As a former jeweler myself, I think it looks pretty damn good! One thing that might put it over the top is to add a gold stamp(14K, 18K, etc.)on the inside of the band for an authentic touch.

Hmmmmm, I am going to try doing that within wings. (should be interesting..

it won't work too well...hehe trust me i've tried that...just boolean it w/a terrain. How did they "tear you apart" as you say? Oh and this also looks like a good way to make tires for a car....

Cool looking jewels...

You make me sick! Just kidding, man I envy you, your 2nd attempt. Please tell me that you've had years of experience in some other modeling app! These are gorgeous and I like the chizeled look, I think it looks more realistic than if it were smoothed. Its got that cut look to it. :-D Angela

looks awesome! especially on only your second attemp!!!

Thats so strange Ornlu, I haven't seen any mean people in that forum. Maybe it was a troll, so hard to believe any of the regulars there would have said that. Wonder who poofed your post, there isn't any moderator in that forum yet.

Ang, I've never really tried this kind of modeling before. My only other experience has been boolean and metaballs. The ring took about.. 40 minutes to make, the little 14k dealy took 10, trying to figure out how to do it mainly.

cool, I was intially going to try something spirally like that, but couldn't figure out how. Think you could explain it to me? Also Apparently I did the inside of my ring (the whole ring is just from one cylinder) completely the wrong way. =P

Wow, believe it or not it looks more real now! Everyday I would give free ring-cleanings to people who came through the shop. Skin-oils, soap, detergents, and fine scratches in the metal would make a ring look just like this. Kudos on figuring how to implement the suggested "14k" stamp so soon!

oh yeah, definitely! lol

For the first one i did up there, I started with a cylinder and made the basic ring shape on one half and mirrow it for the other.(the ends were still capped by the cylinders, bad idea!!!!!) Then I just rotate the top half ten degrees to the right, then the bottom 10 degrees to the left. That gave me that swirly pattern. Then I selected each two faces that were touching and dissolved them, two by two, manually. Then i selected one of them and did "select similar" to select them all. Then I did inset, then i moved them back along the normal. The only problem now was that my ring had these big caps on it. So i selected the two cylinders and extruded them along the normal so that they were closer to the middle of the ring. Then i intruded at a value of 0.02 to get rid of the cylinders because i know no other way to do it. Now i had this gap around the inside of the ring. Soooooo....I selected each top and bottom face and bridged them, one by one... And that's one a 32 segment cylinder. It took me a goo 10 or 15 minutes just to do that. But as you can see the side edges did not join so it left those holes there. FOr the latest ring up there I decided to use a tprus instead. I deleted the outer ring of verticies first, then the inner ring. Then I brought the tops and bottom rings closer in, and thinned it out....much better that way!

Attached Link: http://renderring.com/models/ringbasic.zip

Thanks, this will be very usefull.

Why not use a cylinder, select both the top and bottom, and make use of the Intrude command?

Wait...ornlu...LOL...i just noticed that since you only used "Hole" on one side of the ring...you can only see through the holes one way, it's like some sort of magical ring or something. Secondly, is the texture in the first set just the default gold with some bump mapping? If not, could you...i dunno, maybe...free stuff it...or something?

Looks like he used blurry reflections...that what gives both the grainy look and the soft highlights.

I didn't hole it... You can see the model near the top. I dissolved it or collapsed after I connected the edge loop 3 times, on the top and the bottom. Only problem with this is that it made a lot of triangles. something you don't want. If I had known I could have collapsed them beforehand, however I only figured it out after I had finished. Being my second model and all. Though no big deal, I think it was 40 minutes well spent. As for the first gold texture. Yeah, I used blurry reflections, about 80% white in the specular halo. Then I rendered it in a HDRI globe. only one spotlight was used and true ambiance. 256 rpp.

Is there a tutorial site about these HDRI globes or something? I'd really love to learn more about this technique and be able to execute it.

It's just used to get hi-lights. It's as simple as applying any panorama to the inside of a sphere. Just make a really large sphere around your whole scene (think of it as a sky dome) then apply any jpeg to it. If you are using blurred reflections it doesn't have to be an actual panorama/hdri. You can use any photograph. It's mainly used to get a range of hi's and lo's in the reflection.

What about lighting rigs and all of that stuff...You oughta make a tutorial site or something..

Attached Link: Gallery image here.

Well now bless your heart! Thanks!

Wait, it was at 64rpp, sorry.

See, now that's not so hard is it? =P

I've seen that 'phantom surface' stuff when I don't get both sides of something I'm trying to pare down..drives ya crazy. If you're lucky, you can either delete the offending part, or try to merge it in with the rest. Good luck, I think you have a leg up on a lot of us Wings nu-be's..;)

Looks good to me Slakker!

Hey cool! You even "mounted" a stone!

there's a 'flatten' command, that you select the faces you want flattened, and then use it. In the Face Menu.

Thanks pakled, I've had some bad luck using the flatten command, lol, a lot of the commands I use tend to give me unexpected results. The stone is from Peter Sharpe's tutoral. One of the first complicated things I made in Bryce, Probably close to a year ago now.