Way back when I posted some work I had been doing on a model of my friend Gus’s guitar. Well, I thought it was a good time for an update.
I haven’t done much with materials, lighting or composition yet, but the model is pretty much finished and I’m ready to go do something else for awhile. Your comments are appreciated.
cool i like it.
you might think about the black going around it i think it should show a little more of the wood so i would go over the wood with black with intenistiy low and RBG to give more of a FADE look…
but besides that it looks real good 
I’m certainly impressed! I like the colors, the modeling, etc. The materials that you used for around the opening and along the frets are awesome. Very believable mother-of-pearl. Thanks for the update – it’s superb work!
Wondefull update…I’ll be watching for more!
thanks for the update … looking good.
VERY nice.
My only thought (as I look at my husband’s ovation) is the size of the neck and the size of the body. I think the body of the guitar is a bit small.
But you sure have the classical denotation of Ovation acoustic guitars dead on.
You have acomplished your mission admirably. Very well done.
Very Real !! Excellent Work !!
Brn, its coming out great! My husband < who was peeking over my shoulder lol> also thinks its comeing out great, but sounds a little hollow 
Very nice
Great modeling,texturing and lightning
stargo
Outstanding work…one of the first images I saw here was an earlier version of this.
Fantastic!
Paul
what a GREAT instrument, brn! bravissimo and kudos re: patience and going for perfection… what an outstanding work it is already!!! …
A well done image. a fine example of photorealistic modeling and textures.
Thank you for all your comments. Kathy - I have to agree with you about the proportions. I just sort of eyeballed it and it does seem that the body is a little small. My plan is to ZBrush a caricature of Gus next and then come up with the final composition with Gus and the guitar. I’ll keep posting my progress.
brn, this is totally amazing. i should have commented on it sooner…don’t know why i didn’t. could you make a tutorial or script on how you made the guitar? i want some electric guitars in a picture i’m going to make but i have no idea where to start. i’d really appreciate it if you could tell me how you did it.
josh
jibberish - I will try my best to explain how the guitar was done. Unfortunately, because I am only able to Zbrush an hour or two at a time, there were a lot of starts and stops (and loads of do-overs!) on this project and I don’t have any scripts. OK, here goes:
The guitar is made up of the following parts:
Guitar body - created from a Sphere3D. I put the vertices of the sphere at the front and back so that the sides could be modeled smoothly. I used the
flatten deformation in the Z direction to flatten the front face. Once I got the shape the way I wanted it, I selected the front face and used HidePts to make the body hollow.
Guitar face - created from a Circle3D. I created the outline shape with the center part of the circle selected. The outer part of the selection was distorted as I created the outline but the inner part of the selection remained circular. When I was done with the outline I cleared the selection and then re-selected the circular, center portion. Then I used HidePts to create the sound hole.
Fretboard - created from a Cube3D. I modeled the basic shape and then subdivided along its length until the divisions were small enough to make the raised frets. I selected where I wanted the frets to go and then used the inflate deformation to raise them up.
Bridge - created from a Cube3D. I put the vertices of the cube at the top and bottom and then subdivided the living daylights out of the front face. From photos of the actual guitar, I created an alpha brush for the sculpted leaves. I used this alpha and the inflate deformation again to get the raised effect.
Headstock - created from a Cube3D. The vertices are at the front and back and the sides are highly subdivided to get a smooth shape.
Neck - created from a Cylinder3D. The vertices are at the top and bottom and I used the flatten deformation to make the front surface.
Keys - created from a Cylinder3D.
Strings - created from a Cylinder 3D. I set the number of divisions along the length very low to keep them simple.
ASSEMBLY: I initially created the guitar using multimarkers so that I could save it as a polymesh tool. As I struggled with trying to texture it, I realized that the only way to get it the way I wanted it was to leave the parts separate and texture them individually. So, after everything was textured, I reassembled the guitar from its parts.
TEXTURING: I’m pretty pleased with the way this came out, thanks to the Texture Master script. I extracted most of the parts of the textures from photos. For the guitar face, I used the Simple brush with the DragRect stroke and a photo sample to create the wood grain. I used the Highlighter brush (with the Alt key) to darken the edges. I created a stencil from the basic outline of the guitar face so that I could add the Mother-of-Pearl edge. I created the Mother-of-Pearl texture using the texture creation utility that comes with CorelDraw. I used this same texture for the inlay on the fretboard. The inlay around the sound hole is taken directly from a photo and applied with the Simple brush and the DragRect stroke. The Ovation logo was added by painting inside a stencil made from a photo.
THINGS I DIDN’T DO: I meant to spend more time with materials and lighting, but I just didn’t get it done. The wood could certainly use some nice specular reflections to show that it is varnished. I had hoped to display guitar and stand on a wooden stage with some nice shadow effects, but I didn’t do that either. Ultimately I chose not to go any further because I intend for the final composition to include the guitarist as well as the guitar.
I hope that this makes sense and is useful. I have learned so much by reading the posts in this forum that I’d like to contribute in return. If anyone needs more info I will gladly provide what I can. Also, if there’s any interest I can upload the individual tools.
Thanks for a very interesting and informative walkthrough, brn…
I think you did a very nice job, and I hope you intend to post your finished image here, because the concept sounds great!