Posted on September 9, 2011

Playing around with the navigation on DB today. I’ve removed the link column I’ve been using for the past five or six years in favor of a “navbar” at the top. Nothing too radical but I think it opens things up a bit.

You can view the old navigation here for comparison.

Let me know what you think!

Posted on September 9, 2011

Added a couple of new revisions of “First Blush” that I came up with this morning. I employed a little post-render trickery for these. Since my 3D software doesn’t let you vary the leaf color on a “per tree” basis I rendered a green tree, a yellow tree and a more muted red tree and selectively layered them in Photoshop.

Which do you prefer? The other versions can be found here.

Posted on September 9, 2011

I’ve added a new render of “First Blush” this morning which brightens the red tree considerably and moves it a bit more front & center.

A number of comments asked about removing the fog, but it adds a sense of depth that I feel is missing without it. The original will remain available in the Pickle Jar for comparison purposes.

Posted on September 9, 2011

I added “First Blush” to the Members Gallery today.

This one is a “mental photograph” of sorts. I was driving on an eastern Iowa freeway earlier this week when I looked to my right and saw a green, summerlike, wooded area with this one blazing red tree sticking out like a torch.

I only glimpsed the scene for about 5 seconds, but I thought it would make an interesting wallpaper. I fired up Vue when I got home and constructed this scene from memory (with a wee bit of artistic license).

My last few wallpapers have been a bit on the dark side, so I wanted to make at least one bright wallpaper before moving on to Halloween and the seasons beyond. I hope you like it!

Posted on September 9, 2011

Huzzah! The long delayed dual and triple-screen versions of “Enshrouded” finally finished rendering last evening and are now available to my Members. In the end it took over 1000 hours (!) for the render to complete.

Why did it take so long? The tree models I used for this scene were designed to be used as “Hero” foreground objects, with only a handful recommended in a scene, yet I carelessly scattered hundreds of them about. What can I say? I don’t like low-res objects…

There are also multiple layers of “volumetric” clouds, each casting shadows on onto each other and the scene. The more you can see through the cloud (where the trees fade away) the longer it takes for the raytracer to process.

Yes, the scene would have taken a lot less time to render on Bucephalus but I really didn’t want to tie up my main machine for 2 weeks. Fortunately my old box (Hydra) chugged away faithfully in my basement and didn’t crash even once. Thanks old friend!