Posted on July 14, 2008

• Status report time. Sorry I waited this long folks. I can see from some of the comments that some of you think I’m on vacation or dead or something if I don’t post here on a regular basis. I’m still alive and I am currently on my second hi-res render of my new project.

  I rendered the triple-screen versoin of “Moonlit Citidel” last week (a 50 hour process) and after reading the comments I’ve decided to keep it and re-render the sky when E-on releases their software update. If it looks like it will be more than a couple of weeks I will probably just post what I have, but I would rather not as a lot of you thought the cloud bug ruined the images.

  I’ve been working on my latest project for the past week or so. All I can say about it is that I haven’t seen anyone try this with Vue d’Esprit before (though I could be wrong) and it’s a tricky render. I hope to have it up in a few days, but I will post here if it’s going to be longer.

  I’ve been getting a lot of requests for abstracts and space images so perhaps I will try some of those after this project. They usually don’t take a long to develop and render as my ever-more-complex scenery images. Thanks for being patient. I’ve created a comments thread below if you have questions or feedback.

Posted on July 3, 2008

• I’ve added the moonlit version of “Citadel (2008)” to the gallery this morning. I call it, simply enough, “Moonlit Citadel” and you’ll find it on the New Images page. It took a couple days longer to get a result that I was happy with, but I think the extra time was worth it in this case.

  I had a render finished on Tuesday but right before I posted it I decided to add some extra lighting to the Citadel itself (inspired by the original 1998 version).

  I should have a multi-screen render up in a couple of days. Last week I contacted the developers of Vue d’Esprit regarding the issue with the clouds in my mulit-screen renders looking different (and worse) than the clouds in the single screen version. I just received an answer from them this morning. Here it is (typos left intact):

  Hi Ryan, we found out what the problem was. It’s linked to te aspect ratio that’s different. And atmospehere are calculated based on one aspect, and the changes a bit (usually not that much) if you change the aspect ratio. But in your case, it changes a lot, so the atmosphere looks realy weird (in fact the math function behind it is stretched. We will try to correct this for the next software update, until then I hope this info will help you finalize your render. Let me know how it goes. Best regards. Matt

  Hopefully they can fix the problem and I can then redo some of the multi-screens which show the problem. Should I hold off on the multi-screen version of “Moonlit Citadel” until the issue is fixed? Leave your thoughts in the comments thread if you have any.

  A happy and safe Independence Day to all my USA Members!

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Posted on June 29, 2008

• I’ve added the dual and triple screen versions of “Citadel (2008)” this morning.

  I’m starting to suspect that Vue d’Esprit has some sort of bug regarding the rendering of clouds at extreme FOVs. The clouds lose a lot of detail when I widen the FOV for the multi-screen versions. It took me an extra couple of days of rendering to figure out that it’s impossible to replicate the original clouds. I’ve tried to compensate but the simple fact is that they don’t look the same as the single-screen version. I’ll continue to experiment, but I wanted to post what I had before I did any more tests.

  I’m still planning to try a moonlit version, but I wanted to have the mulit-screens up first.

• I’ve adapted Lokesh Dhakar’s “Lightbox” script for use on the “Gallery-at-a-Glance” page. Clicking the small thumbnails now will load the large version “lightbox style”. Click the caption below the large image to be taken to the page in the gallery containing the download links. I might be able to simplify this even more (add download links to the caption) but this is what I have so far.

Posted on June 24, 2008

• I’ve posted my latest project on the New Images page this morning. I’ve titled it “Citadel (2008)”, implying that it is an update on my 1998 “Citadel” image.

  Actually I didn’t set out to update “Citadel” image, but when I was looking to see if the “Citidel” title had been taken I saw that I had used it 10 years ago. The themes are sort of similar so I kept the title for this one. When you produce over 600 images, you are bound to reuse a title once or twice I guess.

  I’ve placed in the image in the “Day Scenery” gallery (though it could go in either gallery) because I think I might try a moonlit night version. I hope you like it.

Posted on June 22, 2008

• I’m waiting for my latest project to finish rendering (hopefully sometime tonight) so I took the time to tweak the “Gallery-at-a-Glance” page. Clicking the “Year” links will now take you to a page dedicated to that year with larger (100 x 75) thumbnails. Thanks to whoever suggested that one. I’ve also removed some of the revisions from the 1999 and 1998 galleries and placed them in the Pickle Jar where they belonged.