[C5] A Paper Lamp

[Thomas]

This short tutorial will show you how to create a paper lamp (or any kind of lamp in fact) with the help of the Translucency feature of Carrara. This tutorial doesn't include any advanced action, then, it can be performed by beginners or advanced users. It's also a good way to show a creation step by step.

[Thomas]

The first step of this tutorial is about the 3D mdoel itself. It won't be shown in the tutorial, any kind of model will suite the tutorial. But only keep in mind that the part of the lamp which will be support the translucency, have to be thin, without any thickness, or it won't work. The screenshot below show the model built in Hexagon, but it can be done in any modeler, including Carrara's one.

Open the previous model in Carrara. No need of smoothing or UVmapping in this exemple. But if you need some UVs fo a custum mapping, then, go in the vertex modeler and add some.

Select on of the lamp feet and edit its material, in the Shading room. 1 - Choose a dark color, like a deep blue. 2 - Apply a noise for the bump channel, to create surfaces modifications, like a small noise. 3 - Add a value for the reflection, around 30%. Feel free to create your own shader with your favorites values!

Go back the the Assembly room and in the Shaders tab in the property panel, drag the shader you have just created on all the other "metalic" parts of your lamp. In this tutorial model, it's all parts except the paper part.

Now, select the paper part of the lamp and edit its shader, in the Shading room. 1 - Choose the color, if possible, different from the previous shader. 2 - Apply a shader in the bump channel, like a fractal noise. 3 - For the translucency, first, add an Operator>Mixer. It will allow to have two different colors for the translucency and give a more random aspect to your sahder. 4 - Choose a lighter color of the Color channel for the Source 1 and a darker one for the Source 2. 5 - For the Mixer, chose the same fractal noise of the bump. Then, the translucency will fit the bump perturbations! 6 - It was also possible to drag with CTRL/Command key pressed the bump shader to the blender canal of the mixer.

Go back to the assembly room. Delete the Direct light of the default light and add a bulb light (or convert the default lighting) 1 - Put the bulb on the top of the light. 2 - Take care of centering the bulb inside the model, like a real bulb should be in a lamp.

In the property panel of the bulb, change the foloowing parameters: increase the intensity and change the default color. Try to set a color which is around the shader color (red in this tutorial model). Change the range around the size of the paper model higher value (higer value of the bounding box). Add a range falloff, to create a more realistic lighting.

Add a simple apln for the floor and add a basic beige shader.

As shown in the previous sections, the metalic parts of the lamp include a reflection in the shader. To create a better look for the final render, add an environnement, like an HDRI map. 1 - Click on the scène line in the Instances tab (scene tree). 2 - In the Background section, change from "None" to HDRI and load a map of your choice. You can also use a sky or any environnment map. 3 - Put a lower value for the intensity.

Switch to the render room to set the rendering parameters. Default one are enought, only check the Indirect Lighting. Don't add a skylight lighting or only with low values. Checking the light through transparency won't change anything for this exemple, except increasing render time. But on other sample, it change a lot the final results !

And this is the final result. Youcan see that the variations of the papers can be very nice, thanks to the mixer in the paper shader. Now it's time for your to create your own paper lamp!

[pnoland]

Thanks for this, I was wondering the proper way to use this material feature. Keep 'em comin'! :D

[crazy wabbit]

Thomas have i told you i love you :P

[Couerl]

Thomas, thank you for taking the time to teach us. Short tutorials are very nice and better than long ones, this is just what I need. More real-life short demonstrations please. I would also like to see the new "VM-Pro in action" because I think Hexagon steals all the glory, but the new VM is also very capable now too and should have some movies like "Hexagon in action" on Eovia... No need to write or document or talk, just show it working like Steph3D. He did a great job and I learned a lot there just by watching.

Thank you again,

Steve

[Thomas]

Couerl: sorry, but actually, most of my modeling will be done with Hexagon, since it's my modeler of choice (and a modeler I partialy created..) but I'll do some simple Carrara modeling, because you are not the only one who request it
Next tutorials are about Microdisplacment, after some hexagon ones and then, Amapi Pro ones.. and after, I'll go back to Carrara and Hexagon, etc. (a cycle)