let me down.

    Answer is: Yes!

    Sorry I wasn't clear. Not just for evilproducer. It goes for everyone who has already posted in the submissions thread. Please feel free to make any last minute adjustments until I close the Submissions thread some time Sunday (10/26) night around midnight MST. Please let me know if there are any issues. I can always wait a bit. I'll even give a last call. I'm pretty sure I'm going to just squeak by on the deadline myself. :cheese:

  • sukyLsukyL Posts: 251
    edited December 1969

    MDO2010 said:
    As we rapidly approach the final submission deadline, can I just say how much fun this has been?

    I bought Carrara quite a while back, played with it for a month or so and then more or less dropped it when the first Genesis came out for DAZ Studio. I've spent a lot of time since then learning the ins and outs of DAZ Studio and never went back to Carrara due to all the things I heard about Genesis not working well in it.

    Now sukL has pulled me back in with this brilliantly chosen theme that I could not pass up and I am discovering that Carrara is just addictively fun to play around in. The vertex modeler may not have everything I have been learning to use in Hexagon lately but it is genuinely easy and fun to quickly create simple items for a specific scene. And I cannot rave enough about the procedural shaders in Carrara. That's the one thing that really stuck in my head from playing around in it years ago - how quickly and easily you can create stunningly complex shaders.

    This whole idea of a WIP thread before submissions is brilliant too - so kudos to whoever originally thought of it. I have been entering more contests and challenges over the past year as I get more confident with my amateur art and it is rare to get any feedback at all, much less helpful constructive feedback; getting to see the steps and thought process of the other people participating is just an amazing learning experience.

    I'm not going to abandon DAZ Studio as my primary tool after all the time I've spent learning to use it (moderately) well, but I am definitely going to go back and re-watch all those Infinite Skills videos by Phil Wilkes that I bought and spend more time playing with this great program.

    So thanks to everyone who is participating or commenting, and thank you to sukyL for reaching into my brain and picking the perfect theme to inspire me to pick up Carrara again. :)

    Mark

    Mark, thanks so much! I am so glad the pulp theme inspired you to give Carrara a try--what great results to boot! I totally agree with you that the WIP requirement for the Carrara Challenge is a brilliant idea. That's what sucked me into the September challenge. I wanted to force myself to work through some areas I was frustrated with, having to do the WIP and getting feedback really did the trick.

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,929
    edited December 1969

    deadline squeak? me too :)

    here's some pics, shader, scene, plain jane render, finished render, sorry to be absent so much!

    well run SukyL!

    Doc1.jpg
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    planejane.jpg
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    thescene.jpg
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    shader.jpg
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  • sukyLsukyL Posts: 251
    edited December 1969

    If anybody wants to play around with the Martian War Machine figure I made, I have uploaded it to my ShareCG account. I re-rigged it. It also includes the particle emitter for the heat ray. It is timed to begin emitting at 1 second and stop at 3 seconds. It is pretty easy to change that if needed. The read-me file has more details.

    http://www.sharecg.com/v/78191/view/5/3D-Model/Martian-War-machine

    evilproducer Thanks so much!!! You are awesome for sharing! It's time for an old fashioned alien autopsy to learn your modeling and particle emitter secrets.

  • sukyLsukyL Posts: 251
    edited December 1969

    head wax: Holy crap! I just looked up and Bam! your cover was there. That's one очаровательны ржавый медведь робот!

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,929
    edited December 1969

    sukyL said:
    head wax: Holy crap! I just looked up and Bam! your cover was there. That's one очаровательны ржавый медведь робот!

    :)

    На здоровье!

  • sukyLsukyL Posts: 251
    edited December 1969

    I, too, hope everyone who started working on this challenge can submit something. It's no fair teasing us. I'm sure everyone would agree, we so want to see the finished product...whenever. Life definitely gets in the way of art, so even if you can't make the deadline for the official voting phase, PLEASE try to post something. These threads just hang out there, waiting for someone to bring them back to life. There's no time limit (well...unless the site is overhauled).

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    deadline squeak? me too :)

    here's some pics, shader, scene, plain jane render, finished render, sorry to be absent so much!

    well run SukyL!


    Head wax, that is great! Love the characterizations and the body language for all the characters! Cute, yet extremely creepy. It's an enjoyable trip to see the color of the sun in your world!
  • StezzaStezza Posts: 7,823
    edited December 1969

    love it Headwax... you weren't russian to get it out were you?

  • chickenmanchickenman Posts: 1,202
    edited December 1969

    Well every time I try to export Chickenman from DAZ Studioi either Carrara has an I/O error or when I try to recreate him in Carrara It does not like the Toon Chicken so I have issues.

    I have tried to save him as a DUF, scene, scene subset,

    I think I have a way of doing it to get around the issues

  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 7,814
    edited October 2014

    Well every time I try to export Chickenman from DAZ Studioi either Carrara has an I/O error or when I try to recreate him in Carrara It does not like the Toon Chicken so I have issues.

    I have tried to save him as a DUF, scene, scene subset,

    I think I have a way of doing it to get around the issues

    Hello Chickenman,

    Have you tried setting the figure to the pose that you want, then export from DAZ saving as an OBJ file with the associated MTL files, then import into Carrara ?
    Thats how I brought Vicki6 in along with her clothes setup into my scene in last months competition.

    Don't know if it will work, but possibly worth a try if you have not already attempted it.

    Regards, Bunyip

    Post edited by Bunyip02 on
  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    sukyL said:
    I, too, hope everyone who started working on this challenge can submit something. It's no fair teasing us. I'm sure everyone would agree, we so want to see the finished product...whenever. Life definitely gets in the way of art, so even if you can't make the deadline for the official voting phase, PLEASE try to post something. These threads just hang out there, waiting for someone to bring them back to life. There's no time limit (well...unless the site is overhauled).

    Well, I am about to tease. This image has been clawing its way out of my head ever since the theme was announced, and I looked at some references. Ultimately I liked the Robot and Juliet idea better, so I put a lid on this one. But the lid wouldn't stay put, and I found myself working on this image despite having decided that I'm only going to enter one image into this round.

    So here it is, no WIPs. It fails the requirement of a rusty shader anyway. This is just for your fun and viewing pleasure. :)
    I am including the initial image, and the one with the titles. (I wasn't going to add titles initially, but then ended up doing it, too, because I realized that I actually set up my composition with the titles in mind.... Seriously, this idea just wanted out and had a mind of its own.) And it uses an item by our wonderful sponsor, The AntFarm! It's his adorable Glitch http://www.daz3d.com/glitch with my own shaders.

    Cover_Cuckoo_titles.jpg
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    Cover_Cuckoo_NOtitles.jpg
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  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,929
    edited December 1969

    thanks evil et Stezza yes I was russian to get it out :) I got up at 5.30 am to do it, but my wife could still hear me typing...... even in my stulag office

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,929
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:
    sukyL said:
    I, too, hope everyone who started working on this challenge can submit something. It's no fair teasing us. I'm sure everyone would agree, we so want to see the finished product...whenever. Life definitely gets in the way of art, so even if you can't make the deadline for the official voting phase, PLEASE try to post something. These threads just hang out there, waiting for someone to bring them back to life. There's no time limit (well...unless the site is overhauled).

    Well, I am about to tease. This image has been clawing its way out of my head ever since the theme was announced, and I looked at some references. Ultimately I liked the Robot and Juliet idea better, so I put a lid on this one. But the lid wouldn't stay put, and I found myself working on this image despite having decided that I'm only going to enter one image into this round.

    So here it is, no WIPs. It fails the requirement of a rusty shader anyway. This is just for your fun and viewing pleasure. :)
    I am including the initial image, and the one with the titles. (I wasn't going to add titles initially, but then ended up doing it, too, because I realized that I actually set up my composition with the titles in mind.... Seriously, this idea just wanted out and had a mind of its own.) And it uses an item by our wonderful sponsor, The AntFarm! It's his adorable Glitch http://www.daz3d.com/glitch with my own shaders.

    spiffing Antara, the concept is marvelous :) the glow on the rocketship thingy in the nest adds a sparkle to my eye,
    i didnt get a chance to say how wonderful that render you made is (the one in the submissions thread) - by the time I saw it it was buried ten pages down .....

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969

    sukyL, I can't thank you enough for this theme and the fun that this challenge has been! I haven't seen your entry yet, but I am hoping it's still going to happen. After all, the deadline won't happen until you say so. :)

    head wax, love your teddy cover! The titles are hilarious! :) But the Soviet themes and the Russian phrases keep making me do double takes at the screen. (P.S. Thank you! And I can relate - this thread moves so fast that I've had to set a limit to myself not to respond to anything earlier than 2 pages back, otherwise I'd be here all day, because between my visits the thread usually adds about 5 pages, and I tried to stay active this time...)

    Chickenman, Bunyip02 has the right idea. When all else fails, obj is the way to go. It's crude and limits your edition options inside Carrara, and also creates ha huge multi-shader list for your object (if you have clothes plus original figure all saved as one huge obj), but it helps when nothing else works.

    evilproducer, thank you for your great process descriptions and the freebie! Especially with particles. I also really like the final look of your entry. The trees look scorched and suggest a wide scale of destruction - great storytelling detail. And those particles look absolutely stunning! (sorry, no pun intended.)

    Mark (MDO2010), thank you for your great thoughtful comments, and I think the clean sleek sci-fi look of your second cover was what tipped over my hesitation over working on my second idea. :)

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited October 2014

    Antara said:
    sukyL said:
    I, too, hope everyone who started working on this challenge can submit something. It's no fair teasing us. I'm sure everyone would agree, we so want to see the finished product...whenever. Life definitely gets in the way of art, so even if you can't make the deadline for the official voting phase, PLEASE try to post something. These threads just hang out there, waiting for someone to bring them back to life. There's no time limit (well...unless the site is overhauled).

    Well, I am about to tease. This image has been clawing its way out of my head ever since the theme was announced, and I looked at some references. Ultimately I liked the Robot and Juliet idea better, so I put a lid on this one. But the lid wouldn't stay put, and I found myself working on this image despite having decided that I'm only going to enter one image into this round.

    So here it is, no WIPs. It fails the requirement of a rusty shader anyway. This is just for your fun and viewing pleasure. :)
    I am including the initial image, and the one with the titles. (I wasn't going to add titles initially, but then ended up doing it, too, because I realized that I actually set up my composition with the titles in mind.... Seriously, this idea just wanted out and had a mind of its own.) And it uses an item by our wonderful sponsor, The AntFarm! It's his adorable Glitch http://www.daz3d.com/glitch with my own shaders.

    That looks awesome Antara. Really a nice concept. The wet feathers on the chick, is that Carrara hair? It looks very close to what the little ones look like when they first hatch and begin to dry out.

    Post edited by evilproducer on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,086
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:

    Well, I am about to tease. This image has been clawing its way out of my head ever since the theme was announced, and I looked at some references. Ultimately I liked the Robot and Juliet idea better, so I put a lid on this one. But the lid wouldn't stay put, and I found myself working on this image despite having decided that I'm only going to enter one image into this round.

    So here it is, no WIPs. It fails the requirement of a rusty shader anyway. This is just for your fun and viewing pleasure. :)
    I am including the initial image, and the one with the titles. (I wasn't going to add titles initially, but then ended up doing it, too, because I realized that I actually set up my composition with the titles in mind.... Seriously, this idea just wanted out and had a mind of its own.) And it uses an item by our wonderful sponsor, The AntFarm! It's his adorable Glitch http://www.daz3d.com/glitch with my own shaders.

    Fantastic. I can only think of two suggestions for me to enjoy this image more.
    1) if the mech egg had another hinge on the top. Of course, that hinge would have to be rusty.
    2) if the version with the rusty hinge were added to the entry thread.

    But seriously, thanks for sharing the renders. I love to see what you have in mind. That chick in the nest is magnificent, and the nest itself is very impressive.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,086
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:

    Chickenman, Bunyip02 has the right idea. When all else fails, obj is the way to go. It's crude and limits your edition options inside Carrara, and also creates ha huge multi-shader list for your object (if you have clothes plus original figure all saved as one huge obj), but it helps when nothing else works.

    Agreed. The .obj route can be used very effectively if you get the pose, expression, etc. the way you want before exporting. With time constraints, probably the best way to go.

    Here are 2 longshots to try when you get time.

    - if chickenman is genesis based, make sure that the folder that you export the .duf files to is in the same file structure as where the core genesis content (genesis essentials) were installed. Does not have to be the same file folder, in fact should not be, but I have seen threads where people overcame some genesis related problems this way. If I can find an example of such a thread, I will link to it in an edit.

    - if chickenman is M4 based, don't use the .duf approach, use the cr2 approach, and save to a runtime file structure.

    You probably have already tried these, but for the sake of the future, we must get chickenman fully functional!

  • sukyLsukyL Posts: 251
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:
    sukyL said:
    I, too, hope everyone who started working on this challenge can submit something. It's no fair teasing us. I'm sure everyone would agree, we so want to see the finished product...whenever. Life definitely gets in the way of art, so even if you can't make the deadline for the official voting phase, PLEASE try to post something. These threads just hang out there, waiting for someone to bring them back to life. There's no time limit (well...unless the site is overhauled).

    Well, I am about to tease. This image has been clawing its way out of my head ever since the theme was announced, and I looked at some references. Ultimately I liked the Robot and Juliet idea better, so I put a lid on this one. But the lid wouldn't stay put, and I found myself working on this image despite having decided that I'm only going to enter one image into this round.

    So here it is, no WIPs. It fails the requirement of a rusty shader anyway. This is just for your fun and viewing pleasure. :)
    I am including the initial image, and the one with the titles. (I wasn't going to add titles initially, but then ended up doing it, too, because I realized that I actually set up my composition with the titles in mind.... Seriously, this idea just wanted out and had a mind of its own.) And it uses an item by our wonderful sponsor, The AntFarm! It's his adorable Glitch http://www.daz3d.com/glitch with my own shaders.

    Antara That is such a sweet image. Love it! Glitch is a cutie. The fuzz on the chick is perfect!

    Regarding my entry...Sometimes I need the pressure of a deadline. I finally worked out my rusty shader last night, which was my last big thing. Just making some final adjustments and adding the titles today. I've got 10 hours! It will happen!

  • AntaraAntara Posts: 444
    edited December 1969


    That looks awesome Antara. Really a nice concept. The wet feathers on the chick, is that Carrara hair? It looks very close to what the little ones look like when they first hatch and begin to dry out.

    Thank you! :) Yep, that's Carrara hair on a Poser Animals Duckling with a bunch of my own morphs for the beak, head and eyes. And you have relieved my fear that those hairs looked too much like fur. Thank you!

    diomede64 said:
    Fantastic. I can only think of two suggestions for me to enjoy this image more.
    1) if the mech egg had another hinge on the top. Of course, that hinge would have to be rusty.
    2) if the version with the rusty hinge were added to the entry thread.

    But seriously, thanks for sharing the renders. I love to see what you have in mind. That chick in the nest is magnificent, and the nest itself is very impressive.

    Thank you! :) The nest is the eagle nest with my morph to make the nest itself deeper and a surface replicator of some more twigs replicated around an outside of a torus shape of about the same size as the nest.

    Sorry, but I got it out of my system now, and am all happy and content about it. :)

    But if sukyL wants, she can use this image to promote the voting stage of the challenge in the Commons forum or at Rendo. I was thinking of posting this image in my Rendo and DeviantArt galleries along with the message promoting the voting stage, but I am afraid it might be viewed as invitation to vote for my own entry, and I wouldn't want that. I might have to wait and publish the image in my own galleries after the voting closes. But I don't think it will have the same bias if sukyL posts it (there is even no need to add my authorship there).

    Antara That is such a sweet image. Love it! Glitch is a cutie. The fuzz on the chick is perfect!

    Regarding my entry...Sometimes I need the pressure of a deadline. I finally worked out my rusty shader last night, which was my last big thing. Just making some final adjustments and adding the titles today. I've got 10 hours! It will happen!

    Best of luck with the entry. I look forward to seeing the final version of it.

    Also, as mentioned above, if you wish, please use my image for promoting this challenge.

    And I also seem to remember that you wanted to know how multiple quotes are done in same reply. I don't know if anyone answered it, but the way I do it is by opening the thread in a different Tab from my response Tab, and then clicking "quote" for the messages I want to quote, copying the text from the quoted window, pasting it into my response Tab, then going back to the other tab and clicking "Back" to return to main Discussion thread and choosing another post to click "Quote" on. Repeat as many times as needed :).

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Antara said:

    That looks awesome Antara. Really a nice concept. The wet feathers on the chick, is that Carrara hair? It looks very close to what the little ones look like when they first hatch and begin to dry out.

    Thank you! :) Yep, that's Carrara hair on a Poser Animals Duckling with a bunch of my own morphs for the beak, head and eyes. And you have relieved my fear that those hairs looked too much like fur. Thank you!

    Trust me, I know what freshly hatched birds look like, and you did a pretty good job of making it look as if it hatched about an hour or so prior to the render (give or take). The one thing folks miss about hatched birds is the blood and bloody bits in the shells and around them. It's not as bad as a mammalian birth, those are a lot more wet, slimy and bloody, but there is still some.

    Reference of chicks that had hatched in an incubator, and those same chicks in a brooder the next morning.

    Brooder.jpg
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    incubator.jpg
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  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    Evil, I freakin' love the new animated avatar!

    Also, baby birds are cute.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Jonstark said:
    Evil, I freakin' love the new animated avatar!

    Also, baby birds are cute.

    Thanks Jon.

    I figured that I did all that work on the skeletal astronaut for my first entry, it would be a shame not to use it with Halloween coming up.

    Those little chicks are cute, now they're all grown up and laying eggs.

    Tiny little wing feathers start to come in at about week or so, then it slows a bit, and then they start feathering out pretty rapidly. There's an awkward teenage phase where they look kind of mangy, but when they're done with that, they look just like little versions of the adults.

  • StezzaStezza Posts: 7,823
    edited December 1969

    Antara - that is one good looking chick.. looks very authentic.. Like EP at the moment I have around 40 young pigeon hatchlings squeaking and carrying on all with fluffy down on them..

    Maybe the next challenge can be creating a chickenman!!
    they're everywhere, they're everywhere ;-)

    Well done everybody, I shall now go back to YouTube to listen to 'War!... what is it good for' and Tom Jones :ohh:

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    We currently have two Muscovi ducklings that were hatched last week by their mother. The chick pictures are from last year.

  • chickenmanchickenman Posts: 1,202
    edited December 1969

    Entry submitted
    I did not get time to work on it today so it is as it is without chickenman.
    I was going to try rendering him out in Studio then apply it as a shader to a plane to get the image to work quickly.

    Love the chicks and duckling picks as we have lots our selves.

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    My brother was married on Friday to a beautiful and lovely lady, so I finally had a little time on Saturday to do a bit more tweaking on my own submission. Thank goodness I started working on it early, on nearly the first day, because this last month has been so busy I haven't been able to do much of anything til the very last minute.

    So I thought I would do a render combining the volumetrics and primitives of Carrara with the base render of the carrara Octane plugin. Probably the wrong theme to go with Octane, as I really think pulp magazine cries out for some biased rendering, but I wanted to play a bit with a new toy, and I'm obstinate so...

    The tool I'm using that I've never used before is the Fog primitive. I don't know why I never touched it before, it's easy to use and seems to work absolutely great. Seems like I read someone say in one of the forums way-back-when that the fog tool was really old-tech and not realistic, and there were better ways to get that misty effect, but honestly I thought it worked like a charm.

    The thing that gave me fits was the rusty metal shader. The scene I'm using is one of 3dc's ship elements from over at Rendo, and I knew from the beginning I wanted to have the main lighting come from below, too try to give a spookier effect (not sure how well it worked out) so I decided to make the floor glow and use it as the main source of illumination. The problem was I discovered it looked weird, like there was no floor at all, and the characters were just hovering over an opening to a white cloudy planet below or something.

    So I had to amend the scene, and put a 'floor' on top of the floor (sort of a grating above the glowing lower floor. This is the ridiculous backwards-ass way that I accomplised this. I took a cube primitive, took it into the modeling (vertex room) and then deleted all the sides except the bottom so it was now essentially a single plane. Then I tessellated it into many squares, and deleted some of the squares to make the openings in the 'grating'. I added a slight thickness in the end, then went back into the assembly room and stretched it using the scaling to make it look right-ish, duplicated it several times, and moved each duplicated piece to make them all look like one 'overfloor' grating with the light coming through the grates from below.

    I then put together a semi-decent octane rusty metal shader, but then discovered quickly that because this overfloor grating was completely backlit, in the dimness of my scene lights any rusty metal shader was completely unseen, so that didn't work so hot.

    (below are the screen grabs for making the false floor/grating that will overlay the real glowing floor. This was a totally ridiculous way to model this, so I don't recommend this approach to anyone, but this is what I did, so...)

    pulp_floor4.png
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    pulp_floor3.png
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    pulp_floor2.png
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    pulp_floor1.png
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  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    I decided to use the rusty metal shaders as backstops to the text of my scene, since I have no skills whatsoever with creating fonts and texts, or any other programs with which to create them, I just used the Carrara text objects. I sort of experimented with the many many font styles that are in the carrara text editor until I found a few different styles that seemed legible but also kind of weird and throwback-y. Then I made several different text objects, and gave them shaders to make the glow, but soon discovered even if they glowed they still weren't very visible against the background lighting, so I had to add some primitive cubes behind some of the letters that would otherwise not be visible against the background lights, and to these primitive cubes I decided would have my rusty shader texture.

    Problem was, I apparently suck at creating rusty metal shaders :) I experimented for several hours and everything I did seemed to just look worse and less realistic. I started combing back through the forum threads to see how others had accomplished this, and finally decided to take the easy way out. I just googled up a picture of a rusty metal step, used that texture as the color and bump map, and then tiled it so it looked about right on the primitive cubes backstopping my glowing text objects. Then I rendered the text and backstopping cubes separate from the rest of the scene (originally I was thinking of having the glowing text objects light the scene, so they were all positioned right in front of the camera and in front of the rest of the scene, but that really didn't work). I rendered using full indirect lighting so that the glow of the letters is all that illuminates the rusty metal back stops for them, it makes it kind of darkish to see the backstops but I thought it was kind of ok, so kept it.

    pulp_challenge_carrara_text_alpha1.png
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