I had the luck of going to the Sicán museum in Ferreñafe in northern Perú. Quite inspiring to see all those ancient techniques applied to pottery, metallurgy and goldsmithing. This tutorial will be a consequence of the visit, and we will make a gold Sicán earpiece, based on one of the pieces seen in the museum.
The modeling work is simple and the texturing, simpler still. There is an optional tweaking phase that can be a bit laborious, but it is optional.
This is the reference image, not very good as you cannot use flash in museums.
Getting started
Let us create a new document and set the global light as a construction light. This way we´ll be able to see what we are doing in the modeling window and it will not interfere with the rendering.
Modeling
The modeling is quite straightforward: primitives, lathes, path extrudes and a lot of replicating.
I strongly suggest using shapes. Create a new shape named Earpiece and work inside it.
We´ll start in Left view and will draw a small arc with the pen tool.
Then we´ll lathe this arc, clicking on the top point.
After lathing, we´ll move the axis of revolution down (reselect the lathe tool to do this).
The finished lathe
Next piece is a wire ring that has a lot (120) small spheres soldered.
The wire ring is a small circle path-extruded through a larger one
The spheres are added by replicating a small sphere. 119 repetitions and a rotation of 3º in the z-axis will do nicely.
Don’t forget to move the center point of the sphere to the center of the piece before replicating.
The ring with the spheres is slightly forward from the outer piece.
Spirals
The spirals are made by path extruding and then replicating.
First draw the spiral using the pen tool or draw in Illustrator and then import.
Next, draw a small circle and path-extrude.
Looks ugly. No need to worry as it can be tweaked at will editing the path through which the profile was extruded.
Replicate. The original earpiece has 17 spirals. That requires 360/17 degrees rotation, which is about 21.2º.
Now comes an optional and tedious part of tweaking the path for each of the spirals to make them all different. A good technique is modifying three or four coils and delete and replace others. This way, there is no need to modify all of the coils.
More spheres
Theres is another wire ring with small spheres soldered. This smaller ring has 48 spheres, so the angle is 7.5º.
A couple path extrudes for the arcs that hold the piece to the ears of the wearer and small metal strips that hold it all together. We are done with the modeling.
Texturing
The texture will be a simple gold texture, similar to the one shown in the basic metals tutorial.
Let’s uncheck the construction checkbox in the directional light, to see what we are doing in the renders.
In addition, we´ll use a corrosion shader to do away with the perfect 3d look.
The gold shader
Gold is shiny, yellow and it reflects yellow too. This texture is very similar to the one in the basic metals tutorial.
There is no mapping needed, and it is applied to an instance of the earpiece shape in the modeling window.
The corrosion shader
We’ll use a corrosion shader with no hole area, a little resistant area and small bump values.
Aply it to the instance and make sure it is applied using planar mapping. Play around with the scale until the bump looks good.
Lighting
Museum lighting is dramatic. Usually dark backgrounds with powerful lighting and not much to reflect at all.
We´ll use a single point light, a glow panel underneath the earpiece for reflections and one of the backgrounds that come preloaded in Strata3D for the reflection, with a little tweaking.
Environment
We´ll use no visible background, and we´ll use a modified version of the Physics Lab HDR background as a reflected environment.
The modification consists in darkening the map. To achieve this Edit the map and djust the Black point of the image.
Light
We´ll use a single point light at the front left of the piece. This is a trial and error process, looking for the best lighting.
Camera
Create a camera from a frontal view and move according to your preference. In this case, it is to the front and the left of the earpiece.
Render
A Soft Shadows render is adequate for this piece. Here, Local lights-Good is used.
Final piece
There. That’s what going to museums can do to you.
