3d animation/renders

[GregDearman]

Looking nice guys!

I´ve done my 2015 reel, hope you like it!

That was amazing! I felt like I was watching a high budget animation like a Pixar film! Awesome job dude

[VMX_SKYmx99]

Looking nice guys!

I´ve done my 2015 reel, hope you like it!

Hey mace, That whole reel looks awesome! One question for you... What method did you use at the 30 sec mark to do the ground? Is that just normal and displacement mapping? Or is it lots of particles? Or am I just totally off all together? lol

[mace-x]

Thanks Greg!

Thanks aswell vmx!

Ding Ding!
The ground is a plane with a texture, normal map and a displacement map aswell

Btw, nice renders, nature is pretty difficult to do!
are you using blender internal or cycles?

i love cycles but it has that damn noise wich is mostly noticeable in darker areas, i might give it a try again tho xD

Overall Blender is a great package, a bit confusing at first but once you´ve learned the basic is super freaking fast to work!

[VMX_SKYmx99]

Thanks man! I am using cycles. I started on version 2.69 or 7, so cycles was pretty far along by then and it just seemed easier and more efficient than the internal render. I have been messing around the past couple days with volumetric lighting, but it is way over my head at the moment. But the results will be worth it once I figure it out.

[mace-x]

Volumetrics look nice!

Cycles is a very good engine, blender internal in pretty old, un updated and featureless, is not a bad engine tho.

For lighting try to play with soft shadows and area lights, a setup of 2-4 of them will help to learn basics, play with materials, lights colour and intensity in a simple sphere, that will help you

[SMR 510RR]

Quick render I did this afternoon to try to figure out some Distributed Rendering bugs I have been having, of course it worked fine and I am no closer to an answer...



Have another one I have been working on for a few weeks on an off that I will hopefully finish this week.

[VMX_SKYmx99]

That looks great man! I am not digging the material on the canopy. It needs some light shining through or something. The top of it looks a bit bright as well. Also, maybe add a noise texture to the wood to give it some weathering effects. I would do that on the fence too. Other than that, it looks great. Just needs some finishing touches. I know I'm not the greatest person to give tips and advice, but that is my two cents. Keep up the good work sir!

[VMX_SKYmx99]

After looking again, maybe add something to the canopy like I mentioned for the wood. Just something to look like there is some mold or mildew on the top so it looks like it has been in the weather and not brand new.

[SMR 510RR]

yea the canopy was bugging me too, I had it where it let too much light in, then too little, then too much, then finally too little hahaha. I modeled it so the edges are double thickness but it wasn't reacting how I would think it should when I adjusted the translucency on it so the edges were overly dark. Silly me for over complicating it. I do have some old wood textures I can put on the wood.

[m121c]

SMR you do CAD things right? Obviously architectural from your renders, but what do make the models in CAD or are you doing polygonal modeling? I'm just curious as I am trying to find the best route to doing presentation renders for my CAD models. They need to be able to animated and such and these are some pretty large CAD files, I'm thinking on settling on VRay though.

I really need to up my presentation and rendering knowledge forsure.

[SMR 510RR]

SMR you do CAD things right? Obviously architectural from your renders, but what do make the models in CAD or are you doing polygonal modeling? I'm just curious as I am trying to find the best route to doing presentation renders for my CAD models. They need to be able to animated and such and these are some pretty large CAD files, I'm thinking on settling on VRay though.

I really need to up my presentation and rendering knowledge forsure.

This scene was just done in max but usually I import from Revit to Max and then have to fix up the model a bit, add the more detailed stuff I don't put on the building in Revit, and add my materials and such in Vray. There is also corona you can try out, its relatively new but everyone is raving about how easy it is to get good images out of. Its only for Max right now but there is talk about a blender version and the licensing is monthly like Creative Cloud vs. shelling out $1000 for one seat of vray 3.0 and then additional licenses if you want to use distributed rendering. Best workflow will probably depend on a number of factors including what CAD program the models are made in and how complicated the models are. I have imported some stuff from Solidworks into Max and the quality was probably ok but you might get wonky reflections.

If you send me a model I would be happy to try it out for you, maybe just a chrome or highly reflective material with a nice HDR to see how the reflections look?

I got the landscape plan for the other one I am working on and now I have to make a buttload of plants unless I can find something I have already that is close enough. I hate plants, least fun thing to model and it takes forever!

[VMX_SKYmx99]

Could either of you explain what the benefits of Vray are? Is it just a standalone program for rendering and materials? How does cycles compare? Or are they two different animals all together?

[p2sta]

vray is just another render engine for 3d software, not stand-alone. First it was made for 3ds max i believe and now it has versions for blender, sketchup, etc. Right now it is probably most used render engine in cg industry.

I'm wondering how much people will switch to corona when it gets more popular...btw. corona was created by guys from Czech republic which is pretty cool for me, i tried few alpha/beta versions and it looked promising. But since most of the studios i work with use Vray i don't have the motivation to switch just yet.

[VMX_SKYmx99]

Thanks for the explanation p2sta!

I went to the vray website and see the free blender version, but it says I have to have the vray standalone version. So you have to pay for vray standalone to use the free blender software?

[SMR 510RR]

Thanks for the explanation p2sta!

I went to the vray website and see the free blender version, but it says I have to have the vray standalone version. So you have to pay for vray standalone to use the free blender software?

Yes, you can download the demo version of standalone and I think it will work but it will be watermarked and resolution is limited to 600x500 so its basically useless.

The thing about switching to Corona from Vray is assets, everyone has a collection of materials that they use a lot and you can buy models all day for vray. Nothing much out there for Corona right now, well they have some material packs from some big names but almost nothing. Once support comes on line for assets I think a lot of people will start using it but since big studios are already invested in Vray I don't see them switching. For a individual user tho the monthly licensing makes a lot of sense because there is very little up front costs and you don't get stuck with outdated licenses.

The other great thing about Vray is their support is really good, I don't know how good the Corona support is but once they get a lot of users it will be a big portion of their time spent just dealing with customers.