Ever wonder how to set up a volumetric material in mental ray for Maya? Parti_volume can be kind of tricky, but once you get it working the results are very rewarding. This technique is also photonic, so the physical accuracy is available.
The volume on this is going to get fixed soon. Until it does, you can still follow along with the video.
Right Click the above image to download the quicktime file. It is 1280×720.
We’re back this week with almost thirty minutes of video. This week I’m mapping the bar in the living room of my Fish House which involves a little remodeling, some beveling, texturing, and of course mapping the UVs. Just right click on the images to download the files if you want them for yourself.
I cut them up into four separate files. They’re all 1280×720 and the resolution is much better, so they should be easier to follow.
A lot of people have asked me how I paint. Hopefully this shows them just enough to keep them happy, but not enough so they have to come back for more:)
Just click on the images to play the videos.
The following painting took about a half hour.
This one was about fifteen minutes.
This one was also in the range of fifteen minutes to a half hour, but not too long. That’s what makes these speed paintings.
This started out as a ten minute video at 24.5MB. I compressed it down to an flv at 15.2MB. Hopefully you can follow along and tell what I’m clicking on. This video is the start to a series on UV mapping in Modo. If you guys want the higher rez version let me know. I can get it up here asap.
Low-Rez
Higher-Rez.
click the above image to view and download the full resolution quicktime.
It was hot out today. Matt Paquin doesn’t like the heat. So he painted this refreshing snowy mountain scene.
It looked a little lonely up there, so Matt tried out a red dragon, which we all know rarely venture that far north.
I recorded a UV mapping tutorial for Modo today which I will not be releasing. I mention this because I started talking out loud about how I didn’t know how the scene was being lit. You can see the image example below.
You’ll notice how the floor is much more blue and lit than it should be. The are no lights above it, and the only light source in the scene is way down the hallway. I’d been scratching my head for a few weeks as to why the attic portion of the building, which has absolutely no windows was just as lit. I finally figured it out today. Its the Indirect Range in the Global Illumination settings. When I first started texturing the building I set this to a low value and everything magically rendered faster and was better lit. I checked the manual to find out that if the GI rays don’t go far enough the geometry will pick up the color of the environment. So that’s why the floor of the interior was sky blue. After setting the Indirect Range back to zero I got this:
As you can see, everything is as dark as it should be. However, this presents an interesting problem. First of all, my render times more than doubled. Everything looks much better, it just takes longer to make it happen. So I fired up my PowerPC G5 tower and figured out the network rendering process. It shaved off about two seconds. That was kind of disappointing, but I think it might come in handy when the animations start getting rendered.
So that’s my Modo tip of the week. If your interiors seem like they’re getting lit when they shouldn’t be, check the Indirect Range. It might be too small.
Now that the scene is nice and dark I have to figure out how its going to be lit.
Some more demo images from teaching. Normally I haven’t used textured brushes, but I started playing around with them today and I think I liked it.
This was my demo painting for a Photoshop class I was teaching to 9-12 year olds. The class is about three hours long, and factoring in q+a and troubleshooting, maybe this took me an hour?
He’s the Loch Ness Monster’s Arctic cousin. The coat of fur actually helps him sense movement in the water and smell (like nosehairs).
Todd Miller and I worked on the website for Rick Laprade’s movie Deathforce. I contributed what we called bio cards to give some background to the characters, like the backs of old GI Joe packages. Rick liked them so much he couldn’t decide which version to use, and apparently is going to integrate them into the movie.
Bear witness to the awesome power of my fully functional blog!
Well, its not so fully functional yet, its only been a couple days. I promise there’s going to be some awesome stuff here soon. I’m really enjoying this whole WordPress thing so far and it seems like this could be the beginning of something amazing.
And just to get things started here…
an early render of the fish project's kitchen
This is an early kitchen render from what I will refer to as “The Fish Project.” Much more of this to come later.
