in practice lighter, model and shaders

[Jelmer]

In this tutorial you'll learn the basics of poly modeling, we'll start with simple objects like boxes and cylinders and the convert them to editable poly. Then we can start shaping the model by extruding, cutting, and moving vertices and poly's.
Once we have finished modeling we'll make the final result more realistic by making a reflective (raytrace) shader, also called material in 3dsmax, and set up a simple scene to render.

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size:26mb length:32 min format: WMV, 640x480

[Wiggy]

Great tutorial has taught me a lot.

But 2 questions:
1) You said at the end in the next part you will be showing how to create smoke etc, is that done yet?
2) How could you make holes in the piece that is supposed to protect the flame, something like shown here:


Thank you in advance

[CU441ES]

to make the holes just create cylinders where the holes are gonna be and then just boolean em out

[Jelmer]

yes you could use booleans, but they're very unrealiable to be honest, unless you have power booleans (which is a plugin) i wouldn't recommend it, it's built in in version 9 i think. What you could try is just make a cylinder, delete the top and bottom, move it into shape, add holes in it, square ones should be fine, apply turbosmooth and then a shell modifier to make it '3d'

[Marlboroman]

Absoloutly great tutorial, very useful, I love Zippos and so this was perfect. I added a few bits onto mine. Here what do you think?

[Jelmer]

that's cool! definately much better then my attempt
I like the caustics too, but the shadow quality could be a bit better.
you can post this in final work if you want to, maybe after a few refinements, another thing you could try is adding a flame, by using a standard material, then playing with fallof maps and gradients for diffuse and opacity.

[Marlboroman]

TX for your reply, i have tweaked a few things to get a nice result. The only problem i am having is to try and make a realistic flame, i have tried 2 things now and havent got the result i wanted. I tried firstly using the same technique that you used in the candle tutorial but it didnt look realistic for this type of model, then i tried using a neon type effect which totally mucked things up when i tried adding the lense effect lol (remembering im a noob). Lastly i have found the flame i am looking for but it would cost me like 90 dollars to get the tutorial here take a look:

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPrevie....cfm/ID/241813

So until i can get that flame done the project isnt really complete.

[Jelmer]

ok, you don't need to spend 90 dollars on that, don't worry.
In the description it says:

To set up this candle in your scene, simply add a camera Look-At contraint to the candle light object and a glow effect to the included light source of the candle.

So what you should basically do is find the right flame you need, assign it to a plane and add an opacity map, then align the plane so it's facing the camera.
The glow can be added with video post i think, check the max reference for that.
Another thing you should think about is do you want to animate it at all or is it only a still render?

[Marlboroman]

TX for the tips, i will have a go at it :P and its deffo a still render, i dont animate.

[Scherzi Ned]

Wow....what lovely work, hope to be able to do somenthing like that someday.