As posted by Master Zap on his blog: here
He goes into some technical details of the linear-space lighting process. There are some really good explanations for what is really going on behind the scenes, and I highly recommend a listen. FXGuide has my utmost fandom at giving him some time to talk. Here is a more direct link to the podcast.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Vray Switch
Hey folks, I have some news. I've been testing Vray and RT over the last few weeks. And now that Vray for Maya is a reality, I can seriously consider switching. While I love 3dsmax for many things, I still feel Maya is required for many tasks, and wouldn't be without it in production. I'm getting pretty comfortable with Vray in both Max and Maya, and have to say it is a big step up from Mental Ray, which has unfortunately languished for the past few years with few useful updates.
There are things I can do in Vray, that I just couldn't accomplish properly with MentalRay. Many may argue, you can do the same quality work in MR, and short of true DOF and MB in reasonable time, I would agree. However, the man-hours required to do the same level of work are vastly different. Vray's unified DMC sampling (global glossy settings) and many other features I'll discuss later, make setting up complicated realistic settings very easy. I have already done work with vray that I doubt I could have done in twice the time in MR. saving caches, baking, importance sampling in image and area lights... the list goes on, and I have to say I wish only that I had jumped in earlier. More soon.
BTW, due to a few Russian spam comments, I've turned on posting administration. Thus your comments may take a day to show, since I have to approve them. But I'll generally let any post through that isn't spam. Even if you hurl insults;)
There are things I can do in Vray, that I just couldn't accomplish properly with MentalRay. Many may argue, you can do the same quality work in MR, and short of true DOF and MB in reasonable time, I would agree. However, the man-hours required to do the same level of work are vastly different. Vray's unified DMC sampling (global glossy settings) and many other features I'll discuss later, make setting up complicated realistic settings very easy. I have already done work with vray that I doubt I could have done in twice the time in MR. saving caches, baking, importance sampling in image and area lights... the list goes on, and I have to say I wish only that I had jumped in earlier. More soon.
BTW, due to a few Russian spam comments, I've turned on posting administration. Thus your comments may take a day to show, since I have to approve them. But I'll generally let any post through that isn't spam. Even if you hurl insults;)
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Lighting Blocking
Just a quick post to remind people I still exist;)
Thought I'd share a working method for lighting if it weren't already obvious to you (It probably is). Just like animation, blocking is an important stage. Roughing out light positions, intensities, etc. should be as fast and interactive as it can be. When dealing with say, and interior render with GI, bounces, and such, fast seems to be an oxymoron. It can be bearable, and even fun if you optimize your scene for it.
Just like blocking an animation, you don't need every feature turned on. While you can always tune your render settings, that's not what I'm talking about. I leave my FG and AA at medium. Say 75FG samples, 20 interpolation and global AA at 0 or 1 to start. Beyond that, the biggest slowdown in a render are the shaders. So use something very simple to block out lighting. a light grey mia or even a lambert. Such materials will render much faster.
My workflow is to create a lightingBlocking renderLayer with a material override to the mentioned grey material. Start blocking lights and render iteratively, or use IPR. Blocking lights without the interference of material color is useful in 2 ways. First in speed as mentioned, but also to judge values and lighting ratios more easily. Here's an example of a blocking render for a recent job. Some clients are receptive to seeing this stage, some are not. But if nothing else, it is helpful for you to make creative judgements.
This is closer to a final blocking. In earlier iterations the bed was too dark, as was the hall. So a window was added to the hall, and a lamp (omni light) was placed at the bedside to fill the bed a bit. Ulimately, one more light was placed in the hall, and minor tweaks to some settings were required once full color and materials were added.
Thought I'd share a working method for lighting if it weren't already obvious to you (It probably is). Just like animation, blocking is an important stage. Roughing out light positions, intensities, etc. should be as fast and interactive as it can be. When dealing with say, and interior render with GI, bounces, and such, fast seems to be an oxymoron. It can be bearable, and even fun if you optimize your scene for it.
Just like blocking an animation, you don't need every feature turned on. While you can always tune your render settings, that's not what I'm talking about. I leave my FG and AA at medium. Say 75FG samples, 20 interpolation and global AA at 0 or 1 to start. Beyond that, the biggest slowdown in a render are the shaders. So use something very simple to block out lighting. a light grey mia or even a lambert. Such materials will render much faster.
My workflow is to create a lightingBlocking renderLayer with a material override to the mentioned grey material. Start blocking lights and render iteratively, or use IPR. Blocking lights without the interference of material color is useful in 2 ways. First in speed as mentioned, but also to judge values and lighting ratios more easily. Here's an example of a blocking render for a recent job. Some clients are receptive to seeing this stage, some are not. But if nothing else, it is helpful for you to make creative judgements.This is closer to a final blocking. In earlier iterations the bed was too dark, as was the hall. So a window was added to the hall, and a lamp (omni light) was placed at the bedside to fill the bed a bit. Ulimately, one more light was placed in the hall, and minor tweaks to some settings were required once full color and materials were added.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Liza Lee Music
Not that I secretly desire to sell or review music;)... but I would like to post a big kudos to my friend Liza who has released her second album, Anima. It's a Jazz album, and let's face it, I'm not a Jazz sort of guy, but she is highly influenced by some of my old favs... Kate Bush, Tori Amos, David Bowie... so there are more melodic aspects to this album that stretch its fingers well outside what scares me about Jazz. I'm proud of her work on this, and hope people discover her music. She is also coming out with a more alt-pop styled album soon, so keep a look out.
Nice thing about this release, is that all proceeds go to the Society for Womens' Health Research. So buy it dammit!
You can get it on amazon and cdbaby... my bias is for amazon, nice and clean insta-downloads with no crappy drm.
Nice thing about this release, is that all proceeds go to the Society for Womens' Health Research. So buy it dammit!
You can get it on amazon and cdbaby... my bias is for amazon, nice and clean insta-downloads with no crappy drm.
Monday, October 20, 2008
A.A.W.W.
On Thursday afternoon (Oct 16th) at 11:56am, my wife and I became the proud parents of a perfect baby boy. Aaron Andrew "Woden" Weidenhammer was larger than expected... 8lb 1.3oz and 21in long. This is our first one and we are going nuts with all the new responsibility and lack of sleep, but all is well, and he's as cute as we could imagine.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Gamma Tools 1.0
Hey folks. I mentioned I was going to post some scripted tools for inserting/removing gamma nodes. Well, here are a few.
gammaTools_1.0
Check out the readme for specific info, but here's a basic rundown. There are 3 tools (and 1 bonus for the brave).
insertGamma - inserts gamma nodes with pre-set .455 (after any selected texture nodes with color connections).
deleteGamma - deletes selected gamma nodes while retaining connections
gammaValue - changes the gamma value globally or for selected nodes. This is a command-line tool only at the moment... so the value should be entered in after the command, then executed.
There is also a hyperUserInit.mel which is a replacement for a standard maya UI script. If you choose to try this, make sure to back up the original one. This update adds the ability to insert Gamma nodes by Ctrl+Alt+Shift clicking on a connection line in the hyperShade.
These are really simple scripts. We don't have a lot of time or manpower to devote to such tools, but I'm glad Al could get these done so quickly. Thanks go to Albert (a MotR cohort) for coding.
gammaTools_1.0
Check out the readme for specific info, but here's a basic rundown. There are 3 tools (and 1 bonus for the brave).
insertGamma - inserts gamma nodes with pre-set .455 (after any selected texture nodes with color connections).
deleteGamma - deletes selected gamma nodes while retaining connections
gammaValue - changes the gamma value globally or for selected nodes. This is a command-line tool only at the moment... so the value should be entered in after the command, then executed.
There is also a hyperUserInit.mel which is a replacement for a standard maya UI script. If you choose to try this, make sure to back up the original one. This update adds the ability to insert Gamma nodes by Ctrl+Alt+Shift clicking on a connection line in the hyperShade.
These are really simple scripts. We don't have a lot of time or manpower to devote to such tools, but I'm glad Al could get these done so quickly. Thanks go to Albert (a MotR cohort) for coding.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Financial Woes
While I'll try to avoid political posts for the most part here (with the election coming it's been hard to keep quiet;), I have to mention this link.
The article is from DailyKos, but is very clear and level-headed. It discusses some political/financial history in a way that doesn't require you to be an economist. McCain had a hand in bringing the economy to the brink it's at now. So please read and consider. Regulations are there to protect the people. Unfortunately the supremely rich have painstakenly removed regulations over time, to the detriment of the taxpayers.
The article is from DailyKos, but is very clear and level-headed. It discusses some political/financial history in a way that doesn't require you to be an economist. McCain had a hand in bringing the economy to the brink it's at now. So please read and consider. Regulations are there to protect the people. Unfortunately the supremely rich have painstakenly removed regulations over time, to the detriment of the taxpayers.
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