Posts Tagged ‘Rendered’

A quick post for a quick render – Sunrise City – my first proper test render with my new 64 Bit PC built entirely with it.  My last PC was supposed to be 64 Bit but there was a complication in the manufacturing (otherwise known as Dell used some 32 Bit parts thus rendering the whole box trapped in a 32 Bit body with 64 Bit RAM and Processor).   Anyway I’m now enjoying the 64 Bit life style.  This quick image was made by taking a quickly built Wizard City from CityEngine and dropping it into Vue 9.5 Infinite.  A few tweaks to one of the out of the box atmospheres to make it redder, to add a low cloud layer and to darken the buildings’ materials so they became stronger silhouettes and nine minutes later a larger version of the cityscape above was done.  Resources never dropped below 85% even with both Vue and CityEngine running at the same time.

One of the most popular pages here is Cloud Layer Sculpting in Vue and with all the new Vue 9.5 cloud features I thought I would be a good idea to blow the dust of it and rework it to use the new features.

Here is the original for comparison…

Update: I’ve been busy and I’ve posted a tutorial on how to do this and made a video tutorial to go with it too: Cloud Picture Made with Vue 9.5 Infinite.

So this is my first proper Vue 9.5 render post. A single cloud layer over an infinite procedural terrain with two texture layers controlled by altitude and slope angle. I sometimes feel I’m cheating a bit when I post one of these because Vue does so much of the work while letting me get on with the big picture.  Not really using any Vue 9.5 feature like the new cloud manipulation yet but still nice to see a new version can do the basics.

I’ve tried to create a picture like this for some time – a cityscape with layers of different types of building like real cities have. I started this attempt earlier today and I think its my best attempt to date. Its built up of several CityEngine created models and a few from Cornucopia 3D. The foreground is the new Favela Houses at Cornucopia 3D along with some basic Vue plants. The mid ground is buildings created using the CityEngine Paris 2010 project. Behind that is a narrow row of CityEngine’s science fiction WizardCity and the tallest towers are from the modern city project.

I’d like to have included some cars and people in the foreground and possibly a plane in the sky but my 32 bit system couldn’t really cope with anymore models in the scene once I assembled it in Vue 9.

I’ve been tweaking my unofficial Vue News Blog.  There were a few of the new features available through Blogger I’d been thinking about adding for quite a while.  I’ve finally got round to switching to one of the new templates that can use them easily and rendered a custom background in Vue 8 for the page.

A render of Mars made using Vue 7.5 Infinite

Just a quick render of Mars made in Vue 7.5 Infinite using planetary settings and tweaked to remove the atmosphere.

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)

Last weeks entry in my ongoing series of theatrically inspired Vue lighting rigs is one of the most commonly used rigs: Two Spotlights from the Front. Tonight’s rig is an improved version of that rig which adds a third light behind the actor to add a little back light.

During the development of theatrical lighting the two light rig became popular because it provides good illumination of the actor, modelling and area control. Backlight was outweighed by the cost effectiveness of a rig that used only two lights.

However to give a more natural look light needs to fall on an actor from all around. This can be achieved by adding a third light directly behind the actor. It can shine at as little as 20° from the vertical. In some smaller theatres or when there are a lot of lights in a rig and space is tight an almost vertical downlighter may be used. The new rig had all the advantages of the two light rig and the added bonus of the backlight.

Compare it with last weeks image:

Hopefully you should see that there are highlights on the shoulders, hair, and arms. Here is a rendered the same image with just the backlight with a high power setting. I’ve tweaked the image in photoshop to emphasis where the light falls.

For a slight variation I’ve added a very slight volumetric effect to the back light in this image but reduced the lights brightness. Rather than separating the figure from the background by adding highlights around the edges the volumetric effect picks them out.

Using a three light rig has very little impact on render times compared to using a one or two light rigs.

For a variation on this rig the backlight may be hung slightly to the side.

All of the above images were made using Poser 7 and Vue 6 Infinite. They could have been made using any version of Vue 6 including Vue 6 Pro or Vue 6 Easel and any version of Poser since Poser 4.

I ment to post this explanation night but I was really tired so I had an early night and couldn’t get to sleep till well past 2AM. Anyway less of my problems you didn’t come here to hear me moan on…

The picture I posted last week for Wordless Wednesday, Duel 2 that several people said looked like a computer game was made using Poser and Vue. It was a rework of an earlier picture of mine, Duel. I decided to change the angle a little so rather than looking at the characters with a conventional photographic angle I’d look down on them from above. I also removed a lot of the objects that were already in the scene as they wouldn’t be visible with a steep downward looking angle on the scene but would be using precious computing resources.

However the image was now rather plain and empty with only a couple of characters on the dock in view so I added some clutter to make the setting more interesting. I also changed the water so it was more dramatic although I think it could still do with some more work. I also used SkinVue to try to improve the character’s look although I’m not certain it really made a lot of difference to this picture, if I improve the lighting it will probably have been worth the effort. I fiddled with the light a bit because the original lighting cast shadows that hid some of the detail in the picture. I may play with the lighting on this one again as I’m not really happy with it yet. Finally I rendered it and posted it here.

The following products were used in making the picture:

• Michael 3 Base (Now Available Free at Daz)
• Michael 3.0 Head & Body Morphs
• Victoria 3.0 Base
• Victoria 3.0 Head & Body Morphs
• Pirate Pack for M3
• Wharf Construction Set: Piers
• Pirate for V3
• Buccaneer Gear
• Swashbuckler Pirate Poses
• Wharf Clutter
• Pilot boat
• Port crane
• Oars and Paddles
• SkinVue6.2
• SkinVue6.2 DAZ Character Plugin

Last weeks picture I made for WW was made entirely in Vue. I started with Vue’s default settings.

I began by creating a terrain object.

In the terrain editor clicked on the erode button till the default mountain became a smoother hill shape. I resized the terrain to fit the picture I had in mind and angled the virtual camera up to set up the frame I was thinking of having in the final picture.

Next I created a tree object using the Summer Cherry Tree plant type. I positioned it roughly over the top of the hill where I wanted it to be and then used the drop button to put it on top of the hill. I tried dropping it several times till it landed where it looked best.

I used an EcoSystem to put the rest of the plants onto the hill. It’s a mixture of the patch of grass and fern that come with Vue along with the weed patch from Linda’s lush underbrush set from Cornucopia 3D.

I switched to the atmosphere Bruno kindly gave me a while ago. Then I fiddled with the camera a bit more and rendered the final picture.

I made the sidebars for the revamp of impworks in a similar way and used different atmospheres to create the different pictures I’ll be rotating on the side bar that featured in my Thursday Thirteen last week.