41 replies to this topic

[Telkin Vaga]

Hey everyone,

I see a lot of great paintings, renders, fingurines in the fan art section so I thought you might enjoy something a bit different. How about some photography fan art. We're talking straight photography and then just bringing out the colours/contrast etc. No, not even the lasers are Photoshopped! Nothing was added to the photos other than some colour filters, playing with levels and RGB channels.

We shot a bunch of pics, picked the best ones and gave each a unique feel. Enjoy and let me know what you think!







How was it done?

Well, I got my hands on Valcrow's Version 2 3D printed Atlas which I'm sure you've all seen. The V2 has the sweet paint job on it already which helps tremendously. I set it up with a pretty elaborate lighting setup on my dining room table and propped it up beside a bonsai tree.

I used a ring light as the Key (top left), another ring light set really low for fill (bottom right) and finally an accent light behind the mech to add a more dramatic effect. 2 Magic/Friction arms held a medium laser and a Wicked Laser Spyder III artic which worked well as a Large ER. After fiddling with it for a half hour and accidentally setting it on high (which almost lit the Atlas on fire) we finally got the proper alignment in relation to the camera angle.

This was the result:




Of course you would only see the laser as a dot unless you added smoke/mist to reveal the beam. Hence we brought in a bowl of water with the mist generator which we wafted towards the mech just before we took the picture. Let me just say that mist is not a very cooperative tool for photography. It took a lot of resets to get the beams looking right.

The Setup:



For those who are interested here is an unedited original raw export and a quick vid of the setup.

Video



Take away from this? A custom signature pic! (see below)

Edited by Telkin Vaga, 11 September 2013 - 10:06 PM.

[Valcrow]

Would CG have been easier? heck ya, but nowhere near as fun as real lasers and smoke. :Pew pew.!

[Bishop Steiner]

freaking nice man. THAT is what I'm talking about guys. I gotta see about getting my King Crab done.

Best part? It's not technically a Btech design, so I can probably do what I want.

[Jin Ma]

these are great. I would have loved seeing the sig before the photos. so i can ponder how amazingly realistic those sigs look. before realizing its made from toy

[Zypher]

Eyes need to be glowing too, otherwise looks awesome.

[Magik0012]

That's effing cool!

[William Chase Davion]

These pictures are amazing.

[Amro One]

Those eyes, yet very interesting technique.

[Bishop Steiner]

Hey Valcrow, for those of us looking to do our own 3D print stuff, what is needed to translate Blender or AutoCad stuff into the correct format for the Printers? I have had some real cool full 3D render work done for me by Kiriage~San, and was trying to figure out how to get them printed?


Whilst articulation like your Atlas would be nice, it's secondary to simply the quality of print work. BUt I so wan't to make a 3D print of my King Crab design, to the same scale as your amazing Atlas! (And eventually add my Deputy Dawg Urbanmech to the mix)

Thanks for any insight in advance!

[Valcrow]

You should be able to just export from blender to .STL, the printer slicer ingests STL files and translates that into the toolpath.

You'll need to clean up your model first so there are no double faces, holes, flipped faces. Should be ok if kiriage modelled it from scratch. It's just from the game models you have to contend with these issues.

The process kinda depends on what printer you want to print from. If you use a service like shapeways (sentinel's minis), it's a little easier in that you don't need to worry about support structures and the resolution will always be good. But an atlas sized one would be really expensive as they charge for material used. You should make your model hollow (to save cost) and ensure all the details are not smaller than the minimum print size. Then send the model to shapeways and they'll produce a quote for you in the material that you want. You can print it in one object if you have no moving parts.

If you use a FDM printer like mine, you have to do a lot more 3D work. You should clean up the model, then decide how you want to break it apart to print it. Because it's not suspended in powder like shapeways printers, you need to consider what happens when plastic gets printed in the air. Also takes longer, resolution isn't quite as nice. But at a fraction of the cost compared to shapeways.

So, what I would do is:

1.Choose what scale you want your Kingcrab
2.pick a printer & budget appropriate to that scale
3.prep 3D model to that printer
4.send print job.
5.make drawings while you wait.

hope that helps.

[Bishop Steiner]

Hugely!

Am assuming to "break it apart" one doesn't need to design the sockets like you did, unless one wants a snap together, or articulated version? For simple pin and glue, it could be just flat cuts?

Kiriage has already done a boatload of modeling work, so I don't want to just keep heaping extras on the guy, as it's all been volunteer work. Though if I was at all knowledgeable in these programs, I would probably try to slog through it.

I will have to ask him about the design, if it is hollow or not, as TBH, I dunno how one would tell, lol.

[Valcrow]

yup you can just cut the model anywhere and glue it. But you need to be careful about where you do that because you will get a seam. (note the atlas legs), also, the XZ resolution is generally a lot higher than the Y so you want to optimize the orientation of your part to optimize for details. It's kinda hard to grasp without seeing the issues first hand. But I guess that's why a shapeways printer costs like 100x more than a consumer one.

The model is most likely not hollow, you'll need to specifically make it hollow for printing purposes if you go for a shapeways print. Doesn't need to be hollow for FDM as it just prints a grid structures or honeycombs on the insides automatically. Which is why you should pick a printer first before prepping the model because it defines the process you would need to go through in order to get it printed.

If I were you I'd try to make the main body part hollow, and upload it to shapeways to see how much it would cost you. If that's acceptable, make the rest of the thing hollow, pose it and print it there in one go.

If it's wildly out of your price range, then go through the work of getting it to work on an FDM machine.

[Parduke]

Very Nice!!

Really digging the second shot.

Good Job

[aniviron]

Very impressive; I actually prefer the ones with the least processing the most.

While I do like your setup, I can't help but feel that a tighter aperture (Can your camera do f/64?) might have reduced the depth of field to help give a greater impression of size. That said, as far as miniature photography goes, this is pretty much sets the bar for quality. Now you just need to get a 3d printed scale model of river city to make it complete. ;]

[PoLaR]

I have a huge appreciation for this since It's actually real and not just CGI. It's like watching Star Wars with all the real puppets and then watching the animated version. No comparison.

Thanks for doing this.

[DevilCrayon]

Wow. Those are really nice. Thanks for sharing all the details on how you made them.

[Spokes]

That is awesome.

[FupDup]

Me: -----> .





My jaw: ----> .
The floor: ----> .

[Telkin Vaga]

aniviron, on 12 September 2013 - 12:57 PM, said:

Very impressive; I actually prefer the ones with the least processing the most. While I do like your setup, I can't help but feel that a tighter aperture (Can your camera do f/64?) might have reduced the depth of field to help give a greater impression of size. That said, as far as miniature photography goes, this is pretty much sets the bar for quality. Now you just need to get a 3d printed scale model of river city to make it complete. ;]

Thanks for your kind comments everyone! The lens only goes to F32, most of these were shot at F9 and a few at F3.2. I might be misunderstanding what you're saying but stopped down to F32 would give me more depth of field which would allow the right shoulder/arm to be more in focus. That wouldn't necessarily change the field of view though.

Another consideration I had to keep in mind is that the constant lasers act + fog act as a secondary light source. Stopping down to F32 would mean about a 4-6 sec shutter. The fog being lit up by lasers for that long will become a colored cloud in front of the mech rather than atmospheric smoke.

After doing this, CG lasers might have been the path of least resistance lol.

[Bishop Steiner]

suffering for ones art is ok.... as long as its you suffering for my art!