The May Free•For•All

[Gare]

Merde!

I looked up from my screen today and there's stuff growing outside!!!!

Let's celebrate the Rites of Spring (or at least read Mother Nature Her Rites) in photography, modeling, illustration, you choose your medium.

The contest closes mid-June, let's say, when I'll open a summer Free•for•All!

Let's get cracking; first prize I'll mail you a Free Cone coupon for your participating ice creal parlor chain (ex. Friendly's).

My Best,

Gare

[Welles]

Flower Power!

[img width=600 height=450]http://homepage.mac.com/wellesgoodrich/FlowerPowerSm.jpg[/img]

Here's a bigger version... http://homepage.mac.com/wellesgoodrich/FlowerPowerLg.jpg

[Gare]

Somehow I knew you'd be the first to post, Welles...

Verry nice primrose jam!

One of the sure signs of spring here in New England was I spotted a blonde in a red convertible yesterday...with the top down.

the car top.

-g-

[Gare]

I did this using XenoDream to generate a floral-type model, rendered out of modo 203.

XenoDream can generate really large files, but the polys are smooth and you can get a lot of diverse seashell/vegetation stuff by playing with the input values. About $100, cottageware and the folks upgrade you for free, a nice change of pace (or rather, a return to pace with shareware!).

My Best,

Gare

[Welles]

So I was goofing around in Vue 6 Infinite working toward another springish image when I discovered an unusual issue. If you use a bitmap base for the landscape material (in this case the base mat of an ecosystem) and then move your camera off the edge of the terrain, the volume below the edge becomes strips of color which corresponds to the tiling of the bitmap at the edge of the terrain. I saw that and instantly thought to use it as a 'technique.' This image, "Spring At The Office," was a single render with no postwork. Cool!

[img width=800 height=600]http://homepage.mac.com/wellesgoodrich/Spring2.jpg[/img]

[Gare]

You're truly springing into Spring, Welles! Save some of that abundance of energy for the Summer competition, eh? 

What you discovered is called "smearing". You achieve the same effect when you use several of Photoshop's filters with "Repeat Edge Pixels" checked, Displace for example.

Actually, in 3D Land, smearing is an effect that happens when flat type mapping is used on a surface that is not precisely parallel to the scene camera.

The images I've pulled where I accidentally created smearing are, sadly, not as handsome as yours, Welles!

My Best,

Gare

[Welles]

Gare,

That "Repeat Edge Pixel" effect in Photoshop was also a modestly popular effect back when the single pixel horizontal and vertical marquee tools were first added to the toolset. People took the single pixel selection and transformed it which smeared the pixels into an effect similar to the one I 'discovered' in Vue. Smearing is a great term for the effect but in Vue it isn't exactly what you are describing as the classic 3D smear, I think. I've seen the results of that but in this case the smear occurs beneath the edge of the terrain even though the camera is perpendicular to that edge. What's happening is an effect of using a bitmap image in creating the terrain's base material as opposed to using a procedural. Here's that same image with a procedural material used for the base mat of the ecosystem.

[img width=800 height=600]http://homepage.mac.com/wellesgoodrich/Spring3.jpg[/img]

[Gare]

Hiya, Welles—

In your post, you said perpendicular when I think you mean parallel, right? I'm not hip to the inner workings of Vue, but in C4D, when you grow hair or grass on a surface, it's important to make the effect facing the camera (it's a target tag for the "ecosystem"); if you don't you get a very strange render, similar to smearing a bitmap, but perhaps not exactly the same in math terms.

I'm not positive, but I think Vue is auto-aligning the ecosystem to face the camera. Or it's possible that this procedural texture is volumetric...sometimes called a "3D" texture, like a cube of wood texture you subtract from and the texture retains visual continuity.

Just a note for all: a procedural texture is just a math recipe for a surface; you add a pattern in Mulitply mode, a different one in Add, and so on, through a shade tree. A bitmap texture is not a procedural texture, but a bitmap can be used as a part of a procedural texture. The Filter>Distort>Displace command in Photoshop is a "one limb" procedural shading tree, for example, and this limb depends upon a source bitmap to do its thing.

My Best,

Gare

[Welles]

In your post, you said perpendicular when I think you mean parallel, right?

Yep. We have an oops, Houston! Hey once you've seen one P word you've seen 'em all. 

I'm not positive, but I think Vue is auto-aligning the ecosystem to face the camera. Or it's possible that this procedural texture is volumetric...sometimes called a "3D" texture, like a cube of wood texture you subtract from and the texture retains visual continuity.

I'm not positive either about the auto aligning to face the camera. I can place the camera at any position, pitch, roll or yaw I wish and the ecosystem stays 'fixed' to the terrain to which it is applied. I'm not sure Vue actually grows grass or hair as you describe but rather places instances of models. The magic is that if you are using Vue's solid growth vegetation, every instance is a unique plant as the parameters of each are shuffled. You do have great control over placement, angle off perpendicular, size variations and so forth in addition to being able to brush areas with an ecosystem or even use the brush feature one on a one click places one instance basis.

[Gare]

You got some smart plants, there, Welles! You could probably teach 'em to water themselves, then move on to washing the SUV and bringing you your slippers

Exactly how the Vue programmers did it is most likely either a trqade secret or patented technology, so the reality that it works should suffice. I do know, however, that in C4D and Maya, when you have a strand-type growth system going on, the app is actually rendering explicit geometry—very simple 1-3 polygon hairs, grass, ya-da-dah.

That's why level of detail is important for the artist to consider. The closer you are into a beauty shot of a "natural" scene, the more polys you have to specify. Dioramas and post editing in Photoshop can help speed your rendering time; don't bother rendering the areas that won't invite close inspection by the audience.

My Best,
-g-