Archive

poniedziałek, 27 grudnia 2010

Fiery chicken-blob mix

Christmas is time of family reunion, traditional food and classy beverages... I think I`m getting lazy.

Here`s a one-day-project. Started like anything-for-an-advanced-aftereffects-post and ended in dynamics, realtime recording, procedural dynamic light emission, expressions. Grew to few hours of 3d work, several hour render and a couple hour postprocessing.
Just before lunching final render at 6 am I thought it might be nice to animate chickenblob burning excess of kinetic energy when it`s stops moving. Unfortunately was already tired when this idea came to my mind... Well, maybe next time.
In terms of utility of this excercise, I tested camera movement/targeting related things, timeremapping, some invasive color correction.
I`m perfectly aware of many other effects to be implemented (procedural twitches, dof, flares, bokeh, fog, ss, cross just to name few) but with a single render pass and lack of time this is how far the tests go.
Noise, resolution, TR flicker are time related issues (I`d render it to noiseless fullHD at 80frames per second if I had proper hardware).




Special thanks go to:
Kosma
Pawlack


Tip of the day:
Watch good tutorials.

Website of the day:
www.game-artist.net

środa, 22 grudnia 2010

Houston we have a problem

After having modelled few plants I wanted test them so I`ve thrown everything into one rapid messy composition.
Actually no textures were applied which does not justify how BAD this thing looks right now.
I planned adding more variety, doubling, tripling the number of plants, flowers, ivy, trees... Adding colorful, bioluminescent texture maps... But on how this thing is turning out I might just scrap it all.
Any ideas, suggestions?



Tip of the day:
Start small.

Website of the day:
Cgtextures.com

niedziela, 19 grudnia 2010

Beetle WIP

In first place WIP stays for work in progress.
The body is almost finished while legs are still in works, just layed down few polies to set a render.
The beetle will be visible in my diploma for just few seconds, half of which out of focus. Need a tablet to give the model and texture a final touch. Also, it requires a specular map and a rig.

This very special bug is dedicated to Olga, girl that makes me laugh and not only laugh :)


Tip of the day:
When something looks really bad just... nuke it out instead of looking for extreme fixes.

Website of the day:
www.zbrushcentral.com

sobota, 18 grudnia 2010

SSS alien blob

This one`s loosely related to my diploma.
Well, to tell the truth I was working on some weird looking vegetation when I figured out it`d be good to practice with SSS. Might sound weird but it`s not fluid dynamics, it`s just a metaball.
Uh and sorry for color banding, I`m still testing the looseless postprocessing workflow.

That`d be it... An idea that came into my mind: I`ll start linking interresting websites to take a look at. During past years I accumulated quite few links I`d like to share. Stay tuned!

Tip of the day:
When it comes to CG write down your ideas and things to do. This helps finding proper order of making them. Save time.

Website of the day:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/

czwartek, 16 grudnia 2010

Testing ivy

Fast glimpse on what I`m working atm. Renders unexpectedly fast.
Might turn out nice when I`ll play with this proto few hours more.


Tip of the day:
Verbalise your needs. Once you know what they are, just google.

środa, 15 grudnia 2010

One of last small updates. Next ones coming will be more robust. I can almost sense them :)





I`m testing few things:
-new place-object-on-surface algorithm, with relatively high imput values
-new terrain generator even though these are my first steps in it
-new procedural texturing shader. Current version is based mainly on occlusion, slope, facing direction and least but not last complex naki/poxo/sema/luka...noise pattern.

-and ofc more grass.



Disclaimer: this image supposed to look better after postprocessing.


Tip of the day:
When in need, look for specialized software.

niedziela, 12 grudnia 2010

Procedural moss, AE post

Second update, way earlier than I expected.

Here`s ...proceduraly generated moss growing over stones. I`m far from being happy with the results but following this line of thought would make this blog pointless. So here it is.


As You can notice the moss is growing only on the occluded areas. The way it blends with stone is still in works... Well, I need to find right noise pattern, then scrap the current one `cause it`s ugly.
I might also add slope and direction factor to improve the shader.

As for post processing, yeah, I`m slowly moving from PS to aftereffects post. Makes everything automatic and allows to work on video footage way better than batch does.

Tip of the day:
Subtle is the key. When it comes to post ofc.

sobota, 11 grudnia 2010

Vray - 2sided material - vegetation+fog+dof tests








Well, here`s first update.
I do realize that trees do look megafake, did modelled them quite rapidly and only for replicate/performance tests. To see how my software/hardware works with high polycounts.
Given scenes aren`t very complex, they vary from 300k to 2kk polies.

few words

Very often there`s a day when I`m making tens and tens of test renders. Sometimes I do save them... but in most cases those pics get lost. Last month I did 1000+ images of which only something like 50 got saved.
This made me think that it might be a good idea to open a journal, a place where I could post and store all this random stuff I`m doing during my spare time.
Anyway, most of my incoming updates will be dedicated to my diploma project.