3d Company Logo?

[rustysilo]

I am trying to divy up a 3d logo for our company. I want it to have a shiny gold material (which I don't seem to have).

• Does anyone have a shiny gold material and willing to share?
  
• Can I get help with lighting?
  
• Can I get help with render settings (regular AutoCAD)?

I have now attached an image of what I'm working on. As you can see I am in dire need of assistance with lighting and rendering.

 

Oh yeah, I used an out of the box satin brass material. I want a material that is shiny/glossy more like a gold mirrored look. Well, not mirrored per se, but you know what I mean. Sorta like chrome, but gold in color. Polished. Uhm... shiny.

[Cad64]

HERE is a good tutorial for greating gold, silver and copper materials. The tutorial is for 3DS Max, but you can use it as a reference for creating your material in Autocad.

 

Lighting and Rendering can wait until you have the logo built and materials applied.

[rustysilo]

Thanks a bunch, but I'm already lost at step 2. I guess regular AutoCAD (actually using Civil 3d) doesn't have some of that stuff...?

[spursnutter]

Might not be what you want to hear but, photoshop is excellent for 3d text.

[rustysilo]

Nah doesn't really help since we don't have that. I have the GIMP loaded and might be able to pull it off that way, but I thought I'd give it a shot in AutoCAD first for practice. I have never gotten into dealing with materials, lighting and rendering beyond the default ootb settings so I'm clueless.

[shift1313]

here are the 2 golds loaded in acad 05

[rustysilo]

I don't believe those are loaded in '08, at least not in the materials tool palette. Maybe they're in one of the ootb templates? Besides, neither of them appear to be very shiny having the polished look I'm looking for... Unless that can be achieved by changing the lighting and rendering settings.

[shift1313]

in acad 08 you should have an advanced metals template and there should be a gold in there. I checked out some of the material resources online last night and couldnt find anything, but i didnt search for long.

[rustysilo]

I'm fixin to look for it. All I've found thus far is brass, which is what I used on the above logo. It doesn't have the shine though as it's more of a brushed look.

[shift1313]

brass in solidworks

 

gold in solidworks

[rustysilo]

I can't find it yet...

 

OK so lets just say I use the brass/satin that I used in the first logo above. What can I do with lighting and rendering settings to improve the output?

 

Right now default lighting is off and I have a point light located 5" in front of the logo with settings as attached.

[rustysilo]

Anyone? Is this thing on?

[Cad64]

Have you tried rendering it yet? Post some images so we can see what needs tweaking.

[rustysilo]

Nothing more than what I posted previously. As I said it was just default render settings and the light was a point light with the settings in my previous post. That's it. All I done so far. Been waiting for advice on the settings and any other ideas that would improve it.

 

Can you tell I don't know all that much when it comes to solid modeling and rendering?

 

I'm at the point now where I can deal with the material I've applied so long as I can get the final output to be more realistic and good enough to use.

[shift1313]

rusty, i played around with materials a bit today in acad07, i downloaded some images of gold and i also had some images of shiny aluminum and other things. I was able to get a decent rough gold material like something that may have been cast, but i wasnt able to create a shiny reflective one just yet.

 

You will have to search the materials stickys at the top of this forum and find one that is close and just use it under the advanced metal or realistic metal settings in your material window.

 

as far as the lighting goes, im not sure what to tell you on that. You may try using spot lights and playing with their intensities, also changing their colors to a more yellowish color.

 

I did a google search for gold material and came up with several images of gold. I looked for the largest one then took a clip of part of the material but this didnt really "blend" well. ill keep playing around a bit

[shift1313]

also, were either of the last two images i posted close to what you are looking for? the ones done in solidworks

[rustysilo]

Well, I have been working in the GIMP to see if I could get a nice effect, but to no avail thus far.

 

Here's the tutorial I was trying to follow. My end product looks nowhere near as good as the ones in the tut though.

[rustysilo]

also, were either of the last two images i posted close to what you are looking for? the ones done in solidworks

Actually, yeah, those look pretty good. Maybe if you added some light...

 

Is there a good free, open-source type rendering program I could drop the file into to get a better quality render? Most of the time folks around here say that the AutoCAD render engine isn't the best right?

 

Thanks guys!

[shift1313]

acad 08-09 render engine is great. 07 is a little behind it. 06 and older, were good but not great. so if you have 08 im assuming you have a good render engine. awhile back i posted pictures of a spark plug i drew in acad 09(same render engine as 08) and i thought it looked pretty real.

 

http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj39/shift1313/cad/SparkPlugPresent13.jpg

 

http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj39/shift1313/cad/SparkPlugPresent8.jpg

[rustysilo]

Yeah man that was sweet. Now if I could just learn how to use that part of the program.