Some artwork.
 

Random artwork from me. This was initially something made for a speed modelling contest (where you have to model something in 60 minutes). Then took it a bit further adding more instances of the flower and a background scene. The idea is it's a flower that has little speakers inside the bud. I will go back at some point and make a more detialed version (especially as the stork is such low detail) but for now it will do.

http://forums.3dtotal.com/picture.ph...pictureid=2837

More of my artwork can be found here:

http://forums.3dtotal.com/album.php?u=26320

Re: Some artwork.
 

Very nice!

3D studio max?

I've tried doing a bit myself - can build ok models, but I can never skin or light the scene to do it justice.

Re: Some artwork.
 

I use Modo 302. I still use Max for dynamics and for Vray though. I just can't put this stuff down, love it.

Re: Some artwork.
 

Did you ever try Rhino 3D Dan?

Re: Some artwork.
 

Sure did, used it a fair bit before I got more commercial software. Great little package and free as well (from memory).

Re: Some artwork.
 

Erm that would have been the Beta then - its at least 200Euro for the very basic as an educational package - now at V4.

I still love it as it is, ans always has been, totally NURBS based.

Re: Some artwork.
 

Yeah, I'm talking about 5 years ago.

Not bad, Silo is about £150 as well. A subD modeller same as modo, just without the bells and whistles. Got any work you can share with us?

I also use Maya for some NURBS based work and animation (nurbs means Non Uniform Rational B Splines, that clear???) :p I am tempted to move it all over to XSI though, the new version 7 looks awesome. Still, I don't think I will ever put Modo down, it's awesome.

Re: Some artwork.
 

Haven't done anything worthwhile for ages

Tend to actually use it for 2d stuff - its got some VERY robust tools for curves, so used it to layout stickers and stuff (the ones that were on the front of my SV were originally done in Rhino)

Have a few current projects tho that can maybe be polished up a bit - working on some designs for LARP swords :)

Will see what I can come up with.

Downloading a Trial version of Modo as we speak :)

Re: Some artwork.
 

Cool. The full version of Modo is only £400 too, and it's movign so fast as a new peice of software. Not sure about the curve tools though, not done much with curves in Modo but as a modeller/renderer it's pretty unbeatable.

Re: Some artwork.
 

Rhino never had a very good renderer - it was 1st and foremost a modeller.

When I was doing a lot more stuff I used to model in Rhino, do Layout in MAX and render in Lightwave.

Have to come up with a new tool-chain I think.

Re: Some artwork.
 

My pipeline usually involes:

Modelling: Modo, Maya.
Rendering: Modo, Max.
Animation: Maya, Max.
Dynamics: Maya, Max.

Thank the lord for Academic pricing! :p

Re: Some artwork.
 

Thank the lord for Usenet and fast ADSL connections :)

Re: Some artwork.
 

Umm, what's Usenet?

Re: Some artwork.
 

Sit down, get comfortable and let us begin our story.

Long Long ago, when then 'Net' was still young, and Kazza and Bittorrent were not even thought up yet, there exsisted Usenet, or as it was also known, Newsgroups.

These predated even the mighty Forums, of which sv650.org is just one.

Back in those days, we would be trading emails via Usenet to places like alt.motorcycling.suzuki.sv.650

Then Usenet evolved, like the Bulleting Boards that came before it and started taking binary attachments, leading to such groups as alt.binaries.erotica where pictures, and as storage and bandwidth became cheaper, video of young ladies with no clothes on.

Then some people saw, through the eye not covered by a patch, that they could use this place to trade and distribute software.

And that is basically the story of Usenet as seen from the binary perspective :)

Re: Some artwork.
 

David you naughty boy. I would never do such a terrible thing as to procure software from dodgy means.

Cough.

Ahem.

Ooh, better now.

:p

Re: Some artwork.
 

Forgot to add that by using such Usenet providers as Giganews I can get a full 12Mbps download

Or to put it another way, when I had was grabbing Battlestar Galactica, it would take about 5 mins to download a full episode @ 350MB :)

Re: Some artwork.
 

Ah, another BSG fan. I can't believe we have to wait until Jan for the next 10 episodes. :mad:

Re: Some artwork.
 

very impressive! :cool: watch out for matching where your shadows fall though (sorry...the Artist in me speaking!)

Re: Some artwork.
 

Those are very good renderings. I did my M.Sc. in 3D graphics about 18 years ago, but haven't actually done any since. I downloaded Blender the other day, as it's free, to play about with, but it's not the easiest thing to use.

Re: Some artwork.
 

Thanksyou ArtyLady. The shadows are based on the light source and are physically accurate. Meaning, they are where they should be according to the laws of physics. ;) The light source emits photons, these are raytraced through the scene. There is probably a much better description for it than that (i.e ask Luke Millar) It's all 3d work, I don't do much 2d work these days, probably should do more but it's time I'd rather spend in 3d world.

Re: Some artwork.
 

Close, but not cigar :D
Ray tracers actually work backwards, tracing light rays back from the camera position to the light source. Forward ray tracing (from the light source) is too hard to do, as most of the photons will never reach the camera.

Re: Some artwork.
 

See, I knew someone was round here that could explain it better. I could have Wiki's it but couldn't be bothered. :p Cheers Wyrness. One thing is for sure, in 2 years or so they reckon we'll have Ray Tracing in games! Wooo.

Re: Some artwork.
 

The "people who know" seem to think that while Intel are working on it, they are actually inventing a problem for them to create a solution to so that they can sell silicon.

It turns out RayTracing may not be the be-all and end-all for games, but RayCasting may.

Re: Some artwork.
 

Ooh, taps raycasting into Wiki and reads on.........

Re: Some artwork.
 

If you look at the shadow on the ground it suggests the sun coming from 4 o'clock but the shadow from the "flower" onto its petals suggests the sun is coming from 2 o'clock - but the light source on the golden rim of the flower suggests light from 4 o'clock :)

Not trying to criticise - just from my own observations as a professional artist. I still think its very clever stuff! :smt023:cool:

Re: Some artwork.
 

Nooooooooooo, I come on here to get away from work! ;)

Nice render! Any comp work or is that out-the-box?

Re: Some artwork.
 

Hey Artylady, sorry to sound like I was a mr knowitall (I'm really quite nice) and you are correct. There are two lights in the scene, one was a physical sun and the other a fill light. And your keen eye spotted that they were ever so slightly misaligned. Them is some good mince pies (eyes). :p

Hey Luke,

I did some comp work in photoshop, mainly just created an instance of the main image, desaturated it and adjusted the levels to darken it a bit. Then changed the blending mode to soft lights and lowerd the opacity. I'm still learning ps though. Also added a bit of diffuse glow. Am tryign to figurte out how to do a depth pass in Modo but no joy so far, would be so much quicker do do the dof in post.

Re: Some artwork.
 

This started as an artwork thread and turned into a geek thread in the first few posts! ;-)

Re: Some artwork.
 

And?

Geeks rule! :p

Re: Some artwork.
 

Hehe...no worries...Im a bit of an art pendant and it doesnt really matter as obviously its not meant to be realism anyway! Ive just done a section on Art History analysis in my degree! :geek: :lol:...I'll shut up now! ;)

Re: Some artwork.
 

Teh Geeks shall inherit teh Earth

Re: Some artwork.
 

What Carmack is talking about here isn't 'traditional' ray tracing in the sense that Intel are thinking about, but nor is it 'ray casting' (though he does use that term at one point). It's really a different form of ray tracing which will give all of the advantages of traditional ray tracing (shadows, reflection, refraction), which ray casting doesn't provide.

You need to know what a 'sparse voxel octree' is to understand what he's talking about here. It's quite a while since I did my M.Sc. in this, but I've got a fair idea of what he's proposing.

Re: Some artwork.
 

Yeah, I read up on it in more detail when the article first came out, forgot most of it and just threw what I could remember into the mix :)