update needed...

Well I've not updated for a while (thanks for reminding me warren ;) so straight to it:

First up I've posted a panoramic quicktime VR of the Botannical Gardens in Sheffield. It was created by taking about 18 shots around a central point on a hand digital camera. These were then cleaned up in photoshop by altering the lighting and levels and finally stitched together and imported into VRWorx where the quicktime movie was created.

Next up is a couple of HDR images that I have created for use. They are basically around 10 or 12 different exposure shots of a spherical object (the back of a dented ladle in my case) which are then imported into HDRshop and the HDR image generated. Download the first and second HDR images if you want to test them out in a 3D program.

Third up are some test renders of a bathroom scene I created especially to play with basic external single point lighting through a window. They were rendered using mental ray and after a lot of playing about with settings things started to make sense. Check them out (and the other bits) in the 3D section.

Next up is a test futuristic city scene I'm creating for a poster. For the first time I'm using render layers which basically mean you render different elements of the 3D scene out into layers such as a shadow layer, colour layer, specular layer etc. This means that you dont have to keep rendering the whole scene out every time you make a change, just the layer where changes have occurred. It also means you can import the layers into photoshop and play about with them to get a better effect than from the full render. Finally it means you can paint over areas in photoshop with new elements from photos or just hand painted things and this can give you a good final piece. Thanks to Jay and Steve from SimplyMaya for explaning and showing what render layers are about and how they can be used :)

I've got a few more things on the go but they can wait for another posting soon ;)