A little too green for my liking. I may need to fix that.

The cat looks a lot different once it is rendered.

This is a post/tutorial that has been continued from Teaching myself and learning from others part 2. If you are following along, this is a wonderful video tutorial explained by Kevin Salki . You can find the video in post 1. and at the bottom of this post. I’m continuing on with my progress of getting this to work on my project. (Please note this is a WIP)

Well… Kevin and I cheated. I got the bronze color by uploading his material. Because my sculpture has so much texture, as compared to his in the video it automatically makes the sculpture look different.  (I’m kind of known for my textures and with the traditional process it also changes the color of the patination.) When sculpting on the real clay I believe I will really emphasize the stripes by carving the fur differently where the stripes are.  I’ll probably give it more texture or more strokes. Because, unlike the digital process, weather will change my traditional sculpture patination. Even if it goes dark, I will need the stripes to show. But for now, it is back to the digital model.

A little too green, so I bumped down the color diffuse on the blue, hey it almost sounds like I know what I am doing now. I now want to change my specular but my curve looks all wonky. Not sure how to get it to do what I want it to do.

—Mental note- remove unwanted dots on specular curve by dragging them off.  And there is a tiny reset button under the shift if it gets really out of control. Kevin confirms that his too is a little wonky at times.

I also must remember to do a quick render ( shift R) because the digital model looks way different with the render than it does just working on the screen.

Now I’m on to part 5.58 on Kevin’s 14 minute video made for me for this tutorial. So on to making a darker color of the material for the stripes.

Heat and chemicals is how the traditional patination is produced.

I like the richness of a browner golden texture.







NEXT DAY- Well, after sleeping on it and thinking about the entire color, and importing Kevin‘s Material, I ended up changing it.  Just as in the actual traditional patination, I’m always asking, “can you give me more rich gold and brown. This is otherwise known as “traditional” patina. The foundry man wips out his chemicals, heats up the metal, sprays the metal and voila!

 

 

In the traditional patination I ask the foundry man to hit the sculpture with water so that I can see the color, as it would look when it is waxed. 

So instead of Kevin’s green of 72 red, 116 green, and 93 blue, I oped for a darker brown 109 red, 59 green, and 33blue.  Maybe I’ll lighten it just a touch using the mixer that Kevin has introduced me to.
I also decided I would play with the noise slider.  I have never been one to see differences in this type of thing. Often my husband Mike de la Flor will work with photoshop and say, “see this?” and well, I just don’t see it. I think it is because I don’t work with color and have not for years. Of course I work with the color terra-cotta, longhorn white, as it pertains to clay and bronze.  I really, really want to learn color and rendering with zbrush. I have some illustrations I would like to do. So maybe I can talk Keven into doing some more of these tutorials with me.

Noise level is at 129

I’m posting both of these renders.One is at s noise level of 10 and the other 129.  Though I can’t say what the difference is, if there is any, I m gravitating to the higher noise level than the lower.  I don’t know why, to me it loks like the bronze has been bead blasted instead of sand blasted.  Bead blasting feels softer.

Noise level at 10

On to stripes.

I wish it would be so easy. Kevin says to copy the material and then paste it so I have a duplicate. It took a couple of tries but I managed to do it.  I actually feel good about the process.  On to rendering.

Stay tuned for part 4 of ? ( After all I am only on about  9 minutes of a 14 minute video)

My stripes rendered.

 

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Bridgette Mongeon-Sculptor, Writer and Speaker
Bridgette Mongeon is a sculptor, writer, illustrator and educator as well as a public speaker.

Her blog can be found at http://www.creativesculpture.com.

On the planning committee for 3DCAMP Houston 2012 http://www.3dcamphouston.com

She is also the owner and creator of the God’s Word Collectible Sculpture series

Follow the artists on twitter twitter.com/Sculptorwriter twitter.com/creategodsword

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