Amateur 3d Renders

[mrthejoshmon]

Hello,

 

I've been messing around with Blender recently, why not, and have been trying to make wallpapers for my desktop.

Figured I'd post them here instead of just making endless status updates.

They're fairly amateur at the moment, especially the first 2, but I think over time I'm starting to understand how this all works, we'll see how it goes.

Spoilered below are what I have so far, they are quite large (3840x2160):

 

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This is inspired by this old Space Crusade artwork:

 

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Hopefully I can make better stuff later on, I'm interested to see if anyone else has had any experience in this field and would love to see what you have done!

 

Edited November 15, 2023 by mrthejoshmon : Replaced upload of older image

[TheBlurCafe]

For having just started, these look pretty good!
I'm no Blender expert, but for your next renders, I suggest playing around with different camera angles and dynamic posing, but again, take my advice with a grain of salt, since I'm not familiar with Blender at all.

I can see that you have improved the lighting from the first two pictures, good luck with any future work!

[mrthejoshmon]

On 1/30/2023 at 9:29 AM, TheBlurCafe said:

For having just started, these look pretty good!
I'm no Blender expert, but for your next renders, I suggest playing around with different camera angles and dynamic posing, but again, take my advice with a grain of salt, since I'm not familiar with Blender at all.

I can see that you have improved the lighting from the first two pictures, good luck with any future work!

Thank you, I've still got a lot to learn in terms of compositing and making actual special effects (not going to disclose how long those lasers took).

 

Again, we'll see how it goes.

[Phobos99]

WOW.

 

these look really impressive, how did you manage to do these

[mrthejoshmon]

2 hours ago, Phobos99 said:

WOW.

 

these look really impressive, how did you manage to do these

Thank you, mainly just using blender.

There is a lot of resources out there that are readably available for use, for instance you can find a large amount of Halo models ready to use for Blender here.

 

As for the Fallout renders, they were done in a really round about way that I won't get into, all I'll say is there was a lot of reading tutorials on .nif conversions, how to rig models, headaches involving actually getting the textures to map properly... To be honest that's half the fun of it, it's like beating a puzzle.

 

If you ever want to try Blender yourself then I'd say go for it, most of what I know is quite simply found out through messing around blind and occasionally watching a tutorial.

[mrthejoshmon]

Spoiler

Not exactly fully pleased with this one to be honest, oh well.

EDIT: Replaced version with newer one containing less errors.

Edited February 11, 2023 by mrthejoshmon

[Murdoch]

When you said amateur I expected something like this...

 

Honestly these are decent dude. Good job.

[mrthejoshmon]

3 hours ago, Murdoch said:

When you said amateur I expected something like this...

Honestly these are decent dude. Good job.

Thank you, I suppose I have a decent advantage because for the most part I'm not modelling much but instead just posting and such.

 

I dread to think of what my attempts at modelling would look like.

[mrthejoshmon]

Spoiler

 

"Initial reports were off, this isn't the work of insurgents..."

 

[mrthejoshmon]

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[Dusty_Rhodes]

These look solid man. I always like to see Halo given some love here too. Keep it up!

[mrthejoshmon]

2 hours ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

These look solid man. I always like to see Halo given some love here too. Keep it up!

Thank you, hopefully I can get more done.

[mrthejoshmon]

Spoiler

 

Area overrun, Orion class kill teams deployed.

 

[mrthejoshmon]

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"Elite units pose a significant threat to frontline forces in combat, fair fights and chivalry however only get you so far, a knife in the dark gets you much further"

 

[mrthejoshmon]

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More shit.

[mrthejoshmon]

Spoiler

 

It's been a while since I did one of these, thought I'd step out the comfort zone and go for an outside scene (I hate doing them).

[BuffyTheDoomSlayer]

Those are pretty spectacular for someone who's experienced, much less an amateur. You have a good sense of framing - and honestly, I have basically no critiques, any artist should be proud of these. If I HAD to make a suggestion, it would be to play with depth separation a little more - both with staging elements at more drastic distances from the camera and also with a more shallow depth-of-field. But really, that's such a minor tweak. Really impressive work. 

[mrthejoshmon]

30 minutes ago, BuffyTheDoomSlayer said:

Those are pretty spectacular for someone who's experienced, much less an amateur. You have a good sense of framing - and honestly, I have basically no critiques, any artist should be proud of these. If I HAD to make a suggestion, it would be to play with depth separation a little more - both with staging elements at more drastic distances from the camera and also with a more shallow depth-of-field. But really, that's such a minor tweak. Really impressive work. 

Thank you so much!

I've been trying to mess with DOF for a bit but I do struggle with it, I recently found out how good principled volumes are for separating foregrounds, if I can figure out how to mix both I think it'll be golden.

[BuffyTheDoomSlayer]

27 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Thank you so much!

I've been trying to mess with DOF for a bit but I do struggle with it, I recently found out how good principled volumes are for separating foregrounds, if I can figure out how to mix both I think it'll be golden.

 

DOF is a tricky thing because it really is as much art as science. I sort of fall back on real-world usage when rendering, in other words - if it's an action scene, you probably want to go a touch lighter on it, versus an artistic scene, where you can go in a bit heavier on it. Either way it does require a strong subject in the foreground, but you seem to have a really good sense of that in the framing anyway. I haven't spent much time with the principled volumes other than a "god-ray" render a couple of years back, but I'm assuming you mean to use that to simulate atmospheric perspective, etc?

[mrthejoshmon]

46 minutes ago, BuffyTheDoomSlayer said:

 

DOF is a tricky thing because it really is as much art as science. I sort of fall back on real-world usage when rendering, in other words - if it's an action scene, you probably want to go a touch lighter on it, versus an artistic scene, where you can go in a bit heavier on it. Either way it does require a strong subject in the foreground, but you seem to have a really good sense of that in the framing anyway. I haven't spent much time with the principled volumes other than a "god-ray" render a couple of years back, but I'm assuming you mean to use that to simulate atmospheric perspective, etc?

I'll have to experiment more with DOF settings and see what I can make.

Yeah I've messed with principled volumes a bit, they can make great cones of light or God rays but I mainly use them for fake smoke or fog (well, background smoke, they're a lot less intensive than actual smoke simulations but less detailed so you have to essentially hide the trick in plain sight) and I found (especially in outdoor scenes) using an incredibly low density but large size volume does wonders to simulate atmosphere and slightly darken backgrounds (before and after).

Also you mentioned you made a few renders, I'm actually interested in seeing those if that's alright? Genuinely.

[BuffyTheDoomSlayer]

17 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

I'll have to experiment more with DOF settings and see what I can make.

Yeah I've messed with principled volumes a bit, they can make great cones of light or God rays but I mainly use them for fake smoke or fog (well, background smoke, they're a lot less intensive than actual smoke simulations but less detailed so you have to essentially hide the trick in plain sight) and I found (especially in outdoor scenes) using an incredibly low density but large size volume does wonders to simulate atmosphere and slightly darken backgrounds (before and after).

Also you mentioned you made a few renders, I'm actually interested in seeing those if that's alright? Genuinely.

 

You can definitely see the difference in the two - I may have to play around with that a little more the next time I'm in Blender!

 

Renders...possibly? Honestly, most of what I do is product and instructional animation, which is not nearly as artistic in practice (you tend to focus more on visual clarity and "80%" realism, less artistic, more informational). I have some cool artistic promotional stuff from the last couple of years but it's tied up in an NDA and pending IP sale, so I have no idea if I can actually post it or not. I'll dig around my drives a little later and see what I have in there I can share. 

[Joe Khan Deez]

holy shit these are awesome

 

(might steal these for my own background)