Posted on September 28, 2015

I recently installed an old copy of Vue 8 on my Arion workstation so I could render an ultra-hires version of “Red and Gold” for print. While waiting for two new Autumn renders to finish on Shadowfax and Bucephalus I went looking through my old Vue files for likely candidates for new print renders.

That’s when I came across this Autumn version of “Untouched that I created way back in 2008 but for some reason never got around to rendering full-size. I set Arion to rendering and here’s the scene at 5k.

What do you think? Pickle Jar or Gallery??

I hope to have my two new Autumn renders up in the next couple of days so stay tuned!!

Posted on September 18, 2015

I’ve added a version of “Core World” rendered specially for single-screen systems (ie: most of them). It’s strange that Vue and Lightwave both behave different when I change the aspect ratio of my scene. If I design a multi-screen scene (15360 x 2880) in Vue and then reset the camera to 5120 x 2880, it will keep the horizontal FOV and add open up the top/bottom of the frame. If I do the same in Lightwave however it will keep the vertical FOV and crop the horizontal. It makes things a little tricky when creating multiscreens out of single-screen scenes and vice versa.

Posted on September 15, 2015

“Core World” is new in the Members Gallery this evening. With this piece I am imagining what the sky might look like on a world near the galactic center, without all the interstellar dust that darkens our own view of the galaxy.

I rendered the background using Lightwave and the foreground is Vue. Like most of my post-Shadowfax projects, this one was conceived and rendered first as a multiscreen. The single-screen version is a crop of the triple-wide frame, but I will probably render a dedicated single-screen version soon.

My first version (with the golden sky) took nearly 180 hours to render on Bucephalus while the gallery version (with a sky which brings out more the colors in my stars) took only 48 hours on the same machine. The difference? I increased the “world diameter” (moving the horizon further away) and used a flat plane rather than a displaced surface for the water.

Which do you prefer?

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Posted on September 11, 2015

It occured to me not long ago that while I have wallpapers for several holidays, I have neglected one very imporant holiday: Your Birthday. Now, I don’t like to render food (or have it on my wallpaper) so I tried to think of something else.

I hope you like what I came up with. I put it together on my laptop while Shadowfax rendered the first draft of another new Autumn piece I am working on.

Of course I am posting it because it is my own birthday today (YAY!). To celebrate I am offering the new wallpaper for FREE today for anyone else who shares my birthday (or has one coming up). Enjoy!

Posted on September 7, 2015

I’ve added an updated version of “The Golden Hour” to the gallery this morning. The changes are subtle, mainly I’ve varied up the foliage color and added a few taller trees to the mix. I also set the “atmosphere quality” settings much higher than the first version so the light beams should be less noisy. The downside is the image took 3 times as long to render.

While the render was churning on Shadowfax I shifted over to Bucephalus and started a new project. I hope to have it up in the next few days so stay tuned!

Lastly I wanted to mention that there’s FREE WORLDWIDE SHIPPING in my Society6 store for today only (edit extended to 9/8/15).