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.

Merry Christmas!

I've always had a big interest in painting and wanted to give the digital end of it a go. A while back I bought a subscription of Painting with Light and Color with Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo. Two absolute geniuses. These are two paintings inspired by their class. The second one is a little older and somewhat disconnected from the whole Christmas thing but thought I'd upload it anyway. Studying and practicing paintings helps greatly with my lighting work and I plan to post more in the future. Merry Christmas!