Here's a small update to my lighting test scene in Blender.
I'm also using this post to test the social media publishing functions on my blog, so if you came here from Facebook, Twitter, or Google+, then I guess it worked!
Blender Sketchbook
I created this image as kind of a test to see if I could replicate the lighting and atmospheric look of some of the levels on Mario Kart 8 - which I don't own and have never played, but which I nevertheless find to be utterly beautiful. I think it's pretty close, but I'd probably have to make some really fantastical landscapes to see how it really compares. Perhaps a future update?
After reading through a post by a fellow Blender artist, I decided I'd try my hand at making some abstract landscapes in a similar style. I used similar texture images sourced from Bing's image search for cauliflower, cauliflower fractal, and pomegranates. These images weren't terribly difficult to make, but it was enjoyable and educational, nonetheless. I'll be making more of these in the future, I think. It's fun to see what sorts of alien landscapes images can create when you use them to generate particles and geometry displacement.
Maybe someone out there might like to use them for their desktop wallpaper!
A friend of mine wanted a background for his new phone, and after way too much time spent thinking about what I wanted to make for him, I had a revelation while working on a similar project for an Xbox One theme. This image was created in blender using a basic cube and a bunch of modifiers to add geometry, displace it, and make it explode.
After seeing some renders by Oscar Leif via BlenderNation, I decided I'd try my hand at some of the techniques on display there: environment lighting, some simple node materials, and using texture nodes to create a checkerboard effect. After playing around a bit, this is what I came up with - a lineup of rooks using different materials and then rendered with environment lighting from an HDR
I've made quite a few geometric changes to my "Parks" Blender scene since the last update, but unfortunately, most of those are not visible in the render camera that I've been using to post project updates. I've made other changes that are very noticeable however, as you can see here.
In this version of the scene, I've replaced the old single-source sun lamp with an HDR environment lighting setup. The result is a much softer look to the light, but also a more realistic color. I've greatly reduced the saturation of the background color here as well.
I'm not sure if I'm ready to say this is how the lighting will look from this point forward, as I kind of liked the garish look of the bright blue, and the hard sunlight from before. Still, I think this was an interesting experiment, and may lead to a better lighting setup for this project in the future.
The image data I used to create the HDR lighting can be found at the HDRLabs HDRI archive. I used the one called "Bryant Park". They've got a wonderful collection of HDRI images there, all graciously provided for free. If you're interested in this sort of thing, I highly recommend it.
Here's another status update on what I'm calling "Parks" for now, a low poly art project I'm playing around with.
This is a quick render of a Blend file I've been playing around with in my spare time recently. I was feeling inspired after seeing a simple landscape painting at one of my wife's relative's houses.
The idea I'm pursuing with this project is to organically add things to the scene as I see fit. I'm keeping everything to a relative scale, but not worrying much about keeping things on the grid or being precise about placement.
I'll post more later as I continue!
Though I don't personally use Google+ much, my current job requires the use of Hangouts, so I jump on from time to time to chat with my boss. During some of these visits, I've occasionally added people and organizations to follow there, just so the "wall" isn't quite so boring.
The other day, one of the posts that appeared highlighted the release of a newly open-sourced rendering engine that is compatible with Blender, called Nox. I've never used Nox, and I'm not sure if I plan to yet, but they had posted a test image of a three-ringed torus with a wood texture, and I liked the look of the material they'd created:
Since I've been freelancing, I've used Blender's own Cycles rendering engine quite a bit, and I've gotten really fond of the node-based shader system it employs. I thought this might be a good opportunity to test my skills with Cycles, to try my hand at recreating the wood material from this render.
I got a basic scene with a curve-based torus shape, backdrop, light, and camera set up, then grabbed a wood texture from Good Textures, did a little bit of Photoshop work to make it more seamless, and got to editing nodes. Here's what the basic scene looks like in wireframe:
After spending some time getting colors right, utilizing the details of the texture for bumps and specular highlighting, this is what I came up with:
My torus is a little chunkier than the Nox torus, but I like it like that. It feels sturdy to me.
Although I'm happy with where I got with this texture, I didn't get it quite the same as the Nox render. The shiny highlights just aren't there yet. It's a good start though, I think.