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Tags: - Apple
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From a new print advert by Microsoft:

"Windows vs Walls. This epic struggle explains why we make what we make and do what we do. The thing that gets us out of bed every day is the prospect of creating pathways above, below, around and through walls. To start a dialogue between hundreds of devices, billions of people and a world of ideas. To lift up the smallest of us. And catapult the most audacious of us. But, most importantly, to connect all of us to the four corners of our own digital lives and to each other. To go on doing the little stuff, the big stuff, the crazy stuff and that ridiculously necessary stuff. On our own or together. This is more than software we're talking about. It's an approach to life. An approach dedicated to engineering the absence of anything that might stand in the way of life. Today, more than one billion people worldwide have Windows. Which is just another way of saying we have each other.'

I guess they must be done with imitating Seinfeld a show about nothing, so they are apparently taking a new approach, badly imitating Apples adverts, first with the "I'm a PC, and I've been stereotyped... get over it" to this new Print Advert that smacks of Apples Think Different campaign, but of course done with It's own brand of cluelessness... heres to the crazy stupid ones; Microsoft

I thought Microsoft was at least trying to consolidate to ONE message, which would have been a nice change, even if It's message was, "hey were not a big ass evil corporation, were just a bunch of nerds who don't get people, but we try!" that still would have still been better than the hodge podge of messages they are now putting out. Microsoft is having a serious identity crisis. What are you Microsoft? a huge corporation without a mission statement = none stop entertainment.

Mojave, Seinfeld, I'm a PC, Windows vs Walls..... what a mess

I'm going to go off on a rant now as is my right as a slightly informed human being

It's interesting to see how both companies are very much like their respective creators, despite all the people that make up the companies.

Microsoft being the money grabbing autistic misfit who thinks people want their lives cataloged sorted and ordered by size. You only have to watch Bill Gates for a few minutes as he rocks back and forth talking about connecting people and how everyone wants 'insert stupid idea here' , to realize while being very IQ intelligent and ruthless, the man does not occupy the same reality as anyone else. Depending on what his REAL goals were in life, he's done crazily well, can't fault the income figures, well these days you can but he's not exactly actively running the company any more is he, monkey boy Balmer is, and monkey boy is as big of a social misfit as Gates but with a monkeys brain opposed to Gates's planet sized intellect.

I don't believe for a second Gates has any interest beyond making stuff ONLY HE think's is cool and making tons of cash... which is fair enough if he'd just come out and admit it, but he's a squirmy little lying scheming vindictive back stabber

At this point I'd like to point out some things about Apple and the way they behaves borders on insanity sometimes too, such as It's insane secrecy and own self importance. But they do at the end of the day put out stuff that makes my life MUCH better, so they can act as self important as they like, because.. well... they fucking earned it! as Microsoft continues to put out stuff that actually quite dramatically sometimes make my life much HARDER.

And some (not all) of the things Apple put's out are clearly things Steve Jobs just thought would be really 'neat' and wanted to play with... but unlike Gates, Jobs shares reality with a greater majority of people on this Earth, so when Jobs makes something cool for himself, It's often pretty damn cool for everyone else too.

Microsoft has only ONE angle it could ever possibly win at. The angle of supporting everything, supporting any device, any manufacturer, any phone, not locking people into formats or vendors. About openness, about CHOICE. But they still seem to be dominated by the old school of thought that they must own and force down the throats of others their own convoluted standards or the slightly bastardized microsoftized standards of others... and that is, because after all is said and done, they are still money grabbing unscrupulous self interested liars and thieves at the core

End Rant

Oh and just to hit the message home, someone just sent me this video link:

Link: www.youtube.com




It really needs no commentary

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Tags: - C4D - Vray - AfterEffects
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Ooh I'm a genius!
Finally figured a kinda hacky way of achieving a made of light volumetric look in 3D.. fast
Problem is It's not HUE additive, so where super bright RED would go from White at It's brightest down thru yellow and then end up at red... this is stuck in boring old 8bit land.. boo. I can kind of hack it by stretching the 8bit image across a 32bit range, then it will hue shift as you'd expect.

Done using Vrays Volume Fog:










Hue shift from white to cyan to blue achieved by stretching the 8 bit result into 32bit... basically by adjusting It's gamma/exposure/offset and image saturation:



This one looks especially weird as I forgot to decrease the transparency cutoff value, so it had a weird folding over effect






Inverting the red image, makes it look like It's made from light.



Ball with various thickness changes in places.


And with some photoshop modification to simulate it being made from light


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Tags: - C4D - Vray - Photoshop - AfterEffects
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Reality 2.0

I've noticed a common theme in my own personal research, I'm always looking and analyzing what beauty is, the perception of it. What makes something interesting and attractive to look at, and just as importantly how to then recreate or better these effects in CG.

I've centered my thought's a few key things, physical dynamic natural phenomena like fluids, particles. The natural beauty in fractal/patterns. And the natural beauty of light/color.

And when I say centered... this is still going to be messy, a scrapbook of every changing ideas and goals, a brain dump or ideas and theories, a massive mashup of hundreds of principles

This is where I'll be collecting information and examples I've gathered on:

volumetric particle simulation (gaseous, flame, fluids, cloth, softbodies, rigidbodies)
generative systems and forces that shape the creation of and/or existence of objects (lsystems, fractal, lorenz attractors) with forces (gravity, magnetic)
math art, and tools for creating such art in polygonal or volumetric/particle form
intelligent particles (flocking, clustering, swarming, dodging, form into structures, combustion, electricity)
naturally occurring effects like lightning, auroras, nebulas, fluids/flame
rendering and manipulating volumetric objects / voxels / sub surface scattering (rubber blending into clear glass, red and blue fluid mixing, candles made from multiple colors of wax, etc)
simulating camera/eye optical effects and response (lens flares, depth of field, motion blur, lens effects/diffraction, bokeh, chromatic aberration, tonemapping/filmresponse)
sculpting with light or other interesting materials

My goal is to create photorealistic renders and animation's with the primary goal of being beautiful in a natural looking way, yet do things that are either impossible or highly uncommon in day to day life. Mimicking how natural light and human vision works is key to this. To better understand what in our perception makes something beautiful. Rainbows, Diamonds, The rise of the sun, ink mixing in water, Nebulas are all things I hope we can ALL agree are perceived as very beautiful. To take the principles and reasons behind what makes those things appear beautiful and apply it to new things, things that do not exist in reality, yet behave and look 'realistic'

This collection is going to start off with examples in reality or found examples created by others, and then hopefully! followed up by my creative re-interpreations and or simulated attempts at re-creating the effects. Culminating in the creation of unique abstract art leveraging the learned principles and tools.

I have no doubt a lot of what I'm trying to do is either impossible right now, or highly computationally expensive putting it beyond my capability. There's also the fact that some things require a high proficiency in programming and specialized tools leveraging high level math and formulas... and I'm an artist first, I suck at math... so this could be challenging!

The majority of things I'm trying to do, when I have seen similar things done in film/commercials... I've found typically required specially written in house software... which is annoying and disconcerting. I'm looking to the application Houdini and hoping it can, even with my artistic brain, perform some magic for me!

My interest is not in recreating reality, I want to better it!

Genius:

Link: physbam.stanford.edu --- fedkiw




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Tags: - C4D - Vray - 2D - Photoshop
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Link: schloerb.com




Volumetric light in the real world TM


Nebulas... light art on a rather large scale


Subtle details in light and reality can make a simple thing beautiful.

Link: www.colourlovers.com --- bending-light-color-with-alan-jaras




Ink swirling around, inverted and then colored. Can't remember where I got this from


More ink swirleyness


Try rendering that for real... I don't know of anything that can do that volumetrically yet


Link: www.indigorenderer.com




Caustics


Link: flickr.com --- sizes







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Tags: - C4D - Vray - Maxwell - AfterEffects
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Here I will be collecting tools and methods for advanced rendering. I have another post focussing on the volumetric end of advanced rendering.

Link: www.indigorenderer.com --- blog





-- Tools --

Link: www.maxwellrender.com


Physically Accurate renderer, very slow, Can render very real SSS type surfaces and accurate Color Dispersion for effect like color splitting in glass or diamond, and thin film effects like coloration on Bubbles. Cannot render volumetrics
SSS - Subsurface Scattering


Can simulate a Camera Lens, Flare, Bloom, Bokeh very well (can work as a post effect on any HDR image you send it also)


Dispersion:


Accurate Caustics:


Accurate DOF and motionblur:


Link: www.indigorenderer.com


PC only, FREE, similar to Maxwell in It's goals.. plus It's also slow
Dispersion and Aberration:


Volumetric/SSS
Here It's rendering what appears like volumetric effect using SSS, which is an interesting idea as they are essentially the same thing when your computing it accurately:


Vray and Vray4C4D

Link: www.chaosgroup.com


Link: www.vrayforc4d.com


Vray is brilliant and my rendering engine of choice right now, but It can't yet do accurate dispersion, aberration or volumetrics
I think It's DOF and motion blur are fairly accurate (some things missing for C4D right now), and it can simulate bokeh
Volumetric rendering isn't added yet, but It's coming eventually if these examples are anything to go by:




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