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