08/12/18
Shadesmar
I've read out-loud to my boys nearly every night since they were born. It's just something we've kept up even as they have become teenagers, always finding a next book to read. Over the years we've moved from Dr. Suess and Margaret Wise Brown to L Frank Baum and Brandon Mull, from Lloyd Alexander to Neil Gaiman. The past few months we've been enjoying Brandon Sanderson's "Mistborn' and "Stormlight Archive".
We've been reading "Oathbringer" lately and a description of the "cognitive realm" called "Shadesmar" really got stuck in my circuits. Without giving away too much, it's a dark land of black obsidian with colorful crystal trees (and lots of spirits). I thought it would make an interesting challenge to render. Learned quite a bit in Plant Factory about wind and controlling leaf color.
I don't know how many more books Ian and Jason will want me to read as they get older. I'll keep at it as long as they want me to. When they finally do move on I will have this scene to remind me of our bedtime ritual.
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08/06/18
Mistwood Fen
We recently returned from visiting Jessie's family in beautiful Little Rock, Arkansas. Her brother's family lives by a pond and we all walked over one afternoon so the boys could go fishing. While they fished I wandered off and noticed this bright white bird (some sort of heron) standing in red watergrass against a green background.
I thought it was a striking scene so I snapped a mental picture of it for later. I hope you like my version.
Thanks to my son Jason for helping me think of a proper title!
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08/01/18
The Distant Lights
Before I move on to something brand new I thought it would be worthwhile to create a night version of "The One Light".
Gallery or Pickle Jar? Let me know what you think!
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07/23/18
The One Light
Looking through my creations this year it occurred to me that (with some exceptions) the colors have been rather muted. With this render I just wanted to create something colorful and minimal that would make for a nice background. I thought about adding something in the foreground but I think it stands pretty well on its own.
I'd considered "Morning Has Broken" for the title, but since the sun is still below the horizon here (thanks to Vue's "spherical scene" mode) I chose another line from the hymn instead.
Let me know what you think!
360 Panorama
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07/16/18
A Sliver of Sun
Following on the Cascadia theme I decided to reposition the camera in that world and take a closer look. Unfortunately I found the terrain geometry, which looked great from far away, sort of broke down a bit when zoomed in so I added some higher resolution rock formations created in Oculus Medium.
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07/09/18
Cascadia (Summer)
Not sure why I started out "Cascadia" as a winter scene (other than the fact that I wanted to try something a bit different) but I had always planned on doing at least one more seasonal variant.
Here's the "summer" version. I'd considered using the same light angle from the Winter version but I think this turned out pretty well.
Let me know what you think!
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07/05/18
Blue Hollow
Another experiment using Oculus Medium to create rock formations. I really think VR is the way of the future (at least for me) when it comes to modeling. So much more intuitive...
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07/01/18
Cascadia
Getting back into learning how to use World Machine/Geoglyph here. For a while it was a bit too buggy to use but the recent versions have been nice and stable. Should I do a summer variant?
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I've also added a 3D 360 Panoramic version for those of you with a VR headset (preview here).
06/19/18
Tori
If you've been following my work you know I love a good mandala. I created this one using some of the funky tori I modeled using MathMod (rendered using Lightwave). It's a pretty amazing program and makes me glad I took all that advanced math in college.
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06/15/18
Lightfall
I originally created this is a much more abstract piece using mathematical meshes from MathMod but I decided to dial it back a bit and go somewhat more conventional.
The rocks were modeled using Oculus Medium. The main cave structure was a collaborative effort in Medium between me and my son Jason :-)
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06/11/18
Caerulea (Elevated)
Caerulea (Orbit)
Two extra views of the the "Caerulea" system I created using Vue. Vue's "planetary" mode really means you can explore many different points in the world you have created. I thought it would be fun to use that functionality to create a series of images from the same planet.
Some of these may end up in the Pickle Jar eventually but I will start them all out in the gallery for maximum visibility.
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06/06/18
Follicle
I've been learning a program called "MathMod" which allows you to create crazy 3D shapes out of parametric code. I have a few irons in the fire right now in a similar vein, but this one should make for a nice introduction.
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05/21/18
Caerulea
Sticking with the planetscape theme here. I wanted to see if I could use Oculus Medium to create icebergs. The planets are a mix of Vue rendered "planetary landscapes" (spherical terrains) and one that I created in Lightwave. I hope you enjoy it!
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05/13/18
Endymion
I'm still learning how to fit Oculus Medium into my workflow. One immediate application is creating different rock formations and this new render features several practice pieces. The landforms in the background were created using World Machine and the sky was created using Lightwave. I hope you enjoy it!
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05/08/18
The Pillar
As some of you know Santa Claus brought me an Oculus Rift System for Christmas (I was a good boy last year). By far my favorite application for it so far is the VR sculpting program called Oculus Medium. I've been playing with it for the past few months and have used some bits of pieces of geometry in my renders so far.
This piece is my first where all of the geometry (except the water plane) was modeled using Medium. I expect it to be a major part of my toolbox going forward.
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04/27/18
Vernalis
Where I live it seems like Winter has held on long past when it should have ended. It's cold, the trees are still mostly bare and only a few tentative blooms have popped up here and there. You get a warm(ish) day and a few rays of sunlight, however, and life seems ready to burst forth. This piece is my expression of that hope.
On the technical side, I was excited to try out the new "flower" nodes available in Plant Factory. I used them for the tree blooms here and I think there are some exciting possiblities!! I hope you enjoy it!
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04/15/18
Symbiota
There was a lot that I liked about "Oceana" but there was a lot that (I felt) didn't work out. Some of the geometry was broken (due to excessive displacement), it wasn't as colorful as I would like, and it took so long to render that I couldn't really make revisions or a multiscreen version.
Consider this scene to be something of a "do over". For starters it only took less than a tenth of the time to render on Shadowfax so I should be able to create a multiscreen version (maybe even a VR panorama) without difficulty.
BTW, It started as an exercise learning Oculus Medium but most of that geometry is covered up with undersea life :-)
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04/10/18
Bayou (Night)
You probably suspected something like this was coming. I would have had it finished sooner but the first render attempt crashed near the end and I had to rework a few things. Hope you enjoy it!
The dual and triple-screen version of "Bayou" is finishing up on Bucephalus right now and should be available soon!
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04/03/18
Bayou
Applying some of the techniques from "Stasis" and "Nascence" to a more traditional landscape scene. Can you believe I've never attempted a "bayou" render in all these years?
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03/26/18
Nascence
Like "Stasis" before it, this render was a learning exercise exploring new shading/modeling techniques using Plant Factory and Vue. I'm specifically interested here in learning Vue's subsurface scattering and getting it to render somewhat economically. Of course, my primary goal is always to create striking and thought-provoking images for your desktop and I hope you feel I've succeeded here :-)
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03/22/18
Stasis
This one is a 3D doodle of sorts; working on different shaders in Vue and modeling in Plant Factory. The techniques I'm working on here will factor into at least the next two renders that I post. As for this one, it may or may not stay in the gallery long term.
Thought it looked interesting enough to share though:-)
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03/17/18
Nightshade
I created these blooms using The Plant Factory for an upcoming landscape project. I thought they would make an interesting Lightwave macro render however. When I showed it to Jessie the first thing she said was "oooh Nightshade!" and that sounded like a great title to me. It's not your garden variety that's for certain! Stay tuned for the landscape (rendering now on Shadowfax)!
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03/10/18
Painted Sky (Night)
The original "Painted Sky" from last year sits at #2 on my all-time Top Rated list so it seemed natural to create a night-time scene. My night version dials back some of the clouds which gave the original its title but I think it still works. I hope you enjoy it at least as much as a "day" version!
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03/06/18
Strathwood (Winter)
Since I created "Strathwood" to render relatively quickly I can be a bit more nimble with making variations. I thought it would be fun to create a winter version but also at the same time have it be a little more colorful than the mostly earth-toned original. Let me know what you think!
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03/03/18
Erebus
Glad to finally be able to post this one! The Vue scene took so long to render that I feared that Shadowfax had hung more than once. It actually did crash one time and I had to restart the whole thing. Regardless, I persisted and I'm happy to be able to share it with you. I used Lightwave 2018's new texturing model for the background planet. Hopefully it was worth the wait.
The scene will need a major rework if I am going to be able to produce multiscreen versions however. The whole thing is set up for 360 rendering but we shall see.
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02/26/18
Strathwood
It's been a few months since I've done a "BIG" landscape and some of you have been requesting them. My recent scenes have been more on the intimate side. To be honest I've gotten myself into a bit of trouble using Vue lately in that the scenes I've been dreaming up have been taking far too long to render.
For this scene I wanted to concentrate on keeping the render time manageable (on Bucephalus even) while still keeping the WOW factor. I hope you think I've succeeded with "Strathwood".
EDIT: I've posted a revised version on 2/28. The original will remain in the Pickle Jar if you would like to compare. You will also notice that (by popular demand) I've added wallpapers sized to fit the iPhone X.
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02/19/18
Phyllotaxis
Here's something colorful if you are getting tired of winter greys. This render is the result of my experimenting with Plant Factory to create interesting floral patterns. I rendered the scene using Vue but I think I might try a version with Lightwave so I can have a bit more control over the geometry. Let me know what you think!
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02/12/18
Anima (Happy Valentine's Day)
It's been a while (8 years!) since I've attempted a Valentine's Day wallpaper. My rule for them has always been this: Don't make anything that I wouldn't use myself. This project was one of those rare blessed instances where I had the finished image in mind before I started working on it. I hope you enjoy it!
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02/10/18
Dapplewood (Winter)
I'd intended to create a winter version of "Dapplewood" before the Christmas holiday but got a bit sidetracked. I hope people are still in the mood for Winter wallpapers in February :-)
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01/27/18
Organelle
I finally upgraded my Lightwave to the 2018 version (after skipping the 2015 upgrade) earlier this month and a LOT is different. This render is a texturing exercise, inspired by re-rendering the original Organelle from 2002 for VR. The geometry here was modeled using The Plant Factory rather than Xfrog though. I still have a lot to learn but I thought I would share my progress...
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01/19/18
Oceana
It's been a while since I attempted an underwater render so I felt the time was ripe to dive back in. This time I wanted to use Plant Factory to create my undersea flora and fauna. I wasn't trying to model any real life organisms here, but rather create something fanciful and colorful.
I'm not 100% happy with how everything turned out (after MANY days of rendering at 8K on Bucephalus) but I do think it looks nice enough to share while I consider revisions. Let me know what you think!
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01/06/18
Passageway
My first render of 2018 was built using trees that evolved from both "The Standing Stones" and "Animus". It also contains plants that foreshadows my next render. I guess it has a foot in the past and a foot in the future. Truly a passageway :-)
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