Jewelled Headdress

Works in progress and technical screen shots.

Moderator: joepal

Jewelled Headdress

Postby brkurt » Tue Apr 21, 2015 5:59 pm

Here is a new project, a 'jewelled headdress' using several applications: Blender, TopMod, GIMP and Yafaray.

The ribbon rings were created with TopMod. TopMod is quite a useful carving tool; the best way to use it is to start with a NURBS surface in Blender. Amazing, really, most people forgot all about NURBS. The NURBS-to-quad-mesh conversion works every time in TopMod.

This model uses a Wind Object to create the 'floating ribbons'. I'll upload the file once I've fine-tuned it; right now I'm working in 2.49b, so I'll upgrade that to 2.64a.

Image
brkurt
 
Posts: 1100
Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2008 8:49 pm

Re: Jewelled Headdress

Postby brkurt » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:03 pm

Some of you are probably asking "Why does this bald girl have a shower curtain on her head?"

Well you should ask. I'm now going to refine the various parts of the jewelled headdress, starting with the circlette.

This is about 15 minutes work using Blender 2.74 and TopMod 2.5, with the latest LuxRender plugin for Blender.

I started with a simple cube in Blender, removed the left and right faces, and then using the mirror modifier, created a torus of squares.
I then subdivided, and exported the wavefront object to TopMod. After that I selected face loops, and used the High Genus Rind Modelling Thickness to carve out the model. It took a few tries before I got the one I wanted. If this was a real circlette, there would be a silk inner band where skin touches gold. I'll make that near the end of the project.

Image

Continuing on with TopMod, I made a simple-as-possible lemniscate (figure eight) from a simple cube, with the Edge Handles tools, subdivided it, and using Face Loops, carved it out with Rind Modelling. You can pull a TopMod tutorial off the net that will show you every step. Going back to Blender, I assigned a Gold Rough Glass material from LuxRender.

I'm quite happy with the result, as I wanted an Early Celtic look.

Image
brkurt
 
Posts: 1100
Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2008 8:49 pm

Re: Jewelled Headdress

Postby brkurt » Fri Apr 24, 2015 5:51 pm

That was easy. Now, to the hard part, threading three silk ribbons through the circlette and the lemniscates, all without illegal intersecting meshes.

Image

And now, for the first fitting:

Image

The last step is one of artistic choices. I've added a Subsurf modifier and a Solidify modifier. The latter is necessary for the Wind Vortex, so that it can catch a hold of something.

Image
brkurt
 
Posts: 1100
Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2008 8:49 pm

Re: Jewelled Headdress

Postby brkurt » Fri Apr 24, 2015 8:43 pm

And here is the model for folks to play with. I can't quite get the wind force to work, but everything is set up for animation.

http://www.geekopolis.ca/blender/jewelledHeaddress1_274.blend

All fixed now. There were two problems: the wind vortex and the ribbons were not on the same layer (they always must be on the same layer for this physics effect); the cache calculations got all screwed up by the solidify modifier.

Image

And the next step, adding a figure model. This is very rough!

Image

And the penultimate version. Note that this looks great, it won't animate well, because the left and right ribbons are at right angles to the wind vortex object. The last thing I will add is a jewel on the forehead, but that means I have to create a 3d version of a fractal, the Barnsley M.

Image

Here is the beginning of the jewel. I'm going to stop here, because I think everyone who wants to use these accessories (or talismans of magical power, take your pick) can sculpt them on their own. I'm using LuxRender 1.5 for my external render, so you will need to install that.

Here's the model, updated:

http://www.geekopolis.ca/blender/jewelledHeaddress1_274.blend

and the latest render:

Image

Here is a front view, using LuxBlend 0.7

Image

Here is a front view, using Yafaray.

Image

You can try it out yourself, here is a the wavefront object:

http://www.geekopolis.ca/wavefront/goldenCirclette1.obj
brkurt
 
Posts: 1100
Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2008 8:49 pm


Return to WIP (Work In Progress)

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest