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Old 4th January 2009, 01:45 AM   #1
HighXplosive
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Post I May Have Terribly Misunderstood Something...

Hi there.

I'm doing a 3D model of a model map of a castle and its surrounded terrain. It's basically a miserable attempt at making a 3D model of one of those mini-models of like a city, or certain place. I've tried to do one of a castle. This is my first attempt at 3D modelling....so it's going to be laughable, but nonetheless...

Now, in the process of making this model, I've coloured my surfaces using the palette. What I have constructed is a mesh of triangles that I'ved divided up as a went along. I've raised and lowered parts of this mesh to construct a terrain map.

I've then added a number of primative shapes onto this to construct the "walls", "towers" and "gatehouse" of my castle. I then used four arbitrary textures, for:

- grass
- wood
- stone
- snow
- water.

I did repeat these textures on some objects because they looked better when I repeated them. The grass texture is repeated as is the stone texture on some objects. I did also used the TCE to map them on so they looked correctly (even if I have barely a scooby what the TCE actually does).

Using the palette, I coloured individual areas of the whole mesh so that it begins to look like a terrain model (or a very amateur attempt at one at any rate!). There's also a light floating around somewhere.

I then rendered it using povray: an application which I have as much knowledge about as I do about marine engineering (none)! So out comes my render. Disappointingly the colours that I used from the palette to carefully blend my surface mesh as best as my lacklusters skills can have been omitted and not to mention the actual model itself is horribly poor quality.

Anyway, it doesn't as I thought it would be. I now believe I may have terribly misunderstood what the palette material colours are. I have put a lot of work into this, even though its a layman's attempt, and have to salvage it because its part of a project due in the next few days.

Any advice that can be given will be much appreciated. I have attached an image of the IDE so you can see what I'm trying to accomplish, albeit poorly.
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Old 5th January 2009, 06:03 PM   #2
lisa
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Default Re: I May Have Terribly Misunderstood Something...

Hi HighXplosive!

Don't be so hard on yourself. If you got as far as the TCE on your first try, then you're doing great.

AC3D and POVRay handle lights and materials a bit differently. AC3D handles light basically the same way as video games do, but POV is a raytracer so it renders materials and lighting using a different method.

For the best results, you're going to want to tweak your lights and materials directly inside of POV after you export your scene. You can use any text editor you like, or POVRay for Windows comes with a very nice editor. There is also a program called PoseRay that can be used to setup lights and materials with a graphical interface, depending on what you are into.

Odds are, if your colors are looking off the lights are either too bright or too dark. Try moving the light further back, then inside POV adjusting the light.

Code:
light_source {<0, 0, 5> color rgb < 1 1 1 >}
The first three numbers in the light source are the position. The second are the color. If the colors are washed out or have hotspots, make the color less intense like so:

Code:
light_source {<0, 0, 5> color rgb < .5 .5 .5 >}
Same thing the other direction, increase the RGB numbers if it's too dark or muddy.

POVRay has quite a number of other lighting options, you may want to explore a bit. Here's a tutorial to point you in the right direction: http://library.thinkquest.org/3285/language/light.html The POVRay manual also has some tutorials in it that might help.

Also, if you are mixing textures and materials, it's best to set your material color to white and change the color in the texture bitmap using a paint program. Using the material setting to change how shiny \ hard the material is or what color the highlights are, but rely on the bitmap for your base color. This is much easier until you get the hang of how POV blends materials. If you do want to play with blending, the keywords you need are "transmit" and "filter" which change how the colors blend. You can read more about those here: http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/77/ (skip down to 1.3.4.1.4 Using Transparent Pigments and Layered Textures) and also here: http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/230/

POV takes a little bit to learn, but don't let it scare you. Once you figure it out, the results are well worth it.

I hope this helps!
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Old 5th January 2009, 07:21 PM   #3
HighXplosive
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Default Re: I May Have Terribly Misunderstood Something...

Hi Lisa!

Thank you for you're reply. I'm going to attempt some of the suggestions you made like tinkering with POVRay. I have put some thought into a solution, and the most obvious one that came to mind was the same one you mentioned which would be retexturing the specific parts I've coloured to what they should be when rendered either by tinting the texture or of a course a seperate texture as a whole.

However, I don't think there is actually a problem with the lighting in POVRay when it renders. It looks correct to me except my colours that I have used the palette in AC3D to paint are just omitted entirely in the render.

I've attached another image so you can see what I mean: this is the default settings (since I haven't tinkered with them at this point in time) render of the model using POVRay. You can see that the "road" that I painted has vanished. Its not like the road has been whitewashed out by the light either, its just the colour is gone.

Anyway, I'll see what I can do meanwhile.
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Old 5th January 2009, 08:24 PM   #4
lisa
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Default Re: I May Have Terribly Misunderstood Something...

Could be the way your materials are setup. I can't remember what the AC3D exporter does by default, but you'll want to create a "layered material" in POV in order to show both the texture and the material. You'll also need to specify either filter or transmit, otherwise the color will be solid and whatever is on the bottom won't show through.

i.e.
Code:
material {

   // texture layer
    texture { 
        pigment {
            image_map { tga "texture.tga" interpolate 2 }            
        }         
    }     

    // yellow color with 70% transmit
    texture {
        pigment {
            rgbt < 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, .7 >
        }
    }
}
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