Backlit Onyx stone test:

Elevator unit: (Lighting achieved using 2 Dome Lights)

Front structure, 1960′s. Damn complicated to simulate with V-Ray!

I cannot resist to render every single progress step I make :)

More images coming soon, stay tuned!

These days I decided to explore materials behaviour a little bit further than in still images, which are done all the time here at FlyingArchitecture. We set the reflection perfectly for each shot, just to maximize the impact on client and save the render-time at the same time, but I have a qestion – What would happen, if we just watch this scene in a moving animation, how would these materials behave? I am not interested in any perfect plastic materials with shiny reflections and almost no bump. I am talking about some advanced materials. And hell yeah, in Rhino. No tutorials, no references, just pure exploring.

The only problem is time – There is never enough of time just to make tests we need. Fortunately, one of our clients cancelled a job we were supposed to do, so as we had some free time, we could make some tests.

Back in 2011 (January), I got an idea for a nice chair design. So I made a RAW 3D model and left the scene abandoned. It even got it’s name – “Katana chair.” Yeah, You are guessing right – I opened this scene now, in 2012 (May) and I took the chair, finished the model, made some initial details, created UV maps for all parts – even the metal parts – and started to make some textures in PS. These were quite big, 5000 x 5000 pixels, but I was really satisfied with them, because I gained a large amount of detail in final stills. (yeah, again – I just made still images to test the scene :) )

Okay, enough of talking. Right now the first sequence is finished (150 frames, 9:45 per frame), and the second sequence is in progress (150 frames, 10:45 per frame). I am using V-Ray DOF, to get really realistic DOF effect. Insane? I think so. Next time I will learn how to use Zdepth pass in After Effects :) I promise!

The reason of making this animation is mainly to get as much realism as possible. For the second sequence I even added some waterdrops, so I hope this will make some nice effect in the end ;)

Okay, the final animation is here :) A bit sooner than I expected.

Information:

Software used: Rhinoceros 5, V-Ray 1.5, Photoshop (for textures), After Effects (for final video and adding a logo.)

Resolution: HD (1280 x 720 pix, 24fps)
Rendertime per frame: from 9 to 10 minutes.

Rendered on my single i7 CPU during the weekend.

And here are some still images from the video:

And that’s it :) Nothing so special, just a test scene made during 2 days.
If You have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments area!

Some re-thinking in PS and understanding of surfaces and directions.

Front side sectioning.

Back side sectioning.

Back support legs.

Legs are done.

And the chair is almost done.

Realtime viewport rendering with Neon for Rhino.

I will add some more images as soon as I make a progress later today :)

Recently I found some free time to make a few tests in V-Ray and Rhino. My aim was to achieve as realistic fabrics as possible. Starting with leather was not pretty good idea, because I tried to draw a bump map by myself in Photoshop and it just looked bad.

Then I realized that it is almost impossible to get nice wrinkles using 200 pix PS brush, so I got some reference images from the Internet, stacked one above another in Photoshop layers and what I got was pretty nice bump map. I made a few test renderings, and just then after 9 attempts it looked good.

Big challenge in Rhino was to unwrap this set of simple NURBS surfaces to one and single UV map, to have a control over the model using the only V-Ray material. Fortunately, I was successful :)

For making these textures as optimized as possible, as a Diffuse and first Bump maps I used a single texture, which was even cropped and scaled down, therefore for the correct mapping of this fauteuil, You have to repeat both of these 10 times in both U and V directions (all set in V-Ray material settings).

Of course, this 3D model with all textures is available for free from my website, FlyingArchitecture.com. Click here to download this “fauteuil bas”

Diffuse + bump map for the fabric

Bump map for some nice wrinkles.

Let me know in the comment area below, what do You think about the final result, or even better – give me some suggestions about Your workflow for objects like this. I will be very grateful :)

Real scene and a furniture handle using advanced materials:

And this is what You will need for an image like this :)

18/04/2012 – Google homepage :)

Nadväzujúc na úspešný workshop v Barcelone by som chcel týmto oznámiť prvé informácie ohľadom workshopu, ktorý sa bude konať v najbližších týždňoch v Bratislave. Ešte nie je isté miesto (FA-STUBA?), čas (o dva týždne?), ani cena (cca 200-250euro/osoba? pre študentov), ale rád by som vedel predbežný záujem.

Workshop by bol dvojdenný s nasledujúcim obsahom:
Rhinoceros 5 + V-Ray 1.5 + Photoshop

Pokiaľ by ste mali nezáväzný predbežný záujem, dajte prosím vedieť do komentu.
Ďakujem.
Matúš Nedecký

Teaser image for the new FlyingArchitecture forum.
Rhino > Marvelous designer > Rhino > V-Ray > Photoshop.

Wasting some spare time at the airport by taking some reference photos…