3D Rendering

[rcperryls]

It’s fascinating to see your work. And your yes and no answer makes complete sense. Things are often not black or white.

I totally agree. This one will be fascinating to watch develop.

Carole

[richardandtracy]

I have had very little free time recently, but since my birthday I have been on leave, and been taking the opportunity to play.

Now, I seem to work best with mundane stuff, and a lady asked if anyone could model up a carpet sweeper for her. It seemed like a relatively straightforward job, so I volunteered, getting the image below to show the sweeper in use:


That room is somewhat less cluttered than the part of my dining room where I use my main computer, but it goes a long way to explain why it takes an age to clean properly. The dimensions of the walls are pretty accurate, as are the furniture sizes. In reality we have an additional 2 pictures and barometer on the wall, a computer, monitor, keyboard, office swivel chair and a fair bit of 'stuff' in that space too. The general feel is similar, though.

Regards,

Richard.

[Serinde]

That is very clever -- the mirror effect is particularly elegant. I might find myself hard put to live up to those ancestral portraits, however!

(Fancy asking for a model with a carpet sweeper!)

[richardandtracy]

I know. It sounds terribly 'pre-feminist' knowing nothing else about why she wanted one. No idea what she might need it for. For all I know, it could be for images of fighting off zombies with unlikely but available weapons. I suspect that I shall never know.

We have no ancestral portraits hanging up. My family came from very poor Cornish mining stock and we have a few tiny monochrome prints dating back to the 1870's(?). We have a photo in a book called 'Industry in the Tamar Valley' that shows my great grandmother. She's one of three (don't know which) balmaidens, tiny women who used huge sledgehammers to smash copper ore into lumps small enough for the stamp mill. Our walls just have a number of David Shepherd (https://davidshepherd.org/product-categ ... -shepherd/) and Ian Kent (now largely impossible to find online) prints.

Regards,

Richard.

[Roland]

It’s so amazing…with the shadowing, and the carpet detail.

[rcperryls]

Amazing detail. Beautiful!

Carole

[richardandtracy]

I first started playing with figure animation in 2000(?) and in 2004 I had saved up some money & bought two characters (Generation 3) that were a bit more realistic than the average Generation 2 characters commonly available at the time. I still have the two, and decided to re-vamp them & their clothing to the modern standards of materials, surfaces and rendering. So, with a Google Street View type 360 degree all-round image providing the background, I tried to create an image of two ladies going to a restaurant one quiet weekday evening and stopping for a bit of window shopping on the way. A little bit bland, but the technology was in its infancy when these two characters were created and extreme bends at the elbow, hip & knee show their limitations quite badly. So, action shots are not practical, and the clothing I got years ago is limited to contemporary, everyday, type stuff. A trip to a restaurant is perfect for what I have available.


This feels like the best image I have done with these 19-20 yo characters. What particularly pleases me is really only a little thing, and it is the poses. They look relaxed, untroubled with no stress in any limb. That is really hard to get right.

The pose for the character on the left is one I made for a character 5 generations of model more recent, and I wrote a script (mini program) to convert the limb positions to the right places on the old generation 3 character to mimic the positioning from the new generation 8 character I actually created the pose for. That too seems to have worked well. The pose for the character on the right was created on the generation 3 character in situ. I feel the pose worked so well that it's one I'm going transfer to the modern generation of characters and distribute for other people to use too.

The hair is modelled as a 3D model, rather than painted on the image afterwards. The Generation 3 hair available for those two characters when I got them in 2004 does look terribly dated now, whatever I do to it, so the hair models shown are from the Generation 8 modern characters and made to fit. That is something I need to perfect, as some of the blonde hair on the leftmost character's left shoulder disappears into her shoulder, making the hair look shorter on that side. I think I will need to write a script to correct this if I do more images using these two older characters. But apart from that. it's difficult to object to how any part of the image came out.

Regards,

Richard

[rcperryls]

I don't understand all the different generations and the details of what you had to do to create these lovely ladies. They look great and I think the one on the right is especially lifelike. I'm happy to see your 3D Rendering again. What happens if you print one of these 3Drendered pictures?

Carole

[Roland]

Fabulous job. I also like the brunette best.

[richardandtracy]

With regard to the generations..

If you imagine a car maker making a model of Car, like (to use a UK example) the Ford Escort. Ford started off with a Mark 1. The model remains basically the same, but there are variations of engine, seat covers and paintwork. Then when Ford had gone as far as they could with the first design (which wasn't very good as they were learning new things with the new model), they started again making the Mark 2, then Mark 3 etc.

With the figures, the software manufacturer made an initial generation, Generation 1. It really wasn't very flexible at the joints, had limited detail and limited options to customise the figure into unique characters. To improve this, they went to generation 2 which was better, but as it was early in the technology cycle, it still wasn't terribly good. Then Generation 3 came out. It was more customisable, so it was possible to morph the mesh (the collection of little flat surfaces [facets] used to define the model) into different shapes to get different characters. The two figures in the image above use different modifications of the same Generation 3 mesh. The mesh had a lot of facets to obtain the detail (around 72,000 in the characters above), but the bending at the elbows, hip & knee wasn't terribly human in the way it happened (with the elbow and buttocks bulging outwards at large bends and the knee looking like it folded along a crease line. But it was a good start.
When Generation 4 came out things improved and the number of facets increased to 80,000+. However at that number of facets, the computers of the time started to struggle with memory, so a less detailed mesh was created for the 5th generation, but more thought put into the way the joints happened, and the ease of creating different characters.
These trends of fewer facets, more customisation and better joint bends continued to the most recent generation, generation 8, where it's rare to recognise a character as there are thousands. The number of facets in the mesh in the latest generation has reduced to 17000, but additional information can be called upon to contour the surface when extra close up detail is needed, and each facet can be broken up into a maximum of 256 individual mini-facets. This way the 17000 facet model can render with the level of detail that a 4.7million facet model can, but not overload the PC at other times.


With regards to printing.
I'm not sure which type of printing you mean.

The output of a render is a 2 dimensional image that can be printed on a piece of paper just like every other picture. There is a software limit of 10,000 pixels square, so at full Laser printer resolution it could create an image 16.5" square at ultimate printer resolution, or more reasonably at poster quality, about 6ft square.

As for the other type of printing, 3D printing. Yes, the characters can be printed. This is a trial 3D print about 95mm high (3.75" high) of the character on the left above when wearing a bikini as opposed to a dress. I'm sure it could be improved with more experience, a less transparent resin and more trials. I have not gone much further with 3D printing because I am allergic to that resin, even when it is in the solid state - makes my skin sting after touching it and the effect lasts for 24 hours.


Regards,

Richard

[richardandtracy]

Roland,

I confess I prefer the blonde best, not because she's blonde, that's a not-very-good disguise.
My preference is strongly for the blonde because her shape from the neck down is so close to that of brunette Tracy when we met that I'm reminded of her every time. The blonde hair is an attempt to disguise my foolish besottedness from Tracy - not that I think she'd ever realise. I'm fairly convinced that Tracy doesn't want to remember the time when she was exceptionally slender due to having suffered from Gastroenteritis, but I confess it was one of the reasons I wanted to get to know her. After I got to know her, the fact I thought she looked stunning was irrelevant, it was her I adored.

Regards,

Richard

[rcperryls]

Thank you for the info. And for the 3d print. And for your perfect reply to Roland.

Carole

[Mabel Figworthy]

Thank you for the explanation (which is fascinating) and the love letter to Tracy (which is moving)

[Serinde]

Awww! Lucky gal, your Tracy.

These are really interesting and the explanations very helpful to a layperson like me. If I were to be ultra critical (which of course I’m not, sir), I’d suggest your blonde’s left eye is slightly odd? But that’s ultra critical because overall, it’s so impressive. (Wouldn’t want to wear those sandals to walk in for long, though — but I’m an old woman!)

[richardandtracy]

Thank you for your embarrassingly effusive comments. I just say things the way I feel them, which is not always a good thing...

Serinde, I agree the left eye looks a bit odd. Not sure why. I moved a camera to the point I wanted her to be focussing on and then posed both eyes to point straight into the camera (a set of axes appears on screen to help with that) and it still looks a bit odd. I suspect it's one of the limitations of that generation of character. I also posed the eyelids slightly closed, as the 100% open state makes all the characters look a bit like startled rabbits, and maybe the inner part of the eye closes further than the outer part, giving a slight slant to the eye. I do know that generation of figure didn't look right with closed eyes.

The other possibility is that I accidentally changed the focus point after finishing with the eyes... I will check for that later.

Regards,

Richard

[richardandtracy]

Yesterday Tracy and I went for a lovely walk in our local woods. The Sweet Chestnut coppice trees were beginning to leaf up, there were bluebells and a profusion of white Wood Anenomes along with Cowslips and Primroses. There were a few puddles too, and for some reason, while splashing through one, I had a vision of someone walking through the woods in the wrong type of shoes (high heels), as opposed to rubber boots and having to watch every step. As a result, she would have to take baby steps to avoid twisting an ankle, and miss the beauty of the woods. This is my attempt to replicate that momentary vision in my head:



Hope it raises a wry smile, if nothing else.

Regards,

Richard

[fccs]

I love this!

And I love your story. When I retired back in 2009, my retirement lunch was at a restaurant at the end of a pier in Huntington Beach. I was walking down the pier with some of my coworkers and one of them was having a difficult time as she was wearing high heels and they kept getting stuck between the slats of the pier. I said heels were probably not the best choice of shoes for the pier and her response was, “But they’re so cute!” Well, yeah, there’s that.

[rcperryls]

I love the 3D rendering and both stories about ladies in high heels. Both could have been in the "Smile" thread because they both made me smile!

Carole

[richardandtracy]

Must admit Debby's story where the word 'Cute' was used made me twitch involuntarily. 'Cute' is a word used to cover all sorts of crimes against both aesthetics and sense.

Love the idea, though.

Regards,

Richard

[Mabel Figworthy]

Very recognisable - I have been on walks with people like that....