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

3dcheapskate

Engaged
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)

PBtest.jpg


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
 
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3dcheapskate

Engaged
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:

AdobeMick02 1024x662.jpg


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

Engaged
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.

Fitting To Template.jpg
 
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aqua1955

Member
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

Engaged
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

Engaged
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

Dream Weaver Designs
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

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
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

Engaged
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)
 

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