Hi all, I wanted to add a pic to the other carpentry message and somehow deleted it entirely( ok, I admit it, I was doing 3 things at once, and thats never a good idea for me) So I tacked the wooden box on to the second pic here. Both of these are part of a larger scene Im working on.

I have a couple of questions regarding the clock.
The clock is resting right up against the wall, but it looks to me like its floating in front of it instead of being hung on it. Any suggestions on how to fix that?

The other thing is that right now there is no glass in the clock door. I tried making a pane of glass but either it turns out completely invisible or it obscures/washes out the clock face. Any advice on making a decent pane of glass?

Thanks,
Max

You could try to put a bevel around the edge of the glass to give it dimension so light will play off it. I typically set the color channel to 0% and transparency around 75-85%. Another thought is to put a subtle texture in the bump channel. Or possibly a slight refraction. memaci

Max, "Smoke and mirrors...." That will pretty much answer your question. Both of them. Explanation time... From what I can see in the clock image it looks like you have multiple lights and the shadows from the clock are giving it that floating feeling. Try adjusting the light settings to see if this clears up the problem... As for the glass... let's face it... glass is reflective. For realism's sake you need to have a value or color in the reflection channel. You want to make sure that it is a low reflection setting and you may try to make the refraction as low as possible (zero is good, but it's not realistic). Just keep adjusting the setting until you see results. In my experience I have given up too early on some of my attempts at shading. I just learned to keep plugging at it until I am satisfied. My 2 cents.... Ken

Thanks memaci and ken, Ill keep working on it and give your suggestions a try. Im getting there, slowly, but surely. Cheers, Max

Glass is a pain to work with, in the real world. Whenever I've worked on movies (I used to work in the art department -- sets and props), the lighting guys would often ask us to remove glass from picture frames, clocks, that sort of thing, because the reflections from the glass would give the game away. Now, in 3D, you don't have to worry about the lights, crew, camera gear, and all that being reflected in a glass surface, but you do have to worry about putting SOMETHING in the scene to reflect in the glass. If your background is just grey or black, that's going to reflect in the glass. If you want it to feel reel, map a photo of a room into the background; then the glass surfaces will reflect the photo. Better yet would be to build the rest of the room. Then, you have to control where light hits, so you can make sure there's no glare or reflection on the face of the clock.... Hope this helps! - Dex

By the way -- really nice modeling! The chest looks especially real.

I will undelete your previous posting. AzChip has answered to a lot of the concerns I was thinking about in your image. What you can do is mix a two value sliders with something like a wave function in both the highlight and reflection channels. This may help you some on the glass issue. As far as the floating thing goes, you will have to move on to more advanced lighting techniques to get the look you're after. GI rendering will be your best bet or you might be able to pull this off with environmental lighting. Otherwise, you're just as stuck as the rest of us. Good suggestions by everybody else on the glass issue. AzChip has suggested the ultimate solution. -Kix

Nice stuff, keep it up. Image may help with the shadows.

Thanks everyone for your comments and advice. Ill give your suggestions a try. I know Im still pretty much a beginner, but Im kind of pleased with what Ive done so far. I feel like Im making progress (with still a long way to go, but then whats life without something to work towards? :o) ) Cheers, Max

Attached Link: http://www.freid.com

Hi Max, cool job. About the glass : If youre using GI you'll need a small light behind the glass : the gi engine has some trouble with transparency. (thanx Litst for that info ;) Freid