Vue Tip: How I Made My Header Image

by admin on November 16, 2009

Vue comes with a sample scene called “Product Showcase”. This is just a simple basic scene with a white floor and a white sky with a Ferrari racing car. e-on Software included this scene to provide you with a generic setting where you can do sample render of objects or plants that you created in order to sell them or give them away.

header01

Of course you can also use this sample scene to render anything you want if you need a white background.

Floor reflections

The writing is a standard text object. I chose “Eurostile Bold” with rounded bevel and 2.5 extrusion. The floor is slightly reflective, but the reflections look better if the reflectivity is increased a bit. The floor material is transparent with the “Turn reflective with angle” option checked. This is used to simulate some kind of milky glass. Here is the trick: Increasing the “Global transparency” value will increase reflectivity. This is something not very obvious for those not familiar with the physical laws of reflection and refraction.

header03Text Material

First, the surface of the text object will get a slight shinyness:

header02The coloring is done with the formula editor inside the material editor. What makes the coloring special is that there is a gradual color change across the whole object. For this to work, you need the AdvancedGraph module or a version of Vue where it is included. To bring up the function editor, choose the “Color & Alpha” tab, right klick on the “Color production” preview and select “Edit Function”

header04The x value of the “Position on Picture” input node is used to select a color from the default rainbow color map. This colors each pixel of the object according to its x coordnate on the final picture. The multiplier is used to squeeze the gradient a little because there is a bit of margin left and right of text object. Here I used a value of 1.17 for the multiplier.

This is just a fairly simple demonstration what a powerful tool the combination of the function editor with the material editor can be.

Download the Rainbow Material

http://www.microstock-graphics.com/wp-content/plugins/downloads-manager/img/icons/default.gif download: Rainbow Material for Vue (6.56KB)
added: 16/11/2009
clicks: 231
description: Colors an object according to its x coordinate on the final picture

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