Photoshop Friday

Illustrator Training

I provided a member of staff with a couple of hours of training on Adobe Illustrator today.  It's the first time I've given any training on that particular program and I hadn't realised just how much I knew about the package. 

Illustrator is one of those that I've used on and off, but never had a solid requirement for in a work setting until this month, - when I was asked to generated some logo designs with it for an SIG group project.  For this reason I was thinking that my knowledge was probably full of holes that I'd just learned to work around, but today proved otherwise.


I'm really tempted now to come up with a little side project of my own in order to showcase what I can do with the package.

Alternative Options

A quick example of how different colour schemes can be explored using the same 3D model.

Global Illumination abomination

Rendering problem *sad face*.  I think its Global Illumination that I've got poor settings for, but I don't know for sure.  I'll be hounding the Maxforums people to help me solve it.

Lighting

I took a little time to investigate actual lumen levels of lamps, and found that my lighting in 3DS Max was a bit out.  I had most of my luminaires at twice the actual brightness they should have been - revised renders are looking nicer.

I also had a bit of a play with translucency to get the lampshades right.

3D models

A reminder to myself more than a post really:

Really great 3D models for free:    http://archive3d.net

W.I.P. FRONAT Tank

and again..

Yep, its Photoshop Friday once again...

Tank treads

I've made a start on the FRONAT tank at last.  Here is a reference image for the treads:

I managed to put together this so far:

Better luck with macro

I figured out how to make my aperture setting count when reversing the lens.  This has helped me to get far sharper pictures in closeup.  Its still a bit hit-and-miss, but I'm getting better.

Photoshop Friday - just a bit of fun.

F.R.O.N.A.T. tank

Well... Here's my concept for the next round of the competition.  Its called the Feline Retribution Orbital Navigation Aqua-Tank.  (FRONAT).

The vehicle enables garden owners who are tired of neighbour's cats s**ting on their lawn to torture the moggy by squirting water at it (every cat hates this with a passion).

The vehicle is crewed by three highly trained operatives - a driver, communications specialist (allowing airsupport to be called in via satellite uplink should the moggy try to escape) and a weapons officer who is responsible for accurately squirting the cat with water.  The FRONAT is armed with a 500 litre reservoir of refridgerated water, and is armoured with teflon coated plate steel incase the cat tries to scratch the crew.  Every eventuality has be catered for.

Macro

I had a bit better luck today than previously.  Here's a couple of shots taken with the 18-55 reversed.  Manual mode at f22, 1/80sec.  I'm not sure if the aperture setting is being stored once the lens is taken off, but I like what I acheived today.

Macro photography

Maxforums competition

The Brief:
"In this round you are to create a device of torture. Most importantly, the device must be really inefficient i.e. require the most amount of energy to produce the least amount of actual result. It must be really bad at what it does.
It doesn't even have to be a device that tortures humans. It could be used to torture robots, aliens, coconuts, gerbils, crazy frogs; it's up to you!"

Well.. its not that inefficient I guess, but its just a first idea..

Completed Maxforums Competition Image - Ant

Kitchen visual nearing completion

Here's one that I experimented with - including various Ambient Occlusion and compositing techniques to improve the quality.  I still want to add some more geometry to the kitchen area such as pots and pans.  Think I need to improve the wood finish of the nearest vertical panel.

3D Kitchen

A photo from the Poggenpohl website

Final image

Well, I think I've done my bit on this project.  I've learned a heck of a lot putting this one together and I'm looking forward to the next Maxforums competition so I can have a go at a new subject.

Ants- update

Foil corrected!

Photos

The weather is FINALLY half-decent today, so I popped out into the garden with the camera.  I'm pleased with the spider shot particularly since I've not got a proper macro lens.  I'll have a mess with the RAW image when I get a chance.

Have a break

I had a break from working on this for the last few days, when I came back to it today it seemed logical to add the kitkat in that I made a while ago.  I still need some help to get the foil right though :\

Ants, Plural

I haven't spent much time on this in the last couple of days, but at lunch today I did re-render with some different camera angles.  The really wide and low angle wasn't making the ant look small, quite the opposite infact.  I've adjusted it so its a less distorted image and that has helped to make the ant more like a little'un.  I need to plan proper composition for the finished piece.  This is what I've got thrown together now:

Sparkly.. :(

Partially completed render - I'm having real problems with the materials and their specular reflections :S

Test composition

Ant texturing

I'm finally getting some textures together.  My first attempt at unwrapping and texturing a "character" is teaching me a lot about Max.  It's a really fun process but it takes a fair bit of patience!

Unwrapped

Boy, you is UGLY:

 

More detail

Abdomen and leg segments refined.

Slight update...

I've tweaked the mandibles and added some more detail to the antennae.  During this process I also detached the sections of the ant into separate objects so that the mesh is easier to manage.

6 legged Hairball

Hmm... think I still need to learn some before using the Hair & Fur modifier...

Sweet!

An ant's-eye view of sugar granules.

Research

A bit of visual research for the ant's scene. I want to put some sugar granules into the scene for the close foreground.

Ant in Scene

Setting the scene - needs something in the foreground - maybe some spilt sugar grains?  I'll be working back into the model of the ant if I can - time will be against me though.  There's something funny about the smoothing on the kettle too...

Sig

Just need to host this image somewhere and photobucket's annoyingly stopping me from doing so.

WIP - ant

Thinned out the legs and made them more refined, added antennae and eyes, also sharped up the mandibles.

Ant, an update

Not bad for a modelling noob I thought?

3D Modelling

Been trying to do an Ant for the Maxforums 7 competition. I'm well pleased with my work in progress, considering how this is the first edge modelling I've ever done:

Here are a few reference images that I'm working from.

And here is a link to the Maxforums work in progress thread: CLICK ME