Moonwolf's Graphics Lair

The Eye Has It

2012-03-24T14:25:56Z

The Eye Has It

Cranking it all up to max for photorealism.

Trying to determine the balance point between settings to get shader nodes to render photo-realistic images whilst keeping render times down to the lowest needed. The end result? She’s got her eye on you

Shortlink for this post: http://wp.me/p2cfwg-to

Past and Present Future

2012-03-20T19:13:04Z

Past and Present Future

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Skelewars

2012-02-29T17:21:31Z

Skelewars, a Tunnels & Trolls render

A “swords and sorcery” fantasy battle scene created for @trollgodfather and Tunnels & Trolls.

The scene was composed so that elements could be split out as separate “snapshot” renders, if possible – “Shall We Dance” is one example derived from this scene, with additional tweaks for the close-up.

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Fantasy Render: Shall we dance?

2012-02-29T15:32:52Z

Image highlighted from a wider scene render in progress, being created for @TrollGodFather and Tunnels & Trolls.

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Cover Art – Dragon’s Blood/Vvvarr’s Qiip

2012-02-29T15:36:25Z

Many many years ago, as a kid, I used to hang around a lot at our local hobby store. It had tons of fun stuff, but their roleplaying games section was a magnet for me.

One of the games there dragged me in. These were the days when Dungeons and Dragons was really starting to roll out, with the old blue box set and red boxed set. Sitting beside them was this little A5-sized booklet of a game called Tunnels and Trolls, and I was hooked!

Over the years I kept up with Tunnels & Trolls, even writing my own solitaire adventures (this was also the days of the advent of Steve Jackson‘s Fighting Fantasy Game books).

It’s safe to say that much of my gaming perspective was heavily influenced by Tunnels & Trolls – but so too was my art thanks to the wonderful illustrations by people like @LizDanforth inside the books.

In some ways, you might even say my writing style was influenced by the people I first learned of through Tunnels & Trolls, such as @MikeStackpole as well as @LizDanforth and, of course, the @Trollgodfather himself Ken St Andre.

So when Ken asked me on Twitter if I’d like to contribute cover art for an upcoming Tunnels & Trolls solitaire adventure, I jumped at the chance. I mean, this was Ken St Andre asking me to do cover art for Tunnels & Trolls!

And so, this is the final result, the cover art for Dragon’s Blood (Vvvarr’s Qiip).

Not only is this the cover art for Dragon’s Blood, but it’s also been included in the 2012 Tunnels & Trolls calendar, alongside art from some talented artists in their own right.

I’m looking forwards to doing more artwork for a game that has been my favorite for so long.

Fight On! Magazine #13 is out! from The Omnipotent Eye (theomnipotenteye.blogspot.com)

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Red Witch – Talk to the hand

2012-03-25T17:46:58Z

Red Witch - Talk To The Hand

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Dragon Canyon

2012-02-16T16:36:49Z

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Derelict Hell

2012-02-16T16:37:54Z

“No-one knows why the colonists decided to nose-dive their ship into the molten proto-planet beneath them, but speculation abounds.

Sudden insanity on the part of the crew? A mutiny, perhaps? Bad sensor data is always a possibility, but was discounted immediately by the ship’s builders shortly before they filed for bankruptcy and executive protection.

But the truth is, we may never know the cause of the catastrophe, why so many normal, rational people, gave up the will to live and ended it all in the fiery death that ended the last flight of the Star Ship ‘In Search Of Tia`ja’

~Encyclopedia Galactic Trivia, 434th Edition”

Notes:

The derelict ship was created in Vue using a handful of primitives poked into place then grouped into a metablob, an idea Chipp Walters has mentioned a lot recently about his “Speed Painting” thing.

It worked out pretty nicely, although I still need to poke some more to get it to use separate textures on selected primitives.

The other advantage to doing it this way rather than an object seems to be it only took 12 minutes to render the original 6400×4000 master image. The whole thing came in just shy of 7000 polys!

“>

Derelict Hell

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Evolution

2012-02-16T16:38:24Z

My luck at the start of 2011 had not been so great, facing both a rotator cuff injury and illness. At times it felt like I was doing battle with alien hordes of invaders, albeit very very small microscopic ones, but once past the critical nerve-wracking stages and deciding how to celebrate turning several corners (I never said my navigation was any good), my mind drifted as always to the realms of “What if … ?” and transformation. And so I present, with minimal fanfare (I still ache yet), my first render of 2011!

Evolution

There’s got to be a better way of evolving – or at least one that doesn’t involve so much owie!

Hmmm, I wonder if this qualifies for entry to the Dark series …

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Storm Tower

2012-02-16T16:38:34Z

This render originally started out as an exercise in doing stormy water effects with Vue. The castle/fortress and lighthouse were added later to match an environment within a virtual world, and became the “signature” image for that region, which it very closely resembled.

The lights on both buildings were created using the same techniques first tested with “Never pick up hitch-hikers“, tweaking volumetric and glow as needed.

Image rendered in Vue.

Shortlink for this post: http://wp.me/p2cfwg-iw

Moonwolf's Graphics Lair

The Eye Has It

Past and Present Future

Skelewars

Fantasy Render: Shall we dance?

Cover Art – Dragon’s Blood/Vvvarr’s Qiip

Related articles

Red Witch – Talk to the hand

Dragon Canyon

Derelict Hell

Evolution

Storm Tower