Visual Diaries

Training: "Detail" Texture Mapping

2010-08-02T17:17:00.008+08:00

After participated in the recent lighting challenge, I realized something is lacked in my rendered work which is texture detail. I must confess that I never textured my work properly, not even in a single work that i've done. Therefore, I've scheduled a series of texture mapping trainings for me to go through. Here we go.

04. Revisiting: Texturing & Shading a Hallway
I've shaded & rendered this scene before, but the result was not satisfying. I decided to redo this scene. Some of the objects i have re-model to allow myself to unwrap the uv easily and faster. I've learned and discovered a modelling technique which allow me to unwrap easily.

Re-model some of the major objects to speed up the UV Unwrap process. I have spent a few hours today, almost finished uv-map the entire scene.

03. Texturing Corosion

02. Texturing Bricks & Blocks Tutorial

01. Russian Composite Map Tutorial
Here below is the result of my first training. More to come. :) I will push myself hard enough to paint decent texture.

House Of Alenquer (Work-In-Progress)

2010-07-28T16:09:00.005+08:00

Day_02 Texturing & Shading

Added swimming pool water with caustic.
Note: When I want to generate caustic to a large exterior scene with daylight system, I realize I must check the photon radius option, and aim it to the swimming pool with the radius that just enough to "cover" up the pool. It would help to reduce the amount of photon that will be wasted. Also, watch out the photon decay value.

Added Swimming Pool Texture

Added swimming pool floor texture.

Day_01 Setting up the scene

Setting up daylight system for texturing & shading soon.

Lighting Challenge: Mad Scientist Work-In-Progress

2010-06-22T14:14:00.017+08:00

Procedural Forest

2010-06-21T20:57:00.003+08:00

Cache the tree geometry with MR.Proxy.
Distributed tree proxy with particle flow, some trees are hand painted with Peter Watje scatter plugin, very handy tools, you can paint proxy object on a geometry. Rendered with MR daylight system.

Flower + Glass Field

R&D: CG Grass & Tree for natural enviroment

2010-06-09T02:39:00.005+08:00

Hi. I'll be working on a job soon which require to create a glass field & forest. I'm finding various solutions for that. My computer is a duocore processor and i will be rendering A3 print size. It is gonna be a good training for me to optimize the scene, rendertime & remain decent render result.

GrassTest_01
Using brute force particle instancing method to scatter the grass blade with particle flow. RenderTime a bit slow, G.I. were used along with raytrace shadow, 19 minutes. Not too bad. I believe a better solution is yet to be discovered. Grass Blade Amount: 220,000 PolygonCount Per Blade: 4

Tree Proxies Test_V.01
I must say trees model shipped with 3ds max looks suck. I got to find a better looking solution for tree modelling after this test. I converted the tree meshes to MR Proxy Object and used Pflow to populate the tree all over the river bank. Just ignore the texture, it meant to be a workflow trial & error. 1000 of trees has been placed in the river bank.

Tree_Test_02
I realized to generate a natural looking tree is abit challenging. Will work it out soon.

IceBerg Render
Boring afternoon, fired up a quick iceberg render. Terrain mesh generated in Acropora.

Optical Flare Test

2010-05-08T08:35:00.003+08:00

Optical Flare is not like a tranditional lens flare plugin that just only do translation in X & Y but also in Z. I've exported my 3d light sources to AE and linked up all the 3d lights to Optical Flare. What i've gained in this test will be applied to my current job.

Here's the video.

Optical Flare Test from Jordan Tan on Vimeo.

Various Mental Ray Render Exercises

2010-03-20T16:57:00.007+08:00

Exercise: Render Glass, Liquid & Caustic

2010-03-18T04:02:00.008+08:00

I might be working on a job that require to render glass, liquid & caustic. Therefore, this is an on-going post and show how i'm going to do a series of glass, liquid @ caustic test renders in mental ray.

Test Render_01 Glass & Caustic ( Rendered on DuoCore Machine )

Lighting Pass:

Framesize: PAL D1/DV 720px X 576px
FG Map Render Time: 12mins 35sec
Final Render: 8mins 27sec
(should be able to cut down the rendertime to 4mins on a QuadCore machine)
AA Setting: Min1 Max16 Michell
Render Technique: HDRI + FG + AO
Initial FG Point Density : 2.5
Ray per FG Point: 2000
Interpolate Over Num.FG Points: 60
Ambient Occlusion Samples: 64

Final Render with Caustic:

Framesize: PAL D1/DV 720px X 576px
FG Map Render Time: ---- (cheat, used back the same FG map from the white render)
Final Render: 8mins 36sec (cheat, used back the same FG map from the white render)
(should be able to cut down the rendertime to 4mins on a QuadCore machine)
AA Setting: Min1 Max16 Michell
Render Technique: HDRI + FG (No ambient Occlusion)
Photon Count for Caustic Map: 1,500,000

Final Render for Glass, Liquid, Caustic
Render time: 13 mins 57 sec
Render Technique: HDRI + FG + Caustic + Glare

Glass Studio Render + Bokeh

Light, Shade, Texture A Bedroom.

2010-03-06T20:41:00.002+08:00

Saturday, March 6

Setup a morning light condition.

1. Got to fix the light leakage problem at the window frame area which caused by flipped normal.
2. Setup a 3d volumetric light ray emit from the window.

That's all for first stage. Here's the render.

Church of The Light (Last)

2009-12-01T17:37:00.002+08:00

This is my last render for the church of light.
From the color, you could tell it is not a happy color.
In fact, I'm unhappy today.
But I won't allow my unhappiness to elongate.....

CG Reconstruction: Tadao Ando Church of Light II

2009-11-21T22:47:00.003+08:00

One boring saturday night. I decided to fire off
another render for church of light.
Depth of field effect added.
Nothing much to say because I'm thinking of a girl. :)

Here's the render.

CG Reconstruction: Tadao Ando Church of Light

2009-10-11T01:02:00.005+08:00

div style="text-align: center;">01. Lighting Pass (Final Gather Only)

02. Lighting Pass (Final Gather + Global Illumination)
Render faster then brute force final gather. Looks more solid as well which I like it. Output to gamma 2.2 as well.

03. Final Render
Here's the final render and sweetened the colors in After Effect + Colorista.

Exercise: Cinematic Lighting, The Haunted Hallway

2009-09-15T12:11:00.006+08:00

This is an on-going post of me light the same scene in different time of day.

01_Haunted Hallway Daytime

I'm going to do an animated version of this for my lighting reel.
Had some fun with the lens distortion shader to simulate barrel distortion.
I didn't use MR exposure control in this piece. Instead, I rendered out the image in 32bit HDRI and adjusted the exposure in Photomatix Pro and some minor touched up in photoshop. Ambient occlusion was used to boost the contrast.

02_Haunted Hallway Nightime

Night shot. Creepy heh?

01_Haunted Hallway Daytime(Warmer)

Rendered With Default Light

2009-09-14T00:18:00.002+08:00

Render with 3ds Max default light with final gather turned on and an occlusion pass.
Which mean I didn't setup any light rig at all for this. Done in 15 mins from rendering to compositing.

Haunted Hallway: Texturing & Shading WIP

2009-07-31T13:41:00.010+08:00

This is an on-going post until the whole scene is completely textured and shaded.Try to use as much procedural mapping technique as I can to accomplish the texturing task.

Day01- Floor plank texture

Procedural wood textures were used to map the floor plank along with displacement map to depict the thickness of plank.

Day02- Unwrapping UVW, Wall

Darn! I'm quite busy this week. I wish I could allocate more time for this project. Next I'm going to unwrap the uv of the arc. Actually what excites me most is the part painting the texture. I'm going to paint diffuse map, bump map and specular map for every set of uv.

Day03- Unwrapping UVW, Arc

I'm going to paint texture soon after this. Since I've learned how to use the standard UVW-unwrap tool, I'll try to learn to use UVW-unwrap plugin to unwrap the rest of the objects in the scenes.

Day04- Wall Texture

I've just bought a few 90's Hong Kong Vampire movies as reference to the haunted interior.
Ok, take a break now and watch vampire film and sleep after movie.

Day05- Pole Texture

I feel happy today because it was an handy tool called "Turbo Unwrap" written by steve johnson is available for max 2009/2010 now. The guy from fear the devil has re-written it and make it available for download.

Day06- Almost done, and move forward to setup light rig.

Day07- Vegetation Added to spice up the scene

Effect Rough Sketch: Alien automobile destruction

2009-06-25T09:56:00.003+08:00

Effect Rough Sketch: Alien automobile destruction from Jordan Tan on Vimeo.

World's Crappiest CG Pyroclastic Flow

2009-06-23T12:15:00.000+08:00

World's Crappiest CG Pyroclastic Flow from Jordan Tan on Vimeo.

Learning MAXscript Day_004: MacroScript Basic

2009-06-17T16:26:00.003+08:00

Learning MAXscript Day_003: Evaluation

2009-06-15T16:22:00.004+08:00

Here's some snippet from the MAXscript course note on "Evaluation"

* MAXscript reads every line, word by word.
* Evaluating atomic functions as it goes, accumulating their results.
* Functions or commands have pre-set priorities.
* We can use bracket ( ) to create command groups, overriding the default priorities.
* Results get substituted in the original command line.

Therefore, with the help of bracket ( ), I'm able to create a command group and wrap everything that I've created yesterday into one line of script. How cool is that!!!!!

Below is the screenshot that indicates I've wrapped everything into one line of script.
The script is: -
addmodifier (box height:120.0 width:10.0 length: 10.0 heightsegs:12) (bend bendAngle:90)

That's all for day03. Look forward to learn more complicated kind of scripts.

Learning MAXscript Day_002: Functions

2009-06-14T22:18:00.004+08:00

Refer to the screenshot above,
1st line of the script box() which I assign a box geometry class function.
2nd line of the script is move $box01 [15,10,0] which I move the box geometry that i just created to coordinate X:15 Y:10 Z:0.
3rd line of the script is showProperties $box01 which I use the showProperties function to display the properties(list of parameters that available) for box01.
4th line of the script is $box01.height = 80 which is set the height of box one to integer value 80 by using the .height function.
5th line of the script is $box01.heightsegs = 8 which I set the heightsegments of box01 to 8.
6th line of the script is myBox = $box01 which I set a variable "myBox" equals to box01.
7th line of the script is myBend = bend () which I set a varible "myBend" equals to a bend modifier.
8th line of the script is showProperties myBend which I list the available parameters of bend modifier.
9th line of the script is myBend.bendangle = 90 which I assign the bend angle value of the bend modifier to 90 degree.
10th line of the script is addmodifier myBox myBend which I use the addmodifier function to apply a bend modifier on top of the modifier stack of the geometry Box01.

Here's the snippet of addmodifier function which you can find in MAXscript online help.

Node Common Properties, Operators, and MethodsNode Common Properties, Operators, and Methods

addModifier [before:index] -- mapped

Applies the modifier to all instances of the node(s) to which the function is applied. The optional before: keyword argument can be used to insert the modifier into the node's modifier stack just before the indexed modifier, counting from the top of the stack.

Since 3ds Max 3, addModifier() does not preserve the sub-object selection that might be active in the modifier stack when adding the modifier. If you want to add a modifier and preserve the sub-object selection, use the modPanel.addModToSelection() method described in Modify Panel.

If is a collection, an instance of the modifier is placed on each of the nodes in the collection. Unlike interactively applying a modifier to a selection, the position and size of each modifier instance's gizmo corresponds to position and size of the node the modifier instance is applied to. To apply a modifier to a collection in the same manner that 3ds Max applies modifiers, use the modPanel.addModToSelection() method described in Modify Panel.

That's all for second day. I wish I could procedurally script a cg scene in the future. :)

Learning MAXscript Day_001: Variables & Properties

2009-06-13T22:02:00.005+08:00

The first line of the script, I have assigned a variable which is myMaterial equal to getMeditMaterial1(shader in the first slot of material editor)

From the course note:
* All entities in 3dsmax are objects, each with its own properties.
* Properties of any object can be listed via the showProperties() Function.

Therefore, in the second line of the script, showProperties myMaterial has been typed to show every property that included in the standard material.
* We can find the Properties using the maxscript online help.

From the properties that listed in the bottom of the screenshot, usually the properties consist of 4 different variable value types which is integer, float, string & boolean.

integer = integer value like "10"
float = fraction value like "10.5"
string = " "
boolean = 1 or 0, ON & OFF, True or False.

Just take a look at the second screenshot.

The third line of the script illustrates I've modified the diffuse property of the shader by keyed in
myMaterial.diffuse = color 255 0 0

As mentioned before, myMaterial is the variable that i assigned to material 1 and .diffuse is the diffuse property of the material. The value equal to R:255 G:0 B:0. Therefore 255 0 0 is the value of each Red, Green, Blue channel.

That's all from now. To be continued.

Bullshit Jam 01

2009-06-11T10:57:00.002+08:00

Played with PhysicX RBD + some particle flow.
Here's the result.

ReadyBoost© & Krakatoa = 100 million particle in 1 partition

2009-05-05T04:30:00.007+08:00

In my previous test, my computer crashed when krakatoa was caching 90 million particles.

After I did some research, I setup ReadyBoost and gave 100 million particles in 1 krakatoa partition a try. With the help of ReadyBoost, I'm able to render 100 particles in 1 partition.

Here's the benchmark.
100_million_Particles Cache to disk time:12min51sec/frame Size on disk: 1.26gb/frame

Here's the render of 100 million particles.

As recommended by Tom Archer, "1:1 ratio of flash to system memory at the low end and as high as 2.5:1 flash to system memory. Higher than that and you won't see much benefit."
I have 4 gig memory in total, therefore I use a 4gig kingston USB drive as my ReadyBoost cache. For more info regarding to ReadyBoost, please go Tom Archer's Blog: ReadyBoost Q@A
or Tom Archer's Blog: Using Your USB Key to Speed up Windows Vista.

Here's the screengrab of my ReadyBoost setup.

Conclusion: You won't feel a significant improvement on ReadyBoost when you perform a common task. It come to notice when you perform such a tedious task as caching millions particles. Therefore, I would use ReadyBoost again to cache some of my highres fumefx simulation. You can run out of memory easily esp. when come to cache small step size fumefx sim.

HTH.
Jordan

Krakatoa Benchmark On my Machine

2009-04-30T23:31:00.030+08:00

The purpose of this test is to find out what is the maximum amount of particles that my computer can tolerate on 1 partition in krakatoa. Therefore, after aesthetically pleasing image is not the goal for this test.

After the test, i believe that it is possible to render 1 billion particles with multi-partitions but disk-storage will be an issue due to huge file size that krakatoa store in your hard drive.

Here is my computer spec:
Intel Core Duo 2.4ghz, 4gig ddr3 ram, window vista 64.

I believe if I have better spec with a few 1.5 terabytes SATA drives in RAID will be good enough to reach the ultimate 1 billion particles goal.

Here is the stat. (all in 1 partition)
1_million_Particles Cache to disk time: 7sec/frame Size on disk: 12.9mb/frame
2_million_Particles Cache to disk time:9sec/frame Size on disk: 25.9mb/frame
3_million_Particles Cache to disk time:11sec/frame Size on disk: 38.9mb/frame
4_million_Particles Cache to disk time:16sec/frame Size on disk: 51.9mb/frame
5_million_Particles Cache to disk time:18sec/frame Size on disk: 64.9mb/frame
6_million_Particles Cache to disk time:18sec/frame Size on disk: 77.8mb/frame
7_million_Particles Cache to disk time:24sec/frame Size on disk: 90.8mb/frame
8_million_Particles Cache to disk time:31sec/frame Size on disk: 103mb/frame
9_million_Particles Cache to disk time:33sec/frame Size on disk: 116mb/frame
10_million_Particles Cache to disk time:35sec/frame Size on disk: 129mb/frame
20_million_Particles Cache to disk time:81sec/frame Size on disk: 259mb/frame
30_million_Particles Cache to disk time:107sec/frame Size on disk: 389mb/frame
40_million_Particles Cache to disk time:162sec/frame Size on disk: 519mb/frame
50_million_Particles Cache to disk time:193sec/frame Size on disk: 649mb/frame
60_million_Particles Cache to disk time:240sec/frame Size on disk: 778mb/frame
70_million_Particles Cache to disk time:283sec/frame Size on disk: 908mb/frame
80_million_Particles Cache to disk time:302sec/frame Size on disk: 1.01gb/frame
90_million_Particles My computer crash, run out of memory.

Here's the render. (The Mclaren Mercsedes model courtesy of Aleksandar Ivanov)

1_million_Particles

2_million_Particles

3_million_Particles

4_million_Particles

5_million_Particles
6_million_Particles
7_million_Particles
8_million_Particles
9_million_Particles
10_million_Particles
20_million_Particles
30_million_Particles
40_million_Particles
50_million_Particles
60_million_Particles
70_million_Particles
80_million_Particles

As a conclusion, for particles simulation in between 1- 20 millions, I won't split it into partitions because my computer can handle it. It also save up some disk space as well.

2 Millions Particles

2009-04-28T01:38:00.004+08:00

I've watched the Hottest "Audi Filter" ad. recently and decided to give multi-million particles a go. Did some research, and here is the result. This exercise will be proven to be useful for my upcoming tornado animation that require huge amount of particles to be rendered for large volume swirling dust. Soon, I'm going to do a 10 million particles test then follow by 20 mil, 40 mil and lastly 60 mil test. According to the documentation, a 64bit system with 4 gig of ram should be able to render up to 60 million particles. If I can afford to buy a 16 core machine with 16gig or 32 gig of ddr3 ram end of this year, then I am able to do billion particle test. HooHaahhh!!!!! Technology really determine the way the effect look.

Untitled from Jordan Tan on Vimeo.

Plane_Explosion

2009-04-27T01:19:00.002+08:00

I've just done allan mckay's fireball tutorial.
Here's the result.

Plane_Explosion from Jordan Tan on Vimeo.

Volcano Eruption_02

2009-04-22T00:24:00.003+08:00

I promised myself, don't sleep late tonight. Wake up early tomorrow and continue with a fresh mind.

Volcano Eruption_01

2009-04-19T09:37:00.002+08:00

Hi. I've just finished Pete Draper DTE eruption tutorial. I've replaced the smoke shader in the tutorial to AfterBurn volumetric shader. The initial blast doesn't contain any lava fluid. In the coming eruption 02 video, i would show the lava fluid blast out from the crater of volcano. Next i'm going to do tornado and follow by tornado tearing a house to fragments. Excited.

href="http://vimeo.com/4218434">Volcano Eruption_01 from Jordan Tan on Vimeo.

Capten Stop Asteroid MU

2009-04-13T23:11:00.000+08:00

Ok, Chin Yew. Here's little update.

Afterburn Rocket

2009-04-08T01:04:00.001+08:00

Afterburn_Rocket from Jordan Tan on Vimeo.

Cloud Fly Thru 01

2009-04-05T03:24:00.002+08:00

Here we go.

Puffy Smoke Test

2009-04-03T23:49:00.003+08:00

Played with afterburn spontaneously. When i experiment, I've the pyroclastic flow kind of thick smoke in mind. Quite fast to render. Here is the result.

Volumetric Fog Test

2009-04-03T12:29:00.002+08:00

I used afterburn once again to create the volumetric fog effect as shown below.The range of parameters that afterburn offers are flexible enough to create effects such as puffy smoke, dust, explosion, fireball, tendril, snow avalanche, fog, steam and etc. Therefore, I going to stick with it for the next 2 months. Then it is the turn to learn fumefx. I kind of excited.

Ok. Here's the test.

Basic Cloud Test

2009-04-01T01:39:00.003+08:00

Did a quick test for upcoming cloud shot with afterburn volumetric render.
Here's the test. Camera fly through clouds animation coming soon-ish.
Render time quite fast. It takes only 5 minutes for HD resolution.
I'm running 3ds max on 64-bit windows vista.

Simple Explosion

2009-03-31T00:20:00.002+08:00

Afterburn + pflow = another boring night.

Capten Stop Asteroid LS

2009-03-30T13:36:00.001+08:00

Hi, chinyew. Small asteroids will be added when i'm free.

Robot Hit By Asteroid

2009-03-15T22:31:00.001+08:00

Sorry for the delay, chin yew. I've been sick for the last few days.
I'm heading to the next few shots.

Explosion RnD_001

2009-03-09T14:32:00.002+08:00

This is an on-going study and practice of cg explosion animation.
Made with afterburn. It doesn't look good enough for the first time.
I believe it will be looked better on the second, third, fourth, fifth... time.
Therefore, practice makes perfect.
Here is the video.

WireFrame Preview: Robot Explode Asteroid Hit

2009-02-16T00:57:00.004+08:00

Hi chinyew, here's the wireframe preview of the robot hit by the asteroid scene. You get the timing by watching it. For sure camera-shake will be added in post. Tomorrow, I'll be working on the render of the same shot. Thank you.

Note: For blog reader, I've given up to use particle sprite for this shoot due to some technical issues happened last week, it will be replaced with afterburn volumetric shader.

Asteroid Look Development_02

2009-02-02T14:11:00.004+08:00

Ok. Smoke Trail added as requested by the vfx producer.

Here's the setup of the smoke shader. To speed up the render time even more, I've added a camera_cull node in my particle network which mean the renderer won't load particles are not visible to camera for each render bucket.

Smoke Trail Look Development

2009-02-02T01:26:00.004+08:00

Ok. After the asteroid look development WIP discussion, I've been asked by the vfx producer to add a smoke trail for the asteroid. Here is the test. I used a missile for this smoke trail test is simply for fun. I didn't use Afterburn nor Fumefx for the smoke trail effect is simply because i wanted to reduce the render time. Instead, I used particle sprite for the smoke. Setup the particle system wasn't hard. I just spent more time on tweaking the smoke shader. I think the smoke will be looked better on the actual shot simply because I realized the texture size wasn't look right after I pressed the render button. :) The average render time per frame is 18sec. I believe if I render the same particle system with afterburn, it would takes 10mins to render a frame.

Although I'm a max user now but cg-technique is software-independence. I've borrowed this particle-sprite technique from Houdini Particle Master- Miguel Perez.

Here is the screenshot of the setup.

Asteroid Look Development

2009-01-31T19:37:00.004+08:00

I've been asked by my partner of crime chinyew to conctribute to a few asteroid effect shot that he produced. The brief that I got from him is a good job is always a fast job. Since the dateline is tight, therefore i decided to go for a stylize asteroid look. I managed to keep the render time of the asteroid with the contrail fire animation with about 58sec per frame. (I'm working with a single machine)

Here is the still of the asteroid without fire.

Here is the rough animation of the asteroid with contrail fire.

PFlow101-02-Dispersion & Assemble

2009-01-30T11:33:00.003+08:00

Since particle studio no longer support the latest version of 3ds max, to do particle disperse from one object and assemble to another object the quickest way is to use another plugin called Thinking Particle from Cebas. I've use the build-in particle flow for this effect with extra scripting as taught by Allan Mckay.

PFlow101-01-Text Blow Away Like Sand

2009-01-29T14:45:00.002+08:00

Self-coursed study on 3ds max particle flow. I was wanted to create this effect badly after watching the movie "Black Hawk Down" opening title credit back to year 2001. That time i was just started to learn after effect and do motion graphic.

RND: Iceberg

2009-01-18T03:37:00.002+08:00

Hi.
Further practice with procedural modeling and shading technique. The shader of the icebergs can be further improve with Subsurface Scattering. I going to learn SSS for the next iceberg piece and learn how to cheat SSS in non-physical shader as well.

Here's the image.

Non-CG-Blog: 批判对与错

2009-01-14T23:56:00.006+08:00

不知道大家有没有警觉到大多数人已经不用道德规范来判断一件事情的对与错。何谓对与错？从道德规范的角度看来，错的事情是伤害到别人的行为。如精神上的伤害，肉体上的伤害或利益上的伤害。不过，如果大家观察入微的话，相信大家不难发现当一个人批判某人做错事时，通常那件事情跟批判的人的利益上的立场是冲突的。我也不需举出任何example。只要大家留意日常生活上的对话或报纸上的批判性报道就不难发现到通常批判的人是伤害别人的那个人。一个人会批判别人通常都因为是“被批判者“无法满足“批判者“的欲望。因为欲望无法被满足而做出批判性的言论是一种自私的行为。人为何自私呢？是因为过分纵欲而无法自拔吗？例如对吃的欲望，对性的欲望，对权利的欲望，对金钱的欲望，对物质的欲望，批判对与错的欲望。。等等

欲望是无法被满足的。。。。

所以我们时常听到非常熟悉的批判性句子
例如:-
1. 这家restaurant的食物比粪便还难吃！（吃的欲望）不被满足时
2. 如果我上任的话，肯定做的比他好。（权利的欲望）不被满足时
3. 他又胖又丑，最好不要靠近我。（对性的欲望与妄想）不被满足时
4. 你这个人真笨！没鬼用！（渴望被帮忙的欲望）不被满足时
5. 妈的！这个人不回驾车的！（渴望尽快到达目的地的欲望）不被满足时
6。还有一些被高等教育者称为高档的批判（criticism), 也是带着同样的性质。不同的只是文字上经过修饰而已。看看影评，画评，歌评。。等等，你就会发现到那些critic也是根据个人的喜好/利益（欲望）来批判一件产品/艺术品的好坏。

我也是上文所说的那种人。只有摆脱欲望的枷锁，
我们才能够做出不伤害到别人的行为。
到底有没有摆脱欲望的枷锁的方法呢？有。
首先，我们要了解欲望的结构。
什么是欲望的结构呢？

下期我会谈谈欲望的结构~贪，憎, 痴。Craving, Aversion & Delusion.

Procedural Mapping Exercise_002

2009-01-07T12:28:00.008+08:00

The more I learn about procedural mapping techniques, the more I amaze with its endless capability. Procedural mapping is widely used in VFX production by visual effect artist to simulates fictitious natural phenomenon like water, smoke, cloud, ice, fire, atmosphere, terrain, rocks and etc.

I eagerly want to be a visual effect animator, so that I would spend extra time in learning procedural mapping techniques.

Here are some recent exercise I did through the book "Advanced Procedural Mapping Techniques"

Procedural Rock Shader

Procedural Ice Shader

Procedural Terrain 01

Procedural Terrain 02

Procedural Terrain 03

These days, I still keep the same amount of excitement as the first day I discovered the existence of visual effect. Keep it up! I will go abroad one day to fullfill my desire of become a visual effect animator in the film industry.

Procedural Mapping Exercise_001

2009-01-03T00:44:00.012+08:00

Currently, I'm reading a book called "Advanced Procedural Mapping Techniques". Here I would like to show the result of the tutorial as I've gone through each chapter.

Gold Shader

Stainless Steel Shader

Rust Metal Shader

Compact Disc Shader

X-Ray Shader

Silk Shader

Frozen Earth Shader ( Not From the Book, self-experimented)

Crystal Shader (Non-physically Correct)

Sea Water Shader (Pretty Old School)
I think is good to learn both old school & new school 3d techniques.
To me new school is a brute force way, more rely on cpu power.
The old school way is fake everything as much as you can to speed up the workflow.

Creating CG imagery both in still and animated is a never-ending learning path. Keep it up, jordan!!!!!! I'm going to spend 2 more weeks on procedural mapping, move ahead to particle fx soon... yeah.. babe.

Exercise: Various NPR Approach

2008-12-17T08:19:00.009+08:00

Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is an area of computer graphics that focuses on enabling a wide variety of expressive styles for digital art. In contrast to traditional computer graphics, which has focused on photorealism, NPR is inspired by artistic styles such as painting, drawing, technical illustration, and animated cartoons. NPR has appeared in movies and video games in the form of "toon shaders," as well as in architectural illustration and experimental animation. An example of a modern use of this method is that of Cel-shaded animation.
(Adapted from Wikipedia, for more info, Click here)

Here are my exercises of NPR style image. (No third party plug-in were used)

Water Colours
Simulates water colours effect with various procedural mapping techniques without using any
third party plug-in.

Chinese Ink Painting
Combined illuminance loop with various falloff & procedural noise map.

Chinese Ink Stroke

Hard Edged Poster Colour

Mixed Media Painted

Chinese Ink Painting

Various Exercise

2008-12-11T11:36:00.005+08:00

MR Sky + Hdri cloud map
Played with MR Sky map and loaded a hdri map into the haze slot. Instead of conventionally load a hdri map as an enviroment map, it would block off skylight emit from a hemisphere.

Complexed Fallof+Raytrace Shader
This is a test bed of my next 3d abstraction series. Experiment with complex fallof material with raytrace reflection.

Raytraced Stainless Steel Shader
Here is a classic example of a metal shader render before any G.I. renderer exist. Is good for my old school 3d abstraction render.

Finished Work: An afternoon Kitchen

2008-11-19T19:28:00.002+08:00

I have rendered the same image in the previous post in bigger size.

This time I made the render to a 32bit output, hdr file.

The reason I did that is to enchance the tonal detail that I unable to

do in normal 8bit low dynamic range image.

Here is the render. Constructive critism needed.

Hi.

Exercise: Kitchen Lighting Part 2

2008-11-17T09:41:00.003+08:00

In this finished render, I tried to depict a daytime interior
lighting condition. After few weeks of evening time
( I spent mostly night time) to read the lighting,
shading and texture manual, I managed to fire off a
somewhat acceptable render result.

MR exposure control played an important role to tweak
the daylight exposure. In part 3, I'm going to try to
light a night kitchen scene.

Here's the kitchen render.

Exercise: Kitchen Lighting Part 1

2008-11-15T12:51:00.003+08:00

This is a Part 1 and Part 2 series to light and shade
a kitchen scene. In part 1, I've layout a basic light
set to the scene as you can see the render below.
In part 2, I'm going to dress up some material/shader
for this kitchen scene.

Note: I've borrowed this awesome 3d kitchen scene
from the famous cg society lighting challenges.
This scene is modeled by Jeremy Birn.

Here's the render for part 1.

Render time at the moment is 30minutes.
I estimate once on the glossy reflection/
displacement maps added, render time
should be increase approximately
15-20 minutes. I still finding an
optimum way to speed up my render.

Exercise: Volumetric Lighting

2008-11-15T09:18:00.006+08:00

Hi. I decided to give myself a try on volumetric lighting
after inspired by jeff patton volumetric render.

I've have created 2 images by using the mi party shader.
Hence the word party, this shader creates disco light
kind of effect. I have set 3 teapots in a party.

Here's first render without procedural noise.

Here's second render with procedural noise.

In the near future, i would like to
model a dance floor / disco scene to
further illustrate this effect.
Have fun with lighting! :)

Exercise: MR Sky Portal + Ambient Occlusion

2008-11-10T10:55:00.004+08:00

I did an exercise on the MR Sky Portal to illuminate an interior scene
with some small openings.Not too slow the render time to get rid of
the area shadow noise that cast from sky portal. Final gather was
used for the second bounce and third bounce. Render time is 8Mins for
the G.I. pass.Render time raised is because of i added some subtle
blur reflection in my A&D concrete shader. G.I. + raytrace reflection is a
bit slow to render in most case. MR exposure control play the strong role
to have an accurate daytime indoor exposure.Selective Specular bloom
was added in the photoshop. And the ambient occlusion pass rendered out
fast, MR only takes 1 minutes and 47 second to render a noise free AO pass.
All rendered in my single core centrino laptop. Wow! i can practice render
on my laptop these days due to the improvement of mental ray.

Here is the render with subtle post work in photoshop.

Here is the ambient occlusion pass.

Exercise: HDRI Lighting + Depth of Field

2008-11-10T10:50:00.002+08:00

I was doing an exercise on image based lighting with final gather.
The render turned out quite fast and noise free.
It has taken 4 minutes 29 seconds to render on my single core
1.6ghz intel centrino and 1 gig of ram laptop. Sounds reasonable
render time. That's mental ray.

Exercise: G.I. + Occlusion

2008-11-08T02:16:00.002+08:00

Did a quick n dirty test. Mixed final gather with ambient occlusion.
And i can barely model a teapot. :)

Exercise: Mixing final gather with photon based G.I.

2008-10-27T17:16:00.002+08:00

Hi. Just did a quick cornell box render.
The benefit of mixing final gather with
photon based G.I. is I don't need to
crank up the amount of photon and it
would cause render time increase.

Here is the render. Both images render in 3mins39seconds.

Exercise: Plastic shader + Decal Mapping

2008-10-25T09:13:00.002+08:00

Just did this for fun, also for exercise purpose.
Learn plastic shader & decal mapping.

Here is the result.

Exercise: MR Sky (Time-lapsed)

2008-10-23T12:53:00.003+08:00

hi. I was playing with mr physical sky last night.
Here is the time-lapsed animation.

Exercise: Sea Underwater

2008-10-19T15:03:00.004+08:00

Hi. I've just completed Pete Draper Sea Underwater exercise.

Here is the reference photo.

Here is the CG underwater.
Hence this is an exercise, if it is a complete work I would add some
floating debris to the scene.

And the animation is here.

Wire Wrap Test_01

2008-10-14T01:24:00.003+08:00

Did some wire wrapping test to familiarize myself with the control of tool before create the final artwork. Here is the image. Not really happy yet. Going to create a more interesting "wire-flow".

Day02- Fume Fx Simple Explosion

2008-09-18T00:44:00.004+08:00

Hi, there.
Second day playing with fumefx.
I know what to improve in the coming session.
Lighting, animation timing and nice looking fire/smoke.

I enjoyed practicing a lot. Happy.

Day01- Getting Started with Fume Fx

2008-09-13T18:29:00.003+08:00

Hi.
While waiting for my lighting & rendering book to be delivered to my house, I decided to learn some volumetric effect such as fire, smoke and explosion from now.

I'm learning the basic of fumefx today.
Here is the outcome.

Radiosity Day03- IES Sky with Weather

2008-09-03T07:53:00.003+08:00

Tried to depict time / weather different in this render.
( Not really good.) But i try my level best to light a same scene
with different time/ weather, mood and lighting condition.
Since i m not 100% familiar with the lighting tools in 3ds max yet,
i think is time to read the user manual tomorrow nite. :)

I m really indulge with lighting. I would like to light different time,
different weather, different season (autumn, winter) in
different country.. interior / exterior lighting and such.......

Radiosity day02- material wrapped up

2008-09-01T22:29:00.003+08:00

The final render abit brighter then the previous black n white render.
I've brightened it up with the exposure control and also the indirect
bounce contributed to the brightness as well.
One cool thing about max architecture material has a color bleed control
per shader basis.
With all of the raytrace reflection wrapped up, the render time is 9 1/2 minutes.
it motivates me to create more images from now.

Merdeka Day: "Max2009 Radiosity Render"

2008-09-01T01:24:00.002+08:00

I've 2 days holiday.
I play with 3ds Max 2009 radiosity and IES photometric light today.
Here is the render. I'm just impressed with the render speed.
The image above render in 2 1/2 minutes.
I consider the render is lightning fast compare to some of my
2hrs g.i. render in other renderer without noise.

I'm going to add some shaders to the scene by tomorrow
hence i have 2 days holiday.

Maxwell Physical Sky

2008-05-31T09:36:00.003+08:00

Hi.
The same houdini scene render in maxwell studio.
I admit I was really enjoying the rendering process.

Here is the Physical sky parameter rollout.
I think I gonna download Google Earth for the sake of setting up an accurate geographical characteristic. And also I gotta get a photography manual because
rendering process in Maxwell render is exactly like taking photography with your
digital camera.

Hoola Maxwell.

Better G.I. Room Test

2008-05-22T01:48:00.002+08:00

At least better then the previous render.
One area light.
Full hemisphere enviroment light turned on.
Path tracing Global Illumination.
Diffuse limit = 10

Didn't render with PBR. I only render with PBR when i buy a new machine.
You know what i mean.

My next render gonna be a semi outdoor lighting scene which is more challenging.
I swear I going to texture the scene properly.

G.I. Room Test

2008-05-18T19:19:00.004+08:00

First picture, rendered with path tracing g.i. with 3 area light.
Still unsatisfied with the result.

Second picture, rendered with full irradiance g.i. with one spot light.
Still unsatisfied with the result. Render with full irradiance even more difficult to have the secondary ray to bounce around the room hence it just only support one bounce.
So i decided to go for physically based render abbr. PBR soon.

Path Tracing G.I Test Render

2008-05-16T23:13:00.005+08:00

Did some path trace G.I in mantra.

First picture,
the exposure is about right but forgot to set the g.i. raytrace bias, so you can identify an obvious artifact at the bottom edge of those boxes.

Second picture, correct raytrace bias to get rid of those artifact but the exposure is wrong.

Alright, after this two failure, i somehow know an almost better setting for my next g.i. render.

BioMech_Wip_02

2008-05-12T22:08:00.002+08:00

As this project "BioMech" started, i'm having more n more fun during the process of making the imagery.

As this work-in-progress goes on, you are going to see more and more complexity will be added in this piece.

Here is the image. i enjoyed making it. More to come. Stay tune.

BioMech_Wip_01

2008-05-10T19:53:00.003+08:00

Here is new work wip. Alot of new works, none of them is completed because alot of ideas has been conceived. Quickly did some rough visual b4 idea fly away.

Here is the character in BioMech.

Sphere

2008-05-04T13:54:00.000+08:00

20 Minutes Quick Work_04

2008-05-03T02:09:00.001+08:00

20 Minutes Quick Work_03

2008-05-01T23:38:00.002+08:00

20 Minutes Quick Work_02

2008-05-01T14:23:00.001+08:00

Another 20mins quick work.
Everything done in houdini.

Here is the image.

"Procedural Abstract"- WIP_002

2008-05-01T01:19:00.003+08:00

The same model in wip_001, i quickly switched it to metaball(fluid like)surface without effort.That's what called procedural. Thanks to houdini, i can switch to new surface within a moment.

Here is the update.

"Procedural Abstract"- WIP_001

2008-04-30T23:46:00.003+08:00

Hi, guys.
I'm working on a short term project called"Procedural Abstract".
I'm trying to take my previous 3d abstract style to the next level.
I'm sick of manually compose an image.
In the coming wip, i will show how i construct my graphic in a procedural(automatic) way.

here is the first layer of the image. Your comment is needed because i'm using it to enter a digital art competition. thanks.

20 Minutes Quick Work_01

2008-04-25T00:05:00.003+08:00

Particle Simulation in 5 minutes.
Setting up the lighting in 20 sec.
Render 10 minutes.
Post-process in photoshop 5 minutes.
Total 20 minutes.
I am impatient......
More to come.

Here is the image.

"Phatom Dance" Background WIP-02

2008-04-23T02:40:00.001+08:00

"Phatom Dance" Background WIP

2008-04-14T22:09:00.006+08:00

hi, artist/designer friends.

I'm working on a hobby project now.
It is my 1st full cg short film.
I am working on the background now.
I'll keep you update with latest wip from time to time.

here are some snapshots.

Rough Layout.

Rough Background Model

Various Render

Image Storage 1

2008-03-24T04:13:00.001+08:00

Sky_006

2007-09-26T18:46:00.001+08:00

Semi-pano stitched image. Sunday Afternoon. Taken after a good-sleep. ;P

Sky_005

2007-08-31T00:00:00.001+08:00

Tomorrow is Merdeka Day.
I will be going countryside take some sky photograph.

Sky_004

2007-08-29T23:53:00.000+08:00

Sky_003

2007-07-19T23:09:00.000+08:00

Day19-revisited

2007-07-19T12:53:00.001+08:00

Sky_002

2007-07-19T11:53:00.000+08:00

Save money to get a Digital SLR Camera.
My 5 years old compact digital camera produces way too much noise/grain when come to heavy color-correction.
I need a 16 bit raw format. yay. Be patient and save money.

Sky_001

2007-07-18T01:10:00.000+08:00

My latest obsession. Digital Photogaphy + Photo Retouching.
Tried to replicate the cross-processing effect with my digi_cam & photoshop.
Doing some simple colour-correction practice before colour-correct my 3d render.

Kesariya

2007-07-11T22:37:00.000+08:00

Kesariya Stupa- The Kesariya Stupa, situated at the place where Buddha delivered the Kalama Sutta.

The image attached left here is a photograph of Kesariya Stupa which i downloaded from wikipedia.

Recently, i have been worked on a printed material of Kalama Sutta.
Here I would like to show the progress of retouching the original photograph to the composited printed material.

Those who wants to find out more about Kalama Sutta can go here Kalama Sutta.

Here is the chinese translated version.

《卡拉玛经 KALAMA SUTTA 》取自巴利《增支部 Avguttara nikaya 》
当时，卡拉玛人们来见世尊。一些顶礼世尊后坐到一旁，一些卡拉玛人顶礼世尊跟世尊谈一些话后才坐到一旁，一些报告他们的姓名、字号后才坐到一旁。有卡莎布塌区的人坐在一旁跟佛陀世尊说：“我毕恭毕敬地顶礼世尊，请问世尊：有一些婆罗门和出家人，来到卡莎布塌区，他们说自己的法是最好的，而看不起别人的法，说别人的法是卑微的。但别的出家人和婆罗门当他们来到卡莎布塌区，也是说自己的法是好的，赞美自己的法，而看不起别人说的法，说别人的法是卑微的。我礼敬世尊，我们很怀疑在他们之中，哪些法是真的！谁的法是谎言呢？” 世尊说：卡拉玛人们！你们的怀疑是对的，你们是应该怀疑的，是应该的。卡拉玛人们！你们要："

一、不因为他人的口传、传说，就信以为真。
二、不因为奉行传统，就信以为真。
三、不因为是正在流传的消息，就信以为真。
四、不因为是宗教经典书本，就信以为真。
五、不因为根据逻辑，就信以为真。
六、不因为根据哲理，就信以为真。
七、不因为符合常识外在推理，就信以为真。
八、不因为符合自己的预测、见解、观念，就信以为真。
九、不因为演说者的威信，就信以为真。
十、不因为他是导师、大师，就信以为真。

copyrighted 静心家园

Selected work from 30dayartist

2006-12-01T19:38:00.000+08:00

Hi, i've been away for a month(last november). Here are some selected work I did during I was a featured artist at http://www.30dayartist.com .

Car Render 03

2006-10-24T18:59:00.000+08:00

Here is my car-render 03. Pretty much close to what i've expected. Cheers! Mr.jordan. I have been spending approximately 3 weeks on and off to create the car shader. Next i m gonna do is tire shader. Stay tune! more work is coming this november. I am looking for freelance cg job after 20th december. If you have any job to offer, feel free to contact me.

Car Render 02

2006-10-14T07:33:00.000+08:00

Here is my Car-Render02. Just ignored the chrome surface,that's no further touch up in comp this time. This time the car-paint shader looks a bit nicer then the previous one. But still not happy yet... Will add the "metallic flakes" once I get my mood back to further refine the car-paint shader... have to rest for while, spend too much time in front of computer is no good.

Ok, is time to get some breakfast. More car-illustration coming in this november dress up with some particles n lighting effect.. so stay tune. November gonna be an exciting month. I m gonna produce 40 pieces of 3d abstract illustration for 30dayartist.com in a month time. I have been anticipating for it..... Sending my computer to fix right after Car Render 02 is finished....

All this while I've been worked on some RnD stuff which is very boring and brain-fucked. Now is time to do some artistic work.. oh yea!!!!! :) is time to have fun and enjoy!! woohoo!!!!!!!!!

Image Based Lighting and Enviroment Reflection make easy.

2006-10-11T18:42:00.000+08:00

Today I have discoverd a more convenient way to do image based
lighting in Houdini.

Usually, We need to convert a light probe image(HDRI)to a cross map and then use the isixpack(houdini's reflection map generator) to convert the map into *.rat file.

Then, We have to load the rat file that we just converted in the
v_gilight shader for the lighting.
If we want to use back the same map as reflection map we have to load the
map in the reflection map slot where we can find under light's illumination tab
and change the projection type to polar panoramic which find under the viewing tab.

But I found a problem with the technique mentioned above which is we cannot
identify the position of our reflection map in the viewport.

Therefore, I have figured out an easier way to do it.
First, I project a 16-bit lat-long enviroment map on a sphere.
At least a 16-bit map has a wider dynamic range then a 8-bit map.
See image below.

Then I assign a v_gilight shader with full irradiance on to a light.
Once full irradinace is on, then I assign a white shader to the model
which is the car front part. Then I hit the render button.
Here below is the result.
I have noticed that the colors from the enviroment map has tinted the model
which mean we can do image based lighting without loading
a rat texture into the v_gilight shader and also a hdri map is not necesarrily.
Because sometimes not much time we have to shoot multiple calibrated
exposure image to produce HDRI during production shooting.

We can use an enviroment map as a constant texture and project onto a sphere
to bounce color on to the model when Full Irradiance is turned on.

Here is the end result of the menthod that i just discovered.

Car Paint Study- Day03

2006-10-08T17:17:00.000+08:00

Getting there. I just added the index of refraction property for my car-paint shader today because I'm trying to replicate back the brazil car paint shader I had back to MAX's day which I wanted so badly.

The next thing I m going to add is the candy flakes and glossy specular. I am trying to finish it by tonight because I haven't been finished my contest entry yet plus next friday is my childhood best friend wedding. And also I got to send my machine to fix since the motherboard memory slot no longer work consistently, i got memory leakage almost everyday....(MS Windows just nice enough to pop me a bluescreen error as usual) ;)

Here is the progress of the day.

SHOP parameter just added today.

Car Paint Study- Day02 evening

2006-10-07T18:11:00.000+08:00

Reflection parameters

reflection_color sets the color of the reflections in the clearcoat layer, generally white.

Clearcoat tends to reflect more at glancing angles (edges). The edge_factor defines the "narrowness" of this edge, reflection_edge_weight the reflective strength at the edge (generally 1.0) and reflection_base_weight the reflective strength at facing angles (generally low, 0.1 - 0.3).

Optionally, clearcoat layers may be glossy. The samples parameter sets the bumber of glossy reflection rays traced. The value of 0 disables glossiness and glossy_spread sets the amount of glossiness. Cars are generally near-mirrors so this value should be kept small.

Text above copy and pasted directly from Los Angeles Mental Ray User Group.
http://www.lamrug.org/resources/doc/paint.html#mi_car_paint_phen

Based of the information above, I have worked out the reflection property
for metallic car paint in Vop.
Reflected Light Vop, Fresnel Vop and Power Vop has been used.
Well, not technically correct, but got the desire look that i wanted so badly.

Here is the result.

Here is my setup in Vop.

The next thing I am going to add is flake properties like flake color, flake weight, flake reflection, flake exp and flake density. Then follow by glossy specular.... good luck Mr. Jordan.

Car Paint Study- Day02

2006-10-07T01:02:00.000+08:00

Car Paint Diffuse Parameter

ambient is the ambient light component. Note that this parameter is treated differently to the ambient/ambience parameter pair of many other base shaders in that it is influenced by the other diffuse color parameters following, and hence represents incoming light, rather than the objects "ambient color".

base_color is the base diffuse color of the material.

edge_color is the color seen at glancing angles (i.e. edges) which tend to appear much darker. For really deep metallic paints seen on sports cars it tends to be almost black.

edge_color_bias defines the falloff rate of the color towards the edge. The useful range is 0.0 to approximately 10.0, where the value 0.0 turns the effect off. Higher values makes the edge region narrower, lower values makes it wider.

Texts above cut and pasted from Los Angeles mental ray user Group.

http://www.lamrug.org/resources/doc/paint.html#mi_car_paint_phen

Based on the information above, I trying to figure out my car paint diffuse layer in VOP by using edgefalloff VOP, power VOP and subtract VOP.

Here is my attempt in Houdini.

Color shift due to view angle, shifting between a red base_color and a blue edge_color

The next thing i going to try is reflection parameter, specular parameter and flake parameter.

Car Paint Study- Day01

2006-10-06T14:28:00.000+08:00

I will update this topic from time 2 time when i have time to do my research.

After spent 2 days and stayed infront of the interface doing nothing, I decided to get my butt off the chair and do some research on car paint shader.

I am targeting on a metallic paint flake bump shader.
Below here is my analytical study of car paint shader based on various research material, correct me if i am wrong.

Basic metallic carpaint specification:
Ambient Color
Diffuse Color
Specular Power
Light Color
Light Position
Edge Color
Middle Color
Fresnel Bias
Fresnel Power

Car Paint Phenomenon

Region A&B- Glazing Angle. The Fresnel transmittance is the fraction of light that is transmitted into the material. The effect of Fresnel reflection is that as the incident angle heads toward glazing the surface, more light is reflected and less is transmitted.
Most objects that are reflective are more reflective at glancing angles than straight on and the fresnel term can be used to achieve that effect. It can also be used to blend between reflection and refraction in water.

It changes color based on your viewing angle. The paint looks like when you are looking straight at the surface and another clor when the surface is parallel to your view.

The amount of each color in the gadient is determined by the "Fresnel Power" and "Fresnel Bias" values. These will allow you to tweek how much of each color gets applied to the effect.

Finally, the two colors are subtracted from the per-pixel lighting result. Because the colors are subtracted, you'll end up with the opposite colors from the ones you selected and they'll darken the final result.

In this case, I assume and going try to play around with Fresnel Vop, Reflectlight Vop, Power Vop, edgefalloff VOP and Substract Vop to archieve the effect which mentioned above.

References:-
Tony Apodaca and Larry Gritz- The Advanced Renderman Creating CGI for Motion Pictures
Ben Cloward- http://www.bencloward.com/shaders_carpaint.shtml
Los Angeles mental ray User- Group-http://www.lamrug.org/resources/doc/paint.html#mi_car_paint_phen

Region C-Clearcoat specularity(glossy specular). Lighting model Phong. I guess I need a primary specular highlight and a secondary specular highlight to blend together and with a Multiply Constant Vop n an Exponential Vop to makes the surface appear more polished and shiny.

That's all for now. The next few days i m gonna get my hand dirty in Vop, as i forsee alot of trial n error going to happen to get the shader looks right.

Once again, If i missed something out, feel free to correct me.

Good luck to me. I always ask myself a question:" to archieve the similar result if you use other packages with a good tutorial you can do it in a day time, why spend extra time to do research and trial n error in houdini? maybe i enjoy the frustration i got when using houdini.

Car Render 01

2006-10-05T00:26:00.000+08:00

I m not particularly happy with the render. I can't reallly get a good looking car paint shader yet.
So I will give my second try soon. I lost patience half-way because the car paint isn't looks right.

Here is the final render.

Here is the enviroment map.

Here is the quick n dirty z-depth map manually painted to fake DOF in comp.

Wireframe preview(scene setup)

Sigh...... Next car render is coming soon. Once i've sorted out some chores.....

Here is a list of work i m going to produce until end of year 2006.
October- One more car render, houdini contest entry and a volcano lava shader test.
November- Produce 40 digital artworks for 30dayartist.com in a month time.
December- Tunnel explosion, fireball and gaseous fire test.

That's all for this year.