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MMC Laboratory - Small Minds

Posted: 14 Aug 2011, 05:29
by Finis
WIP for my MMC August 2011 entry.

A bacteria created to store information in tiny structures in its cells for use in very small computers develops unexpected intelligence ...

I need to work on the glass. The agar isn't transparent enough. Surprisingly, the infinite light has mapped shadows with transparent shadows on. I never had that work before.

The close up shows their devices for opening the petri dish lid. The screw tower lifted it up. Then the cable pulled it back. After the lid was supported by the dish the screw was retracted some to allow the lid to pass.

I used Spacekdet's strutting method on the tower base but small changes in settings made a big difference or a mess. I found in the past that strutted items don't scale well but I'll try strutting an enlarged item and then shrinking it.

They need a city and a bridge over the side of the dish.

Re: MMC Laboratory - Small Minds

Posted: 14 Aug 2011, 22:12
by Finis
Added cities and a bridge. Worked on the glass and agar. Agar needs to be brighter like the earlier picture but transparent like this one. The glass is ok but I think I'll try the Caligari Phong reflectance on it.

I made the cities with the geometry paint tool.

I also made a bacteria's view picture. The lab background image for reflections and some large distant temporary objects are visible there too.

Re: MMC Laboratory - Small Minds

Posted: 14 Aug 2011, 22:17
by Steinie
Clever idea Finis! It took me a second to realize what this was about.
Very cool.

Re: MMC Laboratory - Small Minds

Posted: 15 Aug 2011, 09:44
by bitkar
lol, very nice and funny :)

Re: MMC Laboratory - Small Minds

Posted: 15 Aug 2011, 11:07
by MikomDude
Indeed, brilliant idea Finis!!! :)

Re: MMC Laboratory - Small Minds

Posted: 17 Aug 2011, 02:42
by Finis
Thanks everyone.

What do you think about the glass? I've been experimenting with different settings of the glass shader and the Caligari phong shader. The dark line and jagged reflections (?) along the corners and lip remains. Does that look normal to you? Also, if I turn the reflectance up then some parts become strangely bright.

The petri dishes have 13K poly of SDS so they should be smooth but I think I'll remodel them. They might have geometry that causes the dark lines or jaggies.

Re: MMC Laboratory - Small Minds

Posted: 17 Aug 2011, 11:02
by bitkar
i think that the material is not bad at all. I personaly wouldnt use SDS in making this, but why not, only bad about this is the high polycount.

Re: MMC Laboratory - Small Minds

Posted: 21 Aug 2011, 20:05
by Finis
Worked on the glass, remodeled the Petri dishes, worked on agar texture, made an Erlenmeyer flask.

This takes nearly an hour to render on a 2.6GHz dual core. The whole scene has 51K polygons. The transparency and reflection must take the render time.

The paper has one edge in the table. See anything else to fix?

I'll put this glassware in my free stuff thread sometime.

Re: MMC Laboratory - Small Minds

Posted: 21 Aug 2011, 21:27
by spacekdet
The flasks seem tiny in comparison to the petri dishes.
Also, why am I suddenly craving a pizza?

Re: MMC Laboratory - Small Minds

Posted: 21 Aug 2011, 22:11
by Steve
Mind if we have some wires? Would be interesting to see how you've used SDS for this