Tests and Curiosities
This section is for various tests and the conceptualization of ideas or methods I'm learning about. It's not all pretty, and some tests may be total failures, but it's nice to have a log of things to look back on. It's like a toy chest of ideas for me to try things out. Nothing is really final here, this is a place of learning and experimentation.
This super simple render was a test for backplates + HDRI. This image has a tiny lens flare as post but that's it. While I got the model off of Thingiverse, I think this is the original creator. The goal was to test some early iterations of HDRI's and test the stitching and setup of PTGui. After trying a few others, PTGui remains my favorite for this stuff. (Also the pano transformations are pretty great in there too)
This is a scene by Marco Dabrovic that is sort of famous in render circles for being a great GI test. I like to revisit it from time to time and test new ideas and methods. This render has had post done to it.
A quick leather material study of a stock chair model. This is a raw render with no post. I like doing non-traditional leather materials. There was a time when realistic leather was sort of hard to do.
What can I say, Greeble rules. Getting to know Greeble and the vrayedgestex map. Simple AO but lots of fun. While the edgestex is pretty great, there were limits on how far it could go at oblique angles here. It's not so obvious on the white objects but on the colored ones there was some weird seaming that was happening. In the end it was due to some problems with certain AA filters in Vray, but was later address with the 'Fix dark glossy edges' button.
An older project for Darkwater studios, this details some manufacturing processes for industrial waste cleanup on Superfund Sites. Used this to learn more about FumeFX and Afterburn. Doesn't quite make the cut for the main page anymore, but it was a fun learning process regardless. It was a simple task to get smoke from the fire, but it wasn't easily controlled at my experience level so I split the process between 2 systems.
Another kiln visualization for a machine used in Superfund cleanup sites. From the same project, but a different area. The biggest pain came from the limitations of pflow back in 2005/2006 when the project was completed. With box 3 integrated and a better method for particle surface follow this might be fun to revisit later.
I was trying for a more stylized and illustrative render here, but I didn't quite hit what I was aiming for. Some filter forge or post work would do it, but I wanted to get it in render. This is an old render and I should revisit it sometime soon to see if I can get this style nailed down.
A quick plastic study on some funky cool chairs from a stock model pack. Plastic is sort of easy/mundane at this point but the chair is just so cool I couldn't pass up the chance to do a quick render.
This is the same scene scene by Marco Dabrovic, only at this time I wanted to do it all in Vray with no post work at all. This is a raw render. You can see this older version has less defined but more mysterious ceilings on either side and a more bleak exposure and mood.
An opalescent study of the Stanford Dragon. This is a raw render with no post. I tried a bunch of different methods here, using references from Chaosgroup forums, vray-materials.de, and siger-studio. In the end, Sigers was the best method though quite slow and I was only able to improve the render speeds at the cost of minor noise. I wouldn't want to have to render an animated character with this method, but no others came close to the level of realism.
I've been seeing some pretty great 'invisible person' renders recently and wanted to take a stab at it. I didn't have a pattern to follow here, so I winged it. The toughest part was due to the nature of the 'stringer' t-shirt, the skinny areas around the neck just wouldn't settle when I did a simulation. In the end I had to make the particle distance quite large at first and slowly lower it to keep it from freaking out, but it worked quit well under those conditions.
Just trying to get the hang of a blown glass material. I used Bulge-O-Matic to get the shape here on a simple donut/torus. I want to do a casino lobby render someday with blown glass chandeliers similar to what you see in the Borgata in Vegas or in Atlantic City. This is a raw render with no post. Sometimes fog color + material color is wacky and hard to predict. In this case I managed to use it to my advantage. The part that worries me with a bigger scene is all those levels of refraction in a big chandelier, but I was thinking the fog inside the glass combined with post glare/bloom could sort of limit the problems there.
This is an old render when I was learning how to do interior lighting with Vray. It's from a model pack that came on DVD from a trade show, with couches replaced and the sculpture on the wall modeled by me. The colors sort of remind me of Brigantine Beach in New Jersey. My main test/goal here was to light with simply a sun/sky and no portals or interior lights to reduce blotchiness. Basically it was a test in irradiance map and light cache optimization.