Genetica 3.51- Texture generator

Spiral graphics Genetica 3.51 is a custom texture generator,capable of building almost infinite amounts of textures for 3d modelling.Begin by selecting a type of texture from dozens of category's such as metals,planets,bricks and buildings and then you move in to 'node' mode.Here you drag and drop elements rearranging a tree of effects,you can click on individual effects and alter them which in turn alters the final texture.Normal maps can also be created at the click of a button and images can be exported for use in any program.

A basic texture and bump map made in 2 Min's from presets.Worth noting the
program does everything from brickwork,windows,landscapes and tons more.

Genetica is a pretty interesting program for texturing and the massive amount of custom and copyright free textures it can create was what drew me to it but its one and maybe only failing is that the results are often slightly random,I couldn't help but think why not just create exactly the texture i wanted in photoshop.For more info on the program check it out here- DEMO

Twitter

Now on Twitter,say hello- HERE just getting used to it!

AutoDesk Showcase rendering

I must have  tried at least a dozen "real-time" render programs by now but forgot to actually look and see if Autodesk had one of there own,I stumbled over Showcase while looking at game engines and another rendering program called Marmoset on You Tube.Showcase is a hard program to judge,it has tons of features and presets,its got hdri lighting and a library of materials to play with but compared to some of the other software I tried it isn't particularly fun to use.It might be strange to describe it as not being fun but I think the best programs encourage you to play around,in the case of realtime renderers slapping textures onto objects they clearly don't belong to and looking at the results.Compared to Lumion the renders do come out more realistic and with a less like a game engine.The program is good though,there is huge amount of options and you can create turnarounds and movie's and even add animation but what stops me going back to it is that performance wise its below some of the other software I tried.On my laptop it ran very slow when I tried upping the details,if you have a good computer give it a go for sure but there's quicker realtime software.

I imported my train model and was pretty happy with realtime results
but beyond this level of detail my PC came to a standstill.

Rotating camera on this scene it looked fair,one thing I did notice is
that Showcase doesn't support .obj importing 

Hero Engine testing

Another quick test I put together using HeroEngine Game development kit,the online engine enables collaborative world building for MMO games.I brought in an old factory model I built to see how many polygons the engine could handle importing from Maya.

Speed Challenge 4# : Alice in wonderland

Model based on some of Tim Burton's Alice in wonderland concept art,was a fun scene to build and a good theme I would like to do some more models based on.

40 min's Modelling.

Speed challenge 3#

One hour challenge,was going for a Japanese style street scene,
built it up quickly using repeats and mirrors.

Would be nice to see all the sign texture's added and colorful
lights flooding the scene.

Speed challenge 2#

An hour in Maya,this was inspired by some concept
art I saw for the game Fable 3.

It probably took longer to render these images on my laptop
than it took to build them..I need a new computer.

Speed Model Challenge 1#

Thought I would try something new over the next week or two,after playing about in Mudbox in my free time and Maya being for work I wanted to get back to some fun modelling,the challenge is I have a maximum of an hour to model something..anything..long as it's clean model.

40 Min's in Maya modelling,probably more time
thinking on what to do than actual building.

I was going for a quirky game style building,not too cartoonish.