form and dysfunction

Presentation at SAI

2011-02-20T18:15:00.003Z

Hi all,

I will be giving a talk/presentation at the Society of Architectural Illustration (SAI) in London in April. If you are not already a member please apply!

I will be presenting some of my recent work (over the last few years) and going through a large animation project in detail, covering all aspects of the production from initial brief right through to the final output and presentation to the clients.

http://www.sai.org.uk/blog/?p=388

I hope to see you there!

IRAY Is Here!

2010-09-11T09:53:00.004+01:00

IRAY is here, folks. Well, soon anyway. Either it's going to be released as a free upgrade for Subs Customers during 2011's cycle or it will ship with 2012, either way that's soon.

Here are a few details/demos of it in use:

http://area.autodesk.com/ibc/movie08

I have fired off a load of questions to Ken (or anyone else willing to answer) and will post back any responses I receive. See the questions below:

1) will the scene workflow for IRAY be basically the same as with MR? I.e. photometric lights, A&D materials, Daylight System etc. Will using IRAY require anything that using MR wouldn't?

2) will proxies eventually be supported? will they be supported for the initial stable release?

3) are there any plans to enable multiple renderers within the same scene file? i ask because it would be fantastic to be able to switch between MR and IRAY depending on how much time you have available on deadlines etc, negating the need to create a second file just for MR/IRAY/scanline.

4) will it take advantage of multiple GPUs within the same workstation?

5) will it take advantage of multiple machines on a network, both CPU and their GPU(s) in the same way that DBR currently works? thus, will we be able to create a GPU-Farm rather than traditional CPU-based render farm?

6) are there any plans to release some comparison benchmarks showing how rendertimes drop by increasing the number of CPUs/GPUs both in the same workstation and across a network?

7) will standard GeForce cards (460-480 for example) work or will we need Quadros?

8) will we be able to combine multiple renders of the same scene file to produce a better converged result? (a-la Maxwell).

9) will we be able to resume renders? (after max has been closed and restarted, not just within the same session).

10) will IRAY be able to generate passes and channels such as alpha, zdepth etc or just beauty passes?

11) will render region/crop work or can we rely on picked-buckets to refine/revise certain areas of a render? (just thinking about last-minute client requested changes that hopefully won't require a full re-render).

12) will the usual output formats work? Just thinking about OpenEXR, which I use exclusively now.

13) will Gamma Workflow be taken into account/needed?

Suffice to say, this thing is looking fantastic already!

40 Bond Part 2!

2010-01-13T21:45:00.005Z

And here are some more!

here

Fantastic Photos of 40 Bond

2010-01-13T21:27:00.004Z

40 Bond:

Some fantastic photos of 40 Bond Street, a project I worked on with several others at Hayes Davidson a few years back, are up here for viewing.

Some great photography and really interesting to see the stairwell is now blue instead of white! (image on right is my original CGI)

http://alexyork.co.uk/

2010-01-11T10:13:00.001Z

I have just launched my new website.

Please have a look:

http://alexyork.co.uk/

Octane GPU-Based "Unbiased" Renderer

2010-01-11T07:34:00.003Z

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=841503

A new GPU-based "unbiased" renderer is now available. I say "unbiased" because it allows you to change things like trace depth, which is a little dubious for something supposedly unbiased. That said this looks rather impressive and the node-based approach is excellent.

Check it out.

Louis Marcoux Reveal Techniques in MAX

2010-01-09T12:12:00.003Z

Louis Marcoux has released a series of great videos detailing various Reveal Techniques in MAX. Well worth checking out.

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/louis/reveal_techniques_and_autodesk_university_in_las_vegas

Maxwell Render v2 is out

2009-09-29T13:33:00.003+01:00

lots of new features. speed increase being the biggest, obviously. not had a chance to test it yet because old v1 license doesn't want to work with v2 any more, and no response from NL....

Lightroom 2.5 Is Out

2009-09-17T08:25:00.003+01:00

New cameras are supported + bug fixes (import dialogue no longer pops up when unchecked!)

Grab it here:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4572

Max 2010 Design 64-bit SERIOUS bug

2009-09-15T10:12:00.000+01:00

I’ve found a very serious bug… Max Design 2010 SP1 + Connection Extension, Vista Home Pro 64-bit.

1) Render an image
2) Save it as a .tif (for example) called render_01.tif
3) With the same file open, render a new image (a crop for example)
4) Save image, pick render_01.tif in file dialogue and RENAME text to “render_02.tif”
5) render_01.tif is OVERWRITTEN with new render and render_02.tif does NOT exist!

In other words, when picking an existing file, changing the name and hitting save, the ORIGINAL file is overwritten.

I’ve just lost 7 hours of rendering because of this bug.

Can anyone else confirm?

New AMD Graphics Cards Sept 10th

2009-08-25T11:05:00.002+01:00

Hopefully it will have a few features/enhancements for the DCC market and not just games.

Quick Tip(s)

2009-08-17T14:07:00.002+01:00

1) CMYK jpegs don't work in max/mentlray/mw - cause crashes.

2) Don't use User Paths to force max/mr to find maps, use proper addresses (absolute if possible).

3) use uncompressed TGA/TIFF/PNG rather than JPEG where possible. (for speed, so renderer doesn't have to decompress them)

Vray RT Siggraph Demo

2009-08-11T10:18:00.002+01:00

This is quite something...

Max 2010 SP1 is out

2009-08-11T10:14:00.004+01:00

Make sure you grab it asap. It fixes the background processor/RAM usage issues, so you can now use your PC while rendering. Nice of AD eh?

Maxwell Tips

2009-08-11T09:20:00.004+01:00

I've been using Maxwell Render on and off for several years now but have only just moved on to 1.7.1 recently. Here are a few tips and workflow methods I've picked up on my travels:

------------------------------------------

sky preview in design 2010:

The sky preview can be enabled in any 3D Max Design version by doing the following:

1. Close any instance of the 3D Max Design.
2. Open DXManager.ini from C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMaxDesign\2010 - 32bit (or 64)\enu\plugcfg\ and set ManagerEnabled=1.
3. Start 3D Max Design.
4. In the MaxwellRenderer settings, click on the Sky Preview checkbox.

------------------------------------------

general tips:

- keep scene near origin. further away from origin = less accurate lighting

- keep emitter polycount low

- disable motion blur on all objects (set to "none"), use "per object basis" on all objects for displacement to work

- always use custom glass material, wizard mat or AD mat don't work

- no crop, use region instead

- don't mirror emitters

- don't mirror instances

- generally don't use instancing (renderer general settings)

- 242!!!! (value 0.95), set exposure JUST below bloom point, so brightest 242 = 242 in render.

- ND 99 (or less than 100!) for walls and pretty much everything

- turn off caustics

- stick with 2.2, 0.8 toning

- use 100% lambertian walls (roughness 100 does this)

- hide what is not visible

- ref 90 is a brighter derivative of ref 0 - ALWAYS brighter, but must be different, never use white unless you want dusty effect

- for ALL texture maps, use a brigher derivative version of same map for ref 90

- base ND = 8, not 3

- base roughness = 80-85

- in "normal" layer mode, must not exceed layer weight 100. in "additive", combination can go to 200, but no higher.

- ND 5-40 for most reflective surfaces, shiny

- ND 20-200 for most rough metals

- cloth, wood etc - use 80-95

------------------------------------------

clip maps:

- disable image filtering for transmittance image

- avoid screen mapping

- use nd = 1, roughness = 100

------------------------------------------

emitters:

- side of emitter makes difference to attenuation/reach but not brightness/luminance

- hide invisible emitters!

Autodesk Connection Extension is out

2009-08-11T09:15:00.004+01:00

Autodesk Connection Extension is out:

- SKP import (works well!)
- Streamlined Compositing with OpenEXR
- Enhanced Interoperability with Design Data
- FREE ImageModeler and MatchMover

Available through Subs.