Ibanez RG550 (work-in-progress)

MoP

Edit: Updated with video!


[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIX5aEqLVTA&hd=1[/ame]

Downloadable video (6mb, XVid codec)

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Can't... stop... rendering!

(Click for 1080p resolution)






Decided to make a new thread for this project instead of cluttering up the WAYWO thread with random pics.


Modelling:

Modelling is about 80% done, I still have to finalise some details on the bridge and add some stuff to the headstock (hence not showing it much!), then do all the internals (wiring, components etc).

The whole thing has been polygon modelled entirely in Maya, it's sitting at around 100,000 faces for the control meshes, probably around 2.5 million when subdivided.

It is modelled accurate to life, all the screws can be unscrewed and all the pieces come apart realistically. I hope to end up doing an animation in the end, trying to make it look as realistic as possible.

I'll post up some wireframes of the control meshes tonight, probably.


Texturing:

Currently using about 3 texture sets, diffuse/bump/reflection/exponent maps, between 2048x2048 and 4096x2048. Going to look into messing with procedurals for doing the weathering on the dark metal, that stuff currently isn't even texture yet, just using a flat MR shader on it, which is why it looks super-clean compared to the surrounding parts.


Rendering:

Rendering is in Mental Ray with nice glossy reflections and an HDR sphere map for environment reflections.



List of older WIP images and renders:
http://www.greveson.co.uk/dump/ibanez_wip_01.jpg
http://www.greveson.co.uk/dump/ibanez_wip_02.jpg
http://www.greveson.co.uk/dump/ibanez_wip_03.jpg
http://www.greveson.co.uk/dump/ibanez_wip_04.jpg
http://www.greveson.co.uk/dump/ibanez_wip_05.jpg
http://www.greveson.co.uk/dump/ibanez_wip_06.jpg
http://www.greveson.co.uk/dump/ibanez_wip_07.jpg
http://www.greveson.co.uk/dump/ibanez_wip_08.jpg
http://www.greveson.co.uk/dump/ibanez_wip_09.jpg
http://www.greveson.co.uk/dump/ibanez_wip_10.jpg
http://www.greveson.co.uk/dump/ibanez_wip_11.jpg
http://www.greveson.co.uk/dump/ibanez_wip_12.jpg

SHEPEIRO

nice, like the black metal

felipefrango

SHEPEIRO wrote: »

nice, like the black metal

Kidding aside, I like the black metal too. How did you do the bump on the strap thing around the bridge and neck pickups?

MoP

felipefrango: It's just a simple greyscale bump map!

brandoom

Nice work MoP,

great renders.

Is this a recreation of your own personal guitar?

bbob

Great stuff!

I absolutely love the insane detail.

Can't wait to see this finished..

Lonewolf

looks pretty good

now u need to model zee MArshall!

Wahlgren

I'm very curious about the dust/dirt between the pickups. How did you do that? Just a bump aswell? Looks like it's laying on there. Really cool.

metalliandy

Great work mate!

Fantastic work on the wood, dust and dents...its all looks really believable.

I dont really have any crits. apart from the the metal looks a little grey and the grip on the pots could do with defining a little more.

Some scratches on the Floyd Rose pivot points and tuning nut threads would be cool if you fancied adding it

Keep it up man, its looking really nice

JacqueChoi

Absolutely Stunning stuff!!!



Love the different gauges between the strings.


I actually want that guitar!

MoP

Cheers guys.

Lonewolf: Yeah, I'm gonna do a guitar stand, a strap, a cable or two, and maybe some effects pedals in the final renders. An amp would be awesome, if I feel like I can be bothered, I might put a Blackstar in the background

Notorious P.I.G: It's just a greyscale bump map, yeah. The only maps I'm using are bump, diffuse, glossiness and reflection level. The dirt/dust is just in all of them, there's nothing modelled or anything.


Here's one more render for tonight... the main body and some of the back panels, so you can see how it'll be put together.

JordanW

looks really awesome, there's some weird aliasing going on some parts. in _13 the top of the switch has it, and in _14 the whammy bar overlapping the knob has it. Its minute but i wonder what's causing it.

MoP

JordanW: That's probably coming from the Lens Blur using the Z-depth pass as the depth source. I think the fact that it's smoothly anti-aliased in the Z-depth pass means that the blur goes a bit wrong.

I'm guessing you've done stuff like this before, do you have any tips on how to do good Depth of Field in postprocess? Lens Blur does a great job but it seems lacking in some areas (like you can't do an F-stop value, it's just a constant range, it seems), and this aliasing issue is something I haven't found a way around yet, either.

JordanW

hmmmm in the past I've always done a bunch of blurs and junk and would mask em out and paint out bad areas. It totally sucks. I remember that one architectural vid had awesome post made DOF. http://vimeo.com/7809605 If I remember correctly he used some red giant tool or something to make the DOF, maybe its worth looking at?

I've always wished i had some free time (haha) to write my own DOF style plugin for photoshop. Although i'm sure there's some decent ones but at a price.

MoP

Well, that guy just did Lens Blur with the Z-depth pass in After Effects, if I remember right. It's pretty much the same as Photoshop's Lens Blur, except you can (obviously) animate the parameters for focus point and blur amount, so you can make some great looking stuff.

That tutorial he did on the compositing process was actually what inspired me to start this model and start looking more heavily into postprocessing and depth-of-field stuff in Photoshop and After Effects.

It's actually surprisingly easy to make an average-looking render seem super-real and awesome

Here's Alex Roman's tutorial, he says he does all the postprocessing in After Effects, and he shows the Z-depth layer there, so I can only assume he must be using the Lens Blur filter, unless there's some custom third-party plugin he uses.
http://en.9jcg.com/comm_pages/blog_content-art-166.htm

JonathanF

wow! great job! are you using Maya or 3ds? could you give me some pointers on what your render settings are and with what shader you use for the flat one color renders you have(img 4 and 6)? This is one of my biggest issues is rendering my high poly out, and I been trying to find that one looks I really like that I can carry out to all my portfolio pieces so its consistent. And I really like what you got there! Great work! I am also actually modeling a guitar for a class project myself.

Firebert

so incredibly sick MoP. absolutely love it.

In regards to the lens blur topic, I have used Frishluft's Lens Care plug-in for some animations I did in the past. Depending on what version of AE you are using, you may need it, you may not, but I highly recommend it for post work. I think the latest versions of AE come with a lens blur built in, but I know older versions just had DOF, which wasn't very good.

My one crit, unlike Jacque, would be the string gauges. Looking at the high res link on 13, strings A - E look like something I wouldn't dare put my fingers against unless I had calluses made of adamantium. The low E string looks spot on, and A - G should look about that same pattern but a lighter gauge. Don't know if you are doing this for an effect based on monitor resolutions (I didn't notice this until I zoomed in on the JPG, looked fine in my browser) or if these are just strings I've never seen, nor played.

everything else is top notch per usual man. Looking forward to what you come up with on these procedurals and how the headstock turns out.

edit: k, so I looked back at the other renders here and over in the tech discussion on CA. the close ups on the strings look perfect, it's just that one image, 13, where the strings look all bananas. my bad man

tda

i dont have much to say except wow. jaw droppingly awesome mate, well done.

3D-209

Really awesome man. I love that you're doing everything legit with working parts and insides. I've wanted to do that with something for a long time and you may have inspired me to make it happen with whatever I make next!

ZacD

This isn't CGSociety, where is the game art?!


Just teasing, awesome work and amazing detail. I really like the taken apart renders.

MoP

Cheers guys.

brandoom: Sorry I missed your question before, yep, this is my main guitar!

JonathanF: I'm using Maya, the render settings are pretty basic - I have Final Gather turned on, casting 250 rays with a point interpolation of 25. There's a single area light with fairly high MR shadow samples, and there's a spherical environment mapped around the whole thing for ambient light and reflections.
The renders with the grey materials were just using a simple Blinn, if I remember right. Most of the nicer-looking stuff comes from doing Curves adjustments per-channel in Photoshop

Firebert: Weird, heh, now that you mention it, the strings do look pretty insane in shot 13. Not sure why, they're exactly the same. Also, they're scale-accurate to 0.09 gauge super light D'Addario strings (which are all I use on this)

tda, 3D-209: Thanks guys, glad you like it!

ZacD: Funny you should say that, I actually have plans to do a lowpoly of this too... and other things which should be very interesting and fun

almighty_gir

prepare for talent steal attack on saturday Paul.

Ged

my new desktop background thanks!

Lamont

My only crit would be the wood grain. It's constant as in does not change as depth is made. Using a procedural would look like crap if done wrong. Find some way to blend the texture on the sides with the one on top.

Tea Monster

Really sweet renders!

My only crit is that the part where the wires connect at the base looks too clean in comparison to the pickups. Same deal on the metal arm. You only notice it as you suddenly see the slight wear on the pickups.

Also, I'm no guitar expert, but I'm thinking that your metal shader might need a bit of reflection or some grain or something. It looks a bit too soft and liquid. I've never seen one, so I don't know if you've got it spot on or not.

Don't be afraid of procedural textures. I use them a lot. I apply them, then bake them off and arse around with them in Photoshop so that they don't look procedural.

MoP

Got back into this again the other day, haven't really done anything more with the model or textures, just messing around with cameras and rendering/postprocessing.
Quite like how this one turned out.

Stills from video:


Video (watch in HD 720 res!):
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIX5aEqLVTA&hd=1[/ame]

Downloadable video (6mb, XVid codec)

*goes back to lurking*

metalliandy

Looks nifty mate!
very realistic camera movements

ScoobyDoofus

Yeah. I like the camera movements especially. How did you do that? Maya trickery?

MoP

Yeah it's just hand-keyframed camera translation/rotation/FoV in Maya. No trickery - although there must be an easier way to add simple "noise" to an animation than just hand-keying it. I didn't really look into it much, probably should.

Also, I should have probably used some reference from a real hand-held video, but I just made it up and tweaked the curves until it looked a bit more natural. Shaky hands!

Klumpmeister

holy shit man. That is an amazing piece of work!

d1ver

that's really awesome. I'd have a hard time figuring out if this was real or not if I didn't know already=)

PatJS

That looks extremely natural! You might try making the exposure "breath" a bit right after the zoom in, if you want a more amateur look to go with the shaky cam. Also, I love the little dings in the wood; lord knows I have enough chips in the finish on my guitar just from existing. It's a nice touch!

karera

Mop. Seriously. First when I skimmed through your post I started looking for your renders.

Thought the images was your references. Nice work.

Firebert

you should make some nice tools (screw driver, wire cutters, soldering iron, wire spool & solder, etc.) and place them about on the table like you just finished putting it together. would work well for the animation. maybe even a table/desk lamp. i'd love to see this come to life even more than it has already!

Barnstable

Absolutely incredible work, and I love the video. That shaky effect you did with the camera just sells it even more as a real guitar.

MoP

Thanks guys, nice to know it's fooling some people with the realism already - I need to work a bit more on the materials for a better effect still. I showed it to a guy at work today and he thought it was just a video of a real guitar

Firebert: Cool idea! I will definitely do that Then it will be all the more surprising and surreal when all the pieces start floating apart...