Final renders for rings

Hello there, I have finished texturing and rendering the rings I chose to go with. They have come out quite well I guess, they're not quite displayed as I intended but I'm happy with the result. I struggled a bit with creating decent textures in cycles render, but I got there.

The first I textured was the push ring. I started by choosing a HDR image to light the environment which I sourced from a site called www.hdrlabs.com. I then put a black and white converter node on the output to take the colour out. I was going to block out the image and just use the light but after creating a glossy black surface for the ring to sit on I could see some interesting lines and patterns in the reflection so I kept it in. The material is a combination of glossy, diffuse and glass shaders. I was going for a silver metal.

I then rendered out the image at 1920x1040 pixels with a sample rate of 2048. I used the same render setting for each image. This took around twenty minutes to render and once it was done I had to rake it into photoshop because the reflected imagery was pixellated. I created a mask layer for the background and applied some Gaussian blur just enough to take out the pixellated look. I think it looks good because it resembles a photographic trick and then cropped it to make the ring the primary focus and the reflection the second focal point.

This next ring turned out way more colourfully than I expected. I always wanted gold some I manged to wrangle a nice shiny texture. I had to then texture the gems which took quite a bit of messing around, I probably still didn't quite nail it but I think they still resemble real gems pretty well. Choosing the colours for the smaller gems and how they would appear took quite a while. I was thinking of alternating them but that might have made it just too much. I decided to do each half of the tiers a different colour. 

I then thought about what type of lighting and maybe using the same sort of effect as the first image but with a different background. Looking around I found a nice galaxy image on hdrlabs, I thought this might enhance the vibrancy of the ring and it sure did. I rendered out the ring and took it into photoshop because it was a bit dark and lightened it, I also cropped the image because the ring looked too small in a widescreen format.

This next image is my spiral ring, I feel it's the weakest image of the three. It was a bit of a struggle from the start this one from the modelling to completing the texturing. When I tried doing a Boolean modifier for every gem it soon became way too slow to carry on meaning there must have been many vertices being added every time, so I did a bit of a cheat and selected the vertices in the middle of each gem and pulled them down using proportional editing to crate a divot for the gem to sit in.

I used a yellow gold for the metal and darkened the emerald green gems for more emphasis. I know what I was going for here but I didn't quite achieve it. I was going for alot of green anyway but maybe in a more gentle way. I took this into photshop and increased the saturation. I also changed the yellow blue balance towards the blue side which bought the overall colour of the image into more of a balance.

Here is a picture of the node structure for my gold material, there is a glossy shader as the primary mixed with the output from a mixed glass and diffuse shader. As you can see I have weighted the material more towards the glossy side, using the glass diffuse shader.

The gem material was a combination of glass and glossy shaders with a touch of emission that I ran through a transparency modifier. The emission was to give the gem a little brightness and I used the colour panels to change the colour of the gem.

After initial consultation, it was recommended the I take out the background and just have the rings on a plain black surface which is what I will do to exhibit the images.

Ring selection and modelling.

Hello there, it came time to narrow down the designs and get to creating them in Blender. I chose the spiral ring, the Aztec inspired ring and the button pusher.

The Aztec ring was quite simple to model, it was a cylinder that I extruded out and scaled up. It has a large gem at the top and a multitude of smaller gems around the lower tiers. The placing and rotation of the smaller gems was the most time consuming part about creating this ring. I used a Boolean modifier to create space for the gems within the geometry of the body.

The spiral ring I had trouble modelling initially. I made life hard for my self by extruding some sections from a cylinder and ended up with a total mess when I tried to smooth the arms out. I started again with a cube then extruded out and rotating the new axes a set amount. Taking this more structured approach I was able to produce a better result plus I could bevel the edges properly to make the arms have a rounded look. The ring has a large central stone and smaller gems along the arms.

This is a ring for pushing buttons, the tapered bottom is made so the ring sits snugly on top of the fingers when a button is pushed.

 

The next step is to texture and render them out using cycles render to create realistic images.

Initial ideas and sketch

I've been thinking about how these rings are going to look, I want them to look both stylish and realistic, by realistic I mean both visually and able to be created physically. I have sketched up a few designs, here they are below.

I will discuss the designs from left to right, top to bottom. Starting with the top left this is a simple winged design that would have a large central stone with two teardrop gems at each end. Once it is modelled I will play around with the metal and gem types. That might be the case for a lot of these designs.

The next design has a bold geometric feel, it is probably more of a ring for men, I was thinking of a rose gold colour for the ring with rubies for the gems.

The spiral design will also curve around the finger slightly. I think will be a bright yellow gold colour with emeralds for the gems.

The next ring is a little strange and sort of a concept design, it is an upwards facing dish the has a large diamond in the middle. The metal would be a silvery colour or possibly platinum.

The multistory type ring is inspired by Aztec pyramids, not sure what types of gems to use, maybe a colourful mix but the metal will definitely be a bright gold.

The tri-corner design I'm thinking would have an alien feel with amethyst for the gems and a bluish type metal.

The smiley face one is a bit of fun, the paradox would be the commonality of the image combined with the ridiculously expensive materials used to create it. the black parts will be a material like polished ebony, the face would be yellow gold mounted on a platinum ring.

The last one is a strange one. It would function as button pusher and general interface for the world. I would make it out of titanium, it would have slight ridges on the face to avoid slipping.

I may not create all of these, I will have a good think about it and maybe go with five of these designs for this project. Once that is done I will model them in Blender and show the results before I start texturing.

Jewellery Project Update

Hello there, while I haven't sketched up anything as yet I've been thinking about what type of pieces I will create. I would like to do more than a standard engagement type looking ring but still remain within the bounds of reality to a point. I may just end up creating some magical glowing ring but I will start out with artistic but still conventional pieces.

Creating and texturing the jewels should be relatively simple. Modelling the body of the rings will be only as hard as I make it for myself, hopefully I will be able to plan and execute the model in Blender without too much hassle. Not too fussed on what type of gems to use, I think one will have a ridiculously large diamond and another has to use a ruby I feel. Maybe I will try and make them into a series of matching pieces we will see, I won't know until I start sketching to see what I will come up with.

Jewellery project

Hello there, the next project I am taking on is creating and printing jewellery. After discussion with the jeweller, the most useful use of printed jewellery was for creating samples for making moulds from. This would only be possible if the makerbot was capable of printing with sufficient accuracy and detail to make it viable.

To start with, I made this simple ring just to see how well the printer handles it. I put it into the makerbot pretty confident that it would print nicely. I even used the high detail settings in the makerware taking the layer thickness to 0.1mm. It didn't turn out. The top and inside seemed to be alright but the bottom half of the outside didn't print well at all, the surface seemed to be missing. I needed the raft because the plastic couldn't seem to stick well enough on such a small footprint.

So I tried again, this time with the standard settings that used 0.2mm layer height. The results were the same but worse. It was missing the same part but the detail was much cruder.

It was possible that it was my model that was unsuitable so I tried to print it using the up printer. As you can see below, the results were much more consistent. The surface was even all around, it snapped off the base pretty easily. This was nice but it meant that it wasn't my design it was the printer which was worrying.

I designed a few rings based on photos I found on the Internet, you can see on the bottom right corner the two twisty type rings. The black one was done in the makerbot, the white in the up printer. Both were failures. The support structure on both of them was hard to remove and didn't come off cleanly. The resulting pieces were quite weak and had too much surface disruption to be even close to being suitable for moulding.

This is the other ring that I modelled in blender, it wasn't too hard to do and I was hopeful that it would print out nicely.

As you can see below, the ring printed out relatively nicely but it was over sized. After removing the supports the resulting finish was like the other ring, it left a lumpy surface behind that would be impossible to smooth without breaking it.

It seems that the makerbot just isn't capable of producing the fine detail at that size needed for mould production. This is disappointing but I need to finish the project so I will change tack.

I will go for high quality rendered images of jewellery that I have designed. I will begin by sketching up a few designs then modelling, texturing then rendering them.

Next project

Hello there, my next project will be for a local jeweller making prototypes and, if the prints are exact enough, create forms that will used to make moulds for casting real pieces.

My first task is to make a proof of concept, so I will find an image of a ring, re-create it in blender then print it out. What is important is that the pieces are detailed and exact enough to have stones attached to them because that will be the determining factor of whether they can make suitable moulds or not. My aim is to have several samples printed by mid next week.

Nest Project - Full sized print

Hello there, after tweaking the design to even up the outside walls as well as doing a little smoothing, I took the stl file I exported from blender and imported it into the makerware. The makerware took a long time to convert it to a x3g file but it got there in the end. Here is a shot of the nest in the makerware.

Tho bounding box represents the build size so the model was as wide as it could be. Once it was sliced up I put it onto the sd card the the makerbot and let it go. Twenty hours later I came back to find this.

The print had worked! As you can see the support structure has warped a little bit but that didn't matter because the print itself was solid enough to hold it's shape. After an hour or so of destructuring I had a finished product.

The lady who commissioned these pieces was quite happy with the result and asked if I could produce a few more. The second full size print came out well, the third was a failure but it wasn't the machines fault. The filament had been taped to the spool halfway through the reel so at some stage during the night the filament had run out and the print was only half done. I put another one on with the hope that the filament left was enough to produce a full one.

Unfortunately there was not enough but a very small amount. The filament had run out about two centimetres from the top so it was very disappointing to see. After a call to the artist it was agreed that I would print another one in white ABS. The first attempt ended in total failure because the build was knocked off the plate a few hours in. The white ABS seemed to be a lot more prone to warping. With great trepidation I put another one on and came back to check it about four hours into the build. The print was hanging onto the plate by a thread and rocking back and forth as the print head moved over it. There was nothing I could do so I left it to it over the weekend would find out on the Monday if it worked.

By some miracle it had printed out so I quickly destructured it and it was sent off the Albury that day with the other nests. Regarding the exhibition they will be shown at I will have to gather more information but as far as the project is concerned, it is complete.