Got Balls...

This is a picture of some balls. Nothing much. Didn't take long to model. Didn't take long to apply materials. This was an excercise in depth of field. I wanted the object to be in focus and everything else to progressivly blur. I think it worked alright.

Working Vacation...

Considering all of my responsiblities (work, family, ect.), I have always thought of sleeping as a vacation. If you think about it, it's probably a vacation for you as well. It's a time to relax, stretch out, close your eyes, forget the world, and dream. When I wake up, I'm refreshed, I feel great, and I'm ready to face the real world with a little bit more energy and enthusiasm.

Sometimes my dreams are demanding. If I stay up too late playing a video game and I can't get past a certain level, I'll have a demanding dream; I'll dream about figuring a way out of the level. When I have a demanding dream, it's like taking a working vacation. I get a little less relaxed. My energy is only slighty recharged.

On a completely unrelated note (which is my sarcastic way of saying "related note"), I made this render today after dreaming of it last night. Two questions...

1 - What is it?
2 - What does it do?

BTW, this is exactly how I visualize this in my demanding dreams.

It's Very Cold In Space...

The other day, I decided to take a trip around the world utilizing a Low Earth Orbiting Vehicle. I took a couple of photographs. Enjoy...




Ok... I wasn't really in space. These are actually 3D renders that I made using 3DS Max and some earth images I found online. Believe it or not, these were rendered with Scanline instead of Mental Ray.

Three Dee Ess Max...

I just "Purchased" 3DS Max 2010.

It's weird. When I first started it up, I thought for just a second it was a cruel joke. The user interface was a big blob of gray shading. Fortunately, I was able to clean it up a little. After about 5 minutes messing with a custom UI, I made it somewhat visually appealing... at least enough to start working on something simple.


The good news is the lighting seems a little easier to figure out. The bad news? Nothing yet. More to come...

Propellerhead Reason...

It's really hard for me to come up with something to design with 3DS Max. It's easier for me to just pick a logo and make a 3D version of it. Yesterday I decided to do a render of Propellerhead Reason's logo shown here:

This is what I came up with:

The orange boxes are just chamber boxes booleaned with a cylinder. The orange colored material is a high gloss ceramic and the black material is a two tone car paint. I used two white self-illuminated boxes to stimulate the center sphere. The stage material is a polished cement. All materials except for the self-illuminated white are standard mental ray materials.

The lighting was a little tough for me. I still haven't mastered lighting with 3DS Max 2009. I used two photometric target lights at 110K lm from each side to simulate relfected light. I also used a standard omni, with shadows enabled, from above and behind. Most of the ambient light was generated from a standard skylight directly above center.

More logos to come...

Spades...

Here is a header design I made for my brother's poker blog. I actually made a lot of different styles but this is the one my brother likes the best.

The 4 suits were modeled with 3DS Max 2007. I used a chrome material for the edges and a checkered car paint material for the center. The surface is also a car paint material but I lower the reflectivity to lower it's presence.

My goal was to make it look as real as possible. After I finished, I felt it looked real but not real enough. I changed my goal to make it look a little abstract. I opened the file in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and added a plastic wrap filter.

Here are some other examples...

Tweaking...

I recently "purchased" 3D Studio Max 2009. The previous version I had was 2007. This is so much better. It took awhile for me to get through a lot of the changes but I think I'm finally figuring it out. Below is my blog header plus the re-rendered version using the new version of Mental Ray and also using some great mental ray materials that came with the software.

3ds max 2007

3ds max 2009

Geeking...

Here's another logo. BSL stands for Bath Scientific, Ltd. That's the company that built the machine that I run at work. I made this to use as a desktop wallpaper on the machines control computer. I know... I need to get over the whole chrome thing. I promise I'll start working on other types of materials.

J.Ro Logo

The 2009 season is about to start for the LGPA. I decided to make a 3D logo for my favorite golfer, Jenny Rosales. I used ornament material for the blue outline. I used a checkered carpaint Raytrace for the pink and a chrome material for the... chrome looking part. I'll probably make a desktop wallpaper available for download on her website.

Ornament Material quick tutorial...

After many hours of tweaking around in the material browser, I have finally figured out how to simulate christmas ornaments using the mental ray engine.

Using a standard materail, I set up the diffuse to black RGB(0,0,0). Specular Level:80, Glossiness: 40. Use a fresnel falloff map in the reflection with an intensity between 50 and 65. The falloff mix curve should be set up as shown below.



The second color on the falloff is set as "raytrace" map with your favorite HDR image as the background map. The first color of the falloff will be a "mix" map.

The first mix map color will be another raytrace map with the environment settings as the background map. the second mix map color should be set to whatever color you want the Christmas ornament to look like... except you'll want to drop each RGB channel by about 10 to 15.

The mix level should be set whichever way looks best. The ball on the left is set to 15. The red ball is set at 40 and the green ball is set at 50.

Setup the mental ray for final gather (set to around 40 or 50). Also, I use the Lanczos filter with pixel sampling setup at 4 min. and 16 max.

There you go. Rendering time will take a long time. You can kill the fresnel level raytrace for faster rendering times but you will lose quality. Add it to your favorite ornament model and you're done.

More 3d Logos...

America's Team

Brandon's Team

2009 Superbowl winners

Chargers 3d Logo...

I spent a lot of last week learning how to make realistic materials for 3DS Max. This image was made using a chrome-like material and a couple of high gloss materials.

It took me just a couple of hours to model. It took another hour to figure out the lighting. A couple of tweaks to the rendering engine and this is what I got. It took 4 minutes to render this one image. I also rendered a high resolution (1440 x 900) for my new desktop wallpaper. If you want one for yourself, email me.

a'dam 3d render...

This is an a'dam from the Wheel of Time series. I rendered it with 3ds Max. This scene is made up of 1 light, 1 camera, 8 materials, 38 objects and 195,140 polygons. It took about 10 hours to make.

So what's an a'dam?

"An a'dam is a ter'angreal designed to hold a female channeler captive. It takes the form of a flexible silver collar and bracelet, usually joined by a long "leash" although that convention is not strictly necessary to its functioning. They form a basis for the "leashed channeler" social status in the Seanchan Empire; the leashed woman is called a damane ("Leashed one"), and the women who holds the bracelet a sul'dam ("Leash holder")."

a'dam. WoT.wikia.com. Retrieved November 29, 2008, from WoT.wikia.com website: http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/A%27dam

Stupid header image...

The header image at the top of the page is starting to drive me crazy. Why??? Because I'm a perfectionist and the image is not perfect. Maybe you might have noticed, maybe not. The lit light bulb has a shadow.

Of course, that's impossible.

Shadow shad·ow -noun [shad-oh] - a dark figure or image cast on the ground or some surface by a body intercepting light.

Obviously, since the body intercepting light is in fact a source of light in and of itself, it cannot cast a shadow.

The reason there is a shadow is because I am not as experienced at 3D modeling and rendering as I would like to be. I think I did an OK job modeling the light bulbs and setting up the lighting and textures in 3D Studio Max. The problem I had was trying to make the 3rd light bulb look illuminated. This problem was only half solved by adding the lens flare and point source effects using Adobe Photoshop.

Photoshop is great for touching up images but it should never be used to light up the subject of a scene. The illumination effect looks great but that stupid shadow is still there. Adobe can't make that disappear without some serious, time consuming editing.

The solution is for me to learn how to illuminate a light bulb model in 3D Studio Max. I somewhat know what to do but I can't get the illumination to look as good as in Photoshop.

This is a "...to be continued" project. You'll know I have solved the problem sometime in the future when you will no doubt navigate to my thoroughly entertaining and intellectually stimulating blog and notice that the annoying shadow, which has plagued your thoughts and dreams for what seems like decades, has finally descended into the decrepit cespool known as mediocre art hell.

shadow. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved October 21, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shadow

Wheel of Time...

It's been a little over a year since Robert Jordan died. There was a lot of anxiety in his fan base on whether or not he would finish the series. As of now, the series is still not finished.

There is hope for WoT fans, however because author Brandon Sanderson is hard at work with the final book. It is scheduled for publication in Fall of 2009.

In preparation for the release of the last installment, I have begun rereading the series. I just finished book 2 - the Great Hunt. Even though I remember just about everything about the books, I still find it a great read. My perspective is different now that I've read all 11 books so the first couple of books are a little different.

For example, the first time I read these books, I had no idea what the Emond's Fielders meant when they talked about "false dragons" and "Aes Sedai". Moiraine mentioning "the ways" meant nothing to me the first time either. When Min describes the auras she sees on Rand, Egwene, Matt and Perin, I understand what the auras mean.

I don't normally reread books. In this case, I decided to reread more for proficiency than for enjoyment. I want to be ready for book 12 when it comes out. As it turns out, I am really enjoying this series. Robert Jordan is a great writer. His description of environments and action/battle scenes are detailed and interesting. His characters are fun and memorable.

I can easily see myself rereading this series for a 3rd or 4th time. For those of you who have not read it once, I highly recommend you pick up book 1 - The Eye of the World. Even if you are not an Epic Fantasy reader, you will enjoy this series.

On a side note...

I was supposed to start reading book 3 yesterday. The problem is I'm depending on my buddy to let me borrow it. He keeps forgetting to bring it when we hang out. So instead of reading book 3, I find myself scouring the internet for discussions, articles, and artwork inspired by the Wheel of Time series. I found some gems and I'd like to share.

My two favorite Wheel of Time concept artists host blogs here on blogger.com - Jeremy Saliba and Seamas Gallagher. Check out their artwork when you have the time.