Random lamp

[TMausi]

Hey guys, i was browsing for a lamp to animate and i found this:

I thought it’d be a good challenge since I was learning to use the curves and circles to make the base and the discs looked a lot like the same procedure but different results.
It was fun and everything but I really struggled in some parts like the rope and lamp materials, also I ended up making the lamp head lower poly than what i intended to and didn’t know how to make it higher since bevel and loop cuts were broken because of the holes, so i just went with it and made a low poly scene to present the lamp like Michael said, it’s always better than just presenting it in the default gray void of blender
I’d love any tips, like how to make stuff more realistic or more (i always end up with something low poly that i can’t modify and makes shadows hit really hard even on smooth shading or super high poly so that i can barely render, the discs were in a good middle term but you can barely see them in the render).
I’m still learning a lot as I go and i’ve just been doing those random models as I wait for the course to be updated to 2.8, it’s really fun and i think i’m discovering something new each time and it’s really exciting!

Anyway, here’s the cycles render:

(just add here that i made all the parts smaller because i wanted to animate this, but it didn’t work out because of the rope and stuff, i just don’t have enough knowledge at this point, so i’ll go back and make the same lamp as Michael

Edit: Just reuploading, accidentally uploaded the render where the weight on the right of the lamp was like super small lol

[capa14]

I already said it before, don’t stop making your low poly scenes, they are great
The tree could have more “branches” since this is so close up, but ok!

About Shadows in Cycles the softness of the shadows is determined by the Light Source Size being an actual Light object or being an object with Emissive material.
The smaller the light is the more hard edged the shadow will be. Being larger the shadows will be more Smooth Edged.
(Sometimes you need to fake some stuff to have the desired result but that’s another story)

I really recommend you to watch of Blender Guru’s Donut tutorial series, he keeps it simple on how to make stuff look more realistic while explaining a hole bunch of stuff in a fun way.

Blender Beginner Tutorial Series

I’m sure you’ll be able to skip a lot but starting from the particles is really interesting.

Then again there is another tutorial the Anvil one which is really good too that he explains about Materials using Principled BSDF with textures. Mixing Material, Baking normals, etc…

Creating an Anvil - Full series

Actually browse all of the tutorials… man so much content… so many insights.
I also really like how he tries to understand how stuff works in real life to make it work in the project.
Don’t be afraid of the stuff that seems hard to make, they are actually doable!

[TMausi]

Thank you so much! That’ll help a lot, really.
I love doing low poly but i really would love to get some more realism in my scenes, i know it doesn’t fit a lot but i’ve been thinking about mixing those together in some way that’s visually pleasing, maybe in the future because i need to learn how to make stuff more realistic first
I’ve watched some of his tutorials, they’re really good and fun to learn and go along, thanks for giving me somewhere to start as i’ve never seen those tho, just some more advanced ones that left me with a “?” face.
Really hoping it helps me, i’ve been struggling to make stuff more realistic for a while now.
Again, i really appreciate you taking the time to show me these, i’ll check those soon, thanks!

[capa14]

I’m sure it will, since it helped me a lot

Before I bought this course I started with Blender by watching his tutorials.
Back then I was also looking to make stuff realistic and he’s really prone to make realistic stills and short animations with using some physics, simulations and particles.

Other thing that was a really eye opener to me about materials was this specially the Wooden Floor one:

Grant’s channel I watch a lot, mostly short videos but life changing ones!
He also does a lot of series for beginners!
BTW, here is a Low Poly Tree tutorial which is a 4min video lol

[TMausi]

Thank you again for the help! i’ll post the results of what i could learn in a month or two

[capa14]

Nah… It won’t take that long you’ll see that a few videos is all that will take to look better already

[TMausi]

Hey Capa,
Just finished the donut series from blenderguru, learned a lot on making things look more realistic, thank you again! I already have some other scene ideas so i’ll try that next, very, very soon.
Anyway, here’s the render:

[capa14]

Told ya!

Really well done!

Now move to the Anvil one
There are a lot of tips there about a lot of things, from modeling to texturing

[TMausi]

Hey Capa!
Well, first of all thanks again for showing me those tutorials, i learned a lot of stuff doing this anvil, as always i ended up exagerating a little in the details by putting them everywhere so now it’s quite difficult to look at it since it’s a lot of visual pollution, but i guess it’s just another lesson learned.
i really loved learning to bake the normal to make a lowpoly detailed asset, this will help me a lot in my next projects since i always ended up with a scene that crashed my blender as soon as i tried to move something xd
Also i really liked making the anvil but i’d love it to be in a scene so i think i’ll work on that now, and then i’llget back to the game assets part of Michael’s course feeling a lot more confident in what i can do.
Anyway, here’s my anvil with poor lighting:

[capa14]

Fantastic!

You see… didn’t took months…

[TMausi]

Well, now to try something on my own, let’s see how long it takes xd

[capa14]

If you don’t go for a full scene with a lot of objects or a really complex one i’d say a few days
If you do, you could create a new topic and post the progress steps as you go.

It’s very interesting for me to see the development of a scene