text effect in Blender

K1TesseraEna · **Joined:** Sep 22, 2012 **Posts:** 2089 **Location:** US

Could not resist to try another brilliant tutorial by 'Andrew the Guru'.
Text effect - Blender.
Postprocessing - GIMP
The Decline of Empire.

Not very pleased with the results (mostly rendering)

molly · **Joined:** Apr 07, 2010 **Posts:** 14182

I love the text. It looks like the real deal. Actually, I love the whole thang.

he4rty · **Joined:** Aug 30, 2012 **Posts:** 2174

Looks good.

K1TesseraEna · **Joined:** Sep 22, 2012 **Posts:** 2089 **Location:** US

Thanks for the comments everyone!
Here's the close-up to get a better feel of textures.

Weathered galvanized gold brushed finishing

molly · **Joined:** Apr 07, 2010 **Posts:** 14182

COOOOL

Erisian · **Posted:** Fri Mar 22, 2013 5:44 am **(#6)**

Stunning Kite!!! I'm going to dust off my copy of Blender and get learning I think.

K1TesseraEna · **Joined:** Sep 22, 2012 **Posts:** 2089 **Location:** US

Erisian wrote:

Stunning Kite!!! I'm going to dust off my copy of Blender and get learning I think.

Thank you, Erisian!
Knowing your potential and GIMP/Mandelbulber skills, I'm actually surprised you still haven't done that yet.

I set a goal to practice Blender every day for 25-30 minutes before I get to more serious projects. As a warm-up.
Below is an example of routine exercise while I was sipping my coffee this morning .
This helps to build up speed in modeling and rendering.
Today I was playing around with lighting and materials in Cycle render.

molly · **Joined:** Apr 07, 2010 **Posts:** 14182

Gosh are you sure those aren't photo's, they are spectacular Kit.

K1TesseraEna · **Joined:** Sep 22, 2012 **Posts:** 2089 **Location:** US

molly wrote:

Gosh are you sure those aren't photo's, they are spectacular Kit.

Lol, molly! Thanks. I suck at photography, so I guess i resort to blender. :hehe

molly · **Joined:** Apr 07, 2010 **Posts:** 14182

I think you got the harder part of the two. I suck at both.

Esper · **Joined:** Jul 17, 2012 **Posts:** 2769

i like the overall effect !

especially the golden/brass textures - they looks awesome !!

the 3D does look a bit wird to me, but i guess its correct as its made in blender
you look almost straight into the F, but the rest of the extrusion seems to do a slight curve, while the text is straight
i dunno, maybe its just me

i think the whole piece could be improved by getting rid of the s.p.q.r. sign and a bit more light in the background

do you think you could write a very simple tutorial how to do some basic 3D text in blender, K1te ?

K1TesseraEna · **Joined:** Sep 22, 2012 **Posts:** 2089 **Location:** US

Esper wrote:

the 3D does look a bit wird to me, but i guess its correct as its made in blender
you look almost straight into the F, but the rest of the extrusion seems to do a slight curve, while the text is straight
i dunno, maybe its just me

i think the whole piece could be improved by getting rid of the s.p.q.r. sign and a bit more light in the background

do you think you could write a very simple tutorial how to do some basic 3D text in blender, K1te ?

Thank you, Esper!
Those weird looks are due to the specific camera set I used in this case. I believe it was one of the Nikon cam presets and since I put camera extremely close to the text and used 18mm focal lens it came out as if it was shot with wide-angle lens and respective lens distortion. Another thing is i used orthographic instead of perspective camview. Blender has all the variety of camera presets to play with, but it calculates all those angles and perspectives correctly.
The only reason I have that SPQR thing placed was to disguise render defect, there were a couple of tiles that did not render correctly.

A tutorial? I can surely do this, although, think it's not a very good idea on this site. Besides, with Blender it is better to do a screencast than to write it down. And there have to be some good ones on YouTube. I'll think about it.

Lurifax73 · **Posted:** Sat Mar 23, 2013 3:38 am **(#13)**

K1T Cool work.

Can you take a look at my blend file and give me criticism and what is missing. http://www.pasteall.org/blend/20285
Thanks
Lurifax.

Erisian · **Posted:** Sat Mar 23, 2013 5:14 am **(#14)**

K1TesseraEna wrote:

Erisian wrote:

Stunning Kite!!! I'm going to dust off my copy of Blender and get learning I think.

[font=Tahoma]Thank you, Erisian!
Knowing your potential and GIMP/Mandelbulber skills, I'm actually surprised you still haven't done that yet.

I'm sadly not very good at remembering keyboard shortcuts and I still find Blender a little confusing. I do remember E for extrude but that's about it at the moment. I'll try and spend some time each day as you suggested and see what I can come up with.

K1TesseraEna · **Joined:** Sep 22, 2012 **Posts:** 2089 **Location:** US

Lurifax73 wrote:

K1T Cool work.

Can you take a look at my blend file and give me criticism and what is missing. http://www.pasteall.org/blend/20285
Thanks
Lurifax.

Hi Lurifax!
I have had a look at your file, thanks for trusting my judgement.
First of all, what you can improve on is lighting. Today almost nobody's using lamps for this purpose in Cycle render.
Use plane(s) set to Emission. I usually use at least two planes. It give the render result more natural illumination, and it only benefits from the ability of Cycle render to calculate complex cross-reflections from different surfaces (like in my coffee rendition)
Secondly, do not underestimate World settings. Never set your background to absolute black. Or even better, use gradient (ColorRamp in node editor)
As for the materials/texture, I'd say you got it right on, except, in my opinion, if you use mix shader for the teapot, and the same RGB values for diffuse shader and glossy shader, it does not make any sense to me. Make the Diffuse a darker tone and the Glossy a lighter tone of the same color, to make it look non-flat, you can also use RGB Curve to shaders' color input. Other than that, nice job!

K1TesseraEna · **Joined:** Sep 22, 2012 **Posts:** 2089 **Location:** US

Erisian wrote:

K1TesseraEna wrote:

Erisian wrote:

Stunning Kite!!! I'm going to dust off my copy of Blender and get learning I think.

Thank you, Erisian!
Knowing your potential and GIMP/Mandelbulber skills, I'm actually surprised you still haven't done that yet.

I'm sadly not very good at remembering keyboard shortcuts and I still find Blender a little confusing. I do remember E for extrude but that's about it at the moment. I'll try and spend some time each day as you suggested and see what I can come up with.

Just make it happen, Erisian!
I would love to chat with you on far more occasions that it is now.

Lurifax73 · **Posted:** Sat Mar 23, 2013 6:29 am **(#17)**

Hello K1T. Yes I ask you any time.. My small experience with Blender 2.66 Cycle, there is plenty of stuff already to use without any confusion.
Yes you can use anything as lamp as longest you select emission. This latest blendfile I use 3 planes http://www.pasteall.org/blend/20287.
One of all tutorials teach me to use ( Cyclesmatmatlib.blend) with Ceramic, CarPaint, Gold, Silver, Copper, Rubber and Ice. You can use default settings with good results.
Add-Append- Select - Cyclesmatlib.blend and import material in to your project.

Thanks for helping.
Lurifax

K1TesseraEna · **Joined:** Sep 22, 2012 **Posts:** 2089 **Location:** US

Lighting is superb!
I made some teapot color adjustments in the node editor.
Tell me what you think. Thank you!
Blend file http://www.pasteall.org/blend/20289

Lurifax73 · **Posted:** Sat Mar 23, 2013 2:13 pm **(#19)**

your looks better than my. Thank you K1T
I have 2 questions left that I need answers to.
1.
On Blender Internal I learn how to use Material/Texture, there was nothing els to be confused about. Why Blender Cycle use both Material/texture and Node Editor. I dont know anything abouth nodes but almost everything abouth Material/Texture. Can you tell me if there is any difference between these two.

2
I laborated little bit with Background-Enviroment Texture (HDR) and add a chromed bolt. This look terrible. Do you know how to get this work together. http://www.pasteall.org/blend/20290

Thanks
Lurifax.

K1TesseraEna · **Joined:** Sep 22, 2012 **Posts:** 2089 **Location:** US

Lurifax73 wrote:

your looks better than my. Thank you K1T
I have 2 questions left that I need answers to.
1.
On Blender Internal I learn how to use Material/Texture, there was nothing els to be confused about. Why Blender Cycle use both Material/texture and Node Editor. I dont know anything abouth nodes but almost everything abouth Material/Texture. Can you tell me if there is any difference between these two.

2
I laborated little bit with Background-Enviroment Texture (HDR) and add a chromed bolt. This look terrible. Do you know how to get this work together. http://www.pasteall.org/blend/20290

Thanks
Lurifax.

1.Node editor in Cycles is basically the same but gives you more control.

2.I gave it a try, here's what i got

I had to add my own HDR image but the bolt rendered just fine after I reduced roughness to 0.002

Here's the tutorial on HDR env image mapping http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MvMuHckfDQ.
You can do HDR in internal blender render too but Cycles yield a slightly better results.