3D Ray Traced Image

[bluescope]

Hi All

This is may be a terrestrial scene from the future .... just wanted to post it to see what you think. I hope you like it.

It is a Ray Traced scene that took 1 hour 43 minutes and 20 seconds to render and many hours to build and compose so it's a bit like doing Deep Space imaging. I needed something to do as it was 42 degrees outside.

Has anyone else dabbled in Ray Tracing ? YES or NO

:thumbsup:

[Octane]

Hi Steve,

In a previous life, I used to engage in 3D modeling and animation.

I started 3D back in 1996 on Bryce2 and then moved on to Bryce3D.

Sometime in between there I started using LightWave 3D. I managed to score a mini gig at AFTRS whilst at university, helping a student complete his Master of Arts slate project. We were using Silicon Graphics machines (Maya running on IRIX).

I sometimes wonder where I'd be now if I had stuck to that path.

I do remember spending weekends rendering a single scene in Bryce and LighWave when I had a Pentium 200.

I think you'll find Roger Groom was also into Bryce terragens.

H

[multiweb]

That's very nice. I used to be heavily involved in 3D and real-time rendering nearly 15yrs ago now and worked many years in the industry. Now I'd rather play games or go to the movies :)

[bluescope]

Yeah the good old days of waiting an eternity for scenes to render thankfully are behind us now with dual and quad core systems. I started with ray tracing back in the days of the Amiga computer, I can't remember the program I used ... probably still got it in a box somewhere ... then came windows based PC's and I used to mess around with Ray Dream Studio and Bryce 4 also Poser 4.

I discovered my Ray Dream Studio CD's in a box the other day which sparked my interest in tracing again ... luckilly I still have a Window98 pentium 3 computer lying around which I will be able to use to model with that program again as it's not compatible with my current system.

I never got into animation that much apart from a bouncing ball tutorial I did one time :lol:

I don't know how long my current dabbling will last but it's fun ;)

Cheers Humayun

:thumbsup:

[DavidU]

Yep. Here is one.

[bluescope]

Hi Marc

I'm not one for games and movies are for night times when I'm feeling lazy or tired ;)... have you got any old images of yours lying around that you might feel inclined to post ? Post them into this thread if you like ... I'd be interested to see other people's efforts :)

Not meaning to be offensive Marc .... each to his own ay ! I very rarely go to a cinema !

:thumbsup:

[bluescope]

Nice one Dave ... what software did you do that with ?

:thumbsup:

[JD2439975]

Steve , you didn't mention which ray tracer you used.

I more than dabbled with POV-Ray through the late nineties, it's free and about all I could afford. :)
Once had a fully animatibly humanoid/dragon creature on a detailed Harley Davidson, with a second dragon on the back giving a one fingered salute.
I don't even dare think about how many hours I spent creating those two objects, let alone the rest the things I had...all lost to a computer crash with no backup. :sadeyes:

Once made a 30 second animation about a hallucinating frog chasing a TimTam biscuit, it took 5 solid days (120 hours) just to render the frames.
It was about a girl I had the hots for...she didn't like it. :shrug: Such is life. :lol:

I do still look back on those days with fondness though, very creative times.

Justin

[bluescope]

Hi Justin

I used Bryce .... funny you mentioned POV I was just about to post a link to it .... some great images .... so here it is

http://hof.povray.org/

:thumbsup:

[JD2439975]

Oh that link is bringing back memories...fond ones too.

Was always envious of what Gilles Tran could do.

[bluescope]

I'm glad ... maybe it will spark a new interest !

:thumbsup:

[troypiggo]

Some of you guys may have seen my recent work. I believe they called the movie "Avatar" or something like that.... :)

I wish.

That image is fantastic. Amazing what we can do with computers these days. Still, having the tools is one thing. You've shown you've got the creative side to go with it. Wonderful.

[koputai]

Yep, POVRay here too, since, I dunno, 1990/91 or so. Every machine I've had I've kept a record of the POVRay benchmark, my first one was on a 286, so that's how long it's been! I still use it too. I find it very useful for trying out different house renovation scenarios.

Cheers,
Jason.
P.S. Yes, I know there's much more purpose built renno 3D progs out there (I have one or two), but I just find text bassed POVRay fits my brain better!

[bluescope]

Thanks Troy it was fun to do.

:thumbsup:



No worries Jason ... have you got an image you'd like to post ... stick it here if you like !

:thumbsup:

[SkyViking]

Great image Steve, nice work!

Some years back I enjoyed creating images of imaginary space scenes using 3D Studio Max. Some of these got a bit of attention around the web.

I have always tried to make my scenes as realistic as possible, regarding atmospheric effects, lighting, colours etc. One of my favorite images is the second one attached here, which I call "Descending Through Titan's Upper Haze". I made this scene in 2003 before the Cassini probe arrived at Saturn. When the Cassini images later appeared it was interesting to see that this particular scene was pretty much spot on.

The two others are both imaginary scenes from a ring planet's moon in a globular cluster (yes I had a 'globular period' :) )

[bluescope]

Hi Rolf

They look very good indeed ... I like the use of real astro images for the backgrounds ... the first one looks like NGC104 or am I mistaken ?

Thanks for posting them.

:thumbsup:

[Jeffkop]

You've got a nice pair of tubes David :rofl:

[gary]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the post of the really nice image and I appreciate the amount of both human
and CPU time that goes into rendering these things, then tweaking and re-rendering
again and again.

I started using Rayshade along with the Utah Raster Toolkit in the early 90's on
UNIX workstations. A favourite reference text was Foley & van Dam's wonderful
book, "Computer Graphics". The collection of color plates in the middle of the
book alone probably inspired large numbers of people to either enter into or
dabble in the field.

At some point, I migrated from Rayshade to POV. Without the benefit of a modeler,
plentiful lines of source text would go into creating objects. For example, hours would
go into instantiating the keys on a model of a keyboard that would then be just
one object in a collection of objects in a scene.

These days I have no free time to ray trace for purely artistic or recreational reasons.
However, we continue to use POV for some work, but for fast visualization
we use Luxion's KeyShot (http://keyshot.com/) (which up until a week ago was Bunkspeed's Hypershot).
Keyshot's extremely fast rendering times, combined with its ability to
assign materials, change the environment and camera angles on the fly whilst it
is continually rendering is a real time saver. Having said that, computers will never
be fast enough. :thumbsup:

[multiweb]

Wow! I'll have to dig in my mess and old HDs. I got some realtime games leftovers though online. If you google marc aragnou and check pictures you might find some old series from 97, gravity angels, superman, xena, kiss. There were all marvel & WB franchises. As far as pre-rendering goes the latest I have probably pre-dates pov-ray. I used the first incarnations of 3D Studio pre 90s. At the time it was originally owned by Autodesk and run under DOS. Yep...good old DOS. Then discreet was formed with MAX, first versions to run on windows, then got back to Austodesk and blended in with Maya. I lost touch with all this stuff years ago although I keep my MAX subscription running to play with. It's Max 2010 now I believe.

[bluescope]

Glad you like the image Gary ... sounds like you have a world more experience than me with ray tracing ... also thanks for the link to KeyShot ... I'll check it out.

:thumbsup:



Cheers Marc ... I'll do a search and see what I come up with.

:thumbsup:

[rogerg]

Humayun is right, I have. I posted a pic here (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=48965&highlight=bryce) from one of mine back in 1998. Was good fun doing them, I enjoying having the time to be creative in Bryce & PhotoShop back then.

I might get around to posting some more later, right now I don't have the capability .... just where I'm at with switching PC's and stuff :rolleyes:.

[bluescope]

That's a nice image Roger ... post some more when you get the time ... it's good to go down memory lane every now and then. I've been getting a sore neck, eyes and rear end from messing with it alll again. I'm rendering a scene in the background right now actually ;)

:thumbsup:

[kinetic]

Some beautiful renderings guys, wow!

I didn't ever get into the rendering thing but a mate of mine did.
I dabbled in a similar thing in another lifetime, scenery design for
flight sims.
I built a 3D elevated mesh scenery of the far western N.S.W. area
using the 30m DTED elevation database and the first geomaps freely
available on the net. Way before Google earth was around.
They were fairly rough back then but far better than the default
scenery for the area.

I also repainted some of the Flight sim models, even as far back as
FS98.

Pic 1 here is one of my scenery jobs, the Pinnacles just out of
Broken Hill. In the pic is one of my FS 98 repaints, a NZAF Harvard reg
VH-PEM, the full size plane of which I have fond memories of.

Pic 2 is a repaint of mine, a Fokker F50, VH-FKZ, again the real one
I have spent many hours in as a passenger :)

Pic 3 is a bit of fun my daughter and I had..we repainted the F50
in Barbie colours and as a challenge to the online FSim guys,
I showed I could land one on VSAS runway in Venezuela :)

Pic 4 is some fun with my son flying an X-wing over the Mt Lofty
Ranges in Adelaide buzzing Star Destroyers at sunset.
Not my work though, these ones.

Steve

[bluescope]

Very interesting Steve ... thanks for your contribution !

:thumbsup:

[Spanrz]

Loving your images guys.

Hahaha, Steve, nice. I used to muck around on the FS too, come up with stupid slogans on the side of the planes. I would sometimes paint swear words on the side of the planes, to constitute "don't fly with us, we're terrible".
Just a bit of inhouse fun.

I use to dabble in 3D a long time ago, I remember it used to take over 5 minutes to draw a single, somewhat pixely, picture.
A 386SX-33mhz would do that.

I have stepped up to 3DMAX 9, but have since dropped out of it, as this 3D image path is very time consuming. I am still very much a learner in 3DMAX. Self taught, never been to Uni type of thing, so it's a learning curve.
Always wanted to get back into it. One day I will.

BTW, do any of you know the "easiest" way to make a gear (Worm, spur, planetary)?
I was trying to make a worm gear setup, so I could figure out some of the scope stuff, but I went ahead and got the real things anyway.