Posted on May 2, 2013

I’ve added a night version of “Sakura” to the Members Gallery this morning (Dual and Triple-Screen Now Available!).

It was my original intention to create a night scene that used some of the same “bio-luminescence” from “Satori”. I played around with quite a few different textures on the petals (see the blue Pickle Jar version here).

The results, however, were underwhelming. The idea struck me as I was falling asleep one night to light the scene from beneath and that’s when I thought up the floating lanterns.

Fortunately I remembered my idea the next morning. I modeled the lanterns in Lightwave, imported them to my scene and set up the lights. I have to admit that my first test renders really took my breath away.

I hope you like the results! I almost prefer this one to the day version…

Posted on May 1, 2013

I have couple of different projects cooking right now. One is a night version of “Sakura” that I think will look really great when it’s finished rendering (fingers crossed that it finishes successfully soon!).

I did a few experimental “Sakura” renders in preparation for my night scene and one of them (a day render with blue blooms) looked Pickle Jar worthy to me. I’ve posted a single-screen render this morning for my Members to download.

Be on the lookout for the night version soon. I also have a bit of a space theme working on “Asfaloth“…

Posted on April 25, 2013

Added “Jelly (2013)” to the Members Gallery this afternoon. Dual and triple-screen images are available.

I’ve wanted to update my jellyfish from 2000 for quite a while now but for some reason never got around to it.

Believe it or not I Googled “jelly fish” before I started this update to do a little research and my old render showed up on the first page of results!

Anyway, I was aiming for a bit more color this time around and to create a better sense of depth. I’ve played with adding more than one of these creatures to the scene but I think it works nicely with one (and works better as a homage to the original).

People are (rightly) fascinated by alien life from other worlds, but mind-boggling creatures do exist on our very own planet…

Let me know what you think of the update!

Posted on April 18, 2013

Around where I live we are still waiting impatiently for Spring to arrive. I’ve gotten so tired of the cold and gloom that I thought it would be therapeutic to create a new Spring wallpaper.

I’ve added “Sakura (2013)” to the Members Gallery this morning. I’ve wanted to update this piece for a long time, due to the fact that the cherry blossoms on the 2006 trees are actually 2D planes that lose detail closer to the camera.

Vue 11’s new “360 Ecosystems” finally allows me to create a proper flowering tree using 3D blooms. I’ve used this tech so far to create Christmas lights and a few glowing blooms but this is my first attempt at cherry trees.

This render itself is actually a “first draft” and there are a few aspects that I would still like to tweak, but I thought it came out nice enough to share while I render my revisions.

If you are curious, the scene contains over 98 billion polygons and took over 38 hours to render at 4096 x 2560. I’m hoping to cut down the render time for future versions.

Let me know what you think in the comments. I hope you like it!!

New Resolution:A lot of Members have been asking me if I could cover the new 21:9 (2560 x 1080) monitors that are coming out so I have finally added around 90 of my latest wallpapers in this format. You will find them in the “single screen” column on the image pages and the zip file is available at on the Downloads page.

Posted on April 10, 2013

By request, here‘s a day version of my Arrakeen render. Of course, my original vision was far darker and more ominous but I do like to provide options. I tried to make this one as bright as the other was dark so to provide a true contrast.

If you swap between the two images quickly you would probably notice that some building and rocks have moved. The reason for this is that certain elements looks fine in the shadows but needed to be retooled for the day version. Hopefully it isn’t too jarring for folks.

And yes, the center figure hasn’t moved. Let me know which version you prefer!