Help needed on mirrors, rendering and animation

FenS · 7 Jan 2009, 21:20

First of all, i've looked for the correct place to put this question. Maybe this is not the right one, please feel free to move it to some better place if necessary (preferably within this forum though

My question,
i've sketched a model of a statue i once made for some friends of mine and since i could not really get the picture of it the way i wanted it, i thought i would give it a try to make a model of it because except for the sculpting itself, it is a very easy model.

However, now i've created the model and wanted to make it in a way that i could 'take a picture of it' in the way i first intended.
Could you please help me, eather by doing so or giving some hints on how to do it?
(sorry i have so many questions but i am liking SU more and more and everyday my wishlist is growing..)

how can i make both parts of 'opa.skp' (more or less) look the same color/material like the statue in the picture?
(turkish marmer and 'belgisch hardsteen' or bluestone)
And is that something i should do in SU, or in Kerky?
In SU i tried some red color, but that turned out véry red (in SU), i don't now how the render would become)

In the real picture i made, i was trying to show both front and back of the sculpture at once with the use of a mirror but it did not came out right.
I have never made a mirror in SU (but this is something i can posibly find on the forum), but how should i do this to make a artistic picture? (make 1 mirror, make 2? And what about lights?

The next thing i wanted to do is make 1 worthy render of opa2.skp but up till now i only used the basics of Kerky like
'file / open / opa.xml',
'insert / model / basics / infinite plane
'start render / current view / 640x480 / photonmap-quick (or some higher resolution) and althought this already looks better than my own sculpture it is not very artistic. Any suggestions on how to improve this?

And finally,
i wanted to make an animation of opa.skp (to show that in theory it should be impossible to open the stones/urn)
In order to do so, i inserted 4 scenes in SU:
camera / standard view / front
view / animation / add scene
(repeated with left, back and right) and exported this to kerky.
if i create a 'tools / walktrough animation' and create a new camera with this 4 scenes and i right-click on that new camera and choose 'goto/follow' than it reacts totally different than how i would expect. I would like the camera to keep the statue focussed in the middle and always keeping the same distance (like SU is doing if you swith from scene to scene) but in this case the distance seems to be changing a lot and the object is leaving the screen several times. I have had this problem once before and the solution was suggested to insert more scenes but in this case (turning the statue 360 degrees), how many scenes do i have to insert and isn't there a better way?

A lot of questions but if i tackle these, i think i will like SU and Kerky even better for future use so suggestions are very welcome!

Regards,

Fred.

the two parts on top of each other

the two parts seperated

Jean Lemire · 7 Jan 2009, 21:58

Hi FenS, hi folks.

See this SU file for ideas.

Faking a mirror.skp

FenS · 7 Jan 2009, 22:13

Hi Jean,

thanks a lot, that solves one of my problems!
Should have thought of that, in case of taking just 'one picture' of the setting this is a fine solution, no need to make a 'real' mirror.
(except maybe when using lights? I will give that a try (still wondering what would make an artistic photo)
Suggestions for the other questions are still welcome ofcourse

Gaieus · 8 Jan 2009, 09:21

Hi Fred,

For ideas about "faking" a mirror in SU, have a look at this topic:
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4721

A for your Kerk questions (t least the animation one) I can only suggest to read the animation tutorial at the Kerky site:
http://www.kerkythea.org/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=82&func=fileinfo&id=31

FenS · 8 Jan 2009, 12:23

Hi Gaieus,

also thanks for your answer,
i get an error in downloading the Kerky-tut, but i think it is the same one i downloaded before because i already made an animation once.
However, before creating all these seperate pictures, i wanted to know how to make this pictures better that just the normal settings.
And if this is the same tut, then it does mention how to create a new camera which goes from one scene to the next but it didn't say how to influence the way how it is moving from scene 1 to scene 2 (how do i always keep the object in the center of my screen?)
Thanks also for the mirror-faking-thread, that is a simular one like Jean posted and indeed it is a good way for me for this picture.

Gaieus · 8 Jan 2009, 12:27

Well, sorry but I have never gone into animation rendering in Kerky so the above link is the best of my knowledge.

FenS · 8 Jan 2009, 12:37

No worries

Maybe someone else has got some suggestions. Btw, if i know how to control the camera's, then the creation of all the pictures and combining them to an animation is no problem to me.
Thanks anyway for replying, appreciate it.

Gaieus · 8 Jan 2009, 12:50

You can always ad more cameras in SU and export them to KT - with the "merge" function in KT you can even do this without needing to redo everything that you have done there.

Don't ask meabout the merge function however because I only know aboutit but have never done it myself