Guitar Paint

[knightroguitars]

Hey Fusion community!

I'm working on a guitar model and I'm wondering if there's a good way to simulate a translucent 'burst' finish, a la vintage Les Pauls. Being able to alter the colors/gradient between would be an amazing feature as well. Manipulating woods and paint colors is no problem, but this has me stumped. 

Attached pics are my current model in various finishes. 

Thanks for taking a look!

[jeff_strater]

Those are awesome guitar models!

There are quite a few of us in the Fusion community who are doing similar things - using Fusion for guitar design.  There is even a Facebook group for us:  Fusion 360 Luthiers.

You raise a very good question that's got me stumped as well.  Let me contact the rendering folks to be sure, but I suspect that it will be hard/impossible to get this done.  You might be able to supply a bitmap that shows the color gradient for a sunburst finish, but orienting it correctly on the body will be a challenge.  I don't know if that is something that Keyshot can do or not.  Might be worth looking into.

I'll get back to you if I get any good ideas from our rendering team

Jeff

[knightroguitars]

Hey Jeff!

Thank you so much for the kind words and for looking into my (admittedly not actually very important) issue! I've been playing around with making translucent gradients in Adobe Illustrator and applying them as a decal. This process sort of works, but still needs some work before I'd be happy to show the results off. 

Oh, and I'm already a member of the F360 Luthiers group 🙂

Thanks again!

-Andrew

[TrippyLighting]

I'd have to agree with Jeff. Beautifully executed!

[CarlFrischmuth]

I think it probably can be done in fusion its just not that obvious perhaps.

is this what you were after? there might be other options for slipping wood grains & other warpy textures in there to but these are ok without any other maps and may get close to what you want

[CarlFrischmuth]

Lol maybe my optimism was a bit out of control there....

[CarlFrischmuth]

So i tweaked the shape a bit more to look like a guitar blob, did a quick screen grab with the windows snip tool and whipped something together in sketchbook to get the main parts of a texture map together. the tif is attached and should have the layers still set up...

its not too bad ....a bit hacky hack ... could be better if i made the tex map from an actual guitar shape but I'm going to leave that up to you, i just wanted to see if the process worked to see whats possible without waiting for a worn french lacquer shader 🙂

cheers,

Carl

[jeff_strater]

@CarlFrischmuth,

Fantastic!  That looks really good.  I see what you did, and that's a great approach.  Using a 3D wood material as a starting point is good.  Then, you get the sunburst all the way through.  The only downside with this approach is the need for a per-body-shape material.  So, if you wanted to do a Fender Telecaster version, you'd have to create a Telecaster sunburst material.  A small cost, IMO.  This is really nice.

Jeff

[knightroguitars]

Hey Carl, 

That looks great! I'll try to do something similar when I get my main rig back up and running (moving this week). I really appreciate the input!

[Phil.E]

I tried using your image as a decal and it doesn't really look right, but I thought it worth sharing. If you ever want the "painted" look, just stretch a decal over it.

[CarlFrischmuth]

haha yeah @Phil.E I'm not sure it bends round the sides that well as a 3d wood texture, still looks OK rather than torn texture, is it using box mapping? 🙂

i tried opening up the multi-layer tif in Photoshop and it was flat!! so i attached as PSD version of it with layers preserved,  if you want to play around a swap out my mock wood layer with something more wood like, or change the colors, or adapt the shape to suit something else 🙂

cheers,

Carl

[oldtbone55]

Hey There, just wanted to say that's an excellent looking guitar build you've got. I feel like such an amateur when I see stuff like that. Keep up the great work!

[ynz]

Sorry, I have no sollution for your q but I had to drop in and say this...

That! is one absolutely stunning guitar you've made there 😃

Did you use lofting for the arch/curvature of the top or did you use sculpt?
I'm new to Fusion and I'm trying my best to make a PRS style body as exact as possile and slowly learning how NOT to do it
I'm currently on my fifth attempt so seeing this makes me think of a sixth 😉

Cheers!
/ynz

[SceroGuitars]

Can you share ANY details on how to get such realistic looking renders on your guitar designs? I absolutely SUCK at it...