Images



This was my first ever 3D Landscape and it was made using Terragen. Terragen is a 3D landscaping program that allows you to create photorealistic environments. Additional plug-ins for the program allows you to render out a small movie (image sequence) for Flybys. I also made another Landscape after I got better with the program.



Using 3Ds Max, I made the very popular Dragon Balls from the Dragon Ball Z/GT series. This was my second time texturing and using Raytrace for the reflective material on the Dragon Balls. On my first attempt, having gone through a "dry-spell" of the series due to school and work, I was mis-informed about the colors of the Dragon Balls. With no internet connection at the time I could not get reference pics of the Dragon Balls, so I went ahead and put the color I thought I remembered. Here is a look at my first attempt at the Dragon Balls.

Made in 3Ds Max, this was the first time Ive made not only a planet but the surrounding two moons, Stars and Sun. Just as any first attempts, something of course was missing. As you probably might know, a Planet's atmosphere gives out an aura and that is what's missing. I will post an update on this soon. In the meantime, I applied that arua knowledge to a new Planet I made for a fan-film I'm helping out with. Check it out.
*Texture for the new Planet was provided by Dave Atlas

From the very popular Lord Of The Rings Trilogy comes The Ring Of Power. Made with a combination of both 3Ds Max and Adobe Photoshop, working on this made me even more familiar with 3Ds Max. It also showed me the limitations of 3Ds Max; no matter what I did, I just couldn't get a good "fire glow" effect for the scripture on the Ring. That's when I thought about how well Adobe Photoshop would handle this and voila! Here is the Ring Of Power without the glow.

The goal here was to make a successful explosion in 3Ds Max. However it looked a bit dull for my taste. So I went on ahead and put some Naboo Starfighter escaping the explosion. I am currently working on how to make better explosions using Particle Flow in 3Ds Max 7. Combining Particle Flow with a touch of the default Particle system in MAX should allow for a nice looking explosion. Here is a High Resolution pic.


3Ds Max now comes with the Mental Ray Renderer ever since version 6. The Mental Ray Renderer allows you to create photorealistic...anything really. In this instance I made a glass table with a bowl and some donuts inside. Looks OK but the realism I was going for isn't there. So here is a look at the same pic but rendered with Mental Ray.


Recently I've been working with Procedural Shaders in 3Ds Max and one of the effects I've come close to perfecting with this method is CG (Computer Generated) Lava. Here you see that I have applied it to a sphere. In the next pic, you'll see that I have also applied it to a plane (ground), unfortunately, it does not look as good as the Lava Ball. Fortunately it doesn't look bad enough to just get rid of it so it's best for me to use The Ground Lava pic I made for far away shots.

Here is an example of what compositing is. Compositing is taking all the elements and putting them into one seamless image sequence (movie) or a still (pic), which I have done here. This job required Color Correcting, Level Adjustments, Keying, 3D Background (not Matte painting), and a Manual Depth of Field effect. My second job only needed the Levels Adjusted a bit, a tad bit of Color Correcting, Manual Depth Of Field, keying and of course the Lightsbaer Effect. The Background is not a 3D image or a Matte Painting. I actually found it on the internet and decided to use it. You can find my second Greenscreen Work here.
Rotoscoping is a frame-by-frame process of re-touching images in a live-action sequence. Often, animation is added over live-action via the rotoscoping technique. Rotoscoping is the technique I.L.M. (Industrial Light and Magic) uses to make their Lightsaber Effect. Granted I.L.M's Star Wars Episode II Lightsaber Effect wasn't up to par with that of the Lightsaber Effects in Episode I. More info. on that in my Compare page. I made this for a friend of mine who is into Choreographing Lightsaber battles.

This is yet another 3D Landscape I made using a different landscaping program called Vue 5 Infinite. Granted the edge of the rocks look pixelated, then again I made this beautiful scene on my first try. As I become more familiar with the program, I will post new pics. Let's just call this the "Before" picture. Vue 5 is a very powerful program used to make realistic landscapes, its even more powerful than Terragen. Click here to read more on Vue 5.

This was made entirely in Adobe After Effects. Making this I have learned, even more, the ins and outs of After Effects. In doing so, I've also learned that there was a better method of doing this. I had a total of four masks for the eyes and two more masks for the darken areas. I made this in a little under thirty minutes. I could have done it in less time, but this was my first attempt, ever, at creating this type of effect. So far the reviews I got for this have been positive.


The following set of pics illustrates the progess of how Chorme Mapping works. Chorme Mapping in 3Ds Max is a method created by Håkan Andersson who has generously given his Chorme Mapping plug-in on his webiste to the world which you can find here.
Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Final