Posted on January 6, 2007

• Some users noticed a rendering error or two in “Capricorn (2006)”. These occurred when the render was interrupted and I had to piece together three different “render-strips” into one image. The composite looked fine on my screen but apparently it was not seamless on other screens.

  I’ve completed a “one-pass” render (only took 52 hours!) which should look fine on all screens and I’ve posted it in place of the original.

Posted on December 31, 2006

• I hope you all are enjoying your holidays. We had a great Christmas this year, with Ian anticipating Santa Claus for the first time. Now we have a parking lot of trucks and tractors to deal with…

• I added “Tropic of Capricorn (2006)” to the gallery this morning. The image wasn’t designed as an update to the original “Capricorn“. Sitting here trying to think of a title (usually the very last thing I do before posting an image) it occured to me that the scene was very similar (sunset to the right) and would make a nice revision. Hopefully it will provide some (simulated) warmth if it is cold and grey where you are.

  Happy New Year!

Posted on December 20, 2006

• I’ve finally finished the dual and triple screen versions of both “Snowy Creek” and “Snowy Creek Christmas”. Enjoy!
• In response to some of the comments regarding colored lights in “Snowy Creek Christmas”: I tried multi-colored lights and I felt it looked quite garish and too busy. I eventually settled on all white lights and I think it works nicely. Thanks so much for the great feedback you all have been leaving in the comment sections!

Posted on December 16, 2006

• Late Update: Many of you have commented that the snow in the new “Snowy Creek Christmas” doesn’t look quite right. Easily fixed. A revised version is now up on the new images page. The original will remain in the Pickle Jar.

• Sorry it’s been so long since I have posted here. After posting “Snowy Creek” I recieved a number of suggestions that the image would work well as a Christmas image. I thought it would be an interesting challenge. It was quite a bit more difficult than I had envisioned at the outset. The next paragraph is technical in nature (skip if you aren’t interested)…

  Since the trees were placed using Vue’s “Ecosystem” method, I couldn’t alter their geometry and ensure the same placement as in the original image. If I wanted to add lights to the trees I would have to do it using the geometry already in place. I finally figured out a way to make it work using Vue’s “Mixed Materials”, but it took many days to tweak the luminosity, glow and atmosphere to where I was happy with the results (renders took between 8-12 hours each). Of course, the longer I spent on it the more I wanted the image to look perfect (sort of a vicious circle). To be honest, I’m still not 100% satisfied (the hi-res version looks much nicer than the thumbnail). But I think it is time to move on.

  To sum up, what I thought would be a simple conversion took much longer than intended. The Christmas version of “Snowy Creek” is now up on the new images page. I will have multi-monitors of both the day and night versions up shortly. Thanks for being patient!

Posted on December 1, 2006

• I added “Snowy Creek” to the gallery this evening. A snow scene sounded like a good idea a few days ago, when the temperatures were in the 60s here in Illinois. Now that a monster winter storm has rolled though the area (knocking my power out for most of last night and today) I am feeling a little less romantic about snow and ice. Still, Ian seemed to enjoy playing in it so it wasn’t all bad. Enjoy!