United3dArtists Archive

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 14 Aug 2011, 05:29

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 After the lid was supported by the dish the screw was retracted some to allow the lid to pass.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.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 14 Aug 2011, 22:12

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.

Steinie · Post by **Steinie** » 14 Aug 2011, 22:17

Clever idea Finis! It took me a second to realize what this was about.
Very cool.

bitkar · Post by **bitkar** » 15 Aug 2011, 09:44

lol, very nice and funny :)

MikomDude · Post by **MikomDude** » 15 Aug 2011, 11:07

Indeed, brilliant idea Finis!!!

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 17 Aug 2011, 02:42

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.

bitkar · Post by **bitkar** » 17 Aug 2011, 11:02

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.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 21 Aug 2011, 20:05

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.

spacekdet · Post by **spacekdet** » 21 Aug 2011, 21:27

The flasks seem tiny in comparison to the petri dishes.
Also, why am I suddenly craving a pizza?

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 21 Aug 2011, 22:11

Mind if we have some wires? Would be interesting to see how you've used SDS for this

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 22 Aug 2011, 04:21

Spacekdet: Are you sure you want a Clostridium Sapiens pizza? Their cousins Clostridium Tetani and Clostridium Botulinum cause tetanus and botulism. By comparison to the 8"x10" grid paper the dishes must be large. The flasks do look small but I wanted them to fit in the picture and the city shows well from this angle.

Steve: Only the dishes have SDS. One level of it. I made the flasks and dishes from a profile with the lathe tool and and gave them plenty of sides. The flasks look good without SDS and the dishes have better glass effects with it. My earlier attempts had more SDS. Here's some wires.

To make the flask contents:
1. Entered point edit mode on a flask.
2. Selected the top part with rectangle select with backside on.
3. Separated selected part.
4. Deleted the top.
5. Selected all outer surface faces with free hand select and add to selection on.
6. Separated then deleted the outer surface faces.
7. Closed the top with the tip tool using x,y,z = 0 and 1 segment.
8. You may need to flip the normals of the contents object. They probably point toward the inside of the object but should point to the outside of the object.

This produced a shape that fits in the flask inner surface. To get a good render make the contents shape slightly smaller than the flask's inner surface with the scale tool and the axes in the center of the contents. I made the different size content shapes using using steps 1-4 and 7. Give the contents object a low refractive index, 1.12 or less works for me, to see good results if it is glassy or clear.

Rectangle and lasso select with backside off selected half of the flask with the outer surface and the other half's inner surface. That is why I used free hand select.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 22 Aug 2011, 04:26

Wires of the Erlenmeyer flask and Petri dish. The dish on the left has one level of SDS as in the finished picture.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 24 Aug 2011, 03:24

I've been working on the flask contents and glass. None of these objects are subdivided.

Glass: I found that artifacts like the vertical light streak are fixed by using the smooth faceting option. That is on the same material editor control as autofacet. SDS also fixes it but the poly count makes the render slow.

Contents: The refractive index must not be near that of glass 1.6. Strong lensing effects occur if it is high that I don't think look realistic. The round flask in the middle has RI = 1.12. I think it looks good. The top of the liquid is red and it appears to fill the container except for the glass thickness.

The RI's for the contents are shown on the image comments from left to right.

Which Erlenmeyer and which round flask do think looks best?

froo · Post by **froo** » 24 Aug 2011, 05:31

uhhhmm... bacterium pizza? Eeeewww... Uhhhfff... <dry heave> I think I need a bucket...

Tommy · Post by **Tommy** » 24 Aug 2011, 16:35

Nice work. I think something between the second and the third Erlenmeyer glas would bee the best. The surface of the liquid has to been seen in some way but with at lighter colour. The middle round flask is the best!

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 24 Aug 2011, 20:09

Get well soon Froo.

Yeah Tommy, I think that's best for the flasks too.

Here is a new render. I took the reflection walls away and it renders in about 20 minutes now.

I wasn't getting the transparency I wanted on the bacteria "pizza". It was a two layer texture but the bacteria layer didn't look right. Now the agar cylinder is the same as the one on the left but there is a 2D disk above it with the bacteria and a transparency mask.

Raised the paper out of the table.

The flasks have smooth faceting on the glass and no SDS. The contents have RI = 1.12. The Petri dishes have 1 layer of SDS since the smooth faceting didn't help on them.

The flask contents still need work. The top is dark and more transparency is needed. I just checked and they don't have the settings I intended.

TS 7.6 model side. Lightworks render. Lighting is an array of infinite lights with no shadows for general light and one infinite with shadows.

I started a small Vritualight render. It looked good but didn't get to the top of the flask contents in an hour.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 25 Aug 2011, 04:57

These are wires of the jack tower, the wench, and the bridge. The coils are from the lathe tool. The strutting method using the shell too, discussed elsewhere in this forum, made the frames.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 25 Aug 2011, 04:58

The buildings of the city.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 25 Aug 2011, 05:00

New render. Adjusted the liquids and the lighting. The light array now has mapped shadows. The effect of that is subtle, most apparent near the round flask, but it added something to the picture. Changed the table top so there is something to show the transparency.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 27 Aug 2011, 16:47

This is my MMC entry.

There are wires of everything above.

I'll try this in Messiah 3D's GI renderer sometime.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 01 Sep 2011, 17:38

Note: MMC entry ends above.

Here are markings for the flasks. I discovered how to get a second texture layer to have correct transparency. More on that when I have time.

I found that raycast rendering is better for the glass. It can make complex textures blurry but it works for this scene.

A trick here is to put the markings in the middle of a large texture so you can use the scale and offset on the color and reflectance shaders to position and size it.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 08 Sep 2011, 03:16

I had trouble using texture layers to apply the markings to the flasks, the bacteria colonies to the agar, and the text the petri dish lids. I used planes over the dish lids and agar to that for the MMC image.

See the bacteria colonies in the earlier images in this thread for an example of the trouble. Compare that agar/bacteria (with one transparency map) to the one here.

I discovered how to get the transparency to work with texture layers. How to do the flask markings:
- Make the base layer glass.
- Make a big marking texture as noted in an earlier post. Make it white for transparent areas and black for opaque.
- Make a second layer for the markings.
-- Make the color appropriate for the markings.
-- Apply the markings texture as a transparency map on BOTH the color shader and reflectance shader.
-- Move and scale the markings to fit the flask using uv offset and reps. Use the same numbers on the color and reflectance shaders.

You must use the transparency mask on the color and the reflectance shaders. If you just use it on one it won't look right.

Here is a new render with raycast and the flask markings. I think raycast is better for the glass but it still has jaggies and raycast makes some things like detailed textures and text blurry.

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