XGen Hair RnD in Maya and Renderman with PxrMarschnerHair Shader

Hi there. This is some more further Renderman and hair work from early August, I'm only getting around to uploading it now. These were interesting to work on. I experimented with some different lighting setups and was observing how the hair reacted to emissive objects also. All renders are straight from Maya except the two abstract type ones which have glows added in compositing. One of them is a the result of a camera placed inside some hair, just to see how it looked. Render times ranged from 5 to 20 minutes. Please click into each image for the full resolution. Thanks :)

Six New Art of Books

The Color of Pixar by Tia Kratter is a book I have been waiting to add to my book collection for a while. It's pretty cool how it's put together and shows how the creative use of colour can affect emotion in a scene. It's a little gem. I also picked up some other ones which I'm looking forward to digging into.

Blog update

Hi, due to a recent injury I suffered I will not be at the PC as much and will be unable to post here for a few weeks unfortunately. It's annoying because I was really getting into the XGen and Renderman hair and fur posts. I cannot wait to get back to them as I enjoyed them so much.

Also, I'd like to say thanks for all the visits to my blog and for the interest in it in general. I really appreciate people dropping by for a look, so thank you.

See you soon!

Paul

XGen Hair RnD in Maya and Renderman with PxrMarschnerHair Shader

I've been diving a bit deeper into XGen with Renderman and these are some results I came up with. This time it's more hair than fur. It's a pretty addictive tool to experiment with and the possibilities with XGen are crazy. There's some variation on the XGen groom for some. The renders are a little on the noisey side, but for RnD work, they are fine! Render time was 15 mins per image. Hope you like them.

XGen Fur RnD in Maya and Renderman with PxrMarschnerHair Shader

I had been wanting to check out XGen hair and fur with Renderman so here's the results of some tests I did over the weekend. They are not very high res and the render time was only between one and four mins per image. The fur groom is very basic too, but was OK for the testing I wanted to do. Some renders have different clumping values and hair densities. It's a simple lighting setup in combination with the PxrMarschnerHair shader. Straight renders from Maya. I really enjoyed this one. Please click into each image for the full size.

Bear, our new puppy. And Heidi!

We got a new boxer pup on Saturday. He's a little beauty, we called him Bear. Here's a few pics of himself, Heidi and her teddy. Bear is just over 8 weeks old and Heidi is 3 in July. Good for testing out the f/1.4 lens I got a while back, I hadn't really used the lens at all. Great for the shallow depth of field. Wide open it really knocks the background back. For the teddy shot, I tried bouncing some sunlight back onto him from the shed in the garden. Worked out well!

Bifröst River R&D Progression

A progression edit of Bifröst river playblast clips from Maya. Earliest initial tests are lower resolution and later ones are a bit higher resolution with foam also added. I have been looking into how this plugin works out of curiosity. It's great fun and I intend on doing some further tests with it.

Bifröst River R&D Progression from Paul Sheehy on Vimeo.

Volumetric Clouds Research and Development

This is only a small post that I have already tweeted but just logging it here also. The clouds were created in Houdini and brought into Max through OpenVDB and rendered in V-Ray. Render time was about 40 seconds.

Lightning and Hammer

This is some work I did a while ago and thought I would share it. It's quite different to the usual work I would do and the aim was to make it nice and atmospheric. I really enjoyed working on this one. The ember effects are 3D and FumeFx was used for the atmospheric smoke. I just did the shading, lighting, FX and compositing on this one. Rendered in V-Ray.

Here is a breakdown of the lighting and effects:

Bifröst Viscosity R&D in Maya and Renderman

Hi, this is my first post of 2017 and I will be aiming to post more often than before. As well as lighting, I am interested in exploring effects also. I have been experimenting with Bifröst in Maya and this is some R&D looking at viscosity settings to simulate a thick liquid. It turned out kind of like honey! It is not a very high res sim and some bubbling can be seen. I'm sure more time spent on the sim will address this. Rendered with Renderman in Maya 2017 with an average frame time of 30 seconds. Great fun doing this stuff.

Bifröst Viscosity R&D from Paul Sheehy on Vimeo.