CGTalk - Abstract - Volumetric Light Experimentation

Valkyrien

05-23-2002, 03:10 AM

THanks! As to explaining it, I can explain it only in LW terms. First I created a point light, then activated it as a volumetric light. From there i basically fiddled around with procedural texture maps, luminosity, light size, camera zoom, and other factors, to arrive at what you see above.

Using a multiple layering technique, I've come up with two more cool pics for you all to drool over! :rolleyes:

http://www.lwg3d.org/LWG/gallery/245-thumb.jpg (http://www.lwg3d.org/LWG/gallery/245.jpg)

http://www.lwg3d.org/LWG/gallery/246-thumb.jpg (http://www.lwg3d.org/LWG/gallery/246.jpg)

dmcgrath

05-23-2002, 05:01 AM

NIce Stuff, I wonder if you can do the same thing in maya. Im gonna try and let you know

Titan

05-23-2002, 05:31 AM

"Met her at a party and I took her home,
she is the sadest girl that I have ever known....":buttrock:

I love everclear, and "Amphetamine" is my favorite song from them...

great pics...cool technique!

Valkyrien

05-23-2002, 05:31 AM

thanks! Feel free to post a thumb in this thread if you have any success!

Valkyrien

05-23-2002, 05:32 AM

Originally posted by Titan
"Met her at a party and I took her home,
she is the sadest girl that I have ever known....":buttrock:

I love everclear, and "Amphetamine" is my favorite song from them...

Me too!:beer:

JeremyW

05-23-2002, 06:22 AM

Here are some things I've been doing with volumetric lights in Cinema 4D.
The first is from almost 2 years ago. At the time, no one had ever tried it. It's neat to know others are trying it as well. It's something I've worked at quite a bit.
http://www.jeremyw.com/C4D_Stuff/3dnoise3.html
http://www.jeremyw.com/C4D_Stuff/nova-fly.html
http://www.jeremyw.com/pages/nova.html
http://www.jeremyw.com/Movies/spaceShark_snd.mov

And these are my most recent exploratioin of it:
http://www.jeremyw.com/C4D_Stuff/fire/index.html

Cheers,
JeremyW

Valkyrien

05-23-2002, 05:36 PM

damn cool stuff you got there!! And i thought ambassador was being original....:rolleyes:

*runs for dear life*:D

JeremyW

05-23-2002, 08:26 PM

Thanks. Yeah well, sometimes earthshaking discoveries are made simultaneously on different sides of the globe.
Here's another one. Just a single voulumetric light with noise in the vis chan.
http://www.jeremyw.com/C4D_Stuff/clouds.jpg
Totally fly-thru-able.

Valkyrien

05-23-2002, 10:11 PM

awesome!! THe problem with trying something like that is that there aren't as many channels in the v-light menu as there are in LW's regular texturing editor, so there's not quite as much room to play around with stuff like adding noise to specularity maps and whatnot. I also can't get the fly-throughs to work quite right, but i suppose practice makes perfect...

*starts digging through reference manuals for more cool stuff to experiment with*

JeremyW

05-23-2002, 10:33 PM

Cinema4D let's you simply apply a texture to the light, so all the depth and intricacies that are availabe for texturing are slapped right onto the light. Are you saying LW requires you to create the effect from within the lights params? What sort of difficulties are you running into with fly-thrus?

Valkyrien

05-23-2002, 11:50 PM

Originally posted by JeremyW
Cinema4D let's you simply apply a texture to the light, so all the depth and intricacies that are availabe for texturing are slapped right onto the light. Are you saying LW requires you to create the effect from within the lights params? What sort of difficulties are you running into with fly-thrus?

Well, the method for texturing v-lights is different from that for texturing solid objects. There's a separate panel (found within the light's properties panel) and everything. And the panel isn't quite as complete. In terms of flythroughs, I attempted to position a mesh so that part f it was within the radius of the light sphere. The part of the hull that was inside was completely blacked out, even in parts of the sphere that are transparent to the background. Now, granted, I haven't tried flying through the light with the camera, but that's an entirelt different kind of flythrough than what I was talking about.

Valkyrien

05-25-2002, 01:31 AM

And now, for a short animation. (1 second) ;)

The V-light Animation (http://www.scifi-pics.com/uploader/anim.avi)

LyonHaert

05-25-2002, 02:32 AM

bravo, bravo. i've always loved energy-esque visuals. i should try some of that myself. i also use LW, btw.

Valkyrien

05-25-2002, 02:43 AM

yeah, you should try this stuff out! It's remarkably easy to do! Even I can't screw it up! ;)

Titan

05-25-2002, 04:42 AM

how would you do this in max...I wonder..

dmcgrath

05-25-2002, 04:49 AM

Im still trying to figure it out in MAYA:thumbsdow

Valkyrien

05-25-2002, 05:41 AM

sorry, but you're both on your own!!:shrug:

shade

05-25-2002, 09:46 AM

Would you be willing to give some more precise(?) hints for a noob :). I tried it for 15 minutes or so, but all I could achieve was gradient ball. I assume that you used multiply on a second texture channel to get that "fog" glow like that? I'll head back to properties panel to try things out :)

:wavey: :thumbsup: :bounce:

Creature

05-25-2002, 04:33 PM

Ah, you and Howard Day made me register at another forum ;)

As I already said - I absolutley love this kind of painting with light

Valkyrien

05-25-2002, 05:36 PM

Ah, welcome Creature! BTW, that title of "Novice" is rather unbecoming of you....

shade....ok, here we go with the more precise tut.

open layout ;) target the default light with the camera. Go into the light's properties, and turn on volumetric lighting. (change the light type to Point) Go into the volumetric lighting settings panel, and try messing around with the settings in there. Make sure your light is set to SPRITE mode. There are also some presets, which will give you a general idea of what you should do, and they'll provide some layers for you to copy into your own texture ;) They're also not halfway bad for rendering!! As for the glow...that's mostly due to messing around with the ratio of sphere radius to luminosity. Motion blur is also a good simple thing to make your render look cool.

Good luck!

Valkyrien

05-26-2002, 04:18 AM

ok, I rendered another anim. This one's a bit better, IMO.

QT, Indeo 5 (http://www.scifi-pics.com/uploader/anim2a.mov)

yahll

05-26-2002, 06:29 AM

I have to try this..
really cool stuff you have there:drool:

JeremyW

05-26-2002, 03:02 PM

http://www.jeremyw.com/C4D_Stuff/volumetrics/lightPlane_A.mov
Here is another little exploration. The ground is geometry, but the whispy stuff is a single volumetric light with procedural noise.
Should we move this thread out of "FinishedWork" into the Animation section?

Valkyrien

05-26-2002, 04:18 PM

debatable. It's more of a WIP experimentation type thing, but everything I've posted was its own piece of finished art....

If ya ask me, there should be an Experiments Forum where multiple members can post their work (using a particular specific technique) in the same thread and help each other get the settings and whatnot just right, sort of a collaborative project with many different results....

oh WOW!! it just loaded!! That's freakin' NICE!

Could ya tell me how you got the light to spread into that flat shape? Was it just messing around with the light's dimensions?

Benken

05-26-2002, 05:39 PM

Hello
I read this thread and I got so much inspiration so I tried. And I ended up whit this image.
Not as good as yours but I quite satisfied whit it.

Valkyrien

05-26-2002, 05:44 PM

hey, that's pretty good!

Now you need to experiment with multiple layers, varying the transparency, playing with presets, et cetera et cetera! ;)

Oh, do you use LW btw?

Benken

05-27-2002, 08:23 AM

I used 3d studio max so I didn't get the same result.

Valkyrien

05-27-2002, 06:43 PM

ah i see...well, in that case, I don't know what to tell you! ;)

JeremyW

06-07-2002, 07:11 PM

http://www.jeremyw.com/C4D_Stuff/volumetrics/terain_B.mov

diazgl

06-07-2002, 08:08 PM

basically, i've been familiar with this from the third almost day i used lw, cos i was trying to find all the "cool bits". It's a standard,yet very cool feature, although it's pretty difficult to master and simulate some realistic effects (as in real-life). Here is an attempt for simply something that would look cool.

wgreenlee1

06-07-2002, 08:15 PM

:)
Lightwave is too darn COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:wavey:

hypercube

06-07-2002, 08:26 PM

Neat stuff..volume light patterns are fun..was looking around for the freaky nebula thing I did way back, but couldn't find it.

JeremyW - damn that's cool looking..you're telling me that's the product of that landscape and one volume light? That's friggin crazy if so. Can't figure out how it would do that.

JeremyW

06-07-2002, 08:35 PM

Yep. Just the landscape and one light. In Cinema, I can apply procedural shaders as alphas onto the light. These are the same shaders/tools as used on regular procedural textures. So... a visible light is essentially spherical, and I am using 3d noises and gradients to carve that sphere.

Valkyrien

06-07-2002, 10:54 PM

Originally posted by wgreenlee1
:)
Lightwave is too darn COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:wavey: :beer: I'll raise my glass to that!!;)

Valkyrien

06-09-2002, 08:32 PM

Originally posted by JeremyW
Yep. Just the landscape and one light. In Cinema, I can apply procedural shaders as alphas onto the light. These are the same shaders/tools as used on regular procedural textures. So... a visible light is essentially spherical, and I am using 3d noises and gradients to carve that sphere.

Hmm, maybe i should try and see if I can do something like that....

hypercube

06-09-2002, 08:40 PM

Hrrmmmm..well, that's how LW's work too, more or less, it's projecting through the texture, etc. I just can't figure out how it can be a thin plane like that and fit the landscape in that manner..that's just crazy, and crazy cool.

Oh well..V is on the trail, see what ya come up with :)

Valkyrien

06-09-2002, 09:04 PM

well, as for the plane thing....that just means that the light is a sphere and you're mapping procedurals onto its surface. Making it volumetric would just mean that those textures create 3D mists inside of the sphere. Multiple layers=more and cooler variations in the patterns. Now, you can set the mode of one or more layers to Alpha, like JeremyW has done in C4D, that much I've done. But I haven't really experimented much with just what is possible using that method. i had just been using normal and additive layers before. What I'm really interested in is a little more in-depth explanation of how diazgl got what he did. That pic is simply AWESOME. Show us your ways!! :D

I'll post some thoughts on the anim later, since i have ot get offline now, before the d/l can finish....

diazgl

06-10-2002, 09:24 AM

hey!! very flattered i am!! It was a 5-min test to see if I can add my bit in here. It's really not much (as you are about to find out)

As a little bit of irony, i didn't save the texture settings...:( But i can pretty much tell you what was on

Use a point source light. This is the order form top to bottom

-Veins (~150 opacity, additive mode) ~-0.04 coverage
-Gradient (additive mode, distance to light) a simple black to white gradient, distance should be set about to 1 metre, or the same as your point source radius.
-Underwater (normal mode, ~200 layer opacity, 2 wavesources, band sharpness ~4)

Light properties:
Luminosity: ~300
Opacity~60

Enable Texture: Yes
Texture Only: Yes

That's all!!

It's a shame I didn't keep the set, especially since someone wants to know about it, but if you fiddle enough with the procedurals, you'll get to a much better result than mine.

The glow came from the fact that i used a gradient on veins, and cos veins isn't all over the place only a few places were lit.

These are really simple stuff, i'd like to see someone with some experience on playing around with these.

Damn, i almost forgot!! Could JeremyW say a little bit more about his animation? I don't get it man!! You used a light source, but light only appears just over the landscape, whereas the procedural is in 3 dimensions!

Facial Deluxe

06-10-2002, 12:40 PM

Big respect to JeremyW ! Have you guys seen his website ? Impressive !
I'm not quite sure LW can generate similar planar effect through a light. But perhaps a plan with Bumpdisplacement and some gradient in transparency/luminosity can achieve something close to...
Was it long to render in C4D ?

diazgl

06-10-2002, 04:08 PM

pretty much that's it Facial Deluxe, you can add a plane above that and apply a gradient transparency, glow and all the cool stuff, only thing is that you can't manage (or its rather hard) to give it volume...except if you're using HV, which is definitely a killer.

Facial Deluxe

06-11-2002, 07:36 AM

Mmmh... Yes Diazgl,
The more I see C4D, the more I'd like to give it a try...
Except for character animation (IMHO), it seems to be very clever software. Lot of things in it that make your life easier, and it's fast too.
JeremyW, when you'll be back around, give us a speach about C4D, what you like, what you don't....
I know about a year ago, Maxxon selled C4D Half priced if you already own a 3D software, got to check that...

Creature

06-11-2002, 08:31 AM

They've got a "Happy Spring" Special where you can get Cinema4D for 1.400€ if you own one of the following 3D packages: SoftImage, ElectricImage, Maya, Strata, Lightwave, 3D Studio MAX, Animation Master, Real3D, InfiniD, FormZ, Rhino, Inspire3D, Raydream, Carrara, Truespace, Amapi3D, Art*lantis

If you want to get BodyPaint too, you can grab it for 510€ if you own either DeepPaint or Painter3D

Regular prices for Cinema4D and Bodypaint is 2039€ and 715€

Check out Maxon (http://www.maxon.com) for further informations

Facial Deluxe

06-11-2002, 08:58 AM

Thanx creature !
Are u a C4D user ?
Any opinion???

Creature

06-11-2002, 09:23 AM

Are you a c4d user? - A hardcore one ;)
Any oppinions? - Use it! :)

OK, maybe the character animation tools are not that outstanding. But everything else is really top notch. Modelling tools are great (and very simple to use), texturing is a realy pleasure (especially when using BodyPaint), TimeLine gives you extensive control over how things move in your animation (there's a editable curve for nearly everything), the procedural package by BhodiNUT (which is included in c4d) is so sweet to play with, renderer is really fast and produces wonderfull results (including radiosity and real caustics),...

Oh yeah, another negative thing about c4d: if you want to do really high res pictures/animations you could get problems because Cinema does not render glows and motion blur when the resolution of the output is bigger than 3000 pixels. But as long as you do not render for Hollywood-movies that should be alright

Facial Deluxe

06-11-2002, 10:02 AM

Thanx Creature,
A very good friend of mine uses it!
http://www.pasto.tv
And that guy's a killer ...see..

I'm very fond of LW for it's Character animation abilities, but C4D, I'm thinking of it , why not.
There are pretty cool stuf I still can't easyly do with LW...
And at that price, it's given...

Perhaps, perhaps...

JeremyW

06-11-2002, 01:10 PM

OK. I'm back. As for C4D, it's the only 3d app I know, so I'm not in a position to compare and contrast. I will say that I taught my self 3d with C4D, and was making a living with it less than a year later. So you could say it' s learning curve is quite easy (or I'm just brilliant?...nah)
SmellLikeAlmonds, the procedural texturing package (that is now included) is very very cool. It has inpsired me no end. Some of my explorations with it can be seen here (scroll down to SLA Explorations):
http://www.jeremyw.com/C4D_Stuff/C4D_Links.html

I'm not as enamored with it's timeline and keyframing functions as the other fella (creature?), but it is quite manageable. It seems the biggest problem is with it's user base. There just are not that many folks doing high quality work with it...check out the Maxon gallery :-P
Although I am also a big fan of Pasto! Also Bunk is doing some VERY fine modeling with it (http://www.postforum.com/forums/read.php?f=6&i=46550&t=46550)

HTH
Peace.
JeremyW

Facial Deluxe

06-11-2002, 01:41 PM

AHAHA ! Cool you know Pasto's stuff ! I'll tell him about you as soon I'll see him...
Does anyone tried the Golem Plug ?

Valkyrien

06-11-2002, 07:27 PM

diazgl's process intrigues me. I'll have to try it a bit later when i get motivated to do some 3D! ;) Hey Creature, what's up? :)

wireFrame

06-11-2002, 08:31 PM

JeremyW-- hey your rendering are interesting! I'm completely amazed about the things that C4D can do. I haven't done anything like this before with my app. Nice trick! :thumbsup:

JeremyW

06-11-2002, 08:35 PM

Thanks wireFrame.
But just for the record, C4D didn't do those... I did.:airguitar
.
.
.
:rolleyes:

Valkyrien

06-11-2002, 11:38 PM

Originally posted by JeremyW
Thanks wireFrame.
But just for the record, C4D didn't do those... I did.:airguitar
.
.
.
:rolleyes:

damn straight!

Rant On

People are always arguing "my software can do this, my software can do that!!" but the real question is, can you put your software's abilities to good use? ;)

Rant off

Valkyrien

06-18-2002, 07:55 PM

well, I just dusted off the ol' vlight techniques, and did something a little different....

http://www.lwg3d.org/LWG/gallery/250-thumb.jpg (http://www.lwg3d.org/LWG/gallery.php?showpic=250)

Valkyrien

06-19-2002, 08:51 PM

*AHEM!!*

;)

JeremyW

06-19-2002, 10:13 PM

Oh, OK...is that my que?
COOL DUDE!!!!
How'd ya do it?
Ummm, looks kinda 2d though. Is it really volumetric?

Valkyrien

06-19-2002, 11:37 PM

naw, it was your cue when I posted the art yesterday...:D hahaha, J/K

anyhoo, it is indeed volumetric. If i remember correctly it's a ridged multifractal procedural set to lattice-whatever noise. i also utilized some motion blur and a nice zoom factor.:)