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pazoozoo In reply to bluesman219 [2009-12-23 06:58:51 +0000 UTC]

Yeh man - for sure.
This was the the snorkel fungus .xep that comes with xenodream 1.5/1.6, which is in the organic folder. I turned it into a mesh in xenodream using a 600 grid size, surface method, isosurface of 127 (or possibly lower), and I think I had mesh filtering on Low. I think what they say is that for xeps with really thin surfaces, turning mesh filtering off is the best. I'm still playing with the settings.

I let it render for a few hours I believe, on a tri-core 8 gig machine before saving the mesh. The sizes are incredibly large if you don't do polygon reduction. Which I don't. I want something incredible, but some people don't have the luxury of having a fast enough computer. The file sizes get up to like 700 meg. I've had slow computers for years, so this is a really nice switch.

So, after the save..., I go into Cinema4D and import the mesh. Guess it really doesn't matter if you're using Lightwave, or Max, or Maya, or whatever. I've just always used Cinema4D. Cinema4D 11.5 64 bit allows a render method called render instances with a module that comes with it called Mograph. One of the best features with Mograph is the Cloner Object. You can take any object, put it in the cloner object, set how many duplicates you want of it, and choose between linear, radial, object, or grid mode for replication. Radial is my favorite because it will take an object and replicate in a circle. With the Snorkel Coral picture I used 5 instances of the xep mesh and slightly rotated each instance. Now, the best part about Mograph is that each instance does NOT use any more memory than just having one instance. With render instances, I could make 2000 of them and the computer only see it as one object (which is actually enough to bog down a slow computer to begin with). Placing a display tag to show the mesh and instances helps if you use wireframe in the editor cuz that can bog down if you don't.

Anyways, lol, with the mesh replicated - there are lots of options available. You can shrink, rotate, or move each instances progressively to get really interesting shapes from your original mesh.

Now, what really makes this kinda thing cool is the next part. The lighting. I use hdri lighting with global illumination. It is soft, sweet, and realistic - which is what I'm shooting for. A nice texture helps too, and I've found that slight displacement is nice along with bump. But the real key is the lighting. GI is - like the kids say - the shiznit. Also I like putting ambient occlusion into the render - puts dirty shadows in cravices that GI won't.

Render time is usually pretty long, even with a fast computer - because of the size of the mesh, but I think I did the Snorkel Coral pictures in like 8 hours at 2400x1600 (which really isn't that bad). I remember waiting 2 days on 800x600 renders that were complex.

I really like the xenodream program on its own. I mean you can really gets some nice stuff without having to go 3d, with the lighting presets and all. But I wanted more. I want crazy objects that are complex, but I want them rendered realistically in real life lighting environments. And that's really only possible with a 3d app.

My girlfriend is getting me the upgrade to 2.2 for Christmas, so I can't wait to try it out for mesh export. The grid size goes up to 1024 in 2.2

Any questions, I'm at your disposal. Like I said, I'm still getting use to the settings for mesh export in xenodream. Sometimes the meshes are just awful because I either let them render too long or because I was using the wrong triangulation settings for the object.

Merry Christmas to you and yours
Mike

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bluesman219 In reply to pazoozoo [2009-12-24 03:01:13 +0000 UTC]

I have to admit Mike you overwhelmed me with all that you did to create this.
It's very apparent you've done your homework!!

Have a great Christmas my friend.

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