08 March 2010
I just released Render Presets, another free plugin for LightWave 3D. It lets you manage a library of common rendering related settings to quickly organize, apply or switch between them.
This started out as a script I wrote a long time ago when I worked with a project where I constantly needed to change between different Global Illumination settings, so to keep my sanity I whipped up a script to quickly switch them on the fly.
Render Presets for LightWave 3D
I continued to find it useful and over time I’ve included additional settings that I’ve had use for. I finally decided to clean up the user interface to be more generic and add more of LightWave’s common render settings so I could release it in public. In this release presets can be setup for Global Illumination, Render Flags, Camera Antialiasing, Backdrop and Processing Effects. I might add a few more options in the future when time permits.
Read more and download the plugin here »
05 December 2009
Weekend, and I found some time to explore ZBrush 3.5 R3 which was released last week. I’ve spent a few hours playing around with the new polish, trim and planar brushes for hard surface sculpting. I can’t help continue falling deeper and deeper in love with this application, the new brushes are really awesome.
I haven’t posted here in a long time – work, work, work. But here is a few quick doodles I created earlier today while having fun with the new ZBrush version until I get some more time to write something more interesting.
Hard Surface Gun Sculpted in ZBrush.
ZSketch and then the retopologized poly mesh.
See more ZBrush Hard Surface Doodles »
01 October 2009
Just another quick entry with something until I get time to update my portfolio. Here is a CG illustration of a dinochicken, chickenosaur or whatever to call it – I did a few weeks back with modo 401 for the latest issue of the magazine Filter (issue 10, October & November 2009) currently on sale wherever you can get Swedish magazines.
Chickenosaur - Published in Filter Magazine issue 10, Oct & Nov 2009
I created this illustration to accompany an interview with the American paleontologist Jack Horner, known for being the advisor on all Jurassic Park films, regarding his theories to use chicken DNA to re-create the dinosaurs.
I love to use modo for print work, it really shines when working with stills. Here is another image of just the modo render:
The T-Rex being born in an egg box. He would probably be pretty upset hanging out in my kitchen.
And a shot of the scene in modo…
The dinochicken scene in modo
Oh, here’s also one of the early versions, which I thought turned out kind of funny. This is the pose I would have preferred to go with myself.
Oh yeah, birth anxiety!
Anyway, I’m currently occupied with a film shot and when I’ve delivered that scene I believe I’ll have some time to update my portfolio. (I seem to keep pushing the portfolio update ahead of me…)
Til next time. Cheers!
30 September 2009
I just released a small Python script for modo to export the selected layer(s) to an OBJ file.
There were a few layer to OBJ scripts available for modo but none that worked like I wanted or properly with modo 401. I needed this functionality badly right now to bring layers out as separate OBJ files and then take them into ZBrush as SubTools. I do this many, many times each day in my work so this script saves me some decent amount of time. Maybe GoZ will deprecate this script when it’s released for Windows. We’ll see, but until then it’s a nice companion for a modo <-> ZBrush workflow.
Get the modo script here »
I’ve been wanting to learn Python for some time now, and creating this script was a nice little introduction to Python for me. Many other applications I use can be scripted through Python, so definitely a good language to touch some base with in other words. Not to forget that the upcoming LightWave CORE will have a solid Python API.
30 September 2009
I finally had some time to play around a bit with the recently released version 3.5 of my favorite application, ZBrush. The new sketch spheres in the ZSketch mode is really interesting, and as usual with ZBrush – brilliantly fun to work with.
Just a quick ZSketch i doodled together while exploring this new tool.
Doodling in the new ZSketch mode in ZBrush
ZBrush 3.5 is overall another impressive release from Pixologic. I love the new ZSketch mode and I hope I soon will get an opportunity to use it in production. I just wish Pixologic had updated their plugins to work with 3.5 before releasing it. I’ve come to depend on many of Pixologics plugins, so I’ll have to keep using ZBrush 3.1 in my daily work until they are updated. But til then I’ll continue having some fun with the sketch spheres in 3.5.
21 September 2009
Turntable Viewer version 2
I’ve just released version 2 of my Turntable Viewer to showcase rendered turntable clips on the web.
Major new features in version 2 are:
- Implemented a loader for jpg/png/gif image sequences.
- Implemented a theme option to create a custom theme for the viewer.
- Included better documentation.
- Changed to a more flexible Creative Commons license agreement, which allows the viewer to be freely used on commercial and corporate websites as well. Go nuts!
I rewrote the entire application architecture from scratch since the last release to be fully object oriented for easier additions of new features. I will be occupied with some work in the coming weeks so I decided to take a snapshot of the current version and release it today as I won’t have time to look at it again for the next month or so. There was a few more things I wanted to add and some things I wanted to fix, so I guess I’ll make another update later this autumn when I get some time for it.
In the meantime, enjoy this new version, I hope the inclusion of the image sequence loader will be useful and make it much easier to use.
Grab the new version of the Turntable Viewer »
Cheers!
25 August 2009
Here’s a quickie. I couldn’t sleep tonight, so I spent some time messing around in ZBrush. I’ve doodled for an hour or two, no references used – just having some fun while trying to sculpt a decent head from a couple of ZSpheres. The neck, what to say, looooong…
Late Night Doodling in ZBrush
Well, now I guess I’ll catch the late night run of Stargate SG-1 or something on the telly and see if I can get some sleep at last.
Til next time…
19 August 2009
I just released my flash Turntable Viewer, to be downloaded and used on your own site if you wish.
Screenshot of the flash Turntable Viewer
I’ve got several requests about it lately, so today I made the ‘quick-n-dirty’ release. With quick and dirty I refer to that I haven’t had time to write any proper documentation or add all features that I’d like it to have for a public release. I did add the option to customize the control bar’s colors through an external XML file today though.
I’m very busy at the moment, so instead of holding back the release until I get time to finish everything I want, feel free to use this version if you’re one of those hardcore web people who don’t mind poking around a bit yourself to learn how it works.
Check my included example html, xml and swf files in the archive to learn how you can set it up and do some customization. At the moment you need to convert your rendered sequences to a swf file (like the ones in the example folder) so you need a flash authoring application to do that. That will change for the next version where you will be able to use an image sequence of jpg or png files instead without the need for any flash authoring whatsoever to use it.
Download the Turntable Viewer here.
Enjoy!
11 August 2009
I’ve made a massive update to the Color Management article I posted about a month ago, now it spans a whopping 8 pages.
The article is expanded with a full color managed workflow for LightWave 3D with display proofing, a generic color managed workflow for all other 3D applications that lacks full color management. A linear gamma corrected workflow for modo and LightWave 3D. Color managed workflows for Photoshop and After Effects as well as a section on monitor calibration and profiling with a Spyder 3 Elite.
I originally wrote the article focused on how to deal with a wide gamut display and 3D renderings, as I was suffering from bad oversaturation problems since I got my wide gamut display. But after I had published it I continued researching the subject and returned to the article last week and kept expanding upon it, and it took life of its own and grew page by page…
Article Overview
Enjoy and cheers!
