Instanced Grass

Experimenting with instanced grass. In this case, there is just one grass-blade model randomized with scale and rotation. Looks like it would be better if there were additional differing blades modeled and then randomized. I'm using the Sunsky plug-in by Denis Pontonnier for the environment and lighting.

For the basic grass setup, see this Lightwave 3D tutorial:
LightWave Controlling Instances with Weight Maps Tutorial

The first render is using an evening sun simulation.

Instanced Grass in the Evening

The second render is using a morning sun simulation.

Instanced Grass in the Morning

Modeling holes in a Sub-D mesh.

Lightwave 3D technique for creating holes in a curved sub-division surface.

The idea is based on a Modo tutorial by Richard Yot and makes use of the recent Lightwave tool - Heat Shrink. The video begins using the technique to create a hole in a flat surface. There are plenty of other great methods (check out William Vaughan's site) for creating holes in a flat surface, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to see the technique used in different scenarios.

Final render of an audio-technica ATM63

I added the microphone label and a bit of blue to the back light. I think I'll stop with this render and call it a day. The ATM63 is an older audio-technica microphone. The one I have is quite banged up and showing its age, but check out their site. They have lot's of great gear.

audio-technica ATM63 - Modeled and rendered in Lightwave 3D

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Microphone 3D model and render

Got a bit further on my 3D model of an audio-technica ATM63 microphone. I wanted to try out a technique from William "Proton" Vaughan's [digital] Modeling textbook for creating a microphone screen and the ATM63 has some interesting cuts in its design. I still need to add some labeling but the node based surface I created for the microphone body is looking pretty close to the actual mic. I don't have a great reason for putting the water glass in the background, but I already had that model completed and I wanted something extra in the composition.

Mic and Glass - modeled and rendered in Lightwave 3D

This is a work in progress, but I liked the test render so I thought I'd post it. Modeled and rendered with Lightwave 3D.

The Seventh Equinox - Trailer

Check out author Matthew Warner's new novel, The Seventh Equinox. John Johnson's Darkstone Entertainment team worked with Matthew to create a book trailer and asked me to provide a couple visual effects to the mix. Looks pretty wild and my lightning shot was used for the thumbnail...cool! Looking forward to the release date.

Ficus Leaf modeled and rendered in Lightwave3D

I need some environmental elements for a scene I'm dreaming up...where to start? I have a ficus tree right behind my desk and those leaves look interesting. Okay, I'll give it a shot.

Pretty straight forward but I liked the look of it. Used Lightwave's Depth of Field because I hadn't really experimented with it. With basic settings, the blur was fairly noisy, but I increased Maximum Samples to 32, turned on the Soft Filter and Adaptive Sampling. My Adaptive Sampling threshold was 0.01. Not sure if this makes sense but I added Photoreal motion blur with 6 Motion Blur Passes and it seemed to remove a lot of the DOF noise.

Oh, and one more thing that helped...under the Render Tab, I checked Noise Reduction.

Ficus leaf modeled and rendered in Lightwave3D