Just finished the cover art for the soundtrack to the podcast Outgrowth. It’s a horror story set here in the PNW. You can check out the soundtrack by We Are Parasols on Bandcamp now.
Houdini Macro Fluid Sims Using Vellum Fluids.
Was doing a bunch of R&D into close up fluid sims and discovered some pretty cool stuff. I Started with FLIP sims but could not get the detail I wanted, so I started trying out Vellum Fluids. Started getting some interesting results that let me punch in pretty close and they hold up. I went down to 0.007 on the particle size but with some Vellum Post Process it cleans up pretty well.
Cloth Sim study with Sub-D experiments.
The Chair study from the other day had a cloth sim on camera right that I made in DOPs, which is what made me want to mess a bit more with some cloth sims and this is the result of that study. This time though, I just made it directly in a vellum SOP with some pinned points. It’s a much simpler workflow for sure. Used good old JSplacement for the textures and displacement and subdivided the cloth mesh with a poly reduce to get the “webbing” stuff.
HyperGrass!
This asset looks pretty good, adding it to the list of assets / tutorials to try out for sure.
“HyperGrass is a multi-purpose collection of realistic 3D grass assets unlike any other. Create realistic fields of grass with ease and craft the perfect look you need with an unprecedented amount of flexibility, control and creative possibility.
With a unique multi-layer design and endless amounts of variation, HyperGrass will be the only 3D grass library you ever need for adding incredible realism to your artwork.”
Mixer 2021 Deep Dive: Multiple Texture Sets
Since adobe bought out Substance Designer I have been messing around with Mixer occasionally. I use Bridge and Megascans all the time but have not really dug too deep into the integration and customizing you can do with Mixer. The new 2021 update seems to add a lot more functionality though that has me more interested in messing around more. The siren song of real-time rendering with Unreal is growing stronger as well….
New work in the Wild
I did some album artwork for local Portland band “Hawks Do Not Share” that will be on vinyl and CD. The imagery is also featured on the website, will be a shirt and did a looping animation for a lyric video. Pretty fun project. When I get the product here I’ll probably update the portfolio with it all proper.
More teasers
Just some more teaser images for some stuff coming out soon.
Abstract Doodle
Messing around with some concepts from a class I am working on.
Basketball still life
Here is the finished render from the sim below that was glitching out. Houdini vellum and Redshift render.
Houdini Vellum, random pins in simulation
Ran into a little bug messing around with vellum where it looks like pins are set to the cloth even though I have no pins set.
The way to fix is to go into vellum node and change “Mass: Calculate Varying” to “Mass: Unchanged”. That will unstick them.
Iryna Nalyvaiko, Back to Bed.
Really cool series by Iryna Nalyvaiko, “Back to Bed”.
4-28-21 doodle
Just kinda wanted to riff on those tables that have resin cut out in them here. Tri-planer shader in Redshft came in handy while texturing the wood.
Doodle and notes and portfolio updates
I hate pinterest with the burning intensity of 10,000 suns. What a garbage site that spews out so much search engine spam on anything I search for. Good lord, try to google a CG technique and just see page after page of single linked junked with no info from pinterest. Anyways, just add this to your search to kill it.
-site:pinterest.*
The “*” is key as it kills EVERYTHING from that domain and they spew out so much crap just the “-site:pinterest” won’t clear it. Yeesh…
Two new portfolio pieces dropped on the home page as well. Some allbirds and some Nike both with CG elements.
And today’s doodle is a rehash of a older set for some EP cover art that got shot down.
Noedle - free texture maps!
Slack is talking about his new site for free texture maps, Noedle but the copy is where it’s at!.
“I always said the Earth was flat. How else could I have this beautiful Landscapes? Color, Normal and Displacement Texture to use on a flat surface.”
The Mac Pro - a year in the studio
Interesting write up about using the Mac Pro in a 3d studio for a full year. They start testing it with Redshift and Octane at the end which is interesting. The USD previews are cool as well. The biggest thing for me is when they are caching a Houdini sim and can continue working in another program. My computer could not handle that for sure. But after being burned by the trash can mac, I don’t trust them to continue support for it. Interesting though.
“The Mac Pro has given us stability in complex workflows and enabled us to create larger, more detailed worlds than we have ever attempted before. We can animate more characters, paint larger textures and simulate more realistic effects. It allows us to work seamlessly across multiple applications simultaneously and we can continue to work while waiting for heavy tasks to process.
There is now more support than ever from developers. It’s great to see support for new technologies that take full advantage of the hardware like the Redshift and Octane GPU renderers and game engines like Unreal. Apple’s dedication to professionals and studio workflows is apparent with the integration of USD in the core of macOS.
The Pro Display XDR has given us the ability to work in the P3-DCI colour space for feature films and develop workflows for HDR which is something we can now offer to our clients with confidence.
We must address the elephant in the room, Apple silicon. We feel reassured that Apple has aided the transition with Rosetta 2 and noticed the cheeky inclusion of Maya already running on it in the announcement keynote. It’s also great to see the developers of the software we use announce support, like Chaos Group noting plans to support ARM based architectures with their V-Ray rendering engine later this year.”
Man, that is is freaking UGLY though……
Karan Gujar - DIORAMA.
Karan Gujar has created a lovely set of abstract landscapes on her Behance page, titled DIORAMA. The mood and simplicity of these is really compelling. I have been taking a sabbatical from most of my creative outputs lately but this series is kinda motivating me to create again.
Naturalistic lighting from Andrew Wyeth in CG
These two did another project where they figure out the lighting of an artist in CG. This one is on Andrew Wyeth. My big take away was to start using modifiers on my lights. Kind of a forehead-slapping moment.
When I light stuff in the studio the first thing I do is decide what kinda modifier I am gonna put on the light. Strip box with a grid? Projector with a grid? Beauty dish? Well, in CG I just grab a naked light and start aiming it like a scrub. It will be interesting to mess around with diffusion and more modifiers.
Still Life Study
Way back in September, I talked about doing a lighting study on some of Niall McDiarmid images. Well I finally got around to one of them! Took me long enough….
Built it out in Houdini with a quick Vellum sim for the napkin and towel thingy. The new vellum brush tool is quite handy to use. Lots of fun as well. I did learn how bad Redshifts Sub Surface Scatter is though trying to get the ketchup, mustard bottles and bread to look like anything other then plaster. It took a mix of roughness settings and coating to get it looking close to how I wanted. Using both the Sub-Surface and SS Multiple Scattering was not getting it there. Adding detail like the lipstick and coffee stains was super easy though.
Made a simple markup of the lights as well. Nothing too fancy. The super narrow spotlight for caustics is the only little trick in there. The light in back of the bottles was originally just there to help me work on the SSS, but I liked how it made that highlight on the table. Kinda looks like a window or something.
Revisiting some album artwork
A band I did some album artwork awhile back asked me to rework it recently so I took a project that was originally in C4d using the default render engine into Houdini and Redshift. Quite happy with the results. Did a proper glass shatter sim instead of just a Voronoi fracture as well. Here are the Houdini results with the C4d being last.
Well, hello there...
Been a hot minute with no updates here, sorry about that, but between all the election crap and a boat load of work landing I have not had much brain power at the end of the day. Anyhoo, here is a bulk dump of some more mirror balls and other studies I was working on. Just tinkering with some ideas here.
