colortwist

Vanessa - Sunset Flight (7/12)

Second angle for this particular shot.

Vanessa - Sunset Flight (6/12)

I don't think it's going to take much more to push her over the edge- or rather pull her up off the ledge...

Vanessa - Sunset Flight (5/12)

Second angle for this particular shot.

Vanessa - Sunset Flight (4/12)

Good thing they're still kinda squishy and haven't quite firmed up yet, otherwise she might not be able to reach that rope.

Vanessa - Sunset Flight (3/12)

Second angle for this particular shot.

Vanessa - Sunset Flight (2/12)

"Do I have your attention yet? I can already feel the serum bubbling up inside me and the show's about to begin!"

Vanessa - Sunset Flight (1/12)

"Here goes nothing- or rather 'there I go' if all goes according to plan"

Pool scene plans

Long story short, it seems like my pool scene has grown some legs and decided to head off in a slightly different direction.

When I originally came up with this scene, I knew I wanted to have a nice pool (which is thankfully already done) and some sort of environment to go around it that I could leverage for posing and experimentation with other expansion related activities. I was hoping that a simple rectangular fence around the area would suffice, but as I started working on that it quickly ...

Vanessa - Yeah, they're pretty big (latex)

Someone was asking if I could render the former images using that metallic latex material, so here they are- plus an extra angle just for fun (though it's pretty obvious the rest of the scene is missing from that angle).

The actual images are attached to this post as individual files.

Vanessa - Yeah, they're pretty big (3/3)

Last angle for this particular set. Like I said, I'll probably revisit this pose in the future when the scene is complete and I can spend the time adding a few things like some water droplets and stuff (plus I've got a better system for handling the pool ripples in the works).

Vanessa - Yeah, they're pretty big (2/3)

Alt angle for the previous render. At least this one doesn't quite feel as awkward as the last, though I still wish I could have leveled the camera more with the ground.

Vanessa - Yeah, they're pretty big (1/3)

This was a fairly rough attempt at doing something quick that actually made use of the pool somehow (like, beyond just serving as a simple backdrop). 

Unfortunately the camera angle landed up being a bit awkward since there's literally nothing modeled beyond the temporary deck ATM. I'll probably revisit this pose in the future when I've got the full scene working so I can get a better angle on things that doesn't feel so forced.

Special thanks to nedanecin for the initial pose idea....

Poolside water test

This is a render test of the current refraction/reflection setup for the pool and lamps (which attempt to simulate an airy volume behind the glass lenses, since that's where the energized bulbs are located). The surface of the water is kinda invisible here since there's not much to reflect around the pool, but that should get fixed soon enough when the rest of the scene starts to come together.

Otherwise, I think (read: I'm hoping) everything else is fairly accurate here. Part of the reason wh...

Poolside textures WIP

This was supposed to be a boring old render test, but I guess Vanessa couldn't stop herself from slowly floating into frame.

Anyways, I think I'm finally done with the pool (so the pool itself, steps, lamps, ladders, drains, and other assorted plumbing) plus all the semi-procedural shaders that go with that. Good riddance too, because I was really starting to get sick and tired of staring at those particular parts.

Next up is trying to figure out how to handle the wood plank deck, fence,...

Pool lighting WIP

WIP of the current pool lighting setup.

This isn't quite done yet, since I really need to figure out a better way of doing the tiles and texture a few other parts (specifically the tiles around the edge of the pool). I think I'm finally done modeling up parts for this particular section of the scene though.

Aqualight pool lamps

Yeah, I know... more boring pool equipment renders...

Just a quick render of the "mini" versions of the Amerlite pool lamps I'd previously modeled up. They're a slightly newer model designed for accent lighting on steps and stuff, which is probably where I'll land up using these.

I should probably apologize for the lack of updates- I've been working on stuff a lot lately, but I kinda got carried away on a few stupid design tangents that didn't pan out. Live and learn, I suppose. Thankful...

Latex test

I'm still here, and still busy working on pool modeling...

In the meantime, a friend had brought up the question of what a latex-like material would look like in the current scene. This is the end result. It needs a lot of work since the reflection is way too perfect for latex, but it seems to have turned out reasonably well for what it is.

I think I might have to have to have one of my upcoming characters "prefer" latex swimsuits over cloth, since I kinda fancy the look myself...

...

Vanessa - Adrift

Originally I was going to call this piece "flotation devices", but I kinda wanted to save that for a few renders of her right side up in the pool when the entire scene is finally finished.

Anyways, this is the first time I've tried to do something that looks "wet", so I'm not really sure if I hit that mark and I'm positive there's still a ton of room for improvement. Nevertheless, I got bored of staring at polygons in Modo and wanted to try and render out something different for a change.

Road map (26/08/18)

I'm not really a fan of text only posts, but I figured I should post something just so that everybody knows what to expect from me going into the future. So without further ado, here's a simple road map of what I'm working on, what I'll be working on, and what I'd like to accomplish as soon as possible.

1) Outdoor pool scene

This is my current project. I'm about 70% through the second (and final) revision. The ultimate goal is to produce a completely self-illuminating sc...

Poolside VR test in 8K resolution

Here's a VR render of the former poolside picture.

It probably goes without saying, but this scene is not yet finished. This is an older version of said scene (a ton of stuff has been changed since then, but it's not quite ready for rendering yet), which lacks more area behind the camera (where the seating is going), an entrance corridor, various plants/trees, lights on the fence (which will be a concrete/wood hybrid in the future), etc, etc, etc.

Basically, I was looking for an excuse t...

Amerlite pool lamps

Yeah yeah yeah...

I know- they're not boobs (insert "hopefully they're still a nice pair of cans!" joke here)... But at least they're going into a scene that will be used to render out boobs in the near future.

These are the underwater lamps I landed up modeling for my pool scene. They kinda took an embarrassing amount of time to get right, since all the shortcuts I tried to take seemed to fail when viewed from some extreme angle (which occurred way more often than you might thin...

Vanessa - Poolside lounging (alt 2)

Yet another angle of the previous scene.

Vanessa - Poolside lounging (alt 1)

Another angle I'd rendered out of the same scene.

Vanessa - Poolside lounging

I'm never really sure at which point something transitions from being a WIP to being a relatively finished piece.

In this case, the pool scene is far from being done, but I guess it worked out well enough for this image. I'll probably land up re-rendering it in the near future, but hopefully it's good enough for now.

WIP pool render

This is so WIP it's not even funny.

Nevertheless, progress is progress I suppose. A lot of stuff is shaded with flat textures at the moment, and I still have no idea if the pool tiles are going to be too busy or not. Likewise, this was rendered with a fairly low sample rate, so there's a lot of noise and weird moire patterns everywhere.

Pool pose WIP

Funny story about this pose- it's actually what sparked off my current project to model up an entire pool scene from scratch. Originally I was trying to render this out using some simplified geometry for a ledge (which she's lying on) and a literal topless cube for the pool- but that didn't work out too well since the scene wasn't detailed enough to give a good result (plus daytime lighting is kinda annoying to deal with, since you've only ever got one light and that's the sun).

Nevertheless, ...

Vanessa - Butt shot

This was done recently as a benchmarking test for some slightly more modernized hardware. The 4K resolution was a bit much given how much skin is visible on screen, so I'm not sure if I'll be adopting that resolution or not going forward. It'd probably work if the characters were a bit further away, but for this test the render time landed up being a bit excessive at nearly 3.5 hours per frame.

Pool progress

Yes, those are modeled wood planks making up the majority of the pool deck.

Yes, every single one of those was created by hand.

For some reason utterly beyond me, I got it into my head that I wanted to be able to randomize each plank of wood on an individual basis, which is pretty easy to do on the rendering side of things- but it means you need to have each plank of wood as it's own object in order to pull in the object ID and randomize the texture parameters based on that. So I've lite...

Poolside fun blockout

Just a WIP shot of what I'm currently working on.

After the aforementioned failure, I really wanted some sort of scene that I could use to at least produce some content while I'm working on completing the rest of Vanessa's rig.

Originally I figured I could "cheat" and whip up something super quick consisting of a literal ledge, a displaced plane representing the surface of the water, and a topless cube for the rest of the swimming pool... unfortunately things are rarely that simple in 3D...

Liquid physics fail

This was a little test I was messing around with a couple of days ago for a beach inspired scene. The general idea was to have Vanessa running into a set of waves, but the scale of the scene quickly became a huge issue- the waves shown here are almost 6 feet tall when I actually intended them on being closer to 2-3 feet instead. Unfortunately changing the way that worked involved increasing the resolution of the simulation, which multiplied the total number of particles exponentially to the poin...