HDRi Skies - Mourelas Konstantinos

A beautiful image sent to me by Mourelas Konstantinos (@mourelask on twitter) which uses the very dramatic 1853 sky from my collection.

Moody sky, fog, trees... ticks all the boxes for me. Love it.

More about the image here.

Free HDRi Sky* - 3DArtist Mag

Completely forgot about this until I got sent a copy of the magazine, but 3DArtist Magazine has one of my skies on the cover disc courtesy of 3DOcean.net.

It doesn't mention my name anywhere but it is indeed one of mine so maybe a good chance to try a HDRi sky out if you haven't done so already.

The sky on the disc is '1928 Dusk Sun'

*when you buy the magazine for 6 quid

Tind by Claesson Koivisto Rune

Some of my favourite images from a recent project for the Swedish company Fiskarhedenvillan which was designed by Claesson Koivisto Rune.

(thanks to The Urban Alaskan blog for letting me use the snowsteps image here)

Many thanks to Design Connected for their help with the furniture used in this project. Almost all of the pieces of furniture are designed by Claesson Koivisto Rune themselves:

and the remaining items were:

Any other props were either supplied by the architect or come from modelplusmodel. The logs next to the fireplace originally came from evermotion I think and I then put them in place using MassFX in 3dsmax.

As usual all images are lit by my own HDRi skies without any additional help from a vraysun. The actual skies used were:

White House exteriors: 1614 White House interiors: 1008

Black House exteriors: 1614 Black House interiors: 1614

Red House exteriors: 1123 Red House interiors: 1008

As always you can find the full set on flickr.

Hayes Davidson are recruiting!

Hayes Davidson are recruiting! They are currently looking for a Technical Projects Manager, Technical Photomontage Artists and 3D Artists. For information about how to apply, visit http://www.hayesdavidson.com/about/jobs.php

I rent a desk at Hayes Davidson and have the daily pleasure of working alongside a great team of talented and enthusiastic artists, as well as (the equally talented) Patrick Vale and Nick Rochowski.

overscan

Quick 3dsmax tip.

If you need to enlarge the frame of a camera without altering the perspective of your original composition, try this:

Divide the original width of your frame by the new width, which in my case was 1200/1600 which gives 0.75. Then multiply your camera focal length by this ratio to find what the new focal length should be. For the example I'm using my original focal length was 35mm, which multiplied by 0.75 is 26.25mm.

Set your camera to this new focal length, change the format accordingly and you have effectively added width to your composition.

Thanks to twitter.com/VisualEyesMedia for this handy tip!

(There is also a script for this purpose www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/overscan but it doesn't work with vray cameras)

3dsmax - annoyances no. 1

I'm not usually one of those people who resists change in computer software, but I do when 'new' is both less intuitive and also slower. So this post is really just a reminder to myself of what to do to revert the 3dsmax select dialog to the old style one, and the material/map browser (within the material editor) as well. Enjoy!

C: > Users > *username* > AppData > Local > Autodesk > 3dsMax(Design) > 2013 - 64bit > ENU > en-US > defaults > MAX.vray > Currentdefaults.ini

[Scene Explorer] SelectByNameUsesSceneExplorer=0

(If you aren't using vray then the path will be slightly different)

C: > Users > *username* > AppData > Local > Autodesk > 3dsMax(Design) > 2013 - 64bit > ENU > plugcfg_ln > SME.ini

UseOldMtlBrowser=1

EDIT:

And another thing while I'm at it. I prefer having the file menu visible rather than just as an icon, luckily this is very easy to do, just customize your UI, click the menus tab and drag the file menu back where it should be like this:

Thanks to Pixela I think it was who originally helped me with this!

45 Skies - 3docean update!

UPDATE: My HDR Sky shop is now open, please buy my products there instead, thanks!

Before I start making new skies, I decided to go back and work a bit more on all the old ones. If you bought any of them, you can now log in to 3docean.net and download the updated versions.

Changes include:

  • The original horizon has been removed from the HDR files, and the photos used to make the HDRi re-processed for a smoother, noise free image.
  • Radiance (.hdr) and OpenEXR (.exr) file sizes have been optimized to improve loading times.
  • 16 bit RAW versions of the backplate photos now included to allow greater freedom in post processing.

Enjoy!

EDIT: labelled version as requested.

EDIT 2: Any new skies won't be happening anytime soon I'm afraid, I'll probably wait till I have 9 ready so that I can offer them as a pack for a reduced price straight away.

EDIT 3: Lots of people asking how to get the updated skies. Just log into 3docean as normal, click on the downloads tab and you will see all the products you have bought from 3docean, then just download the ones you want. All my skies on 3docean have been updated so you will get the new version when you download.