studioGPU

Too many of the concept tools for architects miss out on light, time and the relationship of the two

Continuing with the blog topic of exploring interesting work I’ve seen created in MachStudio Pro by small or one-man shops, this week I turning to a basement redesign project.

Chad Wanstreet is a Technical Director at Speedshape Detroit, an automotive and product visualization studio.  However, his previous education (and obviously still a passion) was in architecture. This is where Machstudio comes in.  Chad used MachStudio Pro to help he and a friend visualize and define a basement renovation project.

Below are several images from the project (more in the showcase).  What interests me most about these renderings (besides the visual) is the workflow:

1. Model and texture iin 3ds Max
2. Light in MachStudio Pro
3. Render from MachStudio Pro in passes:  diffuse, reflection, AO, z-depth, and matte (render time for 1920 x 1080 images at x24 anti-aliasing was about 5 mins to produce all 5 passes)
4. Final composite in Nuke for stills and animations

Take a look at these sample images - they are a great example of “previs for architecture”. Quoting from Chad:

“Machstudio provides me with a quick feedback loop for my concepts, and the ability to create animations very quickly, which I love.  Too many of the tools which designers and architects use for quick concept work focus only on volumes and materials, and miss out on light, time and the relationship of the two.” (bold is my editorial)

“Machstudio Pro allows me to create very fast renders and animations, which normally I would need multiple computers or a farm to produce, in hours not days or weeks while experimenting with the effects of light on my design.”

If you have an example of work you have done in MachStudio Pro, or impressions/critiques about the productions I feature in this blog, submit a comment.

Will you be submitting to CGSociety’s B-Movie CG Challenge?

I’m a huge fan of B-movies.  I love watching zombies, monsters, bug-eyed aliens and of course the werewolves of B-movie fame.  So I was delighted to see CGSociety’s: “Attack of the 50ft CGChallenge” running today, through April 19, 2010.

Basically CG artists are asked to create their own version of B-movie or resurrect creatures from an existing movie. The emotive impact and implication of “the story behind the imagery” is the aspect that is most important.  But as we all know, good story can be strongly enhanced by powerful lighting and FX.  Since there is not a lot of time (nor budget) to produce these B-movies, the ability to do quick creative treatments and changes (essentially previs for animation) can be critical - i.e. MachStudio Pro.

Check out the StudioGPU CG animation showcase to see some inspirational examples (not of B-movies content, but of animation content). The Princess Twins, New Guys (each video produced in only a week), and Secret of Skull island, all make clear what you can do with good story telling and real-time lighting workflows.

You can enter as individuals or as teams so this might be a great opportunity to search for colleagues in our forums.  If you do plan to enter the contest, add a comment here or in the forums so we can follow your work!

Senior lighting job posting seeks MachStudio Pro experience

I was just cruising around on CGArena and came across a job posting for a Senior Lighting lead for a company in Toronto, Canada.  “March Entertainment is currently looking for a multi-talented, creative, passionate individual to help build and lead a lighting team for exciting, animated 3D projects in our Toronto office.”

What caught my eye was one of the job requirements:

“We need someone who has at least 6 yrs. experience lighting with Maya and any experience with MachStudio Pro is a bonus (but we expect some on-the-job training with this package).”

You can check out the job posting here.

Photo realistic rendering in MachStudio Pro?

There has been some discussion in the forums about the ability of MachStudio Pro to do photo-realistic rendering.

I guess some of that confusion has come about because many of the examples shown in our video tutorials and showcase are from real CG animation production projects where the look and feel was intended to be stylized (PlayMobil), mech (Bionicles) or illustrated (Princess Twins), rather than photo-real renderings.

I've read several comments in which, although artists were amazed by the performance and quality of MachStudio Pro, they were specifically searching for a solution to replace their offline photo-realistic rendering engines. A typical comment was something like: "Well V-Ray/Mental Ray/Brazil renders this architectural/automotive/product image like this. How close can MachStudio Pro get to this kind of photo-realistic render?"

Well it was a reasonable question, so Yoni (our chief scientist) got hold of some of the architectural models people were referencing as examples and ran them through MachStudio specifically with the intent of showing photo-realism and emulating the style of V-Ray.

Putting it to the test

The best way to evaluate how it turned out is to take a look at a few of the renderings. (note: unlike many renderings you see, these were not doctored in PhotoShop. They are the actual final renders.)

Click on the links for the two images and one video below. (will open in a new window)

Modern Exterior - rendered at 1200 X 1469 at x36 samples anti-aliasing in 84 sec.
This was accompanied by an 8 sec., 200 frame MP4 video at 850 X 480 rendered in about 2 hrs.

Airport Terminal - rendered at 1000 X 1200 at x36 samples anti-aliasing in 51 sec.

Side-by-side

Do a quick side-by-side comparison below. While you can see differences between the two images, which is V-Ray-rendered and which is MachStudio Pro-rendered is not as obvious as you might think. Beyond academic comparisons, in a production environment you need to evaluate if the difference in the images, justify the orders of magnitude differences in render times and differences in creative control by the individual artist.

Examples of photo-realistic imaging.

Photo-realism you can adjust on the fly

Now what makes these images especially interesting is that I (or anyone with MachStudio Pro) can change the materials, lighting, DOF, cameras, HDR exposures in a few minutes or even seconds, simply by moving some sliders. Try new variations, add additional lights, create new camera angles, change color grading - all with immediate feedback. If the level of reflections does not meet your requirements, change them - and not by waiting hours to see a new render. Creative control and production is completely non-linear.