Posted on May 3, 2000
- Thanks to everyone who wrote with comments on “Pyre”. Most of you seemed to like it, and those that didn’t seemed to simply want a blue version. Ok, if you want a blue version, you’ll find it in the Pickle Jar.
-
My project this week has been to learn World Builder’s “Z-Buffer Composer”. It basically allows you to render a scene in WB and then use Lightwave (or MAX or Maya) to add in additional elements.
What makes this different from “Photoshopping” the image is that the Z-buffer data allows you to render objects correctly in 3D space (hidden by near objects and in front of ones far away). The process is two-way, meaning you can render a scene in Lightwave and export the render with extra Z (depth) data to World Builder.
I chose a simple scene for my first attempt, a tornado. You can check out a hi-res render and an accompanying animation in the Picklejar. I’ve only spent a couple of days on this, but I think it looks interesting enough to share if only for the wind blowing through the trees 🙂 The texturing on the clouds needs some serious work, I know.
