Some recent stuff

Been kinda messing around with all sorts of things lately after doing a deep dive into Redshift. Worked up a vellum grains simulation in Houdini, a cityscape concept in C4d,a cat skull abstract piece and a more playful grapich coffee thing. Next deep undertaking is going to be doing more of a study on how to make abstracts in Houdini. Gonna dive into particles and messing with geo on a deeper level.

Skull Study

Messing around with volume meshes in Cinema 4d today and came up with this little study. It’s fairly tricky to work with Redshift materials in the C4d window though. Can’t see a damn thing in the viewport. Just basically keeping adding shapes into the volume till you get the shape you want.

Smoke Study: Houdini and Redshift

Been super busy with the work-a-day world but I was able to get a smoke sim built in Houdini over the past few days. Think that smoke sim is where I will be spending my time when I have the energy. Pretty happy with the shape and texture of this one. Learning how to art direct it is pretty tricky. Hoping to get into animations at some point but for now I’ll stick with still I think.

Release

Took some time to work on a animation of the Raven skull. This is the first time I have animated anything besides a simulation in Houdini and key framing is much easier than in C4d for me. Need to practice camera moves and learn more about time ramping. Would like this to be way more slow motion but not sure how to go about that yet.

Creating a Snowy Forest in UE4- Breakdown.

Really interesting break down by Leah Augustine on how she created this landscape in UE4. A lot of interesting solutions in here.

“When creating the snow textures in Substance Designer, I also created a detail normal of simple noise that I used in conjunction with the base normal. I found that when you use subsurface you tend to visually lose normal information, flattening out your material. Since I knew I wanted close up shots, I wanted to exaggerate the normals a bit more to counteract this.

I personally think that a detail normal and subsurface scattering is what helped achieve more realistic snow for this project. Subsurface, in my opinion, really brought it all together. It helps give the snow better highlights around the edges and creates the appearance of light shining through it. Subsurface can be costly, but it does make a difference .“

I tried making some snow in Octane and C4d and failed tragically. Will have to landscapes another shot at some point.

Animated Last Post

Wanted to play with animating the last project I posted. It’s my first go at actually getting into a keyframed animation in Houdini. Everything else I have done has just been a sim. Actually getting into the POP network and keyframing it to behave how I was wanted was nice. Overall, Keyframing in Houdini seems pretty easy. No need for the Dope Sheet like in C4d to move keyframes.

Houdini and Vellum.

Taking a break from learning more about Houdini’s attribute nodes to do a short study with the new Vellum solver. I did not simplify the geo in this model or tweak it. Just dropped all of it into one geo node and Houdini delt with it rather well besides a few pointed points. The animation never comes to a rest but like I said, I just plugged it in and let it rip. Using RedShift for my render engine and learning that now as well.

Moving forward with the new year, I plan on posting my danklife instagram imagery here with a bit more back story for two reasons. One, I can add the backstory and direct link to any tutorials or resources used in the making of. Two, instagrams compression officially sucks major shit. Good lord, it’s terribad. I guess part three would be to replace the dumpster fire the danklife facebook page as well.

Mystical by Neil Burnell

Really awesome series of photos here:

“Nestled on the eastern slopes of the West Dart river stands a wood of dwarf oak trees. Once you walk into the tangled web of trees you are transported into a mystical world of moss carpeted boulders, lichens of all descript, finger like oak branches, all engulfed in a wonderful smell of earth and age. For millennia this small, mystical, stunted woodland has been held in awe and for many fear. Tales of Druids, ghosts, the Devil and a host of other supernatural creatures abound, some dating back to the long lost ages before man could write. Many writers have described the wood as being “the most haunted place on Dartmoor”, others warn that every rocky crevice is filled with writhing adders who spawn their young amidst the moss and leaf strewn tree roots. Locals will never venture near once the sun begins it slow descent over the nearby granite outcrops for it is when the dark mantle of night draws tight that the heinous denizens of the wood stalk the moor in search of their human victims. So be afraid, very afraid, as the wagging finger of fate warns you to stay clear and risk not your mortal soul in the ‘Wood of the Wisemen’ “

New Commisioned Poster Art

Just finished up a commissioned Poster for the Portland band We Are Parasols that I am super happy with. A bit of a breakthrough piece for me for a few reasons. This is the first fully creative piece I have made since recently switching to a new Windows machine from Puget Systems for my full time environment. The Mac be dead people, move on sooner than later. I also contribute the new PC workstation with helping light and build out this set since it is so damn fast. Full on game changer for me. So many more possibilities with a system that does not choke and crash in dense scenes. Another reason is it just looks super damn cool, wheee! Really happy with the feel of it.  I kinda had a breakthrough with Octane Render and understanding the node network and it's slightly quirky take on displacement as well.

Realism Studies

Been focusing more on my realism with CG lately and wanted to post a few different pieces using Physical Renderer in C4d and Corona Renderer. If you follow me on Instagram you may have been seeing these trickle in.  Lots of little differences between the two render engines. The light plays a bit more subtle with Corona but Physical can hold it's own once you tweak the GI a bit. Corona gets the "Flare" of sunlight with shadows way better. Corona is really plug and play, no tweaks from the defaults at all but the materials are a bit different and it crashes Team Renderer every time. So it is not production ready as of yet.  Interactive render is very responsive, but save often. Physical gets some really nice details and the Multi-Pass is less glitchy.

Right now in my head I think for stills I would use Corona and for anything needing animation I would use Physical but I got this feeling I can get more out of Physical yet. Anyways, check em out. 

Clear LCDs as animated stained glass

This is pretty amazing. "‘Illuminated Glass’ is an interactive art experience that reimagines the traditional art of stained glass. The heart of the installation features a 4 panel box made with transparent screens and mirrors. A generative art system plays across the screens, appearing at first like modern stained glass. Light shines through the art, letting colored light into the experience."

Loops and Learning

Starting in May we took on a big CG project where we were doing all the finishing on product renders.  They would send us the raw renders and we would clean up and UV glitches and work up light passes to get the renders to a super clean hero look. This gave me the chance to pick the brain of the CG lead over there about what he was using in his workflow to get his results. They centered on C4d and Octane and the results were really good.  I never tested C4d because most of the rabble on the internet seem to slam it as only being good for making spheres look cool on instagram. But after this conversation, I picked up the Demo at the start of June and now can not stand to open Modo. Anything more than converting a file to FBX and I want to tear my head out. With Cinema 4D I find making animations super easy and rewarding. Plus, this also has opened up using DaVinci Resolve to do my post on the renderings which is a very powerful tool as well. Here is a before and after of my latest animation that shows what DaVinci can bring.

Before and After DaVinci

You can see more of the animations on my instagram page which is where I primarily post these things. So far I mostly just use the Physical Render in C4d and have not hit any major snags but I am running some tests with Corona which is really interesting.  Corona was also just bought out by The Chaos Group who make V-Ray which is really interesting to me as I really liked the results of V-Ray in Modo. Anyways, just some rambling on what I have been doing for fun, enjoy!

Learn new skills!

Good read by Paul H. Paulino about how learning traditional media really helped him understand and push his CG work. 

"During my lunch break I would bookmark all kinds of free tutorials I could find and at night I would follow them meticulously, trying to achieve the same result.

After a couple of months doing this, I realized that I wasn’t improving at all. I couldn’t solve problems without looking at step-by-step tutorials and I didn’t feel I was creating anything. The reason was simple: I wasn’t learning. I was copying.

I felt like I needed to do something different to learn things properly and master the skills to become an artist. Soon I realized that it wasn’t just about practicing, it was about knowing how to practice.

After arriving at that conclusion I decided to put my 3D studies aside and, instead, I began learning more about drawing and painting.

To be honest, that conclusion didn’t come quickly. I spent a long time observing, reading and studying successful stories from artists all over the world and I realized that almost everyone highlighted the importance of learning at least the basics of art fundamentals."

VRay Fun

Been testing out VRay for a bit and it has started to really grow on me. I can spend more time getting the lighting and textures right instead of hunting down the noise demons that dwell in Modo's render engine. I really just hit render and let VRay do it's thing. Here is a outdoor study I worked on last night.

"Some places are better left forgotten..."