Update: City at Night Lights for Vue
May 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Ok, so this really isn’t an update, more of a usage note, as I realized I left out a simple step for users of the Vue version to get the best results from these materials. Due to the way the window regions of the Dystopia City Blocks are mapped, you should double click the materials, choose advance editor and under the color & alpha tab, set the mapping mode to ‘faces’ and then adjust the map size to get the look you desire. This will yield the effect shown above instead of the little tiny lights you get by just adding them to your blocks.
The materials work on primitives and most other objects without any need for the above edits, so no worries there. Oh, and if you don’t already have them, I suggest picking them up right here>
Surya Namaskara
May 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I added a new image to the galleries today. It’s called Surya Namaskara and is actually the last entry for gallery 3. Click here to check it out>
Art Charts Listing
May 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
It’s been a while since I’ve produced enough consecutive work to make Renderosity’s art charts, but this week I made #16 on the favorite artists list. Dig it and be sure to check out all the other great artists on the list>
Cherub
May 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I added a new piece the the gallery today simply titled, Cherub. This piece is very much FPS game inspired and meant to be heavy on the dramatic side. Click here to check it out>
And the title? It actually comes from an old Butthole Surfers song of the same name. A selection from the lyrics is included below
Cherub
Cherub the angel
Roll back the hands of time
Cherub
Enter the angel
aaaaaaahhhh!
You walk alone now
You’re never mind
The walks you’ve taken
have left behind
All people sideways
They look at you
may god forsake me
cause I do to
I see bodies
Maybe, maybe someone is alive
Naked we smile
Immortal (Ad Vitam)
May 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment
It is New York, one hundred years in the future. A mysterious giant pyramid has materialized out of thin air and floats ominously above the city. Below there have been several mysterious murders - are the two related? Obviously.
The culprit seem to be Horus, yes, the Horus from ancient Egyptian mythology. It seems that those whacked-out New Age nuts were right after all and that the Egyptian gods are actually all-powerful aliens and they’ve dropped in for their first visit in several thousand years so that Horus can get his rocks off with a mortal girl . . .
Yup, that’s right: it seems that as always all the gods are really interested in is getting it on with some comely mortal maiden. Except in this case the girl in question is a white-skinned blue-haired mutant, and Horus has to possess a guy named Nikopol who has been in suspended animation for the past few decades to make it all happen. Or something like that.
If some of this seems vaguely familiar to you, then maybe you’ve read the graphic novels by Enki Bilal on which this French sci-fi effort is vaguely based. Bilal is also the director of the film and this was probably a mistake since while the material might have worked on the printed page, on celluloid it has no flow and is difficult to follow.
In fact for a lot of the running time, Immortal is simply incomprehensible. It throws up a myriad of subplots and characters it never comes back to again. Instead of sticking to the main story, we are given some fascinating glimpses of this future world, but these glimpses are never explained and the viewer is simply left to scratch his or her head in bewilderment.
Almost as distracting as the confusing plot is the way the film was made. Immortal, along with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, is one of the first movies to have been made using live actors against a backdrop of computer-generated scenery. Like Sin City and Revenge of the Sith there are practically are no physical sets in any real sense of the word.
Immortal however goes one step further by using digitized human actors as well as real life ones. Why they did this is unclear ? maybe they couldn’t afford any more actors (but they could afford voice talent, and is computer CPU time really that much cheaper?) - because the ultimate net effect is simply distracting. It’s fine when you digitize alien characters like this, but human ones? Why not make the entire movie computer generated like Kaena or Final Fantasy then?
Ultimately Immortal is a failure, but an interesting one. The film’s cityscape and hardware (taken directly from Bilal’s comics) are gorgeous to look at even when the CGI looks painfully obvious. Sci-fi fans will go gaga over them, and the film is definitely unusual in that doesn’t simply want to be an SF action film. But watching it I often thought that I’d care a lot more about what was happening if I actually knew what was going on.
E-On Picture of the Day: Bonneville
May 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
My piece titled Bonneville was featured on E-on software’s homepage as their picture of the day today. This piece was created using their flagship software product, Vue 6 infinite, and they included a small quote from me about one of my favorite professional applications:
An simple environment like the Bonneville Salt Flats can be surprisingly hard to replicate, but Vue 6 Infinite’s killer atmosphere engine allowed me to achieve the desired look with it’s hyper-realistic spectral lighting capabilities.
You can check it out on their site by clicking here or view the larger piece and related details in my gallery here.
About E-on software: Founded in 1997, e-on software was established to develop and promote the highest quality graphics tools with professional strength features, specializing in the natural world. Established by graphics enthusiasts for graphics enthusiasts, e-on software translates its passion for art into tools for the graphics community. E-on software has offices in Beaverton, Oregon and Paris, France. The company has achieved worldwide reputation for its award winning 3D scenery generator Vue. http://www.e-onsoftware.com/
