Messages

1

Gallery / Volumetric Wisps

« on: 2021-11-01, 15:10:58 »

Hi!
I have revisited this old scene and played a bit with volumetric effects while writing the new article about them. This piece is especially Corona oriented and I wanted to share it here, hoping that someone might find it useful. It contains some tests that show how basic settings work in the fully established scene. The second part of this article is coming in 3 weeks and it will be mostly focused on using OpenVDB in Corona.

thecommonpoint.com/blog_volumetrics

Cheers!

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Gallery / Re: SPA

« on: 2021-08-10, 17:32:52 »

Thanks a lot, guys! I would personally love to leave all the commercial distractions and finish this project properly as it has already taken way too long.

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Gallery / Re: Wet Wood and the Dreamless Slumber

« on: 2019-03-13, 09:31:22 »

Thank you, Philip. Generally, I just played around until I liked the results. There are two versions of this glass (one with just the droplets in the normal channel on the external surface and the second one with the droplets + refraction glossiness variation that would create a few levels of subtle streaks) and they are combined with the mask which controls the amount of fogginess according to the windows' geometry and generates bolder smudges.

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Gallery / Wet Wood and the Dreamless Slumber

« on: 2019-03-13, 07:48:30 »

Hi!
I am currently working on a bigger personal project, which can be creatively exhausting as it means a long streak without any specific results. That's why I comfort myself with this kind of tiny weekend pieces. It's the modernist villa, the kind that has already had its best time behind (but still in pretty good shape!). It combines some feelings that I have when arriving at the mountain cabin in the middle of autumn and the memory of visiting the house I live now for the first time (which also has some kind of poor-modernism features). The full project can be found here: https://www.behance.net/gallery/77365681/Wet-Wood-and-the-Dreamless-Slumber Enjoy!
 

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Gallery / Re: Northern Wisps

« on: 2018-07-23, 20:47:58 »

So I've got until now:
Kubrick x3
Lynch x2
TMWFTE x2
Stranger Things x1
All of them pretty decent associations. : ) Thanks!

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Gallery / Re: Northern Wisps

« on: 2018-07-22, 21:41:35 »

sprayer> do you mean the making of the video or the project generally? Because if it's the latter, then the making-of has been at Ronen's website for over the month. : )

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Gallery / Re: Northern Wisps

« on: 2018-07-22, 10:40:31 »

So it's this project yet one more time. It's been recently nominated for CGAwards, which I am really grateful for.
I promised to make some cinematic piece and I guess it's finally done. It wasn't easy to create any kind of narration when actually starting from the end (ie. having the scene ready). Thus it may feel somehow coerced but I haven't had time to re-interpret it from scratch into something different.

I am glad I can move on now into some new endeavours. : )

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Gallery / Re: Northern Wisps

« on: 2018-06-19, 09:25:34 »

Thank you, guys!
Sorry for the late reply but it's my vacation time. : )

Like the discussion about burnouts and non-commercial projects. Very interesting stuff. Lately I am a bit frustrated with all the tools available that I never use because there is simply no time to incorporate them into commercial projects.
I would really love to use Megascan or Substance designer, even Marvelous is to much of a hassle. Clients simply don't pay you enough , so you end up buying assets.

I understand you well. I rarely try new tools when having a commercial commission. That's why a personal work is so important for me. If not for it, I would be probably burned out for a long time, possessing just a very basic skill set.

As I said, I love your lighting. So I'm curious if you have any background in photography or film.

Not really. My background is rather traditional art and architecture but certainly, I am interested in film and photography as probably most of us do.

The same goes for post-production. Most of you work with interior shots simply looks amazing and I would like to know what is you usual go-to software.
In my opinion Corona is great to get an idea of the final image but in most cases you still have to do post in an external software.

I used to work with ArionFX when dealing with rendering on V-ray but I don't find this need anymore with Corona. Maybe just slightest adjustments are all it takes. I always try to minimalize the amount of necessary postwork.

9

Gallery / Re: Northern Wisps

« on: 2018-05-09, 12:44:31 »

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. As I wrote in the first post, I know that there are better and worse images here but I decided to attach everything for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I asked a few friends within the industry about the entire set and their favorites before making this project public. I had my own picks but I was certainly biased as the author. Surprisingly, their answers were really scattered and some of them even voted as the best the renderings you crossed out.

Secondly, it is a competition project and I think that this kind of work should be openly shared with the community, all flaws included. Therefore feel free to elaborate on what you don't like. I think that in most cases it would fit with my own feelings.

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Gallery / Re: Northern Wisps

« on: 2018-05-08, 22:44:03 »

Thank you for giving a glimpse into your perspective. I may be giving some speech next month about things connected with the personal work routine and this topic can help me shape it in my mind. I am also sorry if I get too random and disorganized with my thoughts.

To be honest, I am very defensive about my work. We are made to be quite a bit 3d generalists in arch-viz industry so I juggle with software trying to learn on a daily basis but I feel to be merely scratching a surface everywhere. Sort of the consumer of a user-friendly, egalitarian, nicely crafted set of tools than any kind of a creator. You mentioned AI in the context of the changing industry and I often try to figure out how easily I could be replaced by AI with my job. A lot of people deem the artistic values as irreplaceable but for me, it seems just a snap. A few classic principles, learning on errors and maybe some random dose of a bizarre.

But I don't want to sound too negative. Actually, I am not negative at all (probably just a bit concerned within this inertia of the change) and love the fact that we have nowadays the access to that abundance of sources. It has never been easier and faster to get the magic out of the render button and we start to be able to pull off the projects that used to require at least a small team a few years ago. There is also something a bit ethically reassuring about the photogrammetry as it's bereft of this personal creation aspect that custom 3d modeling used to have. It is like getting the genuine bricks of the world and playing gods with them.

To sum up this bipolar disorder: I have a problem with appreciating my own work but also a lot of fun with doing it. My commercial endeavors are nearly always compromised by the aspect of time (to the point of producing 20 renderings a day) and I see this impatience projected into the personal work as well. But I notice that images finished within 30 minutes are sometimes way better than the one crafted for days in sweat and tears so I probably start to understand the value of the simple and fresh approach prevailing upon the over-complicated solutions. A bit like an impressionist painting juxtaposed with some tiresome academic piece.

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Gallery / Re: Northern Wisps

« on: 2018-05-07, 09:12:05 »

Thanks for sharing your points of view. Creating a decent looking, neatly unwrapped model can be satisfying, especially when shared with the rest of the community. My problem is that even if I prepare something for myself, it so much tailored to fit just my needs that I'd be ashamed to make it available to the others. You summoned the name of Alex Roman and I really identify with his approach. On the other hand, I would also mention here Marek Denko as the person who seems to be the titan of labor at all levels of a project. I don't know him personally but (as for the fan) his personal works seem to be really persistent. I am also dazzled how he is able to pull out just the one and only perfect image. If I did all his work with the scene creation, I would probably not be able to resist to plug all the different HDRIs and rotate the sun like crazy. So I'd end up with about ten images (certainly couldn't choose the best) with a way less influence than his one. That would be so much fun though. 

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Gallery / Re: Northern Wisps

« on: 2018-05-03, 10:55:55 »

I haven't played anything since Witcher 3 and I rather see my fatigue growing in this field. : ) I can only turn on a new game to appreciate some technical aspects and then instantly get this ineluctable pop in my head warning about wasting my time. On the other hand, I am quite the opposite of "disciplined" and I am genuinely wasting hours on ineffective indolence (I guess it doesn't switch that pop on).

But to answer your question about the source of my drive:
Firstly, I don't think that my commercial commissions are satisfying enough in terms of creativity. They are often rushed, with hectic deadlines, and require a lot of mediocre design work. I cannot complain but I would easily get burnt off if not for my personal projects. It's also not that long since I decided I would like to focus totally on arch-viz and I just need to craft my career a bit into that direction since my client base is at the moment pretty random, spanning from vfx industry to advertisement. 
Secondly, I have some constantly insatiate hunger for it. I get inspired a lot on a daily basis and my head is crowded with unrealized ideas. Making them come to life is still one of my biggest joys. I have also this kind of affliction that makes me really positive about the stuff I am currently working on and really negative as soon as it's finished. It may not sound that great but it really pushes me forward.
On the other hand, I am pretty impatient and try to work smart and fast. I buy, re-use, adapt, fake as much as possible, which is not my preference at all but I have learned to accept it. I look with some hints of envy at artists that create their intricate works entirely with their own hands in every crazy detail.
I must also admit in the end that I probably just work too much and it'd be much healthier if I did less. : )

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Gallery / Re: Northern Wisps

« on: 2018-05-02, 18:37:27 »

Thank you very much.

how did you go about making the terrain?

I will probably write more about it in some making-of. Especially that I'd probably change a few elements of the workflow. Generally speaking, there are background and foreground assets. The first one (ie. Thorsmork valley, some single mountains, rocky areas) were created from the scratch in world machine and sculpted a bit in zbrush. I prepared a bunch of scattering sets distributed according to the world machines maps but in the end, I turned them off because they were barely visible in the environment fog and simultaneously quite resource demanding while being rendered. The foreground terrains (the ones where all the environment assets, as well as the cabins themselves, were placed on) were started in low-poly in 3ds max. After getting the rough shape, I placed crucial elements (cabins, rock formations creating the cliffs, etc.) and continued high-poly detailing in their context (I also moved to zbrush for a while to get some extra tweaks but it wasn't that necessary because the low vegetation covered most of it).

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Gallery / Re: Northern Wisps

« on: 2018-05-01, 19:58:29 »

Thank you!
Fluss> yes, I think I will make it. I just need to think about its form since the project is a bit too vast to cover it thoroughly.

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Gallery / Re: Northern Wisps

« on: 2018-04-30, 23:34:57 »

Thank you, guys. That's really a heart-warming reaction.

cjwidd > there's a lot that I could elaborate on here. Generally, the transition was inspired by contemporary polycarbonate facades from Japan. I wanted this form to have a very uniform look on the outside (being some idealized reminiscence of an original shelter as well as contrasting with rough surrounding) while retaining subtle details on many levels of the surface. In the end, it's some unspecified fluoropolymer. Of course, one can argue that closing the direct view from the inside onto the spectacular surrounding is merely a mistake but frankly, there are many arguable solutions here and this project is mainly to be a fun with CGI; to build upon some slightly naive poetry. I just like to think about the inside as of the shelter besieged by the reckless nature during long, cold nights.

Technically, the mesh is from Marvelous Designer, refined in Zbrush. The corona material is made from scratch as the effect of a long testing with various lighting conditions. It has both translucency and some blurred refraction. Diffuse and translucency are combined from several textures of plastics from Megascans. There is also some smudgy dirt in glossiness and normal.