CINEMA 4D AND THE ART OF SURGERY

It's been a while since the last post, but there really hasn't been much time to look over the edge of the monitor or leave alone in my "To Be Blogged" folder for that matter. Sharing with you that we're officially on Cinema 4D version 13 now, which really should have been version 12 it's that good. I love how the UI is cleaned up and it makes a lot more sense now. Most of all the physical renderer. It's getting to be one hell of a 3D program and the renderer is getting close to being real time and allowing us to work things up visually and in real time, artistically rather than methodically. So check it out if you're into 3D. Cinema is of course what we used to model this little sculpture for an image we did in collaboration with Hunter Freeman. For final render I much prefer KeyShot still, but Cinema 4D is getting there and I am glad KeyShot is getting into 4D at the same time. It will be great to have both legs to stand on.

INTERVIEW IN RESOURCE MAGAZINE

RESOURCE, a photo production magazine wanted to take a look under the hood of Raygun Studio and granted me an interview. The issue just arrived in our mailbox. I have no idea why of all images we offered, the rats breaking into someone's home was chosen, other than the people at Resource must share my dark streak. I think Alex Baker did a great job in turning my rants into a good read and it's a pretty accurate reflection of how we do things and what our philosophy is.

Although I was really hoping the part, where Alex asked me what kind of music we play at the studio and I told him about Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, that it would make the cut. I know it's probably about as esoteric as the Raydiosity Esoterica setting but it goes well with bending splines, subdividing polygons and extending long gradients. What's interesting to me, back in Germany where electronic music was pretty much invented in the 70s, there were discussions—fears—about whether electronic music and synthesizers would someday soon displace traditional music and wooden instruments. The discussions in our industry today about CGI and photography remind me of that. And I get this question quite often, whether CGI threatens to replace photography. I don't know the answer to that, but what I do know, is that electronic music has come a long way since the 70s... it's all over the place now... but it really never made a dent into Polka. Or for that matter... Jazz.



Thanks again, Aurelie, Alex and Thomas for the interview. You can find out more about Aurelie's Resource Magazine or subscribe to the print edition on their website.

SIGGRAPH 2010 IMPRESSIONS

Managed to spend a day at Siggraph in LA a couple of weeks back to get caught up with whats new and what will be new in CG. Overall impression? Faster, higher res, touch screens, and ground zero for GPU vs. CPU rendering. Nothing earth shattering really, its more evolutionary. Seems we have reached the point, where the tools and the speed is there and it's now coming down to the artistry. Which is perfectly fine with me :-).

Okay, I am going in...


A 180 view from the entryway.



The break dancers at the live motion capture booth seemed tired, even though they were working in shifts of three. What a job.



And then there was this realtime interactive demo of a fully-raytraced Porsche aus Stuttgart on an HD display touch screen. Change colors in real time. Definitely for those who don't know what they want and put off their decision making until the last second. But don't they realize that all creative reviews and sign-offs are now done on iPhones nowadays?


RealFlow 5... had a look at their sheeter demon, so maybe our CG water can finally be less "cheesy" and nice integration with the Maxwell rendering in Cinema 4D. The pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit together quite nicely. This is going to be just what the doctor ordered for a piece we're working on with Robert Schlatter.


Best of all, the guys from Luxion/KeyShot showed off Version 2.1 of their realtime rendering software, with translucent materials (aka subsurface scattering) and lots of small improvements overall. Please ship now...

KEYSHOT, HOTROD & WHATNOT

It's been a while since I uploaded any real work or something worth looking at, so to all those who haven't jumped ship yet from our humble little blog, this is for you. I checked out a hot rod show in the East Bay a few weekends ago and looked at some mighty fine cars with Frank, Connie and Alex. A 1932 roadster was especially fine and inspired me to do this render job. It's been a bit of a dry run lately so this was also good render therapy. Enjoy.