Hotel Suite - almost...

The modelling, texturing and lighting of the hotel suite visuals did get finished some time ago, though I have been so busy I didn't get around to finishing the post-processing work to the level I wanted. Here's a render which I quickly gave a little attention to in photoshop.  It's still not quite where I'd like it to be, but for now at least I have something to show for all that work.

Hotel Suite visuals

Here are some work in progress shots from my latest personal project.  I started this one to practice my modelling skills, so everything you see here was produced by me in 3D Studio Max.  Getting to grips with the cloth simulation tools seriously for the first time was quite rewarding, though there are some details that need refining in the images you see here.

This is also the first time I've gone through the whole modelling and assembly stage without adding anything besides plain material shaders, and it has made the process of putting the scene together significantly simpler without the distraction of adjusting diffuse values, reflectivity samples etc.

The scene is based on some gorgeous photos I found here on the Galaxy Hotel Iraklio website.  For this reason I cannot claim any copyright for the interior design or art direction in this instance.

Pretty soon I'll be adding materials and textures, so watch this space...

Cannot invert a Transformation matrix

I had a frustrating few minutes with mentalray today when i got this error message:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=13780301&linkID=12544120

Autodesk's pages are obviously their usual unhelpful selves and the only hint I came across was on a forum where Jeff Patton had suggested it was caused by an object scaled at 0%. On analysing my scene I found a sky portal object that was 100000x100000, probably due to snapping to scene extents by accident.

I hope this helps someone in the future who might trip over this post when they search for tech support on the same subject!

Recent renderings

Boardroom

Reception

Here are a couple of recent renderings.  I've had a bit of success with materials simulation and am getting to grips with the lighting still further, so I'm quite proud of these shots on that basis.  I also modelled the seating because the manufacturer's models weren't up to scratch. 

Interior / Exterior rendering

My interior visualisations have never successfully blended with the outside world - I never quite got the hang of adding an environment map until now.

The example above is far from perfect because there is no texture map or geometry detail on the ground, but at least now I'm getting somewhere.  The addition of real geometry trees using mrproxy objects opens up plenty of possibilities too.

Merry Christmas!