The Fridge

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Vaulted Ceilings

Saw an image of the Portuguese Cistern in Morocco, and I started thinking about how I would make a similar ceiling in Blender. This is the result.

I didn't bother with making any materials, so it's just using the default white-foam-looking stuff, but it still looks pretty alright thanks to the background light. Funny thing about CGI--if you make a background right, you can use it to light a scene with incredible detail and minimal effort. This one is from a rather popular source of free 3D backgrounds called HDRI Haven, and it includes the sky, the tree, and the mountains.

I can't tell you the exact specs of this render, alas, because I didn't keep any notes when I rendered it a month or two ago. Said specs likely mean nothing to you all, though, so I'm none too concerned.

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Fog

"Things are about to get real."

Does anyone know what game this scene is from? Probably not, but I'll tell you this: up until this part, the game is almost entirely not scary....

Scene created in Blender 2.79. Rendered in Blender Cycles, 500 samples plus denoising; render time, 7 hours 9 minutes 18.54 seconds. Touched up afterwards in Blender's compositor, as well as some (hopefully) subtle effects being added. All textures were either procedural or sourced from original photographs.

This scene is not actually complete. You can barely tell, though, because the more incomplete half is obscured by fog. Sooner or later, I'm going to have to finish the room...and finish the props (the cabinet is just a big block right now)...and balance the lights...and add the signs of life....

Monday, April 24, 2017

Nathanael's First 3D Scene

Nathie asked today to learn how to "3D model" (a blanket term the boys use to mean all things CGI). I helped him learn some of the basics, and in less than an hour he had finished his first 3D scene.

The scene is entirely made out of resized 3D primitives, mostly cubes, and lit only by the sky and a single spotlight. It's a charming concept, I think, and perfect for a first project.

Rendered in 1 minute 11.8 seconds, at 128 samples.

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Second Render

Second finished version of the render (seventh version overall; last time was the sixth). This time, the materials got overhauled, implementing a degree of Fresnel reflection. Also, the light sources have essentially been expanded, reducing discernible noise by a good factor (plus you can see Olimar's face now!).

In terms of physically-based truthfulnesss, I kind of cheated; the lights you can see are smaller than the ones that are functionally there, casting light into the scene (and, in fact, reflecting in Olimar's helmet--notice the bright patch...). While this did make the image brighter, the fact that I had to cheat the brightness may mean the image needs some fundamental reworking before it's truly presentable.

Unfortunately, I also bypassed the post-post-processing (GIMP touchup), so the really interesting

parts of the picture (the Pikmin in the foreground) are actually darker and harder to see than they were before. The shadows on their heads are softer than they were, as well. A real shame, because the Pikmin were the best/funniest part...

Tech specs are identical to last time, except that I could get a decently clean (read: noise-free) image at fewer samples (100 rather than 2000), and therefore cut the time spent on a single render down from ~10-22 hours to ~33 1/2 minutes (and that's with the time spent rendering the Pikmin and the Waterwraith on a separate layer from Olimar and the scenery!).

A third version may be in order; that water doesn't quite make realistic sense, and I did make a new-and-improved version of the Pikmin model anyway....

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

First Render

First blogpost I've made in a while, eh? As such, you likely don't know about my having gotten into CGI as a medium (which is to say, 3D computer art). This here is my first completed CGI project: my take on the strangest phenomenon of Pikmin 2.

It's awfully dark, I know. And grainy. But that's to be expected of a first project, from before I understood the Fresnel effect, good lighting, etc.

As for the darkness, I think I had a brighter version around here somewhere...

Posed in Blender, rendered in Cycles at 1920x1080, 2000-something samples. Slight touch-up in GIMP.

All models and textures are rips. In other words, directly from the game (with the exception of Olimar's model, which is from Super Smash Bros. Brawl). Which is not to say that they aren't modified--at the very least, subdivision was added to the characters!

Expect a newer version to crop up at some point, maybe with a little more work put into it.