Posted on June 17, 2000

• Some of you were quite adamant that the statues in Phaeralon should stay. They are back in my latest renders. There are two versions, one with the familiar “white marble” texture applied throughout and the latest (featured) version with a faster rendering texture on the architecture.
• Added another “Synapse” render to the picklejar, based on the “unnumbered” version featured on the new images page.

Posted on June 14, 2000

• I’ve been working a little more on Phaeralon these past few days. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the first version. From the letters a lot of you wrote me, I can tell that you did too. Still, I felt the image was incomplete the way it was. I wasn’t thrilled with the scene behind the first set of columns, where things started repeating. I wanted something a little more interesting in the background.

  I added some architecture in the background and widened the front hall so you could see it better. In opening up the foreground, I also decided that the statues should go. They had to be moved farther off-center in the new hall and I just didn’t like how they looked from the new camera angle. They are still present in the 2nd version (in the pickle jar), but in my latest render I’ve removed them in favor of two reflecting pools on either site of the walkway.

  I don’t think this image is complete yet, but it’s been a week now since I posted anything new (where does the time go???) and that’s really longer than I want to take between updates. You’re more than welcome to send over any comments or suggestions you might have on my revisions.

• Thanks to all of you who wrote me about Synapse (the series). It seems most of you liked version 1 and version 4 the best, with a smattering of applause for versions 2 and 3. Interestingly, only a few of you liked the one that I chose to feature on the new images page. Hmmm. I guess that’s why I post multiple versions, so you can use the one you like.

Posted on June 7, 2000

• 30 minutes after I posted Phaeralon last week I stopped by Flay. That’s where I read about this “organic” modeler called Xfrog. I downloaded the trial version and was instantly hooked. Download it and see for yourself. Be warned though, it generates some seriously hi-poly meshes, and they might be too complex for a program like Bryce. Vue d’Esprit should be able to load them, but I haven’t tried it.

  So I set Phaeralon aside for the moment and rendered some “weird stuff”. Five of these renders are now up for your review. All are similarly themed (I guess) so I’m grouping them together under the name Synapse. Some of the images are more synaptic than others, I guess. Comments?

Posted on June 2, 2000

• Added Phaeralon today to the Day Scenery gallery. This one is basically an experiment to see if Lightwave 6 can handle radiosity (indirect lighting) on a “grand scale”. Looks good to me, what do you think?

Posted on May 30, 2000

• Jove is new today. There are a lot of things to like about living in San Diego, but exciting weather is not one of them. I miss huge thunderstorms rolling across the prairie, with lightning arcing from cloud to cloud. All we get in SD is an occasional fog bank. Very boring. Oh well, I guess that’s why I moved here…

  Anyway, “Jove” uses techniques that I think will come in handy later on. If you are familiar with my work, then you know that I have an affinity for puffy clouds. Bryce could do puffy clouds, but it took something like 24-48 hours to render a screen full of them. Lightwave 5 was big improvement but your control over the cloud texture was limited. Lightwave 6, finally, renders reasonably fast and allows full control. Jove (and it’s derivatives) rendered in less that 4 hours on 2 processors. Not bad.

  Because it rendered so “fast” I was able to render several hi-res cloudscapes to see how they looked. You can check out the rest in the Picklejar and if you have any comments you can send them my way.