Artist Feature: Joe Vinton – “Orbital”

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Jim Willey

After the last feature I told myself I was going to take a break from these and get around to some other work I’ve been meaning to do around here. Virtually as soon as I posted the feature with Steve Winter I stumbled upon the work of Joe Vinton, or as he is better known in 3D art circles such as Renderosity and DAZ 3D, Orbital. Like with the first feature posted here (Santosky), seeing Orbital’s amazing Bryce renderings triggered some deep sci-fi/exploration/creative grey matter. I knew instantly that I wanted to feature Orbital’s work.

Joe Vinton’s works have been exhibited in UK galleries and taken him to foreign lands. He primarily works with Bryce, or at least did so until recent years where his work has increasingly incorporated Photoshop. Even in many of Joe’s latest works published on his various online galleries Bryce still features heavily. In his latest posting, shown above (“Astonishing View”), the focal elements and space craft are all 3D rendered while the nebula and stars are Photoshop. As with many of the artists featured on the pages of DigiSprawl, Joe Vinton shows that the often underestimated Bryce, can still hold its own.

Jim: So, Joe, getting any sort of detailed info on you out of the intawebz is not the easiest business. I have found some interesting tidbits though – I know you hail from the UK, you’ve been using Bryce since 2002, that your art has landed you at least one gallery showing (others?), took you to the National Space Symposium in the US in 2007, and won you artist of the year at Renderosity in 2008. In 2009 you picked up a Wacom tablet, but before this you had very little experience with drawing or painting, digital or otherwise. More recently your artwork was selected for the 30^th Space Symposium commemorative poster (slated for May 2014).

This about the size of things? Or are there any major developments I’ve missed? Continue reading →

Artist Feature: Steve Winter – Mecha Beasties of The Future

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Jim Willey

Steve Winter’s work grabbed my attention some months ago amid many posts to a Bryce themed Facebook group. The particular image was of an imposing insectile machine standing amidst a gloomy rundown cathedral. It was the mecha monstrosity that caught my eye more than the overall image presentation. I was particularly drawn and stunned because Steve does his modelling entirely in Bryce (mostly 4), a program that few would associate with heavy modelling tasks. Steve’s designs are complex, frequently composed of millions of Bryce primitives and Boolean operations.

Steve’s works gets even better, not only is he a master of Bryce of model mancery, but he is a skilled visual artist (digital and traditional), so while many of his renders are WIP demonstrations he also has a stunning collection of superbly finished images. Most of his digital works can be found at his Renderosity gallery where he goes by the name The Lord Of Dragons, a title endowed by a Japanese business man who bought several works from a youthful Steve Winter back in his homeland (UK). His 3D works have a serious sci-fi bent, with his renders of the last few years dominated by his InZect creations. His publicly available works do also include some other spectacular renders.

Jim: I admit to being awed when I first saw your mecha-insectoid creations (still am). The idea of creating such complex models in a program that was never designed to be a full featured modeller is mind boggling. Is it a gruelling project putting together one of your InZects, or is Bryce a lot more adept as a modeller than an outsider might expect?

Continue reading →

Artist Feature Sylverdali – Surreal Places

Posted on September 16, 2013 by Jim Willey

Sylverdali is a 3D artist from Sydney, Australia. Primarily she works with Bryce 7 Pro, best known for its terrain and environment production and rendering tools. Bryce is also heavily utilised for abstract and surreal works, which is where Sylverdali’s work is concentrated. I first became aware of her work while sniffing about the Bryce community on DeviantArt, looking for artists who were doing interesting things with the software.

That investigation led to the production of a series of Bryce artist features. In the end I had a list of about a dozen artists I wanted to contact, but of course that was far too many for the sort of articles I wanted to do. Sylverdali was high on that list, not only for her unique and varied (but instantly recognisable) works, but for the fact that in just a few short years she has catapulted from a 3D novice to an inspiring technical proficiency. Come on in and witness the merging of vividly illuminated dreams and familiar realities presented through alien lenses.

Jim Willey: Looking at your gallery on deviantART it appears you just suddenly popped into existence in June of 2012? Is this the case? Did you just pick up Bryce and start serving up beautiful art, or is there significant prehistory?

Continue reading →

Luxus For Carrara Hits DAZ 3D

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Jim Willey

Eliane CK showing off the power of LuxRender and Luxus with one of her unmistakeable signature images

LuxRender comes to Carrara with GPU unbiased rendering power

For those of you that have been waiting for an easy way to configure and export your Carrara scenes to an unbiased render engine then your day has finally arrived. Not only do you finally have relatively quick and easy access to unbiased rendering, but it comes at just the price of one very affordable plugin. No hundreds of dollars for licensing fees and possible hardware upgrade to CUDA compliant technology, just Luxus for Carrara and LuxRender (free). funnily enough I’ve been working on a beginners guide to Luxus for DAZ Studio (which will be posted here and available as a PDF when done) and was about to set to work on completing it just as I stumbled upon this new Carrara version.

This is great news for Carrara users. I remember when I was just starting to use the software there was talk of Reality for Carrara, and that was very exciting, but whatever the reasons, it didn’t go ahead. I doubt I was the only one that was disappointed by this turn of events. There was a lot of talk about how developing content and plugins just wasn’t financially viable for Carrara, but more than a year later here we are. Recently I’ve been modelling a lot in LightWave and exporting these models to DAZ Studio to use Luxus and then onto LuxRender.

If my experience of Luxus for DS is anything to go by then Luxus for Carrara will be a very flexible and reliable tool indeed. It is very possible that I may even consider changing my workflow. Some grumble at the current speed with which it Lux renders, but with it being rapidly developed (huge speed increases and GPU breakthroughs in just the last year) the future is looking very bright, and then again there is price. At zero dollars you just can’t beat Lux.

Myth Busted

DP Carrara Master Collection Shaders

And then as if to put paid to the argument that content development for Carrara is not viable, on the very same day another (unrelated) product is released. DP Carrara Master Collection Shaders from well known Carrara vendor, RingoMonfort. This new set of shaders, according to the product’s description “will bring stunning realism to your Carrara scenes using the most powerful texture room features: Anisotropic, sub-surface scattering, transparency absorption, fresnel, translucency and much more. From Faux Finish paints, corrosion, beautiful woods, crystals, metals, paints and much more.” Of course the claim is backed up with simple but effective demonstration images.

Carrara Pro 69% off

Carrara 8 and Pro are once again on heavy discount For Platinum club members the current price for Pro is $171 (69% off), so if you’re not a PC club member it is worth signing up just for the saving, even if you didn’t want to fork out for an annual subscription. Carrara is the perfect tool for the upstart 3D artist that wants a taste of everything – modelling, animation, rigging, special effects, rigid and soft body dynamics, 3D render engine that punches well above its weight, landscapes and foliage, support for DAZ/Poser content and figures, and now access to cheap unbiased rendering – everything! With Carrara 8.5 and 9 just around the corner it is indeed, once again, exciting times to be a Carrara user.

iClone5 Sales and promotions

iClone still topping DAZ 3D top 30 sales chart.

Also on offer at the store is a bunch of training material for MyClone, currently 100% off with the purchase of iClone Animation Pipeline (3 in 1). Of course the material is free for PC club members – just one of those perks 😉 iClone5 Facial Pipeline Power Bundle is still placed high on the DAZ 3D top 30 chart since it was first released, and currently 50% off. I can’t say I know much about it but it is one of those things that seems to be on the wish list of every small/solo animation teams wish list, and with great integration for Genesis.

New Bryce Freebie by David Brinnen and Horo

…And of course there is a cool new freebie by David Brinnen and Horo, Golden Rules Composition Helpers for Bryce. Anyone who has done any elementary visual arts course has heard all about the golden rules, but with this neat little set of tools you can easily put them into practice. On top of this David and Horo’s stores are on special with handy training material like Bryce Mentoring DVD – Videos, Scenes and Resources currently 40% off. If you happened to miss the DigiSprawl series of Bryce Artist Features then you might be labouring under the false assumption that it is an out-dated and irrelevant program. Now is as good a time as any to find out about the quirky elegance of the program and witness some of the beautiful art being made with it on a daily basis.

Ok, back to work for me 😉 Happy renderings!

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