The Peer Project- OPEN Foundational Exercises for All, A great place to start.

[young paddy1]

What I was meaning was that a lit plane and a surface coloured by light reflecting off a colour are two different and distinct things. The lit plane will work for whatever view point only because the colour from the light is direct and almost covers the object like a blanket, whereas a reflected light depends very much upon the viewer. If you set a book standing on a table and you were sitting, maybe half the book is tinted by the colour of the table, but if you stand much more of the book will covered and the closer to the table the more so.

The thing that was confusing was the little sketch of the grass and the wall on the right. It's reflected light, not coloured light, so it would depend on the viewer.

cheerio

[ChrisMayernik]

young paddy:

I think you are confusing reflected light ( bounced ) with reflections. It's best to think of it this way.

Reflections are based upon your eye , the light source, and the plane reflecting. Reflected light is light hitting a object picking up it's color and transfering some to another plane. It does not involve where the eye is. Honestly you will only see this in Very strong light or direct light. An example would be some light hitting some red clothes and spreading a red hue nearby, or skin reflecting onto skin and raising the saturatione because it's the same color. Another example would be reflecting green light with a mirror onto the wall. The wall will have the green hue and will have a highlight ( reflection) from the green lightsource.

Many many times will you have reflections and reflected light overlayed ontop of eachother. But it's best to seperate these things for painting because it's best to approach step by step. An example of this would be painting light and shadow and THEN once that is done you have your Core shadow because this is the "line" where the light and shadow meet. Then you add reflected light, then reflections, And so on. start with a base and then add on.

[MisterStrum]

Okay howdy, first post
I'm pretty nervous about learning digital colour, but here i am!
For the most part i don't have too much experience with colour so i hope i do something right.><
Exercise 1

Not much to say, i did the shadow opposite the light source, highlight smack dab in the middle of the true colour and a short cast shadow because of a raised light source.

Exercise 2

Did two spheres, like the first step, one grayscale and one the colour i thought was the same tone.

I found out i did okay execpt i should have made my shadows darker on the coloured sphere. When I was doing the colour sphere I had readjusted the shadows to be darker already when I was making, so I saw something wrong there.
Err i hope that covers that>< I'll keep working on it. Any help is good help!

[Master 25 Days]

Mister Strum, your form shadows are incorrect. I made the same mistake on my part. But after I looked at some more examples it was clear where I messed up. I was keeping the shape of a circle in mind and not of a sphere.
You can see what I mean with this demo:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...&postcount=175

This also explained how highlights are not in the middle of the true color.

[Master 25 Days]

Exercise 2:




I can't explain exactly why the yellow light would alter the hue of the blue ball but I held an object of the same color under my lamp with yellow light and the blue was now more of a phtalo blue.

I also theorize that the yellow light when reflected off the blue surface would be white since the blue object is already reflecting blue light so when you add in yellow light(which is red+green) you get red+green+blue=white. But that wasn't the case when I observed in real life. Can someone clear this up for me? Was the hue shifts because the object doesn't have a perfectly smooth surface?

I also tried to picture the light as a single ray hitting the ball and then bouncing off to your eyes to get a better idea of where the highlight should go.


Edit: I just read up some more and I think I can answer my own questions. The yellow light contains no blue so in a dark room, if you shine a yellow light on a blue object, the object would have no color since there is no blue light to reflect to your eyes. In that case, the yellow light I'm observing from isn't perfectly yellow therefore it still has some blue, but not as much as a white light. There isn't enough blue light to reflect to our eyes off of the blue object therefore under a yellow light, the hue of the blue object will be less true as if it was under white light where it will have more blue light to reflect.

[mir]

I am posting without any spheres but I am held up from Perspective.I figured out that there is a relationship between the core shadow and the cast shadow and I want to know how exactly it works because in that way I will be able to chose a lighting direction and build the rest.The more I read, the more I find out that I should go back to basic things like ellipsis and their axes and how to put them in perspective.These things are important .
If I chose the light direction then I don't know how to build the exact ellipse which will define my core shadow an which I will be able to project on the ground plane to get my cast shadow.I don't mean to be very technical but I think if I know how this is working I can easily build my spheres correct.
Sorry for these messy thoughts

[MisterStrum]

Thanks 25, i really need any help i can get>< The link is great so I tried it again.

I think i should have made the highlight a bit lower and my blending is a bit messed up. Anyways I guess the light source is closer than on your spheres 25.

[EtaCarinae]

Dear all,
Here's a couple of questions about the edges 101 tut posted by Elwell. I posted this over there but as he posted that stuff a year or so ago I'm posting it here too. Idiot Apathy, if I'm in the wrong place please tell me.

I don't really understand some of the latter edge rules. I.e;

Harder on hard forms, softer on soft forms
Can anyone give an example of this? I'm confused. Lead would be a hard form with a softness to it's edges, but jelly (or jello) would be soft with a hard edge. Or am I getting this confused with spectoral highlights and does form here refer only to the shape?
Harder on flat forms, softer on rounded forms
Like a cardboard box compared with a ball? A d20 compared with a marble?
Harder on thin forms, softer on thick forms
Like a thin straw compared with a thick pipe or barrel?

Also, (and this is going to sound stupid but...) what is the definition of an edge? Would it be safe to describe an edge as,
'A transition caused by either light hitting adjacent surfaces of a single object or adjacent overlapping objects/surfaces'?

Regards,
EtaCarinae

[Idiot Apathy]

Lieblos:
Bah! If you don't start up a sketchbook within a week I'm sending this after you . Seriously though, it will be good for you - it will help you improve and keep you motivated. New chrome duck looks great. Just a thought, you might keep your pure whites or at least the concentrations of pure white to the more 'direct' reflections of the lightsource - I think it's good to have one highlight that wins out over the others sometimes. Exercise three redo looks great as well, I think perhaps one of the reasons you can't quite wrap your head around the glass sphere might be tranlucentcy - that perhaps you would be seeing something behind it. Cheers dude!

Chris:
Thanks for another great demo mate and the discussion with Paddy1 afterwards! I hope you feel at home in this thread! Keep laying it on us man, I really appreciate it.

Young Paddy1:
Thanks for the discussion mate, that sort of thing is always welcome here. cheers!

Cup of Joe:
Haha, yup; you sure did.

-----Project One:
Looks a bit like a bean to me really. I think you've done a pretty good job on all of these, but I do think you could tighten up your rendering a bit. A lot of this is going to deal with technique in PS and how you go about things - try to get faster and more efficent. Start with harder shapes, block in all shapes hard really - and then you can blend between the shapes. I might expect to see quite a lot more definition in the highlight shapes in the chrome, also the way you have it right now the ends don't feel rounded - well I guess it is a cut in half donut so that works. Hmm, I think I could 'help' you more if you could do a line drawing of this using primitives, show lines that are covered up with dotted lines. I'm babbling because I'm tired, but I've got work to do and this is a 'break'. Cheers!

Onir:
Nah, there is no late in here mate - start at anytime anywhere. Anyways, thanks for joining us! Major kudos for setting up a prop in real life to study, that's the sort of thing I want to see more people doing. Ok, your sphere - glad you followed some of my steps; why didn't you follow them all though? Now, the method I used to determine the shadow edges - not sure if it works or not yet but basically it's the center point of the ellipse I drew earlier, then the two lines I drew around the edges (parallel by the way) meet up with where that point hits the ground. Ok anyways, babbling because I'm tired - sphere looks pretty good, pretty defined full light and half light and minimal blending. Blending is something you should do between two shapes. Highlight is too high I think, it should be further away from the edge. Imagine the route a beam of light travels from your lightsource - this beam has to hit the sphere at the same angle that it will then travel to your eye. Picture a flat plane instead of a rounded sphere if that helps. Anyways, good results - cheers! Hope to see more from you soon.

Master 25 days:
Hey man, thanks for joining us!

-----ExOne:
Good man good! I do think you overblended or could use some stroke economy. Blending should be used between two shapes, try doing this again if you can with two shapes first, full light and half light and then blend those two shapes together is all. Highlight looks good, but I'm not sure it matches up entirely with the cast shadow. I need to study that sort of thing some more. Kudos for the freehand, good design on the comp too.


Ok, sorry guys - I'm just taking a 'break' from work right now - need sleep too. I'll try and get to the rest of you tomorrow if not sooner.

[Lieblos]

Thank you so much for the feedback, Idiot Apathy. I so want to learn how to paint a glass ball. Perhaps I should try painting from real life references. It's so difficult!

So, I *tried* to do Project 1 in color, and um... let's just say that it turned out REALLY horrible looking. Lol. I'm going to restart it and try to create something that I think is worth posting. So until then, I decided to work on exercises 1 and 2. Hope they are ok.

I honestly don't have any thoughts on these, only because they are so similar to projects that were worked on in the first peer project thread.





Oh yeah, and here is a very old image that I worked on when the older thread was active. I honestly don't remember whether or not I posted it over there but it was from the exercise where we were supposed to paint a picture from reference. This is the only glass ball that I've ever painted that actually turned out at least somewhat realistic looking. Let me tell you, it took me a VERY long time to complete.

[Lieblos]

Dear all,
Here's a couple of questions about the edges 101 tut posted by Elwell. I posted this over there but as he posted that stuff a year or so ago I'm posting it here too. Idiot Apathy, if I'm in the wrong place please tell me.

I don't really understand some of the latter edge rules. I.e;

Harder on hard forms, softer on soft forms
Can anyone give an example of this? I'm confused. Lead would be a hard form with a softness to it's edges, but jelly (or jello) would be soft with a hard edge. Or am I getting this confused with spectoral highlights and does form here refer only to the shape?
Harder on flat forms, softer on rounded forms
Like a cardboard box compared with a ball? A d20 compared with a marble?
Harder on thin forms, softer on thick forms
Like a thin straw compared with a thick pipe or barrel?

Also, (and this is going to sound stupid but...) what is the definition of an edge? Would it be safe to describe an edge as,
'A transition caused by either light hitting adjacent surfaces of a single object or adjacent overlapping objects/surfaces'?

Regards,
EtaCarinae

Ok, I'm not so great with the technical art terms so I'm going to try to explain this as best I can with my poor english skills. Haha. Sorry... hopefully I won't give you any wrong information. I'm sure that there are others who participate in this thread who can give you a LOT better feedback than I.

Harder on hard forms, softer on soft forms
This does refer to shape, I believe. Remember that art is about what you can see, not what you can feel. A soft form would probably refer to a cotton ball or something that physically looks soft, not to something that feels soft. Jello, in this case, would have a hard edge when doing a painting or drawing because the form and shape of the jello itself is very sharp.

Harder on flat forms, softer on rounded forms
Comparing a cardboard box to a ball is a little extreme because of the fact that a ball is a circle and contains no inner curves. A carboard box will almost always have sharp edges, depending on how far away it is from the viewer. Take a look at the image of the cushions below. As the cushion edges become flatter and taper to the ends, the edges themselves become harder looking. If you take a look at the inner space and inner edges of the cushions, however, (such as the areas where there is a lot of padding) then you can see that the curving of the edges is much softer than that of the outer edges.


Harder on thin forms, softer on thick forms
Honestly, this one confuses me too. I think this is just a general statement because if you think about it, large forms have more surface area than small forms. In this sense you have more "space" to draw/color an edge on a large form than you do on a small form if you think of surface area to edge area in terms of ratios. I did a quick example of what I mean in Photoshop. Set one is based on the theory, and set 2 is done oppositely, with the small form having soft edges and the large form having hard edges. I personally think that set 1 looks more natural, but I guess that this sort of analysis is more subjective than it is objective.


Hope that helps you out. I'm sorry if any of the information is incorrect. I based most of this off of my own knowledge (which could be quite twisted) and also off of my own assumptions. (Which are definitely twisted. Lol.)

[mir]

The attachment manager doesn't show for me in this thread.
Anyway,here is a visual explanation for edges done from Kevin Chen,I hope it is ok to post it here:



I also found this information about light and shadow on spheres,the link is from PP1:

modeling form with light & shadow

[Lieblos]

Alright, here are my colored versions of Project 1 beta. Honestly, I do not have many comments on this image other than the fact that I absolutely failed at making a metallic looking pig. UGH. If someone could help me out with figuring it out, that would be really awesome.

[Idiot Apathy]

@MisterStrum:
Welcome to the thread man! Glad you're joining us!

----ExOne:
Woot! That's got a nice feel to it. I think perhaps you've cheated yourself out of a little full-light real estate so keep an eye on that in the future. I would also expect to see the edges of your sphere a little softer as to describe the rounded form. Also, come one man, you make this nice sphere and you plop a shadow on it with multiply like that You can do better ! I'm not sure but I don't think it proper to think of a highlight as smack dab in the middle of the 'true color' as highlights are relative to the viewers position as well. Anyways, good job! Cheers!
----ExTwo:
Great, again the idea of this exercise is merely to make sure you are thinking of color in terms of tone. It can be very tricky with different colors especially saturated colors. Now on this one I think the only thing lacking is a little bit of construction - your full light doesn't make it your subject feel like a sphere nor does the placement of your highlight. These two combined sort of make it feel like a top down view of a gumdrop or something. I apologize if my wording isn't as diplomatic as it could be tonight, I suffer in that category when I'm tired; I'm actually just taking a break from work right - just know that my intentions are always and only to help Cheers!
----ExTwo redux:
Great! Some really good thoughts in here and I enjoyed the highlight diagrams - glad to see you're getting it! Ok, yellow light on a blue ball changing the hue? Ever mixed crayons or markers together? Same thing, can't get too far right now into color theory as that would take up the whole page but keep asking specific questions in your search and I'll do my best to help you out. Now, the theory that yellow light reflected off a blue surface would be white? See, the surface is passive - it can only react to the active lightsource, if there is no blue light in the lightsource then there is no blue to reflect. A blue object is really just reflecting a majority of blue light (most likely among other hues) it recieves from a/many lightsources. Ah, well I just saw your edit and I think you did a brilliant job of deducing your question! Also think that perhaps your 'blue' sphere may even reflect a little yellow light - so it could even appear yellow at times. Now you have a pure yellow highlight - feels a little funny huh? I can't say I've really ever seen such a think - I suppose it might be possible, no probably not - as such a reflection would indicate that the lightsource was indeed quite yellow and wouldn't contain much in the way of blue. I think it would perhaps be possible to have a duller yellow (less sat same brightness) as the highlight in some cases but it would still be hard to keep such a vibrant blue. Do keep in mind it can be benefical to mess with highlights even if it isn't 'realistic'. I also noticed you had some 'gray' reflected light on the blue sphere - is that on purpose? Cheers, great job!

@Master 25 Days:
Thanks a bundle for helping out around here, can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

@Heartbeat:
Ok, if I interpreted your question properly you are looking for a way to determine your lightsource? I've really never liked the idea of drawing those '3-d' arrows to determine things, they don't make much sense to me @_@. What I would do, and is convienent in this exercise is to actually start with an ellipse indicating where the core shadow would be. This should/will actually be perpendicular to the lightsource so this can become a standard for determining everything else. Now if you check out my demo I did for ExOne, I sort of stumbled on a way of determining the center of the ellipse created within the sphere. From here you just need to determine what angle the lightsource is hitting your sphere and then re-create that angle (parallel if it's the sun) where it will hit the two most extreme edges and where they will hit your ground plane. Good lord that is probably impossible to follow, let me know if it/when it needs clarification and I'll try to do a demo or something. Ok, now as an extra thought - doing this is not just useful in one sole exercise - you might find it useful in any situation. Use a sphere as your guide to any complicated subject, create it and use it as your standard. !



Huff Huff, ok break time over - back to work for now; I'm going to have to leave the rest for tomorrow I guess. Cheers guys!

[Idiot Apathy]

Well, it's technically tomorrow right? I decided to call it a night but wanted to wrap this up first. So, ~night!

@MisterStrum:
Hey, how come you missed that link the first time around? It's posted in the exercise @_@, no seriously - I tried to make it obvious; give me feedback! Anyways - love the sphere; good job. Highlight is bit oddly shaped though. Kind of reads like one of those spotlights with the flaps on each side - but shouldn't really as I don't think it would be nearly powerful enough or clear enough in this sphere judging by the more matte surface. Ok now I'm babbling, kudos! Thanks for being gung ho!

@EtaCarinae:
Yo! This is the perfect place for such a thing - well, elwells post is probably the perfect place but I'm not sure how much feedback you'd get there. Anyways, yes! This is an important facet to the project I want everyone to come here with specific questions just like this! See, not only will you hopefully learn from it but many others as well you know? Ok, as for answers to your questions I'm going to compile that into a post below this so as to efficently compile it for postage on the front page.

@Lieblos:
Yeah dude, my pleasure. How's that sketchbook coming? And yes, you should try painting from reference, you really can't make up anything from your head - even if you operate akin to a 3d program calculating light and whatnot you are still only mimicking mothernature. Lots of complicated stuff going on with glass, Mothernature is queen! Learn from her example!
Also, can't tell you how much I appreciate you helping out the other people in the thread!

-----ExOne:
Wooooo! That sphere is shweet! I might expect to see the cast shadow show up a little more on the right perhaps, not entirely sure where your lightsource is. Also I think you might soften the outside edges of your sphere to show the turning of the form perhaps? Nice highlight, shinnny.

-----ExTwo:
Nice, uhmmmm need I say more? I know you know the point, so this looks like further practice in 'exact' matching, good job.

-----GlassSphere from PPv1:
Nice! NICE~! Well done! Tones colors and drawing seem extremely well done. Some of the edges could perhaps be cleaned up a little just to really polish this gem but hot damn, well done - that's purdy.

-----Project One; Colored Version:
I think these look good. I do think perhaps that your 'matte' piggy better represents a inbetween 'plasticy' piggy and that your inbetween piggy is closer to a glossy chromey piggy. (Yay for the letter Y!). So, you might take your inbetween piggy and concentrate the highlights a bit more and make it a bit more reflective throughout. What were your thoughts in going yellow on the last piggy? Making him a metallic gold I'd assume right? It's not entirely necessary I don't think to change hues, you could have a really shiny piggy of the same hue I think.

@Heartbeat:
Yeah, I think the attachment manager is disabled because it complicates the polls for the ~Of the Week competitions and as we share the same section we share the same affliction. Good links, I think it's ok to post things like this - can never be too careful though; I would make sure and basically do as much of a bibliography as possible making sure at least to post the original URL. Handprint, man that guy is nuts - part rocket science part art, always hard to follow and poor site design @_@.

WOO! I'm all caught up for now.

[Idiot Apathy]

Question: Some Specific Edge Questions!

Question by EtaCarinae:
Harder on hard forms, softer on soft forms
Can anyone give an example of this? I'm confused. Lead would be a hard form with a softness to it's edges, but jelly (or jello) would be soft with a hard edge. Or am I getting this confused with spectoral highlights and does form here refer only to the shape?

Answer from Lieblos:
Harder on hard forms, softer on soft forms
This does refer to shape, I believe. Remember that art is about what you can see, not what you can feel. A soft form would probably refer to a cotton ball or something that physically looks soft, not to something that feels soft. Jello, in this case, would have a hard edge when doing a painting or drawing because the form and shape of the jello itself is very sharp.

Comments from Me:
Yup, great answer Lieblos. Elwell I believe made sure to use as many descriptors to address as many things as possible so not to leave anything out. It can be a little redundant and confusing I suppose, but hey such is the fallacy of language . He mentions at the end of his tutorial that these rules are additive - most are probably found in conjunction for sure.


Question by EtaCarinae:
Harder on flat forms, softer on rounded forms
Like a cardboard box compared with a ball? A d20 compared with a marble?

Answer from Lieblos:
Harder on flat forms, softer on rounded forms
Comparing a cardboard box to a ball is a little extreme because of the fact that a ball is a circle and contains no inner curves. A carboard box will almost always have sharp edges, depending on how far away it is from the viewer. Take a look at the image of the cushions below. As the cushion edges become flatter and taper to the ends, the edges themselves become harder looking. If you take a look at the inner space and inner edges of the cushions, however, (such as the areas where there is a lot of padding) then you can see that the curving of the edges is much softer than that of the outer edges.
http://www.cnb-exports.com/pcat-gifs...ion-covers.jpg

Comment from Me:
Woo! Another great answer. I think it might be easier to instead imagine a paper cut-out of a circle held up next to a sphere.

Question by EtaCarinae:
Harder on thin forms, softer on thick forms
Like a thin straw compared with a thick pipe or barrel?

Answer from Lieblos:
Harder on thin forms, softer on thick forms
Honestly, this one confuses me too. I think this is just a general statement because if you think about it, large forms have more surface area than small forms. In this sense you have more "space" to draw/color an edge on a large form than you do on a small form if you think of surface area to edge area in terms of ratios. I did a quick example of what I mean in Photoshop. Set one is based on the theory, and set 2 is done oppositely, with the small form having soft edges and the large form having hard edges. I personally think that set 1 looks more natural, but I guess that this sort of analysis is more subjective than it is objective.
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7...los_/edges.jpg

Comment from Me:
Hmm, yup - confusing. Perhaps this isn't exactly a rule depending on how you interpet it, more of something to check if thinks start to look wrong perhaps. It is more of a combination of a few rules I think, but also a bit of an illusion at times. It could also refer to the inside 'shape edges' or blending I suppose.

Question by EtaCarinae:
Also, (and this is going to sound stupid but...) what is the definition of an edge? Would it be safe to describe an edge as,
'A transition caused by either light hitting adjacent surfaces of a single object or adjacent overlapping objects/surfaces'?

Comment from Me:
Yeah, sounds pretty good. Don't worry about sounding stupid, not asking questions is stupid. Another way to think about it is, ever done a line drawing? Of course you have, for the most part those are your edges.

Ok, now I of course defer completely to Elwell who had this to say in the original thread:
I thought that even if my thoughts are wrong they can still serve as stepping stones towards 'ze truth'. (If I can learn from my mistakes why can't you learn from my mistakes too?)
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...0&postcount=16


Quoted from Elwell:

Harder on hard forms, softer on soft forms
Can you give an example of this? I'm confused. Lead would be a hard form with a softness to it's edges, but jelly (or jello) would be soft with a hard edge. Or am I getting this confused with spectoral highlights?

If you had to show the difference between lead and, say, steel, you could use a softer edge on the lead because of it's duller surface texture. Jello doesn't necessarily look different than colored glass or plastic, but you might want to soften it's edges to convey the fact that it jiggles.
In painting the figure, areas where bone is close to the surface (nose, collarbones, kneecaps, etc) are handled with harder edges than fleshier forms.

Harder on flat forms, softer on rounded forms
Like a cardboard box compared with a ball? A D20 compared with a marble?
Harder on thin forms, softer on thick forms
Like a thin straw compared with a thick pipe or barrel?

Exactly. In both cases it has to do with how "fast" the form turns.

Also (and this is going to sound stupid but...) what is the definition of an edge? Would it be safe to describe an edge as,
'A transition caused by either light hitting adjacent surfaces of a single object or adjacent overlapping objects/surfaces'?

Not bad. Painters tend to use the word edge to mean both the physical boundaries of actual objects and any place where two "pieces of paint" meet. Look at the plane diagram in Greg Pro's paintover. Wherever you have a plane change, you have an edge.

Remember, these aren't hard and fast rules! If something has to be harder or softer than it "should" be to do it's job in the picture, good! The main point is to think about and design your edges with as much care as you would put into any other aspect.

[mir]

I feel quite terribly with these attempts with figuring out perspective.I think I didn't explain what exactly I don't understand.I had seen the demo before writing my questions but I still have them .
I will try first to understand what exactly I do not understand
I did a little drawing from life.
The sphere is almost top lit.It is a matte surfuce.The surface on which the sphere is sitting is light so there is visible reflected light.I tried to place some dark paper and the reflected light is not visible anymore.I should have made the edge near the light less sharp cause it's less visible and this part is merging into the background when I am squinting.Sorry it is not digital but I wanted to find out how to cast the shadows first.So then I'll do it in Photoshop.

[MisterStrum]

Exercise three
WARNING: LONG ASS NOTES

Alrighty so I did the next exercise and it wasn't too diffcult. Starting on the top right:

Sphere 1: If it only reflects red we only see red. The highlight is where the light reflects off the object to our eyes..so we see more of the light colour there..? I'm always confused about the highlight, I guess I'll start fully reading the links in the first post apathy since I missed something important already

To the right is...
Sphere 2: Same thing as above excpet with blue.

Below sphere 1 is..
Sphere 3: Okay so.. it reflects everything.. which is white..and their's shadows because of reflected light..and the light source can't reach the other half of the sphere as much...??

To the right...
Sphere 4: Absorbs everything is the opposite so it's black, again, I'm not sure completely how highlights work, so i thought since the highlight is white-ish, and black abosorbs everything, you wouldn't see it>? I'm also now thinking there should have been reflected light.

Diagonaly left is..
Sphere 5: Reflecting red and yellow...red+yellow=orange right?

To the right...
Sphere 6: Black is absorb/reflect 100/0, white is absorb/reflect 0/100 so the midway point between black and white must absorb 50/50...so gray.?

Down on the corner..
Sphere 7: So Sky blue has blue in it for sure, but it is whiter than pure blue, and if it's whiter that must mean it reflects the other hues aswell, just not as much as blue.

Thanks for the help Apathy!

Ughh notes..><

[MattGamer]

hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
here's exersize 1 and 2, but i called them step 1 and 2 for some reason

i painted them by first doing the stuff that tom tom the military man did in his little post up there and then filled in the shadow then blended.... and highlighted. for the color i just got a blue base and added white or dark to it to make it "pop out". uhh that's it. bahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my balls SUCK!

[seth1]

Some very imformative imformation here thanks guys... Just trying some thing out then I will set up a still life to see how it really works.

[Idiot Apathy]

@Heartbeat:
Nah no worries, use whatever media you want - pen, penci, oils - digital or crayon - doesn't matter. I'm still not entirely sure what you are after, what you are having problems with. I think that the cube diagram you are working on could help - but I think you may still be better off constructing the world around your sphere rather than constructing a world before your sphere you know what I mean? If you have any specific questions let me/us know and we'll do what we can ok? Also check out my reply to MattGamer below as I go over some things that might come in handy.

@MisterStrum:
Thanks for the notes, it makes my part a lot easier and I think it will help those who follow in your footsteps. I'll send you the 'answer key' I wrote up and a more specific reponse via PM in just a minute so be sure to check that out. I'm sending it via PM so others will still be able to do the experiment 'blindfolded' but I think you're probably the last 'guinea pig'. Cheers!

@MattGamer:
Hey mattmatt, glad you could join us. I know I don't have to tiptoe around with you because we've talked and your serious so I'm going to just go here: Sphere, I want you to think of only two shapes on this sphere - the full light and the shadow. Let these shapes be just as hard and solid as the rest of the sphere for now, the full light is where the light is hitting the sphere; if the lightsource is sunlight then it should cover 'exactly' half of the sphere and the shadow with the other half. Now, with this in mind you can draw an ellipse seperating the sphere into, get this - hemispheres! With a hemisphere you can then figure out where the ball sits on the table as well as the lightsources direction. Now, the only blending you need to do is between these two shapes - the full light and the half light, that is after all what a blend is a mixture of two or more things. This doesn't usually work in color but is fine in grayscale, with color you will have to manually mix your colors for the blend I believe. Highlight, right now I think your highlights are way to large which would imply that they are diffuse, very diffuse however they are also very powerful/concentrated/white implying that the object is quite glossy. It feels a bit odd to have both you know? I want you to get a matte object and a shiny object out and look how they react to the light - specifically the highlights. P.S. Use some harder edges brushes and then use softer edged brushes to blend the harder edged brushes edges @_@. If that makes sense... Cheers buddy.

@Seth1:
Informative information? hehehe... Not entirely sure what you are experimenting with in your picture, but it appears to be radiosity and the like; I'd recommend checking out Prometheus|ANJ's tut on the first page for some great thoughts on that. Cheers! Oh, and please elaborate if you want any input/help.

[Nerahla]

Ok hello everyone! I've been lurking in this thread since way back when it was volume 1... I did a couple of the exercises there but it was after the thread was dead and I didn't really realize it. Heh.

Anyway, since this one is active I've decided to give it a go. I've started with exercise 1 only so far.



I winged this, though I did scan over the precise directions, I just wanted to get right to it. I"m impatient -- probably my biggest flaw.

The only thing now that I'm looking at it is I think the values could be stronger. But all in all, I'm really glad it looks round! lol

Also, I'm so new at this (it'll be a year from stick figures in November) that I really don't have any real advice to give anyone, but I read everything, if I think of anything at all constructive at some point I'll mention it

[Nerahla]

Okay so I went ahead and did exercise 2. I just pulled the sphere from exercise 1 into a new document and chose a color and began to paint a brand new sphere sitting next to it.




Then I converted it to grayscale when I was done. I did make adjustments and check along the way. My biggest problem was not going bright/less saturated enough with the color to match the value of the grayscale sphere. Through checking, I learned that you really need to be bold with your colors sometimes to achieve the proper values. This is something I know I need practice in! it was good to see it like this, it really helped me 'see' the tonal/value relationship.



Pretty fun and thanks for putting something like this up for us beginners

[mir]

Runecaster-I will try to give some feedback.Someone stop me if I am spreading wrong information,please.I think that your sphere will pop out by adding some reflected light.The surface on which the sphere is sitting is very light so the reflected light should be there to light up the shadow.You can see this for yourself if you place a ball on a light surface.Then put a dark paper under the ball and see how the reflected light changes.I tried to lit a ping-pong ball in a similiar lighting as yours.So the darkest part of the shadow is not the sphere's edge we see because it will take some reflected light.The darkest part of the shadow should be located near the edge of the light.(Think of the sphere as half in shadow and half in light).
Hope it is not much confusing.
M.

[Nerahla]

I added what I could -- it's way way easier with a side lit sphere, but I did it a little differently and did mine front on with a /tad/ bit to the right. You can tell from the cast shadow. The reflected light comes from the bounce back towards what is not lit directly -- and since we cannot really see that side (it's behind) there isn't really any reflected light that we can see.

I did add some on the left side of what you already are seeing. Sorry you can't clearly see it. Like I said, my values should be stronger - would make it easier to read.


Looking back at yours, you used a ball then on a table? I just did mine out of my head. Reference is always preferable - I thought the exercise was just to 'draw a sphere' out of our head though. Oh well. I don't even think I have a ball in my house that I could use, nor a decent surface to place it on near my computer.

You know, the funny thing about all of this is that everyone's monitor is different. >.< You never know what you're gonna get!

[romance]

I was asked by Mr. Apathy to post this here as information for you guys & gals. Just a little example as to how you can show surfaces on abject without really having to paint much. You'll have to pardon some on the instructions if they don't make sense or they are difficult to understand, as English is my first language



Top Left - This frame represents a surface that is unaffected by light. Pretty much looks like a silhoutte, which is all the more reason to add light to accurately describe the form.

Top Center - This frame contains the same object as the first, but has light to describe its form. The light spreads evenly over the objects surface allowing for the object to appear dull (matte).

Top Right - In this frame, the object is given a smooth glossy look. This can be achieved by reducing the spread of light over the surface into focused points where the light strikes the surface most directly.

Bottom Left - Same glossy surface as above, but the increased amount, changed shaped, and uniform distribution of the highlights gives the object a vertically ribbed surface.

Bottom Center - Again, same glossy surface, but by placing tiny hightlights scattered in roughly the same area as the smooth surface highlight, an bumpy look can be achieved.

Bottom Right - Glossy again, this time with horizontal ribs. To accomodate them a little better, the silhoutte of the shape has been altered slightly. Because the ribs all have angles that will be affected by the light source, each bump will need a highlight that spreads slightly in a horizontal direction.

These were the most easy to understand samples I could give, but they can get alot more complex. You'll also notice that I'm not just adding the highlights, but bounced light as well. These aren't necessary, but they do help achieve a more realistic result.

Hope you enjoyed this. I learned some shit, hope you did too.

-R

[Jtho]

awesome examples romance, it really is striking how just changing your highlights affects the surface texture so much.

Anyways, here's my exercise number 2. I originally just started #1 in color but I read two so I decided to merge them.



Holy hell did I screw that up. They're completely different
Goes to prove how much help I need with color, I've been struggling with this ever since I really started to try incorporating color into my work a year or so ago. I'm too comfortable in my grayscale domain, I really need to do stuff like this. Anyways, i'm gonna dive right into number 3, thanks for this helpful thread Idiot Apathy, even though you're very humble about it you're doing something great here by prodding us noobs into shape!

[Jtho]

Exercise three! I feel very clever. Or perhaps I'm about to feel very wrong, we shall see. The sky blue extra credit scared me so I didn't try



I forgot to mention this, but a black sphere has a highlight because no matter the color of the object the light that appears at the highlight point is bouncing off straight into your eye anyways right? I mean the sphere isn't a black hole.. Am I correct?

[Jtho]

And Apathy's beta project too!

Rough Surfaces: Rough surfaces like clay, a cement road or a paper bag do not reflect light very well because at the microscopic level their surfaces are very uneven and chaotic, thereby chaotically spreading light every which way when it comes in contact, so less light is sent to your eye.

Glossy/Metallic Surfaces: These have much "cleaner" surfaces when examined up close, so light that hits this surface bounces back more "evenly"

Wet objects: Wet objects can make most things look glossy because the water fills the imperfections of a rough surface and creates a temporary "clean" surface for light to bounce off of, i.e. a wet sidewalk can be shiny despite being rough normally.



I like how it turned out.

Also, I have no clue how to do Exercise four, the colored light is throwing me off big time.

[Jtho]

Exercise six, complete with Hue degrees as close as I could get them