[arttorney]

Did a little abstract brainstorming today for the hands with Alchemy. There are a few shapes in there I may explore with the GIMP a little further.

[arttorney]

For those who are not abstract-friendly, here is a pencil drawing of a concept I had the other day while walking home from work.

As I thought through the costuming issues I noted early on, coupled with my desire to build an adobe, it became evident that what I was heading toward was a spaghetti western re-telling of The Girl With No Hands. I was walking around playing Morricone music from Fistful of Dollars in my head when I devised this steampunkish prosthetic. The linear gear is attached to a rod that attaches to a vest or something. When she extends her arm it pulls back thereby operating the circular gear which is attached to the movable prong. The movement of extending her arm thus causes this device to grasp. It would naturally have a spring so it will open when she pulls her arm back.

[arttorney]

Still pluggin' along day by day.

[arttorney]

several more mountains







This is close enough for now on my 10 mountains. Next comes cross beams and a roof for the shack.

[RobotGodzilla]

Really looking forward to seeing this all come together, very interesting

[arttorney]

I did a little work on the sky today. I guess I might punch up the polys on the sun another notch or two. I could probably figure out how to use an HDR photo for a background but the rules did not say that is OK. guess I could fudge that by mapping the HDR photo onto that sky block.

[arttorney]

I've been busy with the day job lately, but this morning I did a little work. I don't know how legit 16:9 aspect ratio is for Imagine FX but it sure does work for these outdoors scenes. There's really no good reason for mapping an image on the skyblock, though, when I can just simply build the image with 3D things and lights in pretty much the same way the real world is built. I'll put in the rest of the mountains and the cabin to this image. I'll pick a camera angle that wont allow you to see things like those little shadows the sun is casting on the sky. The figures will be in another image I composite in during post production

[arttorney]

Today's progress. Except for sky and sun these are all still default texture.


I am going to have to take the sky to a different image because I need sky lights that regrettably cast mountain shadows onto my physical sky thing.

[arttorney]

I can resolve the problem of mountains casting shadows on sky by putting the sky in a different file along with a copy of the sun-light and rendering it separately. If I had Vue 9.5 from one of the sponsors it would solve that stuff automatically, but for now I need to muddle through this with my more primitive softwares and non-powerful computers.

The first image has higher rays per pixel and ambient occlusion style lighting solution. The second has Monte Carlo style lighting. I can see that the Monte Carlo style will produce a good effect in the eventual sky file, but is not appropriate for showing the near side lighting of the rocks and cabin. I'll probably test photon mapping and photon mapping final gather methods to see if I get a crisp result that is not so heavy on that secondary shadow my skylight casts away from us on that cabin. That could be attributable to bounce from the foreground mountain my characters will stand on, but I don't want it to be very obvious, that's for sure.

I just need to fill in a few more rocks and I can start on clouds and vegetation.

[arttorney]

Starting in to work on my clouds. Clouds are subtle and complicated. (edges currently too sharp ... must go back and see how I made my flames in fire breathing bull of Crete)

cloud multiplied X10 in Y axis; divided by 10 in Z axis.

[arttorney]

A quick and dirty fan palm leaf for thatching purposes.As you can probably tell, that roof is going to be seen from pretty far away.

[arttorney]

Today's progress.

[arttorney]

That weird geometric light on the sky is shaped by the doorway of the cabin due to a "candle light" I put in the cabin. I can block that off later if I decide not to render the sky separately. Such a decision may happen because there is an interesting cloud wisp thing going on due to the candle light that peeps through some little gaps in the thatching fronds and casts onto the sky. I learn some of the damnedest things by accident sometimes.

[arttorney]

I'm back.

[arttorney]

Some notes about rendering and global illumination:

#1= photon mapping- direct plus scattering from materials set at both single scattering and photon mapping plus soft shadows was activated

#2= ambient occlusion plus scattering from materials was single scattering and soft shadows was deactivated

#3= monte carlo global illumination using caustics photon map, high dynamic range was deactivated and soft shadows was deactivated

#4= monte carlo plus caustics photon map, high dynamic range deactivated, scattering from materials is photon mapping mode, light in building value darkened, additional texturing on "cube 1" plus better anti-aliasing and photons per pixel 32/256 (1 hour 40 min. to render)