[Carrara] Lighting a dark bottle - Page 3 - Polyloop

Bittles · 21st March 2008, 23:31

OK rickei Back to that bottle shape.

I have a shape made by importing the illustrator path and using "extrude line" under "surface modeling".

Now, dumb question, I see in your video how you closed off the bottom. When I try, I can't select the edges the way you did. How do I do that?

Bittles · 21st March 2008, 23:33

jones2000u below is a link about making tutorials that seems pretty interesting:

http://www.digital-web.com/articles/...ast_capturing/

rickei · 21st March 2008, 23:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by jones2000u

rickei - your movie is really cool. How do I do one of those on a mac, because then I can show you what i'm banging on about from a label designer's point of view?

I use iShowU it's very nice software
http://www.shinywhitebox.com/

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bittles

OK rickei Back to that bottle shape.

Now, dumb question, I see in your video how you closed off the bottom. When I try, I can't select the edges the way you did. How do I do that?

not sure what you mean. .. if you have smoothing on your object, turn it off. I can cause various oddities, when trying to select edges.
can you show a screen grab?

jones2000u · 22nd March 2008, 09:32

Here we go. It was too late last night - brain fried.

This is what I mean about the Ai side of things. Many labels can't be easily comped onto a stock bottle because of weird sticky-outy bits ie they are not square. Because Ai will export direct to jpg, greyscale, tif etc, you can work within a rectangle that is the right size for a bottle's barrel area and just churn it out. So if you want extra alphas for bumps, embosses, shine etc, it's all one operation.

I could work directly on the bottle, but if I wanted all this lot to move down half an inch after seeing a test render, it's a nuisance. With a separate cylinder, it's easy. That's all!

Again, sorry about the lighting. Must learn how to grmblgrmblgrmbl

Bittles · 23rd March 2008, 20:22

Hi Jones,

I see what you are saying. Yes I have worked with the label size only this would be a good way to work to maintain size relationshps rather than eyeball it.

Following a tute in 3d Extract I have used the opacity mask to created a clipping mask for my labels. The Alpha channel will do the same thing? Can you in one shader have all the elements for one label for example. Your foil stamp, your emboss and your die-cut?

One thing I did not see you doing is indicating foil. Have you figured out a way to do so nicely? I cheat by adding it in photoshop.

The lighting thing is a B---h. Thats a whole nother can of worms. I have a seemless set-up I downloaded (3d extract) but the white backdrop on you file is great. Also, the black is nice and dramatic if you need a stylish rendering of a product not bottled yet.

I like your verbiage. I am a friend of Lorem epsum my client always reads the copy and gets stuck.

jones2000u · 23rd March 2008, 21:33

Greetings Bittles!

My clients always wants to stick in "premium quality trodden by virgins at the vineyard" kind of garbage... but it takes a while to think of something to give them something alternative that's worthwhile...

Yes, the alpha will only show the bits that are less than solid black, so 100% black&white masks all else except your label. One caution: sometimes you get a 50% grey at the edge of the black when exporting jpgs out of Ai, which appears as an annoying white highlight. I just open in PS and cure it.

You can make more greyscales for emboss/shine/paper texture out of the same artwork: eg, leave the logo where it is in the big rectangle, delete everything else. Make your logo white and the background black etc. Then in PS do a little bit of clipped blur. That will work as a bumb map. To be honest though, by the time you've fiddled about with shader layers, like you, I do a quick fake emboss in the artwork with a couple of gradients and a shadow. At a 10 x 8 render size, no-one can see the difference. Just keep your eye on where the bottle highlights are and get your Ai blends in roughly the right place.

On the "black" lighting, I'm trying to copy a moody high-class ad shot I saw. I know it's done with a big square fish-fryer to light the side, but that gives you a flattish effect on the label bit. So I've chucked in a front light as well, which is giving that nasty white glare and I don't know how to keep that light on the label and yet have no reflection of the actual light. Any ideas?

BTW I just treated myself to the low profile alu Apple keyboard. In UK money it's 29 pounds. I would have paid double

jones2000u · 23rd March 2008, 21:38

Rickei, apologies, I forgot to say thank you for the link! Appreciated!

rickei · 24th March 2008, 00:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by jones2000u

Greetings Bittles!
On the "black" lighting, I'm trying to copy a moody high-class ad shot I saw. I know it's done with a big square fish-fryer to light the side, but that gives you a flattish effect on the label bit. So I've chucked in a front light as well, which is giving that nasty white glare and I don't know how to keep that light on the label and yet have no reflection of the actual light. Any ideas?

BTW I just treated myself to the low profile alu Apple keyboard. In UK money it's 29 pounds. I would have paid double

Since the bottle and label are different objects, just restrict the light to only illuminate the label and not the bottle. that should avoid the reflection

I really wish Carrara had negative lighting. it would really help in these situations

If you wanted to pay double for the keyboard you should have bought the wireless one

jones2000u · 24th March 2008, 14:25

Yeah and if I wanted to pay the right price, I should move to the States. UK = computer rip-off capital of the world

Thanks for the tip, Rickei - I'll work on that tonight!

Bittles · 24th March 2008, 16:30

For the designers here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Ap6Ck0aKI

Very funny! As someone mentioned they missed the fontalizer and I will add they missed the copy compressor (to fit maximum copy in small space)

jones2000u · 24th March 2008, 16:56

Can't watch it at the mo, but I bet they've missed off the magic instant web to cmyk colour-matching conversion kit as well

rickei · 25th March 2008, 00:35

"You paid your neighbor's, nephew's, friend, a whopping 50 bucks for that logo, make sure you display it with pride!"

good find Bittles!

Bittles · 26th March 2008, 22:00

OK so I spent all weekend in Hex making a bottle. I could not figure out how to select and duplicate a section of the bottle even with the movie from Rickei. I just duplicated the bottle and made it slightly bigger in Carrara as I did before. I tried using alpha channel to mask my label, which is really slick. With the help of the downloaded bottle from jones2000 I was able to figure it out. Now I have something I am stumped on. My bottle render looks realistic and I like it but when I make the label visible the dark low-lights on the sides are gone. Because the label shader is masked I would think the only element that would respond to light would be the label area. Whats going on?

Attached: sans label showing dark lowlight and with label showing only highlight.

Bittles · 1st April 2008, 21:38

Rickei, I have found your little bottle movie very helpful for learning to create a bottle in Hex.

I am trying that method to create a bottle but one thing confuses me, it appears that as you adjust to the bottle shape your selection is wrapping to the bottle with a curve (picture1.jpg) rather than like mine, with a straight edge (picture2.jpg). How do you do that?

rickei · 1st April 2008, 22:52

I think you are talking about using "edge tools"

see if this helps... I kept it big so you can see the tools and what they do

http://iconway.com/edge_tools.mov

Bittles · 2nd April 2008, 00:20

Hey thanks thats handy. It doesn't show me how you achieved the curve along the bottle edge though.

On the bottle clip, I see that you select an edge, drag up to lengthen the height, than you click on the yellow square to taper the cylinder to the bottle shape...this is where I am stumped....it looks as though when you click on your yellow box, the shape tappers in a curve rather than a straight angle. You are able to copy the shape of the bottle with smooth edges but when I do it I see angles where I want curves.

rickei · 2nd April 2008, 00:53

actually I didn't use ANY smoothing. it's more a matter of putting the lines where you need them to make it smooth.

here is another video.... I just bought a Sony HVR-A1U high Def Video Camera, so i'm in video mode... sorry

http://www.iconway.com/smooth.mov

as you can see if you put your geometry in the right place, you can keep your mesh sizes down by not using any smoothing.

22nd March 2008, 09:32	#44 (permalink)
jones2000u NURBS Booleans are your friend Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 138	Here we go. It was too late last night - brain fried. This is what I mean about the Ai side of things. Many labels can't be easily comped onto a stock bottle because of weird sticky-outy bits ie they are not square. Because Ai will export direct to jpg, greyscale, tif etc, you can work within a rectangle that is the right size for a bottle's barrel area and just churn it out. So if you want extra alphas for bumps, embosses, shine etc, it's all one operation. I could work directly on the bottle, but if I wanted all this lot to move down half an inch after seeing a test render, it's a nuisance. With a separate cylinder, it's easy. That's all! Again, sorry about the lighting. Must learn how to grmblgrmblgrmbl Attached Thumbnails

26th March 2008, 22:00	#53 (permalink)
Bittles Spline Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Midwest, USA Posts: 47	OK so I spent all weekend in Hex making a bottle. I could not figure out how to select and duplicate a section of the bottle even with the movie from Rickei. I just duplicated the bottle and made it slightly bigger in Carrara as I did before. I tried using alpha channel to mask my label, which is really slick. With the help of the downloaded bottle from jones2000 I was able to figure it out. Now I have something I am stumped on. My bottle render looks realistic and I like it but when I make the label visible the dark low-lights on the sides are gone. Because the label shader is masked I would think the only element that would respond to light would be the label area. Whats going on? Attached: sans label showing dark lowlight and with label showing only highlight. Attached Thumbnails Last edited by Bittles; 26th March 2008 at 23:08.

1st April 2008, 21:38	#54 (permalink)
Bittles Spline Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Midwest, USA Posts: 47	Bottle in Hex how'd ya do that? Rickei, I have found your little bottle movie very helpful for learning to create a bottle in Hex. I am trying that method to create a bottle but one thing confuses me, it appears that as you adjust to the bottle shape your selection is wrapping to the bottle with a curve (picture1.jpg) rather than like mine, with a straight edge (picture2.jpg). How do you do that? Attached Thumbnails

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21st March 2008, 23:31	#41 (permalink)
Bittles Spline Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Midwest, USA Posts: 47	OK rickei Back to that bottle shape. I have a shape made by importing the illustrator path and using "extrude line" under "surface modeling". Now, dumb question, I see in your video how you closed off the bottom. When I try, I can't select the edges the way you did. How do I do that?

21st March 2008, 23:33	#42 (permalink)
Bittles Spline Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Midwest, USA Posts: 47	jones2000u below is a link about making tutorials that seems pretty interesting: http://www.digital-web.com/articles/...ast_capturing/

23rd March 2008, 20:22	#45 (permalink)
Bittles Spline Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Midwest, USA Posts: 47	Hi Jones, I see what you are saying. Yes I have worked with the label size only this would be a good way to work to maintain size relationshps rather than eyeball it. Following a tute in 3d Extract I have used the opacity mask to created a clipping mask for my labels. The Alpha channel will do the same thing? Can you in one shader have all the elements for one label for example. Your foil stamp, your emboss and your die-cut? One thing I did not see you doing is indicating foil. Have you figured out a way to do so nicely? I cheat by adding it in photoshop. The lighting thing is a B---h. Thats a whole nother can of worms. I have a seemless set-up I downloaded (3d extract) but the white backdrop on you file is great. Also, the black is nice and dramatic if you need a stylish rendering of a product not bottled yet. I like your verbiage. I am a friend of Lorem epsum my client always reads the copy and gets stuck.

23rd March 2008, 21:33	#46 (permalink)
jones2000u NURBS Booleans are your friend Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 138	Greetings Bittles! My clients always wants to stick in "premium quality trodden by virgins at the vineyard" kind of garbage... but it takes a while to think of something to give them something alternative that's worthwhile... Yes, the alpha will only show the bits that are less than solid black, so 100% black&white masks all else except your label. One caution: sometimes you get a 50% grey at the edge of the black when exporting jpgs out of Ai, which appears as an annoying white highlight. I just open in PS and cure it. You can make more greyscales for emboss/shine/paper texture out of the same artwork: eg, leave the logo where it is in the big rectangle, delete everything else. Make your logo white and the background black etc. Then in PS do a little bit of clipped blur. That will work as a bumb map. To be honest though, by the time you've fiddled about with shader layers, like you, I do a quick fake emboss in the artwork with a couple of gradients and a shadow. At a 10 x 8 render size, no-one can see the difference. Just keep your eye on where the bottle highlights are and get your Ai blends in roughly the right place. On the "black" lighting, I'm trying to copy a moody high-class ad shot I saw. I know it's done with a big square fish-fryer to light the side, but that gives you a flattish effect on the label bit. So I've chucked in a front light as well, which is giving that nasty white glare and I don't know how to keep that light on the label and yet have no reflection of the actual light. Any ideas? BTW I just treated myself to the low profile alu Apple keyboard. In UK money it's 29 pounds. I would have paid double

23rd March 2008, 21:38	#47 (permalink)
jones2000u NURBS Booleans are your friend Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 138	Rickei, apologies, I forgot to say thank you for the link! Appreciated!

24th March 2008, 14:25	#49 (permalink)
jones2000u NURBS Booleans are your friend Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 138	Yeah and if I wanted to pay the right price, I should move to the States. UK = computer rip-off capital of the world Thanks for the tip, Rickei - I'll work on that tonight!

24th March 2008, 16:30	#50 (permalink)
Bittles Spline Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Midwest, USA Posts: 47	For the designers here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Ap6Ck0aKI Very funny! As someone mentioned they missed the fontalizer and I will add they missed the copy compressor (to fit maximum copy in small space)

24th March 2008, 16:56	#51 (permalink)
jones2000u NURBS Booleans are your friend Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 138	Can't watch it at the mo, but I bet they've missed off the magic instant web to cmyk colour-matching conversion kit as well

25th March 2008, 00:35	#52 (permalink)
rickei Respect the Dawg! Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: USA - Conway, South Carolina Posts: 793	"You paid your neighbor's, nephew's, friend, a whopping 50 bucks for that logo, make sure you display it with pride!" good find Bittles!

1st April 2008, 22:52	#55 (permalink)
rickei Respect the Dawg! Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: USA - Conway, South Carolina Posts: 793	I think you are talking about using "edge tools" see if this helps... I kept it big so you can see the tools and what they do http://iconway.com/edge_tools.mov

2nd April 2008, 00:20	#56 (permalink)
Bittles Spline Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Midwest, USA Posts: 47	Hey thanks thats handy. It doesn't show me how you achieved the curve along the bottle edge though. On the bottle clip, I see that you select an edge, drag up to lengthen the height, than you click on the yellow square to taper the cylinder to the bottle shape...this is where I am stumped....it looks as though when you click on your yellow box, the shape tappers in a curve rather than a straight angle. You are able to copy the shape of the bottle with smooth edges but when I do it I see angles where I want curves.

2nd April 2008, 00:53	#57 (permalink)
rickei Respect the Dawg! Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: USA - Conway, South Carolina Posts: 793	actually I didn't use ANY smoothing. it's more a matter of putting the lines where you need them to make it smooth. here is another video.... I just bought a Sony HVR-A1U high Def Video Camera, so i'm in video mode... sorry http://www.iconway.com/smooth.mov as you can see if you put your geometry in the right place, you can keep your mesh sizes down by not using any smoothing.