The New Status Quo

So I've been having a very interesting last few days.

My hunt for employment had not been going particularly well (thanks in no small part to the American Republican party using the world economies recovery as their play thing!).

The one hope we'd been riding on, was an incredibly lengthy and draw out application for a real teaching position in Hong Kong I started in March. It never panned out. Leaving us without options.

Literally on the day we were starting to give up hope, one of R's contact's in Hong Kong suddenly made a public appeal to any teachers out there who wanted to teach in Hong Kong that there was a sudden job opening at their skool...

So a short story long, I sent my resume off Weds night. Was contacted Friday night, and offered the job. I now leave for Hong Kong tomorrow (Monday Aussie time), and start teaching Thursday.

Why couldn't all job applications work like this?

So I'm moving to Hong Kong, where we'll be for two years at least.

This shouldn't interrupt my online presence too much in the long run. Sadly in the short term I suspect I will be a no show for a week or so. Who knows. Just warning everyone in case you need to contact me.

Expect some posts of the new adventures in Hong Kong (and who knows this might just be enough to reboot start Traum... though I still have a backlog of his finale in NZ)

Lighting Challenge 2

It has been a really stressful and tense 2 days, as we're waiting back on a very key job application. I've ended up unable to focus on anything too thought intensive. Making my lighting challenge a perfect thing to run in the background.

At moment I'm only really playing with individual key lights, so they are not too time (or brain consuming) on my part. Rendering times on the other hand are incredibly long. So once I make the change to the light I can leave it for 30 minutes while it renders.



The changes are subtle, and some are not enough to fix the problems. I'll go through each element to make it more clear.

I differentiated the source lights on nearly every component in this scene. So all like things in this rendition have a unique source light targeting only them (which caused me some major issue in sorting out shadows).

The Gorgosaurus has a slight blue gel on it. I'm happy with this initial setup. I plan on following more of David's suggestions with him.

The Styracosaurs have a strong red gel on their source light which is helping bring them out of the background, but not enough. They are going to need more light tweaking.

The plants have a mid yellow filter, and this has brought out the details on them while not drastically brightening them. I'm especially happy with how the Gingko leaves now pop out from each other. I'll be probably leaving this lighting the same, and leave the forest alone from here on here.

This is the old version from my last post so you can compare. There are differences, but sadly not as pronounced as I had wanted.

Gallery Coming Up...

Quick aside from my lighting experinment... As we have an ART Evolved gallery coming up afterall.
Here is my soft shelled turtle so far. The only thing I'm even remotely happy with is the shell. Sadly I don't have a high enough resolution picture of a turtle's shell to make the texture as good as I wanted.

The tissue needs a lot of work in the shader. The model also needs some serious TLC.

So I'll be bashing away on him on the side...

Lighting Challenge Part 1

I FINALLY got to the lighting part of my lighting challenge.

Entering into this task, I had a fantastic head start due to advise I have been receiving. I just wanted to say thank you again to the talented and supportive people taking their time to help me out!

Though David Maas has gone five steps above and beyond with this full reworking of my composition to produce a very easy to follow visual lighting guide!

This is how far I got today. It still needs work, but thanks to David I didn't have as much stabbing in the dark to do.

I've only really started on lighting the Gorgosaurus. It is a nice start (especially compared to the "flat" version of yesterday, below). I have a lot to do still...

The biggest issue is the Styracosaurs are now too camouflaged. The plants are too black and their detail is obscured is the last issue.

Still once more it is a huge improvement over this!

Lighting Challenge... Prelighting 4

Between job applications, an online course I'm taking, and of course bird watching (now narrowing in on my local Kookaburras exact behaviour... updates soon) I managed to sneak in a bit more work on my lighting (scene creation?) challenge piece.


I was able to litter the forest floor with more "stuff". I like it, but I'm going to need more. Have to fidget with some smaller stuff (dead leaves and branches) to capture the true feeling of a forest.

I also added a thin fog to the forest to help decamouflage my Gorgosaurus (man I can't get over how good that cameo is... unfortunately it is too good in this case :P). Hat tip to Matt and David for pointing me in the mist/fog direction. It'll need some adjustment and tweaking, but I think for a first pass this looks not too bad!

I dare say beyond the forest litter needed, I might have something ready for a proper lighting experiment now. What do you all think?

Lighting Project... Prelights 3

The next steps in my lighting challenge (though I'm starting to think of it more as a scene challenge... I'm pushing every single one of my skills, except those with the Dinosaurs (I've had plenty of practise with them).

Today was plant day (the first of many I'm sure). Here is where I'm at so far. I'm pleased as punch with a few of my plants, and quite underwhelmed by others. I'm finding getting realistic leaf colours difficult (mind you the lighting... once I FINALLY get to it) might help out here.

So how do you make a distribution of plants like this. Well you can either manually duplicate and place every single plant, or take a short cut. With about 600 plants in here (most of them the shrubs) I took the short cut.

This time saver is a surface replicator. Though after I take your through the process it turns out to almost be more work :P

I have plenty of experience with replicators as they are how I make my feather setups. Plants are quite different though. To get better result you need to target where your plants pop up.

To line up your rough target I suggest setting up an Isometric camera directly above your landscape. Render out a map of your scene like this. Keep your subjects in view, so you know where you need to place your plants around.

Next in your photoshopish program draw out the plots for your plant layout. Each of those painted areas is the portions of my landscape where certain plants are allowed to replicate within the replicator. The Green is the large trees, red the medium ferns, blue is the shrubs and smaller plants.

Depending on the topography of your landscape, your deployment pattern might or might not line up with your isometric map. In this case I was lucky, and it was about 95% on the spot.
You can see the 5%ish miss with this attempt to line the pattern up with the plants themselves.

So from here I will probably expand the 3D plants one more layer. From there I'll set up some 2D proxies to make the rest of the forest. While the replicator procedure is the same (simpler in fact!), I'm not sure how to approach creating the pictures for the proxies. Do I wait till I get the lighting right to render these, or do I do that now in this current light, and hope the new lighting effects a picture the same way it does the 3D plant.

The Lighting Challenge... Pre-Lighting 2

Here is the updated version of my new portfolio piece. Still no lighting that alone much else. I have added the sky, ground, and I'm sure you're noticing a lot more Dinosaurs.

I decided a bit more chaos from the Ceratopsian end was needed to communicate the exact idea

of loose social groups I'm going for. Sure they move together, but the instant trouble rears its head their in it for themselves.

The Lighting Challenge... Pre-lighting 1

So my lighting experts have challenged me to test lighting within a scene. Who am I to argue with them? So here I go.

I figure I can make a nice portfolio piece along the way. I will be continuing with my previous lighting variable experiments (well really just posting them, as I've already done most of the work anyways... having taken the effort to render them all I figure I'd finish up my public documentation of the results to make it worth my time).

So here is step one of my lighting test ground so far. Of course this is just the Dinosaurs so far. In the final piece there will be ground, plants, and of course LIGHTING! Elements like camera angle, the orientation and position of the Dinosaurs, and even number of Dinosaurs can all be changed. This is the point from which I am planning to build the scene up, and I will take you along for the process.

The scene will be a Gorgosaurus ambushing a family group of Styracosaurs. Unlike most pieces that see such an event playing out as the Tyrannosaurid versing an adult Ceratopsian, I don't want my Gorgosaurus in this unlikely duel. I just don't see how this would be beneficial for the Tyrannosaur (that alone survivable most of the time). To me they'd be going for sick adults when available (which won't always be guaranteed), but usually a smaller young member of a herd.

I'm also playing with less popular social theories than those that are usually presented. While it is likely Ceratopsian and Tyrannosaurids lived in social situations some of the time, there is no reason to believe this was always the case or the norm. If anything recent (more cautioned) research is starting to indicate while Dinosaurs possessed some complicated social behaviour, they were probably not as complex as modern mammals. Which implies there were many times social interactions were rarer or more volatile than the original Dino renaissance envisioned.

I've been quite interested in how the massive bonebeds in Alberta are interpreted as massive seasonal migrations by Brinkman, Ryan, and Eberth (east to west rather than north south if you're wondering). They present a scenario in which the Ceratopisans were living most of the time along the coast and would seasonally move inland. The reasons are not determinable at moment, but food availability or breeding seem the most likely. To me it calls into question just how concrete their sociality really was, as there is nothing to say the giant herds were full time. At the end of the migration is makes more sense the animals would disperse.

So to demonstrate this casual sociality I have the adult bolting at the first sign of danger. I've heard some interesting unpublished research suggesting adult (Ornithischian) Dinosaurs might not have been as supportive of parents as we've been thinking. This might be a bit extreme, but who can prove me wrong?

As for the Gorgosaurus I'm debating whether I want it with a hunting partner. I'm more inclined to think mother Tyrannosaurids would tolerate their kids hanging around rather than another adult. Their bird relatives, but very primitive ones.

Anyways thoughts or commentary?

Lighting Blooper

Had a funny mistake today while playing with lights. Thought you might kick a giggle out of it.

I was starting to setup some forest and lights for this fellow. Before adding trees I thought it might be fun to add some light cone effects (god rays in real life situations). I probably should have added the trees before hand to proper see how the effect was going, but I've played with light cones a lot in my water scenes so I know how they work. So I set up a quick light cone, but forgot to reposition the spot light (which was way too close to the model and ground). Giving me...

A Tyrannosauriod beaming down to Saskatchewan (For you non-Canadians there is a joke about our middle province being so flat you can see your dog running away for days... Much like the landscape my Gorgosaurus finds itself in right now).

Fastest Forest

After a very informative discussion with fellow ART Evolved member David Maas I've just launched a major attack on one of my biggest 3D problems. While I can't claim total victory, with David's incredibly useful advice I'm in position to finish off my foe.


That imaginary enemy. Rendering big dense and realistic CG forests...


Even after upgrading my computer's RAM, this task has been killing my machine and my efforts. Now with a brilliant suggestion from David, I just rendered this forest in just under 15 minutes (my normal forests, IF they rendered, took well over an hour).

While it is very rough around the edges, this is of course just a demonstration of the concept.

What is the concept?

The majority of the trees you saw a moment ago were not actually proper 3D models, but rather a CG equivalent of a 2D cardboard cut out. To make them, I rendered the true tree model as a 2D image, than applied it on a plane object, and amped up the alpha setting (which a non-3D person would think of as transparency... but don't get me going on what transparency actually does in 3D...).

Apart from some issues I'm having with the 2D image (it has a white outline due to slight greys around the edges) this looks perfect. I just need to seek out a solution in my graphic editing software (not that that won't be a headache).

Thanks David!