swinging | orbit

swinging orbit. grafik: ms

actually, this was not meant to lead to a rendered image at all. i experimented with particles in CGI, 10 per second, emitted in the center of the scene, about 10 cm from the objects you see in this rendering, blown into one direction by wind. i then applied so-called trails to connect them. what i actually wanted to get to, however, was a more loose connection of the particle objects by thin curves. it took me about an hour or two to find out how this can work. and while experimenting, this camera angle came up. the view was so beautiful, i introduced some light and did this high-res rendering with depth of field. the camera actually is in the particle stream, with the particles flying towards us, and it looks into a world of macroscopic dimensions. that‘s why the DOF is so shallow, even with a pretty small aperture.

flucht | bewegung

flucht, wohin? grafik: ms/dpa

die bewegungsunschärfe hätte ich direkt rendern können – und würde es bei einer bildfolge, also einem film, so tun. bei diesem bild habe ich mich aber entschieden, es komplett scharf zu rendern und mit dem photoshop-filter „pfad unschärfe“ nachbearbeitet. der filter simuliert eine kamerabewegung und tut hier so, als würde ich mit der kamera den läufern hinterherschwenken.

a pen writes | foam

… in 3D, of course. the workflow is interesting. like most tasks this one can be solved in several ways. the client needs a hand written animation with the product or brand name. you can do it either with particles or liquid simulations or, much more pragmantic, using a NURBS curve, a pen attached to the curve with a motion path, and a paintFX ink or oil stroke synced to the pen movement. here’s a standard rendering, and below one with arnold toon shader.

a pen writes foam

stylized rendering

arnold toon | shader

new in solid angle → arnold in version 5.1 is, among other things, the toon shader. arnold, famous for its photorealism, offers, as a side effect, some cartoon rendering options. the amount of detail is amazing, as shown in the image above. note the ultra thin silhouette of the border parts of the gemoetry.

below you see a detail from the torso front of the runner where another runner in the scene appears as a cartoonish reflection. i modeled the holes in the character with mainframe north’s plug-in for maya → prosets.

arnold toon shader with | motion blur

… raises several questions.

aesthetically correct seems that despite the leg to the front is blurred a lot (1) and the leg in the back not at all (2) the edges are not blurred on both legs. motion blur seems to not affect the black silhouette lines.

but why is the silhouette of one leg (3) thicker than of the other (4) ?

and what does the shadow (6) have to do with the delicate black lines in the rear leg (5) ?

finally: why is the reflection of the silhouette of the front leg motion blurred (7) ?