December Render

I can't believe that it's been more than a year since I started working on the model of the Pagani Zonda. But here we are, almost a year removed, and I have yet another "December Render" to share. Hhhmmm. March Madness and December Renders. I really enjoy all of these little traditions that I am slowly instituting here at Hard Core's Film Updates.

So, without further ado, here is the second official "December Render!!!"

Yes! It's all snowy and icy and watery! And stuff! I kind of half did this for fun, and half did it because I needed to make something for my 2D Design final. I printed it out on the super-nice printers at the Digital Media Center where I go to college at ETSU. The image is 4800 by 2700 pixels, which is exactly the right resolution to be printed on a 16 inch by 9 inch piece of paper at 300dpi. So that's what I did. The critique for my class's final pieces will be tomorrow, so I might add to this post or make a new one once it has been critiqued.*

Oh, and in case you weren't bored by the technical details mentioned earlier, here are some more to ensure that you get a healthy amount of bore-induced snoring today: The image was rendered in Blender using the Cycles rendering engine, using my GPU (A GTX 485m). It took about 12 hours of rendering to get this quality, which is actually very fast when you consider that there is virtually no noise in it. A similar image would never have cleared up this much in 12 hours if I rendered it with, say, Luxrender. So far Cycles is proving its self to be really, really valuable.

*I had the critique today. Nothing special, really. It went pretty well but people weren't drooling over it or anything. The class wasn't geared towards digital art, so I'm not surprised that not many people really "got" the image.

What I've been doing this December

If you regularly keep up with my blog, then you've probably noticed that I haven't updated very much this December. Well, how's this for an explanation?

Yep. It may be hard to believe, but that is my own completely* original creation. I used reference images from the internet and modeled it by hand, just like I did with the Warrior of Light. "Why make such a complex model?" you might ask. Well, I made it for a relative who loves cars. I asked him what the best car was, and he told me that the Pagani Zonda was his personal favorite. So this was a Christmas present for him. Unfortunately, I am still trying to explain to him that I made it, and it's not from Gran Turismo 5 or some such racing simulator. Anyway, I feel really great about this project. It obviously turned out spectacularly. I did not think I would achieve this level of awesomeness in Blender so quickly. Oh, and it was rendered by Blender's internal renderer. No Yafaray or Luxrender here. I tried them, but they were too grainy and they rendered too slowly. The render time for this Full-HD image was 4 hours and 30 minutes. Oh yeah, and the scene contains roughly 1 million vertices.

I'll be getting back to Axis Mundi after my break. After working on this up until the last minute, I definitely need one. Merry Christmas!

*I got the tire rims from a generous fellow who posted them for download. It was the last thing I had to do, and I really didn't feel like doing any more modeling.

Update (for lack of a better title)

Sorry that it has been a while since I posted. I just had a lot going on during Christmas and New Year's, and I decided to allocate my time to other areas of my life besides updating the blog.

So anyway, I have been working on MVA episode 6 a small amount during the past few days. So far I have filmed, edited, and scored nearly two minutes (1minute, 52seconds to be exact). This time around I have been composing using virtual instruments instead of Mixcraft's loops. It's not really like I have a choice anyway, seeing as how I used a good majority of them on Episode 5.

The other thing I have been trying to do lately is gain more ability in Blender. Here is a model of a light bulb that I modeled recently with assistance from my father:

And here is the same light bulb, but rendered as if it was screwed into a socket and turned on:

The bulb and the base were both modeled by me and my Dad in Solid Works. The floor and the lighting/rendering were done by me in Blender.

So, that's pretty much all that I have been up to lately. Hope you like it!