Posted on August 9, 2016

Whirlwind

A companion piece to “Thunderhead“. I used what I learned designing those cloud formations to make a convincing environment for a tornado I modeled using The Plant Factory.

I may still tweak a thing or two with this one before I’m finished, but I thought it looked nice enough to share for now.

Compare to the original “Whirlwind” from 2000!

PS: My renders are usually an escape for me from the flatness of Central Illinois, but the foreground in this piece very much embraces it

Posted on August 1, 2016

Thunderhead

I was born and raised in central Illinois, which is very flat country (flattened by a glacier 10,000 years ago), and cumulonimbus clouds are our versions of mountains. I first attempted to model one back back in 1999 using texture mapped spheres. This version with 2016 technology uses Vue’s Spectral 2 clouds.

Posted on July 26, 2016

Class M

First off I would like to mention that for the first time in 10 years, DB is living on a new server. I’ve been working hard migrating the site to the new box over the past week and I think I’ve ironed out most of the bugs. The new machine will give me a platform to hopefully create a whole new site soon!

When I wasn’t tinking with my code I was creating a new render. I recently finished the excellent “Red Rising Trilogy by Pierce Brown and his vision of a terraformed Mars inspired me to create this piece. I used Vue d’Esprit’s “spherical” terrains and dug deep into the cloud editor to create this render.

There was one location from the books in particular that I wanted to recreate and this piece could be considered a warmup for that 🙂 I hope you enjoy it!

Posted on July 16, 2016

Cloud Kingdom

Having some fun with World Machine here. My last few images have been somewhat on the dark side so I wanted to do something with a bit of sunlight. It’s been dreadfully hot this week as well so I wanted to do something cool. I hope you enjoy it!

Posted on July 9, 2016

Bones of the Earth (Glow)

I mentioned last time that a Member sent me some photos of a cave that inspired me to try to make my own. Well, those photos featured glowworms which lit the cave up like a starry night. After modeling the cave for the “Bones of the Earth” render, I’ve turned down the lights and added my own glowy denizens.

I hope you enjoy it. Multiscreen coming very soon!