Joe's Polybook

Thanks so much, Martin!

as for the left of the crate; methinks that’s a hard shadow from the default light which looks bizarre juxtaposed the softer shadow from my area light.  Didn’t notice it until I posted, but i’ma check it out further tomorrow, ‘cause the troubleshooter in me just gots to know 😆

I’ll update it after I fix it 😁

Thanks so much for takin’ a gander at my lesson projects! 

That’s the power of my crate, maaaan.  It overwhelms all logic with its magical powers- yeah, I kinda rushed my lighting and it’s probably too close to my lil background Cyc. But, if I’m wrong, it’ll be fun to troubleshoot and get to the bottom of 🤓

Aaaaaaand updated

Leaving my original wonky light ‘n Cyc image as is, so if anyone stumbles across yer solid feedback, they’ll be able to see the original and updated

1.) Cyc with bevel (created from a cube, front/top faces removed, edges beveled, normals flipped to the inside) was too close to the crate

2.) one of my lights was literally right in front of my camera, so we basically had the perspective of a coal miner with their headlamp on. Lol

That could def cause that kinda issue, but ever since blender stopped glowing blue at me when face orientation is turned on, I keep it on (especially when I’m working with the inside of an object); it was def clean on the inside and bright red on the outside, as I did the ol’ Edit > A (select all) > alt + N > flippity-doo 🤪. My bevels were all clean and shaded smooth. Just seemed to need space and a lighting setup that didn’t have a hard light shining on the rear/right with a softer light shining straight-on (right in front/on top of the camera) 😅

but, one thing I MIGHT have missed was Ctrl+A > apply scale (on the cube that I turned into a cyc). Regardless of how vital that step can be, i always do seem to forget 😂

I didn’t realise the blue of face orientation has been hidden. I wondered why it had stopped showing and figured I’d inadvertently done something to turn it off. 

Thanks so much, Omar!  I’ll definitely try that cylinder Cyc technique from Kent’s vid next time!  Thanks for the tip! 😁

I've used either the cylinder or just a plane with the back edge extruded up just past the camera view with a beveled edge to get a little gentle curve in it on a lot of my own shots. Makes for a real quick and easy background and without the constraints the "cube" version has.. you have more room to more things around the lighting or the camera if you need to.

(Great shots, BTW.. great job on the modeling and texturing!)

Thanks so much, Grady!  I’m definitely ALWAYS open to new background/Cyc-modeling techniques to get the lighting and scene looking clean while providing more variety ☺️

And big thanks for your supportive words as well 🥹