Posted on August 4, 2000

• Where do I start? After the (understandably) less than stellar reception to “Tablaeu” I really wanted to post something cool for a followup. I worked on few different projects but none of them really blew me away as being something that I would want to post as a “standalone”. I would work through the night on a project and then render it during the day with the hopes of posting it that night. When the time came to post the image though, I would find a reason to work on it some more.

  I’ve just finished posting 14 images. Some of them are new, some are pickles. Here’s the list:

  • Misty Grove/Bamboo Grove: This is really two different versions of the same landscape. “Misty Grove” was completed a couple of days ago but I decided that it was just too grey and depressing to post on it’s own. I decided the scene needed to be more intimate and I replaced the trees with bamboo. Still kind of grey though 🙂
  • Far From Home: I started this project last weekend to see if I could create a planetscape using World Builder. I was hoping to use WB to model the moon’s surface, but it turned out to be much more difficult than I had imagined. World Builder terrains look a lot better when they are covered with grass.
  • Rocks: This is the project that turned into “Phaeralon” a few weeks ago. It was one of my first attempts at using Radiosity with Lightwave. The only element that made the transition from this scene to Phaeralon is the small figure added to give a sense of scale. There are two versions of this one available in the Picklejar
  • Swordman: I modeled this sword in Lightwave and brought in a Poser to wield it. Rather than design a totally new environment for the fellow, I put him in “Phaeralon“. There are three renders of this guy available. Two on the New Images page, and one in the Picklejar. The one in the Picklejar is quite dark, since I used a darker marble texture for the stairs.

  I’ve also posted…

  • Snowy: This image was created between “Relics” and “Song of the Sky“. I basically turned the “summer forest” into a “winter forest” and added some calm water in the foreground to balance out the blinding snow. It was the transition from a summer image to a winter one that gave me the idea to add the Aurora.
  • Phaeralon by Night: Some of your suggested a night version of “Phaeralon“, lit only by the blue glow from the crystal parts on the statues. I tried it out.
  • Orange Stellar:Some of you asked if I would do an orange version of “Stellar“. Actually, I did the orange version before the blue one and I combined the two renders in photoshop to create the image I posted a couple of weeks ago. Here is the orange version. Get out your shades…
  • Last and least — Green Gargoyle: This one was a brief experiment in UV mapping that I did in Lightwave last week. It’s pretty basic, but I figured if I was going to post all of this other stuff I might as well through it in.

  So that’s about it for now and I think I’m going to take a break from art for a few days to rest my brain. If you have any comments on any of these images, don’t hesitate to send them over.

Posted on July 24, 2000

• A second version of “Tableau” is up for your review. You can still see the first version inside the pickle jar. I thought these scene might make a nice home for the Pagoda I designed earlier this year…

• As mentioned yesterday, my new render is up and available. Unfortunately it did not turn out quite as I had planned. I noticed some things looking at the 1600 x 1200 render that I didn’t like so I’ve been doing some revisions already. The second version is rendering right now, but I think this first draft is decent enough to share. The tentative title is “Tableau” and you can check it out on the New Images page.

  Thematically, image was inspired by a photo I saw in a book called “Spectacular China“. Technically, this image was inspired by some of the comments I received about “Relics” in which some of you suggested that the guns would look more realistic if they had some plants growing out of them. This image was about trying to grow a plants on an imported mesh (like a chia pet). World Builder 3 plans to have this feature, but I had to work out a hack using the current software. As you can see, I figured it out (the tall rocks in this image were modeled in Lightwave).

  The next version of this image should be up either late tonight or early tomorrow. Hopefully some of the rough edges will be smoothed over by then.

Posted on July 23, 2000

• Sorry for being out of touch recently. First of all I want to thank everyone for the wonderful comments you sent me regarding “Song of the Sky“. I spent a few days last week tinkering with it before coming to the conclusion that it should stand as is. So many of you seemed to like it that I didn’t have the heart to make any changes. Of course, I may feel different down the road…

  I spent the latter part of the week practicing my modeling skills with Lightwave, trying to learn a bit of software called Macroform. Most of my spare time is spent learning how to create my own meshes.

  Yesterday I started working on a new landscape image, and it is rendering as I write this. The first draft should be up by tonight (Monday morning at the latest). Hope you stop back to check it out!

  That’s the status report for now. Just wanted to touch base a let you know that I am alive and rendering…

Posted on July 17, 2000

• Back when I was in college I took a road trip to northern Minnesota for a “hiking class”. On the way up I caught a display of the Northern Lights. I didn’t know what it was at first. The sky was glowing green and shimmering. It was one of the most incredible things I had ever seen.

  I heard that over the weekend you could see the Northern Lights as far south as Denver (can anyone confirm this?). I really wanted to see the aurora, but unfortunately I live too far south.

  My point? I spent all of last week tweaking “Relics”, trying lots of different stuff. None of the images really struck me as a major improvement though, so I kept at it. Last Friday I heard about the impending electronmagnetic storm and to assuage my disappointment as missing the Northern Lights I decided it would be cool if I added them to the image I was working on. The result, at long last, is entitled “Song of the Sky” and can be found on the New Images page and in the Night Scenery Gallery. The image turned out almost exactly like what I saw that night in Minnesota seven years ago. What do you think?

  I’ve also posted what this image looked like last week before I decided to add the aurora. You’ll find it in the Picklejar.

• If anyone is interested, the folks at Animatek have posted some of the new features they are working on for World Builder 3.0. It’s interesting in that it not only details what is to come (I’m drooling), but it also highlights some of the current version’s shortcomings. I may have to pick up a copy of Max. . .

Posted on July 11, 2000

• Added “Relics” to the gallery. I’m still trying to learn how best to use World Builder’s “Z-Buffer Composer”, and this image is another exercise.

  There’s a version without the cannons in the Picklejar if that it more to your taste. Either way, don’t hesitate to share your thoughts. Do you think the ray-traced objects “stick out”?