# Wherein I Regale You With My 3Dness.



## Renzatic

Here's a little project I'm working on to get my learn on. I'll post updates on it as I go farther along.


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## Eric

Wow dude, this is impressive. Looks professional all the way, something you do for a living?


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## Renzatic

Eric said:


> Wow dude, this is impressive. Looks professional all the way, something you do for a living?




Nope. It's that expensive hobby I was talking about earlier.


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## Thomas Veil

I like it! It’s like I expect to see some characters walk into that room.


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## Alli

Renzatic said:


> Nope. It's that expensive hobby I was talking about earlier.




Is it a CAD of some sort?


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## Renzatic

Alli said:


> Is it a CAD of some sort?




It's Blender.

Without getting into the nitty gritty details, there are two types of 3D applications. Stuff like Maya, Max, and Blender, which are geared more towards 3D art, movies, games, and whatnot, and CAD applications, which are all about drafting schematics with exacting specifications.

Blender's free, and I only fairly recently started using it over Modo, since it suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, went from kinda crappy to really awesome. Where most of my money goes is towards Substance Painter and Designer, which cost $150 each, and are about texture creation. Plus, I use the Affinity Suite for touch up and further texture work. They're not too bad. About $50 each.



Thomas Veil said:


> I like it! It’s like I expect to see some characters walk into that room.




Characters are coming later. I can do them, but I'm not great at them yet.


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## lizkat

Renzatic said:


> Characters are coming later. I can do them, but I'm not great at them yet.




But those canned goods, well...    they are already worth stealing.  C'mon, post a shot of those.


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## DT

Renzatic said:


> Nope. It's that expensive hobby I was talking about earlier.





Did you know I had a (side) company with a previous partner?  AR/VR, we did some work for G*****, and M**** L***, worked with MetaVision, had our own product where we created interactive scene replays of famous movies, met with Trigger Street, some Marvel folks.

I build the core code foundation, did some work in CV (computer vision), built SDKs, dealt with a lot of assets generated from Blender, etc., worked with Unity and Unreal 3D engines.


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## Renzatic

You want cans? You get cans!





And the scene with which the cans are in.


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## DT

I have a story about that gig, I spent about a year in Cali (the Valley, SF proper), it involved walking around with, *cough*, cash, lots and lots of cash, hahahaha, it can only be told in person, over many beers/drinks ...


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## Renzatic

D_T said:


> I have a story about that gig, I spent about a year in Cali (the Valley, SF proper), it involved walking around with, *cough*, cash, lots and lots of cash, hahahaha, it can only be told in person, over many beers/drinks ...




Then buy me a damn beer then!

Also, I'm surprised no one's commented on the old Commodore 64 in the shot above. Then again, you all are a bunch of Mac nerds, so...


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## Chew Toy McCoy

D_T said:


> I have a story about that gig, I spent about a year in Cali (the Valley, SF proper), it involved walking around with, *cough*, cash, lots and lots of cash, hahahaha, it can only be told in person, over many beers/drinks ...




*middle finger emoticon I can't seem to locate at this moment*.  You people don't realize there were indigenous people who lived here before it was a tech mecca.  We didn't land on Silicon Valley!  Silicon Valley landed on us!!  Or some shit.


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## Renzatic

Preliminary lighting work has begun. Needs more throwaway props to fill the scene.


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## Renzatic

And a big ole render, touched up in Photo.


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## Eric

This is seriously cool man, following this thread with interest!


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## Renzatic

Eric said:


> This is seriously cool man, following this thread with interest!




Right now, I'm making cardboard boxes. It's pretty rad.


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## lizkat

Renzatic said:


> Right now, I'm making cardboard boxes. It's pretty rad.




If you run short of models I sure god have enough cardboard boxes out on my back decl that you can use as models,  from all my deliveries of staple goods from walmart and amazon during the pandemic.  OK well most of them are flattened, so only 2-D,  I forgot about that.


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## Renzatic

lizkat said:


> If you run short of models I sure god have enough cardboard boxes out on my back decl that you can use as models,  from all my deliveries of staple goods from walmart and amazon during the pandemic.  OK well most of them are flattened, so only 2-D,  I forgot about that.




I'll take 'em, but you have to pay for shipping.

Here are the boxes I've got, by the way. Yeah, it's not much. Just baby steps. I'm doing wall decorations now, posters and whatnot.


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## lizkat

^^ I was thinking to call up amazon and ask if they wanted them back, for a price lol.


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## Gutwrench

@Renzatic - Interesting. I’ve never heard of Blender but it looks like something my step daughter would enjoy. Is there a Blender forum where people post projects, discussions, share tips?

I found https://www.blender.org/ btw.


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## Renzatic

Gutwrench said:


> @Renzatic - Interesting. I’ve never heard of Blender but it looks like something my step daughter would enjoy. Is there a Blender forum where people post projects, discussions, share tips?




Holy shit! It's you! How you been?

...you still using your Big Green Egg?

Yup. Beyond Blender.org, there are three main sites most Blender people congregate around.









						Blender Artists Community
					

The largest forum for Blender 3D artists




					blenderartists.org
				



-Where people show off their work, and ask questions.





__





						BlenderNation
					

Daily Blender Art, Tutorials, Development and Community News…




					www.blendernation.com
				



-The more curated form of the above, run by the same bunch. 





__





						Blender Market
					

A Unique Market for Creators that love Blender




					blendermarket.com
				



-Where you buy plugins, models, and whatnot.


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## Gutwrench

Renzatic said:


> Holy shit! It's you! How you been?
> 
> ...you still using your Big Green Egg?
> 
> Yup. Beyond Blender.org, there are three main sites most Blender people congregate around.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> Blender Artists Community
> 
> 
> The largest forum for Blender 3D artists
> 
> 
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> 
> blenderartists.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -Where people show off their work, and ask questions.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> BlenderNation
> 
> 
> Daily Blender Art, Tutorials, Development and Community News…
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.blendernation.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -The more curated form of the above, run by the same bunch.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Blender Market
> 
> 
> A Unique Market for Creators that love Blender
> 
> 
> 
> 
> blendermarket.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -Where you buy plugins, models, and whatnot.




I’m going really well, thank you! Hope you’re well!!  Yeah, I spend a lot of time using the Egg particularly this summer.

Thank you for the links. I’m texting them to her them now. I like your hobby and will be watching for updates!


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## Renzatic

Gutwrench said:


> Thank you for the links. I’m texting them to her them now. I like your hobby and will be watching for updates!




Another thing you should recommend to her is Substance Painter. It's a godsend of a program that makes the texturing process so, so much easier. The only downside to it is that it's not free. $150 flat out for a license, or $20 a month for a subscription to the Substance suite.

Though if money is an object, there's also Quixel Mixer, which isn't bad, especially considering it's still a work in progress beta, but it can't go toe to toe with Painter yet.


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## Renzatic

Getting there. But besides the window, which I'm going to do tomorrow, it feels like it's missing something. Too many empty spaces still.


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## thekev

Gutwrench said:


> @Renzatic - Interesting. I’ve never heard of Blender but it looks like something my step daughter would enjoy. Is there a Blender forum where people post projects, discussions, share tips?
> 
> I found https://www.blender.org/ btw.




They have made entire movies with Blender. 








						Films - Blender Cloud
					

The iconic Blender Open Movies. Featuring all the production files, assets, artwork, and never-seen-before content.




					cloud.blender.org
				




There used to be a lot of forums focusingn on both 3D and visual effects. It seems like cgsociety is still around, but it doesn't look that active. I thought Blender had forums. 



Renzatic said:


> You want cans? You get cans!
> 
> View attachment 104
> 
> And the scene with which the cans are in.




Ah yeah I am glad you went with the Children of the Corn reference. Also in the original scene, it looks like they have a repurposed G5 tower by their bed.


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## Renzatic

thekev said:


> They have made entire movies with Blender.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Films - Blender Cloud
> 
> 
> The iconic Blender Open Movies. Featuring all the production files, assets, artwork, and never-seen-before content.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> cloud.blender.org




Spring is probably my favorite of the bunch, since it's the one that marked when Blender really started to improve. It looks about as good as a Pixar movie.








> Ah yeah I am glad you went with the Children of the Corn reference.




You were the inspiration for the Chowder of the Corn, brah. That's all you!


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## Alli

Renzatic said:


> Too many empty spaces still.




It's ok to have empty space. It can say as much as the item that's missing.


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## Renzatic

Alli said:


> It's ok to have empty space. It can say as much as the item that's missing.




I'm not a good enough of an artist to start playing with negative space yet.

...so I added cables to the floor.

I think I'm gonna call it a day on this one. There isn't anything more I can add without making it too busy. It's served as good practice.


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## Gutwrench

Renzatic said:


> I'm not a good enough of an artist to start playing with negative space yet.
> 
> ...so I added cables to the floor.
> 
> I think I'm gonna call it a day on this one. There isn't anything more I can add without making it too busy. It's served as good practice.
> 
> View attachment 211




This is pretty attractive...warm glow and feel. Fascinating.

It reminds me of a scene from Myst. Can you add clicks when tapping on things, and sounds to objects? Does the radio work? I imagine hearing some faint sound of chimes blowing in the wind and a little surf in the background.


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## Alli

Gutwrench said:


> It reminds me of a scene from Myst.




Very much so! 

And if you can’t add clicks and sounds within that program, I’m sure it could be used in something else for that very purpose.


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## Renzatic

Gutwrench said:


> This is pretty attractive...warm glow and feel. Fascinating.
> 
> It reminds me of a scene from Myst. Can you add clicks when tapping on things, and sounds to objects? Does the radio work? I imagine hearing some faint sound of chimes blowing in the wind and a little surf in the background.




That could be done, but I'd have to import everything into something like Unreal Engine or Unity to do it.

...though I could make it a movie in Blender. It'd take a lot of work and extra learning, but it can be done.


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## DT

Renzatic said:


> That could be done, but I'd have to import everything into something like Unreal Engine or Unity to do it.




Yeah, that's my job


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## Renzatic

D_T said:


> Yeah, that's my job




Save up some time. I'm gonna want to have a discussion with you sooner or later.


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## Gutwrench

Renzatic said:


> That could be done, but I'd have to import everything into something like Unreal Engine or Unity to do it.
> 
> ...though I could make it a movie in Blender. It'd take a lot of work and extra learning, but it can be done.




Are those test tubes on the shelf below the lights? Lol...


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## Renzatic

Gutwrench said:


> Are those test tubes on the shelf below the lights? Lol...




Yup. That's a rack 'o tubes.


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## DT

I need to post some pics of our one our VR products (Screen Play) it let you play famous movie scenes, you had a floating teleprompter, you engaged in some interactions (like Obi Wan handing Luke his father's lightsaber), you had an audience who floated around in little cameras who could view it from any angle, rate your performance.


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## Renzatic

D_T said:


> I need to post some pics of our one our VR products (Screen Play)




Do it. This thread doesn't have to be about just my stuff.


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## DT

Renzatic said:


> Do it. This thread doesn't have to be about just my stuff.




You know, when I posted that I was thinking, "Geez, this is shitty, Renz makes this nice thread about his 3D design and I'm derailing it."


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## Renzatic

D_T said:


> You know, when I posted that I was thinking, "Geez, this is shitty, Renz makes this nice thread about his 3D design and I'm derailing it."




It gets boring just talking about my crap all the time. Consider this the general 3D thread, and post whatever you want.


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## Alli

Renzatic said:


> It gets boring just talking about my crap all the time. Consider this the general 3D thread, and post whatever you want.




Yea, and let us know what we should not steal.


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## Renzatic

Okay, this is going to be the VERY LAST TIME I post this damn thing. The only reason why I'm doing so again is because I decided to use Cycles instead of Eevee (slow ass raytraced vs. realtime rasterized if that makes any sense to you) to see how it looked, and I was impressed by the difference it made. It just looks and feels more full and interesting now.

It took nearly half an hour to render vs. the roughly 3 seconds it takes to produce the shot above. Here's the end result.





And now to work on some trees.


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## thekev

Renzatic said:


> I decided to use Cycles instead of Eevee (slow ass raytraced vs. realtime rasterized if that makes any sense to you) to see how it looked, and I was impressed by the difference it made. It just looks and feels more full and interesting now.




Raytracing is making its way into realtime applications. It has been a research topic for years. You have consider the sheer amount of work that goes into raytracing though. 

Your camera has a particular field of view. It uses a notion of outgoing "rays" from the camera's perspective to see what the camera sees. For each ray that intersects a triangle on some object, if the surface shader applied to that object can "reflect" light, we need to check what it reflects.

At some point, we either hit a light or need to assume that sample is shrouded in darkness. 

Now, at each of these object intersection phases, we also have to do a lot of expensive math. For any smooth shaded object or any object that can reflect anything, you need to know the angle between the ray and the surface normal of that object so you know where to look for whatever might be reflecting it. At some point along the way, you also have to use that information to compute the contribution of each shader in the shader stack of that object. 

Each step of this is pretty damn expensive, considering that functions like arc cos on a system that is consistent with the transcendental guidelines of IEEE2008a (roughly states that they should be accurate to 16 decimal places on double precision), each of those might take 100 cycles or more on their own. I checked some instruction tables and a lot of the vendor tuned ones from intel/amd seem to take 100-200 cycles. If any division or square roots are used for ray normalization, it could easily add 100 more for a very small piece of logic on a single intersection. Ignoring that, you have huge potential latency on fetching the necessary geometry, since these things don't follow patterns that your underlying runtime would know how to prefetch.

 So yeah... raytracing costs a lot  .


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## Renzatic

There's also the fact that I had that scene suspended in a fog volume, which means that the renderer had to calculate light scattered through a diffused medium. I had to increase the amount of samples per bucket just to make it look halfway smooth, even with denoising in play. 

It amazes me that we actually have GPUs capable of doing it in realtime these days, even if it is a relatively simplified take on it.


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## Renzatic

Want to learn how to do all this yourself? Then start by teaching yourself how to create NIGHTMARE MEN!


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## Citizenzen

Renzatic said:


> Here's a little project I'm working on to get my learn on. I'll post updates on it as I go farther along.
> 
> View attachment 98




Sweet.  I've been unofficially asked at work to acquire that skill.  I know where to come for advice.


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## Renzatic

Citizenzen said:


> Sweet.  I've been unofficially asked at work to acquire that skill.  I know where to come for advice.




If you've got any questions, then ask away.

Though keep in mind that my skillset is all over the place at the moment. I'm okay at construction, but rendering is still something I'm weak at.


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## Citizenzen

Renzatic said:


> If you've got any questions, then ask away.
> 
> Though keep in mind that my skillset is all over the place at the moment. I'm okay at construction, but rendering is still something I'm weak at.



I noticed you use blender.  Can you tell me why you chose that program?


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## Renzatic

Citizenzen said:


> I noticed you use blender.  Can you tell me why you chose that program?




I actually started out with Lightwave and Modo, and If you asked me about Blender 10 years ago, I would've told you to avoid it like the plague. It was, to be polite, a janky program, not even sporting a quarter of the features of the mainline 3D apps. Something only used by open source zealots who refused to spend money on something better.

But over the last three odd years, Blender has gone from this janky also ran into an app that's not only directly competitive with the likes of Max, Maya, and Cinema4D, but actually sports a number of features they completely lack. Over this last year in particular, it's garnered tons of support from places that have previously ignored it, and it's quickly becoming a new standard.

Really, unless you're working in a studio with a long since established pipeline, there's no reason not to use Blender. It's free, and there are no downsides, caveats, or sacrifices to be made for the price.


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## Citizenzen

My university provides Cinema 4D.  Should I just stick with that, or is there a key feature in blender that I’d be missing?

and I’m curious about your use of the word “render” previously.  I’m familiar with rendering in video, and assumed it was the same thing in 3D.


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## Renzatic

If you're getting C4D for free, then I'd say it comes down to preference. All these programs have some specialty in some specific field that they do better than the others. One might be a better modeler, another a better animator, and so on and so on. Look at them both, and see which one you think fits you better.

Assuming you're not used to either, the best thing to do is work your way through a few beginner tutorials. The most popular for the Blender crowd is the Donut Tutorial. C4D probably has something similar.






As for rendering, it's roughly the same thing, though 3D rendering is a bit more indepth. It's taking your raw scene, all the polygons, shaders, lights, and whatnot, and running it through what's basically a highly accurate light simulation to produce a final product.


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## thekev

Citizenzen said:


> My university provides Cinema 4D.  Should I just stick with that, or is there a key feature in blender that I’d be missing?
> 
> and I’m curious about your use of the word “render” previously.  I’m familiar with rendering in video, and assumed it was the same thing in 3D.




Render is a somewhat overloaded term. Here it refers to calculating the appropriate shading information for a 3D scene. The output is similar, although most renderers will allow you to output in passes rather than fully rasterized final images, as this is helpful for tweaking things in post-procssing. I'm curious what you mean by "asked you to acquire" though. Do they have a clear idea of what they want you to do in the future that requires the use of 3D modeling and/or animation?

Cinema 4D has always been popular for motion graphics. It has a pretty friendly ui from what I can recall (it has been a lot of years since I used it). Most of this software has proprietary formats for things like scene files, so if your coworkers use that, you are probably good with that. I'm not sure how they managed to improve Blender so much in the past few years. 

You should also be aware that the package you use doesn't fully determine the renderer. A lot of people will use Cinema 4D or Maya for staging and then something like vray for rendering. 

Lastly, Cinema 4D is famous for their tutorials. Cineversity has been around forever (at least 15 years IIRC).





__





						Cineversity Cinema 4D Video Tutorials, Templates and Plugins
					

Learn how to use Cinema 4D with beginner training and best practices in modeling, materials and animation for MoGraph text & logos, VFX and more.




					www.cineversity.com


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## Renzatic

thekev said:


> I'm not sure how they managed to improve Blender so much in the past few years.




Here's one reason. 

Though I think it's all down to them finally making it so that left-click select is the default.


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## thekev

Renzatic said:


> Here's one reason.
> 
> Though I think it's all down to them finally making it so that left-click select is the default.




Well, they have to convince people to donate somehow. People are less likely to donate if they don't think it's a good project.

Infrastructure projects also seem to have more trouble with funding. It might be that art programs have a higher coolness factor. For example, Pandas complains about this, and Cython in spite of a lot of contributors seems to be mainly driven by a couple people. The latter has an unfortunate number of outdated warnings and documentation bugs, in spite of being used by a very large number of other projects.


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## Renzatic

thekev said:


> Well, they have to convince people to donate somehow. People are less likely to donate if they don't think it's a good project.




From what I saw, it was a cascading effect. The new UI was easier to use, Eevee provides a nigh exclusive feature not available in any other 3D all-in-one package, and left-click select was the final push. Once Ubisoft decided to throw a bunch of money at them, all these other big names stepped in, and now they're making beaucoup bucks.

There on, it's been improving by leaps and strides.


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## Citizenzen

thekev said:


> ... I'm curious what you mean by "asked you to acquire" though. Do they have a clear idea of what they want you to do in the future that requires the use of 3D modeling and/or animation?




No clear idea, need, or timeline, just a vague notion that IF we had the capability we’d find some use for it.


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## Renzatic

It took me a helluva lot longer than I care to admit to, having watched at least a couple hours of tutorials, and spent loads of time experimenting, but I think I've finally managed to make trees that look like they've been painted, but are actually 3D, and react to light.

The only problem now is that it doesn't fit in with the rest of my work, so I'm gonna have to go back and see if I can find a way to integrate the two.

...I've put a helluva lot more work into this crap than I initially intended. Originally, my plan was to smack everything out using flat shaded colored polys, which is easy as hell to do, but I somehow got lost along the way.


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## thekev

Citizenzen said:


> No clear idea, need, or timeline, just a vague notion that IF we had the capability we’d find some use for it.




I was afraid that might be the case, because employers can be like that. I think from a practical standpoint, you should look for something that is at least in the realm of possibility for your workplace, even if your own project may be more or less involved than what you see there. 

Vray has a huge render gallery of this stuff, including a lot of product visualization stuff, so it might give you some ideas. I'm just linking this one,  because it's a popular, albeit commercially licensed renderer. It popped up a lot of years ago as an alternative to Mental Ray, which no longer exists.









						Gallery – Rendered with V-Ray® | Chaos
					

Get inspired. Explore a collection of artwork created by our talented user community. Share your work. We’re always looking for amazing images and animation.




					www.chaosgroup.com


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## User.45

Renzatic said:


> Okay, this is going to be the VERY LAST TIME I post this damn thing. The only reason why I'm doing so again is because I decided to use Cycles instead of Eevee (slow ass raytraced vs. realtime rasterized if that makes any sense to you) to see how it looked, and I was impressed by the difference it made. It just looks and feels more full and interesting now.
> 
> It took nearly half an hour to render vs. the roughly 3 seconds it takes to produce the shot above. Here's the end result.
> 
> View attachment 302
> 
> And now to work on some trees.



And where's the tape machine and the C64 load screen? Those are the stuff real memories come from.


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## Renzatic

PearsonX said:


> And where's the tape machine and the C64 load screen? Those are the stuff real memories come from.




That's funny. I actually had the C64 BASIC screen on there at one point. It kinda clashed with everything else, so I had to nix it, but the thought WAS there.

And since this is sortakinda my unofficial project diary, I figured I'd go ahead and show the start of my next project. It's not much yet, but it's a first step. Took me about 3 hours to to, altogether.





edit: ...and done. Took me about 5 1/2 hours altogether. I'm getting quicker at this stuff.


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## Renzatic

ICE BOX!

...yeah, tell me if I'm getting too spammy with this stuff.


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## Alli

Renzatic said:


> ...yeah, tell me if I'm getting too spammy with this stuff.




Never! You should be proud to show off what you’ve done.


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## Renzatic

Well, okay then.

WHO WANTS SOME DRANK?


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