Work In Progress - Antiquarian Books [commercial]
Widdershins Studio
Posts: 556
Hello folks,
Thought I would share what I am working on next and maybe get some feedback.
Basically it's old books. I've modelled five books so far each with three variations of cover; plain, leather and marble. So you get fifteen variations in all.
Question is (aside from if anyone likes them), I'm planning on making at least five more. Do people think I should do a big pack of the ten with three variations for each ?
Or spilt it up into two packs of five ?
For a bit of further info, the books are inspired by real books. The spines were put together from photos of real books, it was fiddly getting the detail in there, but I think it was worth it. Really these are old books, but not meant to be particulalry age worn. I made some that look older, but in general it was about books in period so they would still look in good condition - of course you can find old books that look new today, I bought some from eBay for my reference for the next five.
Anyway' I'll stop rambling. The bookends I made too and would be included.
Edit: I did a pack of six in the end with 3 cover variations for each one.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Do they open?
Nope, not these ones, just meant for display, but I will be working on some where at least the cover opens to reveal the frontispiece.
These are pretty good. Nice work.
Very nice. Book props are something that I find I've used a lot in my scenes. Are you planning to do a bookrow with them as well once you've finished them? Those are helpful for filling shelves.
I'd like to see a row of them, with a couple slanted. I hate boring bookcases full of perfectly upright books, lots of those already on the market. These are very nice btw! So I'd say a group of three or four, with the last one slanted back slightly toward the one next to it. It also helps us fill up the shelves faster. And if you could make different material zones on the ends, we could tweak the colors and that would be helpful.
If you could try to work out a way of giving the books different titles and/or authors, then their being bound books, a long row of the same design up close would be more realistic and intriguing.
Yes I can do some rows, good plan.
Yep, some slanted ones would be good, also on top of each other.
The matarial zone is something I could add, thanks.
I'll have a think about that, maybe making the labels separate materials.
I had a quick play with custom labels and it works quite well. I will supply the labels separately and some blank ones so people could make their own labels for each book. I'll make a selection to choose from with each type of book. In Photoshop I just tinkered a little with inner shadow and found an old looking font.
Also had a quick play with the spine material zone. The example spine is a bit garish, but it's just to show that if you have a row of books you could tweak the colours so they look different.
That would be a big help. I had a series of book covers to do which required varying combinations of the same ten books, which of course do not exist in 3D. I managed to Photoshop some new covers from old ones from various old book models that I happened to have, and it worked out pretty well, but being able to just have swapped out the titles would have been a lot easier.
Those look really nice
I like the side view of the pages too, I think mine need some work in that area. I took photos of my books, but that little puckering goes a long way to making them look more real. I've got to make the bump maps still as well, which will help with details like that.
My spines were done in Photoshop too, I cut out the best details from the images I had. I bought a stock photo of a long row of books, so I have plenty of inspiration.
And/or endpapers?
I think the books with pages showing were all from some old sets of prop books by Cartesius over on Rendo. I'm pretty sure they've all gone the way of clearance/disappearance by now. I think I got them at least five years ago. They were an awfully nice series of book props, but I think that not all of the ones in the image were his.
Well if I can do the front, then I should be able to do the back - I'm still playing at the moment, I found I can't get my bones from Blender to Daz, so I will have to learn how to rig in DS tomorrow. I have some nice old images in an old book I bought for both.
The only bones I have ever successfully migrated from Blender to Studio was a single joint in FBX and even that was more trouble than it was worth. It's just easier to rig, from scratch in Studio. Richard's advice in the other thread would be the best route. It's not hard, once you get the hang of it.
The books have been submitted and are in line to be tested now.
In the end I did not make rows of books, but instead have been working on a plugin that will do this. Hopefully that will provide a flexible solution to people needing to stack books in rows etc.
It's almost done, I just have a few odd things to sort out and I will make a post in the freebie section for people to try it out.
I'll put some docs up on my site, but it's pretty easy to use.
Later I will look into the rigged book again as it did not make it into this cut.
What did get in was the material zones and the labels. I've made 30 labels for the different types of book and it will be easy for people to make their own with the blank labels and templates. :)
This sounds great. So much easier to carry round if I move. Unlike the ones staring balefully at me around the house.
Looking forward to these. Loved the groceries! Did you see the entry in the Because I Said So! contest that had the main character unloading your groceries? It was funny. She was dealing with those, he was busy finding Christmas presents.
This is true !
Thanks and yes I did, I've been proudly showing that off to friends and family :)
You can never have too many books!
Cheers,
Alex.
Except when you are packing them up to move, and then unpacking the other end.
I actually gave up having physical books a year or two after my kids were born. I realized that I had had them in boxes for 10+ years, and that no, I wasn't going to inherit a mansion to put them all out in the library wing.
So, in a process that felt like being trapped under a log and using a pen knife, I hauled the boxes over to Good Will and HalfPrice Books.
sniff
When we moved 7 years ago we were downsizing from an 8 room (4 beds, 2 reception, kitchen utility etc) family house to a small 2 bed cottage 200 miles away, so we did leave a lot of books behind, very sadly, for a charity to clear. When we did the last move, from one cottage to another, similar size we had added books, but decided not to cull many, so moved around 800 books. Books are my friends, I am never going to go to having digital books. After a trying day on the forums it is nice to curl up in a comfi chair with a real book and a purring cat on ones lap.
I generally still prefer books too, it's the tactile thing. I can get by fine with reference material online but when it comes to a novel I still prefer to have a book in my hands too.
I do find books that have a lot of images fine on my tablet though. ie. when not much reading is involved - so I can translate to comics and things.
But yes, I still refer to books a lot and like them, though I too have thinned down the numbers over the years.
These are lovely and I will most definitely be able to make good use of them.
These are beautiful! You can never have enough books- real, digital, or 3D!
I spend most of my working day sat in front of a PC, teaching an IBM Power I how to behave in polite company, armed only with an RPG IV compiler. The last thing I want to do when I get home is read a book on another lump of plastic and metal. You can keep the cat, though, I'll go with a puppy.
Cheers,
Alex.
For anyone interested my books have now been released :)
http://www.daz3d.com/widdershins-old-books
Wheee! 19th-century books! They look gorgeous, and I love that you've included blank labels. This means I can create bi-annual volumes for my fictional Victorian magazine. Awesome!! *happy Snoopy dance*
In my cart, not yet bought. Why not make some modern academic books? Similar, bland covers, esoteric titles and price beyond the range of human will.
Glad they were good enough to get a Snoopy dance
I thought the labels would be good if people wanted their own titles, glad you like them, it's nice to see what ideas people use things for :)
Thanks :) I thought about making some magazines maybe - some more modern books is an nice idea :)
BTW all, if you want to stack these books, then I have my freebie here if you haven't already seen it : http://widdershinsstudio.uk/widdershins-ststacker-plugin-for-daz-studioacker-plugin-for-daz-studio/