3D art meets prose ... somehow, somewhere

Telling a story in pictures ... or pictures accompanied by as little text as possible ... is a very attractive challenge for an artist. Graphic novels and comics are the perfect expression of this -- you could also nominate movie storyboards as a perfect example. Somewhere out there, there's a sublime marriage between the written word and art. Not language and images per se, because that sublime marriage is called motion pictures. It's something else, and it transcends both comics and prose. I'm not quite sure what it is yet, but I think maybe Walt Disney had the same kind of vision and spent a lifetime trying to capture what he's glimpsed.

Way back when, in the days of yore when Disney was literally inventing cartoon animation on the one hand, and a guy called Willis O'Brien was inventing stop motion animation on the other (King Kong, 1933), the technology was so primitive, it took a regiment of artists years to produce a story that could be told in about 75 minutes.

And now? Wellll, unless you have four or five powerful computers, you still can't animate; but by golly, the visualization is doable right there on the desktop. So -- how long before the computer power becomes available to the ordinary artist, to be able to animate? I'm guessing about five years or so, when PCs have ten processors, never mind two or four, and they're cheap as chips. And ... am I looking forward to that!

But till then, I'm hunting for something that's a marriage between prose and art. Just can't ... quite ... find it yet. It's right there on the edge of my imagination, though. Shall keep looking.

Jade, 5 August

***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this. Seriously, guys, I've got dialup speeds. How are you expected to do anything these days, at 1990 dialup speeds?!!!

Bryce 7 Pro First Use --Guest Post

...by dave. That's me.

I knew I was going to be getting Bryce 7 Pro plus DAZ's ME Dragon 2 for my birthday. Turns out I also got LOADS of preset scenes, materials, models etc for Bryce and DAZ.

Why Bryce and not Vue? My old P4 won't run Vue and Vue is enormously expensive. If you're on a budget, go for Bryce.

I was very much looking forward to not only landscaping in Bryce but also being able to import .OBJ's from DAZ. As it turns out I'm still just playing with Bryce; learning the interface and figuring out the controls.

I figured the best way was to take an existing scene and modify it. That way a lot of the early legwork is done as I'm a complete Bryce novice, but I'd still have a chance to figure out the controls and still create something REALLY COOL!

I started with a free scene made with Bryce 4 called Lava Lake. There was no sky nor clouds, not much in the way of texturing, and minimal lighting.

Here is the "stock" render of the scene as it was given away with Bryce 7 Pro. You'll notice it looks very "plasticy".




I decided to do some work on the scene. First I moved the camera so we're closer to the lake and also panned up to see the sky. Then, of course, I had to make the sky. The Sky Lab, cloud, and atmospheric controls in Bryce seemed very easy to me. I don't care a lot for the color picker, wish there was some numerical type control and a larger colour palette.

The main terrain had to be changed along with it's material so it didn't appear "plasticy". Again, fairly easy controls... me likey.

Adding more lights was simple and the control of the lighting suited me fine.

Added some primitives with a fire preset material (obviously jiggled the presets; colour, falloff, etc) to add goodies to the lava pool. And I texturized the texture of the lava.

Once you select any item a discrete flyout menu appears and from that menu you can do pretty much anything to the object, light, terrain, etc.

Here's what I came up with. Just remember to click on it to embiggen the picture to fullsize cuz I think it's fairly impressive.






Once you get used to the graphical interface of Bryce 7 Pro you'll find it's very easy to use. I'm still learning though... lots more to figure out.

cheers,
dave

Sunrise ritual ... happy post 350!

Happy Post 350! I wanted to do something especially nice for this post, because it's a bit of a milestone, and the last in the series of renders is the best. It's enhanced, painted in GIMP (with Ron's Bokeh brushes) and framed in Serif. But here's the whole series of pictures, in order of viewing:

The set is a new addition to my library. Right on cue, DM's Sunedge set went on sale at 50% off at Renderosity, which gave me the idea for this, just this morning. I was looking around for a wallpaper of the Himlayas, but the fact is, what you see here is actually the Remarkables ... in New Zealand. If they look familiar, they should! Parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy were filmed there.

Here's the set, just as-is ... I set a half dozen lights to favor the backdrop, and gave it a tweak later, just a bit of digital painting...

And the backdrop is a wallpaper, not a Bryce or Vue images ... though it could easily have been done in either. Dave is really getting his teeth into Bruce 7 Pro, and I'm pestering for him to come and guest on this blog, tell all and show us some of the work he's doing.

Jade, September 3

***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this. Seriously, guys, I've got dialup speeds. How are you expected to do anything these days, at 1990 dialup speeds?!!!

Return to Tortuga ... adventures with the 3D camera

Two pirates meet in the street, in the Port of Tortuga, circa 1700 ... a few years before Jack Sparrow's time, I do believe, but nothing would have changed by the time Jack arrived. I don't suppose the would even have changed the muck on the walls! It's just the costumes here that tip you off to the earlier year. These guys are doing something like the Men in Tights routine, and by the time Jack Sparrow happens along, the dress code has changes. Not that Johnny Depp wouldn't look a treat in tights --!

If I'm rambling, please forgive. I haven't posted in a few days ... been sick. And before I got even halfway well, work had piled up and I had to find a way to cope, which wasn't easy. Something had to go o the back burner, and blogging was it.

This is what I was doing when I fell face down, and this post is actually about camera positions. It was only the other day when I noticed that a couple of the buildings in the Port of Tortuga set have actual balconies, and you can get the characters and the camera up there.

This is terrific when you're working with two or more characters, because the range of shots you can set up is virtually unlimited. Driving (and flying) the camera around creates all its own challenges, one of which is setting up the lights. You really are the movie director, in this kind of shoot. You can really imagine setting up the shot and having the actors stand on their big chalk X-marks ... then shifting the camera and resetting the lights for the next take. Loads of fun.

Sorry about the long delay in this post. Believe it or not, this is Post 349! The big three-five-oh comes up with the next one. I really want to do something special for that one, but I have to confess, my mind is a blank. Got to thing of something!

And if you're interested in the difference between the raw renders right out of Studio, and the enhanced versions -- this is worth a look:

Jade, 2 September

***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this. Seriously, guys, I've got dialup speeds. How are you expected to do anything these days, at 1990 dialup speeds?!!!