nazSTUFF - 3D Masonic Eye Design

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This is a simple software exercise that illustrates how I developed my 3D Masonic All-Seeing-Eye design for product imprint. You'll see how I manipulate simple shapes using Hexagon 2.5, Carrara 6 Pro, Illustrator 10 and Photoshop to arrive at the finished image. This is basic stuff but still educational. Enjoy.

The point of inspiration is, of course, the United States One Dollar Bill. Thanks to Hollywood we're all familiar now with the myriad of Masonic symbols to be found on the US money. For this project I want to create a colorful and clean three dimensional interpretation of this eye in the triangle. Thinking in simple terms is the key.

To create the pyramid I start with the primitive "octahedron" shape and a primitive cube shape. Since half of an octahedron is a pyramid I need to remove the lower half.

Here, in the 3D workspace I've placed the cube beneath the octahedron. One must make sure that the cube is larger the the material to be removed.

Using the BOOLEON function I've substracted the cube from the octahedron, leaving a pyramid.

Following the same procedure as before I again add a primitive cube to the scene and change its proportions to become the slice I want to remove.

Again, making sure that the "cube" is larger than the slice I want removed I slide it into position where I again apply the BOOLEON function of subtracting a shape from a shape, leaving me with the split pyramid icon I seek.

The essential 3D form is now built and installed into Carrara. This transition is perfectly smooth as Hexagon saves files in Carrara format. Here you see the first version with some texture (a shader) applied.

With a little exploration I discover that the font named "Webdings" include a nicely drawn "eye" symbol. The beauty of using a font as a drawing source is that it is vector created and useful at any size.

I discover that this symbol is embedded under the alpha key "N" and I typed it into a new page in Illustrator. Within Illustrator I convert the font into postscript outlines and make it larger as you see here. This file is then saved as an EPS file, about version 6.

Back in the original 3D pyramid file in Carrara I "insert" a new "spline object." Within this rendering room I can import my saved EPS line drawing of the eye.

The extruded "eye" symbol is then resized, rotated and positioned so that it matches the incline of the pyramid, inset just enough into the pyramid to create the effect I want. Once again the booleon function subtracts the eye sumbol shape from the pyramid shape giving me the appearance of an engraved eye.

In order to enhance the drama and the dimension of the image I've added a second light to the side and I made it a plum color, in contrast to the gold.

Here is the result and how the final render in Carrara turned out. This image is rendered with an alpha mask so I can crop it easier later in Photoshop where I add various post production inhancements. When finished to size I install it on many imprintable items in my gallery. The t-shirt for example is displayed below.

For greater detail and purchasing information just click on the this image.

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This completes this tutorial and step by step digital presentation. It contains very simple shapes and basic modeling procedures. The beauty is in the color, texture and lighting toward the end, along with some Photoshop accents.

Enjoy.

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