my new desktop...

[cfree68f]

My new (in my face dual monitor desktops ).

 

[attachmentid=15340]

 

C

 

 

 

And my favorite...

 

By the way does anyone know a good program to make your desktop into a slideshow for the PC or even animate it?

 

[attachmentid=15341]

[oakchas]

Very cool, Colin...

 

I too would like to animate at least part of my desktop... But Until I do... I may steal yours... Very nice.

[nimblepix]

Now it's mine too!

Thanks Colin.

[cfree68f]

No problem guys.. feel free ;-)

 

It brings up a notion.. we should have a desktop design contest or at least have a Cool AM desktop thread...

 

Hmmmm I'll have to start that.

 

C

[KNBits]

Top notch Colin!

[Guest jandals]

Great renders! I'm envious of your dual-monitor layout

 

 

How do you place the wireframe over a final render like that? It's a very cool look.

[tanassi]

fine Colin!

 

how do you obtain that GI effect?

 

By the way does anyone know a good program to make your desktop into a slideshow for the PC or even animate it?

on Win XP you can use an animated gif, already tested! but it slow down your computer.

 

bye... Vincenzo

[ypoissant]

And my favorite...

Cool!

 

You're using a Ambiant Occlusion technique that I wanted to document in a short tutorial. That is: placing occluders to mask ambiant occlusion and thus control the light and shadow directions. In your case I can see that you placed an occluder to the right which produces a darker shading on the right of your character. I thought I'd take this opportunity to mention this technique.

[thekamps]

How do you get the desktop to accept one image for dual monitors? I have only been able to have the image repeated on the 2nd monitor.

 

clueless

[cfree68f]

How do you place the wireframe over a final render like that? It's a very cool look.

 

Its just a little tricky, but here goes. First... Turn off all of your lights in the choreography. If you have any ambience turned up on groups in your model.. you'll want to turn that down to (or maybe not ;-).

 

Turn off the video safe area on your camera and set the camera background to black.

 

Then Select the model you want to render in the Chor (for some reason I can't get a wireframe to render if I don't have the model selected).

 

With the model selected, render the image out with shaded wireframe turned on and Multipass set to 16. Thats it. You'll get an all black image with a white wireframe. Then I just composite that in photoshop.

 

how do you obtain that GI effect?

 

Its in version 13. Again its a little tricky.. Yves has an excellent tutorial on the subject, but I do a few things different.

 

The first thing I do is create a group of the whole model and set all of its surface properties to the default. That keeps my colored groups from showing up and its an easy way to turn stuff off. If you want your colors back.. just move the all group to the top of the group list and the colors will come back (or delete it, but why do that when you might want it back later).

 

Then in the Chor settings you can turn on all the settings you'll need for global ambience, per Yves tutorial. I don't use the Ambient shader in the render settings, since my group colors are set already and I find the ambient shader harder to control.

 

You're using a Ambiant Occlusion technique that I wanted to document in a short tutorial. That is: placing occluders to mask ambiant occlusion and thus control the light and shadow directions. In your case I can see that you placed an occluder to the right which produces a darker shading on the right of your character. I thought I'd take this opportunity to mention this technique.

 

Bingo ;-) You caught me. Its an excellent way to create lighting variation on the model, but a little hard to control. I find the overall GI without occluders is too light and even. This way you get nice shadows. I discovered it playing around with turning the floor's casting occlusion on and off.

 

This image (which is actually cropped) was rendered out at 3200x2400 and took 2 hours or so to render at 16 passes and the ambient sampling up at 30. I also set the Ambient Occlusion amount in the Chor settings up to 150 which caused and interesting linear striation on the model (I kinda liked it, but I can see where others might not)

 

NeatImage could easily take out the noise, but I liked it.

 

How do you get the desktop to accept one image for dual monitors?

 

Its a setting on the Nvidia drivers. I have one giant desktop that is 2560x1024. Then I just set my desktop to an image that size.

 

C

[trajcedrv]

Good work Colin! ... but you already know that...

 

Drvarceto

[Rodney]

By the way does anyone know a good program to make your desktop into a slideshow for the PC or even animate it?

 

It's pretty basic but Irfanview (freeware at www.irfanview.com) will create a screensaver/slideshow of images in .exe/.scr format. Nothing fancy but if you created several similar images it would almost look like animation... um... maybe... (actually the refresh rate probably wouldn't work for that now that I think about it). Perhaps best just to use WinXP's built in slideshow...

 

Desktop / Screensaver Contest. Great Idea!

That should be the next Hash Inc still image contest.

 

Great imagery Colin.

[itsjustme]

For a video screensaver in Windows, I use AVISaver...it's free and very good. To download, right mouse click on the download link at the bottom of the page and select "save as". When I just clicked on it I got an error.

 

Hope that helps.

[UNGLAUBLICHUSA]

AAAAARRRRGH!!!!!! It wouldn't let me download for "virus protection"! Did I say AAAAARRRRGH yet? AAAAARRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Drakkheim]

for autmated wallpaper changing I highly reccommend Wallpaper Master.

It'll do nifty things like, only change the desktop at startup and then close itself out, change at whatever interval you want, automatically scan a directory to check to see if there are new images to use in the desktop rotation, randomize your wallpaper showlist with no repeats and much more.. I can't live without it.

[itsjustme]

mad.gif AAAAARRRRGH!!!!!! It wouldn't let me download for "virus protection"! Did I say AAAAARRRRGH yet? AAAAARRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

That's the error you get if you don't right mouse click and select "save as". If you can't get it, I could e-mail it to you. Just leave me your e-mail address as a PM.

[cfree68f]

Thanks for the programs guys.. They'll come in real handy!!!

 

and heres some More Ambient Occlusion (and some Compositing) goodness!.. Man you've got to love that hair in GI.

 

[attachmentid=15419]

 

[attachmentid=15420]

 

C

 

and a wire for the spline nuts....

 

[attachmentid=15421]

 

 

If it were'nt for all the cool new features in 13.. I'd be done rigging and texturing this guy by now.

 

C

[John Bigboote]

Checked out Wallpaper Master...it's pretty cool. But I set it to change out my desktop every minute and Hash did not like that. So you have to remember, it's just another icon in your taskbar, using resources, taking a toll on the graphics card. I think I'll set it up to switch every 8 hours or so.

 

Nice work Colin!

[cosmonaut]

Nice .... I gotta ask, how long did it take to render the AO pass with hair? My experiments with it so far haven't worked at all...

[cfree68f]

It took about 2 hours at 1600x1200 with 16 passes and the AO sampling set to 30. ( I'm running a 2Ghz AMD with 2 gigs of ram)

 

I also did a simple color pass with an interesting result. and It only took 5 minutes at 1600x1200 16 passes....

 

Here it is.. (might be an option for really fast hair rendering in a seperate pass or something.. but it looked pretty cool for 5 minutes, take a look...

 

[attachmentid=15428]

 

C

[patrick_j_clarke]

wow...would love to see more of your superhero guy with AO!

 

Can't wait to see some poses with your little red beastie too! Nice leg warmers!

 

- pjc

[Stuart Rogers]

and heres some More Ambient Occlusion (and some Compositing) goodness!.. Man you've got to love that hair in GI.

Have you been tweaking that hair? It looks shaggier, a little less groomed, and certainly a lot better! (But I think you should add more to the crotch area - give the impression he has something significant to hide!)

 

Also, can I suggest you add some scuff marks to the hoofs? At the moment they look too clean-cut. A demon of this maturity would have gained some serious footwear scuffs!

 

(I hope this doesn't sound too picky - you've done a fine job on this guy!)

[cfree68f]

Hey Stuart,

 

don't sweat it.. I welcome all critics... and yes fixing those manicured hooves is on my todo list.. when he's done.. he'll be craggy and nasty ;-)

 

I actually did groom the hair.. which made it messier ;-) and something about the version 12 and up hair is different. It seems that the kink has changed.. and become more spiral or something.. it looks more like curly or kinky hair than frizzy hair. I did some test renders between 11, 12, and 13 and theres definately a difference after 12.

 

I also took the density down by 75 percent and increased the thickness.. which causes some issues in the chest, but nothing thats not fixable. His render time got cut by an hour and 10 minutes doing this and the result seems nicer for the most part. He renders in 50 minutes at 1600x1200 and 16 passes now (normal render.. not AO)

 

C