One for Bedeekin?

[sunshaker]

Hi Bedeekin, 
Came across this from octane render, My computer skills are not great, but still this looked like it could be fun. Not something i normally look into.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/36313045 


There is a free demo, at their site, alas the heap of "poo" i'm using at the moment until i ever get round to fixing my main pc, cannot take the graphics card download.
http://render.otoy.com/

Have you ever used this? do you think it is something that someone with limited computer skills could pick up?

[Stillwater]

What you are looking at is a rendering suite.

Usually the pipeline these days either goes: ( Low-polygon modeling --> Model-refinement --> Scultping --> Texturing --> Map Export / Rendering) , or  (Sculpting --> Texturing --> Retopologizing --> Map Export / Rendering).

Notice that rendering is at the back end of the pipeline in either situation 

These results looks good, but you don't get results without models or textures.

If I read you correctly, you want to learn to create art such as you see in the renderings; if that is your goal, you need to learn modeling and polygonal topology, texturing and material mapping, and computer sculpting- those are the core skills that will lead to content which can then be rendered.

To learn modeling, the three standards are Maya, 3DSMax, and Blender. The first two are Autodesk products with multi-thousand-dollar pricetags, but which you can attain a free student license for to use non-commercially to learn (anyone can get that really), and the last in a free open source application which is still quite powerful in spite. All of these offer modeling, sculpting, texturing and rendering, but do modeling best of all. There are programs like "Mudbox" from Autodesk which are good for sculpting and texturing, and then there are products like Zbrush which is the industry standard for sculpting and offers a sort of backwards workflow where sculpting is usually done first and the model's polys are projected over that later. Despite being a great program though Zbrush has no demo or student copy, and costs $600 USD for a license, so is sort of out of bounds for a beginer.

If you want to jump into this stuff, Get a copy of Maya, 3DSMax or Blender, and have at it! Google Sketchup is another good program too offered free, but it is more for architecture people like me, lol. If characters or game environments are your thing, definitely go for one of those first three!

Hope that helps!

[desert-rat]

I dont know if this will do what you want , but dream studio Linux comes with some of this kind of programs and it is free open source . http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=dreamstudio   

[sunshaker]

What you are looking at is a rendering suite.

Usually the pipeline these days either goes: ( Low-polygon modeling --> Model-refinement --> Scultping --> Texturing --> Map Export / Rendering) , or  (Sculpting --> Texturing --> Retopologizing --> Map Export / Rendering).


Hope that helps!

Cheers it does, I realise theres a lot more to it than i first thought,
Watched a few youtube vids some cool stuff, Made to look easy, When you know what your doing which i'm afraid i do not.

Cheers desert-rat, i had no set idea what i wanted, just thought the tech looked good, thought i might have a "dabble" at something, dream studio looks cool.

Hope to try a couple out when pc allows.

But i suppose it is how much we are willing to put into something, to what we get out.

[Stillwater]

The programs are astoundingly non-demanding hardware-wise.

You can pretty much render near real time in Maya or blender, for instance; I used Maya on a consumer laptop from 2005, and it ran fairly well until you stepped the textures over 2048x2048. When it gets higher, you want a slightly better CPU and a bit more RAM, but not crazy amounts.

You are probably not as hardware limited as you think, at least not to learn fundamentals.

[Bedeekin]

Hey. Sorry I didn't get back to you straight away.

Looks like an awesome resource to use.

I am assuming you aren't familiar with 3D modelling software.

I have a software called Vue.. it's environment modelling and animation software. They offer an online render facility called Renderbull. Bloody expensive.

aaanyway.

If you aren't familiar with 3D modelling software but you are an artist then I totally advise you to get Zbrush. It's by far the best software for artists wanting to learn and work within 3D graphics. It's simple and fun to learn and also a top professional tool. Gollum was built using it.

I was advised to buy Zbrush by a potential employer so I could work on his next project. I had only used photoshop and painter before then. I bought and downloaded a proper copy on the morning and by midnight I had a fully rendered model of one of the Joker's masks to show him. I'm rubbish with computers.

Here's a link to Sculptress... their free version.

http://pixologic.com/sculptris/

Have a go.

The cool thing is that after learning it I got so into it that I had inadvertently learned enough to understand more advanced CGI programmes like Maya or Blender. It's worth buying.