Before Octane became a household name in the GPU-rendering sphere, I was a beta tester on the project. And although one of my images briefly appeared on the splash screen of a very early version, I haven’t been very faithful to it since. This could change thanks to the release of Octane for 3ds Max, a quite well integrated version of the render, which removes the need to export geometry to Octane for rendering. We are not talking about the degree of integration of Vray, which supports nearly all functions of Max, but it is definitely as easy to use as Maxwell. And there is even a Vray Material Converter built into the plugin (which I haven’t tried as I like to build my mats from scratch).

Clearly, Octane is not going to replace Vray for me as long as we don’t see a massive increase in the amount of RAM on consumer graphic cards (I have 24GB in my Workstation and routinely max them in Vray). But I can see myself using it a lot more for small scenes or product viz, especially if Vray continues to grow slower and noisier, as has been the case for me with recent versions (though not everyone has noticed this so it may have to do with my setup or idiosyncratic workflow).

The images at the top are my entries for the latest Octane render competition. Those at the bottom are just details done for fun. These clear so fast it’s a joy, even on my very modest GTX 285. Hope you like them.

2012 is here; so let it be a good one.

Some time back, I promised to show some images of what one could do with this empty Chicago Loft scene and a little bit of love. Here they are. They feature a wild mix of older and more recent furniture pieces, some of them done specifically for this scene, with the only lose link between them being a general mid-century feel (though some of the pieces are actually recent designs).

Hope you like them. You can see the full set of images here.

PS: The image with the Flag Halyard chair was done to test Vray’s new hair shader. I love it!

Over the past few months, several people who had bought my furniture on Turbosquid asked whether I would consider putting a full scene up for sale.

So when I recently revisited an older piece, loosely based on a Chicago interior by Studio Gang Architects, I thought it would make a nice, self-contained interior scene to put up on Turbosquid, should anyone be interested.

The scene is ready-to-render in Vray 2.1 and will open in 3ds Max 2010 and upwards. There are two lighting schemes (dusk with interior electric lights and daylight overcast with weak sun) based on two separate layers.

Although unfurnished (it does sport a highly detailed kitchen) and somewhat optimised, the scene is highly detailed (more than 3m polys) and is not meant to be used on small rigs – Don’t even think of opening it on a 32bit system, or if you have less than 8GB of RAM.

It may sound a bit pricey compared to my other models, but given that it includes a full 3d environment, which I put up for sale a while ago at about the same price, believe me, it’s actually a bargain.

I’m currently working on a furnished version of the loft to showcase the scene’s potential, so stand by for more images shortly.

Just a quick one to point out that my Ditte Isager series is making a small appearance in this month’s 3D Creative.

You can check the content of the issue here. The full series is here.

I’ve had many questions in the past year or so about the skies I’ve been using in my scenes. For a long time, I wasn’t at liberty to say much about them. No longer.

I’m happy to report that Marcel Vijfwinkel, the man behind the enormously popular CGTextures.com, and his accomplice Wojtek Starak have now launched CGSkies.com – source of the super high-res HDR sky maps I’ve been using as a tester in many of my scenes for months. Those of you who have been using CGTextures’s wonderful JPG sky maps will be glad to know that these skies are now available in HDR versions via CGSkies – not for free, it goes without saying, but they’re worth every penny. Indeed, these are in many ways higher-quality versions of the LDR maps: expertly re-stitched and cleaned up of all landscape elements at the horizon. It is hard to fathom the amount of work that has gone into preparing these maps for sale. No wonder CGSkies has been in the making for so long.

The beauty about CGSkies’ maps is that their very high resolution (up to 15,000 pixels wide) makes it possible to use them both as light sources and as backplates, eliminating the need for separate LDR backplates (though you will need quite a bit of RAM to use them).

The second thing I love about the maps, and probably the most important, is that, assuming you are using Vray as a renderer, their dynamic range allows you to generate very crisp shadows without the need for extra light sources, such as sunlights or direct lights, at least for the maps that feature a visible sun (you can obtain a broad range of hard to soft shadows depending on how overcast the sky is).

In order to generate these shadows without altering the colours of the original map in the environment and reflection slots, Marcel recommends using a more refined version of the HDR workflow I highlighted in this post last year. This involves using the gamma control of the VrayHDR texture map to modulate the contrast of the map (in addition to the multiplier for the map’s intensity). For all the details about Marcel’s own version of this workflow, head to the tutorial section.

The site has a number of free samples, which, although considerably lower-res than the originals, will allow you to test if this workflow works for you (though they won’t generate the beautiful reflections and backdrops of the original-sized maps).

The CGSkies gallery features a few renders of mine, including this one, which shows you what kind of lighting and shadows you can expect, using only the maps.