Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Eighty Hours




During the night, I work as a College instructor, teaching 3D Animation (Blender) in Lorma Colleges, Philippines, from which I graduated from some few years ago.  And I'm very honored to have been given this chance to share my knowledge and experience with the new generation of artists.

This is what my students have achieved within an 80-hour timeframe of learning Blender, which I'm very proud of.  More to come soon!

Looking forward to sharing with you more things that my students have accomplished.

Music by: Josh Woodward (http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/7872/josh-woodward)

-Reyn

Monday, July 29, 2013

Down

This is my entry to CGMeetup's "Make Your Minion Contest".



(click to enlarge)


This is actually a parody of Despicable Me and Up, both of which I am truly inspired and at deep awe with, both from a story-telling standpoint and the visual impact they left me.

I'm so happy to have finished it within a weekend time frame, after all of the day's work has been accomplished.  Whew!

I hope you like it! :)

Thanks for viewing.

I would love to hear your thoughts and comments.

Made with: Blender and GIMP
Rendered with: Cycles

Minion character copyright by: Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures
Up character copyright by: Pixar Animation Studios



-Reyn

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Random Technical Rant and Query

Hey, everyone!

I just remembered something which I've remembered before but forgot because I remembered something else.  But now I remember it quite well and so I'm writing this.  In the near future, I'll probably remember that I wrote something about remembering.

Oookay! So, quick question: In Blender, would it be plausible and possible to show users 'how much more time' is remaining in the renders, instead of the 'elapsed time'? I know it is possible, but the difficulty of implementing such a feature is beyond my knowledge.  This way, after changing some settings and the like and hitting the render button/shortcut, we'll immediately then be informed (even after BVH caching and what not) how long the scene will take to finish rendering.  Then once we see that it is beyond our timeframe/schedule/deadline, we cancel the render, do some tweaking, settings adjustment, and render optimization, then do a render again.

What do you think?

-Reyn

Proper HDR Lighting (Remix)

Note: check some awesome updates by Greg Zaal and Ben Simonds at the end of the post.

HDRI- and image-based lighting is simply awesome and highly addicting! This is one of the nicest things that has ever dawned the world of computer graphics.  And on that note, I want to share with you something.

I've recently been inspired by Greg Zaal's recent posts (in fact, all of them!) on his blog Adaptive Samples (http://adaptivesamples.wordpress.com).

To be specific, I've really been thrilled by his post titled 'Commonly Ignored Features #2: Proper HDR Lighting'.  If you haven't seen that yet, I highly suggest you visit it first before reading any further.

Though it does seem like a plausible solution to the issue, there is something missing, or rather something that was lost.

In the post/article, Greg showed us how to accurately use an HDR image (which is used as an Environment texture), to cast shadows.  His technique and workaround is incredible, HOWEVER, I did notice that by using that node setup, the environment lighting/reflection had already been outpowered by the shadows (through a Multiply Math Node), thus reducing the brightness of the reflections/ambient lighting and even darkening/burning the tones, generally.

To elaborate further, here are the things that we need to be aware of:

- the standard HDR environment texture mapping is OK, but it's too 'diffused' and is lacking the defined shadows that we would expect from a sunny HDR image

- Greg Zaal's method works but reduces the ambient feel that we would get from a standard HDR environment texture and it burns the image

- please be kind with me as I don't technically know too much of those Math nodes, I just felt that it looked right and couldn't really explain how and why ;)

The images below demonstrate the issues:

(standard HDR lighting, Env strength: 3, click image to enlarge)


(Greg Zaal's HDR lighting method, click image to enlarge)


To address this issue (except for the last item about my ignorance), and using Greg's Node setup as a starting point and reference, I added a small node group/connection that controls the 'burning effect' that we would get otherwise. 

This is possible by plugging in the Environment Texture to either of the Value input sockets of the Cosine Math Node (Add Math Node works too, with a slight washed out effect), using this to control the Background Node's strength value, while keeping the Environment Texture connected to the Color input socket of the Background Node.  I almost got lost explaining things there, so here's an image to better illustrate what I mean:

(HDRI with better shadows Node Setup, click to enlarge)


(my remixed version of the HDR lighting with defined shadows, click to enlarge)


Kudos to you, Greg, for that wonderful idea.  I'm looking forward to seeing more of these out-of-the-box thoughts of yours; really inspiring! ^_^

To the community and readers out there, if you have any suggestions (highly recommended!) and explanations, please feel free to drop by a comment below.

Here's a download link to the .blend file to those of you interested in playing around with it (without the HDRI, for quicker uploads on my side):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ibcv28by976e8ac/hdr_lighting_with_defined_shads.blend

Thank you so much for your time and happy Blending! :)

Autumn Field HDRI downloaded from: http://openfootage.net
Greg Zaal's article: http://adaptivesamples.wordpress.com/2013/07/24/cif-2-hdr-lighting/

P.S.
No monkeys were harmed/burned in this demonstration.

UPDATE:

In a flash, Greg Zaal improved the setup making my jaw drop. ;)

Check his updates at:

http://adaptivesamples.wordpress.com/2013/07/24/cif-2-hdr-lighting/

UPDATE (2013-Nov-8):

And here's a really impressive adaptation and improvement by Ben Simonds:

http://bensimonds.com/2013/11/07/controlling-hdri-lighting-with-nodes/

-Reyn

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Luke's Escape is LIVE!

We are finally live!

After a long time, we are finally happy to announce that we have reached the first milestone in our project and journey (and soon will be yours too). It is definitely an honor to be working with a stellar team of international artists and it's almost magical that we have made it this far.

Visit us at the following links (you can watch some cool videos of us too):

http://www.lukesescape.com/

http://igg.me/at/lukesescape/x/4019995

Thank you so much to the Blender community and the developers for without them we wouldn't have been inspired at all. This is for you!

We're really looking forward to your support and guidance.

Thank you so much!

-Reyn

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

My Desk


UPDATE:

Huge thanks to Bart of BlenderNation for the inspiration which has lead me to improve my desk (though not that noticeable).  Lighting in real life can have its challenges. ;)


(click to enlarge)
I've been inspired by a post by Bart of BlenderNation recently that I decided to take a photo of my desk (still work in progress).

So to those of you wondering and curious what the behind-the-scene looks like (apart from the other room which has my rendering machine), here it is:

(click to enlarge)

Sorry for the bad quality, I had to turn the sampling down a tad bit. ;)

Thanks for your time!

-Reyn


Saturday, July 6, 2013

Passing By




My first animated CG comp ever.

Hopefully a prequel to something more exciting in the near future. ;)

Also looking forward to uploading the breakdown soon.

Thanks for watching!

-Reyn

Emotion

(click to enlarge)
Thanks to my love, Carla, for the aesthetic feedback and help. :)

Made with: Blender and GIMP
Rendered with: Cycles