Posted on June 22, 2000

• Ever since I heard that Vue d’Esprit 3.1 was multi-threaded, I’ve wanted to try it out. Sunday I downloaded the latest beta (Ver. 6), installed it, and got busy setting up a scene to show off this “citidel-looking” mesh that I had built in Lightwave. I was hoping to post it for you back on Monday, but unfortunately that was not to be.

  To make a long story short, Vue 3.1.6 seems to have a nasty bug. From what I can tell, a memory leak occurs during the last anti-aliasing pass. It slows the render to a crawl, and then crashes the program entirely just when the render is complete. As you might imagine, it is no fun to render an image for 12-14 hours only to lose it all at the very last moment. This has happened to me 4 times this week and, of course, the files created with the new beta will not open in previous versions of the software.

  The bug only occurs when I try a “render to screen” at 1600 x 1200. Vue has another option (“render to disk”), but for some strange reason the render times are multiplied by 10 whenever it’s used. I decided to render the image at 1152 x 864 using my main workstation, and render it to disk at 1600 x 1200 using one of my other computers.

  Hopefully that explains why this latest image, Overlord is a couple days late and a size smaller than I usually post. The 1600 x 1200 version will be up shortly (I hope). I didn’t intend for this to be a big time consumer, just a fun refresher exercise with a neat software package that I’ve been neglecting. The fun part, I guess, was in putting the scene together. Hopefully it shows and you’ll enjoy the wallpaper.

  I’d love to hear your comments on this image, and/or Vue d’Esprit, so don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

  I think I’ll move on to something else now….

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?