Creating a Lantern

Glass

Alright, we’re going to create a shiny metal surface with a few flaws here and there for this lantern. Most important when creating a metal surface is the surrounding area, i.e. what will be reflected, and this simple scene we’ve built will create a very nice result on that part. We will start out with the glass surface though, so we’ll have that one ready when we start out on the metal. Open up the Surface Panel and select the Glass surface, then use the following basic settings.



Lets add some noise in some of the texture channels, click the T for the Specularity Channel, then use the following settings.


Click Use Texture once you’re done, then continue with adding the following procedural in the glossiness channel.


Click Use Texture once you’re done. This glass material will reflect the surroundings as well, but we’re going to tone down the reflectivity as the polygons of the glass turns away from the camera, know what I mean? We will do this by using a Gradient Map, so click the T for the Reflection Channel now and use the following settings.



The Top Key should have the following settings:

Value: 100%
Alpha: 100%
Parameter: 0.0

And the Lower Key should have the following settings:

Value: 100%
Alpha: 0%
Parameter: 90

That’s it for the Glass Material, lets get on with the Glass_Solid surface now. The Glass_Solid surface will be very simple. All this surface will do later on in the rendering process is to tell the light to stop bending as it has passed through the glass. Use the following basic settings for the Glass_Solid Surface.



That’s it, we’re not going to do anything more to this surface.

Metal

Switch to the Metal Surface and use the following basic settings.


Close down the Surface panel for now, then open up the Properties Panel for the Camera and set the Rendering Resolution to 800x600, that’s what we’ll use for test rendering. You can use more or less if you want to though. Also open up the Rendering Options Panel and use the following settings for now.


Now press F9 for a test render, it should look something like picture 164.


Open up the Surface Editor again and select the Metal surface, lets start adding some textures in the channels. We are going to add quite many layers in the Colour Channel. Different textures in different colours to make small variations in the material. Click the T for the Colour Channel and use the following settings for the first layer.



Add another Layer and use the following settings.


Add another layer with the following settings.


Add yet another Layer with the following settings.