Sculptures Whitaker Studio

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Yiqin
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2013 6:08 pm

Re: Affinity Photo

Post by Yiqin » Sun Jan 07, 2018 7:09 am

Thanks Juju, I took a quick look at the website and Affinity Photo looks promising and at that price is worth checking out in the near future. After initial group composition nearly all my layout & spacing work is done in AutoCAD LT, the lack of dxf/dwg on the Affinity designer is a deal killer for me, as I go back and forth between Autocad LT and Sketchup a bit for layouts.

My workflow generally works as follows:

-Site research usually client notes, photos, & google earth (rarely visit sites first hand, but google earth's latest 3d mode can be very telling about what i'm dealing with at a site)
-Case by case may model some site context where photos aren't available or usable
-Initial group composition in sketchup often artist directed (I've pre modeled nearly all of the artists sculptures have them ready to import as components)
-Case by case may animate sculptures with keyframe animation plugin (still can't render these out with indigo, keyframe plugin does create scene per frame using layers but skindigo exporter still doesn't seem to care for it... :( someday perhaps)
-Take plan view dxf export to autocad to verify spacing requirements, refine spacing & prelayout prep
-Take spacing back to sketchup, verify with artist for artist directed compositions
-Setup for render, match photo lighting, match photo camera lens and angle as much as possible, cleanup textures (remove duplicates convert to indigo specific textures)
-Render with indigo, main with alpha, shadows, and separate lighting render if needed
-Prep photo photoshop/perhaps Affinity Photo (often have found it beneficial to blur out photo background/fake bokeh also clean up photos, I've on occasion had to use google street view captures..)
-Composite with Photoshop/perhaps Affinity Photo
-Workup installation layout for client in autocad
-Package up for approval by studio owners & client in acrobat (Renders, layouts, etc.)

Thanks again for input, I'm always looking to improve quality of renders and workflow

Yiqin
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2013 6:08 pm

Re: Sculptures Whitaker Studio

Post by Yiqin » Sat Jun 08, 2019 10:34 am

I've attached a few of my favorite images from recent projects. All of these we done with site mockup in sketchup, only regret is the plants are all pretty low quality, at some point I need to start creating external proxies from my xfrog library...

As always any advice or suggestions are welcome
Attachments
Night3.jpg
A rework of a gallery display that was then modified for marketing use
NIght2.jpg
A rework of a gallery display that was then modified for marketing use
Night1.jpg
A rework of a gallery display that was then modified for marketing use
Concept DST.jpg
Simple concept for a client in Colorado, variation of this with a different sculpture design was installed last month

Yiqin
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2013 6:08 pm

Re: Sculptures Whitaker Studio

Post by Yiqin » Sat Jun 08, 2019 10:57 am

Couple weeks ago I was able to start reworking my materials, a few problems I've always had are texture mapping and how easy it is to get lost with many layers of blend mat. Any advice is appreciated here is where I am at:

Existing model library:
Texture tests previous.jpg
This is where most of the studio model files are at present
Planned improvements:
Texture tests.jpg
This is where I am at. I have pretty much overhauled all of the mats.
I recently acquired a WrapR license and have an indie license set for substance (haven't learned either toolset yet). I plan on properly uv mapping and texturing the models, time being the issue. for the moment I use sketchUV tools, and vray's uv toolset (I have vray licenses for both max and sketchup but I definitely prefer indigo for ease of use, speed, and imaging output....)

If anyone has advice on taking substance textures into sketchup & indigo that would be appreciated. Since most of their materials are geared for realtime PBR uses, and in my use of B2M, it seems some of the maps don't directly translate into indigo they way I think they should.

Yiqin
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2013 6:08 pm

Re: Sculptures Whitaker Studio

Post by Yiqin » Wed Jul 03, 2019 12:24 am

The dev team has been a major help lately with getting sketchup & keyframe animation plugin's "tweens" to export correctly for rendering. I've linked a couple test samples from last week.

Do to time constraints I under rendered the frames (450 spp bidirection mlt for the night, and ~550 samples pathtracing for the day.) For both I used Davinci Resolve Studio's Temporal noise reduction (low motion but the rest of the options set pretty high) to cut back on the noise. The frame sets are a full loop so the video clips repeat the frame sets x4.

The first samples are for top level animation/keys only. Working on a few new tests where the animation is 2-3 layers deep.

At this point my tests show that multi layered animation is working, there are still a few issues with scatter settings, both native skindigo & skatter, getting exported and an IES file copy glitch.

Day time stainless steel Wind Sculptures 2160x2160

https://youtu.be/L3io6h9VicE

Night time stainless steel Wind Sculptures 2160x2160

https://youtu.be/3CPUGKp9JHU

Many thanks to Indigo Renderer's team for the help

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OnoSendai
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Re: Sculptures Whitaker Studio

Post by OnoSendai » Thu Jul 04, 2019 4:07 am

Very nice animations!

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kscore
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Re: Sculptures Whitaker Studio

Post by kscore » Thu Jul 04, 2019 11:09 pm

The night shots are looking very cool. The animations very nice job!

Yiqin
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Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2013 6:08 pm

Re: Sculptures Whitaker Studio

Post by Yiqin » Fri Jul 19, 2019 4:15 am

I had a few quirks show up when I was rendering the next tests, I did some manual frame correction on the night, the day rendered fine and my individual sculpture tests were fine.

Like before these are the same scene but different files optimized for day/night. Both of these require 2-3 sub-object levels of animation.

I rendered these to a higher spp than the previously posted tests, ~600 bidir+MLT for the night still needed significant noise reduction + pp motion blur, and 1200 Path tracing on GPU (15 depth) no noise reduction.

Night:
https://youtu.be/1rPLEeyUmLk

Day:
https://youtu.be/YOLpHJqyIJ8

Open to suggestions for optimizing for render times (night with lighting and metal/phong/specular materials) and any other feed back.

Thanks

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kscore
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Re: Sculptures Whitaker Studio

Post by kscore » Fri Jul 19, 2019 6:16 am

I like these animations. Especially when looking on how the shadows moving.

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pixie
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Re: Sculptures Whitaker Studio

Post by pixie » Sun Aug 18, 2019 9:15 pm

They're mesmerizing! They beg for a 10h loop! xD

Yiqin
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2013 6:08 pm

Re: Sculptures Whitaker Studio

Post by Yiqin » Fri Oct 04, 2019 10:31 am

@Kscore & Pixie, thanks

Presently working on individual sculpture videos for an app and for gallery use, after that hopefully I can do more like the ones above.

Yiqin
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2013 6:08 pm

Re: Sculptures Whitaker Studio

Post by Yiqin » Tue Mar 02, 2021 2:05 am

A little update that is about a year late. I did finish sculpture animations for each sculpture design at the studio with indigo. That project can be found in a quasi AR app the studio had made early last year and can be found in the Apple app and google play stores:

Lyman Whitaker Wind Sculptures
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whitakerstudio.app&hl=en_US&gl=US
apps.apple.com/tt/app/lyman-whitaker-wind-sculptures/id1486673965

Many thanks, again, to the indigo dev team for their help in making the sketchup animation plugin I use work with the skindigo exporter. At some point the studio still hopes to build out the app to include rendered video clips of every size of every design and a few preselected groupings.

At the studio we were very fortunate to have been incredibly busy at the end of last year. I hope everyone else has been doing well over the last year as well.

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