Falling in love with 3D

legrevedotcom

legrevedotcom

Veteran
So in between video and film projects I found time again and passion to try and understand how this world works.

I feel quite drawn towards vfx, but so far Im just playing around with hard surface modelling and so on. Of coursr my models are all too clean and therefore look rendered. But Im working my way towards realism. Anyways... had a good few nights lately where I tried some stuff.

Pleade bare with me... Im almost complete noob and I bet my topology sucks x) All done in Maya with Vray, MR or Arnold

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Looks good legrevedotcom.
I also love 3D. Been working with it on and off for 15+ years. About 10 years ago I bought some books and took a couple classes to really try to get better, and I did. But then heavy workload and some big problems prevented me from being able to spend any more time learning so I have gone backwards. Most of my work doesn't have the budget for 3D so it ends up being regular editing.
Nonetheless I just renewed my license for the next version of 3ds Max and I also have V-ray.. Today I am working on an vehicle animation for my company which is cool, but at the same time frustrating because I have forgotten so much. Plus they changed the physics engine so I have to learn the new one now. I wish I had time to spend getting good.

A thing I like about 3D is it gives me the ability to create videos that I simply cannot do otherwise. I cannot physically build a $1,000,000 set like Hollywood. Nor can I afford to crash my real production van through a wall or jump a bridge. But in 3D.......
 
Yeah I agree completely. My biggest challenge right now is to find a "spot" to grow in a more concentrated way. Everything seems interesting and fun :) although I think organic modelling isnt my forte hehe.

But now I also "discovered" photogrammetry, which kind of short cuts my wanting to do hyper realism. But man, suddenly my computer seems slow. :/ cant afford to upgrade at the moment so it will have to do.

I grabbed some assets in the forest this weekend. Managed to model a tree. The twig I found ate my ram before it could finish the dense cloud :/

Heres the tree:

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It's been a while since I had time to sit down and dig into rendering and modelling, but the last few nights I had a few bright ideas I wanted to try out. All modelled in Maya from the bottom up based on already made furniture. Textures are a mix of Substances and Poliigon. Simple lighting with skydome in Arnold... I was "raised" to keep light simple and take away light rather than add more.

Harmony.jpg

harmony2_Done.jpg
 
Looks really good!
I've been working on a couple scenes for a while in 3ds Max. I wish I had more time to spend learning this.
I animated my production van doing some stunts using the default scanline renderer that I am pretty happy with but now want to do a scene on a v-ray road background.

Trying to mix the scanline van and the V-ray road scene isn't working.
So it looks like I'll have to modify a v-ray version of a grey version of the van to match my real van. Problem is my real van is a different color, trim and has LOTS of decals that took me a long time the first time. Then I have to rig the new V-ray van for driving. And I am totally new to V-ray so I am having to learn everything from the ground up....ugh...Grey Transit Test Render2.jpg
 
Wow... modelling cars or vehicles are on my to do list. I just feels like a whole different way of thinking. Do you use projection planes when modelling this? Looks good.

So far Im sticking to locked scenes since my comp is taking long enough as it is with this many samples on camera and diffuse :D the daybed took around 40 minutes in Arnold. But also added a sample or two to the speculars.
 
How did you do the ground?

Regarding the above scene, I didn't model it as it's way beyond my ability and time to learn. A future goal is full vehicle modeling using plane projection. I bought the grey van and using the scanline renderer modified it to make it like my real van. That took a long time. Now I am wanting to animate a scene like above using V-ray. So now it looks like I will have to redo the van with V-ray materials and then re-rig it. So that means learning V-ray plus learning the new slate material editor. It's like a chain-reaction, lol. Oh, and then modify some V-ray people to put inside since my other people are V-ray either...

Over the last few months I've learned more about modeling and animation but I have no natural talent plus am very busy so it's a slow process.
I don't personally know anyone to ask for help so that means looking online, books and trial and error.

I love 3D because you can set up shots that are otherwise either too expensive, too dangerous or just impossible to do.
The above shot will utilize my production van stunt driving along with all my quadcopters in a moving aerial shot - nearly impossible to do in real life.
 
Hehe sounds like fun shot :) well yeah, completely agree with you on the ability to compose and do otherwise impossible stuff.

I want to push it as far as challenging still photography which I come from. Often have I thought that some of the shots my former boss did I could replicate in 3d for half the price and if the client then says to move the item 2 inches I say "ok" or change the angle etc.
Soemthing that wouldnt be possible with stills.

For the ground its just a flat plane with a fair amount of sub divisions and the the height map from a large rock texture. It only just works since you can only map in y space. Which means that the rocks taper out a bit instead of going inwards towards the ground. :)
I could have made a few hero rocks but thought it was a bit much. If it works it works ;)
 
So next up... made this over the course of the last two days. Think my family disapproves of my tunnel vision when I get caught up in these projects.

I really wanted to try and make rough ice and ended up making a damn cocktail situation. Oh well, its good fun! :)

I modelled everything from the bottom in Maya. Textured with substances.

Icecubes.jpg
 
Wow! Thanks for the info.
Great job on the newest scene! Looks like you are going to be able to reach your goal of replicating the photography shots in 3D and then being able to adjust them like you want.
Did you render that in one pass or more than one to get the DOF?
That really looks nice. I wish I were as good as you.
Been working in 3ds Max today and it's kicking my tail. Too much to learn.
 
Keep it up!

I also consider myself to be somewhat of a 'image generalist' and do enjoy 3D. I think it's a good way to explore ideas that might be hard to realise any other way. And with today's light simulators/renderers with energy conserving materials, there is nothing stopping us from creating very realistic images.

While there is a learning curve to it, the reward is huge: you need a crane? Done. You need an Airbus 380? Well, no problem—done! You need an undisturbed island filled with palms lit by a spectacular sky and two suns... with a spaceship landing on the beach? Well, now that's a.... just kidding—done! ;)

At some point I was learning about woods and I was doing something in the kitchen. I saw my KitchenAid and knew they come in many colors. I don't think I've seen one in wood. What would that look like? Like this?

KitchenAid_Ash_hero.jpg
 
Yeah those are some of the things I love about 3D. Being able to modify things like your wooden KitchenAid, haha. Placing lights wherever you need without massive expense. Getting the perfectlly controlled fly-in shot with no risk of damage....etc.
I've stepped away from my V-ray Van/drone scene. Too many other things I need to do and it's taking too much time trying to learn the slate material editor and V-ray at once. I'm like dead in the water.

Been working on a 3D animaton for my photo booth service now and almost have that done :)
 
Was one pass. Very little edit in photoshop afterwards. I reckon you just have to keep at it :) at some point lately I kind of had the feeling that I bridged some gap and understood it a lot more.

This one I did yesterday
 
I used to work a bit with 3DSMax writing plugins for binary export for custom real-time animation systems, games, and simulators:
http://www.stereo3d.com/news/news0019.htm

This is a custom physics engine I wrote doing the tire simulation directly on continuous bicubic 3D surfaces. Everything modeled in 3DSMax- track is Bezier patches (very tricky to export from 3DS Max but worth it! (fun))
Engine sound is from a Z06 Corvette I used to drive. Here’s the engine sounding more like the Z06:
Watch the tach and listen to rev limiter: modeled the diff, transmission and engine (up to rotational mass, not pistons and spark plugs haha). You can see the tach reacting to the tires/surface (engine sounds reflect this too, including fuel-cut rev limiter).
Also modeled fluid dynamics for airflow + network model hides lag up to over 500ms. Graphics are primitive by today’s standards (was created circa 2004). Most racing games (including simulators) aren't very realistic- they're aimed at being easy to drive and fun (and way better graphics and car models), which makes sense. Realistic tire simulation was an interesting puzzle to solve for sure! (more so than fluid dynamics)

Still have a copy of 3DSMax 2010- it’s always been a complex tool, though Blender makes it look like child’s play haha.
 
Wanted to dirty my hands with some sci fi... was sketching for fun while the kids were drawing yesterday and decided to try and model one of them. This came out of it.

Its also now my first render with the 2080ti x trio and Arnold GPU beta. It takes a while to start up but the responsiveness of the live viewport once the textures and lights are loaded is great.
This took 4m50s in 2x2k to render final, with 4 AA and 50 Adaptive.

Done.jpg
 
legrevedotcom said:
So next up... made this over the course of the last two days. Think my family disapproves of my tunnel vision when I get caught up in these projects.

I really wanted to try and make rough ice and ended up making a damn cocktail situation. Oh well, its good fun! :)

I modelled everything from the bottom in Maya. Textured with substances.

View attachment 135098
Click to expand...

Look really good, are those PBR materials? More here:

https://www.allegorithmic.com/products/substance-source
http://freeassets.net/300-free-measured-materials-for-unity/
https://www.textures.com/browse/pbr-materials/114558
https://www.sharetextures.com/
https://freepbr.com/

https://www.allegorithmic.com/blog/your-smartphone-material-scanner

Super high end: https://quixel.com/megascans

Back to simpler things (and real-time): this is running on my iPhone-X, using PBR material for ground (see close up of grass) and other camera/lens effects, including physically modeled sky (built in API)- things are so much easier these days- can focus on content more now :)
 
Thats one crazy animation haha... I love real time, and seeing what nvidia and unreal is throwing into the mix promises a great future.

I often use pbr, but I jsut saw Flipped Normals talking about pbr abuse, which I seem to be guilty off x) so will have to put more thought into that use. Substance Painter is great! So easy to round trip between maya and it with Arnold. Also just discovered Marvelous Designer... looking forward to finally be able to mske something that actually resembles a sofa x)
 
Flipped Normals is going to render funny haha.
How does one abuse PBR materials in a photorealistic scene?
It’s not like you’re flashing a lens flare every two seconds (who’s that director JJ something lol).

So many cool tools now- have you played with Zbrush and Mudbox?
 
legrevedotcom and jcs, cool stuff! Thanks for sharing.
Been working hard for 2 days and finally bridged a gap in understanding and am making some progress. Was much harder than it should have been due to some weird inconsistent glitches in 3ds max which really blew my mind since I didn't know if it was me or the software.
I'm really liking the results with v-ray, but still only an infant in using it.

Zbrush and mudbox look really cool but I've never used them.
I wanted to buy Cinema4d and Maya but too much $$ and so far cannot justify the cost nor have the time to learn
 
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