[bathsheba]

Help! My renders suck and I'm wasting time. Take my money, please.

I need a product photography setup and material set that I can use for rendering sculptures. The setup should look like the photos on my site
http://www.bathsheba.com/sculpt/metatrino/
but I'm looking for materials and overall quality as lush and convincing as Torolf's
http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1146

To make my site photos I use a seamless background of drawing paper (with a little texture), and three desk lamps to light things evenly, with only enough shadow to model the shape and establish the ground plane. Why I can't do this in Maxwell I don't know...I could sort of do it in beta, but in 1.0 I can't seem to manage.

There must be an environment for reflective surfaces to reflect. Whether this should be modeled or an HDRI I don't know. It should probably be a well-lit interior with a realistic amount of activity to break up the reflections, but without very strong colors.

For materials, I need three or four types of plastic, I can send photos or material samples. Black-painted steel. Brushed steel. Something white with a little texture for the backgrounds. I'll probably have ongoing occasional needs in this area.

The background and materials should be optimized for render speed, as far as possible without compromising appearance. I don't mind if a render takes 60 hours, if I know it will be good, but I can't wait 200 hours.

I use Rhinoceros, so I'm limited to file formats it can import and export. It supports many formats including AutoCAD, 3DS, LWO, OBJ.

I'll send sample models under NDA for you to test with. I don't expect you to run long production renders, if you need a long test I'm happy to run it on my machine. I'll put your name and link on my site. I can pay you by Paypal or credit card or mail a check.

What should this service cost? I have no idea -- make me an offer, or what else can I tell you that would help to narrow it down?

Please post questions to this thread, or to talk about money feel free to email me at b@bathsheba.com.

Thanks,
-Sheba

[Hervé]

I just wanted to say.. I love your sculptures... these are great and I am sure they sell good too... hehe..

I have a clear product setup that took me some time to do, it does exactly what you need, well lit, yet little shadow...

bahhh no money, but the thing is.. I am not here this week-end.. but if you can wait 'til monday.. it will be a pleasure helping you.. !

voila, but someone better than me might give you a setup today... but in case, I'll come back to see on Monday...

Hervé

[dd_]

can you upload a zip file containing a product and i will have a play with a setup today and im sure i will not be alone in doing so

[bathsheba]

can you upload a zip file containing a product and i will have a play with a setup today and im sure i will not be alone in doing so

I can't upload what I'm working on now (I have to make a dollar on each one before giving it away) but there are a few files here: http://www.bathsheba.com/downloads/
Metatron is the smallest, it might be a good one to try.

If you can't read an STL file, let me know what you can read and I'll put it on the site?

Thanks,
-Sheba

[dd_]

doesnt really matter if its old or new, i shall download one today and do some tests for you

[bathsheba]

I just wanted to say.. I love your sculptures... these are great and I am sure they sell good too... hehe..

I don't think I'll need to go back to my day job any time soon.

voila, but someone better than me might give you a setup today... but in case, I'll come back to see on Monday...

Great, see you then. Even if somebody gives me one, two is better!

Thanks,
-Sheba

[Mihai]

What kind of plastics exactly are you looking for?

[Tyrone Marshall]

Hello Bathseba,

I recently saw the pod cast on your work! Interesting and on the cutting edge.

I might have some time to spare later this long weekend to see if there is something I can offer.

Keep up your work! Have you seen the program called TopMOD(free)? It is able to do structures high-genus structures like that the dodecahedron object you created in metal.

[bathsheba]

What kind of plastics exactly are you looking for?

The project that I'm working on now will use these materials:

Accura 60:

A bigger picture is here: http://flickr.com/photos/bathsheba/179490219&size=o
This is a stereolithography material whose transparency and hardness mimic molded polycarbonate. It has the characteristic ridged surface of stereolithography, because objects are manufactured in layers.

Black Nytek:

Bigger here: http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=179490223&size=o
This is a nylon-like polyamide plastic used in SLS manufacturing. The layers in this 3D printing process are less coherent than those in stereolithography, so the bumps are more chaotic.

White Nytek:
Just like black Nytek except it's white. http://flickr.com/photos/bathsheba/179490224/
The white material seems very opaque, with almost no SSS, and it's a very clean, neutral white without a color cast.

Each of these pictures shows about 5cm of an object. The bumps in these are maybe .5mm tall at most. (The manufacturer specifications for these materials say .1mm, but obviously the texture is much larger than that.)

There's an incomplete render of the project here: http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... hp?t=16891)
The model as I've drawn it is about 30" tall, not including the base.

-Sheba

[Tim Ellis]

Hi Bathsheba,

the black & white nytek should be easily achieved using LarsSon's car paint material as a base.
Just increase the roughnesss value to reduce the overall reflections and increase the bump map values.

You could also slightly increase the attenuation distance instead of using sss.



Tim.

[bathsheba]

the black & white nytek should be easily achieved using LarsSon's car paint material as a base.
Just increase the roughnesss value to reduce the overall reflections and increase the bump map values.

You could also slightly increase the attenuation distance instead of using sss.

More power to you if this is easy for you; I can only say that I would waste many hours trying to do it well. I already have. Please -- if you want the job, make me an offer by private message.

Thanks,
-Sheba