Posts Tagged ‘3d’

… my paper copy of Astonishing Adventures Magazine Issue 3.

It will be joining my growing pile of summer reading including Pulp Fiction The Villains,June’s BBC History Magazine (for the articles on revolution and Chamberlain’s place in history being unfair), July’s BBC Focus (for the articles on what Britain would be like if all the humans vanished and not for the one about having sex in space), a heap of New Scientists, the current .Net and 3D World Magazines.

Top that off with enjoying a few blogs including one new addition: Earl Pomerantz: Just Thinking…

I’ve been playing with the trial version of Moments of Inspiration (MoI) a handy 3d modelling package which has a striking resemblance to Rhino. Thats unsurprising since it was created by the original develoer of Rhino. Fortunately MoI is about 1/10th the price of Rhino.

The image above is a render of the second model I’ve made using MoI – a fairly simple bedside lamp I created in about fifteen minutes. I exported the triangulated mesh from MoI as a Wavefront Obj file and imported it into Vue 6 Infinite where I’ve textured it and then rendered it. The textures on the lamp are not designed for fast rendering. The shade is a translucent material with a slight displacement applied but this gave the look I was trying to achieve. I also used several point lights inside the bulb to create a light source which creates a more realistic light for a close up render than a single point source does. I’ve uploaded the model to my web site so if you’d like to download it you can get it from the download link at the bottom of this post. I’ve tested it in Vue 6 Infinite on a PC hopefully it should work in other versions. You may want to turn off displacement mapping in the material and reduce the number of lights.

Download: Bedside Lamp for Vue (357KB Zip Archive)

I’ve covered a selection of theatrical lighting rigs already that use three lights. I was sent an e-mail asking if I’d show a definitive version of the classic three point lighting rig used for film, television, photography and computer graphics. I’m not going to claim to have any experience of using this rig, I have seen it used by a TV crew but that’s my entire level of real world knowledge. One thing I do know is that whenever I’ve tried to find a definitive explanation of it I’ve discovered quite a few variations on a theme rather than one three point lighting rig that everyone swears to. From what I’ve read it originally evolved from the three point theatrical rig when film and later TV emerged.

The basics don’t vary that much. Light sources from three directions are used. These are usually called the key light, the fill light and the backlight. The key provides the main light source from the front. The fill comes from the front and softens the shadows cast by the key as well as filling in any other dark spots. The backlight comes from somewhere behind the subject, it adds highlights to the edges and separates the subject from the background. Sometimes, when a studio set up is being simulated, a forth light is added called the background light.

The first major difference is about where the key should be placed. Some explanations I’ve read place it above the subject at around thirty degrees to the horizontal. Others say to place it where a real light source would be shining from. It is usually placed to one side of the subject from the front.
The fill is a light placed to the front at roughly ninety degrees from the key. It is placed lower than the key at around eye level and its angle to the horizontal is closer to than the key. The fill is usually a softer light source. It is also usually not as bright as the key.

The backlight is the third and final light, sometimes called the rim light. Again different explanations place the backlight in different places. Some examples, particularly those for portrait photography of subjects with hair, place it as a horizontal light close to the rear of the subject shining straight forward. Others place it to the rear of the subject pointing straight forward but raise it above the subject and shine it down at a steep angle, almost like a godspot from behind. The final popular location is to place it behind the subject one hundred and eighty degrees to the fill and at ninety degrees to the key.

If a background light is used it is behind the subject and shines onto the background to illuminate it.

The next source of schism between the descriptions is in the relative brightness of the three lights. Some sources quote formulas and ratios for the different lights depending on if a high key or a low key style is preferred.

Adding to the complication of creating a three light rig in computer graphics, such as when using Vue, are the imperfection of rendering in simulating real world lights.
Some problems, like the fill light casting a shadow can be avoided in some packages by simply turning off the source’s shadow casting. This can be done in Vue 6 Infinite, Vue 6 xStream, Vue 6 Pro Studio and Vue 6 Esprit with the light tune module. It can’t be done in Vue 6 Esprit or Vue 6 Easel.

To simulate a soft fill source it may sometimes be necessary to use several faint light sources as the fill light placed at slightly different positions but all shining in the same direction.

In the real world backlights gain a lot of impact from shining on the tiny hairs the surface of a subject’s skin and through a full head of hair with many separate strands. Computer generated hair on skin surface however is usually none existent and head hair is often either simulated with layered transparency mapped polygons or is made up of significantly fewer hairs than a real person. So as to get a rim of highlights to separate the subject from the background a single backlight behind may not be enough. Instead it may either need to be raised up and angled down or a series of sources may need to be placed around the subject to shine onto the subject’s edge.

Three point lighting’s biggest shortcoming is that it is an overused cliché. Its style is that of millions of unoriginal studio portraits and almost as many uninspired 3d renders. I’ve read that with better technical innovations it has fallen into disuse in a lot of television and film production.

I’ve not had time to write this and produce any example renders. Despite my misgivings about this rig I do think it can sometimes be useful and so for next time I’m hoping to produce examples of several of the variations I’ve mentioned today.

Read:
Vue Lighting Rig #16: Three Point Lighting- Part 2 and Vue Lighting Rig #16: Three Point Lighting- Part 3

1. A reasonably up to date computer with at least the recommended specification for any of the software.
2. For landscapes I use Vue. There are different versions Vue 6 Easel is the cheapest and a good starting point or if you have a bit more cash to spend get Vue 6 Esprite. Once you know what your doing you’ll probably want Vue Infinite, which I use and which was used for Pirates of the Caribbean II and III.
3. For adding figures Poser 7 and a willingness to overcome an interface which many find frustrating. The alternative is Daz Studio which is free and has a nicer interface but doesn’t work as well with Vue.
4. To touch up or play with your finished pictures Photoshop Elements is a good choice. I find Photoshop elements does most things I want to and isn’t going to set me back by a huge chunk of cash. If you want to dive into animation you can get Premier Element bundled in too but I’d get the hang of the basics of still 3D work first as animation is a lot harder to learn.
5. Vue 6 Revealed is a good book to help you learn.
6. For sea pictures Monsoon’s Sea Vue adds some nice extra stuff you can use in your pictures.
7. For space pictures Monsoon’s Postcards from the Rim.
8. For landscapes the TerraPak toolkit for Vue 6 is a great starting point.
9. Vue comes with some plants but you’ll probably want more. Realms Art, Martin Frost and Linda Daireaux’ Incredibly Lush plants at Cornucopia 3D are all well worth considering.
10. I’ve been a member of Daz’s Platinum Club since it launched. It lets you buy lots of Poser and Daz Studio stuff cheap or at a discount. Once you’ve got it you’ll probably want Victoria 4 and Michael 3 and some of their basic clothing packs. I’d suggest restraint though. Don’t get drawn into buying every shinny new outfit with a discount. Buy the ones you need for a specific picture when you’re going to make it.
11. If you got Vue 6 Infinite and you’re working with Poser figures SkinVue and the Daz and/or Poser plug in depending on which figures you use will improve the look of your figures in Vue.
12. Keep and eye on 3D World Magazine and to a lesser extent ImagineFX and some of the other computer graphics magazines like Computer Arts for useful free stuff and tutorials. I’d be careful of Digit as it’s cover disc often sounds more tempting than it really is, in my opinion.
13. Time to work through vue tutorials, time to spend on vue forums asking questions and time to play more.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

… you wait for ages and then three come along at once. Things had been quiet on the Vue News Blog for a few days. Then three stories came along this morning and the Cornucopia 3D sale that I forgot was starting yesterday too.

There was a question on Cornucopia 3D’s vue python forum about setting all the objects / instances in an EcoSystem to point in a direction possibly with a bit of variation. So here is a quick python script for vue to do just that…

Download: EcoRotate (3KB)

Willo-the-wisp. Made using the new 6.5 version of Vue 6 Infinite released today by e-on software featuring plants from Realms Art Wetland Plants.

I thought I’d give my tower model away today. It’s intended to be used in night scenes as a distant object not for close up work. The example render was made with a sky from Bruno’s From Dusk Till Dawn set for Vue 6.

Download: Free Tower for Vue

Scarily I’ve now been building web sites for a living for ten years. I get asked by friends who need or want a web site to help them. Here are a few of the free things you can use or may be using already without realising it.

1. Linux and Apache. A web site needs a web server running on an operating system and this pairing has become very popular.
2. HTML and CSS. Where would the web be without these two easy to learn mark up languages? Gopher? Gopher Holes?
3. JPEG, GIF and PNG. One of the things that helped HTML win over the alternatives: it allowed pictures to be easily included.
4. Perl and PHP. In the early days it was Perl was the gaffer tape that held the web together. I used to write a lot of Perl. PHP took over as it was better suited to the job. I’d now say PHP’s Smarty templating engine as one of the technologies that will keep the web moving. I just wish it had appeared earlier. My life would have been a lot easier.
5. MySQL. This has become the ubiquitous database for web work. I spend most of my time working on Oracle Databases. I know that makes me odd.
6. RSS and Atom. Want to syndicate your content? These two have become the syndicators equivalent of HTML. Now with Yahoo pipes and Widgetbox these are getting even more useful than just subscribing a feed reader.
7. Google Analytics and Analogue. Analogue has been around for a long time. If you’ve done log file analysis it’s not a bad tool. Google Analytics works by visitor tracking. Web sites used to pay thousands of pounds a year for this. So Google gave it us free. Thank you Google.
8. phpBB. Need a web forum? phpBB has become the forum and it’s pretty easy to set up.
9. Drupal, Mambo, Joomla, WordPress etc. There are lots of free (often PHP and MySQL based) content management systems out there that are getting easier to set up and easier to use. With these the web will be a place anyone can create a web site without too much difficulty.
10. Web Chat. There are several web based chat rooms packages you can set up for yourself. I use phpFreeChat. Just the one I happen to like.
11. Yahoo, Alta Vista and Google. Search engines let us find stuff. If they didn’t the web would have collapsed in on itself a long time ago. There was a time before Google. Shocking I know. A time when we turned to Alta Vista to organise the web or before that to Yahoo directory.
12. Web Services. Be it Web 2.0 social networking – MySpace, Facebook, Blogger and all the others. Free web e-mail Hotmail, Gmail and Merseymail. Free web hosting (well they’ve come and gone and now a new wave of them seems to be appearing). Information sites like Wikipedia and Squidoo. Forums like Renderosity and Cornucopia 3D. The list goes on and on. Some succeed others fail.
13. W3C. Where would we be without the World Wide Web Consortium gently steering the ship in the right direction? They don’t just tell us how HTML shoud work they give us handy tools including the validators and tools to help us make sure it all works.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

An architectural concept render with a sky from Bruno’s wonderful From Dusk Till Dawn set for Vue 6.

Edit: You can now download the tower model for free: Free Tower Model for Vue