A Gem Stone

[gsellis]

OK, I have been away for a bit. I got out of doing video and started faceting gemstones in the basement (the computer is in the house - not so sure it is a trade up ). Well, never say never again. The new hobby started meeting the old one. So now I am working on a video about a faceters' meeting (Franklin Faceter's Frolic 3 if you must).

 

Back to old reliable for doing covers and titles, A:M.

 

My new hobby has a tool, GemCad for Windows, for doing design work on stones. And there are large libraries of stones around (including famous diamonds). I noticed that it will export dxf files. Yippy! Well, not too fast. The plug-in import is a little clunky. But if I import into ####### and then export from there as 3DS and import, I have something to work with. A bit of cleanup (like the font extruder sometimes requires) and presto. Attached is a 161 facet Portuguese cut model.

 

Oh, and if anyone has materials for ruby, emerald, or other gemstones, I would love to know. I have not yet figured out how to do refractive index, dispersion, and birefringence in a material. And if you are curious there, here is a table of common gems and there material properties.

 

http://www.rockhounds.com/rockshop/gem_des...properties.html

 

Thanks

 

George Ellis

Portuguese2.mdl

[pixelplucker]

Pretty slick model and very nice conversion.

 

Another option is to convert the dxf to obj and import it as a prop. You can apply AM materials to props. I recently had to render out an stl for yag laser engraving which had around 22,000 faces and it renders very fast. Downside of props is you need to have 1 prop per material since it sees the whole prop as a single object.

[robcat2075]

Welcome back!

 

Oh, and if anyone has materials for ruby, emerald, or other gemstones, I would love to know. I have not yet figured out how to do refractive index, dispersion, and birefringence in a material.

 

Turning on "Caustics" in an AO render is what you want I think.

 

"Dispersion" can be simulated with a multipass technique

 

"birefringence"? I just read the Wikipedia article on that... i thing some sort of compositing or multipass trick is in order there too.

 

 

My experience is that things like refraction are best when adjusted for end result rather than a "correct" value.