New Christmas feast CGI

This was an image for the Blueforest blog to celebrate Christmas feasting, in a slightly rustic style.
Flo, our interior designer at Blueforest picked out the tableware.

Process video for Blue Forest website

We have a new website for Blue Forest! I was asked to create a short video showing the process of creating the CGIs.  This is the result. 

The linework uses Edgenode, the clay render and colour are done with Luxcore.  I render out the light groups in separate passes and they get composited in Photoshop.

These are a set of images for a client on the Isle of Wight.

Watercolours.

I've been playing around with some watercolour creations.
No water but a lot of colour was used.

Competition Winners Gif

Here's a little Gif  hand crafted by our marketing guru Catherine. https://featherandgoldblog.com/

Mid century geese

I love the site Blender nation and visit it almost daily so I thought I'd submit an image for their header graphic.

This is what I submitted.

It's cropped area of this image which depicts the kitchen area of one of our Ecoperch designs.

Modelled in Blender, rendered in Luxrender.  Hope it gets in.

Back again.

26 January - 9 June.  That's a bit of a gap.

I have not been idle in that time though, no.

I have been working for a company by the name of Blue Forest, they design tree-houses and other woody structures.  Cabins, classrooms, hotel lodges... Maybe take a look at their website.

http://www.blueforest.com/

I've had an amazing time designing and visualising some of their projects.  I've been very fortunate to be able to carry on using Blender and LuxRender as the main tools for my job.

Below are a set of renders I did for a recent pitch we did.  All done with Blender/LuxRender apart from the last one which was done with the freestyle render in Blender.

I promise I will try not to leave it so long between posts. 

Pearls on a regency side table.

Another quick render.  I'm pleased with the way the wood came out, it has a really nice glow about it.

The pearls took a bit of work.  I had to use a cauchy setting and mix that with a glossy material.

I might try a close-up of the pearls at some point.

A little detail from the bedroom scene

I thought I'd create a little scene that focused on the glass cake stand as I know how wonderfully Luxrender renders glass.

Unfortunately the necklace clasp lost it's silver material so it's imperfect but worth showing.  I might try it again with a slightly less contrasty  marble so the caustics show up better.

Bedroom lux source files

I've uploaded the lux source files to my googledrive.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByJ0bBMVUUj7TEo2MXNhbzdlUUk/edit?usp=sharing

They are to be included in the Luxrender show-off pack.

Bedroom Progress

I've got somewhere to put my cups and saucers now.  There's still along way to go in terms of furniture but I'm hoping it'll speed up a bit once the rococo table is finished, building it was quite a challenge and UVing it is no small task.

I'm also trying some soft-body modelling which is fun.  Still not completely sure  which material to use for the fabric.

Some details of the breakfast room image.

So I've had a request from Amdcusa from the luxrender forum for more details of how I made the breakfast room images.

This is one of the most finished breakfast room images.

Here's the raw render.

Wireframe.

Solid viewport.

 I'm using 2 lights in this scene.

I did start by using the sun type of light but found I had better control with an area type.  This gives you nice shadows that the hemi with environment map lacks.  The hemi uses a hdmi image I downloaded from http://www.ronenbekerman.com/freebies/

The Ronen Bekerman site is a real treasure trove of useful stuff from textures to workflows.  I would personally recommend this article in the workflows section; http://www.ronenbekerman.com/photographic-approach-in-architectural-visualisation/ I found it very useful indeed.

If you want to know more about any of the materials used in this scene leave a request in the comments section below and I'll post a breakdown.

Cups!!!

Another year is upon us.  I'm starting another room of the house, the bedroom.  I'm going for a little bit of a style change with this one.  Here's a render of some of the clutter for the room.

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.