The Burning of the Golden Calf by Moses (WC 198); 6/10: Blend file now available!

[RobertT]

Here is my voluntarily non-participating entry for Blender Artists Weekend Challenge 198 ("Pagan gods" theme):


The Burning of the Golden Calf by Moses


http://www.artofinterpretation.com/images/wc198-theburningofthegoldencalfbymoses-byrjt2006.jpg



The horns at this point are starting to melt.

Here is a Wikipedia article for more information on the Golden Calf (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Calf).


Blender 2.42 beta + render nodes + some DOF/sharpening post work.


Thank you for viewing my work,

RobertT

[brender]

if there was one of those M-azing canding bar there it would come open cause that picture id freakin sweet.perfect.

[Imperitor]

why don't you enter the challenges? You would win them all pretty easily.
How long did this take? One day?

Seeing you guys who are good at this makes me want to use blender some more. Maybe in like 10 years I'll be that good. lol

[jackj]

I'll spare you the long speech about how I respect you about the non-participant images... and tell you how great it is to see the burning of the Calf finally to be put into a serious mood and look unlike many cartoony times I have seen before. The only thing that could be improved is the brightness of the flames, they look pretty dark for flames that are hot enough to melt gold. The modeling of the Calf is great. Are the flames Image Plane or Particle? Glad you could share this with us.

Regards,
The Jack

[RobertT]

brender: Thanks for the comments, brender!


Imperitor: I did win a few actually ;) I mainly n-p so others have a chance and are encouraged to participate. This took me about five hours to create. I once thought as you did a few years ago when I first started 3D and Blender, but then I realized nearly everything was possible to make as long as the effort was serious and consistent yet still fun and exciting along the way. Just go for it, creatively, and keep at it. Realize you can do it.


jackj: Thanks so much :) I had lowered the emit on the flames out of concern they were too competitive with the statue, but I might try experimenting with RGB curves in the rendernodes to see if any improvements can be made there. The flames were modeled (individual tapered flamelike subdivided planes), and the material for them was based somewhat on my fire material which I had released earlier to the community. What helps the gold material and the flames are all the lights in the scene. I use lights in different ways to simulate HDRI and to draw out key parts of metalic elements in a scene like this. Layer only lamps are very helpful that way.


RobertT

[The_Warder]

that is an magnificent piece of work. Only five hours to create. please what does one of your projects look like after a couple days.And I like the fact that it is a serious religious subject not a joke.

[RobertT]

The_Warder: Thanks! My F1 2006 ("The Great Sea Race Begins") and "Self Made Man" were two longer and more involved projects. Time seems almost insignificant in the scheme of things though, because I can find myself spending interminable hours on projects that never get posted here because I cannot finish them satisfactorily, while other times there are projects that come together quickly with better results. Some projects I have spent months on, one over a year on, and those have never been shown here because I still have much to do. I'm using two computers at a time these days (one while the laptop renders another project), so that helps me get more done and allows me to get more experimental between projects and have more free time when both are rendering. I try to spend as much time as I need on each project. One of the things weekend challenges have helped me focus on is going from first concept to final render quicker and more efficiently. So while a project may take hours to finish, months and years of experience preceded that. Two things that helped me immensely with this project was my past efforts with simulating fire and metal shaders in 3D. I spent about an hour on lighting and the render nodes on this. Mirror modeling helps cut down on time dramatically. Because of the angle and the flames and the fact this is a statue, that saved me from having to model the complete statue and to break down the symmetry as extensively as I had to do with "Self Made Man," which required massive patience and attention in terms of modeling. Proportional editing also helps take an amorphous mesh and work it quickly into the shape you need it to be. All these little ideas and experiences make the next project easier and quicker as long as we remember and apply them :)

RobertT

[Sago]

Thanks for sharing.

Flames look good, but don't blend perfect with the calf (which I can guess is quite hard to obtain).

Superb shaders.

Sago

[Aligorith]

Good job. This reminds me of another work you did a few days ago. I can't remember what it was called, but it looked pretty similar. I think you said you used sharpconstruct on that one.

Aligorith

[garphik]

brilliant, simply brilliant

[xrqlz]

I know why RobertT doesn't participate. He would win all the time because he's so good, and everyone else would stop participating.

That said, great work, its beautiful. I was hoping to see some molten gold dripping off of it, I think it would really improve the model, but that's just me. If you left it mostly intact but just had the gold dripping from a few areas, it would be sweet.

XrQLz (http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?xrqlz)

[vliegtuig]

I like how the gold seems to become liquid on top of the nose.
Great work.
P

[Ecks]

I personally don't like this one very much...even tho the modelling and shading looks decent enough..the background image doesn't do it for me. it looks dull and not life-like enough for the scene itself.

[RobertT]

Sago: Thanks, Sago. The flames were challenging to balance with the rest of the image. They are modeled (image below), and I have been experimenting with render layers to see if something better was attainable.


Algorith: Thanks, Algorith. This one I kept simple, using proportional editing, noise, random selection, and mirror modeling to get the shape and smaller details I needed on the mesh. A lot of detail can be achieved in Blender alone. Of course, once SharpConstruct is integrated there will be many more possibilities :)


garphik: Thank you very much!


xrqlz: Thanks. I tried to work the reflections and bump maps in such a way to hint at gold starting to melt, but what you described would be cool too.


vliegtuig: I appreciate that. Metal shaders can be tricky to get just right.


Ecks: Thanks for the feedback, Ecks. Everything in the scene has been modeled (there is no background image). The flame shaders are procedural:


http://www.artofinterpretation.com/images/goldencalf-3dview-byrjt2006.jpg


I lowered alpha and emit values because when the flames were brighter they were competing too much it seemed with the statue. Maybe they could be a little brighter.


RobertT

[Super Wu-Man]

flawless, i think the more simple the better,
proably my new favoirte of your work.

when you can really get somthing down to its most simple state, and include only whats nessary to tell the story/idea then you really got somthing great! modeling, lighting, flame detail, everything is perfect!

[BgDM]

Excellent shader work Robertt.

The cow has some nice detail work modelled into it, but it gets lost in the reflections, unfortunately. But that is typical with reflections.

BgDM

[Trevj]

Did you use B-brush to sculpt that? Nice work, btw.

[oldskoolPunk]

Why non-participating? Its funny that you think so much of yourself that you think you are doing everyone a favor by keeping it non-participating.
You are very good with the sculpting tool, I cant seem to get it to do what I want. Or did you use outside sources?

[RobertT]

Wu: Thanks a lot, Wu! You're right about the benefits of keeping something simple :)


BgDM: Thanks, BgDM. Yes, in the 3D view I was thinking "oooh, this could turn out good" :) and then when I first rendered it I was disappointed. So I went back and focused on the reflections based on the gold material I had developed for Prometheus and shared with the community. Sometimes it works well, sacrificing some detail for a better composition/render. I had to deal with a lot of sacrifice like that during my F1 project.


Trevj: No b-brush or sculpting, just mostly proportional editing and vert tweaking with a mirror mesh modifier. I'm still haven't been able to get refined control over SharpConstruct, or even Zbrush for that matter, but I didn't need that kind of detail here anyway. With things like edge loop selection, ALT S, PET, and periodic random selection (10-20% verts or faces) + vert tweaks, these kinds of details can be achieved quickly and easily right in Blender.


oldskoolPunk: No, no, no: I just do that so others don't get discouraged since Sago and me won several WCs straight recently. After that I decided to n-p again for a while, that's all. Sago knows how I feel about that after we discussed the situation privately. Me, I think next to nothing of myself. For me this is about creation and improving. BTW, no sculpting tool was needed here for these basic details. Just press O (use Connected or not) and start moving, resizing, rotating verts on a dense mesh (subdivide/smooth or convert subsurf on level one or two to mesh and tweak away). Try practicing on a standard sphere or, a heavily subdivided cube, subsurfed either way like that, and see what you can twist and shape it into. It's fun :)


RobertT

[Zazu]

Excellent work RobertT. I like the idea very much.

Sorry if i sound boring, but could you please share the material settings for those flames, they look very good and realistic.

Thank you

Stefan

[Aligorith]

I only really saw the cow shape in the preview you posted. Now that I know what to look for, it is easy to see the cow in the rendering.

Aligorith

[RobertT]

FIRE


Here is a downloadable blend file of my material settings for the fire (http://www.artofinterpretation.com/blenderfiles/fireShader-byRobertT2006.zip).

You are free to use and adapt it however you want :)

RobertT

[Zazu]

Thank you very much!