Practice makes....slightly better.

I thought I'd post a few images from this last week.  I've been practicing modeling in 3ds max.  While usually you don't have time to model all your contextual furniture from scratch in the heat of a studio\design project, I want to be able to if I have to.  For the Brewery project I modeled the Tolix chair in Rhino when I would have preferred to stay in Max.  It's easier than switching from program to program and keeps textures cleaner.

Anyway, I'll be posting a bit more in the coming days - hopefully some images from a recent project, a review of some software and possibly an update on my brewing.  Cheers!

Brewery Images

I thought I'd update with a few images from my studio last semester.  This was part of a 4 person team project (2 architecture students and 2 ID).  It was interesting collaborating with interior designers and seeing the design change and improve as a result.

For the renderings below I modelled the Tolix chairs and brew vats in Rhino.  The building was done in Revit and the renders were all VRay.  Some post work in PS of course.

I'll be posting more work soon including some GrowFX stuff.  Enjoy!

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.