Question: Refractive / Gem objects...

[Gremlin]

here is a sample of like what i understand of making gems...
(crap)

[wedge]

i dont know, but look at things from a conceptual look.

what do you need for that sort of look?

you need a background color. say, a mid-tone blue.
then it needs to look round. So you add dark around the edges. Then you need to give it a highlight, so you draw in white for the highlight and fade it down. then you need an under/inside glow. so you basically reverse that highlight, dim and blur it.

a good example of this type of material is the OSX aqua scheme. (http://www.iheartny.com/xicons/tutorials/aqua.html)

[VShane]

Well, paint a base going from dark to light- medium. The dark is always toward the light. Add reflective surfaces on top of the color based on the angle of reflection for gems. Gel types will just have a pinpoint reflection highlight in the dark area toward the light. The tighter the reflection the harder the surface. If these are free standing gems or gels, you'll get a radial refraction onto the surface of whatever it is sitting on in place of a typical shadow, an aurora so to speak.

Highlights should always be a complementary color of the actual gem/gel color. Example: if a red gem, the highlights would be ideal as a "white-blueish" color to make them pop out. If green, the highlights would lean toward "whitish-red"...etc...

hope that helps. If you want good examples, see fantasy artists like Clyde Caldwell and Jeff Easly who use these in jsut about every picture they ahve ever done.

Clyde Caldwell (http://www.clydecaldwell.com/)

[Gremlin]

another attempt...

i think i may have the technique (with a lil' more practice?)
but i think i'm not choosing the right colors...

personally, i dont think it looks "3D" enough...I dunno...
Cheers,
:beer:

[Zeddicus]

Don't know why they'd move this post... since this got moved from the Painter forum, I'm assuming that you were looking for a gem tutorial for that program specifically? Ah well. Anyways, there is an artist who uses ZBrush that is a professional gem cutter by trade (at least I think he is). His nick over on the ZBrush Central forums is Stonecutter. Perhap he might also be able to point you in the right direction. I was also thinking that ZBrush might be a good program for creating gems and what not, though not 100% certain. Would certainly solve the problem of them looking "3D" though.

[Gremlin]

I guess since they saw that I gave a visual example (which was only for comprensive purposes, so you guys would know what im talking about) they still assumed I wanted critiques on my "gem" when I really wanted to know how to make a gem of a similar fasion, but...better!

anywho, thanx, i'll go check him, but in the mean time, im just practicing, and looking at other people's gems...

[Zeddicus]

Yeah, I was just thinking that the free ZBrush demo might be one way to create your own gems for study or use in Painter. Actually you got me interested too, so I did a search and found these two threads:

http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=009683
http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=001234

I'm not entirely sure how to make a faceted gem like 3D model yet, but I did manage to apply the approprate techniques in one of those threads to come up with something very gem like (slightly transparent yet reflective). I'd post an example, but I see no attachments allowed. Regardless, there are a few good examples in the threads I mentioned. Of course, the other method is to simply do a search for precious gems on Google. That should turn up plenty of reference material to use.

Anyways, if you find a good tutorial that makes painting gems easy, make sure to post and let us know about it! ;)

[VShane]

doh! forgot what I was going to say. Thats what I get for ahving 5 windows open!

I'll post when I figure out where my link went.

[eversor1]

try this web site it has helped me with the same problem.

http://www.nethersphere.com/howto_jewels.html

[jeroentje]

For more tutorials, check out cgtalk's tutorial thread (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19859).

[MadBarinwave]

hey all, heh, my first time posting, i hope to post here alot more often in the future. i cant seem to find much inspiration but yea, about your question on making pills and jewels. http://minimalistic.dk/home.html
yea. hope that helps

[Ultragames]

this is a rather complex tut. Defenatly not for the average n00b. But it makes some kick ass results!!

http://www.timeshock.dk/tutorials/gems/

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