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.