My rather infrequent, and possibly apocryphal, 'books project'.

[3dcheapskate]

Trying out the single paperbacks with a few morphs and the dimension controls, plus some wear and tear images I found somewhere (just as a quick test)

Just realized that "Round Spine" here is very similar to "Plump" in the hardback, so may need to think about making those consistent. The paperback "Round Spine" morph doesn't change the thickness, whereas the hardback "Plump" one does. Morphs which change the thickness or tilt the top cover will be more difficult to incorporate into the multi-book figure, as mentioned a while back.

Also the corners of the paperback here need to bend a bit - I haven't got round to splitting the "Splay" morph yet

 

[3dcheapskate]

I started running out of steam on this stuff and jumped tracks to an idea I had for millipedes.

But in the background I've been playing at trying to make my own textures for old book covers. Here's where I've got to on my first one:

The title is one from my old list.
The layout is based on this old book I found on the internet.
The green cloth book cover is made using capt-toenail's old book cover texture resource from DeviantArt.
The cover picture is made with this public domain picture from Wikipedia's Adobe page.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Just a couple of useful links:

It was this article that really gave me the inspiration to try creating my own old-fashioned book covers - Cloth, gold, ink, and style | National Library of New Zealand (natlib.govt.nz)

And I've tracked down where those full cover scans I used for my old book test renders came from - Publishers Bindings: Miscellany | RBSCP (rochester.edu)

 

[3dcheapskate]

Fitting the cover of Adobe Mick, which I created at an arbitrary size, to my standard (at least for now) book template. I simply imported the image into GIMP along with my template, did a rectangle select on the spine, and scaled that to fit the appropriate part of the UVs. Front and back covers next, then the edges of the covers and spine.

The numbers I've noted are the thickness, width, and height in pixels of the book cover in the 1024x662 image attached to the post before last (I cropped a bit of top and bottom here before starting to resize). I'll work out sensible dimensions in cm for the book based on those proportions and record them on the final texture map.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Completed texture map...

...and a render - one book at default size, the others with dimensions set as noted.

Not bad I think.

 

[3dcheapskate]

More classy old book covers for cover design/layout ideas - Browse our Books – MFLIBRA - Antique Books - just look at those prices !

 

[aqua1955]

Trying out the single paperbacks with a few morphs and the dimension controls, plus some wear and tear images I found somewhere (just as a quick test)

View attachment 70941

Just realized that "Round Spine" here is very similar to "Plump" in the hardback, so may need to think about making those consistent. The paperback "Round Spine" morph doesn't change the thickness, whereas the hardback "Plump" one does. Morphs which change the thickness or tilt the top cover will be more difficult to incorporate into the multi-book figure, as mentioned a while back.

Also the corners of the paperback here need to bend a bit - I haven't got round to splitting the "Splay" morph yet

You did a hell of a job making this all. My deep respect for making such library!

 

[3dcheapskate]

Thank you aqua1955 !

I love just playing around with ideas and trying things out. I started this thread with the main goal of making a book row/stack figure, and that goal is definitely still there. However, I got side-tracked into playing with a single closed book prop to try and get a handle on the morphs I'd need to make it as flexible as possible, with the intention of feeding back what I learnt into the book row/stack figure. And then, in order to test my single book prop I decided to redo the existing UV mapping, which was a hangover from my earlier released book-row freebies. And of course then I needed textures to use for my test, so I started by modifying a couple of paperback textures that I'd created for a laugh quite a while back. And then I decided that it would be fun to try and create a cover for an old cloth-bound book. And then...

I think it's probably time to do a formal release of something, and that something is likely to be just the single closed paperback (with two textures - "The Renaissance Overlord" and "A Graphic Novel Without Pictures") and single closed hardback (with one texture, "Adobe Mick"). It'll take a few days because I still need to split the paperback's "Splay Corners" morph into individual morphs for each corner and package things up. And I should probably do a DAZ Studio native version too, which'll take a bit longer.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Still having fun making old-style covers and learning what works and what doesn't...

(Martin Wugglechops uses one of these free vintage frames from freepik.com ) and a free leather book texture from DA (have to post the URL later)

 

[3dcheapskate]

Found the leather book cover texture I used for the Martin Wugglechops test, Book Cover by alytre on DeviantArt , but the CC licence is "No Derivative Works" so it seems that I can't use it.

Forgot to add the credit where credit's in the previous post for Donkey Saute, so here it is:
- Cover background is created from 279 by DadiLights on DeviantArt
- Design on both covers from old book cover inner paper by Chelidoni on DeviantArt

I also used the "Twist" morph on the standing book to the left, but it doesn't look right to me. I think the "Twist" morph for standing books needs to be different from the one for stacked books, but I can't quite work out what I need to do yet - I think I need some reference photos...

@3dcheapskate I remember your book props, I was thrilled to find them back then.
If you need photos of different books in different situation please feel free to give me a yell. I have a lot of books, (I mean *a lot* ), everything from old battered falling apart paperbacks to big dusty old hard back encyclopedias and everything in between

Dreamer, is there any chance that you could take some photos of a couple of large. thick hardbacks standing upright but leaning against each other or a wall (similar the top two Donkey Sautes) ? I'm particularly interested in the deformation that happens when the book leans.

 

[Dreamer]

Found the leather book cover texture I used for the Martin Wugglechops test, Book Cover by alytre on DeviantArt , but the CC licence is "No Derivative Works" so it seems that I can't use it.

Forgot to add the credit where credit's in the previous post for Donkey Saute, so here it is:
- Cover background is created from 279 by DadiLights on DeviantArt
- Design on both covers from old book cover inner paper by Chelidoni on DeviantArt

I also used the "Twist" morph on the standing book to the left, but it doesn't look right to me. I think the "Twist" morph for standing books needs to be different from the one for stacked books, but I can't quite work out what I need to do yet - I think I need some reference photos...

Dreamer, is there any chance that you could take some photos of a couple of large. thick hardbacks standing upright but leaning against each other or a wall (similar the top two Donkey Sautes) ? I'm particularly interested in the deformation that happens when the book leans.

Sure I have a nice old set of Encyclopedias that should work rather well

 

[Faery_Light]

Interesting thread.
I used to have a rather large collection of real books.
Some were damaged by leaky roofs or lost in moving.
I gave the rest to my daughter who loves books.
Too bad she isn't an artist, she could tell you a lot about real life books and how they look, new, used and worn.

 

[3dcheapskate]

I've just uploaded a couple of old freebies to Renderosity Free Stuff, among them my 'Proof of principle - Poser ERC opening book' demo (which was a short-lived spin-off from my open book model mentioned back in post #11)

While tracking down a file that was missing from the original ShareCg upload I discovered that I'd actually got a little bit further and had a slightly later version

Here's a quick video of the book opening. The Open Book dial is set to 0 at frame 0 and 1 at frame 120, that's the only thing that I had to change. Everything else is automated.

Proof of principle - Poser ERC opening book - YouTube

I've also attached a zip containing a single folder 'ERCBook04-05b (Spine Bends)' in which is a runtime containing the CR2 and OBJ used for that video if anybody wants a look.

(crosslink to the Renderosity post that links here)

 

[3dcheapskate]

Sooo....

Where was I ?

The last thing I uploaded (prior to the ERC opening book in the previous post #53 - was that really over two years ago?) appears to be "Runtime (BookStack4 test3 ONLY).zip in post #30. Once again I appear to have lost everything I did after that. So I've just been playing with that CR2 in Poser 11 and looking at the OBJs in Blender to see whether I'm in the mood to kick off again...

 

[3dcheapskate]

Okay, it's looking promising. I imported the BookStack4 test3.obj into Blender and see that each book is a separate object - no surprise there, but good to check. There's that 0.00003 PNU gap between the top of one hardback and the bottom of the next - ref post #29 as to why that's required. There are also separate OBJ files for the paperback alternate geometries, the basic 8 vertex mesh - but I'm only looking at the main geometry for now. The shear morph targets, hardback and paperback, are embedded in the CR2 and I haven't got the original OBJs. So to get myself warmed up I decided to try redoing the hardback shear morph targets from scratch. I simply took a copy of the Book1 OBJ, applied a shear to it, exported the modified OBJ (remembering to tick 'Keep vertex order'), and loaded that into Poser as an MT for the Book1 bodypart - worked fine. Then loaded it as an MT for Books 2 to 4 too and that worked as hoped - obviously when I apply the new morph to books 2-4 it also moves them down towards the sheared book1 position, but I'm just testing to see whether I can create all my hardback MTs from the Book1 mesh, then simply move that mesh up in steps of 0.007 and re-export as the MTs for the other books. So now I'm ready to (re)create those warpy-twist, plump, and splay (better word than 'open') morphs I did back in post #35

 

[3dcheapskate]

Making good progress. Shear and twist morphs are straightforward, plump needs to control another dial, and splay is probably better donewith a combination of existing dials.

The 'plump' morph needs to drive the yTran of the book above, should be simple - bog standard ERC.

The 'splay' morph would need to z rotate the book above. But the existing BookStack4 test3.cr2 is set up so that zRot already more or less does a splay. So I tried to match the effect of my newly created splay morph by using the basic transform dials and it's quite easy. So maybe make 'Splay' a whatjamacallit (you know a dial which doesn't do anything by default, can't remember what it's called, but controls other dials via ERC) driving zRot and yScale together and hide the transform dials themselves.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Using my own AddDeltaAddDelta python script freebire the ERC was a piece of cake (although I did have to remove the 'if not act.IsBodyPart()' bit of the conditional on line 173 to allow my Book bodyparts to appear on the expurgated list of slave actors; and I had to remember that values are in PNUs not inches; and recall that 112% is 0.12 for a deltaAddDelta). I also added limits to all the transforms to help counteract those accidental translate-pulls I keep doing when I select a book in the preview pane.
Not perfect, e.g. you can see some intersection between the red and green covers in the render below where I've used both 'plump' and 'splay' on book 1, but definitely looking good.

Latest version of the CR2 in the attached zip.

 

[KageRyu]

A thought - forgive me if I do not phrase this well.
Have you considered, since each book is still seperate Geometry, making this a Compound Prop? That is, making it a Prop that is actually multiple props, where each book is a seperate prop. This would mean a little work as each book would have to be made it's own prop and then a little editing in Notepad to combine them into a single PP2 file - but then adding some simple ERC could allow for moving the books individually in X,Y,Z and rotating them individually, or in a group. If set up with external geometry, this would likely be a smaller file as the ERC data to move and rotate the books would take less memory and space in the PP2 than the morphs to do the same.

Just some thoughts, and I am admittedly rusty in terms of setting up compound props and ERC.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Definitely worth a try - I guess that posts #35 to #40 were potentially veering towards that approach (without knowing it)? I think I was just manually positioning each book on top of the previous one, but I do recall wondering if I could simply parent each prop to the previous one...

 

[3dcheapskate]

Okay, that seems to work* - compound prop version of the 4 book stack included in the attached BookStack4 test6.zip (the figure is unchanged from the previous upload).
Even using all four morphs at max (+1) or min (-1) on all four books, a bit extreme, the result is okay - there's some slight intersection of covers, nmost noticeable on the red/green as per the figure version a couple of posts back.

The Plump morph drives the yTran of the next book with a deltaAddDelta of 0.24" (0.00232558 in PNU).

With the figure I didn't need the splay morph, using a combination of zRot and yScale for the book to be splayed instead. But for this prop I used the morph, which has to drive the zRot (deltaAddDelta value of 3 (degrees)) and yTran (0.001 PNU, judged by eye) of the next book

*except...