Scene/model taken from the 3drender.com lighting challenges.
This is still a WIP - caustics not yet done and could do with a few more lights.

Render time (on my very slow laptop 2min5sec)

It produced these results which I kinda like, with some more tweaking I think it will be a pretty fun shader to use - it added 1 second to render time.

and after amb_occlusion pass + some colour balance/ noise in PS;


(model by Anthony Thomas)

These were from the Lighting and Rendering with Mental Ray course I went on last year. The course ran by Jeremy Birn (Lighting Artist, Pixar) was great for further study in to lighting/rendering with 3d packages (Maya used for these). I'm continuing studies in lighting by doing the 3D Lighting Challenges found here




I'd recommend the course for anyone interested in Lighting or Rendering, the basic techniques can be used in any package really and it teaches how to use lights well and more importantly efficiently (getting good results without necessarily the need for advanced rendering options like Global Illumination).

Sculptris is currently a free to use 3d sculpting program (currently in Alpha stage). It is slightly more basic and raw compared to the big sculpting tools (mudbox/Zbrush) but it still has a great charm and excellent ease of use.

Here are a few tests done with it (using the default sphere as the starting point).

Above: test/wip work of a Magneto/ Raiden character (head would be covered with helmet)
Below: A goblin

Above: WIP of a Kingpin style character
Below: Test Render in Maya with bump and skin shader applied

I found the program really easy to use and a nice start for those not used to importing objects in to Maya for a render. (I used a modified version of MayaSSS Fast Skin Shader as a base for the skin with my texture painted colours as bump added to it, then a simple lighting rig for the images). The downside is it's quite a bit harder to get a refined model such as in zbrush and poly count can be quite high (although the reduce brush does an excellent job of lowering poly count).

This program is perfect for lunch time doodles at work or test ideas which can then be developed in more powerful software combinations. Give it a go!

Just a couple of photos I took tonight of the new instruments the Mrs bought me!

Above: A Suling - an Indonesian bamboo flute.
Below: A Mbiri or Kalimba - Thumb piano

Just a few more shots of the bike so far. I'm not too keen on the materials for the brakes currently but I'm just testing out lights and materials while I go do each step. Aiming to get started on the engine over the weekend and if I can put it on the bike for Monday.

I managed to find an old memory card I used for shooting a few years ago which still has all the photos I took in RAW format. I thought I'd go back to them today and use some techniques I now use within adobe Lightroom and Photomatix Pro. Initially although they were shot in colour when I originally uploaded them (they are still in an older gallery) they were all monochromatic simply because I've always been more comfortable shooting for/in B+W. Now I'm a bit more experimental with colour so here are the results;




Today I also found a couple of books in a second hand book store.

Berence Abbott - Masters of Photography

The Book of Portrait Photography - Jorge Lewinski and Mayotte Magnus


They should be good for some reference work when painting / designing and I've always been fond of Abbott's work, especially as he started as a darkroom assistant to Man Ray (ended up doing similar experimental work at college when I did A level photography).

Here are more sketches I did in the past few days. This week I've also bought myself a sketch pad for the upcoming Drink and Draw in Cork (hopefully a regular thing) with a Daler-Rowney graphic pencil set.

Today I also bought This:

Street Sketchbook

by Tristan Manco

It's a great book packed with sketches and work from a lot of street artists (although I wouldn't call it Graph art more like modern graphic design).



I'm going to try and work on more cartoon/simplified characters this week and some full body sketches and try a bit more lighting skin tones when painting digitally.

Above: More work on lighting, starting from an orange/peach to navy/purple gradient.
Below: Sketching Judge Dredd. I went for an older style Judge (Mike McMahon possibly?). I think I still prefer just the standard black and white one here. Took a photo of my sketch and went over it on the Wacom. Thankfully my new sketchbook isn't lined!

Looking through my old footage on my laptop I found some test shots of my Final Year Project at university and I thought I'd put them on here so that I can compare my lighting techniques after learning some new tricks and techniques later.

My final year project was based around mainly using fluid particles to make a glass of water turn in to a flower (well a flower growing from the water). I knew I was going to be shooting it on just a black background as I was wanting to emulate the slow motion Sainsbury's food adverts that were out a few years ago. Lighting was obviously going to be one of the key things I looked at as I needed to make it efficient and yet still look good. For this I decided not to use caustics as the was no solid background for light to reflect to. Then I created a simply lighting rig using grids with a white or gray Lambert texture on them, hiding their primary ray visibility in the render and then using final gather. This cut the render times down by a great deal without the need of global illumination/caustics and gave me the ability to create a nice studio lighting setup using grids as reflected lights and reflectors themselves.

Above: a wireframe view of the full lighting setup for the stem rising up from the water. I added an environment map to add a little extra to the reflections.
Below: A closeup of the lighting setup used when the petals are created.

This will be a weekly or bi-weekly update of my current projects/ideas in development. I've decided to do this to keep me busy and give myself own personal deadlines which I think is important in order to maintain healthy motivation/pressure.

3D Modelling:
Currently learning some core modelling techniques from a tutorial researched at university. The goal is to build a simple Android model. I'm following the tutorial exactly here before I deviate away too soon. I think learning core 3D skills again will help me show off the areas I want to concentrate in (lighting/rendering/particles).
After this I'm going to do a few simple car tutorials and make the generic car model as a studio lighting and render test. While I could just use a premade model I don't think it will hurt to learn some extra modelling skills with this.

Mini Project Idea:
I want to use the techniques learned to create a 3D version of the image below. It will provide some modelling and lighting challenges and yet not be too complex to be impossible for me.