Posted on February 5, 2015

I’ve added “Recursion” to the abstracts gallery tonight. I am still learning to use “Structure Synth” and this structure spoke to me for some reason. I should be able to do a multiscreen fairly soon as well. Speaking of multiscreens…

I received an email from a fan this morning that may be of interest to multiscreen users… My name is Jake, long-time fan and lifetime member. The last 5 wallpapers have not had the dual screen options, what’s going on? Those are the only ones I use. I have 3 dual screen setups, and I use display fusion to rotate every 15 mins between your most recent 30 wallpapers. Are the most recent wallpapers going to be offered in dual screen format anytime soon? Thanks man, much appreciated.

My reply…

Thanks for writing! I apologize for the slowdown in dual-screens. The simple answer is that I don’t have the hardware right now to render multi-5K scenes in Vue d’Esprit. The single 5K renders are taking between 7-10 days at this point so multiply that by 3 (rendering for 2 extra 5K screens) and you see my problem. Lord help me when 8K monitors come out…

I should be able to bite into my backlog when get a new workstation later this spring. Then I can set my current rig to start rendering Vue multiscreens. Until then you might want to try using the 5K single screen image and see if you can find an interesting crop to fit your config?

PS: I would add that I am working on a couple of Lightwave scenes right now (while rendering the multiscreen version of “Moondance”) so there should be a few new multiscreens coming soon!

~Ryan

All hardware and software purchases, of course, have to be approved by the DB Master of Coin (Jessie). She tells me that a lot more people need to sign up and renew before we can lay out for a new render-beast.

You can help by signing up or renewing today or you can visit my new Patreon page.

tldr — I need your help so I can get a new machine to keep up with the 4K/5K (8K?) monitors to come!

 

Posted on January 29, 2015

Moondance is new in the Members Gallery this morning after around 72 hours rendering at 5K. Those of you who checked out the Members-Only WIP preview will notice that I’ve added quite a few more light sources to the scene. Let me know what you think in the comments!

 

Posted on January 22, 2015

I’ve added “Midnight Sun” to the Members Gallery today. It’s been rendering on Bucephalus for far too long but I hope you feel it was worth the wait. It may be a while before I’m able to post multiscreens for this one so I would recommend using the 5K version if you can get away with it. Let me know what you think.

I definitely need to upgrade my rendering hardware this year if I am going to be doing 5K renders for all my wallpapers. If you have a 4K or 5K monitor (or plan to get one) I would certainly appreciate you not taking the sliding sale discount when you sign up or renew! The faster I can render these the more I can post in a year. Thanks!!

 

Posted on January 15, 2015

I’ve added “Ringshine” to the Members Gallery this morning. This render was inspired by an article I saw online imagining what our skies would look like with rings like Saturn.

This is another piece that I rendered on Asfaloth while my main machine was busy with another 5K render.

I’ll say it again: Rendering everying at 5K is really going to tax my existing hardware so this might be the year I have to get a new workhorse. If you would like to help me with this effort please think about becoming a Member, renewing your Membership, purchasing a print, becoming a Patron/Donor, or simply leaving a small tip (if you are already a Lifetime Member). Thank you!!

 

Posted on January 10, 2015

This new version of “Winterborn” was inspired by the incredible macro-photography of Alexey Kljatov. I used one of background ice crystals from the 2012 revision which were all modelled using Incendia’s Snowflake modeler.

This particular crystal was created while I was showing my son Jason how to use the program back when he was only 6 years old (he entered the parameters, I completed the shading which is really the hard part). For this render I created the “threads” in Xfrog and rendered the whole using Lightwave 11.