Cassina Prive 241 by Philippe Starck

It's been 3 months since I started working as a 3D visualiser. i hardly have time for myself since working, including updating this blog.

Nevertheless, this time I am presenting my latest work. I modelled this settee based on the real product designed by Philippe Starck. An elegant leather sofa with the challenge of building the tufted cushions and tuning the material, yet it's an interesting piece of modelling work.

The real Cassina Prive 241 31/33G, designed by Philippe Starck:

(Source: Archiexpo)

More info: Cassina

Keroro Gunso であります!!

Keroro Gunso is a funny and awesome animation. Keroro is my favourite character in the show. I decided to model the character and did some simple animation, after watching the show again recently.

Modelling was not difficult and I enjoyed watching the Keroro animation I created.

The completed model

Keroro without texturing (right) and with complete texturing (left)

This is the animation I created using the 3D model, rendered in 3DS Max+VRay and composed in Flash.

Feels good! Kero kero kero...

Things I Do Morning and Night

Brushing teeth is a typical activity every morning and night, for most people.

Since I am so free these days, I decided to model and render things I see and use daily, as practice.

So this is the free time work I produced, experimenting with DOF, as usual.

Classy Furniture Design by Reed Hansuld

I stumbled upon this magnificent piece of furniture on the Internet, designed and made by Reed Hansuld. I decided to do some modelling exercise by creating this dining chair.

I also experimented on various DOF effect. I also did another version of the furniture with stainless steel frame and leather cushion.

Both chairs look amazing regardless of the materials, it is the unique design that gave the soul to the chairs.

Reed Hansuld's website can be found here: http://www.reedhansuld.com/index.html

Finally...

The completed rendering with some adjustments, rendered using VRay Frame Buffer.

Evermotion Rendering Competition

Recently I came across of this rendering competition organised by Evermotion. The other participants are EXTREMELY highly skilled so I don't expect to win anything.

Anyway I joined with the hope to improve my skills and learn the rendering techniques from others. In fact, this is my first time doing exterior night scene.

Work in progress:

Rendering with DOF:

First try on VRayfor SketchUp

This is my visual work modelled in SketchUp and rendered with VRay for SketchUp (v4su) for SU 6. Took me 3 days to learn, honestly, the user interface appears not much different from that of 3DS Max. If you understand VRay for 3DS Max, this shouldn't be too difficult to learn. Unfortunately, some of the work flow are not user friendly enough and I would rather turn to 3DS Max. I wish I can use IES lighting as there's only VRay light provided. And I also wish that the rendered view is not cropped from the seen view. Anyway, it's good to see photorealistic rendering from SketchUp.

Chinese New Year 2009 animation

This is the animation by 8TV in conjunction with Chinese New Year 2009. I love the characters and the storyline. Enjoy!

中國風. Chinese style

My latest visualisation work with traditional Chinese architecture. I tried to use the water shader (ocean lume) to simulate the water. The water generates caustic effect though the effect is not good enough. I use mental ray with mr sun+mr sky. I found the mr photographic exposure quite useful and comparable to vray physical camera in terms of usability and function.

中國風. Chinese style

I love the Chinese style pop songs which incorporate the traditional elements into the music. Jay Chou's music is one of the best example. This had inspired me to do 3D visualisation with Chinese elements. This visual was done based on a photo of Chinese style landscaping, with mental ray and daylight system.

The Pinnacles Interpretive Centre

When producing exterior rendering, I always use the render engine's daylight system. For VRay, I use the VRay sun and VRay sky; as for mental ray, I use mr sun and mr sky. The daylight system produces good results for exterior rendering.

The following images are rendered based on the photo I took at the Pinnacles Interpretive Centre during my visit to Australia. I love the play of shadow on the timber frame.

mental ray: mr sky+mr sun

VRay: VRay sky+VRay sun

The Pinnacles Interpretive Centre

Head Modelling

This was the head modelling result for the fifth attempt, based on several tutorials. It was done with poly-modelling method which I think offers flexibility and ease of use. It's time consuming and the form was not that impressive. Still needs practice...

Church of Light-Tadao Ando

I tried to model and render the Church of Light by Tadao Ando. The above was rendered with VRay The light effect looks fake as it was done with Photoshop....:(


And this was done with mental ray, looks quite good. Which of the above looks better?

Photomatch & Exterior Rendering

An attempt to practise photomatch technique and exterior rendering based on photograph. Looks different when compared to the original photo but that's fun!

The original photo

Rendered picture

Another practice work

Practise, practice and keep practising!

First try on mental ray

After 2 years of VRay experience, I decided to learn mental ray, the GI renderer that comes with 3DS Max.

After reading the tutorials and trial renderings, I was able to grasp some fundamental concept of mental ray. It's important to understand how Final Gather and Global Illumination work in mental ray in order to get the realistic results. The Arch & Design shader which is designed for mental ray is user friendly. The preset parameters are good enough to generate realistic results.

After several attempt, I came up with this visual which was rendered with mental ray. Not bad tough but I would say that VRay offers a more straight forward solution once the basic concept is understood.

The following visual was done with VRay. It has more realism compared with with the previous one. I believe with more practice, I will create better results with mental ray.

A lesson for character modelling

Another attempt to learn character modeling.

Piggie

After some time working with architectural visualisation, it's not a bad idea to switch to modelling with other stuffs. This time, I tried a tutorial to model a simple piggie. It's absolutely fun and enjoyful.

Happy Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese new year to everyone!

Physical Camera Rendering

This is my attempt using the physical camera for rendering. It's very useful for controlling exposure and creating the depth of field (DOF) effects. I found that the colour is closer to reality using physical camera as the exposure can be adjusted. The first rendering was produced without DOF.

The rendering below utilised the DOF function provided by the physical camera