Getting Amorphous in Amorphium 3

Tutorial: Page (1) of 4 - 03/24/04

Getting Amorphous in Amorphium 3 Part 1: The basics of abstract imagery for still and motion graphics By Dave Nagel So I was doing some research on 3D programs, and I learned something interesting. Contrary to popular belief, 3D isn't just for impressing your mom with your ability to make an image that looks like a photograph. It isn't just for creating monsters to populate your latest homemade Dungeons and Dragons module or Oscar-winning feature film. And it doesn't have to be used strictly for the purpose of designing your fantasy girlfriend and posing her in various stages of undress. In fact, though 3D programs are universally geared toward photographic representationalism, they don't have to be used to create artwork that looks like anything at all, but can be employed for creating abstract imagery with depth, texture and motion in ways that simply aren't feasible in 2D graphics applications.

Recently a reader was asking me about 3D programs and which ones he might want to look at for generating abstract imagery, presumably for the purpose of creating motion backgrounds with a geometric bent. He was looking for something that wouldn't be overkill in terms of the program's features or the drain on his bank account, and immediately Amorphium 3 from Electric Image came to mind. Amorphium is a 3D program targeted toward graphic designers--those who might not need some of the higher-end features found in the top 3D programs (including EI's own Universe), but who have a practical need to work in 3D, whether for creating still images, animations or motion background elements for a broader composition. So I thought it would be a good time to start off a new series exploring some of the designer-oriented capabilities of Amorphium.

Obviously Amorphium isn't just for sculpting abstract imagery. It has many of the other capabilities found in higher-end 3D programs, especially in the modeling and text extrusion departments. We'll get into some of these capabilities later on. But for now I thought a good way to cover some of the program's basics would be to use simple objects to build abstract geometric forms, which you can then use for backgrounds or animations. We'll kick things off in part 1 of this series with a look at basic geometry, camera and lighting manipulation. In future installments we'll also get more in depth with animation, painting and textures. If you don't have Amorphium 3 and would like to follow along, you can download the fully-functional demo from http://www.electricimage.com/products/amorphium.html. (Note that the demo will not allow you to save projects and will apply a watermark to rendered images.)

Incidentally, this isn't the first time we've run an article on creating abstract geometric imagery. If you're a user of Maxon's Cinema 4D, you can find a tutorial on this topic from our resident guru, Ko Maruyama, here: http://www.creativemac.com/2003/05_may/tutorials/c4d1030506.htm.

Preparation: Lighting and basic object creation
We're going to accomplish our abstract composition through a fairly simple technique: creating a cube, modifying its geometry, applying some lighting and then rendering the scene from the inside of the object.

To begin, launch Amorphium and create a new project. In the Display menu within the Composer workspace, turn off backface culling. (Backface culling is off if there is no bullet in the menu item.) This will allow you to move your camera through the object and get a decent representation of what your final image will look like.

Next, we're going to delete the default sphere object. You can achieve this effect with a sphere, but I've had better results working with objects that have corners. So select the sphere, and delete it.

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