3D & Programming: Cameron Leger
3D, Visual Effects, and Programming
Some decent time has passed since my last render, although I’ve been working on this new one for at least half of that time. Some other short-term projects had come up, as well as new hobbies. When I was nearing the end of this project the render times were somewhat prohibitive for further progress, which kind of burned me out on this a little. Since I only needed a couple fixes from what I thought was my final render, it … Read the rest
I’ve been hooked on Overwatch lately and there’s nothing like a beautiful environment that makes me want to dabble in 3D again. Using a few open source tools, I exported some models and textures for Reaper from Overwatch to play with. I quickly found that a decent amount of work was necessary to do what I wanted.
Once the mesh was cleaned up, I worked on repainting some areas of the textures because they were low resolution for my standards. … Read the rest
With a lot of experience coming from the past few renders, I was able to generate this image with ridiculously less render time than when I was first playing with it weeks ago. While I didn’t think the last image benefitted from displacements, I love the look of it on this render. This is a rear view of the tower we’ve constructed, looking at it from a walkway to an unfinished pylon.
Notice in this render the IndustralCraft wires and … Read the rest
This is a somewhat closer view of that tower you might have noticed in the previous images. Most of our time has been spent inside or around the tower, which is full of machines, chests, and crops, so it’s nice to see views of it from far away. You might also notice many plants and blocks from Biomes-o-Plenty, an export made much easier by my DataDumper mod a few posts back.
Although I tried to get a much larger export, my current limiting factor is actually how far we had explored in the world.
I really don’t have a good naming convention for the following renders, so forgive the titles. I’ve put a lot of work into making the materials I’m using for these – only one of which required a modification to my shader (bug fix!). After ironing out all but the smallest of details, my latest tweaks require the most time so far – and it’s mainly render time given the need for high-quality renders to spot any issues. However, this wider … Read the rest
The specular layer represents the second layer of my uber-shader where the reflected light varies between rough and sharp. Reflected light can consist of light from punctual light sources, image sources, and/or reflections of other objects. In general, if the reflected light varies from different viewing angles, then the specular layer will handle those reflections.
In most shaders, specularity represents the reflections of light sources in the scene, and reflections represent the reflections of objects in the scene. In fact, … Read the rest
The diffuse layer represents the bottom-most layer of my uber-shader where light is reflected almost uniformly across all directions, usually because the surface is extremely rough and light does not penetrate the surface to any noticeable effect. Reflected light can consist of light from punctual light sources, image sources, and/or reflections of other objects. In general, “the vast majority of visible objects are seen primarily by diffuse reflection.”
The most common diffuse shader model by far is the Lambert … Read the rest
For my uber-shader, I have gone with a ‘layered’ style model so that I may represent many different types of common materials easily. I’ve structured it so that some familiar, but old, concepts are represented, yet in a way that is physically plausible.
Computer-generated graphics, like most things, can be burdoned by their history. The common shading models have existed since the beginning of computer graphics, and they are usually chosen for their speed or ease of implementation. Either reason … Read the rest
