360 testing

Here's a quick test showing iframe implementation of Sirv service..
I set my free account up here: https://my.sirv.com

Sarah & Duck

My daughter is 2 and a half and loves Sarah & Duck... which is a bonus because so do it!! It's fantastic. Sarah is this super cool emo-chick in a hoodie and the duck is.. well, just a duck. I'm working on my Blender skills right now and decided to use this as a test bed for building a very simple character.
This is a fairly rough first draft. Eventually I'll recreate the textures properly and pay some more attention to the materials. Perhaps at some point I will do a lighting study or create a scene for Sarah to have an adventure in... but for now, there's just this

Vray DOF recreation

This is a like for like recreation of a shot I found while trawling the internet. I can't find the reference for this so if anyone knows PLEASE let me know and I will credit it.

Post-production depth of field plugins have been round for a while and do a great job in production. That being said, when it comes to refractive and reflective surfaces and materials... well, a normal z-depth pass can't handle it.

Granted there are some obvious differences between the render and the photo but the test achieved what I set out to find out. (how rendered dof reacts for interacting reflective and refractive materials)

  

Jet Fighter circa 1850

I was inspired recently by a piece in a magazine. It showed an element that was really out of place but had been made to blend in with the surroundings. This Harrier jet in a pre-ww1 street scene is my effort.
Modelled in 3ds Max, rendered with very and composited in Photoshop.

Star Trek wear and tear

I love Star Trek, including the original series.

I've always appreciated the design style of that series but always wanted to see more dirty, wear and tear. 

This adaptation of the TOS Phaser aims to describe the more functional, mechanical nature of the design. 

A bit of fun for the most part but I also used this as a test bed for Ddo. Really interesting software.

Aim low, play bass

I started modelling this bass guitar while I was at uni in 2001. After a few re-models I decided to do a lighting study for gloss material properties.

My aim on this was to achieve the finished result using the least amount of direct light as possible, relying predominantly on bounced/reflected light.

slitscan prop rendered result

This is an example of the seamless texture generated by the slitscan technique.

Because the captured texture is so close to the final requirement, the time needed to produce the final piece is minimal. 

Render including DOF in post

Processed in black and white.. (even though it's CG I still love black and white)

Processed using a Holga/Lomo style.

Slitscan textures & map generation

I purchased a cheap motorised turntable from China about a month ago.

This was intended to be used for a photogrammetry project but instead became

really useful for a different application.

Slitscan photography or temporal photography is typically used for photo-finish images in eg. the 100m sprint.

There are some examples where it has been used in a different way

This script by Martin Dixon processes a video file and extracts a strip of pixels. These are then stacked together

to form a single image.

I sat a bottle (empty) of beer on the turntable and switched it on. I then set up my

Nikon 3200D to shoot portrait hd video.

The processed file looks like this:

Taken into Photoshop and processed. I needed specular, diffuse, mix and normal maps

to create the final rendered version in 3ds max.

I created a simple studio style lighting setup and rendered using Vray. The model that I mapped it to is a generic bottle. At some point I will recreate an accurate Moretti bottle. This should complete the look.

Observations at this stage: The lighting while recording the footage needs to be more even as some of the colours are not accurate.

The normal map for the glass is a bit on the heavy side. It seems to be suggesting a condensation look.

The camera wasn't aligned correctly when I recorded the footage, and as a result the textures are wonky..

Other than that, I feel this is a pretty successful first attempt at seamless, (semi) automatically generated texturing for cylindrical based objects :)

3d scanner progress

I've recently done some experimenting with 3d scanning in its various forms.
Started with an Xbox kinect. I was blown away with the result for the cost of the sensor but not really usable in production:

We bought a NextEngine desktop laser scanner a while ago. It's dead slow but the quality is great.

After that came the Artec Eva. Mental fast but no textures on the version we bought. Test scan went ok.

VW mk1 Golf GTI

So, long story short. I've always wanted one of these cars. I started to model one while I was at University in 2002. Five remakes later and I finally made some images that I was semi-happy with.

I'd like to do another remodel as I now have a real one in the garage. We have an Artec 3d scanner at work so I suppose I could give scanning a go. That being said, I'd definitely just use the scanned result as a base to retopologise on top of. 

Real Golf

I wish golf

Challenger... the car not the space shuttle

This is a dodge challenger that I built in 3ds max. I really wanted to have a nice car to test out some studio lighting, so I chose this. The interior is poor but the external features seem to stand up to scrutiny.

Rendered with Vray 2.4 and some post in Photoshop.

My approach to the lighting was quite simplistic. The main highlight across the top half of the car is a large source tilted slightly towards the camera. After a tone of test renders to get the position right (the aim was to accentuate the crease in the body) I added the spots for the wheels. to try and bring out the detail in the tires and multi-spokes... man i love classic wheels like that!!

gallery... again

I started a blog a year ago to document my work and some cool stuff that I'd happened upon the way. A few months later the site closed down and it was all gone... Downer!!

So now I'm back and starting a new blog. The aim of the blog is to mainly document my CG and photography work. I may post some influences in and amongst too..