Working with clouds some more and went for a clean still life for this one. The “trace_psd_file” node works a lot better then I thought it would, it’s how I made the lightning. Pretty handy thing. Makes type much more usable in Houdini.
Snaps from Manzanita
Couple frames from a family trip to Manzanita Oregon we just got back from. Did all the edits in Luminar again. No Photoshop used at all.
Luminar is pretty interesting. I am hammering these pretty hard and not getting a ton of artifacts or issues. The one-button AI sky swap is pretty fun to play with as well. All shot on the new Fuji 100v which I recently picked up.
Cloud Study 2
Here is another take on those VDB clouds. This time I went for a bit more abstract, odd angular shape on them. Kinda like if it was, “At the Mountains of Madness” vibe.
Just got back from the Oregon Coast and I am shockingly exhausted for some reason. Wanna work on some of my photos from there but just kinda staring blankly at Bridge.
Yachats, Oregon.
Went out to Yachats, Oregon for some much needed decompression time a little bit ago and here are some snaps from my phone that I took while wandering around. Really beautiful place.
Background plate study
Kinda had an idea to start doing my abstracts in environments so today I wanted to play with getting BG plates to work with the renders. Not sure if smoke helps or hurts though….
Volumetrics innnnn sppppaaaaaaaaaacccceeeeee!
Worked up a volumetric study in C4d and Redshift last night. Was interesting to put the thing in a cloner and play with it that way. The cloner idea was from that LFO Desgin class I am taking ATM. Learning a ton from that, probably one of the best classes I have purchased and I have bought a tooooon of tutorials. He really explains what everything does instead of just walking you through entering numbers. That or my brain has exploded from Houdini and I am just happy to have a damn UI again instead of coding…..
Puck in Houdini
I was following along with this Houdini live stream the other day and thought it could be interesting to apply the Redshift stuff I have been learning to it but in Houdini. I actually got it all working and built out this creepy little puck statue. You can see the nodes for tight wires and how I textured the main Puck figure in the screen shots. Did the grading in Adobe Camera Raw to finish it off and that was a wrap at 10:30 or so, lol!
Recent progress
I have continued with more RedShift in C4d and have really been enjoying it. Went back to Houdini to mess around and ran into a bug where I can’t get the lights to look at nulls. I can load the null as a target and it will track it for the first movement and then it clears the field and drops the link.
No Idea.
Then I tried to load a fbx file and what a freaking nightmare it is. Tried the first free solution below and it worked but a simple pair of shoes that in C4d is 4 pieces of geometry became over 150. So yeah, really frustrating. That said, being back in C4d has been really nice and easy. It’s nice not to have to break my brain to build out simple sets. So many possibilities with Houdini but it’s really frustrating to do simple ass shit.
Redshift is starting to really grow on me though. Everything works like I think it should. No abstractions or messed up ways of getting something done. Wire it up and it works. Octane is really, really easy but it does some things really quirky and non-standard. Plus, light linking is a joy in Redshift.
I will say gamma correcting scaler values is pretty abstract and should not be needed. That should be added on the programming level at the start of those channels. It is also not well documented as being needed for true representations of your textures.
Anyways, here are some of the things I have been doing along with the classes. Nothing special really but it’s nice to have a log of what I was building out. Some of these are just saved from the RenderView so I can find them later. A few are a bit more thought out ;)
One of the nice things to make is a default three point lighting set with Nulls as targets for the lights and camera. Set your GI and change the default render settings and bango, saves 5-10 minutes at the start of everything. Highly recommend building out one of those.
Also, Ramps are really, really, really important. Like use them on all the things.
Music! New Not Normals Live at Kelly's PDX
Just finished mixing a live recording of my band New Not Normals playing live at Kelly's Olympian in PDX if you all wanna get some music in your lives. Check it out!
My band be playing
Heya Portland Peoples, if you got the notion to listen to some strange music head on out the 23rd. I made some arts for the flyer. New band is called, "The New Not Normals".
VRay Fun
Been testing out VRay for a bit and it has started to really grow on me. I can spend more time getting the lighting and textures right instead of hunting down the noise demons that dwell in Modo's render engine. I really just hit render and let VRay do it's thing. Here is a outdoor study I worked on last night.
"Some places are better left forgotten..."
Daily 3D project: Week two.
Plugging along with week two of the Daily 3D project with a bit more success after trying to simplify my ideas. Went a bit more into simply fun cartoonish characters then abstracts. Was a lot of fun to model out and render this guy. Based off of a sketch by billiambabble that I really liked on instagram.
Daily 3d Project
I started to do a Daily 3D project about a week ago and it has been a really intersting excercise so far. I am attemping to post one 3D project a day to my instagram account but I don't always get something worth posting. Which is a nice way of saying that I have gone down some real ugly rabbit holes of bad ideas and misplaced direction, lol! It has beat into my skull that once again that simpler is almost always better. Get an idea and see how far you can strip it down just to get something decent looking. Ton of fun though and learning all sorts of things doing it. Highly recommend it or something similar if you are in the arts.
Cymbal & Gong Study
Just picked up this new Cymbal & Gong 22" crash ride, "Holy Grail" from Revival Drums and it sounds so damn good I wanted to do something visual with it. They do a custom patina which makes it really have that vintage look as well. Shot with my Dedolights and comped into a sweep made in Modo.
RE:Instagram
After years of not being on Instagram due to my dislike of social media I signed up not too long ago and I have been having a blast. That with the new iPhone camera just makes walking around and doing my street photography super fun again. That is the feed to the left over there. Now if only I could start to understand hashtags, lol!
Joining the instagram about 10 years too late! Whee! You can find me at danklife_photo on there now.
Around Kapaa and coast
Some pics from around town and one from a broat ride. I like broats.
Kalalau ridge trail
Some snaps from the Kalalau ridge trail. Bonus footage of the bar we had drinks in post hike. ;)
Roots and Rocks
Tonal study, Roots and Rocks. Queen's Bath, Princeville, Hawaii.
Digital Painting Study
Digital painting I did in Painter 2015 using oils and conte crayons. The composition on this one is really interesting and having a non-right angle bend in the road is what gives it that tweak. Plus, there was a hell of a lot of stuff on this corner as well. I spent a good amount of time pulling the details out of the boat bumpers and traffic lights learning my way around the brushes. The palette knife was a lot of fun to scape back down to white with, though I still have a lot to learn about the settings on that.