Ice Tests

Currently been working on some Ice tests for a book cover.

A scene download file is below in Cinema 4D format.

Cheers

CG

http://www.zshare.net/download/4299567cc9e0fb/

Some new SMC's

Below are my latest entries for the current Speed Modelling Challenge 004 Portable Fun Handheld Games System. The Nintendo Gameboy was lost today, I accidently overwritten the file, so above the composited Gameboy is the re-made version of the Nintendo Gameboy, only took about an hour.

Enjoy

Classic Gamer

HDRI GI Composition Mini Tutorial

This is a brilliant tutorial based on a scene my good mate -R3D- gave me, so all credit goes to him for the scene, but here's a tutorial on the basis of this setup. Now this is a mini tutorial for Cinema 4D, however you should be able to get the same effects with using other software, as i've not got any other software I cannot be sure. So apologies if this does not translate perfectly.
Building Up The scene
Grab yourself a camera. Set it's projection to perspective, with a focal length of 36, an aperture width of 36, set you field of view to 53.13* (* Indicates Degrees). a film offset or X & Y of 0%, enable near clipping, and show camera cone.Set your camera coordinates as the following, positions X = 600m Y = 300m Z = -600m. Sizes X = 1 Y = 1 Z = 1 and the rotations as H = 45.3* P = -15* B = 0*.
Protect this camera, you won't want to move this camera, if you wish to have a different view of the HDRI, just rotate the HDRI itself.
Setting Up The Environment
We'll be needing to divide the environment into to environment, a visible environment and your GI environment, and of course a floor.
The Visible Environment
Start by creating a new primitive sphere, and give it a radius of 6000m with 24 segments. You'll also need to create a compositing tag, you'll need everything ticked apart from the compositing background & GI, this a visible environment which means this will act as your reflections on your objects and nothing else.
GI Environment
Repeat the same steps as before, create a primitive sphere with a radius of 6000m and 24 segments, and again add a compositing tag, this time only enable casting shadows, shadows received, self shadowing, seen by transparency and of course seen by GI, you won't need this to be seen by a compositing background, the camera or rays.
So we'll be using the same HDRI for both the GI and the visible environments, so that the lighting and the reflections are created the same. With luck that'll mean that your object(s) will appear as if they are actually within that scene.
Setting Up The HDRI
Ok, so now grab your HDRI, you'll need a pretty good one for good enough detailing. I'm using a HDRI known as City Center which is 3000 x 1500 RGB 32 Bit HDRI, this is very high resolution and perfect for what we are trying to acheive.
We'll start setting up the GI Environment HDRI first, swtich on your luminance channel in a new material, create a filter layer and load your HDRI into the texture section. I've correction the gamma on the HDRI to a setting of 1, it's more realistic that way, anything higher will be saturated. now add the following settings with the filter a Hue of 0* Saturation of -100% Lightness of 0% don't colourize and leave a brightness & contrast of 0%. Also give this HDRI a blur scale of -40% too.
For the visible environment just load the HDRI into the lumianance channel of a new material, and again give it a -40% blur scale.
Lastly we'll need of course a floor. So go ahead a create a normal floor and create a new material and place a HDRI into the colour channel this time and again a blue scale of -40%. and a brightness of 80% Then go into the illumination settings of the material and give the receive GI a strength of 138%. Then place this material on your floor and give it a rotational setting of H = 78* P = 0* B = 0* and set the projection to spherical.
Setting Up Your GI
Go into your Global Illumination settings and give the following settings, i'm using a standard setting of GI with a strength of 100%, accuracy of 60% a prepass size of 1/1, and diffuse depth of 1, stoachastic samples of 1000 min resolution of 500, maximum resolution of 1500, to recompute the GI first time, to show illumination in the prepass, and identical noise distribution and there's no need to save the GI solution.
This is all you'll need to do to get a good GI compositing scene.
I hope this method transfers well into other applications. If it doesn't i'm not sure what else to suggest i'm afraid.
Below is a test render with some red spheres.

Enjoy & Thanks For Reading.

Classic Gamer

Classic Gamer - Ambient Occlusion Tutorial

This is a small tutorial on how to create artificial lighting using Ambient Occlusion. Pretty self explanatory. Enjoy CG.

A Little Change Of Scene

I've recently got back into bootlegs/mashups again, not listening to them I mean, no actually making them!I go by the remixer name of Johnny Boot Legs, namely as it's my name, and I thought making an oxymoron out of the Bootlegs Boot Legs thing was funny. The best place in the world for mashups and remixed is GYBO (Get Your Bootleg On) I'm very privledged to be a member and there's so incredibly talent over there, not only better than me but cool people too. I'm not the best remixer in the world but I do enjoy dabbling. So here's a tweakable very very quick bootleg I did today, using Maroon 5's - Makes Me Wonder Versus 80's norweigen legend's A ha's - Living A Boy's Adventure Tale. And so we get the title Wonderous Adventure Tale :) It's a little rough around the edges and it's very short, but I've not done this kind of thing since 2002, it was produced in Sony's Acid 6 sound program. I quite like it. Anyway click on the Z hare link and get it a try! Enjoy CG.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/25335920e2558a/

A Mini Tutorial

This was offerred up on Cinema4D.be aswell as a little digital painting tutorial, excellent for those who like to create there own artworks or textures. It's very very basic, but I enjoyed creating it. Enjoy CG.

Old Artworks Part 04

Audi cars are some of the best vehicles i've ever seen, the design and curvature of those cars always amaze me, none more than the futuristic Audi RSQ featured in the 2005 film I Robot. a while back I decided I wanted to re-create this amazing car. I came across a few difficulties, one being a rather foolish part of being 60% through modelling the car and accidently making the high res mesh editable, rendering it impossible to revert to a low res mesh anymore. But rather than undo the steps i'd made to the curvature, or indeed start again, I carried on with this project. I i'm very happy with the results. Be warned these are high res renders. A while back also I participated in a brilliant challenge over at Cinema4D.be, the challenge was to create a funfair, and there was even prizes to be won, the first prize being very expensive and most excellent. Well I managed to get 4th here with my entry and I was delighted to even be considered. So this is my Funfair Scene.

Old Artworks Part 03

Well continuing the re-creations of classic gaming systems. That is my name after all :) I just had to re-create these two gems from the gaming past. First up is the Atari 2600, again I had this system, it came complete with an in-built game called Asteriods, highly addictive game it was too. Second up is the NES, the predessor to the Snes, this was where it all started for Nintedo really, this is where the big bucks came flooding in for the company, and they've been going strong since. Anyone remember Dangermouse? of course you do! Well here's the Danger Hopper spacecraft! Now this was a very big project for me at the time, I'd not tackled a full exterior building project before and I'd been inspired by another couple of renders i'd seen over on CGS and I was compelled to try my own Bar & Grill scene. I'm extremly proud of this one too. And finally this Tardis was created for the Telephone Booth SMC a while back, but here's a full render with a nice HDRI backdrop :)

Old Artworks Part 02

And so we continue the old artworks theme. And so this first artwork of the pop plants, this was actually a tutorial that I followed from Cinema4D.be another wonderful website, originally dutch, but they are very kindly translating more and more as much as they can. This tutorial was created by a very talanted artist known as Rich, he's a mod over at C4D.be and now also a mod over at C4DCafe too. And so this was my results after following the tutorial, it was also my first tutorial where i'd experimented with sub surface scattering too. I'm very happy with my results here. Well who could forget the classic games system that is the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or Snes for short and known to most as. The Snes was one of my favourtie games systems that I ever played. The games were bright colourful, engaging and extremely playable. And so I just had to re-create this 80's/90's gems in 3D. Next up is a recently revamped peice of artwork, this was one of my first attempts at archicatural/interior designs, and i've recently updated it with better materials, slightly better lighting and GI.

Old Artworks Part 01

Well as promised quite a while ago, here some old artworks. Well first up of course is Harry Potter's Hogwarts Express, this was and still is a work in progress, i've not had the inclination or the time to carry on with this one yet. But i'm reasonably happy with the results of this so far. Below that is an old vehicle model I completed over a year ago. For those old enough to remember it's Inspector Morse's car, otherwise it's the Jaguar MK II, this was just a test scene created by fellow Cinema 4D master and friend -R3D-, the shopping trolley is there just so it looks like an abandoned car park. But the background scene that -R3D- created is truelly wonderful and very realistic, and he very kindly let me use it. Earlier this year I had yet another work in progress over at threedy forums, and the idea was to re-create The Simpsons Moe's Tavern in 3D. I modelled the Tavern and all other elements originally before anything else, but after i'd finished the Tavern interiors, many wished to see the man himself within it. So this was my rather poor attempt at modelling Moe, he's not perfect but he's rather good for my ability at organic modelling. Then below that is the Tavern itself. Homer is lying drunk and unconscious on the floor. Homer's a high res imported model which isn't mine, but felt I needed a friend's model of Homer to set the scene.

New Artwork

Now that i've uploaded all of my backed up old SMC's. I'll be uploading old and new artwork, projects that i've been working on, and Work In Progress too. Stay Tuned, and thanks for stopping by.

Kind Regards Classic Gamer

Speed Modelling Challenge #154 & #155 - 3D Swords

Swords then, well this is the latest SMC right now over at Threedy forums. And i've gone for a classic, which is the Tundercats Sword Of Omens, I loved Thundercats so much, and I just had to try to model this fantastic sword once again. I had partially modelled this sword before in an earlier SMC, alongside the scabbard/claw, but my modelling skills were much poorer in my opinion back then, I consider myself a little bit better at modelling now, and i've learn't alot more too. I also think that i'm a much faster modeller than before. And I really enjoyed making this one. Hopefully I'll make some more soon too. Enjoy CG.

Speed Modelling Challenge #152 & #153 - 3D Toothbrush Redux

Toothbrushes were the topic for this SMC, I enjoyed making this one, the textures were planned early on and made within Adobe Photoshop CS2, and then I later modelled 3 entries, my 3rd being the most popular entry on the forums, as I beleive that's the most faithful to the design and shape of a real toothpaste tube. I like the look of my first entry though, and I feel that the renders really came out very well. Enjoy CG.

Speed Modelling Challenge #148 & #149 - 3D Kart Racer Part 01

Kart Racer, this was fun! I really enjoyed making these Karts, of course I had to reference from Super Mario Kart, I loved that game, it was so cool. So 2 of my entries were inspired by Super Mario Kart, and then a 3rd was just referenced from google image searching. Really great challenge, with even better models than my own on the forums. Enjoy CG.