rendering gallery
Starting out on the Amiga with Sculpt 3D, I have been toying with rendering
programs on and off over the years. I eventually abandoned Sculpt,
with its cantankerous modeler and appallingly slow rendering engine,
for Imagine (originally called Turbo Silver), and I stuck with that product until NewTek released
Lightwave independently of the Video Toaster. Lightwave was my
modeler/renderer of choice for years, and I used it to create
and render spaceships, planets, and other items, usually for work
related projects.
I've since moved onto the Mac and PC, and while Lightwave is a great product on most other platforms, its Mac port has always
left a lot to be desired, and I eventually adopted Specular's
Infini-D. It had acceptable rendering quality, but more importantly,
it introduced me to spline modeling. Using bezier curves I could
create in Adobe Illustrator, Infini-D let me extrude, lathe, loft,
and rail these profiles to my heart's content. It was a great program.
The rendering engine was always its weakest point, but it was
improving with each new version of the program. Then Metacreations
took over, released an unfortunately bugged version of Infini-D, killed
off the product in favor of folding its technology in with the
inferior Ray Dream, and produced Carrara. Metacreations
then promptly dropped all of their graphic arts software business. Eovia has since taken over production of Carrara, and it's shaping up to be a strong product.
Cinema4D has been around almost as long as Lightwave. It started out on
the Amiga, but I always overlooked the program for its quirky,
nonstandard interface, and weird ways of doing things. The current
version, 9.5, still has a nonstandard interface, and weird ways
of doing things, but it is wonderful. It has a fast, high quality
rendering engine, moderately rich set of texturing tools, and
a fast, responsive modeler which uses splines, hierarchical modifiers,
and subdivision surfaces. This results in a fast workflow, with
complex objects represented by small and fast splines which render
very smoothly. Cinema4D is a very strong product, one I encourage
you to investigate.
A point of comparison: I loaded the "MustangHiRes" scene that comes
with Lightwave into both LW6.5 and Cinema4D 6.1. Lightwave took
5 minutes 35 seconds to render the scene at a resolution of 1280 x 960
with low antialiasing, adaptive sampling. Cinema4D rendered the
same scene with 3x3 edge and color antialiasing, at 1280 x 1024
in 1 minute 52 seconds. Impressive speed.
Below, you will find some examples of my recent work in Cinema4D, from
rudimentary tests of concept to more elaborate, finished works.
I continue to update this page as new projects are completed.
I also plan on posting some rendering tips and tutorials as time
permits.
Also, check out this webgallery of game level renderings I recently created for the Tempus Irae site.
click any image for a larger view and commentary