Russell, here is a quickie I did this morning. Done in KT. 3 Minutes, 51 Seconds.
It’s my WoodRat model with an attachment I designed for another Rat user last night to allow raising panels up to 4 feet long. I couldn’t resist running it through Kerkythea.
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Here's a larger version. It was done at 1024x768, higher quality preset, 24 Minutes, 34 Seconds.
That's excellent Dave!!! Really cool idea you've come up with there, you should be patenting that and making a million bucks. You owe me half though for coming up with the idea of marketing it, we'll just call it a finders fee ; ) If I didn't own a shaper I'd be asking you for the plans right about now, especially since I just ordered a new Festool router, can't wait till it comes in. That's amazing how little time it takes to render that, I've just gotten used to waiting 15+ hours rendering that living room stuff. Starting to play with reflective surfaces on my furniture and stuff. Adds a little more realism I find. Anyways, cheers for now Dave.
Russ.
http://www.jensenfinefurniture.com
Thank you Russ.
I wish I could make a million off that idea. I'd be happy to split it with you if I did. Too bad most of what's there was invented by someone else.
Have you ever looked at the WoodRat? I'm sure glad I've got one in my shop.
There are a number of material libraries for Kerkythea. I have found that using various plastic materials with the wood grain image applied seems to work fairly well. In this WoodRat image there was a little bump mapping added to the brick to make it look a bit more realistic. I applied some metals from the metals library to get the reflections on the metal parts. I don't know what you can do in Podium to adjust the materials but I've seen some pretty nice stuff.
Looking forward to seeing more of your stuff.
"I have found that using various plastic materials with the wood grain image applied seems to work fairly well" Yeah I've been applying a "dull plastic" attribute to my furniture, that seems to most accurately represent the sheen that I get on my furniture. I haven't tried fooling around with the bump mapping yet, I'll save that for later in the week I think. I'll post my latest rendering tomorrow night for you to check out. It's only been cooking for four hours, so it's no where near ready yet. Later Dave.Russ.http://www.jensenfinefurniture.com
Hey Dave,Here's a couple of new renderings, mostly experimentations with reflective surfaces and whatnot. I rendering one now with some bump mapping, hopefully it turns out OK. I'll post it for you tomorrow. L8ter.Russ.http://www.jensenfinefurniture.com
Very nice Russ.
In number 11, did you put a bevel on the edge of the table top or otherwise do something to the geomtry so you'd get a highlight along the edge?
Hey Dave,Yeah there's a bevel on the edge, it shows up really well with reflective surfaces. Got a question for you, when you assign a bump map to a rendering, what do you normally set it to. I did a rendering where I set the floors and the stone walls to 0.75. On the floors it looks like it did nothing and on the walls, well it just looks weird. Any help would be...well...helpful. Thanks Dave.Russ.
Russ, in KT I usually use the texture image for the bump map and usually find that a setting of 1.0 works alright. Podium used the same render engine although I think they've diverged enough now that the numbers may not coincide. Stone walls sometimes look weird in my experience. There's probably some settings that can be made to fix that but I expect the main thing would be to have a different map made from the texture. There's software out there to do that but I am not experienced at using it.
One problem I have run into with stone walls is that even though bump is applied, shadows are still falling on a flat surface. You can see that in the red stool image. I imagine the fix is to draw the geometry for the stone wall so that the wall is really not flat. That just goes against my personal mandate to control file size by limiting unneeded geometry.
Bevels do that too which is why I rarely add them. KT can do bevel mapping with one export file type but SU2KT doesn't create that file. Hopefull Tomasz will add that one of these days.
Russ, Kerkythea2008 released today. I just did a quick rendering with a new stone texture that has a separate bump map image. This one was done using Photon Mapping-Medium with AA 0.3 at 800x600. It rendered in 2 minutes, 17 seconds in the background while I was checking e-mail and other things. In the past I couldn't do anything on the computer besides the rendering without experience huge delays both in the rendering as well as whatever other work I had going on. With it running in the background it's like it isn't there at all.
WOW!!! That's totally amazing Dave!!! Looks like I'm going to have to switch over to KT. The stone walls look so much better than on your other rendering of the same picture. Here's my latest with textures, I'm still not totally satisfied yet, but there it is. I'll download KT tonight I think. Cheers.Russ.http://www.jensenfinefurniture.com
Edited 1/30/2008 9:21 pm ET by Russell
That's cool. I like the atmosphere in your renderings. I think you're going to like KT. Make sure you get SU2KT3.0 as well.
Cheers,
Dave
Hey Dave,I was wondering if you could help me with something. I've been fooling around with the new KT and I was just wondering if you could explain to me how to put some gloss on my furniture? I was trying all weekend and couldn't get it to work. Thanks Dave.Russ.http://www.jensenfinefurniture.com
Russ, I'd be happy to help but I have a ventilator and a couple of anesthesia machines to deal with first. I'll probably be able to give you guidance over my lunch break.
Dave
A ventilator and a couple of anesthesia machines, those things don't sound as important as rendering : ). No problem dave, no rush, I won't be able to fool around with it until I get home from the shop tonight anyways. Thanks.Russ.http://www.jensenfinefurniture.com
Russ, I realize I have my priorities mixed up but my employer sees it differently. ;)
Alright, I realized that with the change to KT2008, I couldn't tell you off the top of my head how to do what you wanted. Here's some screen grabs that will hopefully help.
First, I use the Plastics library from the KT Repository. It is installed in the Materials Library. Instructions are at the download page.
After exporting the SU model to KT and opening KT, I go to Settings>Materials. Right click on one of the textures from the model in the right hand side. Choose Select All, Right click again and choose Rebuild Selected. Click Open above the right hand window and open the Plastics libary. You should see something like this:View Image
Select a single material in the left hand pane and choose a material in the right. Right click on the one in the right and choose Apply to Left Pane.
View Image
Right click on the newly modified material and choose Edit.
View Image
Right click on the little square next to Diffuse and click on the X to delete it.
View Image
The sphere turns shiny black. Right click on Diffues and choose Add Bitmap.
View Image
Navigate to find the original texture. I'm not sure if there's a bug with the new release or what but I had to find the folder called TX_Model Name because the bitmap I wanted wasn't immediately displayed. I don't believe it is supposed to be that way but I need to ask on the KT forum. Anyway, after choosing the right image you'll see something like this:
View Image
You can make other modifications to the material if you like but this generally does it for me. Shininess can be adjusted if you want. The higher the number the harsher the reflection. If you want you can right click on Bump Map and choose a map. I usually use the same material for things like hardwood floors and stone. They aren't perfect but its not too bad.
Hope that helps.
By the way, there are also metals and some painted surface library that you can download, too.
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