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On 2021-02-20 7:24 PM (-4), Bald Eagle wrote:
> Cousin Ricky <ric### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
>>
>> Sneak preview. The harlequin colors are there for testing.
>>
>> That other lamp in the left background is a rudimentary place holder
>> that I've been using for the past 5 years.
>
> Well, you've certainly spent a lot of time honing this object.
> The textures are very nice, and they really replicate the real thing.
>
> The base just looks - real. The shape, the gloss, the texture on the toggle
> switch, the press-fitting of the lamp neck. Even the little gap between the
> base and the floor, where the felt pad presumably is.
That _is_ the felt (or rubber) pad. It's just dark like a shadow.
> The light bulb looks real as well. I looks like thin glass with a thin layer of
> kaolin powder coated onto the inside.
This was a v3.7 render, so I used a layered texture in lieu of
finish-level Fresnel. The material macro autodetects v3.8 and would
just go straight for the finish-level Fresnel, but you have me wondering
if I should bother. When I look at a frosted bulb IRL (actually, an LED
lookalike), it looks like there's some SSLT going on there, but I wasn't
going to bother with it. Maybe the layered texture looks more realistic
than the finish-level Fresnel?
> It's neat that the texture on the outside of the shade "peeks out" a bit beyond
> the inner white.
That's a happy side effect of an attempt to avoid the radiosity
artifacts that would otherwise manifest when the lamp is switched on.
When I first coded the place holders, I ended up with nasty white spots
all over my render rig until I set no_radiosity on the fixtures. But I
only want to do this for the inside of the hood.
> Should be interesting to see your power cord, and the lit final product.
The power cord is still in my "future plans" bin. I'm thinking about
commandeering the Rope module from the object collection, as it may have
already solved the issues that will certainly turn up. My biggest
concern here is the plug: different countries have different standards,
and I'm wondering if the plug should be its own module with
international options.
> Of course you're going to want to give the neck spline a bit of non-uniform
> wiggle, and from a math and rigging perspective, one would have to define a
> minimum radius that the FMC/Greenfield style neck can achieve and somehow
> disallow sharper bends. Just a math/programming observation and a puzzle to
> suggest. :)
A minimum radius will naturally fall out of the constraints that I put
in the lamp macro. I'm glad you're going to work on the wiggle. ;)
> Your placeholder has that antialiasing artifact that just got brought up.
Yes, it is creepy, but I explained why I'd rather live with it.
> The square in front of it is rather bright - a trick of the lighting and
> falloff?
Yes, that's exactly what that is. The light source uses the bulb radius
as its fade distance, which results in very bright illumination near the
light, and a rapid falloff as the distance increases. If you look
carefully, you'll notice that the dark squares closest to the lamp are
also somewhat lighter.
> That thing is gonna look _real_ with an HDR environment. :O
That's half the intention.
Notice the flying saucer shaped reflection in the blue stripe of the
hood: that is the distorted reflection of a second place holder lamp
outside the right of the frame. Only with hyper-white illumination can
such a reflection be realistic. Even so, the light is only 10% of
normal brightness, because I'm only using it as a fill. (The visible
place holder is also a fill. The main light source happens not to be
reflected anywhere.)
One problem that concerns me is reflections of lit bulbs. If the
reflecting surface has a specular or Phong highlight, you end up with
twice the reflected light. For this render environment, I tentatively
solved this by setting no_reflection on the place holder's bulb, but
this results in a highlight that doesn't reflect the extent of the bulb.
When I release the source code for the lamp, there will be a parameter
to turn the reflection on or off, and let the user decide what to do
with highlights--unless someone has a better idea.
> As always, very nice, very meticulous work.
Thanks!
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