Posted on June 27, 2000

• As mentioned last time, I am working on a new cityscape. I’ve posted my first hi-res test render on the New Images page for your review. Unlike “Gotham 1999” I’m trying to model each building individually instead of using clones, so this one is taking a little more time than my average wallpaper. Gotham ’99 used maybe three different building meshes, this one has over 12 so far.

  I plan on adding a lot more to this image. The ocean is really just a placeholder and I plan on adding more architecture to the scene, along with better atmospheric effects. I’d also like to see a few flying craft zipping about here and there. Maybe some billboards…

  Anyway, the gist of what I am saying here is that this image is in the rough stages. I’d love to hear your comments on it though.

Posted on June 25, 2000

• Stars are pretty easy to make when they are far away. All you need is a white dot or maybe a little lens flare. Up close, however, they’re a little more complicated. Still, I wanted to give it a shot and you can see the result in “Stellar“, my latest upload. It can be found on the New Images page and in the Planetscapes gallery.

  I thought about adding more elements to this one, but in the end I decided the “simple look” made the best wallpaper. I think the biggest challenge was making a “realistic” looking star that didn’t blind you when you looked at it. Anyway, what do you think?

• Vue d’Esprit simply refuses to render a 1600 x 1200 version of “Overlord“. I’ll try again when they update their beta.
• Coming up next: a new cityscape. Stay tuned.

Posted on June 22, 2000

• Ever since I heard that Vue d’Esprit 3.1 was multi-threaded, I’ve wanted to try it out. Sunday I downloaded the latest beta (Ver. 6), installed it, and got busy setting up a scene to show off this “citidel-looking” mesh that I had built in Lightwave. I was hoping to post it for you back on Monday, but unfortunately that was not to be.

  To make a long story short, Vue 3.1.6 seems to have a nasty bug. From what I can tell, a memory leak occurs during the last anti-aliasing pass. It slows the render to a crawl, and then crashes the program entirely just when the render is complete. As you might imagine, it is no fun to render an image for 12-14 hours only to lose it all at the very last moment. This has happened to me 4 times this week and, of course, the files created with the new beta will not open in previous versions of the software.

  The bug only occurs when I try a “render to screen” at 1600 x 1200. Vue has another option (“render to disk”), but for some strange reason the render times are multiplied by 10 whenever it’s used. I decided to render the image at 1152 x 864 using my main workstation, and render it to disk at 1600 x 1200 using one of my other computers.

  Hopefully that explains why this latest image, Overlord is a couple days late and a size smaller than I usually post. The 1600 x 1200 version will be up shortly (I hope). I didn’t intend for this to be a big time consumer, just a fun refresher exercise with a neat software package that I’ve been neglecting. The fun part, I guess, was in putting the scene together. Hopefully it shows and you’ll enjoy the wallpaper.

  I’d love to hear your comments on this image, and/or Vue d’Esprit, so don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

  I think I’ll move on to something else now….

Posted on June 17, 2000

• Some of you were quite adamant that the statues in Phaeralon should stay. They are back in my latest renders. There are two versions, one with the familiar “white marble” texture applied throughout and the latest (featured) version with a faster rendering texture on the architecture.
• Added another “Synapse” render to the picklejar, based on the “unnumbered” version featured on the new images page.

Posted on June 14, 2000

• I’ve been working a little more on Phaeralon these past few days. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the first version. From the letters a lot of you wrote me, I can tell that you did too. Still, I felt the image was incomplete the way it was. I wasn’t thrilled with the scene behind the first set of columns, where things started repeating. I wanted something a little more interesting in the background.

  I added some architecture in the background and widened the front hall so you could see it better. In opening up the foreground, I also decided that the statues should go. They had to be moved farther off-center in the new hall and I just didn’t like how they looked from the new camera angle. They are still present in the 2nd version (in the pickle jar), but in my latest render I’ve removed them in favor of two reflecting pools on either site of the walkway.

  I don’t think this image is complete yet, but it’s been a week now since I posted anything new (where does the time go???) and that’s really longer than I want to take between updates. You’re more than welcome to send over any comments or suggestions you might have on my revisions.

• Thanks to all of you who wrote me about Synapse (the series). It seems most of you liked version 1 and version 4 the best, with a smattering of applause for versions 2 and 3. Interestingly, only a few of you liked the one that I chose to feature on the new images page. Hmmm. I guess that’s why I post multiple versions, so you can use the one you like.