Workshops / Background reports / Book introductions

Workshops / Background Reports / Book Introductions

1. Workshop: You »wood« if you could - Creating Textures for WBClock (by Christian Aichinger)

[Translator's remark: The program Cinema4D used for the workshop from the AmigaPlus CD is a German version and has no English localization. Therefore menu items, requester text etc. will be quoted in German with an additional translation. Christian, the author, helped me with several menu items, but even he (at short notice) could only find an incomplete English version of the program.]

Knock on wood (or: "How to create a nice texture for my WBClock under OS3.9")

Yes, I admit, in the beginning I was not a believer in AmigaOS 3.9. In more than one eMail list I had read a lot about problems of installation and use. But then again I heard quite a lot of good things about it. Totally confused, I ordered it from KDH. :)

Here I wish to repeat a fervent "Thank you!" to KDH. They had the parcel in my hands within 24 hours - and this was in the holidays!! But then again if it hadn't been Christmas I wouldn't have been there to pay the COD at my front door. ;)

So much for delivery. Since then I have become completely sold on the performance and the convenience of the 3.9 update. The graphical appearance, the improvements to the preference programs, the CD player, Action, AMPlifier etc. and of course Genesis V1.0.6 in full version justify the price of 89.- DM (45.50 Euro).

Only the WBClock disappointed me a little. And no, not the WBClock itself, but the textures that come with it.

Not that they look crap, but the textures just are too big for my Workbench, and there are too few of them. The look is not improved by scaling them back.

The more I played with it, the more I came to realise I would not be happy without a nice circular clock in a border of virtual wood. My first impulse was to whinge about the lack thereof, but being versed in Amiga graphics programs, I thought it would be quicker to create my own. I think it looks good and at 99x99 pixels does not use up too much ram on a Workbench.

Because I hoped ;) that my wood would inspire others to create their own looks, I decided to write a little workshop. You don't need much, just a few graphics programs which most serious Amiga users already have on the hard drive.

My wood texture was turned in the raytracer Cinema4D. I wanted to enhance my Workbench, not make it look amateurish, and any old idler can slap on some borrowed backdrop. ;)

I used version 4.0 Pro from the legendary AmigaPlus CDROM. It should be possible to emulate this workshop with older versions without problems. If you do not have Cinema4D, you could use some other raytracer (Imagine, Moonzoom or Tornado should work as well). If short of funds and software, you should have a look at the software offers on AC Forum (www.amiga-club.de) or at eBay (www.ebay.de, or your local variant). I've often seen there very inexpensive Cinema4D offers. As far as I know, the publisher Falke-Verlag some time ago had several AmigaPlus CDROMs with Cinema4D. You could ask there, too.

Once you've got a raytracer, make sure you have the paint program PPaint as well. Preferably version 7, which can be downloaded for free from the Aminet.

For touching up graphic errors, changing the size of the picture and adjusting the brightness I used ArtEffect. ArtEffect is not really necessary for this workshop, but if you have it, you can experiment with its many effects. Alternatively, you can use any 24Bit picture processor you are comfortable with.

Fire up Cinema. For a round clock with a nice wooden border just three objects are needed: one ring, one disk and a source of light. We will start with the ring.

Select the menu "Objekte/Grundobjekte/Ring" [Object/Base Object/Ring] and keep the "Shift" key pressed. The following requester should pop up.

The number of the "Ringsegmente" [Ring Segments] should be increased to 36. Do this to make the curvature of the clock smoother. The "Rohrradius" [Pipe Radius] is set to 25 to make the ring narrower. The remaining settings must not be changed ("Ringradius" [Radius of Ring]=200, "Rohrsegmente" [Pipe Segments]=12). Now click on "OK" and Cinema creates the ring.

Next we need the clock's background, or rather the surface where the clockface will be displayed later. For this we use a simple disk.

Return to the menu "Objekte/Grundobjekte" [Object/Base Object] and select with pressed "Shift" key the item "Scheibe" [Disk]. In the requester set the "Radius" [Radius] to 175. The number of "Segmente" [Segments] should be 36, the same as for the ring.

The next step is to bring the objects into their correct positions. Activate the "XY" view in the toolbox and select the "Ring" object. This is done by opening the menu "Bearbeiten" [Edit] and activating the item "Objekt auswählen..." [Object Selection...]. In the requester select the entry "Ring" and click on "OK".

Then the ring is "stood up". Select in the toolbox "Objekt bearbeiten" [Edit Object] (the cube below the eye) and "Drehen" [Turn] (the bent arrow). Because we want to turn the clock around the x-axis, "X" must be activated in the toolbox, too. If you have done all this, you may "stand up" the ring through 90 degrees. When the ring has turned far enough, the lines of the wire-frame cube appearing during the rotation should align with those of the Y-plane. Or in other words: When during rotation of the object inside of the XY-view, if only a (2D-)square is visible, the ring is in the correct position.

After placing the ring in the upright position, we turn to the background of the clock's dial. Cinema offers for this a useful "Ausrichten" [Align] function. First the disk object must be selected. For this the previously used function "Objekt auswählen..." [Object Selection...] is activated again. After selecting "Scheibe" [Disk] you enter the menu "Extra/Ausrichten auf..." [Extra/Align to...]. In the requester select the entry "Ring" [Ring] and click to "OK". As you see, the disk is placed to the correct position.

The worst is now over, but we still need a source of light.

Again enter the menu "Objekte/Grundobjekte" [Object/Base Object] and there activate the item "Lichtquelle" [Light Source] - but this time without pressing the "Shift" key, because the standard settings are sufficient for our purpose. You should activate the "XZ" view, which lets you view the scene from above. Next the "Verschiebe" [Shift] mode in the toolbox is activated (this is the arrow showing to the right).

The light source should be set close to the front of the clock. Use the dotted positioning squares which Cinema draws into the page view. A good position for the light is 1 square in front (on the Z-axis - "Z" selected, "X" and "Y" deselected) and appr. 1 square to the left (X-axis - "X" selected, "Y" and "Z" deselected), but you might enjoy experimenting for effect.

Now move the light in the up direction: switch to the XY-view and push the source of light a little more than one square up (Y-axis - "Y" selected, "X" and "Z" deselected). The XY-view will look like this:

You might be tempted to lock in the illumination at this stage, but don't. After you have created your surface textures, they may look better if you alter the position of the light source slightly.

Bear in mind that the lighting of the clock should correspond to the lighting of the Workbench. If you look at the 3D effects used on Workbench you will see that light always comes from the upper left - the upper left part of icons, windows and buttons is brighter than the lower right part. The lighting of the clock should be similar.

ok! Our clock still looks a bit pale - we need a surface texture. My preference was a border of wood. For this I activated the material manager of Cinema (right Amiga + "m" or the menu "Fenster/Materialmanager" [Window/Material Manager]. An empty window opens. Click and hold down the right mouse button and select in the pop-up menu the item "Neu" [New].

First the "Farbe" [Color] of the material is edited. There are two areas, one to edit the color of the material and the other one to define the texture.

The first three sliders in the area "Farbe" [Color] should all be at 100 percent. The fourth slider adjusts the intensity of the color. Set this slider to appr. 14 percent. In the area "Textur" [Texture] the texture of the surface can be selected. With Cinema4D several textures are supplied. In the file requester select the mahogany texture, which you will find in "C4D:Tex/mahagoni.tif". Ignore the cycle gadget "Interpol". The texture doesn't look bad......

...........but I'd like it polished! ;) So let's make the texture shine a little. At the right border of the window "Material bearbeiten" [Edit Material] there are several buttons with a checkmark (or without...). Only "Farbe" [Color] and "Schatten" [Shadow] are selected. Activate the checkmark for "Glanz" [Shine]. Next click upon "Glanz" [Shine] in one of the top rows. Set "Modus" [Mode] to "Plastik" [Plastics]. Set the slider "Breite" [Width] to 12 percent, and the slider "Höhe" [Height] to 27 percent. You could use different values, but don't overdo it with the "Glanz" [Shine]...the border of the clock shouldn't look like a cheap mahogany-veneer-imitation made of plastics. ;) Now click "OK".

In the window of the material manager the new texture should be displayed. Now we have to assign the texture to the border of the clock (object name "Ring"). For this the ring has to be selected as I explained earlier. After you have selected the ring, again click with the right mouse button upon the wood texture in the material manager and select the item "Zuweisen" [Assign] in the pop-up menu.

The next thing we need is a nice surface for the dial. I felt a background with a dull polish made from a grayish material would go well with mahogany. Create a new texture for this, following the procedure used for the mahogany texture. In the settings for "Farbe" [Color] the first three sliders again should be set to 100 percent. Try the fourth intensity slider at 59 percent.

This time we will not use a texture. The clockface should have a dull gleam. For this we we again set the checkmark "Glanz" [Shine] at the right border. In the settings "Glanz" I used the mode "Plastik" [Plastics], and set "Breite" [Width] to 18 percent and "Höhe" [Height] to 28 percent. Confirm with "OK" and assign the texture to the dial (object name is "Scheibe" [Disk]).

If you want you can make a test render at this stage. Prepare to be underwhelmed, because the camera position is less than edifying. You have to set the scene for your "Photoshooting".

Change into "Perspektive" [Perspective] view by clicking on the "P" in the toolbox. "Perspektive" shows the view from which the scene later will be rendered. You want to see the clock from the front and not twisted sideways. (WBClock might not be pleased either.) Turn the whole scene (the "Eye" in the toolbox must be selected) in the "X" and "Y" directions so that the clock looks - so to speak - directly into the camera. This is easiest done by turning the scene around one axis at a time.

A test render now looks much more convincing, but not yet perfect because the environment color is not set properly. Select in the "Objekte" [Object] menu the item "Umgebung..." [Environment]. The requester allows the environment color to be adjusted. All three sliders should be set to 50 percent. Click on "OK" and you are ready to render the scene.

To do this click on the "Render" symbol in the toolbox of Cinema (this is the symbol with the film strip) and in the pop-up menu select the relevant render mode. If you want to change the render parameters, click with the right mouse button on the symbol. In the requester the size of the picture, the aspect ratio and several other self explanatory parameters can be configured.

If the clock renders too big or too small (e.g. the borders of the clock are partly cut off), adjust the scaling. The "Eye" and the "Scaling" (small triangle + big triangle) symbols must be selected and the whole scene changed accordingly in the "P" view.

The final size of the WBClock texture should be predefined with Cinema. It depends on the size of clock you want: if small, don't render the graphics too big, because later scalings with help of ArtEffect and PPaint will cost you quality.

It is best if the graphics are created in the preferred size of the final WBClock texture. For this the picture format of a small clock e.g. 99x99 pixels (don't wonder about this "99" value, it will be explained later) will be set to appr. 103x103 pixels and the scene scaled and shifted so that the border of the clock is just visible without clipping the edges. The rendered picture should look like this:

The background is still too dark, but this does not matter. With PPaint the black borders will later be cut off anyhow. If you believe your clock is a success, save the picture and the scene. If the picture is too bright or too dark or not of the right size, just change it within a 24Bit picture processor of your choice. PPaint should NOT be used for this purpose.

Now start PPaint. First set the "Color Reduction" in menu "Settings" to "Qualitative" and "Dithering" in the same menu to "Floyd Steinberg" and "Best Quality". The screen needs to have 256 colors. Now load the rendered graphic as a brush (press F5). After PPaint has finished loading and "downward calculations", the palette of the brush should be used as screen palette. (Select menu "Color/Palette/From Brush" or simply press "LAlt" + "b".)

Lay down the brush in the middle of the screen. In menu "Settings/Transparency" the item "Color" must be selected. Cut out the graphic again and remove all unused areas of the brush with "LAlt" + "e".

Now press "LAlt" + "i". This gives you a screen with the specifications of the brush. IMPORTANT! The graphic must have uneven numbers of Pixels in the height and in the width, so that WBClock can center the clockface. That means a size of 99x99 pixels or of 101x101 pixels is ideal. (All right, this was the explanation of the "99"-pixel-value. ;)) If this is not the case, try to change the height and the width by just one pixel. PPaint offers a way to do this via an ARexx script called "Brush Format".

Now again save the brush in IFF format and start WBClock. If you double click on the clock you access its preferences. Under the tab "Hands" you set the "Type of hands" to "Rhombus" and the "Width of hands" to "Thin". Under tab "Face" you set the "Background" to "Transparent Picture". At "Picture Name" you select your saved texture.

Checkmarks must be set at "Oval" and "Auto Size". Change the "Radius (%)" to 90 percent. Under tab "Colors" the colors and borders of the pointers can be defined. In my opinion the minute hand looks best in red with black border and the hour hand in white, also with black border.

So much for the Round Wood Workshop. :) I hope, you enjoyed it. If you want the materials for this workshop you can download it from our homepage with the URL

http://www.mediaspace.net/amigaaktuell/deutsch/downld/rundholz.lha

The archive contains the ready-made texture, a preference file for WBClock and the Cinema4D scene. If you have questions about this workshop or if you want to express your opinion, please send me a mail.

Christian Aichinger <christian@aakt.de>«