Posted on September 24, 2011

I added “First Blush” to the Members Gallery today.

This one is a “mental photograph” of sorts. I was driving on an eastern Iowa freeway earlier this week when I looked to my right and saw a green, summerlike, wooded area with this one blazing red tree sticking out like a torch.

I only glimpsed the scene for about 5 seconds, but I thought it would make an interesting wallpaper. I fired up Vue when I got home and constructed this scene from memory (with a wee bit of artistic license).

My last few wallpapers have been a bit on the dark side, so I wanted to make at least one bright wallpaper before moving on to Halloween and the seasons beyond. I hope you like it!

Posted on September 17, 2011

Huzzah! The long delayed dual and triple-screen versions of “Enshrouded” finally finished rendering last evening and are now available to my Members. In the end it took over 1000 hours (!) for the render to complete.

Why did it take so long? The tree models I used for this scene were designed to be used as “Hero” foreground objects, with only a handful recommended in a scene, yet I carelessly scattered hundreds of them about. What can I say? I don’t like low-res objects…

There are also multiple layers of “volumetric” clouds, each casting shadows on onto each other and the scene. The more you can see through the cloud (where the trees fade away) the longer it takes for the raytracer to process.

Yes, the scene would have taken a lot less time to render on Bucephalus but I really didn’t want to tie up my main machine for 2 weeks. Fortunately my old box (Hydra) chugged away faithfully in my basement and didn’t crash even once. Thanks old friend!

Posted on September 12, 2011

The “Elegy” dual and triple-screens took quite a while longer to render than I had anticipated (115 hours!) but it is finally finished and available for Members to download. I’m thrilled that folks seem to really enjoy this latest render (it has even dethroned “Highland Spring” as my top rated wallpaper!).

I also celebrated my big 4-0 birthday yesterday by taking Ian to his first football game. We had an unforgettable time. It’s hard to believe I was a 25 when I started DB!

Here’s to another 15 years and beyond!

Posted on September 6, 2011

Back in August a Member (thanks Manu!) sent me a link to a photo on National Geographic’s website which reminded him of my “Autumnwood” wallpaper. I thought it would be a fun project to make my own version of the scene and this is the result. Now, it isn’t a complete copy. I didn’t have the photo open in another window while I was working on it, but it was definitely inspired by the NatGeo photo however.

I call this one “Elegy” as it has a bit of a mournful feel to it. Truth be told it took me a few hours to think of a decent title. I didn’t want to explicitly remake “Autumnwood” because I think that series still stands pretty well on its own. Don’t be surprised, however, to see a few seasonal variations of this one.

Please click through to the higher resolution version as the thumbnails don’t really represent this one very well. I hope you enjoy it!

PS: Here’s a print version on Zazzle (rendered a 5600 x 4500) if you want to place an order while their 50% off sale is going. Use coupon code “DECKYOURWALL” to get the discount.

Posted on September 2, 2011

A number of folks have asked if I could render a few different color variants of “String Theory”. I tried a few different combinations yesterday and found this one that I thought looked pretty good. It is available now in the Pickle Jar (multiscreens included).

I have also added a print version (rendered at 7680 x 4800) to my Zazzle collection.

Look for my first Autumn render of the year early next week. Hope you all have a great weekend!