Re: New Year's open themed still image competition (OPEN)
Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 7:22 pm
Inspiration:
This art work is titled "Preservation" and came from an idea I had while visiting the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto last summer. I imagined deep sea or alien life forms held in suspended animation but not completely void of life.The sterile glass case with diffused back lighting and the warm hue of the formaldehyde liquid were key elements I aimed to reproduce in the images. I also wanted to model some funky little creatures!
Technical:
I wanted to put Octane up against a challenging scene with lots of refraction, reflection and emitters. This is the type of model that can be difficult with traditional ray tracers, requiring many test renders before the proper lighting and material attributes are found. With Octane, the instant feedback of material and camera changes made the scene a lot of fun to work with. The path tracing engine (max depth of 24) was used for this model which added time to the renders but it was time well spent in my opinion, especially since the render calculated on it's own card leaving the rest of the computer free for other work. I also really enjoyed the camera and image adjustment controls in Octane for settling in on the hue that I hoped to emulate from the museum exhibit. There is no post processing on any of the images.
Modeling:
The glass case and jars of "Preservation" were modeled in Rhino. The creatures were all sculpted and painted in Sculptris and then imported to Rhino as .obj for arrangement. I also brought the creatures into Blender to bake out ambient occlusion maps although I only used these on a few of them. All models and textures are my own work and I also shot the HDRI environment used for the exterior reflections. The final .obj was just under 4 million tris.
Conclusion:
I'm including as my submission four images. Sequentially, they are intended to draw the viewer into this moment of struggle and fear as one creature battles for self preservation... I hope he makes it!!
- Brian James (image names include render time and samples)
This art work is titled "Preservation" and came from an idea I had while visiting the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto last summer. I imagined deep sea or alien life forms held in suspended animation but not completely void of life.The sterile glass case with diffused back lighting and the warm hue of the formaldehyde liquid were key elements I aimed to reproduce in the images. I also wanted to model some funky little creatures!
Technical:
I wanted to put Octane up against a challenging scene with lots of refraction, reflection and emitters. This is the type of model that can be difficult with traditional ray tracers, requiring many test renders before the proper lighting and material attributes are found. With Octane, the instant feedback of material and camera changes made the scene a lot of fun to work with. The path tracing engine (max depth of 24) was used for this model which added time to the renders but it was time well spent in my opinion, especially since the render calculated on it's own card leaving the rest of the computer free for other work. I also really enjoyed the camera and image adjustment controls in Octane for settling in on the hue that I hoped to emulate from the museum exhibit. There is no post processing on any of the images.
Modeling:
The glass case and jars of "Preservation" were modeled in Rhino. The creatures were all sculpted and painted in Sculptris and then imported to Rhino as .obj for arrangement. I also brought the creatures into Blender to bake out ambient occlusion maps although I only used these on a few of them. All models and textures are my own work and I also shot the HDRI environment used for the exterior reflections. The final .obj was just under 4 million tris.
Conclusion:
I'm including as my submission four images. Sequentially, they are intended to draw the viewer into this moment of struggle and fear as one creature battles for self preservation... I hope he makes it!!
- Brian James (image names include render time and samples)
!
), i just can't wait for later versions.
