Lighter’s Diary : 29/07/2012 [A tribute to Newell’s Teapot]

It has been almost 4 decades since it was first becoming an icon for rendering. Newell’s teapot has been helping to shape today’s renderer to test and showcase their lighting and rendering technologies. From the first Lambertian to the last of Sub-Surface Scattering and lots of taste of BRDFs, it’s still standing tall and giving beginners even seasoned pros sharpening their skills by using it’s simple curvature and shapes. Thank you Teapot!! You sure is has helped me a lot in my days of testing long nights of rendering tests. Here’s a classic render as a tribute for classic look for our role model. For history might check out this link Utah Teapot

demystify archviz ii : wip 02

Finally got some time to add up more stuffs into the shelves. Still got no idea for just one empty shelve before I’m doing shading and digital assets to most of the objects.

 

 

 

 

 

Sigh…maybe sculpting? another lamp?…

Cheers..

Demystify Archviz II : WIP 01

First WIP on my Demystify Archviz II using Houdini. Still gathering ideas. Geez, deadlines from my work gives me very limited time to put more ideas for this one.

Japanese Tea Room #2

After some thinking I decided to add some tidbits to add up more into the tea set. Since I think the room lacks of organic stuffs. Still need to refined the macha sweet cake. Blocking the room with current lighting only which is quite early morning time just to get a general feeling on how I’m going to finish this work.

So the WIP so far gave me quite a view on the room in general and how to represent the tea set most importantly. Anyway still a long way to go, still haven’t decided with what mood that I’m going to choose. I think I’m gonna do some test with different rigs just to see where it goes.

Cheers..

a sunday afternoon wip #2

After struggling with texturing and blocking all the colors, finally I stepped into lighting stage to start blocking all colors and mood first. Here’s the first attempt to block the lighting :

There are still lots of homework to be done for this one :
1. The wall sucks, need to change it somehow to match up the whole room
2. Need to add up some props to make it more interesting like wall phone, wires, etc.
3. Fix the red grain inside the bottle, looks like frozen blood pellets.
4. Umbrella holder looks fake, need to find more reference to make it better
5. Revise lighting
6. Setup renderpasses
7. Look for more appropriate backdrop

So much to do in so little time. Sigh..hope it works well

A Sunday Afternoon WIP

Decided to take a look at the past. Remember some stuffs about an idea of a project that me and my best friend planning to do. Well, after some sketching and stuffs I decided to give it a go. Revisiting an old project but only taking a portion of the set which is the kitchen area. I’m going to have an afternoon tea time kind of feeling for this project. It’s been a long time since the last time I do modelling (not on the catwalk of course), so a simple set like this took me 3 days to work with.

Kitchen Outlines

Been thinking to add more classic props to make the kitchen less modern or uptodate. Sigh…it’s still on the early stage, wishing the boring stuffs can get away fast and goes to lighting it.

3Delight for Maya 4.5 at 6am in the morning…(yawn)

Arrggh…dah jam 2 malem tapi masih belum bisa tidur. Gw memutuskan untuk browsing internet buat info-info seputar dunia CGI. Berharap akan mengantuk tetapi malah menemukan hal2 yg menarik untuk dibaca dan dilihat, salah satunya adalah Avatar film James Cameron yg banyak ditunggu penampilannya setelah masa produksi yg cukup panjang.

Selain itu gw juga nyempetin ke 3D Render Challenge buat ngeliat Challenge Lighting terbaru dari Jeremy Birn. Alhasil ga tau kenapa itu membawa gw untuk ngedownload 3D Delight for Maya 4.5. 3Delight adalah 3rd party renderer yg terakhir ini dikembangkan oleh DNA Research. Renderer ini adalah termasuk Renderman Compliant renderer yg cukup bersaing dengan produk lain yg terkenal yg dikembangkan oleh Pixar sebagai renderer yg digunakan dalam produksi film animasi mereka.

Ternyata 3Delight cukup bermurah hati untuk memberikan license gratis untuk satu workstation untuk mencoba produk mereka. Setelah gw coba install dan sedikit membaca manual yg telah mereka ikut sertakan dalam instalasi. Gw mencoba dalam sebuah scene lighting Challenge Halloween yg di model oleh Jeremy Birn. Setelah melakukan shading dan texturing secara kasar, gw mencoba melakukan lighting dan rendering menggunakan 3Delight.

Setelah trial and error, gw mendapatkan bahwa ternyata 3Delight dengan bantuan pluginnya dapat mentranslasi dengan mudah hampir semua shading networks di scene tersebut. Meskipun memang harus ada melakukan tweak sedikit untuk nilai bump mapping. Beberapa fitur yg membuat gw senang untuk menggunakan 3Delight di Maya adalah :
1. Poly -> Subdivision tanpa harus membuat GUI menjadi lambat (bubbyee Mesh Smooth)
2. Fast Displacement Map
3. Shadow dan Deep Shadow yg cukup akurat dan juga cepat untuk di-generate
4. Sistem rendering Multipass yg dapat menutupi keterbatasan sistem Render Layer di Maya

Setelah mengutak atik selama 3 jam lebih ini hasil cepat utak atik tersebut :

Halloween_Breakdown

Dan kesimpulannya adalah ini udah jam 7 pagi dan gw udah mendengarkan alarm berbunyi tanpa gw sendiri harus bangun…sigh…just another day waiting the boss to SMS me to get my ass back to office. Buat info lebih jelas dari 3Delight…disini.

Sepertinya meskipun udah bisa untuk menghasilkan image dari first try dengan 3Delight…masih banyak yg masih musti dipelajari dari renderer ini yg sayangnya tutorial2 di internet masih kurang. Well time to sleep…zzzzzzzz….