A while back, I attempted to model marbles, but failed miserably.  Then
after seeing Chris Purdy's post, and with the new features of 3.5, I decided
to give it another try.

Here's what I have so far.  I think we use to call them "cat eyes".

I still have lots of work to do such as:

-add noise on the surface of the glass since not many marbles are perfect
-allow multi-coloured swirls
-allow swirls to be detached (I think this is called spaghetti)
-maybe add the other easier types: no swirl (rubies?), solid colours
(biuts?)

I really don't remember what they were all called.  Not to mention, I'm sure
different countries have different names for them too.

Surfing the web has taught me that there are hundreds of different styles
now-a-days.  Many more than I remembered.

Enjoy,
Richard.

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Attachments:
Download 'marbles1.jpg' (16 KB)

Preview of image 'marbles1.jpg'

Failed? Heck no. Those are much better than the
cat eye marbles I modeled years ago. Some suggestions:
Make the center color object a little smaller, since the
glass sphere acts as a magnifier. Maybe a little more twist
too. Also, as I remember them, the center color swirl is
transparent, or was for some of them. Care to share the
center shape? I modeled those back with POV 3.0 and
just used untwisted elongated crossed discs for the
center color.

Harold


"Richard Dault" <rda### [at] NOSPAMentredeacom> wrote in message
news:3d0e5423@news.povray.org...
> A while back, I attempted to model marbles, but failed miserably.  Then
> after seeing Chris Purdy's post, and with the new features of 3.5, I
decided
> to give it another try.
>
> Here's what I have so far.  I think we use to call them "cat eyes".
>
> I still have lots of work to do such as:
>
> -add noise on the surface of the glass since not many marbles are perfect
> -allow multi-coloured swirls
> -allow swirls to be detached (I think this is called spaghetti)
> -maybe add the other easier types: no swirl (rubies?), solid colours
> (biuts?)
>
> I really don't remember what they were all called.  Not to mention, I'm
sure
> different countries have different names for them too.
>
> Surfing the web has taught me that there are hundreds of different styles
> now-a-days.  Many more than I remembered.
>
> Enjoy,
> Richard.
>
>
>
>

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Cat eyes is what I remember calling them.  They look good!

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Richard,

Great job!!! Those look a lot like cat-eyes...  I also started doing some
research on marbles and Ohh My are there a bunch of different type out
today.  Heres one I found on the 'net that I think would be really neat to
model... Please forgive me for not actually posting a rendering  :)

I'm sure some of the "pov-gurus" couls easily come up with an equation for
the center parts..

- Chris

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Attachments:
Download 'very-pretty-swirl-in-swirl.jpg' (38 KB)

Preview of image 'very-pretty-swirl-in-swirl.jpg'

Thanks!

The one you posted is what I want to do next.  It might not be as
sophisticated, but I really like that spaghetti look.
That's what I'm going to try to render today.

> Great job!!! Those look a lot like cat-eyes...  I also started doing some
> research on marbles and Ohh My are there a bunch of different type out
> today.  Heres one I found on the 'net that I think would be really neat to
> model... Please forgive me for not actually posting a rendering  :)
>
> I'm sure some of the "pov-gurus" couls easily come up with an equation for
> the center parts..

Post a reply to this message

Thanks.

I originally rendered them semi-transparent, but then remembered that most
of them were solid.  That's just a minor detail though since all I have to
do is change the texture.  I haven't concentrated on textures yet, just the
swirl itself.

I currently have it as a macro where I can control the size of the swirl as
well as how many 'tips' it has.  I'm also going to add some randomization to
the swirl curvature.  Right now, they are all identical.

As for the swirl, I'll post my code in a couple of days.  I would like to
clean it up a little and add a few more things.  But meanwhile, if you want
to know how I did it, I used parametric equations and then convert them into
mesh2 format using a macro created by Ingo Janssen.

I got the idea and looked at the source from Mike's amazing isosurface
tutorial found here: http://www.econym.demon.co.uk/isotut/index.htm.  Just
look up section 12.  Then from Mike's site (sorry, I don't know his last
name, it's not posted anywhere), I found Ingo's macro
http://members.home.nl/seedseven/.
The rest was easy.  These two guys deserve all the credit.

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On Mon, 17 Jun 2002 17:26:52 -0400, Richard Dault wrote:
> A while back, I attempted to model marbles, but failed miserably.  Then
> after seeing Chris Purdy's post, and with the new features of 3.5, I decided
> to give it another try.
> 
> Here's what I have so far.  I think we use to call them "cat eyes".
> 

I think these are the best I've seen so far.  And as you say there was
usually more than one swirl or there'd be no swirl at all. 

-- 
#local i=.1;#local I=(i/i)/i;#local l=(i+i)/i;#local ll=(I/i)/l;box{<-ll,
-((I/I)+l),-ll><ll,-l,ll>pigment{checker scale l}finish{ambient((I/l)/I)+
(l/I)}}sphere{<i-i,l-l,(I/l)>l/l pigment{rgb((I/l)/I)}finish{reflection((
I/l)/I)-(l/I)specular(I/l)/I}}light_source{<I-l,I+I,(I-l)/l>l/l} // Steve

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Here's what I have so far for the spaghetti swirl.  This one has 16
'swirls'.

I also made the swirl semi-transparent.

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Attachments:
Download 'marbles2.jpg' (21 KB)

Preview of image 'marbles2.jpg'

And yet another....

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Attachments:
Download 'marbles3.jpg' (13 KB)

Preview of image 'marbles3.jpg'

"Richard Dault" <rda### [at] NOSPAMentredeacom> wrote in message
news:3d0f7d68@news.povray.org...
> And yet another....
>

Looks like you've found your marbles :)

I would suggest looking into adding attenuation (fade_power, fade_distance)
to your glass material.

-tgq

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