First Lesson in 3D this semester

We had the first lesson in '3D Realisation' today.

Using extrusions to create an airplane
We Were:

*shown around the interface of cinema 4D, with descriptions of the most used functions.

*shown how to postion primitive objects (cube, sphere etc) within a 3D space.

*how to lock certain axis as to restrict movement in a favoured direction when dragging with the cursor.

*How to model objects by manipulating vertex postion, edge position or polygon position of an primitive object that has been made editable.

*using the 'extrude' function' to extrude parts of the object.

*how to scale a group of vertices.



The end result in the example was a basic airplane (shown above). The tutor went on to show the use of the 'hypernurbs' modifier to smooth out edges or make the edges of the object more rounded and detailed.

Creating a wine glass
After break, we were shown how to model a wine glass by drawing a spline (2d line) and using the lathe modifier to spin it round an axis to create the object. (I had asked a question earlier regarding the lathe function so happy a good example was given here).



My favourite part of the lesson, Making a new 'glass' material from scratch. The reason it was my fave bit is because (myself having experience in 3DS Max) a glass material has been something hard for me to replicate in previous attempts.



I learned the basic of what fresnel is used for within shading/materials, with the glass as an example where a black and white gradient can be used to describe 'the level of apparent transparency' from the edge of the glass as opposed to to the middle.(look into this more before i could give a description of a fresnel shader within the transparency setttings of a material)

we were shown how to manipulate transparancy, reflection and specular levels within a material in order to create 'glass'.



10/10 for an introductory lesson in the subject as some of the class had not used 3D software before, and some had some experience.

I practiced on my glass texture (the tutors was like a real glass almost) my texture is kind of plasic-like. I'll fiddle with this until I find it realistic to look at.

This is my glass after playing with the Transparency, Reflection and Specular levels in my material. I have also added a Diffuse layer with a 'dirt' map. Still not as realistic as I want it to be, so I'll post a new image after more fiddling.

Something I liked about the above render is that the refraction of the 'glass' has accidentally produced a 'face' at the base of the glass. A nose and lips can be seen clearly.

The images below show how my renders look after more tweaking. Theres a difference between the 2 renders in the way the top glass 'blurs' what is seen through it, where the bottom one doesn't. This is because of a difference in the disperse value within the transparency settings of the material.