Gen's CG Blog

MR Assmeblies and Passes

2011-10-20T22:27:00.002-04:00

I didn't make it in time for the challenge (bummer ><) but I'm continuing work on this Dream Office project. As I add more stuff, I started running into memory problems, which is to be expected, no biggie. I've used mip_binaryproxies before and didn't have any issues, so I figured I'd give assemblies a shot, it doesn't hurt to learn, right? Wow! what a pain in the ass they've been so far!

Server Rack

2011-09-11T15:17:00.001-04:00

More updating! Even though this is my "Dream" office, I would feel guilty having more than a few of these >.> and by few I mean like 10 or 20, ha! Of course I'm kidding.

Office Chair

2011-09-07T12:08:00.000-04:00

I haven't updated the project shots in a while, so I'll start with this. This chair was actually kinda fun to model as I could see myself twirling around in it and dashing back and forth across the floor.

It's actually a cross between these two chairs (with some custom tweaks).

Sofa tryouts

2011-08-09T05:07:00.001-04:00

I don't know if its because I've been looking at this too long or what, but I'm really considering moving away from this design before I go any further than the cushions.

Dream Office: various furniture

2011-08-08T23:58:00.003-04:00

Progress shots

Dream Office: Basic Interior

2011-08-08T20:54:00.001-04:00

Updating the progress on the Dream Office challenge, I really should've posted a while ago.

I've gotten the room shaped up, ran some quick tests, so far so good. Put down some placeholder furniture. The beach is basically a slope(sand) that goes down into a box (ocean). Why a box for the ocean instead of a plane? Because I'm using the mia_material's refraction falloff color to transition from nice crystal clear water to deep blue! ^^ The backdrop needs a bit of tweaking but that's small potatos right now.

The lighting setup is pretty simple, its the physical sky and a massive portal light. There are about 6-7 mia_materials, regrettably, I didn't even bother to turn on AO ><, as it would have compensated somewhat for the low FG settings, you can see that especially in the corners and up in the rafters.

PMM version 1.6.2

2011-08-03T02:31:00.000-04:00

UPDATE on PMM! --------->>>> here

Dream Office Challenge Floor Plan

2011-07-31T16:20:00.003-04:00

I decided to give Google Sketchup a shot (I'm late I know, I know, gosh!). I really like this program it's so quick, simple and cute, however I can't linger on it too long as I have a TON of modeling and texturing to do! Here's mah floor plan, high ceiling, towering windows etc. I'm going for something "semi-practical", I caught myself thinking wacky stuff like reclining, potato chip and soda dispensing computer chairs and I had to pump my brakes on that, as I'd have to make the whole room equally wacky and that's not what I want.

Dream Office Challenge

2011-07-31T15:51:00.004-04:00

New SimplyMaya/SimplyLightwave two month challenge is up and on the way. Official rules found here. I'm entering this one for sure, I mean really, creating one's dream office without any real limits, I just must participate I just have to!

blog title image credit http://www.officerecyclers.com/catalog/item/2216910/6568092.htm

Favorite Toy Challenge Winners

2011-07-31T15:43:00.001-04:00

It took me a little bit to post this, stuff got in the way, what's new. The winners of the SimplyMaya/SimplyLightwave challenge have been announced! I can only imagine how tough it must have been for the judges as the turn out was pretty sweet, as seen in the final entry thread. Other than “Damn good job guys”, there isn't much more that I can say.

blog title image credit http://www.trophyshopak.com/

Simply Maya and Simply Lightwave Challange

2011-05-03T12:28:00.002-04:00

It's going down! Maya and Lightwave users, The new Simply3D challenge has been announced and this time it's a two month challenge involving the two sibling sites with beefed up prizes! The theme is "Favorite Toys".

Prizes are:

1st prize - $500 USD.

2nd prize - Lifetime Membership for the respective site.

3rd Prize - The Art of Toy Story 3.

When I get back home I'm really thinking about taking a crack at this, sounds fun. Well that's all for now, I'm looking forward to seeing everybody bring it!

Simply Maya
Simply Lightwave

Simply Maya April Challenge Winners

2011-05-03T12:06:00.002-04:00

Simply Maya has been hosting monthly challenges and April's challenge has just come to a close. The challenge theme was “Low Poly game character (New design)“. The final entries were posted and the judges have made their decision. We had a good turn out and a lot of people finished their projects, which is surprising as life tends to just get in the way of such things. There were a few pieces I would have really liked to see finished as they showed promise (you know who you are :p) but sometimes it can't be help, priorities are priorities.

First prize went to RockyMills_01 for his revamp of Toe Jam and Earl.

Second place went to Tweetytunes for his remake of Aya Brea from Parasite Eve.

Third place went to Stwert for his concoction of Worms fused with Valve's Half Life.

Everybody put forward good effort, but there could be only...three? Good job guys!

PMM updated

2011-04-15T21:54:00.000-04:00

Made some changes to PMM as it was turning some SSS shaders black, namely the skin shader. Also a few minor tweaks concerning texture display.

Download Section

PMM release

2011-03-20T05:02:00.008-04:00

Opened a download section and uploaded my first script so yay! PMM Linear Lighting Buddy is now posted. It's a series of scripts I've been creating to deal with gamma workflow in Maya and can be downloaded here. ^^

Download Section

Newbie Trials

2011-02-01T17:54:00.001-05:00

I love newbies! They're so awesome and full of that raw passion and eagerness. And even though they have limited technical knowledge, they try making these half hour long movies anyway, some even finish and share, and that gets a thumbs up from me, partly because I envy that kind of motivation. Now, I can appreciate the work of seasoned folks but the newbie stuff just has a special place in my heart and I don't see that ever changing.

Getting to a point where you can pretty much do your own thing, your own way is quite challenging, especially when you're learning on your own.

Updated Layering Shaders

2010-11-05T22:25:00.002-04:00

Added a little something to an old post about handling caustics when dealing with the mib_color_mix. Layering Shaders for Mental Ray

Yay Arroway !

2010-10-06T13:30:00.009-04:00

Once in a blue moon I tend to make impulse purchases, that's my story and I'm sticking to it! >.> I got the Arroway Textures - All in One Bundle and didn't expect it to get here so soon but it did and ...wow, these textures are freaking sweet! I need to curb my enthusiasm as I'm prancing down fan girl alley right about now but really these textures are pretty awesome. Consider this post a squirt of excitement.

Read more »

Random Render_Cherries

2010-09-12T22:49:00.017-04:00

Trying to get back into the swing of things, and I was going through some old stuff and I stumbled on a fruit scene. Its a simple enough scene for some bug testing for some shader, camera and light setup scripts. On second sight, their reflectivity may have not been blurred enough.

PMM version 1.5

2010-07-13T03:26:00.001-04:00

Making improvements, adding functionality and stuff.
I'm really getting sucked into this.

Quick update:

-The mule shaders auto update when the MR shaders are tweaked, so it doesn't matter if you change the textures or colors, the mule will stay current (might post a vid on that).
-The "screen composite" attribute will be unchecked automatically on all SSS shaders.
-When camera, area lights, and portal lights are created, a new panel for positioning and framing is created instead of taking over the current persp panel.
-The camera searches for any existing photographic exposure shader and attaches it, if not, it creates one and it checks for sky shaders too.
-The rename textures script names file texture nodes according to their system names and sets some filter attributes.
-The match FG to Raytrace basically grabs current raytrace settings and uses those values for FG tracing to avoid things like black glass for example.

*Will possibly add a caustic light feature.

The De-gamma shaders script supports:

mia_material
mia_material_x
mia_material_x_passes

mi_metallic_paint
mi_metallic_paint_x
mi_metallic_paint_x_passes
mi_car_paint_phen1
mi_car_paint_phen_x
mi_car_paint_phen_x_passes

misss_fast_simple_maya
misss_fast_skin_maya
misss_fast_shader
misss_fast_shader_x
misss_fast_shader_x_passes

The SSS shaders were the most pain in the ass ones to script because they differ a bit.

Still polishing and testing but so far so good.

PMM User Interface

2010-04-20T13:35:00.000-04:00

Making a bit of progress on the UI for PMM yay. It's weird but I found it waaay easier to make the other scripts. Scripting a UI just feels really clumsy or maybe it's because I haven't gotten quite used to it yet. /shrug

The first UI I ever created and I'm just so proud ^_^.

Hooked on MEL

2010-04-11T14:11:00.015-04:00

Ah yes some of the chaos from my recent move is mellowing out. Anyways, I've been hearing for years that being able to script in Maya is the shiznite and I totally believe it, I just didn't think I was the script minded type. But recently, I finally got a real “what the hell, why not” moment and decided to jump into MEL, I wanted to make something practical [but simple of course].My goal was to make a script that would create a 35mm render camera with a dark gray gate mask, film pivot, film origin and also slap an mia_exposure_photographic lens with a Cm2 factor of 100000 on it. Doing this manually is easy but just a bit “click intensive” for what it is, so it just becomes tedious. That in itself was surprisingly easy to script [the node and command ref in the help docs kick ass] but that snowballed into “Why not make a camera with aim instead?” and then “hmmm I wonder if I can slap a bokeh lens shader on that too” then that quickly turned into “Hey, I bet can setup a distance measurement and feed that into the bokeh lens shader” [Also I'm really leaning towards having the script detect the physical sky [if there is one] and plug that into the environment slot of the camera.]That worked but the generic names would become a problem so I decided to make a simple interface with a name input field and a “Create” button and that turned me onto the magical world of global procedures and variables.

Ok so the interface has a looooong way to go but for now its good enough for testing.

I made the distance locator independent of the aim, as it allows getting different values without screwing with the aiming of the camera.

Blog Title Change

2010-02-10T13:08:00.000-05:00

Wow, ok so I was flipping through the keywords that lead folks to this site and lately I noticed a particular combination kept popping up from many different areas across the world. I poked around some more only to have my suspicions cemented, yep it was porn. So now, my blog title will undergo a little overhaul. I was pondering changing it anyway, as clearly this site isn't only about Maya. Yes, I know CG artists watch porn too and some could stumble in that way but I think it's best that I change it. So yeah...it's out there.

Nagi_doodle

2010-01-28T02:49:00.003-05:00

Think I'm actually going to finish this one.

SomeLady

2010-01-28T02:48:00.001-05:00

SkinStudies

2010-01-28T02:46:00.001-05:00

Playing around with undertones and stuff.

randomRender_glowStripGlass

2010-01-17T17:38:00.004-05:00

This is a combination of two mia_materials via the color mix node. [Blogspot's compression was pretty brutal on this :s]

Random Render Idea

2010-01-17T16:05:00.001-05:00

I'm thinking about making "random render" posts and giving them their own category. The little twiddling arounds you do when you're bored or uninspired, fun enough to save the results but too small to be called a "project".

Blog Tweaks

2010-01-15T21:04:00.003-05:00

Making a few changes to the blog. I'm merging the sketch blog and my Maya blog, because quite frankly, I was neglecting my sketching and that's no good. Who knows, I might just switch up the blog design since its all 2010 and stuff, keyword "might". I need to fight depression and get the ol' juices flowing [we'll see how that works out lol].

Linear workflow and How I Stumbled Ass Backwards Into It

2009-12-20T05:01:00.014-05:00

It all started with hitting the "create physical sun and sky" button and the disappointment that followed. You see, my colors were all washed out in the render and I did not understand why.

dramatization :)

Then I found a tutorial that said I first needed to run my textures through a gamma correct node with a gamma value of .454, it worked but I was still confused. The number just seemed so arbitrary and I couldn't let it go.

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Its a Material World

2009-11-11T15:31:00.034-05:00

Okay, so now that we're passed the cheesy title, the point of this post is the Sampler Info Node and how I've been using it to make various materials like satin, velvet, etc. And to not give myself a headache, I'm going to approach this in a step by step manner, flapping my lips all the way, yay.

First up on the chopping block is satin.

Googled examples

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Do Your Poly Models have CG-itis?

2009-10-19T19:06:00.000-04:00

Well what is CG-itis? It is a condition where 3D models have a somewhat blocky unnatural look due to razor sharp edges at every turn. Those most at risk are hard surface models such as chairs, desks and John Deere tractors. Is there a cure or a vaccine? Why yes there are, several in fact.

*look to camera 2 and smile*

- Build the model for smoothing: inserting edge loops or splitting where you want to keep definition, the closer the edges, the harder the definition.

- Use the "Bevel" Poly operation, it comes in handy if you're not planning on smoothing the entire model but just want rid yourself of some sharp corners.

- Use the "mia_roundcorners". Its a Mental Ray texture that's plugged into the bump slot of an mia_material. It's "radius" attribute acts like the "offset" attribute of a polygonal bevel operation. Test render away.

And something a tad more complex than a cube on a plane -_-. I used the "insert edge loop" cure in this one.

Fell off the wagon :(

2009-10-18T23:21:00.001-04:00

Note to self: I need to get back into 2D, my poor little Intuos is catching dust lol.

Don't be a Douche :)

2009-10-05T06:32:00.003-04:00

Rant alert!!

It is 3D-ish related but not necessarily to any of the disciplines. I'm no expert, I don't pretend to be, I like helping other users, it warms my squishy little heart to do so whenever I can. But it really irks me sometimes when people indulge in a bit too much douche-baggery online.

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Layered Shader [Update]

2009-08-09T13:08:00.002-04:00

This post is in addition to my Layering Shaders with Mental Ray post and the focus of that was the mib_color_mix node. A thread on SimplyMaya reminded me that I needed to update this thing.

I found that plugging bare textures into mib_color_mix slots results in weirdo alpha channels in the rendered image, like a strange masking effect on the shader.

This confused me for a while, it seems that Mental Ray uses the top most layer on the mib_color_mix to generate the alpha channel, which in this case is a simple fractal texture. It ignored the fact that there are solid SSS and mia_material shaders beneath it.

I needed to have my fractal spit out a solid alpha, and this is where the "alpha offset" attribute comes into play.

Alpha offset allows me to add black or white value to my texture's alpha in a uniform manner. I set the value to 1. The rendered image will look the same but my little torus will be solid in my alpha mask now because my fractal's alpha is all white.

And of course a value of -1 will have my fractal not even show up in the alpha channel of my render, since since its now black.

Commentor JJJenkins was having problems with alpha offset affecting his color channel and these are the results of my tests. Forgive my texture, it's the result of 10 seconds in Photoshop lol.

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IES Profiles

2009-07-31T00:51:00.003-04:00

IES profiles are files that store information on light shape and intensity so you can mimic these lights accurately in a digital design package plus you get 10 cool points every time you use one.

Random googled images to demonstrate.

You can grab photometric data easily from any lighting manufacturer like General Electric Lighting or Lithonia Lighting just to name a couple. And there is even a free IES viewer, called well....IES Viewer. It was created by Andrey Legotin and it allows you to view all the information associated with the light profiles and there's even a really handy render feature so you can see exactly how the light looks without having to setup a scene in your 3D package just for that yay.

Scene setup in Maya: Really simple geometry, walls, ceiling, floor and a few light fixtures. And a camera with a photographic exposure lens shader with a Cm 2 factor of 10000 (have to crank up the value or it'll be too dark) Without the exposure lens shader, you'll get horrifically blown out highlights and hotspots so fast it'll make your head spin. Now on to the lights, I created some point lights and positioned them near my fixtures. Why point lights? They have a special little slot for light profiles in the Mental Ray tab, and clicking that all too familiar checker box will automatically create a light profile node, from there you can browse for the IES file of your choice.

Hit render....nothing.... Apparently you have to set a decay rate on the light, I chose quadratic and to keep pace with the light now dying off with distance, the intensity must be increased (don't be shy with the numbers :) and BAM! juicy photometric lights in all their glory hell yeah!

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The Mia_Material_X

2009-07-19T05:07:00.004-04:00

Well, I made my own little shader swatch scene thingy, I had to (I was using spheres prior to this, don't ask, just chalk it up to laziness and back away slowly). Since I'm rendering out swatches, thought I'd write about it, might help a new user, who knows :o).

The mia_mat_x is one of my favorites, if not my favorite shader, yeah that's right I said it, it's out there now so deal with it. It's a very versatile shader, from glass, to plastic, rock, wood, metal , even the crud stuck in that creepy guy's teeth, it can pretty much do it all. Migrating over from shaders like the Maya Blinn where there are independent channels for qualities like reflectivity and specularity, the mia_mat took a little getting used to since it's a physical shader, good thing the attributes are self explanatory . I tried the whole "use a preset and reverse engineer 'em" method to know what makes that particular "look" tick. Well, that didn't work out too well as I wasn't familiar enough with the shader's default attributes to even know most of what was changed so I decided to poke around 'til I knew what attributes did what.

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Mia_mat Caustics

2009-07-19T04:52:00.005-04:00

As far as generating caustic patterns, there are a few things that I need to setup, two of the most obvious ones are, telling the mia_mat to use caustics instead of transparent shadows and turn on caustics in the MR render settings. On the caustic settings, I usually take the ol' cheapo route of lowering caustic accuracy to say about 20 or 30 and use the cone filter, this enables me to get sharper patterns without having to juice up the photon count emitted from the light too much.

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Stylin'

2009-06-04T19:40:00.001-04:00

Was bored as hell, didn't know where I was going with this. Favorite parts are the hair and glitter.

Changes Changes.

2009-06-04T19:21:00.001-04:00

I'm making a sketches section instead of having the 2D and 3D stuff all lumped together-------------->>Sketches

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Sketch_02

2009-06-04T19:17:00.001-04:00

This one doesn't have a name, was just having fun while I was setting up my Photoshop prefs...again.

Layering Shaders for Mental Ray

2009-06-01T19:19:00.011-04:00

The Maya layered shader always drove me nuts, I always found it so unfriendly. And since Mental Ray is my renderer of choice, I needed something that it won't puke up and I figured it must have a layered shader equivalent. Scouring the help files for anything color blending related I found this puppy that I suspected could do the trick. The mib_color_mix node.