Mike Renouf

Completed catalogue render

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 07:19:00 +0000

Completed image

A personal project to see how closely I could mimic a photo from a catalogue. This project allowed me to practice various techniques including polymodelling (all objects modeled from scratch), cloth simulation (towel), MassFX dynamic object simulation (cotton wool balls in jar), micropoly displacement (towelling textures). Rendered in Vray 2.0.

Catalogue shot - first draft

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sun, 15 Sep 2013 20:44:00 +0000

Unwrapping UVWs

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Mon, 27 May 2013 21:03:00 +0000

Here's an excellent tutorial for an otherwise very tricky process:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn4q-onOzBs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Latest render

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Tue, 14 May 2013 07:11:00 +0000

Completed chair

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 23:03:00 +0000


My 3D chair, modelled, unwrapped and textured


Reference image from internet

Latticework for archviz

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 12:25:00 +0000

I stumbled across the excellent tutorial for producing parametric lattices in 3DS Max:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKvyv5KmtV8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Ideal for quickly modelling buildings with panelled surfaces for example.

Speedmodelling - toaster

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:21:00 +0000

Speed model chair

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 11:43:00 +0000

Slowly getting somewhere. It's hardly speed modelling though!

"Speed" modelling

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 23:32:00 +0000

Well... I've never been particularly fast a modelling in Max, but practice makes perfect. Here's the beginnings of a dining chair for a challenge on Maxforums:

The reference image comes from here...
http://cozyhomeinteriors.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/dining-chair-upholstery-project.html

Vray interior

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 15:41:00 +0000

I've reworked the hotel suite visuals for vray in order to learn the renderer and I'm seriously impressed with how much more user-friendly it is compared to mentalray. Smooth GI solutions are far easier to achieve with the light cache and irradiance map.

Rugs again

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 22:15:00 +0000

I've been playing with vray for a change and followed some tutorials by the amazing VisCorbel. Austris does some fantastically realistic work and is kind enough to share his tutorials.

Vray displacement seems to be ridiculously fast compared with my experiences of mentalray displacement. I'm going to have to go back to mentalray and experiment a bit more - maybe I was doing something fundamentally wrong..?

Road-testing!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 16:42:00 +0000

I've been creating procedural textures for tarmac to lay the ground work (more puns, sorry) for some exterior visuals. Also been putting together a trees and foliage library.

Rug repaired

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:20:00 +0000

Error-free re-styled rug

Well, it turned out it was nothing to do with lighting samples. I'd made an error when styling the hair&fur modifier. Pop selected and restyle. Job done.

mentalray mrprim or final gather problem?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 23:00:00 +0000

mrprim hair and fur, with archdesign shader applied

close up of artifacts (reduced by higher fg setting)

The devil is in the detail

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 22:55:00 +0000

Inspired by Bertrand Benoit I have been working on adding progressive levels of detail into materials and meshes of my visuals. Here's an example of a fabric for the sofa in the Kensington apartment. Future improvements will include:

Proper UVW mapping of the cushions
Depth of field in the camera shot
Higher polycount for the bent glass table
Improved material for the glass and book.
Sunlight to match the environment background

Still Life - enhanced

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 15:57:00 +0000

I spent a bit of time working on the materials within my hotel suite project recently. In particular I refine the subsurface scattering shader which I used for the grapes, and cleaned up the woodgrain shader.

Oldschool CGI Lighting

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 00:50:00 +0000

Modern Archviz techniques are based around complex simulations of daylight and photometric light settings. The mentalray render engine uses Final Gather and Photon Mapping to automatically generate a distribution of light throughout a scene or a camera view but this requires a good chunk of computer resources to calculate and can take a hell of a long time.

Before all this clever software was available CGI lighting artists cleverly faked realistic lighting by using simple spotlights, omnidirectional lights and direct lights. This is more art than science.

With modern computers being many times faster than those old machines, render times for old school lighting in these situations are tiny, so I've decided to try learning those techniques to help me generate walk-throughs which typically require many hundreds of frames.

Advanced lighting with Global Illumination, Final Gather and Ambient Occlusion

The same view with simple lighting to fake the natural daylight

Obviously my first effort at this isn't completely convincing, but it goes someway toward simulating the realistic lighting that can be achieved with a more complex approach - but with minimal rendering times. More soon...

Happy Christmas!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 20:47:00 +0000

Kensington Apartment updated

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 20:56:00 +0000

Lighting updated and did some major work on the chair and materials

progress...

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 23:25:00 +0000

Kensington update

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 20:04:00 +0000

Rug and updated fabrics to sofa

Sofa, so good

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 13:34:00 +0000

Slight texture seams, but getting there

Here's an update - I've refined the modelling on the sofa a little and textured it. The diffuse has a bit of a seam, but I'm happier with the bump map and the mesh than I thought I would be.

Now to do something about that damned rug...

Kensington Apartment

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 20:19:00 +0000

Early stage of modelling

The inspiration

I found some fantastic photos of a Kensington apartment some time ago and I've been meaning to use them for inspiration on a personal project. Here's what I've managed to sling together so far. This is the first time I've played with the newer version of Max so I'm still torn between iRay and mentalRay for rendering. I'll model everything up and then have a play with both.

The proportions need a lot of work and I have 3 photos to use as reference so it shouldn't be too tough to correct.

Original design was by SHH.

Back to nature

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 18:21:00 +0000

Arbaro trees with mentalray shader

I've wanted to add foliage to my scenes for some time now, but I didn't have the processing power required for rendering polygon-heavy geometry with my old laptop. Now that I've got the desktop machine with a bit more power, I have investigated this little gem of a programme:

http://arbaro.sourceforge.net/

The procedural maths which the programme performs are very clever allowing you to make anything from a little desert tumbleweed with dried looking sticks and twigs, all the way through to an elaborate oak - when you know what you're doing. Sadly with my tests I the sunlight seems to catch on the shape of the helix which is used within the tree, so it looks a bit unnatural from that point of view.

Low poly leaves with a very rough texture - needs improvement

I haven't delved that deeply into Arbaro yet, but I'm pleased with my results so far. The geometry of the leaves in this example is too low quality, but that can be improved within the programme, and obviously some decent texturing wouldn't go a miss either.

Displacement rug

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Renouf) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 22:18:00 +0000

Mentalray Displacement

Well it took me a long time to get the settings right for this, and the render time was way beyond what I'd hoped for. The tutorials I've seen for Vray displacement seemed to be faster with better results. I'm not sure if there's still something I'm not doing right, but I worked the number of subdivisions carefully to give me as few as possible.