Fun post-season animation

[abroerman]

BuddyB309:

That eye test was great... his expression at the end is classic

Mazin:

Are you viewing the correct image? The more recent one has better lighting, bump mapping, and some diffuse mapping (not much though). while it could use some work, I've decided just to move on. It was just a few days' fun project, nothing else

I used Vray for the rendering (far superior to scanline and MR). It's an ancient stripped-down version (they used to produce 2 versions: a free basic one and an advanced commercial one). Not sure if they're still giving out demos or not. Still a great renderer that makes MR look relatively weak.

What I've been up to:


(click for wallpaper-sized image)

I've been playing through the second Metroid Prime for the last few days and have only just started to realize how amazing it is. This image (rendered in mental ray) doesn't really represent a specific in-game area, but I was just trying to capture that "metroid-esque" atmosphere. If you've played Prime 1 or 2 you understand I didn't quite get it, but it sure makes me wonder about the awesome talents of the Retro Studio people.

A quick little day project involved me trying to figure out how those little compressed-air engines (that the Air Hogs planes use, if you have seen one of those) work. A couple of friends and I were playing with an old one in my basement last night, they're really neat. I made a quick little animation using my model.

View the .gif

View the final animation (YouTube)

Originally Posted by Capt.ArD

that said, i would suggest playing with:
...-opacity maps

Yeah, opacity mapping is huge. Definately get good at this, it saved my life numerous times. For example, every tree and plant in our animation was created through opacity mapping. This allows me to make a tree using 1 face, versus the hundreds of faces that make up max's foliage (those trees really kill rendertimes). Using opacity mapping, I can make happy little trees in a fraction of the time using a fraction of the processing power.

Anyway... keep it up guys