CG visualization of key cap color combinations

[Wopian]

Ever so slowly uploading the files to my dropbox, may have to wait until tomorrow morning (UK time) as my housemates were complaining about lag. Gotta love RAW files

Hehe

[kaporkle]

Right on McWilloughby. :]

I dig the khaki/sand color and that turquoise Esc.

Amazing work!
Would love to see what this would look like:

I'm on it.

[Jmneuv]

some nice colors and excellent rendering

[verbhal]

This is a very interesting tool.  Some neat keyboards so far.  Will have to give it a shot later tonight.

[Alessandro]

This is incredible!

[smockey]

Here come's mine :



Also, if you could do it all blank, that would be nice

[metalliqaz]

This is so cool!

[Krogenar]

I would definitely want to see some common buckling spring keyboards get this treatment. So...



Classic Model M coloring (as close as I could approximate.) And here's one more:

[kaporkle]

McWilloughby has kindly provided me with some great photos of MX keycaps so I will be able to start on that soon.

[oluf]

These are the best mock ups I've ever seen! Thank you!!

[Lunartuna]

Right on McWilloughby. :]

I dig the khaki/sand color and that turquoise Esc.

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Amazing work!
Would love to see what this would look like:

I'm on it.

I really like this one. I'm colour blind so those bright colours with the black look great to me!

[Wopian]

McWilloughby has kindly provided me with some great photos of MX keycaps so I will be able to start on that soon.

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Wow, those look great O:

::Should've made my base colour charcoal black. :/

[mashby]

Has there been a price established for this service? I know there was some talk of this costing a few bucks, which I'm happy to pay, but I'm just curious how much it'd be.

[MattBuzzy]

Would love to see this done up if you can, I have actually ordered very similar colour keycaps but will be waiting 2 to 3 weeks for arrival.

Seeing it made up in 3D and seeing how similar it turns out would be amazing.

Many thanks.

[razorsharpgears]

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Would love to see this done up if you can, I have actually ordered very similar colour keycaps but will be waiting 2 to 3 weeks for arrival.

Seeing it made up in 3D and seeing how similar it turns out would be amazing.

Many thanks. :)

Unicorn Vomit Thread Worthy xD

[MattBuzzy]

Definitely XD will post my actual board there when it is done I wanted my gaming board to be very colourful

The actual board will actually have all white modifiers, once I can find somewhere that can make a stubby spacebar for me, seeing as it has to be black for now I may have it in a checkerboard pattern as picture but want to see how it looks first XD. It may just be too much on the eyes.

[razorsharpgears]

Can't wait to see the pics!

[kaporkle]

::Should've made my base colour charcoal black. :/

Submit another one if you'd like.

Has there been a price established for this service? I know there was some talk of this costing a few bucks, which I'm happy to pay, but I'm just curious how much it'd be.

Hi mashby. This is still a work in progress and I haven't sorted all the details out but I'm thinking between $4-$7 per render depending on how many you want in a given "order".

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Would love to see this done up if you can, I have actually ordered very similar colour keycaps but will be waiting 2 to 3 weeks for arrival.

Seeing it made up in 3D and seeing how similar it turns out would be amazing.

Many thanks. :)

This one looks like fun, and yes I would love to see the real thing when it's done. Are they blank or printed caps?

[MattBuzzy]

Awesome, just received my mechanical keyboard! Hopefully I will have my keycaps soon. They are printed caps

[kaporkle]

Hay Matt, congrats.
Sorry it took a while, I've been a little preoccupied.

[MattBuzzy]

Wow  That looks awesome! Thanks heaps Kaporkle. No problems on the time taken mate, especially seeing as it is one of the test ones you did for free  I love it!

Anyone who is not into "Unicorn Vomit" boards, Avert your eyes!

[tp4tissue]

Wow  That looks awesome! Thanks heaps Kaporkle. No problems on the time taken mate, especially seeing as it is one of the test ones you did for free  I love it!

Anyone who is not into "Unicorn Vomit" boards, Avert your eyes!

god, that's a very sick unicorn... or he just parties hard...

[verbhal]

I see you have found Rainbow Brite's keyboard.

[MattBuzzy]

I see you have found Rainbow Brite's keyboard.

Lmao, yes, yes I did XD

[rowdy]

That one looks great with the white legends on the black keys

[Krogenar]

Hey Kaporkle! What would you require to model a Model M keyboard and keycaps?

[guilleguillaume]

I didn't see that thread before and I blame me for it.

Impressive work. Really useful when it comes to organising GB.

If you could make the same work for some popular keyboards they would be the 1st choice for everyone organising GB and needing mock ups.

[aviphysics]

There is something masochistic about doing this for a board that has so few custom keycap options.

[Krogenar]

There is something masochistic about doing this for a board that has so few custom keycap options.

Are you referring to doing this for a Model M? That's exactly why it should be done... So that more key caps could be made.

[zoolzoo]

These mock ups are drool worthy. The only problem is that I wish so many of them were real.

[sicaine]

Nice work! I thought doing the same, using blender and a batch script for autoconverting but you did a really good job : ).

Would you mind CGising my image? It is from the group buy CCnG Round 2(http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=40610.0). You could also use this for finetuning the material.

What would be very nice and more sutiable: Can you integrate colorcodes? ST has only special types of color(go to the thread there are color examples in the first thread).

Perhaps you can find material infos for abs?

[kaporkle]

Thank you guys.

Krogenar, ideally I would have orthographic blueprints/drawings of a Model M in vector format, which so far I haven't come across. If that's not an option I can model the case from photos. The most important thing to have though would be good reference photos of the keycaps.
For example McWilloughby has access to a tripod and dslr and did an outstanding job in providing me with good photos of OEM MX caps:

If I had this for Model M caps, it would be enough to get started. Alternately if someone would be willing to mail me a few spare Model M caps I can take the photos myself.
I do plan to add more keyboard models in the future. So far it's the 87U, Filco/QFR tkl (almost identical case?) and Poker/Pure.

Sicaine, I'm rendering your image now.
Poking around the SP website I don't see anything that could provide RGB values for their colors. I may try asking them, because that would come in handy.

[nullstring]

These are pretty awesome kaporkle,

Just curious, how much cputime did these take to render?
I'm curious how feasible it would to get these autogenerated on-the-fly based on submissions via website.

(Not suggesting that you necessarily do-so, just curious about the efficiency of these sorts of renders these days)

[kaporkle]

Thanks nullstring. These take 1-3 hours on average. It can vary quite a bit with the material properties and even with the colors used.
I've had a couple of inquiries about automation and the possibility of integrating these renders in a web-service. Short answer: Seems unlikely. Slightly longer answer: I am using a 3d animation package and I'm personally not aware of any efforts to hook up off-the-shelf 3d animation software to a web interface. Admittedly the web stuff is well outside my area of expertise.

[Batmann]

Poking around the SP website I don't see anything that could provide RGB values for their colors. I may try asking them, because that would come in handy.

Unfortunately they don't have the specs of their colours.
Our best shot on this would be to get a grab an their colour rings (PBT and ABS) and to match them with a pantone, it would then be available in any coulour space.
I'm willing to do this if anyone has a ring he could send me.

[mashby]

matt3o did make a color matching tool that might be of some help.

http://lab.cubiq.org/wta/

More on how his tool works at this link.

[mkawa]

this is like the greatest thing ever, and i want to connnect this to matt3o's tool and script it as soon as possible.

to this end, i've moved it to MST so that it doesn't get buried in "what keyboard should i get" threads

[Krogenar]

Thank you guys.

Krogenar, ideally I would have orthographic blueprints/drawings of a Model M in vector format, which so far I haven't come across. If that's not an option I can model the case from photos. The most important thing to have though would be good reference photos of the keycaps.
For example McWilloughby has access to a tripod and dslr and did an outstanding job in providing me with good photos of OEM MX caps:

Show Image

If I had this for Model M caps, it would be enough to get started. Alternately if someone would be willing to mail me a few spare Model M caps I can take the photos myself.

I will send you some BS caps. I think they're all the same profile, so one model would suffice. I'll put in some of the special keys as well -- Enter, Backspace and what have you. As for the case, I will -- hey, how about I just send you one of my Model M's? Would you be willing to ship it back to me when you're done? I feel like BS keyboards get little to no love from groupbuys, etc. -- partly because people want them to remain 'vintage', but maybe a rendering of a potential new keyset would help. Send me a PM with your address, and I'll ship you out a White Label Model M, which I think is pretty common.

Also, in regards to getting SP's color ring to match up with your renders, I would suggest using PMS colors (Pantone Matching System). Kaporkle, does your software environment support PMS colors? If it does, then that might be the best solution. In my work I use Pantone colors for color matching. There are books published by Pantone called swatch books.



They're just little blocks of color that I can use to find the nearest pantone color for anything. If I can get my hands on a SP color ring, I can determine the closest PMS match to each segment of the SP color ring -- IF your design environment allows for Pantone colors. Or, perhaps SP can give us the PMS equivalents on their own?

[Batmann]

Matteo is full of surprises!

Also, in regards to getting SP's color ring to match up with your renders, I would suggest using PMS colors (Pantone Matching System). Kaporkle, does your software environment support PMS colors? If it does, then that might be the best solution. In my work I use Pantone colors for color matching. There are books published by Pantone called swatch books.

(Attachment Link)

They're just little blocks of color that I can use to find the nearest pantone color for anything. If I can get my hands on a SP color ring, I can determine the closest PMS match to each segment of the SP color ring -- IF your design environment allows for Pantone colors. Or, perhaps SP can give us the PMS equivalents on their own?

pretty much the long version of my previous post!
And no SP don't have any reference for their colours, no RGB, CMYK, PMS or whatsoever

[Krogenar]

pretty much the long version of my previous post!

(facepalm)

What he said!

[Batmann]

^ maybe it would be easier for you to get a colour ring from a member
you could match them with your Pantone (granted you have the time and the desire to do it ofc )
Living in France makes exchanges long and painfull :/

[mashby]

I'm happy to contribute to the cause and order a ABS color ring and ship it to @Krogenar. He can then match the colors and add it to our knowledge of KEYBOARD SCIENCE! 

Quick question though, are the SP color rings consistent? It feels like they are a bit all over the map and change over time.

@krogenar, please PM me your address and I'll ship you the ABS ring.

[Krogenar]

PM sent! 

(Imagines an entire library of 3D keyboard models...)

[mashby]

Ordered. I'll post the tracking number once I receive it from SP. 

[daerid]

Dunno if you're doing more, but if you can find the time I'd love to see this:

[Turkishrambo]

could u do a render of the toxic set on black case?

<3

[kaporkle]

Wow that's two people offering to ship out a Model M. That's incredibly kind of you both. Having the object in front of you does remove all the guesswork that otherwise comes with modeling from photo references. I realize it would be somewhat of an inconvenience so thanks very much for the offer. If we go that route I would pay for shipping each way.

In regards to colors: It would definitely be useful to have values for SP's colors. I had some difficulty with color-matching the Raindrop set for aggiejy, it was a lot of eye-balling. If an SP color-ring can be matched to Pantone numbers they can then be converted to RGB values. Matt3o's tool looks very cool btw.

Dunno if you're doing more, but if you can find the time I'd love to see this:

Aye, it's rendering.

could u do a render of the toxic set on black case?

Sure thing. I had to look that up. Yes or No on:
toxic stripe
green mods

[hashbaz]

I can lend you my ABS color ring if it will help.

[Turkishrambo]

Wow that's two people offering to ship out a Model M. That's incredibly kind of you both. Having the object in front of you does remove all the guesswork that otherwise comes with modeling from photo references. I realize it would be somewhat of an inconvenience so thanks very much for the offer. If we go that route I would pay for shipping each way.

In regards to colors: It would definitely be useful to have values for SP's colors. I had some difficulty with color-matching the Raindrop set for aggiejy, it was a lot of eye-balling. If an SP color-ring can be matched to Pantone numbers they can then be converted to RGB values. Matt3o's tool looks very cool btw.

Dunno if you're doing more, but if you can find the time I'd love to see this:

Aye, it's rendering.

could u do a render of the toxic set on black case?

Sure thing. I had to look that up. Yes or No on:
toxic stripe
green mods

Without toxic stripe but with tox mods if possible, and u got the time Im sure im not the only one whod like to see this!

[Krogenar]

Was the Toxic green posted? I thought it was going to be a heretofore unseen, startlingly bright green.