I've been intending to post a couple things here, but my "intentions" to improve them before posting have resulted in me posting nothing. So even though I still have a couple things I intend to do to "finish" them, I finally decided to share them anyway.
First, I present to you... Toilet paper.
Okay, go ahead and laugh. It's funny, but only until you run out. Then we'll see how funny you think it is.
I am convinced in addition to lighting and a couple other items, one of the big contributors to iClone rendering looking like they came from iClone is TEXTURES.
Here is a toilet paper roll holder, with TP on it, modeled in Blender by my young son. It's not bad, and this is where a lot of iClone props stop.
I had some fun in Substance Designer, and created three substances:
1) A custom "dust" material where I have adjustable sliders for the amount and opacity of the dust, how far it spreads, how it collects in the recesses, and also the color and roughness of the metal. Dust? Surely I am not the only person whose brand of TP lets a few fibers float away and make a light layer of dust on the holder. (TMI?)
2) A "toilet paper print" pattern, including a couple of parameters such as the "lumpiness" of the overall surface.
3) A "concentric circles" substance, suitable for the ends of the toilet paper roll, also usable on paper towels, gift wrap, or even disk brake rotors. I have several parameters for that, too, including the intensity of the rings and a warping factor so it's not all perfectly circular.
(Normally this would not be used in the middle of an outdoor patio.)
This model does not have the cardboard tube painted in it. It is a trivial thing, but needs to be added to the model in Blender. And the model should be re-unwrapped to, rather than just using the automated default unwrapping. I never seem to get around to doing it, but as you can tell I finally decided to post my picture anyway.
I also created my first-ever "morph" in iClone, so I have a morph slider to adjust how much paper is left, from this "full roll" down to about "1/4 remaining." It would be fun to also have a separate "empty cardboard tube" which could also be removed, leaving only the empty holder.
I was telling a coworker about this, and then we started looking at a roll of paper towels on the lunch table. That inspired me to try my hand at that, so I made a paper towel substance. I was actually very pleased with how the "fine fibers" turned out. I think it made the paper look soft and plush, and hopefully very absorbent.
If you zoom in on this picture, you'll see what I mean about the soft, fuzzy texture.
I've been working on some terry cloth towels too, with customizable monograms, but I'll save them for another day.
iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD
Edited
6 Years Ago by
justaviking