HDR Christmas Tree - Happy Holidays!
Added 2021-12-20 11:44:52 +0000 UTCHey!
After all the talk about EXR and the advantage of getting all the high dynamic range data out of Blender, I thought I'd make a proper HDR render for the holidays!
The shape consists of a curve object, duplicated 17 times using an array modifier.
The material is created by combining a glass shader with an emission shader that emits light based on the pointiness of the geometry. This introduces some artifacts at the tips, which are concealed by the diffuse parts on the curve objects. These additional objects are made from a separate curve, and has the animation offset by a tiny bit. This also creates an interesting smear effect on the motion!
The animation is mainly driven by animating the Start and End Mapping Factor of the curve objects. The thickness of the curves are controlled with the Bevel Radius for each control point on the curve. To change this thickness, select a control point on the curve and adjust it with CTRL + A, similar to the workflow shown here. You can also see the Bevel Radius value of each selected control point by pressing N in the viewport.
The animation was 900 frames rendered with 512 samples in Cycles. What makes it HDR is partially by exporting in EXR to Davinci Resolve. I'll make a tutorial about how to create videos in HDR after the holidays, so make sure you're subscribed on YouTube!
Download the project file here: Happy_Holidays_v3.0.blend
Hope you will have a great holiday with family and friends, wherever you are in the world. I will be spending it here in cold Norway, where I hope to go hiking one of the days and maybe set up a campfire and have something warm to drink. How will you be spending your holidays?
Also, please remember that the holidays can also be a difficult time for some, so spread the love wherever you can - whether it's a stupid gift, a friendly message or a warm smile 🤎 Take care, my friends!
- Asbjørn
