Tuesday
Feb212012
Finding the Right Reference
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 9:53AM If you're wokring to improve your painting, reference is a necessity. The question is not "should I paint from reference?" but rather "What reference makes most sense for this piece?" This video looks for painting reference in an unusual area: visual effects test renders.
If you're looking for the search terms mentioned in the video, here's a good starting point: Global Illumination (GI), Ambient Occlusion (AO), Caustics, Photons, VRay, Mental Ray, and Radiosity. Search any of those along with "test render", and you'll have some fun reference materials.
The anatomy reference was found at onlinelifedrawing.com
Reader Comments (21)
You might also want to add, specular, translucency/transparency, subsurface scattering, and emission. Specular is, of course, the light reflecting on the object. Like when you hold a coin to the light and it shines. Transparency is self explanatory. Subsurface scattering is the light that bounces from underneath the object's surface and diffuses as it exits. Emission is anything that emits light.
You know, I just got an idea. It would be awesome if there was a tutorial on setting up such scenes and materials and doing renders for studies. I know 3D applications like 3DS Max have material presets in them, ready to use.
I think it's best to be able to setup such a scene yourself because you're aware of all the lights used and where exactly are they sitting. Being able to move your camera to make render from another viewpoint would be invaluable.
There are also many images if you search for keywords like:
- Texture
- Bump Mapping
- Shader
- Displacement Mapping
- ...
As these all the keywords (those from Matt Kohr too) are general terms in the visual part of game programming (or visual effects in general), these are most efficiently used when combined with a more specific keyword of what you want to study. And in addition to that if you want to study rocky surfaces you could also search for real world keywords. One keyword i highly recommend (not especially for these very specific studies but more for inspiration) is:
- Macro Photography
DON'T FORGET: Don't spend too much time looking for refrence, it keeps you away from drawing or painting!!
Have fun
drawingcode
researching about ambient occlusion and global illumination might also help.
Yay Vray. I do lighting studies in Vray with Cinema4D for my paintings and graphic design stuff.
hmm a term
- Atmospheric
- DOF
- Motion Blur
First of all, I just want to say how much I love this site. I found your videos very valuable. I wish I could donate, but college makes it a little hard. Second, I wanted to ask if you know anything about the market for concept artists today. Do you know if the competitive field is saturated with artists? Do you have any suggestions of what can I do to stand out above the rest without having any prior experience? Thanks!
Wow! I never thought I'd find so much free information of such quality.
I just discovered this site and I must say it feels like heaven!
Thanks for all the work you're doing for us, it really helps a newbie like me get off the ground.
(I'm trying to apply the techniques on ipad drawing, cause I don't have a wacom yet)
You are really an angel
Amazing video as always Matt, been using Vray for my 3d/design projects from some time ago but didnt really think of using it as still life "generator".
Another interesting keyword is : Cornell_Box
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Box
Various of the renders you showed were this
Keep it up!! Really looking forward for next one
@Clancy Pannell
You may find this really useful http://www.fzdschool.com/free_tutorials.htm , specially EPISODE 20 & 52, Theyre directly related to what youre asking. I recommend you see all of them though.
I love this site I am cg artist as well a good cg program that I us is blender! you can douwnload it free from blender.org blender 3d just added a new rendering engin called cycles that is more photorelistic than blender internal, I also use luxrender from luxrender.net which is free too to use as an addon to blender. Luxrender is great becous there are a lot of pre-set meterals. just so that you know that cycles is still being improved apon so some of the lamps are not working right yet but you can use objects as lamps though that works great.
I'm a 3D artist, here's a few keywords:
Ray trace
Unbiased rendering
Progressive rendering
Subsurface scattering
Primitive renders
Solids
Self illumination
Caustics
Octane (render engine)
Yafray (engine)
Luxrender (engine)
By the way, these are really easy to setup in blender's new "Cycles" render engine. For any of you who want to take a stab at it, Blender is free to download at blender.org, and is open source! Have fun!
Some terms I personally suggest looking into are indirect illumination, subsurface scattering, raytracing, luminance, caustics, vray, mental ray, maya, 3ds max (especially this one because the community around it is super talented), cinema 4d, modo, zbrush, linear workflow. A lot of the above comments have some really nice additions as well. :)
There are a ton more, and if you any interest in learning more about any of this 3D just get in touch on twitter and I'll be sure to point you in the right direction: @samwelkertv
I do a lot of my own training but for starting out my stuff is a little complex so I'll point you in an easy direction for beginners ;)
for some good turntables pictures
you may check out the zBrush turntable section on pixologic.com
they are really helpful as well !
and thanks Matt for this amazing site ! it's a weekly joy :)
Wow, I thought I was among a very few I knew who used 3D render layers as painting reference material! Of course, I never really thought to just look up other people's rendered layers as reference material. (Like, duh!) Thanks for that suggestion, Matt!
I've been making my own at times, especially now that Blender (as some of you have pointed out) has its quite new powerful render engine Cycles, which as of the latest release, just so happens to newly support render layers!
(By the way, a big "Howdy!" to other fellow Blender users! :D I get all happy when I meet you guys outside BlenderNation! Hahaha!)
Im a vfx guy tho im not a 3D guy im a digital compositor.
Some words may be
DoF
subsurface scattering
mental ray
matte painting
matte painting projection
3D fluids (simulation)
Also if have you seen Alex Roman videos on vimeo?
http://vimeo.com/15630517
http://vimeo.com/7809605
Blender, Cycles, Refraction, Fresnel, IOR,
when I click on the link for onlinelifedrawing all I get is Gtracking.org
other 3D programs that can be used as keywords
Maya
Vue 9
ZBrush
C4D (Cinema 4D)
light wave
Blender
I'd also add "matcap" to the search terms you can use -- it can get you a greater diversity in results.
Is it beneficially to paint studies of them? Keep it up with the video. Your are definitly helping!
Thanks for the video very helpful. I really enjoy the website www.onlinelifedrawing.com Thanks for sharing