Modelling

Simplistic, black rim

I have created some more faces for the clock and also played a bit with the color and material of the rim.

Hour marks only, red plastic ring

The second also isn't bad. The red plastic material is a bit bright, though.

Four marks with numbers, brass rim

Then I tried brass for the ring. It is showing a problem with the model, the segments start to show. Perhaps an area light would help. Also the marks are too big when used together with the numbers. That is true for all the following faces.

Hour marks, for numbers and back to gray rim

Next I used twelve marks and four numbers. I also returned to a gray rim. The numbers look too small, but actually the marks are too big. I think this could look quite good with smaller tick marks. I will probably try that.

Minutes are marked, all 12 hours with number, still gray rim

And finally with hours and minutes marked and the twelve numbers.

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.

I was very, very lazy today. But it was necessary, I still feel tired, I think from that sickness, I guess I didn't get enough rest then.

But at least I have started to model a socket. I have really stressed the CSG-operations with it and found some situations where they failed. The socket I am modeling is the Schuko-type. The idea I had to model it, is basically modeling the plug, as it can be created easily with CSG-operations. I took a cylinder and added the two pins, this part still worked without problems. Then I created four boxes to cut out parts of the cylinder to form the guiding notches. And that didn't work so well, some triangles were missing. So I have to check that. I also tried to subtract that thing from another box and that completely failed. So I guess I have some more work to do on the CSG-operations, I hope the two problems are related.

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.

I tried to post a good image of the spoon, but didn't manage to. All the scenes I had were not good enough to show the form of the spoon. I will have to create a new one, I fear. I wasted too much time looking for a useful old one. I will try tomorrow.

I also started with the next object, a garden fence. I need it for the scene with the window I still haven't posted. The window was showing nothing, so I decided it would be good to have something outside and I think a simple garden fence would be ok. I hope to finish that object tomorrow. Perhaps I even manage to post two objects, the spoon and the fence.

It seems I really get better at modeling, I model new objects faster than I manage to post images of them. If I count correctly, I have four finished objects I haven't posted yet.

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).

You can see slight steps in the handle, but I think that will hardly ever be a problem.

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.

I was very lazy today, but at least I finally tried to finish the handle of the tea cup. But somehow it didn't work out. The new modifier to move edges didn't work at all. It produced strange results and even crashed the program. So I will have to look into it some more to find the bugs. Then I hope to finally finish the tea cup.

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.