Is this GUI going to be sexy?

[Meffy]

In your latest screenshot, there's something strange going on around the top edges of the knobs. Some have a bright highlight, others a dark edge (for instance, Attack & Release vs. Thres in Ratio I section).

The LEDs seem a little too bright; I think someone mentioned before that they shouldn't be white but have some color. These aren't pure white, but they look too bright and desaturated to me.

I do like the 3-D look, and like the glowing rings. IMO they look "real" enough if they're illuminated, but they should cast just a very little glow on nearby areas for that effect to look right.

[McLilith]

mhh..the problem is i still haven´t figured out how to get soft shadows in 3d-designer
they´re either ON or off, at least thats how it looks to me - but i will try further

There are other 3D graphics programs which will definitely do soft shadows. POV-Ray will do soft shadows. I think Blender will. There are lots of other packages out there. I mention these two, because they are free and they can give excellent results.

I'm just not sure if you want to climb the learning curve of another piece of software at this point in time, but if your current software will not do soft shadows, you might need to switch to something else.

Note: Sometimes you can fake large light sources (which provide soft shadows) by using several lights densely clustered together in an array. It can require a lot of lights to look realistic, and you will need to reduce the intensity of each individual light to the point that the whole array is only as bright as a single light would have been. In other words, if you have a 5x5 square array of lights, each individual light needs to be 1/25 its normal brightness. You also need to orient this array of lights, such that the "broadside" of this array "points" toward your subject. (I hope that makes sense to you.) It's a lot of aggrevation to go through, and requires a lot of lights, but it can work for software which doesn't directly support large light sources.

Another technique would be to render several frames of the same subject, and "jitter" the position of the light sources between each frame. Then, use a utility to average all the frames together into a single image. If done correctly, the result will have soft shadows.

(If you're very new to 3D rendering, it will probably be easier to switch to software which directly supports large light sources, than to play around with these two ideas.)


Take care,
McLilith

[sonicfire]

i already looked at POV-ray and heard from everywhere that it´s excellent - but so far i just dont like the GUI/workflow and stuff. and concerning blender - i thought it doesn´t exist anymore ?

[McLilith]

I found the home page for your 3D software, and it seems to be able to do soft shadows. Look in your manual for the phrase "area light". This refers to a large light source, and it should produce soft shadows. Unfortunately, I can't tell you more, because this program only allows registered users to download the PDF manual for the program.

If I were you, I would try a couple other 3D programs, before purchasing this one. Like I said earlier, some of the free ones give excellent results, and they won't make you register, just to download the instructions.

Here are a couple links for you:

http://www.povray.org
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Home.2.0.html
http://www.artofillusion.org/index

There are lots of 3D programs out there. These are 3 of the free ones. My preference would be for POV-Ray, possibly with a separate modeling program. I could create your GUI directly in POV-Ray if I wanted to, but some people prefer to use a separate modeling program for their POV-Ray scene creation.


take care,
McLilith

[Meffy]

POV-Ray has a GUI now? Wow... when I used it, it was strictly command-line. Did my "modelling" using a text editor (Emacs), a scientific calculator (HP48G), and off-the-cuff Perl scripts. :-D My, how the times do change!

[McLilith]

POV-Ray has a GUI now? Wow... when I used it, it was strictly command-line. Did my "modelling" using a text editor (Emacs), a scientific calculator (HP48G), and off-the-cuff Perl scripts. My, how the times do change!

It has a "GUI" but it isn't for modeling. It's primarily for editing POV-script, but you can also watch your renders being completed, manage your files, etc.

Many people use separate modeling software, export their scene file to POV-Ray script language, and render the file in POV-Ray.

For a simple GUI like this, I would just create it directly in POV-Ray script.


take care,
McLilith

[isdjan]

i heard a lot of good things about blender, i'd personally go for that one.

[Meffy]

Mc: Ah. *nod* Gotcha. Same here: I'd use Emacs. :-) </digression>

[Warmonger]

For this program, the quickest way to turn on area lights is to create a primitive sphere, and enable "object=area light source" in the material editor. I got pretty decent results from doing, with no additional tweaking, on the table.cmo file included in the demo.