Electron Microscopy in Poser
By Traveler
This is a two stage tutorial.
Stage one will show you how to make the weird little models for this and stage two will show you how to set a render up in Poser.
You will need Wings for this, it is an AWESOME freeware modeler found at: http://www.wings3d.com
I am going to walk you through the basics of making a nano-object, you can explore it further on your own.
Nano-Object Creation:
-Start Wings
-In the main work window, right click. A Menu will pop up. From this menu select icosahedron. What looks like a ball made up of triangles will appear in your document window.
-Now we want to select all of the faces of the object. So hit CTRL-A to select all of the faces.
-Right click again and a menu will pop up. Select Inset from this menu.
-This command will make a smaller face inside the existing faces (And connect everything). Once you have started the command, drag your mouse until you get and inset you like then single click to stop the command and finalize it.
DO NOT DE-Select anything at this point, we want to keep working with this selection
-Right click again and choose Extrude from the menu. A sub menu will pop up. Choose Normal from that menu. Once you click on the Normal option, it starts the command. Drag your mouse to extrude the faces out from the shape. Once you have it where you like it, single click to stop the command.
-Ok, here is were we get weird. Right click again. When the menu pops up again, select Intrude. This command takes whatever faces you have selected and basically hollows the object out leaving tje faces you had selected as holes. This is a key command along with the inset and extrude, for making these kinds of nano-weirdos. Once you click on Intrude, it starts the command. Drag your mouse, this will set the thickness of the walls of the object. Again single click stops and sets the command.
-Almost there. Now what we need to do is make it smoother, more organic. But before we can do that we need to switch from Face Mode to Object mode. Up at the top of the work window are 4 Pyramid symbols. From Left to right they are Point Mode, Edge Mode, Face Mode, and Object Mode.
There are different command sets and effects for each of the different modes, but that is for another tutorial.
For now. Click on the Pyramid all the way to the right to switch to Object Mode. The entire object will change to red.
-Right Click, a menu pops up, click on Smooth. This Smooths the entire model. Giving you something like this:
-Now that is a weird little bugger all on it's own.... but we can make it just a bit odder.
-Switch to point mode (The first Pyramid at the top.)
-Hit the space bar to de-select all of the points (When you switch from mode to mode, the selection carries over)
-Now select one of the points at one of the junctions on the main body of model (See below) It will change to yellow when you are over it, click when it is yellow and it will change to red. Red means it is selected.
-Ok, now we want to select all points like this one we have selected. Wings has a command just for that. At the top on the command bar, go:
Select--Similar You will now find that all of those points are now selected!
-Right click again, a menu will pop up. Select Extrude and Normal from the sub-menu (Normal means you will be moving/extruding, etc in the direction the point/face/line is pointing in space.) The command will start and spikes will start to develop. Drag your mouse until you have you spikes the way you want them, and single click to lock in the command.
-Ok.. almost done. Lets smooth this one more time!
-Switch back to object mode (Last pyramid at the top) Everything will turn red
-Right Click, Menu will pop up. Select Smooth. It will smooth everything and you will get something like this:
-Just one last thing we need to do... we need to make it into an .obj file for poser to use.
On the command bar go: File--Export--Wavefront Object.
Wings will ask you where you want to save it to, select a folder and give the .obj a name.
You can quit out of wings now, we are going into Poser.
Phase 2 - Poser 6 Setup
(This will work in P5 as well)
-Start Poser 6
-Clear your document of anything in it, and delete all three lights.
-You will also want to set your background color to pure black.
-Hide the ground plane if it is on (Ctrl-G)
-You should have an empty scene, no ground, no lights, and a Black background.
-Now, import the .obj file from Phase 1. (File--Import--Wavefront OBJ)
-When the import options come up, go with the defaults
-When it comes in, it will be very bright white. This is because Wings materials have the ambient color set to white by default. It's no worry to us because we are heading into the material room!
What we are looking to do is light the object up, but only on the edges and the bits that are facing away from the camera. Poser has an Edge Blend node to do just that, so that is what we are going to use!
-Create an Edge Blend Node (New Node--Math--Edge Blend)
-Attach this to the Ambient Value socket
-Set the Ambient value to 1. Change the Inner color to Black on the Edge Blend Node, the Outer color to white, and set the attenuation to 1.
Ok to see what we have, lets go back into the Pose room and render it out (Default render settings are ok)
You should get something like this:
That is a start to the effect, lets take it further.
I want to break up the edging a little so that it is a little less even all the way around the surface. Create a new node (New Node--3D Textures--Turbulence) Attach this to the Outer Color socket on the edge blend node, and set the Gain on the turbulence node to 0.15 (The default was too harsh between black and white, Gain controls that ratio. The small value there makes it a nice variegated grey)
Go back into the pose room and render it again. Looking better!
But we can still boost it! Back to the material room!
The glow is a little weak since we added in the turbulence. So set the ambiance value on the main material node to 1.6. And I have decided that I want to "tighten up" the edge effect, I change the attenuation value on the edge blend node to 0.6
Ok, lets add some color!
We could just change the color of the ambience color box, but lets get a little trickier!
Create a new Edge Blend Node (New Node--Math--Edge Blend)
Attach this to the Ambient Color socket
Set the Inner color to a very dark blue.
Set the outer color to a very light and bright blue
Go out and render again.
Cool, but too dark, back to the Material Room!
Set the ambient value to 2.2
And set the attenuation on Edge Blend 2 to 0.6
While we are in here, lets add some bumps!
-Create a new node: (New Node--3D Textures--Granite)
-Attach this to the bump socket
-Set the bump value to 0.02 (We don't want this too strong)
-On the Granite Node: Set the scale to 4 (Big texture) and set the shades to 20 (Nice and smooth)
Go back out into the pose room and render.
Oh yeah that's the gravy!!! (I think we should call this one the Gravy Molecule ... the spikes are what keeps it sticking to your ribs (And thighs!)
But..... it could be a little cooler... let's add some displacement.
Back to the material room!
-Add a new node (New Node--3D Textures--Spots)
-Attach the spots node to the Displacement socket
-Set the Displacement value to 0.05
-On the spots node set the background color to black, spot size to 0.5 (Small spots), Softness to 0.2 (Slightly soft) , and threshold to 0.67 (Lots of black, few little white spots)
To see the effect here, we will need to set up our final render settings.
Go to the render settings and switch to manual.
Duplicate what I have here:
And Render:
Ok from here you can play on your own in the material room. Try different colors and values in the nodes I have used, you can swap out different texture nodes... maybe add some transparency? Boost the ambience more.... there really is no limit here.. just have fun!
Bonus Downloads:
The Gravy Molicule
Some Electron Mats
A selction of Nanos (Including the red blood cell
Electron Chamber - A Base Poser Doc with all of the set-up stuff done
Enjoy!
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