Monthly Items

Nearly didn't make it this month. I had some problems with my netbook (spilled some liquid over it on Friday, I still have to clean the keyboard, I was just too frustrated to do it today) I use for modeling. But I still managed to finish this wall clock. The wall is a bit dark or rather the exposure is not correct (slowly my models behave more like reality, so I should use my photography skills).

I think it came out very well. There are still some problems with the clear cover you can see in the image to the right. Where the surface has a vertex there is some disturbing reflection. I think I have to do a bigger change to fix that, I think the best way would be, if the object wasn't a polyhedron at all. I should directly render the object as a rotation surface made from a spline. That way there would not be any hard edge.

But I think I get much better at modeling and defining materials. Both images are linked to bigger versions.

As I was finally able to render the cabinet, so I can show the images. This object was quite complex and might be classified as medium complexity. It uncovered a lot of problems and was the reason for quite some additions.

The materials are still very bad, they are mostly stand ins. I changed the Phong shader to handle the ambient part similar to the Ward BRDF so the problems to use both together get a bit smaller.

As I wrote some days ago, I think my shaders are not good, that is an area I have to do something about. I could in theory use my wood shader, but that too isn't very good. Additionally I couldn't handle the look in this case. The doors are big enough that in reality they wouldn't be covered by one piece of veneer, but by multiple. And that is something I can't do yet.

Finally I need some way to help in controlling the movement of the doors and the drawers. Currently I can turn the doors in every direction as far as I want. I can also move them, the same with the drawers. I would like to be able to constrain the movements, e.g. to the rotation around one axis and only between two fixed angles. I hope to find some time to add something simple like this soon.

Today I have found and fixed the problem with the raytracer and the arrangement object. It was again some problem with transformations, the big changes I have made to the raytracer are still buggy. But slowly I get all the problems, I hope and then the results should be correct. The main problem is, that the old code was completely inconsistent and so the changed code often still suffers from that.

So here is the simple garden wall (or perhaps better fence). Nothing big again, but hopefully of use. The pillars are perhaps a bit too wide. But I think I will leave them as they are.

So I at least will post the spoon today. The other model (the garden wall) uncovered a bug in the raytracer (yet again). I think, I will have to change the object a bit, the part where the head ends is not very good.

But at least it looks like a spoon and it should also be useful in scenes in the future.

And finally I have also fixed the problem with the groups. So I can also show the image with the tea cups and their spoons.

So here the tea spoon is the new object. I am still missing a pastry fork and a tea pot. Also the sugar bowl is not completely finished and I would have to model a piece of cake, but then these object would also fit into a scene quite well, I would hope.

I think the tea spoon might need a bit more work, it looks quite flat at the back and very thin.

Together with the transparency I seem to also have fixed the refractive media. I am not entirely happy with the way the glass is rendered though.

Here the new objects are the lamp, the knife and the glass. You can also see the changed chair. I think I slowly get a nice collection of objects. If I would add a wall with a nice window in the background and some nice shaders especially for the floor, the image would look quite nice overall.

The images with the transparency I promised yesterday. When I remember correctly there are something like 900 holes in the image.

I think I haven't even posted the pin before. The pen holder was modeled in August, together with the texture. The ball point pen is from October with some changes from the last few days.

I finished the chair I had been working on. I also changed the proportions which were wrong. I think it looks ok, at least good enough to use in scenes in the background. I didn't apply any materials today, there is a small issue I would finally like to solve. Currently all the materials are owned by only one object and so if I wanted to change the color of the chair I would need to change 10 objects. Nine of them will nearly always have the same color, only the seat might be different. I want a way to set all the nine objects to use the same material.

I also consider to make a small change to the chair. The top piece doesn't fully fit and is looking strange. I think I will cut away a piece of the two bent bars of the back and put the top piece into them, so that it matches them, creating a level surface.

I used the parallelized raytracer for the image and it is cool how fast it is now. The image is rendered practically instantaneous. Very nice.

Today I finally finished the tea cup. So in some way I could put it up as an item of August, September and October. I think it has turned out quite nice, only the teaspoon is missing. And a teapot, obviously (and no, I refuse to use the Utah Teapot).

I have also looked into modeling a chair. But for that I need some additions to the Sweep Constructor. I found a nice chair, but the thickness of its legs varies and I would like to copy that. I think it looks very nice and it is a feature I wanted in the Sweep Constructor right from the start. So I will see when I can add it.

Ok, so I will try to get my small objects done this month. The first to post is a very simple table. I haven't even given it a useful shader yet. But I think its primitiveness is still visible, though I think it makes sense to have simple objects like this one. It might not be the most pretty object, but it is still better than nothing.

I will try to also model a chair. And add some more tableware, I have the dishes, the unfinished tea cup (I have worked on the handle today) and a fork. The knife has shown issues and I will have to check how hard it is to get it working again or perhaps redo it. I also need to create a spoon and a teaspoon. Tablecloth will be hard, I would need some form of cloth simulation to get it to look good.

This month is the first one where I won't manage to do my two items. I had too many problems with my program to make it. I post at least the image of the fork. There is still a problem with the distances between the teeth, I will see if I can fix that problem.

I worked on the sugar bowl today. I did some smaller fixes to the "cup" and created a cover for it. It was quite easy, but now I have one small thing which is still missing, the opening where the spoon would go in. That is a weak part in my system, I have no CSG yet.

I also worked on the cup. It is now much better, I shrunk it and now it should fit the saucer, but I have not tried it yet. The modifications I made to be able to create the bowl and change the cup worked without a problem.

Today I was also able to reproduce the problem with the Draw On Plane-modifier. Strange that I could not yesterday. I think I know what the problem is, but I am considering of not fixing it, but rewriting the modifier. It was created quite some time ago before I added the class to represent changed geometry. It tries to handle the same problems, though not as general as the new class and is also not as solid.

So perhaps it would be best to just throw the old code away and substitute it with new code using the Change Geometry. I should be able to do the change so, that old objects keep working. I will think about it some more and then probably do it.

I was much less productive than yesterday. I looked for the problem with the Draw On Plane-modifier, but it worked and I couldn't reproduce the problem. So I will have to wait until I hit on it again and then actually save the file. I also looked briefly into implementing support for the mouse wheel, but I soon found out, that my laptop doesn't seem to send the wheel events. The Synaptics driver seems to "look" for "scrollable" windows and then sends scroll messages. Honestly I am not interested to find out what I have to do to get useful messages, so I stopped at an early stage.

But at least I did a bit of modeling and I even managed to create some images. Some of the objects are from yesterday. There is now a small plate, for comparison I put the saucer into the scene. There are also two terracotta pots and a black flower pot.

The geometry is quite ok, but the materials still leave a lot to be desired. I will try to fix that in the future.

The last three images:

It really is a lot of fun to model these small objects. It is just the 3rd of August and I have three objects already. Today I modeled another plate and a small pin (for a pin board). The pin I can't show as it uncovered a small problem in the Rotational Constructor which I intend to fix tomorrow nothing with geometry, but selection I need to make to use two different materials). But the plate I added to the scene with the other two.

Slowly I have quite a nice collection of dishes. I hope to soon also start on cutlery (when the Draw On Plane-modifier has been fitted with a grid) and also start with pans and pots.

I managed to model another small item today, the first for August. It is a lantern made out of glass. I haven't put a candle into it. But I think it looks quite nice.