Postmodernist Brutalism (Maybe)
Over the last few months I’ve been playing with this model and trying to get it to work. It’s lacking in some way. The structure is interesting but unrealistic, probably a physical impossibility too. I like the idea of having each floor floating in free space.
I’m also playing with the camera settings to see how I can use them to positive effect. The vignetting is nice on this render.
I made the furniture and the beach towels were placed using the Garment maker/Cloth system which I learnt about recently. It’s great fun to use and the effect is nice. It’s a shame that it only appears to work on 2D shapes and not 3D/2D shelled items. It tends to make the polys go through the collision item which is rather dissapointing.
Version 1 & version 2 from more recently…
The Roger Stevens Building
Just got back from Leeds University. For the price of fuel and parking I’ve returned with a sackful of photographs which I am processing digitally at this point. Here are the first few. Opinion and more photos to follow.
On my browser the images load in Progressive layers, so each image may take a moment to appear in full clarity.
(The rusty red building isn’t part of the Roger Stevens Building)
Development: Surrounding context
This evening I have adjusted the proportions of the building and reduced the larger blocks to a more balanced size. I am also beginning to construct the surroundings.
Latest with AO – although that will need adjusting too before its finished.
I’ve raised the building from the ground because I have begun to find bridges interesting to the point where I no longer want to be “the driver” on journeys anymore. Taking shots would be much more to my liking. Le Corbusier liked to raise buildings into the air, probably to increase the separation between place and the rest of the world. I need to find a good illustrated book about Le Corbusier.
Lomography Gallery
I have just posted a new gallery page (see link above) that contains all the random shots that were taken on 14th March 2011. “36 exposures” have been chosen to try and capture the personality of those present. Some of the shots are just using the shapes and spaces that most now take for granted in the building.
The images are meant to show the results of using a Lomo LC-A camera. Whilst too expensive for me at the moment, the free Photoshop actions simulate the likely results. Frankly, even if the actions aren’t representative the collection is interesting to look at anyhow and makes for a great set of images.
Thanks to everyone who was photographed / took photographs. If you want credit just drop me a comment 🙂
Lomography
I’ve found a great little camera called a Lomo LC-A+ (Lomo Compact Automatic). It uses the apparently legendary Minolta 1 lens to produce quirky results which typically include the following characteristics:
Incorrect exposure
Over exposed colours
Light leakage due to the poor construction of the camera itself (a feature?)
Happy Accidents (!)
Vignetting
Surrounding this structured chaos is a subculture called Lomography, it’s interesting, especially the history of the camera and how it was basically saved from disappearing completely after the capitalisation of the Soviet Union.
I would like to be able to afford to buy one of these cameras, but I can’t at the moment (ironic considering it’s history). However, I soon realised that the effects caused by the camera could easily be recreated using photoshop/gimp etc without too much difficulty. To get started fast I grabbed a copy of some photoshop actions like these.
These are my first batch of 24 exposures!
Mental Ray vs Vray
I found out how to convert Mental Ray materials to Vray (almost) automatically today. So I decided to open up the Shanty scene from my MA which was rendered with Mental Ray and see what it looked like through Vray. Here are the results.
After the automatic conversion of most of the materials I had to deal with the misplaced opacity maps that the converter placed in the Reflection slot for some reason. I only needed to do this for the occupancy planes and the surrounding background buildings so it didn’t take long.
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- Prior to any adjustments in PS.
Looking at these together, the original vray HDRI render looks better than the one adjusted in PS. Photoshop is good, but it’s so easy to mess a scene up with it!
Occupation 