Spirit Church

Church interior for a recent project.  

Latest....

Here is a few new environments.  I love looking at 3D scenes that have tons of items in them and I do my best to add as many filler items as my time frame allows - then it is off to render and into the final shot.  The garden study has a random light switch on the wall, I was going to put in a door but...just ran out of time.  Such is the life - 

Mountain Cabin

Left is the actual statue right is my zBrush version 

Book of Life

Garden Study 

Rendering is better than Posting

My most recent work, well from the past year.  All these screen shots are movies that are roughly one minute in length.  

English Parlour

Colored Smoke Sequence - (looks cooler as a movie)

Jerusalem 50AD

Jerusalem 50AD

God's Throne Room

David's Throne Room

Hall of Wisdom

Synagogue - Medieval Chamber

No I have not been on hiatus since February.  Frankly I forgot to post some of my latest stuff so I will do a bit of catch up.  I have been working on/trying to achieve more physically accurate lighting and this is what I am getting.  Two different setups the first a 1st century synagogue.  The lighting is done entirely by the Maya physical sun and sky, which produces some really beautiful light play across the interior.  The Medieval chamber is also primarily lit from the stained glass window with the physical sun and sky.  However this interior does have one extra light to push light back onto the table.  I think the results really raise the quality of scene and light but holy smokes it is "expensive."
 

Winter Shoot

Me and the speed lights were back at a it again, that has potential for a band name "Ben and the SpeedLights."  This time we needed a few ladies in the images, so we asked a few of the staff here, they agreed and off we went.  Here is a quick sheet of my favorites.  The graffiti wall was done in post along with the blue background in the upper left. 

Stock Shoot

Last year we did a stock photo shoot here at work.  The purpose was to gather hard to find images/video that we use on a regular basis, images of people studying and gathering for bible study.  Typically on stock sites we find lots of really cheesy images or images that are too staged.  I was responsible for the photos from the shoot and using my 3 speedlights and umbrella and a tiny softbox - this is what I got.  I threw them together on a quick sheet just to showcase some of my favorites. 

Ancient Harbor

This is a companion piece to the Market Place I did a few posts back.  Several people have asked me which ancient seaport it is, and well, a little bit of all of them.  Caesarea and Ephesus are the two I found the most reference/ruin pictures of.  We did have a professor stop by the office and he asked me this question, and after a few more very pointed questions he said "I've been studying ancient seaports for 30 years."  - Great, if I would have asked him for his opinion instead of trying to think back to what I just said wondering if I made myself look like a dummy I could have stamped a "seal of approval" on it.  Oh well.

Set of 4

I originally built this table for one shot, then during our last project I reused it to save some time.  To keep with tradition I decided for our current project I could do a few modifications and use it again.  Granted the last one got a bit more elaborate, but it is still the same table, scrolls, map and lighting setup.  I modified the scene by swapping textures and moving the pieces around, but all in all its the same stuff.

Original

Version 2

Version 3

Version 4

Market

This piece I was really trying to keep the poly count low, which I did until all the paint effect plants and the misc items started to make it a bit heavier.  Would love to really populate the marketplace with more vendors and I would also like to see if we could composite in a few market-goers.  Regardless, here is what I came up with.

The Fall

Here is a new piece that just came out of the render box.  I am really happy with how it turned out, all the existing Eden stuff is during the daytime, but why not have the Fall at night?  The figures were done by our Illustrator, Sean Luo, and there are a lot of paint effect plants but everything else was done in Maya 2012.  I did create the large tree by hand and did all of the lighting and rendering along with the final composite.  Sorry to have to put a watermark on it but.....you know.

Theater

Needed a theater for one of our new lessons.  Pretty simple, most things have ye ole Lambert1 on them - and then the set pieces are from an older lesson.   I will post more pics when they make it out of the queue. 

Jerusalem Council

I know I keep posting these, but each time I do one I try to make it a bit better without losing the original idea and killing the render time.  I thought this one turned out well and I especially like the "set" that came out of it.  I used the Maya Daylight shader to get the light into the room, then lit the rest with point and spot lights.  Final comp came together in AE. Oh and of course the original illustration was done by our in house illustrator, Sean Luo.

Back to the Past

Here is a quick shot of a recent project I am working on.  We needed this shot last minute so I don't have much time to finish.   It is pretty simple, just a floor no walls and a few items on the tabletop.  I did use zBrush to get the two bags made (I wish i had a reason to work there more) and... well... that is about it. Sill using Maya 2012.  If I get a bit more time I would like to add a bit more clutter, but sometimes when it is due - its due.

2D - 3D

More Multi-Planes -  I am still doing a lot of these, basically because they are very fast to crank out.  So here is one more.

                                                                               

Original Painting

Maya Viewport

Final Render

4 Scrolls

A render from an old set yet again, old in more ways than one.  Old because I modeled it a while back and old because, well, it looks old.  We needed an image for a DVD menu and they chose this one.  Supposed to be the 4 Gospel scrolls; Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

Multi-Planes

I have been doing a lot of these lately, I call them multi-planes or projection mapping.  Basically I take a painting done by our in house illustrator, Sean Luo, and break it into several pieces - map the textures on planes or shapes - add some Maya lights then render out a camera move.  Generally it gives the painting a  bit more visual duration for the viewer.  These are really easy to do especially when you start with such a great paining.

Midieval Abbey - up date

I modeled this set several years ago and just completed a few retouches - this is the final result.  I usually don't like to go back to old projects b/c my new stuff is typically much better but this guy has withstood the time test and I still really like it.  I was working with the compositor on a few color corrections and adjustments to match the rest of the 3D from this current series.

After we finished the above shot I felt as if it lost a bit of the mood of the original idea so we landed back with a bit of a warmer version, closer to the original idea.  Both look nice but the bleach by pass look was just a bit to cool/cold for me.  So this is the new up - up date.

Dynamic Compass

Compass is the best term to describe this object and it was done back when I was feeling very steam punk.  For the purpose of our lessons it symbolizes the relationship between blessing and curses.  When the needle moves in the shot all the gears spin and twirl (set driven key,) pretty slick if I can say so myself.  Fun.

Polished Concrete

I have had this environment finished for some time just now got around to posting it.  Definitely a different look than the more "historical" stuff I usually work on, there is even polished concrete on the floor..., whoa!  

Final Churches

So I had the compositor run the Tilt/Shift on these shots and this is the final look.  Just to note, I am not going to do everything T/S but for the series we are working on it does keep our style consistent.  It has been very nice to have someone to run a final pass on my 3D, really makes it pop.