I have dabbled with computer graphics for a long time, learning the basics of simple modelling and animation in small pieces, usually not achieving a whole lot.
But lately I have had some real scenes and images I need to achieve for some people, so have started learning more things from tutorials. And I’ve begun to notice that I now look at the world a little differently.
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[li]I look at a tree, and notice how all the leaves are connected, and how the wind causes the branches to move in a springy fashion.[/li]
[li]I look at a building and see how the dirt and stains are both random yet predictable.[/li]
[li]I look at a car and see how shiny the surface is, noticing how it reflects light and form and distorts to the shape, but mutes the colour.[/li]
[li]I look at the sky and see how clouds are shaped, coloured, and layered.[/li]
[li]I look at draped cloth and see where the tension points are, and the wrinkles that are caused, and the way it moves in the breeze.[/li][/ul]
Just when you think you are at a good clear level of understanding the world around us, you can still experience a subtle change to your point of view that is quite refreshing.
Nice stuff, that subway car looks great. I too dabbled with some 3D stuff, and it’s funny, your comments are spot on. Everytime I watch an FX laden film, I’m thinking about things like the rendering time.
I don’t do anything myself but the spouse has had a hand in some 3D software authoring. Because of the stuff he’s talked about, even just offhand, I certainly have a better appreciation for how remarkable some computer animation is. And it does make one look at the natural world with a new appreciation, too, when you realize how hard it can be to re-create it.
I know exactly what you’re talking about. I took a VR class one semester at college and it left a lasting impression on me as well. I’ll still think about things like how much ambient light is in the room compared with direct. For my senior project I did a smoky pool hall (who knew it was so hard to get smoke to look right?!) and I think about it everytime I play pool, just about. Hey, if you ever do a pool hall, you can save yourself some work, after I modeled the pool cues I used them to hang the lights as well
By the way, there some nice scenes in that gallery, however I should point that you have to work on the lighting more; the shadows are too sharp. You should use more lights, a lot more lights to soften the ilumination.
I´m not sure which software you´re using, but if it doesn´t include Global Ilumination or Radiosity a nice trick is to build a light dome, make an arrangement of 12 to 24 omnidirectional lights placed on an hemi-dome pattern, make this lights all reference copies, so you just have to change the parameters of one to affect the whole array. That would make a sky dome, use a bluish tint for the lights and a lowintensity value, this skylight will fill the scene with subtle lighting and soften the shadows. You can make another, inverted, dome for the ground light, use the average colour of the scene ground for the light colour so it simulates the light bouncing up.
I hope that helps…
Here´s a thread on another MB where I posted some of my works… that was over a year ago, I wish I had more recent samples to show… but anyway, the lighting of the scenes was done with a variation of the method I explained above, see how the lightning and shadows are soft and realistic.
Ale, I know just what you mean. Those pics in the gallery were done a couple of years ago, using Lightwave 5.5, which didn’t get any kind of radiosity until very soon after that version came out.
Newer versions have much better lighting, which I still don’t understand, but I know how to follow tutorials.
Also, for some reason I couldn’t figure out, on some of my pictures (and only some) if I had more than three lights in a scene, then only the first three would actually work, and the rest would behave as though invisible.
I am now using the Lightwave 7 free version that you can get, and radiosity takes about six years to render a frame.
Wow, your work is excellent! I know I have a long way to go to be anything worth writing home about, but I do enjoy it. I plan on playing around with very simple character animation after I’ve finished my current project, just to see if I can get some good cartoony movement happening. As someone who has done a small amount of character acting, I figure I might be good at that.
Isn’t the Italian Renaissance over half a millinuem old? Seriously, you’ve listed verbatim what art students have been learning for centuries in order to realistically reproduce life.
Yes. Well, there you go. It took some serious re-thinking of basic concepts for me to see the real world in a new way (Which, now that I have said it, I guess is stating the obvious).
Here’s more recent stuff, though it’s probably an illusory selection, as there’s precious little original work in these ones.
I’ve also played around with 3d computer graphics. Particle effects are what stick with me the most. Whenever its snowing or raining, I think “hey, that could be modeled with a planar emitter positioned at such-and-such an angle”
