COVERING OUR TRACKS June 2007
by
John Mantzefield
copyright 2007
Many
months ago there was an article in Wired magazine about
nanotechnology that described recent advances in this
area of research. The article included a few electron
microscope photographs to illustrate the main topics.
Because photos of this type reveal a world that is
invisible to the human eye they can serve as a
potential source of inspiration for the graphic artist.
To further develop the idea of doing a Mouse Tracks
cover that depicts a microscopic worlds I bought a
couple of books about electron microscopes at Powell’s.
These books contained dozens of photos of organic
materials and pictures of what man-made structures look
like at that level of extreme magnification. One of the
books had an entire section that was devoted to photos
of electronics components. This months cover image does
not depict a nano-scale world, but rather a view of
electronic parts as they might appear if viewed through
a camera that’s attached to a microscope. The
cylindrical electronics parts in the mid-ground of the
cover are resistors. On a real circuit board they would
measure about 3/8” in length.
POPULATING
THE SCENE
This project stated with a series of pencil sketches that were based on what I had seen in the books on electron microscopes. The drawings helped me to formulate a design concept of what I thought the robots might look like. The sketches started to take three dimensional form as I began modeling (creating the shape of 3D objects) the robot parts in Cinema4D XL v8.5 distributed by Maxon.com. When you begin creating objects to populate a 3D scene like this one it’s common to begin with a type of basic object that’s referred to as a “Primitive”. Primitives are shapes like cubes, cylinders and spheres. C4D’s modeling tools are used to change the scale, shape and contour of the primitive objects to make the parts you need for a scene. Almost all of the objects that you see in the image to the left (cover scene without colors or lighting) were created from Primitives. Objects like the robot head and arms were created with other modeling tools that allow these complex shapes to be easily manipulated until you achieve the finished parts.
The long narrow object that extends from the foreground to the background through the center of the scene in the image above (has alternating black and white stripes) was used to help me set up the focus functions of C4D’s virtual camera. The camera adjustments allowed me to set the primary in-focus point near the robots in the foreground and let the background go out of focus at just the right distance behind them. The black and white striped ruler made it very easy to see where the focus points were set once a test image was rendered as a JPG file. The first components that were placed in the scene were the large processing chip in the background and the small chip in the foreground that the robots are working on. After adding a couple of resistors in the mid-ground area I could see that many more components would be needed. What followed was a few more hours of modeling the additional components and then making copies of the resistors to completely populate the scene.
This project stated with a series of pencil sketches that were based on what I had seen in the books on electron microscopes. The drawings helped me to formulate a design concept of what I thought the robots might look like. The sketches started to take three dimensional form as I began modeling (creating the shape of 3D objects) the robot parts in Cinema4D XL v8.5 distributed by Maxon.com. When you begin creating objects to populate a 3D scene like this one it’s common to begin with a type of basic object that’s referred to as a “Primitive”. Primitives are shapes like cubes, cylinders and spheres. C4D’s modeling tools are used to change the scale, shape and contour of the primitive objects to make the parts you need for a scene. Almost all of the objects that you see in the image to the left (cover scene without colors or lighting) were created from Primitives. Objects like the robot head and arms were created with other modeling tools that allow these complex shapes to be easily manipulated until you achieve the finished parts.
The long narrow object that extends from the foreground to the background through the center of the scene in the image above (has alternating black and white stripes) was used to help me set up the focus functions of C4D’s virtual camera. The camera adjustments allowed me to set the primary in-focus point near the robots in the foreground and let the background go out of focus at just the right distance behind them. The black and white striped ruler made it very easy to see where the focus points were set once a test image was rendered as a JPG file. The first components that were placed in the scene were the large processing chip in the background and the small chip in the foreground that the robots are working on. After adding a couple of resistors in the mid-ground area I could see that many more components would be needed. What followed was a few more hours of modeling the additional components and then making copies of the resistors to completely populate the scene.
TEXTURES AND DISPLACEMENTS
When you create objects for a 3D scene their initial gray surface is smooth and uniform. The process of adding colors and/or designs to 3D objects is usually referred to as Material or Texture Mapping. The colored stripes around the cylindrical resistors began as 2D Photoshop files. These JPG files were 800 X 600 Grayscale images with alternating dark and light gray stripes. In C4D’s Materials Manager you create a new material map by choosing New Mat from a menu, and then in the new Materials Color channel (this determines what will appear on an objects surface) you open a dialog box to choose a 2D images like the Photoshop file mentioned above. In the working view of the scene the resistor now has the striped pattern from the Photoshop file, although it’s not perfectly oriented around the object. To get the flat image to wrap perfectly around the resistors cylindrical shape you need to go through several steps of adjusting the surface mapping with real time visual controls and changing some dialog box settings.
If
you look closely at the objects that make up the cover
scene you’ll notice that almost none of them have
smooth surfaces. This rough texture is accomplished
with two material mapping techniques called Bump and
Displacement mapping. In the image to the left at “A”
it shows a flat plane covered with a black and white
Photoshop file. At “B” the cube only has a color map
applied to it, and at “C” the black and white striped
image has been applied to the materials Bump channel.
In “D” the same black and white image has been applied
to the materials Displacement channel. There are two
primary differences between Bump and Displacement
mapping. With Bump mapping you can see how the parts
surface will be affected as you make changes, but the
degree of surface texturing is lower than you can
achieved with Displacement mapping. In Displacement
mapping you can only see how it will affect the objects
surface after you do a test rendering (making a 2D
picture like the cover image), which can be done in a
small area of the scene just to see how well things are
working.
OBJECT
DEFORMATION
One of the really coal features of a program like C4D is it’s automated ability to uniformly reshape and mold the objects you create. One such tool function is called Deformation and is a common procedure used in many 3D programs. C4D has several deforming tools that can be used individually or in groups to facilitate the modeling process. The deformers act as a force that you apply to the surface of 3D polygonal objects. These forces can cause the surface to bulge, taper, twist and move in several other ways. In the image to the left there’s a resistor in the background as it appears before having a Deformer applied to it. At “B” the arrow points to a Bend Deformer’s control box and shows how it has curved the otherwise straight end of the resistors tubular shape. At “A” the other arrow points to the Deformers control handle which you drag up and down to change the bend angle. At the other end of the resistor in the upper left hand corner of the image there is another Deformer that has been adjusted to bend the end tube upward.
When you create objects for a 3D scene their initial gray surface is smooth and uniform. The process of adding colors and/or designs to 3D objects is usually referred to as Material or Texture Mapping. The colored stripes around the cylindrical resistors began as 2D Photoshop files. These JPG files were 800 X 600 Grayscale images with alternating dark and light gray stripes. In C4D’s Materials Manager you create a new material map by choosing New Mat from a menu, and then in the new Materials Color channel (this determines what will appear on an objects surface) you open a dialog box to choose a 2D images like the Photoshop file mentioned above. In the working view of the scene the resistor now has the striped pattern from the Photoshop file, although it’s not perfectly oriented around the object. To get the flat image to wrap perfectly around the resistors cylindrical shape you need to go through several steps of adjusting the surface mapping with real time visual controls and changing some dialog box settings.
One of the really coal features of a program like C4D is it’s automated ability to uniformly reshape and mold the objects you create. One such tool function is called Deformation and is a common procedure used in many 3D programs. C4D has several deforming tools that can be used individually or in groups to facilitate the modeling process. The deformers act as a force that you apply to the surface of 3D polygonal objects. These forces can cause the surface to bulge, taper, twist and move in several other ways. In the image to the left there’s a resistor in the background as it appears before having a Deformer applied to it. At “B” the arrow points to a Bend Deformer’s control box and shows how it has curved the otherwise straight end of the resistors tubular shape. At “A” the other arrow points to the Deformers control handle which you drag up and down to change the bend angle. At the other end of the resistor in the upper left hand corner of the image there is another Deformer that has been adjusted to bend the end tube upward.
