GRIME-NURBS TUTORIAL - DIRT IN CONCAVE PARTS OF OBJECTS

This tutorial shows how to produce a brass Beethoven bust covered with patina.

The bust model was taken from the LightWave Package. You may wish to save a new copy so you do not accidentally save over the original during the course of this tutorial.

1) Load BEETHOVEN.LWO. A test render (f9) will show that the current surface attributes are rather basic.

Figure 1

These settings might be appropriate if you want your bust to look like porcelain. However, we want our bust to look like weathered brass, so we will need to make some changes.

2) First let's change the surface attributes to look more like brass. Use the following settings:

The Beethoven bust which comes with LightWave has 12 different surfaces applied to it. You may find it easier to set all of the attributes for one surface, such as BeethovenCoat, then copy those settings to the other surfaces. If you do not feel that it is necessary to maintain the 12 surfaces, you could assign only 1 surface to all of the polygons in the model (see the Lightwave User Guide or Reference manual for details on assigning and copying surfaces).

Now our bust looks something like this.

Figure 2

You may wish to play with the surface attributes. Reflectivity was added along with Fractalizer fractal noise to dirty the bust up a bit for the example below.

Figure 3

This looks a bit more natura;l however, it's not quite the look we are trying to achieve.

3) Click on the Advanced Options tab in the Surfaces panel and add Grime-Nurbs under Shader Plug-ins.

4) Open the Options panel and apply the following settings:

Figure 4 - Color (click image to enlarge)

Figure 5 - Diffuse (click image to enlarge)

Figure 6 - Specular (click image to enlarge)

to produce less patina, like below:

Figure 7

Now we have a suitably grimy bust ready for use in a scene.