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"A deadly drink... A meal of heart..." Too much Manowar? Or maybe it was just this cool glass goblet I have, with the pretty blue rim and stuff. I thought it would be neat to have the light shine up through the red liquid onto the skull face. Oh, also, I was doing stuff for my article on clothing Poser figures in Ray Dream....
Ray Dream 5/Studio, Adobe Photoshop 4, Fractal Design
Poser, CorelDraw 5
(still no KPT? Kai's glad, I won't get to yell
at him in this one, either...! :( )
A skeleton, posed in Poser and exported as a DXF, of course.
The basic robe for this figure is in two pieces: the
lower portion is a simple extrusion of a wavy closed shape (to get those
nice wrinkles). It is bent slightly, and enveloped a great deal so
it covers and follows the contours of the skeleton beneath. The upper
part is similar, but pinched at the top to cover the shoulders. This
is adjusted and enveloped even more -- do you know how hard it is to get
a cloth over that rib cage without making him look fat? Yeesh.
The important tricks to remember when modelling clothing
is 1) Jump In New Window so you can see how your adjustments of one object
work in relation to your other objects; and 2) Wireframe mode. In this
mode, you can see through your clothing to the skeleton beneath, and thus
judge if the fabric is settling correctly upon it. (Without even having
to buy those X-ray Specs!)
The sleeves are done the same way, beginning with an
elongated, rounded teardrop shape on a straight extrusion. I positioned
the shoulder of the sleeve, then jumped in that ol' New Window to apply the
bending and enveloping. I copied the first cross section to the last
node as well, to control how the sleeve bellowed out. When the shape
was in the right position, I copied and pasted the cross sections to themselves
and reduced the Geometry, to make the sleeves hollow. Combine both
shapes for this effect. Note: You get very weird, twisted results when
one cross section is combined and another one isn't. Don't panic, they
will go back to being correct once you combine them again. If you need
to adjust the shape of either end of the sleeve, you have to uncombine to
be able to bend those shapes. (Also, save a lot!) Finally, when
you're SURE the sleeve is done, save, then go in and add a buncha nodes along
the envelope. Don't touch them, just add them, especially near the
bend. This is a trick to give your shape transverse wrinkles. It
can really screw up your shape, too, plus it's impossible to make broad
adjustments to the shape when you have to move every single little weenie
node in the middle. (Okay, it's possible, but can you keep your sanity
whilst doing it?) So if you don't Save before you do this like I told
ya... Don't blame me!
The hood is done in a similar manner. First, I
measured the skull against the background grid, then drew a cross section
with these dimensions in mind. It looked kinda like a figure 8 without
the crossing in the middle. Okay, an hourglass shape. After creating
the first cross section, click Done on your object (although you've just
started) to position it on the figure. Then jump back in (in a New
Window!) and start sculpting.
I kept the original cross section for the end, and shrank
the starting section down to make the point of the hood in back. A
big arc and some envelope bellowing further shaped the hood over the skull,
using Wireframe views. The bottom of the hood tucked into the robe,
so it all looks attached. (Thank goodness!)
TABLE:
This is easy. The top is a circle with a short
(2") extrusion, and a symmetrical envelope to give the edge a bevel. The
leg is lathed, much as it would be in real life. You can make a Wizard
lathe, or just extrude a circle and edit the symmetrical envelope on it.
There are three legs on the bottom of the lathed support,
which you can't see in the final picture. But they were cheap 'n' quick
flat extrusions, duplicated and rotated around the central support.
CANDLE HOLDER:
This turned out nicely. The candle is an experiment
with the RDD5 mesh form modeler. I do NOT get along with this thing.
But it is basically a lathed shape. I drew half a candle silhouette,
with wax dripping down the outside. Then I grabbed the top center
node and dragged it down into the candle, to melt the wax. There was
more node-adding with subdivisions, and a lot of pulling around of wax.
Not all of it was successful, but I shaped it up the best I could.
I selected the top section of the candle and subdivided it more, making
it smoother. In the end, it wasn't half bad.
The flame is one I swiped from a candle I had made before
(see "Still Life with Asymmetrical Vases.") I
tweaked the glowing shader with some hints from the 4 Elements' flame shaders,
and I twisted the flame with a deformer. (Hint: if you want to animate
a flame like this, using a twisting/bending deformer that changes parameters
over time works very nicely!) The shader is the same waxy yellow-white
I had in "Still Life with Asymmetrical Vases."
All 7 candles are exactly the same, just rotated differently.
And yes, all 7 leeeetle flame lights are still inside each flame.
With VERY limited radii of influence.
The holder itself also turned out nicely. I made
a smooth double curl in CorelDraw, then imported it as the extrusion line.
The cross section is a half-round thing. I duplicated the swirl
and, in the second incarnation, lifted the end of the side-view extrusion
so the top slants from beginning to end.
The candle-holding cups are circles with fully symmetrical
envelopes, pulled into a hollow bell-shape. I placed one atop a rod
(just a cylinder) by aligning X and Y centers, and touching on the Z axis.
Then I placed each cup/rod group in it's place along the double swirl,
just eyeballing where they would go, not measuring. Once the cups sat
on the upper swirl, i selected each rod and lengthened it to reach down to
the base.
GLASS:
This is a circle with a fully-symmetrical envelope, of course (aka a lathe, but easier). The inside of the top is hollow. The shader is a glass shader with a special wire pattern on it that places a blue glass strip at the top and bottom. Then the shader is applied in a cylindrical mode to get the strip to line up with the top and bottom of the glass. This does a neat imitation of the real glass goblets I have.
The liquid inside ("What flavor do you suppose red is?") is a duplicate of the glass shape, with the nodes and extrusion path clipped to make its outside wall the same as the goblet's inside wall, and to make it a solid shape. It has a semi-transparent red shader.
FLOOR:
This is a huge cube, of course. It has a stone wall texture that came with RDD.
LIGHTING:
This was a pain. There are 7 leeetle tiny lights
in those candle flames. They have strictly limited reaches to keep
them from overpowering everything in the picture. The shadow of the
hand and goblet (supposedly cast by the group of candle lights) is obtained
by aiming a spotlight very very carefully (and with a lot of trial renders)!
There are two fill lights casting blue light very subtly
into the scene. One shines down behind the table, the other shines
down in front, off camera to the right. These help define the shapes
of the figure's robes and all it's neato-keen folds.
The scene is shot in vertical format from position #1, then exported to 'Shop without any fancy masks or anything. In 'Shop, I selected the floor portion and the table leg and darkened them down so they were less obtrusive, and to keep the mood darker.
Extended the bottom of the canvas, added some text, la la la.
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