Posted on May 19, 2008

• I’ve added the dual and triple screen version of “Cloud Terrace” (day). It took 32 hours to render so I expect it to be that long before I have the night version posted. It will probably be ready Wednesday morning.

  On a technical note: I’m glad I upgraded my RAM to 16GB. My old 8GB setup would allow Vue scenes to use around 6GB of RAM before crashing. This scene required close to 9GB to render. I would imagine the new limit to be around 13-14GB and I’m sure I will be testing that in the future. This scene contains 240 billion polys.

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Posted on May 16, 2008

• I’ve added a nighttime version of “Cloud Terrace” to the gallery this morning. I know that some of you have been waiting for the multi-monitor “Cloud Terrace” but if I was going to do a multi-screen version of each then I had to create the night scene first. It should now be pretty simple to create multi-screen versions and I hope to have them up ASAP.

  I have a feeling that this will be one of those images that will look too dark on some monitors. If you are looking at this one in a bright room you might not see the details in the shadows. I did try brightening the image but I just didn’t like how it looked. Please feel free to edit it to your liking on your own machine though.

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Posted on May 11, 2008

• I’ve added my newest render, “Cloud Terrace“, to the gallery this evening. I’ve been tinkering with it for the past couple days and, while there are one or two things I may yet change, I think it’s ready for showing. I hope you enjoy it!

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Posted on May 6, 2008

• Once again I’ve paused the animation render to work on a new still image. I was a little slow getting started because I caught whatever bug my son brought home with him from preschool last week. Ian brought it home, then Jason got it, then me. We’re all on the mend now thought and I hope to have a new render up in the next couple of days.
• I’d posted a picture of my workspace on Facebook last month, but some of you without Facebook accounts asked that I post it here. I’ve posted the pictures here if you are interested. Please pardon the mess!

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Posted on May 2, 2008

• I had hoped to have my newest “Dreamscene” animation ready to post this afternoon, but after rendering all of my stills into a movie it looks like it needs still more work. My Fprime software allows you to “refine” your renders to higher quality so I don’t have to go back and start from scratch. I can just refine them further, but it’s still a lengthy process.

  The problem is noise, which in a static image isn’t really noticable but when the animation is running produces irritating shimmering effects in areas of the image which should be still. I’d hoped that rendering at a “medium” quality setting would result in a quick render, but the noise is unacceptable to me.

  I will probably shelve this for the time being and start working on another wallpaper this weekend. I can’t say when it will be ready because I haven’t started it yet, but hopefully sometime next week. Sorry for the delay though. Creating animated wallpaper is new to me and I am still learning how to do it well. I’d rather wait and post something excellent than post something substandard.

  I also wanted to draw your attention to the links on the left hand side of the page. I’ve replaced the long list of galleries with expandable menus. Just move your mouse over the “year” links and the “collections” link to see further options. Hopefully this will make navigating the gallery a little easier, or at least clean up the page a little.

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