Just wanted to bang out something in C4d where I brought a smoke VDB object into it from Houdini. Did the cheesy neon and Tron thing just to get something happening in there. Hopefully I can be forgiven. It’s a Sam Prekop lyric that was going through my head on Sunday. Redered in RedShift.
News and Updates!
The fun stuff first! Jeremy Wilkins of the band We Are Parasols did a lovely blog post on all the art work I have made for their band over the years. Check out the write up here, “ARTWORK BY DANIEL KOPTON (DANKLIFE) -OR- SPHERES, SKULLS, & LIGHT.”
I finally got a bit of time to start updating the portfolio as well and added a project we did for Sierra Nevada that needed landscapes and log cabins rebuilt. Pretty fun stuff.
Smoke interacting with objects
Yesterday I wanted to get some smoke to roll down a sweep, interact with a object and then have some wind come in to clear the set. This is where I ended up and I’d chalk it up as a success. I did not get into lighting or textures too much because I wanted to focus on the sim mostly. There is also some annoying flicker in the textures I need to look into fixing. Then I brought it into Resolve 16 and dove into some of the nodes for the first time. The Fusion part of Resolve I think I can sink my teeth into. Interesting stuff in there.
Colored and animated!
K, got the animation to work. Man, I really dislike doing any kind of video editing. What a pain in the ass……
Smoke Study Part Two, colored and maybe animated
Still walking the road of smoke sims in Houdini and this is the latest still image from a hopeful animation. Maybe? Need to load it into Resolve and see how it works in there yet. Happy with the shape, color and movement. Torus with a mountain SOP on it for the smoke source.
EXR support in Photoshop!
K, this is kinda a big deal for me, lol! You can now load layered .EXR files into Photoshop with cryptomatte support. Free plug in! Now I no longer have to bounce renders through Affinty Photo. Cool stuff. Exr-IO 2.00
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.
Fluid Source node in Houdini 17
If you are wondering where in the hell the fluid source node went to in Houdini 17, The genius behind Applied Houdini already has a explainer video for you here.
“Essentially it's a Pyro Source SOP (set to Source Smoke) to create points, an Attribute Noise SOP to mess up the density values a bit, and then a Volume Rasterize Attributes SOP to convert the points into a volume that can be read into the simulation with the new Volume Source DOP node, which needs only to be set to Source Smoke to work properly…”
There is a reason I do not have children
“What if I told you there was a paper on climate change that was so uniquely catastrophic, so perspective-altering, and so absolutely depressing that it's sent people to support groups and encouraged them to quit their jobs and move to the countryside? “
More on Vice and found VIA Metafilter
“Chiefly, that it's too late to stop climate change from devastating our world—and that "climate-induced societal collapse is now inevitable in the near term."
How near? About a decade. “
Podcast link here.
Garry Winogrand
WAP logo study
Was tinkering around with vellum and the detangle node in Houdini yesterday and came up with this little logo study for the band, “We are Parasols”. Liking Redshift in Houdini quite a bit as well. Volumetrics are pretty easy to do. Though I say that after failing terribly at a fire sim this weekend……
Morning
Just getting my get up and go on here so I thought I’d post away here. why not right? Anyways, this is pretty amazing feat.
Pretty cool image.
You can download the full high rez file as well. Some interesting wallpapers could be made from that for sure.
When I first sat down, I thought my saved tabs told an interesting story as well. Gee, can you tell where my focus is now-a-days?
New Work in the Wild
Some recent stuff that we have been doing has surfaced on the internet. Really fun project with cool CG sets built out. When we get some time I’ll try to put together a “making of”.
Typecast
Pretty moving piece here. Well done.
Just a couple renders
Just been doing some simpler renders trying out different things the past few nights. Never built out any neon and wanted to try out some things with the new volume mesher. All built using C4d and redshift.
I want to be an enthusiast.
And even if I’d like to I don’t think I can hand someone a resume with the title “enthusiast” as the only skills and experience.
Awesome blog post by Tim Pigott over at SuckLuck. Go check out this words and photos now you old fools.
Hmm, noticing a trend here....
“About six years ago, when I told people I was writing a novel about a group of activists destroying the internet, they would always ask me two questions. The first was always “why?” Tellingly, that’s not a question I get asked anymore. More often than not I’m met with a “nice,” a “right on,” or just a knowing, appreciative nod.
Amen.
““I absolutely detest modern ‘social media’ — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. It’s a disease. It seems to encourage bad behavior,” ”
Salvaged Beseler 23IIc enlarger!
My good friend Jeremy found this sitting on the side of the road and since it had a lens I was interested in seeing it. He was kind enough to pick it up, sit on it for probably a month and brought it over tonight. Electronics still work and has BOTH lenses which is unheard of, they are a bit mangey though. The gearing is shot to hell without a hope. I think I may make a wall sconce out of it in a way that if I ever got the notion I could use it in a darkroom. The video is shot through the massive focusing lens. I have a crazy notion to make a rig to mount that to a camera……
Your job for the rest of your life is to always be learning
Some great stuff here in this discussion. Covers, burn out, mental burn out, rates, being a human being and all sorts of goodness. Give it a listen.