Here's my Amapi learning project rendered in Carrara GI. It is very much a WIP (Chalice isn't done yet; needs a band below the bowl and one at the lip with gems).

The crystal uses Mark D's iridesence shader (not yet available; this is to whet your appetite ;-).

Render is a quickie; there are some odd reflections that need attention (for instance the red above the middle metal is not from the iridesence shader which doesn't have red in this shader. Must be a reflection of the rubies, maybe off the bottom of the bowl?).

This will ultimately be a prop in a thief scene where it won't be all that large in the scene so I probably won't clean up a few of the modeling flaws I've created so far.

The Amapi to Carrara import function seems to work pretty well except that I've several times had a name error where it gives one object or group the name from another. Anyone else seen that? I sent it in to Eovia. Otherwise, it is pretty cool.

Marc

Nice. I'd expect the flat bit of the base with the gems to also relfect the six fold facetting (maybe it does and just doesn't show up very well). It also looks a lot to clean and neat, but at the same time without having the sparkle that a newly made/cleaned item has. Mik

This render shows the base off a bit better (and hides some of the modeling flaws, bonus!)

In the final scene, I may play around with a scratch and dent effect on the gold but I'm not sure it will be too noticable (the chalice will be small in the scene) so I may not bother.

Off to the next stage of the project. This time around, my intent is to put together drafts of the two characters pretty quickly, put in a placeholders for most of the walls and objects and getting the lighting right before proceeding. After the lighting is close, I'll go back to the characters and other props. Part of the reason for this is I'm really not sure what lighting I'll settle on and depending on how things work out I may not need any walls, or different props.

Marc

that looks very good!

Thank you! I've had to change my scene concept. I was going to have a thief holding this chalice with a ghost materializing behind her but after experimenting I can't get the ghost effect I was looking for. I think I could use DCG's Fake Frensel but it would take a ton of work to remove the unwanted (interior) edges. What I'd really want is something to extract the surface polygons of a multi-layer model (like a poser figure with clothing on) but I'm not sure how to do such a thing. Another option is to separately render the ghost as a solid object that composite it in with transparency but I don't think I could get that to look very good. So, the scene will instead have demon materializing (I think it will be beter this way). While figuring out how to rework the scene, though, I decided to do another, shorter project. I'll probably post a WIP on that later tonight if my GI render doesn't take too long ;-) Marc