This render originally started out as an exercise in doing stormy water effects with Vue. The castle/fortress and lighthouse were added later to match an environment within a virtual world, and became the “signature” image for that region, which it very closely resembled.
The lights on both buildings were created using the same techniques first tested with “Never pick up hitch-hikers“, tweaking volumetric and glow as needed.
Image rendered in Vue.
Popularity: 4% [?]
This ended up the result of just doodling to see what I could come up with for ecosystem painting within Vue, but it grew to have a life of its own once I started adding the dead trees. In the end, I started thinking of Indiana Jones-style ruins in the middle of jungles, and so came the mauseleum.
Once that was in place, it obviously had to have a night sky atmosphere added, this one with global radiosity in it, but it also had some basic lights brought in closer to the mauseleum. A light behind the building with softness and volumetric turned on gave it the strange light-beams effect coming from inside the dome area.
When I brought the resulting image into Photoshop for postwork, it really had some problems with the definition, the lights had almost washed out a lot of the mauseleum itself, so I used the alpha mask I’d created for the building on its own to remove the surrounding terrain from a copy of the background layer, and made that layer overlay at about 40%. That brought the building nicely into darker focus.
All in all, a fun doodle.
Rendered in Vue, postwork in Photoshop. Total time to setup including hand-painting the forest ecosystem, 3 hours. Total render time, 2 hours. Postwork time, 30 minutes.
Dark Forest Mauseleum
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Even though I’m not using the super-duper humongous level kit that a major animation studio for the movies uses (donations would be gratefully accepted though 
), it’s still possible for me to use the same level of effects for single-frame images.
An example of the dilemma this causes is after the fold.
I’ve been reading Darth Mojo’s blog, and in it he once discussed how the Battlestar Galactica FX crew had lit up one of the ships they rendered/animated for the series. I decided to give the methods he discussed a try.
The first image was the one I had in mind right from the start, a simple steampunk vehicle trundling along a barren alien landscape at night, that had picked up an unwanted alien hitch-hiker.
The scene as envisioned would give me a chance to practice the self-lighting techniques I’d been reading about.
Hitch Hiker (Unlit)
Looks pretty good, I think?
Enter the dilemma. I also tried to do the same render, with mostly the same lighting, but turned on volumetric lighting to the render.
It actually came out pretty good the first time, but the haze and smoke “flared” too brightly with some of the lights from the original scene, so back into the lighting settings I went, as well as adding some extra external lights to try and bring the shadows into better focus.
This was the result of the tweaks with volumetrics enabled.
Hitch Hiker (Lit)
I’m not sure which one of these I’d call the “better” one. The first one has some of the feel, and is a lot clearer, but the one with volumetric has a more atmospheric, dusty dark planet feel to it – and the line of shadow coming from one of the alien’s fins towards the right is a cool effect.
So, which one would you choose?
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My “Wasteland Wench” likes to get around – Either she’s in the desert, or in deserted ruins, or taking a break in the relative paradise of the view here.
This is another of my combined-applications pieces. I usually have a good idea in my head of how I want the image to come out. So I start by building the Wench figure inside Poser, as well as setting up the pose itself.
Then I switch to Vue and create the terrain I have in mind. Once I have that pretty well set, I bring the saved Poser scene file into Vue and start seeing how the two will mesh together.
Sometimes it needs tweaking, both for lighting and positioning, but Vue has some amazing abilities to fine tune the terrain.
A test render (or five), then hit the button and head off for munchies while the results are created.
See what you think after the fold!
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Underwater render using Vue, submarine from DAZ (I think). Click the image after the fold to see the full sized version.
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Underwater render using Vue, submarine from DAZ (I think). Click the image after the fold to see the full sized version.
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When I posted Leviathan Outbound over on deviantArt, the wonderful PrincessJaden pointed out that it looked a lot like a Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR) warship.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Direct import into Vue 7 of the US Geological Survey DEM (Digital Elevation Model) data for the Grand Canyon (East and West).
These files are a right pain in the nether regions to locate in .dem format, as the USGS website is nearly impossible to navigate sometimes. As USGS has released the data into the public domain, I decided to make these two .dem files available so people can find them easier.
The zip file includes the public domain .dem files, as well as Vue 7 scenes. No textures are applied.
DEM file release into public domain by USGS noted from http://www.usgs.gov/laws/info_policies.html. Vue 7 scenes likewise I release into Public Domain. » Continue Reading…
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Turtles spawned in the night?
Or something less cuddly is on the loose …
1600×1200 .jpg format 3D rendered image, created using Vue. » Continue Reading…
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