Depth of Field

I remember this post at cgpinoy. I wanted to test mental ray's DOF and tried to come up with a pure out-of-the-box rendered image without using any post editing. The funny thing was I only had a core 2 duo machine. I cannot  recall how many hours it took but it finished without a problem.

I came up with this:

Click to enlarge

CGPinoy First Exterior Rendering Competition

This is the first exterior rendering competition that I will be joining. It's quite interesting because I've been a big fan of Stephen King's The Dark Tower novel and the main subject is a tower. I have read all the seven books in the series and I have so many ideas running in my head of how to approach (should I say) the problem just thinking of The Dark Tower.

Artwork from the original Marvel comic series based on Stephen King's epic The Dark Tower.

the third & the seventh

Just keep in mind while watching all of this (in FULL screen) - it is CG. I had to slap myself a few times midway in the (short)film just to keep from drooling. The musical score just lulls you into this dreamy state that convinces you into thinking that the scenes "are" real; the lights, the textures, the ambiance... (are they not?). This is something I can only dream of achieving.

I'll just shut up now because you'll enjoy it more by seeing it for yourself. It's not enough to use a single word to best describe this magnificent work by just one man. This is just truly awe-inspiring. Check out Alex Roman's site and see more of what I'm talking about.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

The Season

I'd like to greet everyone Happy Holidays!

I haven't touched my (upgraded) pc at home for a while so I've got no renders to post. Been busy moving flat and work just keeps getting in the way of learning 3dsmax and mental ray.

Almost forgot, I happily traded (with some cash) my core 2 duo processor for a core 2 quad. yipee!

Again, have a safe holidays everyone!

Of (Christmas) balls and 3D

I have finally in my possession a reflective ball. It's something that I have been looking for here in the UAE for months now. I have almost given up hope of trying out mental ray's production shader with my own background and reflection images. A good friend (Hey, Glyndon I hope you can read this) told me to wait for Christmas and true enough Carrefour is now selling decors for Christmas and I bought two pieces at City Centre for 2.50 Dirhams only. I know I won't be able to obtain perfect reflections from a cheap 7 centimeters diameter Christmas ball but it IS perfect for a simple scene practice. 

The Christmas balls.

Exterior ArchiViz

This is my first go at an exterior architectural rendering. It's a work-in-progress. This was started months back when work was not "getting in the way" of learning 3dsmax and mental ray. And then work at the office started to pick up. So I had to finish as much as I can before work really gets in the way. I can't seem to get a good POV at first but I decided to render it anyway. This was modeled in Sketchup and exported to 3dsmax.

Click for higher resolution

These renders are just lighting test of mr sun &sky as well as finding a good point of view.

Click for higher resolution

I'm still not satisfied with this half-done output. It still needs a lot of work but I'm glad it turned out well.

Side note: The design was done by a good architect friend. Thanks Mervin for letting me use this. I'll improve it when work don't get in the way of learning this wonderful new craft. :)

Train Scene for download

For those of who would want to see how I worked out the train scene, below is the link to download the 3ds max 2009 file. It's rendered with Mental Ray. I left out the HDRI and some of the materials from the file because they are proprietary stuff. You can easily substitute them with what you have. Anyway, they are properly named so you won't get lost.

Forgive my modeling skills, it's something I am not really proud of.:)

And here is another render. It is a bit better than the last.

Download

Image Based Lighting

I've been scouring the net lately for tutorials on Image Based Lighting. There were several that I've found to be very helpful. Of course I have to try it out for myself. So I exported a model I did in Sketchup to 3ds format as a test subject. It's a simple wooden toy train. If you would take a closer look, the train's wheel are not smooth. I did not use turbosmooth modifier on it thinking it would come out okay but then again it didn't. This was probably because of the way the model got exported or the way I modeled it. Whatever the cause for that, I had to find out for my next time.

I love the way it lights up the entire scene and the soft shadows it creates.
More to come.