Review: Crazy Bump

Looking for a normal map maker? then sooner or later you will find CrazyBump,simply because its one of the easiest to use and quickest ways of generating normal,specularity,occlusion and displacement maps.Load the image you want and there's a list of sliders to increase details,intensity etc and that's it done.The layout is clean and simple and you can learn everything in 5 Min's.There are also extra options for batch processing images and you can preview the maps in 3D,worth trying for sure.
Download the demo from HERE

Taking a "Genetica" generated texture and normal mapping with
CrazyBump.

Artlantis Studio Rendering - Review

Artlantis studio is another "realtime renderer",by now Ive learnt realtime means a nice preview..and you still have to hit render at some point!.My first time trying out the program I didn't give it much of a chance,the included sample files are fine but rendering them out was painfully slow.I decided to give it a second chance though and import a .obj of my own scene from Maya.
Once in the program you import a scene or model,there is sunlight setup allowing for location,time of day and cloud cover.A material bank containing some presets such as wood,floors etc and some simple objects you can use.The setup is fairly easy and the preview window will give you a pretty good idea how the scene is going to look.Render settings include radiosity and the main draw of the program is that it creates indoor and outdoor natural lighting well.

5 Min (1280x720) render with hard shadows and high radiosity 

Added soft shadows,7 Min render.Click images to enlarge.

The interface itself while being easy to navigate and understand i found a little off putting,a nicer layout would have drawn me in a lot quicker as when i actually rendered my scene the render time was pretty good.
There is a couple problems in the program,there are only 2 render options (high or low) for anti aliasing and 3 similar settings for radiosity and adding additional lights slow the render time massively.The program also crashed a few times when changing basic settings on a low poly scene.
I'm still undecided on what i think of Atlantis,its certainly worth trying again though.

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

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 

Review: Sculptris

While checking out Zbrush's website I came across 'Sculptris',created by the same people its basically a cut down version of zbrush and a competitor to Mudbox with one major difference..its free!.At 20mb I downloaded it and gave it a go,unlike zbrush the interface is immediately accessible and clean,it doesn't have the same head/body presets but does has the option to import any .obj files as well as a library of materials.
The program has two key features..firstly you can paint color and texture directly onto the model (like Mudbox) and secondly (unlike Mubox) when you sculpt you can increase the detail in one area without upping the geometry of the whole model.This allows you to drag out areas like tentacles or entire limbs.
It's currently an Alpha release so more features are to be added but as it is if you're looking to try out digital sculpting not only is free its intuitive and fun to use.
Sign up free and download here- SCULPTRIS!

My first attempt in Sculptris,10mins modelling from a sphere.

Amnesia: Making of the Game

Amnesia: the dark descent is best known for it YouTube reaction videos of players letting out yelps and screams while playing the game, its pretty good at mixing point and click,survival horror and physics to create something original.After finishing the game I noticed that among the install files was one called "super secret Rar ",so I went straight to google.It turns out the multiple endings of the game give sections of a password that opens the file and inside there's a fairly expansive making of,over 200mb worth of videos,images and production booklets.

Behind the scene images show Maya modelling for game details.

PDF,PowerPoint's and word files breakdown  production,
selling points and pitch the story's unique elements

The majority of making of books tend to gloss over a lot but here you get to see development of the game engine itself and a host of pdf and even PowerPoint pitching the game (presumably to investors) and its features,they show initial ideas and breakdowns of story and basically try to sell the game at its earliest stage.It's an interesting look into behind the scenes of a game and worth checking out even if you aren't a gamer.

Review: Lumion Realtime Rendering

Real time rendering programs..they have a habit of hiding a button called play,record or movie that's actual purpose is...to render.Lumion is no different but the program itself manages to get away with it because for the most part it does produce some really good real time images.The first thing that hits you opening the program is the design,Lumion looks like the 'sims',everything is ultra easy to navigate and you can explore the entire program in about 5mins.The program itself has a ton of props,materials,animated characters as well as terrain and water.It all has the bright and cheery Sims look.

A Pre-set examples scenes in realtime,the quality settings
are graded by 1-4 stars with this being the highest.

A quick .obj import of my model in realtime the weather
can be instantly updated with lightbeams and fog.

The main purpose of the program seems to be architectural rendering,fly-throughs of streets and concepts which it does do well.On my laptop the program ran with some drop in frame rates and other issues but on a good system I'm sure it wouldn't be much of an issue.Its a good program but limited,the renders have a definite "look" that feels game-ish and it feels more like a fun program than a professional one.When i do upgrade my computer I will probably come back to Lumion and see how far it can be pushed,its definitely one of the best I've tried so far. http://lumion3d.com/
For review's of more realtime render software click program or review tags below.

Review: Daylight Visualizer

Another day another program,VELUX Daylight Visualizer is basically a program for render interiors with natural lighting,it also builds custom rooms and features presets of objects and materials as well as settings to calculate light based on country,day of the year and time.In a matter of minutes you can learn almost every setting and setup and rendering a fairly high quality image or animation,the rendering takes no time.

A basic scene i created in just 2 mins and lowest quality render setting which took about 2 mins

The program claims to support importing .obj files and others but i wasn't able to get it working sadly,its pretty much the only fault i found in the program as it delivers nice renders fast.Its currently on version 2 and free for downloading at less than 50mb (it does watermark renders but only at bottom) and later versions would be well worth checking out.Available here - http://viz.velux.com/
            



Another low setting / ultra quick render using material and object presets.There's some artifacts on render but given the low settings is understandable.

                               

Review: ShiVa Game Editor

Today I tried out Stonetrip's ShiVa editor,a game building engine and authoring tool similar to Unity.Opening up the program the first thing that hit me was the layout which seems to waste as much space as possible,putting all the major an important tools in a panel half way down the screen rather than up top.Once I got past that all the usual features are there (creating lights and shapes etc).Whenever you create object they are added to a library where they can be dragged and dropped into scene,seems pretty simple but with all the menus condensed into one area it quickly gets complicated.

ShiVa 3D Available as a free PLE edition

The demo levels show off some nice lighting and soft shadows and there's a library of free materials and objects to play around with,Maya importing is also fairly simple though the polygon limit seems low.In the short amount of time I played with shiVa I got the feeling Unity's probably got the upper hand with interface and community forums.

Unity 3D 3

I decided to give Unity3d 3 another go,the last time i used it i thought the quality of lighting and rendering was disappointing but after seeing the program version had updated and there are now lots of add-ons,scripts i wanted to check out if anything had changed.The first time I tried Unity my goal was importing Maya models in the hope that the game engine could be used for real time renders,this time i decided to look at it as a game engine and how complex scenes could be as well as how well the lighting would work.
I managed to import a pretty large scale model i built a while back in Maya with minimal fuss (the vertex limit is somewhere around 65,000) and set about lighting it.The main lighting was directional light and a couple of point lights to add some glow,Unity Pro also features image effects which you drag onto the camera,so i set up an anti-aliasing effect and some bloom.The results are pretty decent actually,it took around 20mins to put the scene together and although theres some slow down external lighting works fine.

Bloom image effects applied to camera

In-game render after 20 mins work.

                                     
The next scene I tried was  internal lighting and this is where the limitations of the engine showed again,there are 2 lighting options,deferred and forward.Deferred lighting means you can have soft real time shadows on point lights and forward means you cant,clearly you need shadows so its got to be deferred.Until you see the quality of the shadows.By turning on deferred every edge,shadow and line flickers and pixelates,you can spend hours tweaking settings,adding image effects and blurs but the quality just doesn't cut it.

Deffered lighting causes pixelated shadows in Unity

From a distance the scene looks fine,but edges become choppy

Forward lighting of the same scene is more clear but shadows are gone.

               
Unity is a great program and I'm sure a few version's down the line it will be even better but right now its still limited to certain projects,outdoors scenes and casual games for mobile wont notice the problems but for bigger projects theres better programs.Next up I try Shiva3D...

The Setup Machine 2 Review

I hate rigging,most folk do.So soon as I had to animate a character model I built the first thing I did was google "Maya auto rigger".There is actually a fair few available for free on Creative Crash but the results are hit and miss,first one I tried was Creature tools which rigs both biped and quadruped characters but didn't seem to work at doing either that well.I had heard a few mentions of Anzovin studio's "the setup machine" and decided to give it a go.Installing it was straight forward and the manual actually was pretty clear for once and after playing about I actually had a rigged character in about 5 minutes,yeah it actually works!.
To rig a character you define the mesh you want to rig and then place a series of tubes over the limbs to set the legs/arms etc,a few adjustments and you hit rig.


Defining the characters limbs before rigging.



Initially its a pretty simple setup but it offers various options for paint weighting in order to get limbs moving correct and a basic character can be done in no time.
The project i used the rigged character was for university which meant that I would be working both at home on windows PC and in class on a Mac which didn't have the program installed,luckily characters rigged and saved in Maya scenes work on either and I had no problems with compatibility,I also upgraded my version of Maya and had no problems bringing the rig into the newer version.

Final rig for my clown character.Colin Kaszynski 2011.

Overall a definite recommend for anyone who has little or no knowledge about rigging or simply hates doing it and there is also an auto face rigger. Check it out here -The Setup Machine

Unity 3 3D with Maya Review

I decided to give Unity 3 3D game development a try over the last few days,its basically a program for creating multi-platform games fairly easily and quickly and it supports importing Maya objects but i thought it would also be a useful way to real time 3d scenes.The interface and setup is actually pretty easy to learn and the main draw was that i was able to import Maya scenes in just a few minutes,just put your Maya file into the Unity project folder and it converts it and imports it.When it comes to lighting and rendering its all easy to set up but sadly the final result isn't quite what id hoped for,you can achieve better results by baking lighting into static objects but the engine has some clear limitations.Looking around the web you start to find the number of videos showcasing the engine are limited.It was worth trying and future releases might be interesting to check out,time to try the  Unreal Engine...

EDIT-- More in depth look at Unity 3 with renders here- http://sharkswithjetpacks.blogspot.com/2011/08/i-decided-to-give-unity3d-3-another.html