I have just updated the Photos section of my Portfolio with this panorama from my trip up Mount Bego.
Top of Mount Bego French Alps
Exterior Yacht Render
I am happy to present an image that is on the inside cover of three magazines, Yachts International, Showboats and Boat International. The representation of the 48 metre SuperSport Yacht was created using 3ds Max, Vray and Photoshop.
CG Health and Well Being
With January coming to a close and New Year resolutions starting to lose momentum it can be hard to continue with the well intentioned goals you set yourself at the beginning of the year. This is a bit off the normal topics of the site, but I think it is important for industry we are in
Apps I have found apps a great incentive.
I am currently using the free version of Map Draw to track the runs I do, I then email the map to my friend to show off! For my never ending todo list I love using Epic Win. This app turns your todo list into a RPG game.Seinfeld's Productivity Secret Credit has to go to Lifehacker for this great tip. Stick up as many calanders as you need and write the goal on top. Each day put a X if completed. The idea is not to brake the chain and it works! Here is the article How Seinfeld's Productivity Secret Fixed My Procrastination Problem
Get Up Having a few small breaks and walking around (not disturbing anybody) during the day is recommended by everybody but it is tough to do. I set reminders on the computer to pop up using great apps like Workrave and Coffee Break.
Lunch It is so easy to eat at your desk, but get out for at least half an hour. It is easy to get 'blinded' by what you are working. I am actually writing this post in a park near the office. Get some fresh air .
Posture I wanted to improve my posture at my desk and I also wondered why was I getting so tired from sitting at a desk. Some people suggested that getting tired is not always due to mental fatigue. If you sit awkwardly at your desk it can make your muscles tense. If you stay in the same position for a long time tensed all day this can make you tired. The solution sounds quite easy, just take a moment to notice how you are sitting and relax.
Getting Moving I was interested to see how much I was moving daily, the recommended amount per day is 10,000 steps. I bought a pedometer (I am sure there are apps) and I now aim to beat the previous days steps. This encourages me to jog in the mornings and take the steps instead of the evaluators. I am currently averaging 10,461 steps per day.
Join a Club I highly recommend joining a sports club, it is a great motivator to get moving and release some stress after work. I play Squash twice a week with a colleague, I have found it is great motivation to have somebody to go with and not to let them down. It always seems harder to let some body else down other than yourself. Being in another country I thought it could be difficult to find and join a club but it was surprising easy and if I can do it here then so can you.
Move Your Bin This is a great one, move your bin away from your desk so you have to move. This also gets the steps on the pedometer up!
Water Bottles I have been doing for a while now, I have two 1 litre bottles. One in the fridge and one on the desk. The task is just to get through them in the day. If I have not finished one by lunch time it's time to speed up.
Take the Stairs Where I live there are a lot of steps to get to work. There are public lifts and escalators which I used for a long time. But since September I have been taking the stairs and I feel much fitter. It does get easier!
Park Further Away If you drive then you can park further away to get some more exercise and you may also save some money in parking costs.
For more health and fitness advice follow @_FitnessAcademy
Venice Texture Pack
Jaked3d-Venice-Texture-Pack
As promised here are 36 high resolution textures I took when I was in Venice. Feel free to use them as you like.
French Alps Hike
After the amount of time I have been stuck to a computer lately a friend of mine Kim and I went on an eventful 4 day hike through the French Alps. One of the highlights was reaching the top of Mount Bego at 9,423 ft and raising £330.00 for a children's hospice in Brighton. The views through out the trip were amazing and the pictures could never do it justice. But here are a view pictures from the hike. I have some HDRI's to put together when I get a minute. More pictures here.
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State of the Art Academy Day 3
I headed over to Venice for a few days to attend State of the Art Academy Day 3. There was great talks from speakers such as Peter Guthrie, Pixela, Ronen Bekerman, Adam Hotovy and Tomek Miksa. Lots of great subjects were brought up and I got to meet a lot of the 3d community. I particularly enjoyed Pixela showing how to create amazing pillows in Marvous Designer and Adam Hotovy giving a great insight into the importance colour theory and harmony. A couple of cool links to check out are Gobotree and Color Scheme Designer 3
I also got the chance to check out Venice and I am working on the texture pack which should be up here soon.
VW Camper Van
I have finally got around to uploading my Volkswagen Camper Van to Turbosquid.
It was originally created with 3ds Max 2011 using the Mental Ray renderer. (2010 and 2012 .max included)
Containing both a high and a low poly version.
High Poly- 436,176
Low Poly-17,509
This model is suitable for use in advertising, design visualisation, films and games.
The model can be switched from high poly to low poly by turning on and off the turbosmooth in the modifier stack.
Boat International Cover and Monaco Yacht Show
Monaco Yacht Show was on this week. In the build up to the event I have been extremely busy creating images for press and the exhibition. I am happy to say that a image made it as the cover image for Boat International for the October issue. There was also a six page spread in the magazine. You can see the article on the publication page. The show also marked the unveiling of three of the new yachts in the SuperSport series which receive a lot of attention.
I also took the opportunity to head up to the top of Monaco and get some HDRI Panorama shots. Although for the first attempt of the night shot I headed up without any battery. I have learnt my lesson to always check my equipment before I head off.
3ds Max Cleaner, Remove Missing Plugins and a cool iPhone App and More
Here are a few things I have learnt this month.
1. If you can not Group objects in 3ds Max then with the objects selected hit the unlink button on the left of the main toolbar. Then try and group it and it should work. This happens to me when I import files from AutoCAD and other software.
2. Camera Converter. To quickly add cameras I hit Ctrl+C in the 3ds Max viewport this is great when selecting views with others. But if you are using Vray it can be a pain to line the Vray Physical Camera up. This is where Anything to Physcam from Lele's Vray Tools on script spot is really great. There is a good video on how to use it from Alex over at Vray-Studio.
3. Cleaner. I was having trouble with a scene that was taking ages to load and save. I also had to turn off autoback and it really got hard to work with. Then I found Cleaner on script spot. This amazing tool got my file down from around 1gb to 200mb!
4. Remove Missing Plug-ins. I started to use Rebus Farm and I had a plug-in that Rebus did not. They are quite good with having Plug-ins but I could not send it until I sorted it. This can be quite a pain to resolve, but not with Remove Missing Plugins from Martin Breidt. Really easy to use and extremely useful.
5. How to setup Depth of Field in 3ds Max. A great reminder on setting up a DOF pass in 3ds Max from Onno Van Braam.
6. Wireless Trackpad and Keyboard iPhone App. This great app from Logitech turns your iPhone into a mouse and you can type to. This is handy when watching films on the TV from the laptop and not wanting to have to move.
Polygons to Solids for 3D Printing
The reason for this blog article is to save you from the terrible time I had exporting a polygon mesh into a solid. Basically taking a mesh file and turning into a .iges or similar for 3d printing. After searching the forums and testing out tools that claim to do the job with no luck I had to get busy...
It is possible to take a mesh into Rhino and use the MeshToNumb command, but the mesh needs to be under 20,000 poly and once it is converted it is not smooth and for 3d printing you probably want it smooth. In 3ds Max there is a way to turn your model to Nurbs and export as an .iges. For small models this may work but not for me. If you right click on the model and Convert to Patch and once that is done right click again and Convert to Nurbs. I have not successfully used this method because I have never had the time to wait for the conversion so be warned it does take sometime.
So in 3ds Max there is an export to .iges file in the export box. File>export but unless your model is in Nurbs rather than ploys then this option won't work. So here is how I managed to get quite a heavy max scene into a solid format. This is in no way the correct method but if there is one I would love to know about it.
So here we go with my method. In 3ds Max select your mesh and go to File>Export as .obj. Then open this great tool called 3d Exploration which can be downloaded here. Navigate to the .obj file in here and save it out as a .stl file.
Open up Rhino and import the .stl file. Select the mesh and type in the command bar MeshToNurb. Once this is done select the mesh and delete it, then you should be left with the nurb object. Now all you have to do is export it as an it as an .iges :)
Panorama at Roquebrune Cap Martin
I have added a photo section to my portfolio area including this image I recently took at Roquebrune Cap Martin.
Top 5 Free 3ds Max Scripts and Plugins
Recently I have been trying out quite a few scripts and plugins to speed up my work flow in 3ds Max. I highly recommend browsing scriptspot.com for useful scripts. But to save so time and kick you off here is what I have been using recently. Please note that not all of these are available on Sciptspot but there is a link to each download. So in no particular order here are my Top Five Free 3ds Max Scripts and Plugins. Wireframe Render jokermartini.com/2010/04/30/wireframe-render/ Wireframe Render is a script from John Martini over at jokermartini.com. I have found this one very useful for creating wireframe renders for Turbosquid for example. Wireframe Render uses a simple interface that enables the user to quickly and easily create wireframe renders. I would also recommend checking out some of John's other cool tools available at jokermartini.com/extras/ including cobwebs and Select Intersectors.
Render Mask www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/rendermask
Render Mask allows you to quickly render masks such as object ID's and Materials ID's which I find extremely useful. It is possable to do this in 3ds Max Render Elements but this is handy after you have rendered and maybe you need to get a mask without re-rendering. This plugin is a massive time saver when trying to create varous types of masks for use in post production. It is by Ivan Tepavicharov and this video should explain how to use it.
https://vimeo.com/26107414 Center and Reset www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/frodos-magic-scripts-pack This neat script is from Frodo's Magic Scripts Pack. It resets the xform on an object and centers the pivot point in one click. I use this alot and find it to be a big time saver.
Copitor www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/copitor
This has to be one of my favourites. I have posted about Copitor before here and I am still using it all the time. Copitor lets you copy and paste objects between 3ds Max scenes. I also find it useful to grab the material off the object rather than having to export it.
Ivy Generator www.guruware.at/mainIvy Generator hass been around for a while now and I think it is great. I am always looking out for places I can put it in my scenes because it looks great and it is so easy to use. It is also very customisable with your own leaves etc. Here is a great video tutourial from Sachin Joshi over at CGTuts.
21 Free Medieval Textures
Hopefully some people will find these free textures useful . They are from the Medieval Village of Roquebrune in the South of France, not to far from me. Please feel free to use them for whatever you like. In the rar file there are doors, walls, windows and a view over the village. Vray Embree, EUE write ups, The Rule of Thirds and Britney Spears
An update of a few useful things knocking around the community this month.
Jorge Baldeon's post Britney Spears Big Fat Bass Backdrop Making Of on his blog jorgebaldeoncg.blogspot.com is well worth a read, especially if you are a Mental Ray user. He talks about how he went about creating the background animations for Britney Spears Femme Fatale Tour using Mental Ray and 3ds Max.
Samuel Enslin, who I meet at EUE this year has done a write up of some of the talks that went on there at www.insertmesh.net. This was very useful for me as with so many great talks going on it is impossible to make it to all of them.
Ciro Sannino's blog post on The Rule Of Thirds In 3ds Max over at Cg Blog is a great read and very useful for working out how to get the best shots from your 3d models.
Finally, if you want to speed up your renderings in Vray check out Vray Embree. It can speed up your Vray renderings by up to 30%. Definitly check it out, it is very simple to use. Watch the video below for more info.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iJaPhuxepIs
Latest 3D Work - The B-Town Series
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This set of images are influenced by my time in Brighton, you may have seen the Vespas before as I started them a little while ago and they were in 3D World's Portfolio section of the magazine. The VW's were inspired by the VW show I saw when I first moved to Brighton, I posted some pictures of that back in October here. The Vespa took two days to model and adding materials, rendering and post-production took another two. All the images are rendered using Mental Ray.
End User Event 2012
I headed over to Utrecht for the End User Event this week. The event is held in the Florin Pub where the rooms for the talks also are. A total of 5 rooms made it difficult to decide what to see or not. Luckily a lot of the speakers presented their talks more than once. I arrived in the afternoon on Thursday and started with the 3ds Max Expert Panel which was made up of of Neil Hazzard, Zap Andersson, LouisMarcoux, Alex Horst and Jamie Gwilliam. In this session we could ask anything we liked about 3ds Max and any issues we had, this was a great start to the event.
Next up I saw Ted Boardman's workshop, Ted Gets Push-y where Ted demonstrated a range of modifiers that often get overlooked, most of which I had not used before. The Volume select, Push and Slice modifier all got shown and the Snapshot and the Shape Merge tool also look like something that I can introduce to my workflow.
The evenings were great with an open bar and a tasty dinner included, this was a great time to meet fellow 3D Artists and discuss workflow, tools and anything else. My ‘to check out list’ has quadrupled.
First thing on Friday I saw the Unity guys present ‘Doing Magic with Unity in Architectural and Design Visualisation.’ Here they showed how Unity could be used as an interactive architectural visualisation tool. Next was Jamie Gwilliam, from Jamie’s Jewels, presenting an interesting discussion on ‘What Makes a Good Render.’ I learnt a lot of valuable lessons from this talk and enjoyed hearing from everybody about what they thought made renders look good or not.
After lunch Joshua Newmanfrom Meshroom presented his 15 Do's and Don'ts of Visualisation. Again I learnt a lot from this presentation and also had the opportunity to discuss issues I was having in my workflow. One of my favorite talks was from Evert Vandenberghe called Meeting Insane Insane Deadlines! I think the title appealed to a lot of the community and some of the tips and workflow were incredible, a lot of ideas that I can hopefully take into my workflow. Evert went through how he worked using basic examples but they can be used for more complex things. The day finished up with Master Zap and Neil Hazzard talking about the renderers that ship with 3ds Max.
Monaco Formula 1 Grand Prix
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This weekend was Monaco Grand Prix and I was lucky enough to be able to watch from the balcony at work.
Autodesk 123D Catch Beta
I was very excited to hear about Autodesk's 123D Catch. 123D Catch lets you take ordinary photos and turn them into 3D models. Here is a quick introduction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6aU2s85Zw3A
So I downloaded the software from here. The software comes with some good tutorials and the program is pretty straight forward to use. For the object I wanted to create I took 42 photos spinning around the object. I uploaded them and waited for Autodesk to email to let me know it was completed. A couple of the images were too dark so the object I received was not 100% but 42 images is probably the minimum I would suggest.
It looked pretty good if I do say so myself. Next, what I was most excited about was getting it into 3ds Max. This was simple, File, Export, FBX and import into Max, this is what I got below.
The scene contains cameras where all the shots were taken from, which could come in handy. I then opened up the Material Editor and selected the material from the object. There were two in this case. The file Autodesk emailed me contained to texture sheets which I remapped to the correct location and below are the 2 texture sheets and the result i got.
I then added a Mental Ray Daylight system and applied a smoothing group to the whole object and rendered. Below are the results. The mesh was very heavy and if I had more time I could have cleaned it up a lot and patched up any broken areas in the model.
Catch 123D is an amazingly powerful tool which I am sure will come in handy in future. Definitely give this free software a try and let me know how you get on.
Milan Furniture show and Top Marques
It has been a busy couple of weeks over here. On Wednesday I went to the Milan Furniture Show and returned to Monaco on the Friday night. Then I was off to Top Marques in Monaco on Sunday. Milan furniture show was great and so was Milan. I could have really done with a week there as there was so much to see. Top Marques is 'the most exclusive supercar show in the world' and it did not fail to deliver. Below are some pictures from Top Marques.
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iRay
A great Autodesk University class that converted me from Mental Ray to iRay for rendering. The talk by George Matos concentrates on how iRay is different from previous rendering technology and goes through the advantages and disadvantages. Later the talk moves on to cloud rendering with iRay and where it is all heading. Definitely worth a watch.
"Key Learning
Describe the hardware required for iray and explain how to use cloud rendering with iray
Explain what iray is
List the advantages and disadvantages of iray
Describe the differences between iray and previous rendering technology"
... Autodesk University