Page 1 of 1

thermionic valve

Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 12:25 pm
by dougal2
link to first render, jpg

i'm building a valve - it's a Mullard type QV05-25.
(photos of this valve)
what you see is the result of an evenings modelling (in blender), and (edit) rendered overnight.
i still need to model the rest of the innards - mostly metallic constructions.

a few questions though:

1. there is a circular disc within the valve that is supposed to be Mica i think. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mica ) it's transparent - but not as transparent as glass, and has kinda rough edges. how can i make this look more realistic?

2. the whole render looks kinda desaturated. the base is actually a brown bakelite colour in blender - but here it looks metallic. what gives?

and an observation:
the top cap is supposed to be metallic. i shall be making it lighter in the next session.

oh, one other thing - i will need to put the writing on the glass. i'm assuming i can do this with a standard texture map with alpha channel?
any advice here?

any other comments are welcomed.

cheers.

Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:31 am
by iamthwee
the whole render looks kinda desaturated. the base is actually a brown bakelite colour in blender - but here it looks metallic. what gives?
If it looks too metallic try sliding the spec down.

Nice start, looking good.

Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2006 10:15 am
by dougal2
sorry, wrong choice of word - i meant metallic as in colour, grey... it should be brown.
i'm happy with the actual material properties.

Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2006 10:29 am
by DaveC
You need to tun down the specularity on you bacolite material. The higher the spec, the less saturated your diffuse colour becomes. It doesn't just affect reflections. Try something around 0.2 if you still want it to look shiny.

Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2006 11:34 am
by dougal2
ok... looking a bit better now. i'm resolving the materials issues:

Image

just the modelling to finish then...

Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 3:56 am
by Kosmokrator
yeap looking good now!keep it up

Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 5:47 am
by dougal2
Kosmokrator wrote:yeap looking good now!keep it up
thought you might be interested ;)

your amp is what inspired me to do it.

if this goes well, i might build up a library of popular vales - 6L6, EL34, EL84, ECC83, KT66 etc and release them for people like yourself to use (that is, if you would want to).
I actually have a lot of these valves - it's certainly very helpful to look at the real object whem modelling!

Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 8:21 pm
by Kosmokrator
:D thnx man....i have some tubes too..im electronic enginering and i have some just for collection!good luck with your work!