Jonathan Kaplan

3d Product Visualization: Commercial Sized Solar Umbrella

2016-02-25T21:39:00.000-08:00

I want to share some renderings from a 3d Product Visualization gig that I had a few months ago.

I don't want to get into the particulars of the functionality as the product is still in development; however, I am rather proud of the way these images turned out as there were some particularly complex shapes involved in the model (such as the organic base shape and fabric like umbrella top.)

Product Visualization is very fun but can be quite difficult as a lot of the time you are creating the first photo-realistic renditions of an object that has yet to be conceived in reality.

If you are interested in learning more about 3d Product Visualization feel free to leave comments or contact me via my website at www.kaplandesignlabs.com for more information. If you have an invention or a product that you would like to develop or market checkout my friend's website at www.EddyPham.com

Software Used: 3ds Max, V-Ray

Thanks!

Landscape Paintings & Drawings: Architecture Studies- Pen and Watercolor

2016-02-24T02:02:00.000-08:00

Greetings Blog-ettes and Blog-duders,

I want to share a couple of Architectural Illustrations/ Landscape Paintings & Drawings that I made recently. Each one of these was done within 20 minutes to an hour including paints/ markers. Both of these were sketchbook entries to refresh my drawing "chops." Sometime this week I would like to do at least another one or two pieces in more detail, perhaps on canvas.

Landscape painting is my oldest artistic passion going all the way back to when I was about five years old when my grandmother first started teaching me how to paint. I had originally learned on oils as a child and later made my way to acrylics and watercolors as I got older. I know most artists start with acrylics or watercolors and make their way into oil paints as oil painting is supposed to be the most difficult medium; however, I feel if you first master oils, acrylics and watercolors come easy.

As I mentioned these were quick studies rather than attempted masterworks but I want to get into the habit of drawing and painting more often. I used to draw everyday; however, since graduating art school, digital platforms and corporate art have distracted me from more traditional mediums.

Architecture Study- Postwar House- Pen and Watercolor

Architecture Study- Beach House- Pen and Prisma Color Markers

While I spend most of my time as a 3d artist these days, working in the architecture and interior design industry has renewed my passion for more traditional mediums. I am lucky to be around several talented 2d/ traditional artists in my office who keep me inspired.

Feel free to let me know what you think and make sure to checkout my online gallery at www.kaplandesignlabs.com for frequent updates. Thanks!

3d Architectural Visualization and Design: Arial View, Original Skyscraper Design

2016-02-21T00:08:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of trying to post more often I have a couple of 3d renderings of some towers I recently designed when playing around in 3ds Max.

Arial Rendering of "Kaplan Towers," an original design by Jonathan A. Kaplan

At work I am heavily relied on for creating a lot of interior spaces. Because of my limited opportunities to get to build out exterior scenes, I decided to put together a scene from a building design I recently created in a little down time I had. Below is the base design before adding context such as the forest, roads, cars, ocean, HDRI sky, and additional buildings:

Original Building Design before Context

I was very happy with the design I came up with and I received a lot of compliments from our senior Architects and Designers who happened to see my building on my desktop wallpaper.

In the future I hope to be able to add more camera angles and continue juicing up this scene as I have more spare time. I will be sure to post if I do. after designing the bones of this building, I have realized how far my understanding of architectural design has come in the past couple of years while working for my current employer and I am inspired to continue creating my own designs in the months to come. Thank you for reading!

www.kaplandesignlabs.com

Software used: 3ds Max, V-Ray, Photoshop

3d Architectural and Interior Visualization: Mid Century Modern Living Room

2016-02-15T18:19:00.000-08:00

Hey there! I want to share a recent render that I had the opportunity to put together in my downtime.

3d Rendering of a Mid Century Modern living room by Jonathan A. Kaplan

I have always been fascinated with the Mid Century Modern Era of architecture (think Mad Men)

See examples of Mid Century Modern homes here:

https://shar.es/14PFdi

To me, this was the pinnacle of creative design, as architects and designers of this era were intent on imagining what the future was going to look like and incorporating this creative thought into the buildings and homes of all Americans. This style of architecture has also been referred to as "Space Age" and "Atomic" because of it's forward thinking inspired designs. From the huge fins on classic Cadillacs to the houses that sprinkle the hills of Palm Springs, Mid Century Modern Architecture made a major impact on both American and international culture, especially in architecture and interior design.

Process:

1) I started this project while practicing my tufting skills by modeling the Knoll Barcelona chair which is very common in many interior designs (the pink bench in the middle.) After modeling the Knoll Barcelona, I decided to run with it and create a full scene which would compliment the chairs I had modeled.

2) From there, I envisioned a color palette which included grey tones and shades of pink complimented by vibrant selections of blue and green which really pop against red as green is the complimentary color to red.

3) I used this great website I found for furnishing selections which is a marketplace for antiques, especially those of Mid Century Modern designers:

https://www.1stdibs.com/ ; however, I did not limit myself to the colors found in the original reference images.I used this site to pick the lamps, side tables, and chandelier. While I often incorporate my own designs into my personal 3d renderings, for this project I wanted to get the authentic, period look.

4) Once the focal furnishings were established, I picked a retro brick texture for the back wall and vintage fabrics and patterns for the pillows and rug. I accented the design using the Mid Century Modern, egg style, "swan chairs" which I had previously modeled when developing my 3d modeling skills.

Designer Chairs previously modeled for practice

5) Finally, I added some V-Ray IES Lights to the back wall to give the room a moody but realistic feeling, and of course, living in Las Vegas, I picked a great photo of the original Sands Hotel and Casino as the cherry on top of this vintage inspired 3d rendering.

Please visit my website at www.kaplandesignlabs.com

Software used for this scene: 3ds Max & V-Ray

Animation History: Silly Symphony- Little Hiawatha

2015-09-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

About a couple of years ago I attended one of my former life drawing instructor's art show openings, Ruel Pascual http://ruelpascualart.bigcartel.com/, at the Van Eaton Galleries http://vegalleries.com/ in Sherman Oaks, CA.

Ruel is one of the most talented artists I have ever met, and I consider myself lucky to of had the privilege of his tutelage. He has spent the past couple of years working on Star Wars (the video games and movie I believe) for Disney Interactive.

Anyways, seeing as how I am an Animator with a Bachelor's of Science in Media Arts & Animation, and being that Van Eaton Galleries is one of the world's premier Animation Art Dealers, I couldn't help but to browse their catalogs for nostalgic purposes.

I was on vacation at the time and wasn't actually planning on buying any artwork; however, once I was there flipping through original works by Chuck Jones, Disney's Nine Old Men, Hanna Barbera, etc. etc, I just could not leave the gallery without my very own piece of Animation History for my private art collection.

That being said, I ended up purchasing two original Yogi Bear keyframes/ poses, as well as this Silly Symphony's Little Hiawatha compilation sheet of Action Sketches/ key poses.

Little Hiawatha has always had a soft spot in my heart as this was one of the first animations I remember having watched as a child back when Disney Channel used to actually play archival animations and films (if you are old enough to remember this).

Little Hiawatha is a 10-20 minute film from the Silly Symphony collection. It is about a Native American Child who is hunting a baby bear through what appears to be the forests of the Pacific Northwest. As "grizzly" as this sounds, it is filled with hilarious antics and exemplifies the 12 principles of animation at every second.

Below is the full length version of the Cartoon I found on Youtube. If you are not familiar with the Silly Symphony collection this is a great introduction to the series.

Feel free to comment and share your thoughts about Little Hiawatha. I hope you enjoy this animation as much as I do :) Also, If you are ever in Los Angeles, I highly recommend visiting the gallery. The staff is knowledgeable and friendly and there are always new galleries of contemporary artwork as well. This sheet of Action Sketches is something I truly treasure and brings a smile to my face every time I see it hanging on my walls.

www.kaplandesignlabs.com

3d Architectural and Interior Visualization: Tron Suite and Concrete Penthouse

2015-09-08T23:38:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, again, I have found myself working in the Architecture and Interior Design industry for the past couple of years.

If you follow my blog from its beginnings you know that when I first graduated from school (back in 2010) I worked for a couple of years doing Retail Design for a company called Ayalas Inc.

After a hiatus from interior design/ architecture, during which time I worked on 3d Illustrations and Motion Graphics (as well as 2d illustration, 3d animation, and graphic design) for a internet startup/ website that is about to launch called www.LifeTimeStock.com, I re-entered the Architecture/ Interior Design business with Steelman Partners, one of the highest grossing and productive Hospitality Design firms in the world.

Since my beginnings with Steelman Partners, my 3d and Design skills have grown exponentially on a daily basis. I currently find myself in charge of 2-5 projects at a time which include visualizing spaces such as hotel rooms, hotel lobbies, casinos, nightclubs, spas, shopping malls and many more large scale hospitality spaces.

Some days I model 10+ pieces of highly detailed furniture, chandeliers, sculptures, or even whole interior spaces.

Below are a couple of interior spaces for penthouse/ hotel concepts that I designed and created in my spare time using %100 assets which I modeled, textured, and created lighting for myself.

Both are works in progress (as are all great works of art.) For these I used 3ds Max and V-Ray.

Please feel free to let me know what you think. As I mentioned, both are works in progress and I will be updating them as I have more spare time for personal work.

If you have any questions about techniques used please feel free to email me or comment. I have been having a lot of fun with these designs and I look forward to posting some of my professional projects in the near future.

www.kaplandesignlabs.com Enjoy!

Abstract 3d Artwork- A study in the color White

2015-03-26T23:11:00.000-07:00

Hello friends!

It is crazy to think a whole year has gone by since my last post. Thank you for keeping the blog alive in my absence.

A little over a year ago I obtained a position as a 3d Artist with a local Architecture Firm, Steelman Partners in Las Vegas, NV.

Since then I have done Architectural Visualization work daily on projects ranging from hotels, casinos, nightclubs, restaurants, resorts, pools, mansions, etc. etc.

Over the course of the year I have visualized over 50 projects! Needless to say, I am very sleepy; however, this is extremely fulfilling work.

I am going to be posting on a regular basis again. While I can't post any work online yet as many of the projects are either still under development or construction, I want to post some artwork I have been having fun with as well as non architectural visualization projects.

This is an abstract piece of artwork I made while listening to a Wu Tang Clan album and browsing through fashion magazines. The goal was to make White the predominant color in the composition and splash bursts of very saturated colors through symbols of power and wealth.

Let me know what you think! More to come soon.........

www.kaplandesignlabs.com

The Hotel Bud Light, Las Vegas: Chalkboard Art Mural

2014-03-29T00:36:00.000-07:00

Paradise Tower has officially been turned into #BudLightHotel for #NCB2014! Yes, we're #UpForWhatever. @NightclubBar pic.twitter.com/N89ukeS2qZ
— Hard Rock Hotel LV (@HardRockHotelLV) March 26, 2014

Now I know I haven't posted since New Years but that is of course because Kaplan Design Labs has been busy!!!

Last week The Hard Rock Hotel, Las Vegas, was transformed into "Hotel Bud Light, Las Vegas" for the Nightclub and Liquor Distributors Conference.

For a special event which took place in Festival Hall in the Hard Rock Hotel Conference Center, I was commissioned to do a Chalkboard Art Mural spanning 2 walls each roughly 8 feet in length and almost four feet high, making this wall almost 16 feet long.

This was our largest chalkboard to date and because it was at a special event and due to the design of the awesome interactive beer tap wall that The Mash Group, an Exhibit Design company from St. Louis custom designed for Anheiser Busch, the job had to be done after the build of the wall for the event was completed (about 3:00PM on Sunday) and had to be done by the time the event started at 10:00AM on Monday morning.

Me and my lovely assistant as well as a core chemist here at the Design Laboratory, Elizabeth Kaplan, worked for over 20 hours straight to come through on the deadline while making changes to the design on the fly to accommodate a Photo Shoot taking place the next day for the Anheiser Busch executives.

The designs were pre-made digitally by me in cooperation with The Mash Group and AB.

Digital Design Proof Side 01

Digital Design Proof Side 02

Needless to say KDL kicked some art ass and the project as well as the event was a huge success. On top of the Interactive Tap wall which featured my mural of awesome, Festival Hall was completely filled for party action with Pool Tables, Fooseball Tables, Multiple Bars/ sampling stations, a ton of Flat Screen Televisions, a DJ Booth with Dance Floor, and a Basketball Court!!! Talk about a party! Below are some pics we took during the build. Unfortunately our week was to busy to make it back to the party but I thuroughly enjoyed working on this project and cannot wait to collaborate with Anheiser Busch and Bud Light again.

Sorry the pics are so low res, the fancy phone's battery died towards the end of the project ;) I will dig up more photos and update the post soon soon so make sure to check back!

www.kaplandesignlabs.com

Happy New Years 2014: 3d typography

2014-01-10T14:09:00.000-08:00

I know its a little late but I forgot to post these when I made them for New Years 2014. They made it to the Facebooks and Twitters but not Blogger so here you go!

Pro Tip: Save render time by making your color variations in Photoshop using the Hue/ Saturation Tool.

New Limted Edition Prints in Store! Retro/ Vintage Apple & Macintosh Faux Product Posters

2013-12-27T04:15:00.000-08:00

I wanted to announce that I now have prints available on my Etsy store of the Apple & Macintosh faux advertisements I made a while back which were featured on my blog at an earlier point.

They have received a warm welcoming since posting. They are all signed and numbered limited editions.

As a reminder if you didn't see the original posts all artwork are original vector tributes to different art styles and decades. The Bondi iMac is done in the style of a psychedelic 1960's concert poster, the 1st generation iPod is done in an Art Deco inspired Early 1900's Print Advertisements, and the Macintosh Plus is an homage to the style and artwork of the 1980's. All artwork features original prices, release dates, and specs of featured illustrated products.

Check it out!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/KaplanDesignLabs

Using 3d / CGI (or the illusion of) for presenting your work

2013-12-16T16:15:00.000-08:00

I wanted to do a quick post about presenting artwork by using 3d software to make your portfolio shine above the rest. A long ways back I wrote an article about how presentation is your portfolio is just as important as the work/ content in your portfolio.

http://jonathankaplan.blogspot.com/2012/02/portfolio-updates-presentation-tips.html

This is an extension to that advice. Below are images that I put together which showcase some of my 2d artwork using 3d compositions to bring the artwork to life:

As you can see, presenting your artwork in simple 3D compositions can really make your work stand out. Most art directors go through hundreds of portfolios a day. Use techniques like this to make the cut.

If you do not know how to use 3d software, try something like this:

I made this piece %100 in photoshop (artwork itself was done in illustrator and photoshop.)

You don't need to be a 3d artist to creatively showcase your work, you just need to be creative with the tools you have available!

If you can't be bothered with this kind of stuff or would like me to do it for you shoot me an email for a quote.

If you found this information helpful please consider donating to the blog so that I can continue to offer free advice and do so on a more regular basis...

Sketching and Painting Hikes: Landscape Painting, Drawing, and Sketching at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area

2013-10-22T23:49:00.000-07:00

For a little more than six months now I have been assisting my wife, who is employed as an Interpretive Naturalist at Las Vegas' local hiking and general outdoor mecca, Red Rock Canyon.

Basically, Liz leads a group of visitors on short hikes to some of Red Rock Canyon's most scenic areas where during the walk Liz will give a series of lectures on the history, plants, wildlife, and the climate of the South Western Mojave Desert. Once we arrive at the destination, I give instruction, tips, and tricks to give hike-goers an introduction to how to sketch, draw, and paint Landscapes as well as the basics of drawing wildlife and plants.

The event is in the process of being elaborated upon in which rather than giving just an introduction to Landscape Painting and Drawing during the course of a single hike we will actually work on developing a finished composition over the course of 2 or 3 outings.

Below are a few pictures of some of the fun we had at our last outing, as well as Liz doing her thing!

We are currently discussing starting a blog dedicated to the "sketching/ painting" hikes for posting news, updates, and artwork from each future event. I will also continue to post updates here at http://jonathankaplan.blogspot.com

If you would like to sign up for one of Liz's next hikes ( the next one is a historical sketching hike at the Willow Springs trail-head on Saturday 10/26/2013 ) call (702) 515-5367

Error Code Adventures: Setting up (and making it work) a Render Farm with Maya, Mental Ray, and Backburner

2013-10-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

@kaplandesignlab and I at the office today. Err, render farm. :) #TheGreatMigration pic.twitter.com/0ldJ9Y4dO9
— Kevin G. Schmidt (@kevingschmidt) October 5, 2013

Very recently I was contacted by a producer who is working on a feature animated movie that wanted me to act as a consultant for the creation of the Production Trailer for the film. Apparently I am one of few people in Nevada with the technical knowledge/ experience for setting up reliable, fast performing Render Farms (within a reasonable budget as far as Render Farm standards go.)

For this project I was also given the lead on creating lighting, acting as quality control for texturing, and for optimizing rendering preferences/ executing rendering.

While I do have extensive knowledge in building and maintaining render farms (refer to post: http://jonathankaplan.blogspot.com/2012/04/tutorial-using-backburner-and-vray.html ) the last and most recent render farm I built was constructed with 3ds Max, Vray Distributed Rendering, and Backburner.

Crossing over to a Maya/ Mental Ray model took some getting used to. First I would like to warn anyone attempting this: Maya & Mental Ray's Network Render is a little more complex than the setup and execution of a 3ds Max with Vray Render Network. There are subtle differences that if not properly understood will make the process take several hours more than it should.

Despite the differences and deficiencies of the en-devour, ultimately within a few hours I was able to get all of the Render Farm Slaves to communicate properly with the Render Manager and actually bump out some fantastic render speed results. Throughout this process I had to troubleshoot several error codes from Maya/ Backburner that were very obscure and for which I found little support online. Each error made me permanently, slightly more insane. The feeling I got after conquering the errors is equatable to the feeling you get after a 12 hour day of manual labor in the desert sun (a great feeling of accomplishment and exhaustion.)

For a little background on the setup: The International Academy of Design and Technology, Las Vegas partnered with the producer of the film and supplied us with about 24 Alien Ware computers with Intel i7 Processors with a second room in the process of being upgraded and networked.

With 24 computers acting as slaves, at 1920x1080p we were able to finish about 120 frames in 40 minutes, averaging 3 minutes per render. This was with optimal rendering preferences (with the exception of motion blur and depth of field) and some pretty complex textures and lighting.

I just wanted to give an update and some insight to setting up a Maya, Mental Ray, Backburner render farm and I might put up a tutorial at a later time but for now if you are attempting such an adventure, my best piece of advice is:
1) to be patient with the error codes (don't pull your hair out, you will overcome)
2) refer to Autodesks documentation and make sure you go through each step like a checklist http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2014/en_us/index.html?url=files/GUID-788EB610-5A7E-41C4-BD0C-1099FB9E72AF.htm,topicNumber=d30e681735,
3) and make sure the same version of Backburner is on all machines!

If you need further assistance, you can contact me at jonakap1@gmail.com

By donating you make it easier for me to post more often on more topics and give me the ability to spend more time answering your questions. If you enjoy reading or have found any of my posts valuable feel free to let me know.

Blog Award!!!

2013-09-28T16:22:00.000-07:00

Today I checked my email inbox to find that my blog has been featured on BLOG AWARDS! Here is the URL for you to check out http://jupiterindia.com/blog_awards/index.php?id=1691

I would like to thank the team at Jupiter Web and Software Solutions for taking the time to not only operate such a great blog database but for also honoring me as their featured blog.I would also like to thank all of my visitors, especially the regulars who keep my blog alive! I couldn't do it without you.

Go team Kaplan Design Labs!

Chalkboard Art: Superzoo 2013

2013-07-26T19:42:00.000-07:00

Hey now! Apologies for not posting more frequently lately but I have been busy busy busy (which is a good thing.)

I wanted to post a recent Chalkboard Art piece I did for Darford/ CanAm on site during the build day of Superzoo 2013, a massively large Pets/ Animal supplies convention here in Las Vegas which features everything from dog biscuits to aquariums.

This piece took about 6.5-7 hours on a 36"x24" board. I am quite the perfectionist so I wish I would have had more time for the clean-up process but I am very pleased with the way this one came out. Usually I am accustomed to doing this type of work at my studio but due to the short notice and circumstances of the project I actually went on site and did this during the exhibit build. Check it out!

And here is the original digital mock-up I put together:

As you can see the final product came out slightly different. This is pretty common when translating the digital information on to the physical board as spacing and layout adjustments have to be made to account for text size, legibility, etc. of final typography. All and all I would say I definitely captured the essence and was even able to make the final product a bit more fun. For an in studio project it is common that I spend 4 hours just working on the block-in and layout of the elements on the board.

How well do you see color?

2013-06-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

One of my former life drawing instructors posted this test on Facebook. It tests the accuracy of your color vision. Color tests can be important for determining deficiencies, showing signs of possible illness, and for seeing how well a potential employee might suit a position with a company (design or art related industries.)

I scored a "perfect color vision." On a scale of 0-100 with 0 being the best possible outcome. The test took me about 4-5 minutes and is pretty fun. Most people are reporting landing in the 15-30 range.

http://www.xrite.com/online-color-test-challenge

And here is a link to my former instructor's blog whom I learned about this test from:

http://sheffabella.blogspot.com/

Here are some interesting statistics in relation to color blindness and the use of color tests:

http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=86

Enjoy!

Illustrations: "The Young Dinosaur of Red Rock Canyon" (working title) - Various Illustrations of Desert Animals and Dinosaurs for Children's Book

2013-04-19T15:03:00.001-07:00

About four months ago I was commissioned to be the illustrator for a Children's Book about a Dinosaur that comes to life from fossilized eggs at modern day Red Rock Canyon, a conservation area just outside of Las Vegas. The author needed about 20 full page illustrations for the book. I have been compositing 2d Illustrations with photo's and matte paintings of Red Rock to give the illustrations a fun, unique direction that still showcases the natural beauty of the Conservation Area. Below are collages of the original line drawings as well as the Photoshop painted renditions of selected characters from the book. We are about half-way through the illustrations at this point and actively seeking out publishers for the project. I will be posting some finished illustrations in the upcoming weeks but for now I wanted to give everyone a taste of what I have been working on. Enjoy!

Sketchbook Drawing: Vintage Illustration of Camera Collection

2013-02-17T01:46:00.002-08:00

Hey everyone, I did this drawing of my camera collection in my sketchbook the other night. I thought it would be fun to draw it in the style of a vintage advertisement (as my camera collection consists of retro cameras such as the Kodak Brownie Bullseye and the Argus Seventy Five.) I have been brushing up on my illustration skills as a vast majority of my work as of late has been digital. When you reach a very high skill level make sure you practice your abilities as often as possible to "keep your chops fresh." Enjoy!

- Jonathan Kaplan - www.kaplandesignlabs.com -

Kaplan Design Labs Website Goes Live!

2013-02-09T17:47:00.000-08:00

Hello friends,

I would like to announce that my new website Kaplan Design Labs, www.kaplandesignlabs.com, is now live. I am still adding portfolio content (which is endless) as well as editing content, but please check it out if you haven't already and tell your friends.

Here you can find all my blog posts, my company bio, my services, my portfolio, contact info, and links to all my social media. I will still be posting on this blog so don't worry but you can find all the same content at the main site as well. Thank you for reading and especially those of you who keep me in your RSS feeds. There will be an upcoming website launch party so those of you in Las Vegas, check back frequently for updates. Those of you who are not in Las Vegas, don't worry, I will be posting all the highlights on facebook, twitter, and of course jonathankaplan.blogspot.com! Let me know what you think of the site and thank you for continuing to read the blog!

Octane Render: Final Verdict

2013-02-06T03:32:00.000-08:00

*** There have been some great comments on this post that shine some insight on what results are like with multiple heavy duty graphics cards, be sure to check them out! My findings were based on the use of a single mid-high level graphics card. Since I did my own tests, multiple graphics cards engineered for the specific purpose of GPU based rendering have been released. From what I hear if you get a couple of those beasts, GPU based rendering can in fact be a very fast rendering platform without the need of a several computer render farm.***

Sorry for the delay on posting, I have been in the process of re-branding my company. You can see my new website at http://www.kaplandesignlabs.com - I will also post my marketing materials soon so that you can see what I have been up to.

Anyways, In my last post,

Octane Render: First Impressions in GPU & Physics Based Rendering

I talked about my opinions on the GPU/ Physics based Octane Render Engine. I also touched on some of the benefits of GPU based rendering. Since my last post I have conducted further testing with Octane Render Engine and I have some interesting results. This review is primarily focused on the Octane Render Plugin for 3ds Max rather than the stand alone version. To me, having to export and import my scenes into a separate piece of software is tedious and if I have to do so I can't say that using Octane Render would be a superior rendering experience -so for me, I didn't bother too much with the Stand Alone version and focused mostly on using the 3ds Max Plugin version.

1) Render Time:

As I mentioned in the previous post when I was working solely with the demo version of Octane Render the resolution was limited to 1000 X 1000 pixels. Since then we purchased the full version and have been able to get more accurate figures in terms of render speed at high resolution. On that note- While GPU based rendering/ Octane Render Engine boasts about increased render speeds, this is a slightly misleading claim. Octane Render plugin comes with a great viewport which allows you to see a high quality render through your preview window. This means you have the ability to have a pretty good sense of what your scene is going to look like rendered, without having to render. This can save a ton of time in the development process because you don't have to constantly do test renders to gauge progress.

While the viewport preview is great, when it comes to actually rendering scenes my results weren't as good as anticipated. On the subject of actual render time, while Octane Render does create a really nice, crisp, realistic render, it actually seems from a number of tests conducted that Vray actually renders faster than Octane Render. This comes down to a matter of a few seconds of difference when rendering out a low resolution image; however, at high resolutions they were minutes apart. Keep in mind that this is when setting Octane's sampling levels to a high amount to get maximum quality. If you set the samples low, it renders extremely fast; however, the quality drastically decreases. When trying to decide whether or not to switch over to GPU/ Physics based Render Engines like Octane, this really does not motivate me to do so.

It is impotent to note that for these tests I was rendering Octane with a single Quadro 4000 which is a very nice graphics card. If you were using multiple high end graphics cards, instead of a single card, render times would probably be a lot lower. In my opinion though, investing your money in an i7 processor makes more sense then buying multiple high performance graphics cards which have little application outside of gaming and GPU based rendering.

Octane

Vray

Render time at 4000 x 4000

Vray 1:15

Octane 4:59

2) Quality:

As I said and as displayed above, the final renders Octane creates are quite stunning. The sense of realistic shadows and reflections and the overall realistic quality of the finished render are very nice. While the render quality is great, I did run into a huge problem that affects my opinion of Octane Render.

At my current job, I take 3d Models which were textured to suit either Vray or Mental Ray and render them out from dozens of various angles. I do hundreds of these renders a day. As with Vray, Octane Render Plugin has a function to "Convert" textures from Mental Ray or Vray into Octane Textures which are essential for the renders to come out correctly. Sounds good right? Wrong! While Octane seems to have no problem converting basic textures, on more complex textures many of conversions had major errors correctly converting color, bump maps, and reflections, as well as a variety of other issues. While it isn't too difficult to go in and "fix" the textures, when you are like me and you have to render out hundreds of objects a day, this is a major issue. If you are building your own models and textures from scratch you would avoid this issue but for large scale operations I would not suggest putting all of your eggs in this basket. For this reason, we determined that making a company wide switch to Octane Render just didn't make sense.

3) Conclusion

While Octane Render is a very promising addition to your current render arsenal, don't go running out to make a major switch to Octane from platforms like Vray and Mental Ray. Because final, high resolution renders simply do not appear to be any faster than existing engines like Vray, this is a major drawback. On the contrary, the cost of Octane is in the range of $150 making it a pretty affordable option, especially for those of you just looking to get your feet wet in GPU based rendering. Also, on a positive note, Octane was recently purchased by a larger company called OTOY. Since then Octane has started seeing regular updates and seems to be out of the Beta stages so hopefully they address some of these issues.

www.kaplandesignlabs.com

Octane Render: First Impressions in GPU & Physics Based Rendering

2012-12-21T17:30:00.002-08:00

The Back-story:

In the pursuit of science I have been delving into the world of Physics Based Rendering using GPU's instead of CPU's. Currently at the office I use 3ds Max for the base 3d software on which Vray has been my main render engine. In conjunction with Vray I have 12 computers I use as render slaves on a network I built which draws on the Render Que bliss of Backburner but utilizes Vray's Distributed Rendering to have all slaves contributing to a single image at a time instead of spreading separate frames to individual computers. A tutorial on setting up a render farm in this fashion is detailed in this post:

http://jonathankaplan.blogspot.com/2012/04/tutorial-using-backburner-and-vray.html

We chose Vray over Mental Ray for a few core reasons detailed in this post

http://jonathankaplan.blogspot.com/2012/04/mental-ray-vs-vray.html

A summary of the reasons why we decided to use Vray primarily over Mental Ray was because it was much faster than Mental Ray to set up scenes and get photo realistic renders pertaining to materials, render settings, and lighting. Also we felt that Vray had a crisper, sharper render quality than Mental Ray, even when Final Gather was set to maximum within Mental Ray. Lastly, the benefits of Vray's Distributed Rendering were irresistible.

Hypothesis/ Question:

In that same quest for speed and quality I am now experimenting with GPU based rendering, and the first Render Engine to test is Octane. In the past I experimented very briefly with Vray's GPU rendering but found that render quality was less than impressive. Octane was recommended to us by a counterpart in Italy who uses Blender with Octane for all of his work (which is very impressive.) The main question on our minds is- "is it possible to achieve better render quality and faster render times using Physics/ GPU based render systems on 1 or 2 computers rather than having to use 12+ computers on a Vray render farm that produces only decent render times?" WELL LETS FIND OUT!

First Impressions:

For this study I downloaded both the stand-alone version of Octane as well as the newly released 3ds Max Plug-in Version. Using the Plug-in Version, right away upon setting up a few basic "Octane Lights" and converting some Mental Ray materials over to Octane Materials- at the click of a button, I noticed that I got a very nice looking render within a just a few minutes of preparation. I made the below render comparisons with a standard Torus. For each I used equatable Materials meant specifically for use with the Render Engines used for the test renders as well as Mental Ray/ Vray/ Octane specific lighting. They were all very close in quality and render time but Octane did stand out for the realism of the reflections and shadow fall off.

Mental Ray

Vray

Octane

Next I set off to render out a more complex object to really get a feel for render speed and quality:

Mental Ray

Vray

Octane

At this point it was obvious that we liked the quality and realism of the Octane Version even over Vray; however, the render time was in the area of 10 minutes which was even higher than Mental Ray and Vray, much higher. Octane is supposed to render at relatively instantaneous speeds right? Yeah, thats what I thought too. After some quick digging I found people in forums saying that Octane will continue to render, seemingly forever unless you tell it to stop. After the first 30 seconds there is a nice quality render appearing on the screen but the program continues to sample, and resample, and resample fine tuning the quality ever so slightly with each second. So I thought there must be a way to limit the render time without having to manually tell it to cancel right? While I couldn't find any information on this subject I did discover through trial and error that if you reduce the default "16,000" samples in the render settings down to say, 1000 you still get a very high quality render and the render finishes at about the 30 second mark. I guess setting the default sample amount so high kind of makes sense if you can still get a flawless render in about 10 minutes, but we want SPEEEEEEEEEED! and quality.... So for me, so far, 1000 samples seems to be a happy medium. Below are examples of what a render time of 26 seconds with 1000 samples looks like:

Octane, 26 seconds, 1000 samples, 640 X 480 pixels

So far so good then. Unfortunately the demo version does not support large render resolution but we plan on purchasing the full version this week. I am looking forward to pumping out a 4000 x 4000 resolution render and really seeing what Octane is capable of. First impressions are that it is BLAZINGLY fast once you get your render settings dialed in and Octane is capable of extremely high quality and realistic lighting and textures. I feel like it is still a very new technology and software, so you might want to wait until they make sure there aren't any major bugs before running out and purchasing it but for 100-200 dollars why not right?

BY THE WAY VERY IMPORTANT If you do not have an Nvidia Graphics Card don't bother because it is only compatible with Nvidia at this point. I am using the Quadro 4000. I will keep everyone posted as I progress into the next phase of study so stay tuned!

www.kaplandesignlabs.com

New Website Coming Soon!

2012-12-05T14:57:00.001-08:00

Hello friends, family, countryman! I would like to announce that within the next couple of weeks I will be launching my new website under my new company name of "Kaplan Design Labs." The blog will remain active and I will continue to post here even though there will be an integrated blog in the site as well. In the new site you can expect to see my full portfolio, history of my career, services offered, tutorials, resources, and many more surprises. I would like to thank all of my followers and viewers for your past and continued support as none of this would be possible without you. Excelsior away!

Here is a random render just for fun!

3ds Max & Vray with Depth of Field

Illustrations, Presentation, and 3d Gallery Visualization: Apple iMac & Promo Designs

2012-11-27T16:25:00.002-08:00

Hey now! So I finally created a 3rd illustration/ poster in the Apple Product Series. 3 Illustrations was the magic number I was shooting for to create a new project for my portfolio. The previous two illustrations were done in retro fashion, one representing the 80's and one representing the 30's. So in keeping with the tradition the newest graphic is done in the design style of 60's Rock Concert Posters. This was my first time designing in this style and it was a blast to experiment with the type deformations that made the lava lamp style of graphic design such a hit in that decade. Below are two color variations of the poster. I have chosen the first one as the graphic that will be included in my portfolio (it was a tough decision.) The below three graphics are presentation images I created to make the project more interesting and appealing. As I have discussed in previous posts, the presentation of a project is just as important as the main elements of the project itself. The first presentation image I put together in Photoshop to simulate the graphics as posters on an eroded concrete wall. The last two images I made in 3ds Max and rendered with Vray to show them as fancy works of fine art in a gallery. It was a lot of fun putting together the images and I am very pleased with the way the project flows together. If you want to check it out go to this link and let me know what you think!

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Vector-Illustrations-Vintage-Retro-Apple-Posters/6092801

3d Architectural/ Interior Visualization- Purple Recording Studio: Command Station Close Up

2012-11-14T15:23:00.000-08:00

Doing some detail shots of the "Purple Recording Studio. Here is a close up of the command station equipment. I could wait until they are all ready for posting, but why deny you the awesome?

More to Come!!!

Vector Illustration- Retro/ Vintage Advertisement: iPod 1st Generation

2012-11-14T00:01:00.006-08:00

A month or two ago I created several vector illustrations of past and present Apple products such as the Macintosh Plus, the original iMac, the original iPod, the iPhone 5, the iPad, and a new iMac to use some examples. Since I made them they have been just sitting around on the hard drive with the exception of the Macintosh Plus which I created an 80's style vector illustration/ advertisement for (that is on display a couple of posts back.) This week I decided to put the 1st Generation iPod to work and I decided to do a very retro/ vintage advertisement that clashes the new-ish product with the very old school ad design. Eventually when I utilize more of the illustrations these will be on sale as a set of posters, for now enjoy!

Created with Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop-