Week 9 Part 2 - Half A Pint O' Guinness Please...

I've gotta say first of all, Iv pretty much sorted out the Halloween one now, so be ready for an unveiling of it on next weeks post - you know you can;t wait to see what a travesty Ive created...

Like I said on Monday, this is the second part to the weeks blog update - yeah, I've got some extra images that continue my slow (but steady!) completion of St Patricks Day

What I decided I needed to do was to create a separate 3DS Max file, use a similar method as before to create a spline for the pint glass
This was so that I could edit existing materials and also create a few new ones to apply on this glass - this will then be portrayed as a half-full Guinness pint further back away from the foreground (adds a sense of believability)
By selecting a multi/sub-object layer within the materials library, I could combine my original Guinness bitmap, with my 'beer-head' macro so that each one in ordered precisely

From there, I then went to my initial file, selected 'blend' from the 'file' menu and then brought onto the stage that duplicate pint glass that's going to be half-full (if I can remember what I need to do to create a diverse merge material!)
As the image shows, I attempted a background by adding a custom bitmap onto a plane that's been rotated to stand vertically, a wooden table with a oak/walnut material added and a perspective which allows the table to appear as though its perspective is physically accurate

I was then struck by an idea with which my environment would appear much more encompassing, fitting my table in with greater precision and also providing a much needed natural light source from which I can then adjust my trajectories from where the light source is coming from
As is also displayed, I have added in a beer mat, which I intend to apply a Irish flag texture, again adding to the natural scenery present on screen




The 'Pearl' material has been created specially for the head atop the Guinness within the glass itself, with an emphasis placed on achieving the pearlescent finish - a base material of a preset 'pearl' tone, combined with a shellac material of 'pearl translucency'
This was a two-tone blend which gave a realistic 3-dimensional "roundness" to the texture, a result of the artificial lighting in the scene and the slight decrease in opacity when combined with the shellac material and its relative blend count of between 50 and 75
Once this has been finalized, a process which required a great deal of experimentation with many areas including specular levels and refractive denominations, I was then happy to apply it to the existing glass - signifying a happy reveler in the pub merrily drinking half of the brown ale to celebrate a glorious nationalist day (can you tell that Iv seen much of this happen before!)

^ Details of my settings for the Pearlescent Shellac Material^

NOTE: Look away now if you don't want to see a sneak preview of my first finished calender
image...

*This was actually this final screen dump I took of my Halloween image, but its definitely a very important final stage within its development
Clearly, the whole setting of the scene was pretty much there and sorted, however I was bugged by the gravestone/glyph itself having a too harsh-a glow on the stonework itself, giving the surface and unnatural appearance, especially with the moonlight behind it!
Peace was restored luckily by returning to the material editor and reassessing my five textures I had used for the grave and it was looking under the 'maps' section where I found the problem...
Firstly all of them bar one had a Basic Shader Parameter more reserved for a metallic surface selected (examples such as Phong and Orayl-Neyer-Blinn) where there should have been a Strauss Shader) Also, I'd amateurishly selected self-illuminating and specular coloured maps when it wasn't necessary. Once those options had been put right, I saw an immediate difference - no more ethereal glows, just darkened, more weathered looking stonework which looked so much more effective in this scene (which is hopefully evident from my fished piece below!)


Well, next week will probably be another two part-er basically because I'm going to try and get this all done before week twelve - its going to be near my birthday and so I'd rather not be sitting here on the 6th and still hammering away with my oh-so-wonderful images...