Ed Coyle's Art Blog

One of my favorite 3D pieces that I've done would definitely have to be my pool room. Even though I'm not so good at it, Pool is a game that intrigues me. Being the 3D animation nerd that I am, whenever I'm playing or watching a game of pool, I can't help but notice the various textures, colors, and reflections in everything that makes up the environment that is the billiards room. It's such a unique environment, and while I'm proud of my portfolio piece, I can't help but think that my presentation of it just isn't doing it justice.

So, I've decided to upgrade it!

Follow up:

Number one on this list: Make the models look a bit better. After close examination of the old piece (which can be found on my Portfolio Samples page), I've realized that my pool table seems to be a rectangle on legs. I did this piece originally for a lower-level class, so that could pass back then. But I'm not too happy with it anymore, so I've modified it a bit:

The key is in the shape of the legs and the much more stable base that I've built for it. I think it looks a little more believable than it used to.

I've also taken the time to build a new Billiards Lamp. I've always admired the stained glass type of lamp that some people install over top of their tables. In my original piece, I had a solid brick light that had stained glass on it, but when I switched the scene renderer to Mental Ray, I was strapped for time and somehow forgot to fiddle with the textures and make it actually look like stained glass. It came out as a white and black blob, I think... so I'm scrapping the whole thing and building one from scratch. This is the new model:

I am much happier with this model. It actually appears to be shaped like one of those lamps, and I've gone in and added the inner wiring and chains to make it "functional", per say. I don't plan on having closeups of the inside in the final piece, so I may not add fine details to the inside just yet...

To finish off this update, I want to show some experiments with V-ray I've been doing. I've been searching for tutorials recently on building shaders in the V-ray renderer, because apparently it's a very different process from what I've been taught. I've been looking for a good stained glass tutorial, and a good soft shadows tutorial. V-ray seems to do some types of shadows hard and some soft without configuration, but I'm trying to figure out how to control each type. If anyone has any links to tutorials or advice for how I can accomplish these things, please comment on this post!

Regardless, here are some very quick renders I did of my experiments. I'm happy with the 3rd one, but I'd still like to gain some more control over the glass and shadows.

Sweet deal. I may have some pixel art for tomorrow's update. I'll keep you posted...