Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Everybody has Secrets

"What one hides is worth neither more nor less than what one finds. And what one hides from oneself is worth neither more nor less than what one allows others to find." -Breton, Andre



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Created with: Blender and Cycles

Monday, November 28, 2011

Happiness-Video

Here's the camera-animated version of 'Happiness'.  You can view the still image here http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2011/11/happiness-cycles-render.html

Music is 'Melancholic Interpretation in G#' by Connum (http://www.freesound.org/people/Connum/sounds/12691/).









Have fun! :)

-Reyn

Blend In

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This has been lurking in my drives for a long time now, I think it deserves an emergence. ;)

And here are some close-up shots:

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And wireframe shots:

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(click image to enlarge)


Made with: Blender 2.60
Shading and rendering: Blender Cycles
Post processing: Blender 2.60 and GIMP

Huge thanks to Blender's Game Engine and Bullet Physics.  I would've placed the jelly beans by hand. ;)

Thanks for viewing! :)

-Reyn

Ubuntu Pirates Wallpaper

I've recently been contacted by Ubuntu Pirates (http://www.ubuntupirates.com) to create a wallpaper for them and I just couldn't resist the urge.  I sat and thought, got ahold of Blender, did some tinkering with Cycles, and here's the end result (I hope you like it):

(click image to enlarge)

-Reyn

Renderosity Artist of the Month Nominee

Weeeeee!

Thank you so much to Renderosity for this wonderful opportunity yet again.  They have chosen me to be one of the nominees for December 2011 Artist of the Month, among with other amazing artists.  I do, however, represent Blender as the category there.  Wish me luck, fellas! :D


http://www.renderosity.com/vote-for-december-2011-aom--cms-15919

-Reyn

Friday, November 25, 2011

Choice

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 "You are who and what you choose to be."

Thanks to my friend and fellow blenderhead Floren Bautista for the render challenge and inspiration.

Modeling, texturing, compositing: Blender
Shading and lighting: Cycles
Post processing: GIMP
Textures: http://cgtextures.com

Scene screenshot:

(click image to enlarge)
Thanks for viewing! ^_^

-Reyn

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Childhood

Title: Childhood

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"It doesn't matter how slow you go, as long as you don't stop." -Confucius

Inspired by the thoughts and ambitions of children.

Modeling, texturing, and node compositing: Blender
Shading, lighting, and rendering: Cycles
Post processing: GIMP

Blender scene screenshot:

(click image to enlarge)

Thanks!

-Reyn

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Addiction

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Title: Addiction

"Man's greatest addiction are his thoughts."

Modeling, texturing, compositing: Blender
Shading and lighting: Cycles
Image Editing: GIMP
Textures: http://cgtextures.com

Here's a wireframe shot:

(click image to enlarge)

Friday, November 18, 2011

Journey







"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for." -Epicurus

Another test with Blender.  This time using the 'Cloud Generator' Addon by Nick Keeline (nrk).

Rendered with Blender Internal.

Music by Jonathan Geer.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Dreams

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"Whether you think you can or think you can't - you are right." ~Henry Ford


Here's my latest test with Cycles.  This time to play around with compositing.  I just love how Cycles handle GI and light bounce so well.  The model was a product of a modeling sprint done by me and my friend Floren Bautista, and the closest subject was the wooden persona on top of my desk. :)

Only the wooden persona is CG, the background photo is from Romain Guy and is used here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) License.  You can find the original photo here http://www.flickr.com/photos/romainguy/6068294974/

Problems, challenges, and workarounds:

- Cycles viewport render doesn't match actual Cycles render (some objects appear pure black);
- so I had to manually save a screenshot of the viewport render, then use the actual render's alpha values to mask the viewport render output
- a little selection feathering and 1 pixel increase in GIMP, then delete unnecessary screenshot bg (to create a transparent bg)

Modeling, texturing, compositing, post-processing: Blender
Rendering: Cycles

And here's my node setup:

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 (click image to enlarge)

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Blender Mesh Dynamic LoD Test








This test has been sitting in my hard drive for quite a long time now, I feel it must be shared.  I had a discussion with my friend Brett Hartshorn regarding dynamic mesh LoDs (level of detail) and dynamic texture LoDs.  And I just thought, out of curiosity to build upon his idea and try to generate a similar scenario inside Blender's interface itself, harnessing Blender's flexible drivers system.

You can find more about LoD (level of detail) here in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_detail

Another useful link (credits to Jude Jackson) from Pixar http://graphics.pixar.com/library/StochasticSimplification/

To those who are interested to tinker around with the setup, you can download the .blend file here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9701519/blender_mesh_lod.zip

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Finite Human Knowledge


I recently had a discussion with my brother regarding knowledge, the universe, science, etc. and it stirred my dormant brain once again.

The thought that the human brain is capable to contain ideas like quantum physics, multiverses, and just knowledge in general probably all boils down to how we can quantify and observe things as human beings, given tools we can only contain with our basic senses.

We can assert to the fact that deities don't (or do) exist.  But this is only true due to the fact that we can't fathom or quantify the ideas that we have.  The knowledge bias that we gain is true because we have a certain tendency (or influences) to believe so.  Great figures that lived during the great periods and those that are still breathing today may claim that the universe is expanding or that a god is watching over us - that will only be true once we conceive to the idea and we believe that it does.  The facts that we are currently presented now are, for me, illusory perpetuals of what our mind can munch on.  The human brain is a very powerful, complex, and beguiling piece of matter.  It controls you, your reaction to facts, your reaction to the so-called space around you, it controls everything a human can process on.  Everything we say or hear from other people is an opinion and that goes with the fact that everything we see is a perception.

What if all these things are not, cosmologically speaking, real at all? And by real, we then go back to ascribing via the facts we have gathered and experienced.  What if the text (that's what we humans call it) you see on your screen is not there at all? What if the blood that spurts out or flows to your vessels is not reddish in color but is transparent? What if our vision, hearing, and other related senses is a jumble of other things? But these are all possibilities imposed by my gentle brain. And these 'what ifs' are yet again a superimposition by the collective conjugation of my brain's neural activity.  Currently, we are constrained by what we can sense and observe.  We claim that the universe is expanding (or maybe shrinking), because that was what our scientific observations has told us and the traces from the past has given us.  But we don't know what we really know.  What if there's a more profound way of observing the observable than we humans do?  But knowledge itself is an empirical ascription.

We know that dinosaurs once existed, we know that we humans breathe in oxygen to our system, we know that water is liquid, we know that by moving, we can travel, we know that light travels faster than sound, we know that light can bend, we know that there are billion galaxies out there with a quantifiable number of stars and systems.  Why? Because it is what our mind can contain and it is what has been factually observed throughout the centuries.  There is entropy, which can explain (as human understandable as possible) why we're born as babies and die old and the concept of a past, present, and future.  However, it is really impressive how the human brain and understanding has evolved through the millenia and it never ceases to amaze me.

What I simply wanted to share is that there is always a possibility to everything, or probably the impossibility that comes along with it.  I may not live old enough to witness the possibilities emerge but one thing is for sure, the human mind will always be trapped by the thoughts it concurs.


"Knowing is believing."

-Reyn

Big Buck Bunny Sighting

Wow! I was surprised last November 7 to see Big Buck Bunny for the first time used as product video here in the Philippines.

Here are two photos I snuck (just couldn't resist it):


Friday, November 11, 2011

Follow Your Heart

 (click image to enlarge)

Made with: Blender and GIMP
Rendered with: Blender Cycles

Inspired by the late Steve Jobs' philosophies.

Phrases extracted from "What Will Matter" by Michael Josephson
and from Steve Jobs adage.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's
life.  Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the
results of other people's thinking.  Don't let the noise of
other people's opinions drown out your own inner voice.  And
most important, have the courage to follow your heart and
intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to
become.  Everything else is secondary."

Friday, November 4, 2011

Happiness (Cycles Render)

(click image to enlarge)


UPDATE:
I have read a few comments on the internet mentioning that this image is disturbing and inappropriate.  I could not blame them for visually judging it as such.  Some have even interpreted the image as it relates to drugs and such.


I am writing this update to clear the concept once and for all.  I, as the creator and my own beholder, should not, in the first place, be elaborating this creation in any of its forms.  But since I published it publicly, I believe I am held responsible in at least trying to convey the message blatantly, though I believe this would somehow stain the very reason that art is interpreted as is.  And yet, everything is an opinion, and I admire what other viewers have in their minds.


I created this image to portray 'Happiness' as how I see it around me.  I did not interpret it as the cheesy cute cuddly smiling teary eye type of happiness, that would be too obvious and senseless.  This emotion that I am depicting is the happiness that surfaces amidst pain, fear, and the like (shown through the syringe, since it's an object that some people fear from childhood to adulthood), amidst indiference, misery, and dogma (indicated by the monotonous uniform sad faces around our subject).


The image is trying to imply that no matter how difficult life gets, no matter how everyone else judges you for who they 'think' you are, no matter how painful your experiences have caused you, and no matter how bitter your entire life has been, you still smile and stay happy because that's the only sane thing left to do; to live a positive life and treat everything you're going through as just challenges and trials.


I am hoping I made everything clear now. ;)









"Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident.  It's not a matter of circumstance, but of choice."

Yay! This is my first Blender Cycles render ever. It is so much fun to play around with, probably summarized by "joy > frustration".

I hope you like my latest artwork and as always, I'd love to hear your opinion on the image.  Thanks in advance!

Created with: Blender 2.60
Rendered with: Cycles
Post-processing: Blender 2.60 and GIMP

Sunshine Featured at Aniboom's Channel


Yay yay yay! Huge thanks to Aniboom (http://www.youtube.com/user/aniBOOM) for featuring 'Sunshine' in their Youtube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bspc3l0tc4&feature=channel_video_title).  I really have to work harder on story development next time I create my short. ;)

Regards, everyone! Thanks again for the inspiration!

UPDATE:
I believe someone just caught what I really wanted to imply with this short.  One user commented on this video over at Aniboom's channel and by far, is the closest to what I have originally envisioned.  To quote:

"this is what i think of the meaning:

you where given a heart (love).. but you will just kick it away like nothing.. (avoid,throw it ect).. and.. when ur about to do it.. something struck u.. more like a realization.. that.. what ever happens.. even if u hated it.. that love will always be there.. to calm u down, or even to guide u.. :)

in an easy way... its hard to live without love.... like... its hard to live without a companion.. :))
ganda100filipina"  

-Reyn

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Blender Viewport Shading Question

UPDATE:


Build used: http://graphicall.org/45


I recently noticed that this option only appears whenever I have Cycles Add-on enabled (using a Cycles build).  What I think it does is it shows you a material preview on your viewport instead of just seeing the default 'Viewport Color' as shown under the 'Settings' subcontext under 'Material'.  As far as what I can see, the 'Material Viewport Shading' reflects what you have as 'Surface Color'.  However, I am not 100% sure if this is really the case.  If anybody could confirm, I'd appreciate it. :)


(click image to enlarge)

Hi, everyone!

I noticed recently this new (or was I too outdated to even notice?) 'Material' viewport shading (see screenshot below).  Clearly, what is this used for? I regularly use Textured, Shaded, and Wired, and was wondering if 'Material' has a better option elsewhere.


I'd love to hear your opinion. ;)

-Reyn