Posted on August 21, 2000

• Added “Canopy” to the gallery today, marking another chapter in my long struggle to master lighting in World Builder. This one is sort of a cross between “Misty Grove” and “Morning Light“. Comments appreciated.
• As you can might have noticed, I’ve finally replaced the old “chair” login page with the new Flash animation. Thanks to everyone who sent me feedback.

Posted on August 11, 2000

• A couple of updates today. First, I posted another render of “First Snow”. This one lacks the white haze and should be a little less blinding. You’ll find it in the picklejar (it’s called firstsnow3), because I stubbornly prefer the render I posted yesterday 🙂

  Second, I started messing with Joe Alter’s cool “Shave and a Haircut” software. My goal was simple: to put some hair on the “swordman” model I posted last week. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know anything about “hairstyling”, so please be understanding when you see my results. You can find my render on the new images page, and you’ll find a “detail” render in the picklejar.

• I’ve posted a more colorful version of “Minutiae”, in case you’re interested. You can find it on the New Images page.

• I’m working on a little redesign for the “login page”. Nothing too fancy, though it does require the Flash plugin to get the full effect.

  Click here to check out a preview of the new login page I’m working on. You can see the old login page by clicking here. Comments appreciated (especially from those of you who don’t have Flash installed).

Posted on August 10, 2000

• Added “First Snow” to the gallery today. It’s a continuation of what I started with the “snowy” image that went up last week. I liked that one, but I felt the composition with a little cluttered. Hope you like this new arrangement better, but if not you can still grab the first draft (along with a few intermediate renders) in the picklejar. As always, feel free to write if you have comments or suggestions.

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.