Creating Depth of Field
Even though we’re creating digital renders in a 3d world, we need to keep in mind that we are still imitating a real world camera lens. Cameras and human eyes have something called ‘Depth of Field‘ (or ‘DoF’), which makes objects in the background and foreground appear blurry. When used correctly in your artwork, it can draw the attention to the subject and make the scene more aesthetically pleasing. When used wrong, it can seem like another overused tiresome effect. Learn the difference and how to use it effectively. To play along at home, download this light bulb scene.
s RenderMan®
Just getting started? RenderMan for Maya The perfect tool for the Maya artist who wants to painlessly integrate RenderMan into their work. Read more Advanced tools for TDs
EPHERE: Project: Zookeeper
Zookeeper is a big asset to the toolbox of any technical artist working with 3ds Max... " At last we can create, edit and manage all the components of a 3ds Max scene and their relationships in one unified, clean graph;... If you like node-based systems and use 3ds Max, this one is a must." Full Text - Martin Breidt (www.breidt.net) "Having been a 'Maya guy' for many years prior to switching to Max, Zookeeper is exactly the tool I've been waiting for. Having the uncanny ability to seem familiar and innovative at the same time, Zookeeper takes the node-based workflow to the next level.
How to make Puddles
As I announced in my last video, the theme for this month is Weather! So to kick it off, I’m starting with a very important topic: Puddles. Because no rain scene is complete without them!Puddles are notoriously known amongst the 3d community for being difficult to achieve, and for very good reason! They are flush with the ground, partly reflective and subject to water physics.
Thea Render
The new integrated plugin for 3dsMax has just arrived and licensed users can grab the plugin as a free update! Bundle with Motiva Colimo and create infinite variations from a single render. Perform luminance and illuminance analysis and generate reports out-of-the-box. Thea Render offers a variety of high quality Model and Material Libraries. Lighting simulation is as accurate as never before with full spectral resolution and support for ior and scattering data. All lighting options are here, such as image-based lighting, physical sun-sky, area and point lights along with IES support.
How to run Blender on iOS locally with Bochs
The squidifier sent as a message that it is now possible to run Blender 2.5 through Bochs on the iPad. Of course without a keyboard Blender might be hard to use but this at least shows a way to actually bring the software to run on the iOS device as a first step. Here is the tutorial:
VRayMtlConverter v2.5
A simple MAXScript to automate otherwise time-consuming tasks regarding converting some types of materials (currently: Standard, Raytrace, Brazil Advanced and fr-Advanced) to VRay Materials - and also fixes some parameters of materials of previous versions V-Ray (1.09.xx) in view of changes in new versions V-Ray (1.46.xx and 2.0 SP1). Additional Info: Now the script has installer. At installation it finds and deletes previous version VRayMtlConverter.
Tutorial: Dissolve your Logo in Blender 2.62
Published: 16 February 2012 Using the Remesh Modifier and particles dissolving logos in Blender becomes easy. Dissolving text in Blender has always been a lot of work, but not anymore! Blender 2.62 got a great new addition - the Remesh modifier! It's power combined with a particle system make this awesome effect. For this great effect, you need Blender 2.62 or newer.
Walt Disney Animation Studios
BRDF Explorer is an application that allows the development and analysis of bidirectional reflectance distribution functions (BRDFs). It can load and plot analytic BRDF functions (coded as functions in OpenGL's GLSL shader language), measured material data from the MERL database, and anisotropic measured material data from MIT CSAIL. Graphs and visualizations update in realtime as parameters are changed, making it a useful tool for evaluating and understanding different BRDFs (and other component functions).
Furniture prototype
Hello everybody, I haven't been posting for quite a long time so here's a small project I'd like to share with you. It's a visualization job I did some time ago to our friends who run a small design studio (www.azedesign.pl) - pictures show sofas which would be in production this year. The images sent for print had obviously much more "commercial" feel, but I've decided trying to achieve more interesting look. These are the results: The scene was modeled using Blender and rendered in Cycles using GPU. Post production was partially done in Blender nodes (adding AO and enhancing shadows) but mostly in Photoshop.
