Digital Sketching

I just landed a Wacom Intuous 4 tablet for Christmas so I thought I'd post my first sketch attempt with it.

I'm really impressed.  I think that combining it with CS5's amazing brush setup I'll be able to bypass a lot of analog process work and jump straight to digital.  This will save time and add flexibility while still preserving the looseness of hand rendering.  Also it's essentially the same techniques, so you stay in practice with sketching even though it's not a piece of paper you are sketching on.

Creekside Cabin - First design sketch  (Photoshop + Tablet)

XMas Trees (in 3d)

Here is a major load of images.  I'm trying to learn a new tree growing piece of software (I'll post a review of the software soon) along with winter render techniques.  I'm working on a small residential project in a winter scene.  I'm excited about it.  Winter has a certain charm about it when it comes to renderings.

Here are some renderings that I've been doing as practice for the final product.

Particles, Motion Blur and Fish...

I haven't had time to post in a while but here are some recent renders that I've done.  I've been doing some neat effects with particle emitters and motion blur (see the fish below).  Also I've been working on a more 'illustrative' form of renders (first render below).  All of this work is Revit > Max > PS.  All images are work in progress at this point - presentations are mid December.

Entrepreneurial Center

Salmon Fountain in the Greenway

The Fish in 3ds Max showing the particle emitter - all context is 3d using 3ds Max proxies.

Abstract Buffalo Sculpture in the Greenway

I love (rendering) leaves.....

Here is another leaf render.  Leaves are so great....they let you play with translucency, light, texture, reflection maps, etc.

This is using a couple of bitmaps for textures from (the great) Peter Guthrie.  I also should post my latest presentation boards soon, too.  If I can figure out how to make my 72"x72" presentation boards into a reasonable sized jpeg, I will post them.

A few odds and ends....

Here is a recent hand render along with a project that I designed for fun.  It's all based around a parametric family I made that has an option for 'horizontal shading = yes/no' and 'vertical shading = yes/'no'.  It was modeled in Revit with a adaptive curtain panel family and the exported to Max for a nice HDR environment iRay render.  It's actually for a class where we invent a fictional firm, so I decided to drop it onto the cover of Arch Record so we can say our firm got published ;-)

EDIT:  I figured out a way to have my curtain wall glass be wavy!  So here is the finished (or actually not so finished) result.  It's more of a work in progress.  I like the results though, even if there are some anomalies.

Revised Courtyard

After a crit the courtyard render changed substantially.  I'm very impressed with how iRay handles heavier geometry and complex lighting situations such as this.  I don't love it, yet, but it is a handy and fast renderer.

Rainy Night render

I thought I'd get a recent render posted, too.

I decided to try out a rainy texture the other day.  I slapped it on some glass, messed with the settings over and over again, but I'm finally happy with the results.  It's great how a whole scene can just 'develop' because of curiosity about a new technique.  The only question I have now is: where is that guy going and what book is that?  Also, where do I get a couch like that!?

Nurbs based 3D Melon

Product Viz work is fun, particularly when your subject is a cantaloupe!  This is just a quick model I did for a class.  It was fun making this thing in Rhino, putting it into Max and then mapping it and rendering it.  I snagged the textures off a photo of a cantaloupe.  I had to take the perspective out and do what you always have to do with textures, but I'm happy with the result.

The displacement map gives a nice thickness to the skin.

Random thought:  I bet a cross section of a grape would be fun to render!  All kinds of weird refraction in that thing.

 iRay Render

iRay Render + Abstract Overlay

Design + Render workflow

I thought since I'm down sick with a head cold that I might post a bit of my process for a recent render\design.  Not a step by step so much as an overall, broad workflow.

I'm currently part of a two student team working on a studio project that involves getting together a 'visionary' package for a client.  For our next presentation we're prepping our massing model with locations that have higher detail to give a better idea of where we're going.

So - Step 1...the basic pergola model I made that came from a squiggle on my teammate's trace paper:

Then, Step 2: making an adaptive curtain panel component for that rigging to give us the shape we want:

Step 3: Placing that component on the divided surface:

Step 4:  Put it into our massing model, add contextual details for the scene and then go to 3ds max and render!  I used iRay with my GTX 580 for this.

UPDATE:  And Another use for this was in the Market place - these renders are Mental Ray + VRay:

Redesign

I thought I'd post a redesign of one of my renders from a week ago.  I decided to change the brick pattern to a basket weave, I 'baked' my Substance texture from the concrete wall into a bitmap and then modified it in Photoshop to give it a sort of interesting sub-pattern to it rather than the 'panelized' look from before.  I also tweaked out a bit on the UVW mapping of the wall in Max and placed my texture EXACTLY where I wanted.  The curtain wall is an obvious addition.  Also I applied a strong 'levels' adjustment to my concrete texture BEFORE I added it to my render, so that gave a nice punchy contrast to the render even before I photoshoped it.  I also improved the grass a bit by using the mental ray '2 sided' material.

My render settings were pretty high...1600x3200, sampling was 16 min\64 max, and Final Gather was set to 'Low' (since it's an exterior scene I felt that was fine.)

All in the Family...

For the ASID:

A quick review sheet and some links for Revit Families:

• First and foremost: pick the right template to begin with!  Often there is no going back.
• Flex your model early and often!
• Avoid at (nearly) any cost the mistake of locking geometry to geometry….this is BAD and the family will not flex.  Rather, ‘sketch’ out your shape with reference lines\planes and align the geometry to that reference geometry.
• Reference lines are used for rotation and are not infinite (where they begin defines the rotation point!), reference planes for horizontal spacing or permanent angles and they are infinite.
• With complicated families you will need to ‘nest’ one family within another….an example would be a single ‘shelf’ family within a bookshelf family.
• Make something an ‘instance’ parameter if you want it to be changeable for every ‘instance’ of the family.  Use ‘type’ parameter if you want it to be universal.
• I highly recommend the book ‘Mastering Revit 2012’ by Eddy Krygiel

For information on the Revit class I taught this last summer (Arch. 404) visit:

http://flexingfamilies.blogspot.com/

Also, if you are interested, here is the Autodesk Official Family Guide page.  It’s for Revit 2010 but applies to 11\12:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=13376394

And last but not least, a link to a great PDF shortcut list.  Credit to the RevitKid for finding it on HOK's blog who (I believe) found it and linked to it.  Originally it was done by David Driver.
http://davidddriver.com/Product/Freebies/Revit/Revit%20keyboard%20ShortcutsVert.pdf

Renders

Thanks to a new computer I just built myself, I've been motivated to revisit some old renders and create some new ones.  I can't say how great it is to have a new (read: FAST) machine!  I decided to go watercooled, since a lot of the work I do puts 100% load on the CPU and\or the GPU.  I've been impressed so far...the cost wasn't too high and the benefits are fantastic.  Sub-50C temperatures on my GPU when I'm rendering and sub 70C on my CPU when I'm rendering.  Part of the reason the CPU is hotter, I think, is that I've overclocked it and also the direction the water runs goes from Pump+Reservoir > External Radiator > GPU > CPU > Pump again.  So, in other words, the hot water hits the CPU after the GPU so it's warmer.

Anyway...on to the images!  They are a mixture of different renderers (including iRay, the new GPU renderer in Max 2012) as well as some digital painting.

Concept art

I'm working on some conceptual plans for a client.  They want a medium sized mountain style house with an arts + crafts vibe and large overhanging roofs to shelter the walkways from snow.  These are early days yet, but I thought I'd post my initial render for them.  It's a mixture of hand and digital techniques.

Doors

Welcome to the world of Carpitecture!  I do enough projects that I thought it might be rather fun to share some of them online.  I'm in the midst of trying to get my M.Arch degree and I also run (when I have time) a small carpentry shop specializing in high end millwork and furniture.

As a starter for my new blog, I'll kick it off with some images of some doors I'm building.  They are out of quarter sawn Western Red Cedar.  The client owns a fairly remote log house that sees some harsher winter weather than typical, so the stability that comes with QS Cedar will be a boon.  These doors were a pleasure to build not only because they were all new designs\layouts to me, but because the house they were installed in is particularly nice.