Latest Den + composites

With the crash of my last save, this project has officially become a monster. Arg!

I'll need to revert back to an earlier version then do some serious compositing.

My, Oh Maya: The Den

And finally...

I spent the past few days trying to get a decent bear-skin rug, but couldn't negotiate around an ugly masking job. I don't know if anyone else has any luck, but I'm here to say that mental ray and even ray-tracing will--in one way or another--force maya to crash an already taxed processor when trying to merge fur.

That said, I'm saving my pennies for a Mac, since my days of futzing with pc hardware (and even knowing about it) need to be over. What kind of professional needs futz??

No Mental Ray (Software Render)

I finally did a software render using Raytracing alone... (sigh)

I've concluded that mental ray is really a daylight rendering engine, and doesn't lend itself to any sort of 'dramatic' or warm set lighting... thought??

look of shock

Ugh--I think that I might have to bag the mental ray on this particular scene. There's way too much bleed and aliasing going on here. But I'm liking the worried unicorn better...

...and here it is:

(remember to click on the image to get a higher-res picture)

the den---final touches!

This is the unadulterated (no photoshop / no compositing) final version. Hoo-ray! Now to super-impose a better looking bearskin rug (NO MENTAL RAY--only software render!) and replace the photo in the frame with something tighter and straight. Again, mental ray is not ideal in this particular way, since it gives it a 'painterly' feel at the sacrifise of crystal-clarity.

This was rendered in multiple passes:
1.) everything minus the chandeliers and bear - 2.5 hours
2.) the bear - 1.75 hours
3.) chandelier 1 - 30 minutes
4.) chandelier 2 -30 minutes

I found that turning off the layers that won't appear in the 'red box' segment greatly reduces my rendering time. The fur was the ultimate liability, crashing Maya as well as my computer system multiple times.

But as my French-Canadian ex boyfriend would say, "I will sleep less stupid!" And I discovered an incredible trick to pull Maya out of an seemingly inevitable crash on my pc: CTRL + ALT + DEL, Processes tab, then start closing down superfluous programs (anything that doesn't directly run Maya), like your anti-virus, etc. Like magic, I kept Maya from crashing and losing a bunch of work. It was incredible...

Alright! Now I think I'm getting a little warmer...

This particular image is a Photoshop composite of three different renders. The first was with the unicorn head, the second was the polar bear rug, and the third was the chandeliers. Each 480 X640 took between 1.5 to 2.5 hours. The bear's fur amassed the most time, and I quickly discovered that fur and mental ray not only do not play well together--they will crash your computer in almost every scenario unless you're working with a very little amount of hair, like on my unicorn. He was rendered with Maya software, begrudgingly. I'm telling you--it's hard to go back!

Changes:
1.) the unicorn's head will be turned, and the mouth will be opened
2.) I would loooove to find a photoshop plug-in that will allow me to cast prisms from the chandelier
3.) clock-face, fire, frame will have new and improved jpegs
4.) I might try and experiment with getting that dark wood lighter
5.) the bear's head needs to be smoothed, mouth rigged and opened for a nice 'GARRRRR!'
6.) a couple more chairs will be added
7.) mouse-over objects will be added

After all this, the animation will be started! Let's hope our web developer has a good sense of humor...

Unicorns!

Rendering Battle: Mental Ray vs. Fur!

So in these scenes, I wanted to add my unicorn head for above the framed portrait of the group, as well as this bearskin rug that I modeled. Big trouble: mental ray and fur are both highly taxing, and my computer crashed many, many, many times. In two days work, I gained an infinity amount of experience points and very very little product.

The bearskin rug came out great in earlier tests, but it didn't make the cut on this scene. The unicorn head was sub-rendered, and you can tell by the box around it. The grandfather clock needs work, and I'll probably add a couple of chairs and a table or two with an old radio and a newspaper on them. I also got inspired to elevate the ceiling and add a chandelier on each side. I think a square format will work awesomely for this web-page, and I will need to work with the developer to make sure our goals get realized.

I initially added dreadlocks to the unicorn, and it looked so frickin amazing I had to save it for Jessica.

After I post this, I'm hanging up my Maya until I am better tempered to deal with her. Weekend starts now!

More Concept Design for Den (photoshop!)

Again with the placeholder, we'll have an ornate gold frame above the fireplace, with a shot of the Neutrino group within. I think the girls are going for a 'The Royal Tennenbaums' sort of feel, with all the members in their own track suits.

The Den is coming together...

I added two bright orange point lights to the fireplace to warm up the lower part of the room, and added a plane in which to plug a fireplace jpeg / movie. After some great advice from Jason (former art director at Microsoft) I reworked the scale of some of the room elements. For my three spotlights I turned photons up to 1,000,000 each.

The stag horns at the top serve as a placeholder for a unicorn head, the urn is now brass/gold, I'm going to move a bust to sit on the left side of the fireplace, and I will put a gold framed portrait above the fireplace.

Mental ray continues to be a serious tax on my machine, and this render took a wopping 2.5 hours!

The Den!

First off, I would like to thank the lovely Neutrino ladies for offering me the pleasure to work with them, and for allowing me to post my progress on their new web page. I'm excited to get this ball rolling!

First of all, I have 3 lights set up with mental ray. This gave me a 2.5 hr render time on a 1024 X 786 frame, about an hour on a 480 x 640. Needless to say I will have to adjust some light settings to bring this down a LOT. I'm happy with my start, overall, but here are the things that are immediately apparent:

1.) dark wood needs better illumination, possibly lighter color
2.) the 'magic' carpets are slapped on for effect, but some texture mapping is needed
3.) chair could be brought up to scale, along with wee side table
4.) lighting emitting from the fireplace will warm up the lower half of the frame

Once the miscellanea are in place, this scene will really start to hum...