# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > 3D modeling (map elements and height maps) >  Dusted off the old Magical Crystal Compass Rose

## Robbie

I had a few minutes at work today and found my old files, so I figured I'd dust this little thing off and see what modern rendering tech would and modern lighting calculations would do.  Looks pretty cool actually.  This is only a test render...So I can see what needs tweaking.  I can already see a few things that need some work, but I'd love any feedback on what you guys think needs work...

Also, if anyone would like to donate a high quality map that would look good on the piece of paper in the background let me know  :Wink:   Something black and white preferably.

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## Mouse

I Like the new avatar  :Wink:

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## ThomasR

It does look nice ! 

Maybe one of these or this one. If one of these suits you, and it's not B&W, I can clean it.

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## Robbie

I like the second link! It's already not colored and has the rough edges. I'll see if I have time tomorrow to do some more work on it. 

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## ThomasR

So awesome !

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## snodsy

What programs did you use to create this beautiful piece? really nice. Thought the lower blue reflection on the feathers base seemed on the wrong side, but other than that looks so real. Have some reps.

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## Robbie

This is all done in 3ds Max. I made the original in 2006 I think. It's what the sites logo is made from. Thanks for pointing out the blue anomaly, I'm not sure what's causing that but I'll take a look. Lighting anomalies are not my strong suit. Lol

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## Robbie

Leaving my computer rendering a 1080 version overnight. I think I fixed the blue light on the feather, and I implemented thomreys map. I need to rough it up on the edges though, too clean. Also made the lighting a little less harsh. We'll see how it looks. 

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## ThomasR

Eager to see it  :Very Happy:

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## Robbie

So here's my overnight render.  I think it's pretty awesome looking.  As I said, I need to make the edges of thomrey's map a little more torn looking.  I also need to work on the opacity of the feather, it's too "cutout" looking.  I may actually take one of the feathers that my pet turkey drops in my yard (not kidding, I have a pet turkey) and photograph it in higher res.  Good stuff.  Anyways...Please tell me if you see any areas for improvement other than what I mentioned.

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## ThomasR

Except for my lousy border, it's beautiful. If it helps, I can provide the .psd file.

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## SteffenBrand

Well crafted! I personally like to blur the further areas a bit in this style of close-up illustration to enhance the sense of depth. This could be done easily in Photoshop afterwards, don't know about 3Dmax. =)

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## Robbie

Yeah, I'll probably do some depth of field work in the final. 3ds Max has it as a camera setting. 

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## Robbie

So I've switched this over from 3ds max to blender and am using much better materials and such...Any thoughts?

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## Mouse

Well its certainly given the gems on the compass a sort of radioactive glow  :Razz: 

The wood is better.  A lot better.  I think just that one thing has shifted the dynamics of the composition in a pretty startling way, and greatly improved it overall  :Smile:

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## Redrobes

I like the cork and gems of the old one better and everything else about the new one is better.

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## Robbie

Hmmm...I just adjusted the glow of the center gem to match those of the outer ones...and I also changed the IOR on the inkwell. Rendering again.  I need to make the cork dirtier I think and inky...What is it about the old gems you liked better?

I definitely think the wood texture is the best part...What do you think about the patina on the metal bits?

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## Robbie

A few minor changes...Mostly the center crystal and glow balance.  I've decided to get rid of the feather and model a dip pen instead...Soon.

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## Mouse

Patina on the metal?

Ummmm..... a bit large in scale?  I don't know.  Either that or it should be only about half as noticeable, perhaps?

Its really difficult to say.  The problem is that you probably aren't modelling this based on a real physical compass?

Just looking around me at the various bits and bobs on my desk that happen to be metal, the patina seems to be far less noticeable than the environmental reflections, but it may just be that the metal I can see at the moment is all fairly highly polished good quality steel (umm, my dinner cutlery  :Blush: ).  I don't have any brass or anything else to compare.

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## Redrobes

I thought the metal bits looked just great - esp the brass, that looks real. I still like the old gems but the latest new one is better than the last new one. I think it might benefit a little if the shadows were not as sharp. Not sure if you can use an extended light source for the main lighting component just to take the edge off of the shadows. The new ink pot looks quite similar to the old one but its softer because the new one has depth of field rendering going on. Although using that is a good idea it might help a touch if the depth of field was a little larger with smaller aperture. The scratches on the table are quite severe too - that could be a good thing tho. Very rustic.

Its all a matter of taste tho. Its very good.

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## waldronate

Overall, it's a nice composition. The gems bother me, though. They look milky (a lot like fluorescent plastic), where the originals were decidedly clear. The glow also escapes from the gems into the surrounding area without sufficiently illuminating the surroundings to account for that level of illumination. It feels a lot like what happens when you take the UV filter off of a camera and film under a black light in addition to regular light. There's a lot of illumination on the scene that doesn't match with the expectations of our normal-illumination experiences.

Rather than a diffuse glow, maybe use a small (no more than 50 or so) swarm of point lights on the interior of each gem? I'm not sure how you'd go about modeling that, though. With a swarm of illuminators and possibly a small amount of scattering on the interior of the gems, you could possibly get an effect that would be interesting.

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## Falconius

What's the material setup on the gems?  Are you using an emitter node?  I've always had tremendous difficulty getting glowing things in Blender to look right.  Perhaps you'd be better off with spot lights narrowed down and just shooting a high powered beam of light at each of the gems?

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## Robbie

I am using emission on the gems...I actually have a 3d gradient ramp based on object space to make it lighter in the center of the gem and darker on the outside and I really like it, lol.  I only had the emission strength at 1, which is the same as the background lighting so I upped the emission to 10 so it will actually light the surfaces around it...Had to scale it down and darken the glow, but I do like it a bit more...It's much more extreme now, but I think it's more atmospheric.  Also I modeled a dip pen and killed off the feather.

As for the illumination, you can even see some light escaping from underneath the base from the bottom of the center gemstone illuminating the table. I also softened up the shadows a tiny bit...may try for more.

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## Azélor

I like it. It's a major improvement. 
But as other have said before, I'm not a big fan of the gems.
I would prefer either a dim glow, or the natural reflexion of the light.
The gems could be aquamarines.

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## Falconius

> I am using emission on the gems...I actually have a 3d gradient ramp based on object space to make it lighter in the center of the gem and darker on the outside...


That's a cool idea.  I wish I could think of things like when doing these sorts of things.  Still the problem is that being emmisive also makes it look cloudy, you literally get the same sort of effects with subsurface scattering.  The problem me and I believe the others are running into is they don't look like gems, even bad ones, gems tend to be rated on their clarity and how shiny they are.  Even poor gems that are described as cloudy are cloudy with intriguing or organic detail.

I like the new pen, it looks spot on just about.  The divider IS spot on.  I'm definitely a fan of that ink pot, you might consider putting some ink stains near the lip, but honestly that may also ruin the effect.  The carving on the table or scratches have interference from the texture on top of them, you can actually make a texture mask that block the texture from going over the scratches (or at least I remember seeing something like that once).  The one thing that actually doesn't read well material wise is the red part of the compass, to me it looks like anodized aluminum, but the splotches kind of don't make sense to me.

Edit:  Saw your post over on the Blender forums, I hope they give you some feed back.  Unfortunately the forum over there has no where near the same vitality that your forum does over here  :Smile:

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## Robbie

I'm kinda torn about the gems...The gems are supposed to be magical and filled with energy...there's no other way to convey that and still have them emit light. In previous iterations back when I had it rendering in MAX I was unable to get the gems to appear "filled" with energy...I didn't really even like the clearer look...the clear gems look empty to me and I want them to be filled with energy you know? If anyone can think of a way to pull that off that would be great, but I'm leaning towards leaving it...I'll still tweak some more...but this thing takes a good 45 minutes to render as is.

Falconius, what are you talking about when you say divider?

Also, the red material, silver material, and brass material all have the exact same roughness mapping, I only changed the base color for them., so that may be confusing for the red metal...

I intend to have ink stains on the cork and the tip of the pen...I'll see if I can figure out a good way to get ink stains on the inkwell.  I intend to emboss a "logo" of sorts onto the pen nib, but not sure if it will be visible in the render if I do.

The Blender forums have given me no love since my initial post...I get better feedback from here and IRC honestly.

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## Azélor

The Blender forums are dead? Have you tried here? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions
There are a lot of unanswered questions but users can also answers using the comments even if the practice is not recommended.

45 min to render?

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## Falconius

> I'm kinda torn about the gems...The gems are supposed to be magical and filled with energy...there's no other way to convey that and still have them emit light. In previous iterations back when I had it rendering in MAX I was unable to get the gems to appear "filled" with energy...I didn't really even like the clearer look...the clear gems look empty to me and I want them to be filled with energy you know? If anyone can think of a way to pull that off that would be great, but I'm leaning towards leaving it...I'll still tweak some more...but this thing takes a good 45 minutes to render as is.
> 
> Falconius, what are you talking about when you say divider?


The Divider:


As for the gem problem... Maybe if you doubled the object and deleted some faces and made those emmisive?  Or made some sort of emmisive object inside them?  I don't know.  I think the emission shader uses a diffuse surface assumption and that is the problem (it may be necessary in order to emit light though *shrug* that stuff is beyond my ken).  There is no mapping input for the node but maybe there is a node set up you can put in between?  I think looking at peoples water shading node ideas may give you ideas ( https://youtu.be/XsRdns2G-z0?t=15m48s ).  Alternatively have you tried putting lamps inside the gems?  Does that sort of thing even work?

Yeah I'm really no good at figuring out shader problems, which is why this light emission thing is always a problem for me.




> The Blender forums are dead? Have you tried here? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions
> There are a lot of unanswered questions but users can also answers using the comments even if the practice is not recommended.
> 
> 45 min to render?


They aren't dead, just very unresponsive.  Lots of new artwork or WIP threads are started for instance, but a lot of them end up only being one or two posts long.  Direct technical questions are answered in the "support" section of the forums, but as often as not in a sort of brusque manner.

That said they are better than the Pixologic forums which have lots of new threads, but practically no responses.  (besides the fact that everything going up there looks somewhat professional which discourages others).

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## etrnlflame

Great inspiration! It I love that compass.

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