Posted on July 27, 2008

• I’ve dropped the price for Lifetime renewals from $99 to $85. The price is also good for returning members. If you’ve purchased a Lifetime renewal within the past two weeks and would like the difference refunded please drop me a line and I will be happy to do so.

Posted on July 25, 2008

• Update: There was a problem with the triple-screen split file that I uploaded this morning. I’ve reuploaded the file with the proper images. Sorry about that!

• I’ve added dual and triple screen versions of “Pride (2008)” to the gallery this morning. In the end I had to cheat a little to get around the “Vue Cloud Bug” but I think the end result looks pretty good. Unfortunately this sort of cheat won’t work with “Moonlit Citadel” so that is why I am holding onto that one until a software fix is released. The render has been completed but the sky needs to be redone before it can be posted.

  I’ve read all of the comments regarding “Pride (2008)” with great interest. I knew it would be a polarizing image, and that not everyone would want to use it on their desktops. I was also well aware of the technical issues when I posted it. I’m glad that a lot of you enjoyed looking at it, even if you didn’t use it as a wallpaper. I’m not going to make any thematic comments here, but rather let the piece speak for me.

  As I said before, look for space and abstracts next!

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Posted on July 20, 2008

• Added my latest project to the gallery this morning. It’s a reworking of an piece I did back in 1999 called “Pride“. I thought I could probably improve on the original given the advances in volumetrics in the last 10 years, but it proved to be a more challenging project then I had anticpated and I spent a few extra days tweaking things.

  Anyway, it’s up now and I hope you all think it worth the wait. I think this one burned me out on Vue d’Esprit for a little while so, as I mentioned last time, I hope to do some space and abstracts next.

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Posted on July 14, 2008

• Status report time. Sorry I waited this long folks. I can see from some of the comments that some of you think I’m on vacation or dead or something if I don’t post here on a regular basis. I’m still alive and I am currently on my second hi-res render of my new project.

  I rendered the triple-screen versoin of “Moonlit Citidel” last week (a 50 hour process) and after reading the comments I’ve decided to keep it and re-render the sky when E-on releases their software update. If it looks like it will be more than a couple of weeks I will probably just post what I have, but I would rather not as a lot of you thought the cloud bug ruined the images.

  I’ve been working on my latest project for the past week or so. All I can say about it is that I haven’t seen anyone try this with Vue d’Esprit before (though I could be wrong) and it’s a tricky render. I hope to have it up in a few days, but I will post here if it’s going to be longer.

  I’ve been getting a lot of requests for abstracts and space images so perhaps I will try some of those after this project. They usually don’t take a long to develop and render as my ever-more-complex scenery images. Thanks for being patient. I’ve created a comments thread below if you have questions or feedback.

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Posted on July 3, 2008

• I’ve added the moonlit version of “Citadel (2008)” to the gallery this morning. I call it, simply enough, “Moonlit Citadel” and you’ll find it on the New Images page. It took a couple days longer to get a result that I was happy with, but I think the extra time was worth it in this case.

  I had a render finished on Tuesday but right before I posted it I decided to add some extra lighting to the Citadel itself (inspired by the original 1998 version).

  I should have a multi-screen render up in a couple of days. Last week I contacted the developers of Vue d’Esprit regarding the issue with the clouds in my mulit-screen renders looking different (and worse) than the clouds in the single screen version. I just received an answer from them this morning. Here it is (typos left intact):

  Hi Ryan, we found out what the problem was. It’s linked to te aspect ratio that’s different. And atmospehere are calculated based on one aspect, and the changes a bit (usually not that much) if you change the aspect ratio. But in your case, it changes a lot, so the atmosphere looks realy weird (in fact the math function behind it is stretched. We will try to correct this for the next software update, until then I hope this info will help you finalize your render. Let me know how it goes. Best regards. Matt

  Hopefully they can fix the problem and I can then redo some of the multi-screens which show the problem. Should I hold off on the multi-screen version of “Moonlit Citadel” until the issue is fixed? Leave your thoughts in the comments thread if you have any.

  A happy and safe Independence Day to all my USA Members!

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