Breakfast room detail

Thought I'd do a close-up of some of the breakfast room objects.  I think the sundae glass came out particularly well.

I got a suggestion about how I could simplify my grass set-up from Vlad Miller, one of the lux developers.

http://www.luxrender.net/forum/download/file.php?id=19918&sid=7e6a6fcb578f77641f1c4d8b8c2ce619&mode=view

I'll give it a go when I do my next exterior render.

Grass shader node tree

I'm wondering whether my grass shader could be improved.

It looks good from some angles but from others I can get some odd results.

Breakfast room & Exterior progress

I've added a little more to the breakfast room and tried some new lighting.  I find I'm constantly working the main light around the house to see what it hits as it passes through.  It's really nice when a ray of light makes it's way into an otherwise dim room and illuminates some little detail unexpectedly.

I've also been playing around with the exterior.  I feel I've got to the stage where I can see what's missing. It feels like the end is in sight.

Adjusted the grass colour.

Here a render with the improved grass material

Breakfast room progress

I've got some furniture into the breakfast room area.  I've gone for a later, lighter style with Eames designs.  I'm delighted with the contrast and plan to build on that with the smaller furnishings.

I've included 2 shots I did of this as I can't decide which is better.

Another shot with a few more odds and end in.

Breakfast room floor

I've done a quick breakfast room floor.  I've cheated a little by using the materials from my bathroom scene but applied to a tile system I worked out when doing the parquet floor in the lounge.

This was a really quick test render so you'll have to excuse the poor quality.

Exterior shot

I've done some work on the exterior of the house/garden.  Still early days, the trees are a little ropey and will have to be replaced once I get better at making them but I'm happy with the grass.  Maybe some meadow flowers might make it more of a feature.

Still need a lot of fleshing out I know.

More furniture for the lounge

I've fleshed out the lounge area of the building a little more.

The glass table is affecting render time quite considerably. 

More arch vis

A new architectural visualisation is underway.  It's a little more ambitious than the bathroom.  Here's an early render.

I'm pleased with the way the interior materials are working.  The exterior is going to be more of a challenge,  fun though.

Wireframes

Here are some wire frames of some of the pieces.

Bathroom detail

Couldn't resist doing one quick snapshot.

My first architectural visualisation

I finished the bathroom interior. There are bits I'm not happy with but I could tinker with this for ages and as this image took 20 hours to render and still was a little grainy I think it's time to draw a line under it and say this is my first architectural visualisation,  time to make a better one.

Saying that I might make a few little scenes of some details of the room.

As requested here's some lighting information for the shaving scene.

The light doing most of the work is the spotlight behind the equipment.  There's an area light illuminating the backdrop which gives nice reflections, I should have done this with a hemi with a reflection map on but I didn't know you could do that at the time.

The other area light is just to control the colour and luminance of the backdrop.

Here's a screen shot with lighting info.

Hope this helps.

I've done a little more of the bathroom scene.  I used the texture paint feature of blender for the bath which was enormous fun.  The view out of the window is a P'shopped in photo but it didn't work with it blank.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the view...I might model some foliage .

Started work on an interior architectural visualization. I thought a bathroom scene would be a good place to start as I can put my shaving stuff  in.

Some of the materials aren't working correctly at the moment, but it's a start.

Shave scene tinkering

Re rendered the lux/cycles render of the shaving scene.  I wasn't sure about the background in the original.

Got the bristles in.  I used cycles hair strand rendering rather than Lux.  I'm tempted to try the whole thing in cycles to see how it compares.

Lux render is awesome

This is a Lux render render.  I'm impressed.  I've just got to workout how to do strand rendering for the bristles of the brush.

Early comp.

I've been working on a new composition.  It involved turning the bridge around 180 degrees.  There's not so much emphasis on the eco pods from this angle, it's more about the tug craft.

I've also got a cloud layer in there but it's not really working how I need it to.  It's got to have the dark blue/black with golden highlights going on.

Now trying to work with the tug as the foreground element and the station as background.

Scale's wrong though.  Probably too much DoF.

I've got the spacestation and small spaceship/tug thing in the same scene now.  I decided to shift the eco pods to the main truss.  I can see the eco pods being the main function of the station, maybe seeding the planet below.

Still looking for the right composition.

Folio page at http://polygonjungle.blogspot.co.uk/p/folio.html

Planet.

Not too bad from this distance.

But close up.....Might need another division.  From 3-4 minutes a frame to 6+.:-(

Folio page at http://polygonjungle.blogspot.co.uk/p/folio.html

First post. An introduction.

I am an artist, or a craftsman.  Probably somewhere in-between. 

I make models, computer, not real, for computer games.  Or I did , up until 6 weeks ago when the company I worked for, Blitz Games Studios, went under.

Making models, texturing them, lighting them, making them into a world is fun, so I'm still doing it. Not for anyone in particular, just to improve my portfolio, skills and to fill in time between jobs. 

This isn't the first time I've been in this position.  Six years ago, after working for Sony up in London for six years I got made redundant. I made an armoured vehicle.  Here's a picture.

This time I've decided to create a space scene.  I've started a space station and a small spacecraft.

I have a planet too.  I'm baking out cloud simulations as I write this.  I'm hoping this will all come together into quite a nice little space scene.

At work I've used Maya to model and mental ray to light the armoured vehicle.  For the space scene I've been trying Blender.

Folio page at http://polygonjungle.blogspot.co.uk/p/folio.html