IanHubert
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Interplexa Bike Boys
🕑 Added 2021-08-31 22:21:54 +0000 UTCHey okay! So- I'm trying to see if I can get all these ground assets uploaded today (I've been going wild scanning everything in my neighborhood, and they're really fun to work with, but I'm mostly stuck on which ones too include (I've snagged a ton))- but in the meantime just wanted to show some renders from the last few days!
Both of these images started out in my cleaning/assembly file, where I optimize my scans, but I inevitably start playing with them, and once stuff starts to click like that I usually try to ride that momentum till the end-
Which is actually how this whole sequence is working out; it was supposed to be a 10 second shot in a random world to set up an event, but after spending a month building all the assets (and thinking through the logistics of how the world would work), I'm finding myself super drawn into the world, so I'm just going with it for a bit.
Thanks to Nathan Vegdahl for pointing out that water's way more realistic when it's not just a glossy plane :P Also a very good tip to combine it with volumetrics!! I'd totally written off volumetrics in blender, but I've been using them for everything with zero trouble (both of the renders below were about a minute and a half render time, and yeah I'm running a 3090, but even still it's resolving way faster than I'm used to). Did they optimize something on the render side of things, or was I always trying to do stuff with spotlights and other stuff that leads to fireflies? I gotta look into that.*
The fonts on the wall below are a rad custom alien font my friend Teague made for Dynamo (for anywhere it wouldn't make sense to use English)- we'll be sharing the font here pretty quick!
This feels a lot better- there really was no justifiable reason for the ship names to be in English before.
The bikes below were just a quick bike model I made, but then covered with pieces from old projects (most of which I've uploaded here in the past)- I might still go in and add some final details, but honestly we'll never see them close-up.
Also ooo- I'll probably upload this too- made a little bone library by scanning part of Kaitlin's bone collection; it's useful for making nonsense skeletons!
This one's in progress- I think I want the steam vent to be blowing a fan that has some wacky IK solution for waving the skeleton's stick-arms up and down.
From a worldbuilding perspective, in the context of the story, the gods only tend to occupy one world at any given time, and that tends to be the happenin' place (lots of development/wars/shenanigans). When the gods move on, like with Interplexa, everything slows down and gradually falls apart, but things also chill out, too. Time stops meaning as much- I kinda want that eternal-late-summer vibe.
On the technical side of things, I've been using the PolycamAI app on my phone (still only iPhone for now, but that's changing)- I've been loving the experience- it's the first phone-based scanning app that's actually given me good results- but I also don't totally understand it. I think someone said it uses Apple's Object Capture? Is that some module Apple came up with that other apps can take advantage of? Or- I dunno. Gotta google it. It's not doing anything that RealityCapture or any other scanning solution doesn't do, it's just a bit more handy.
Regardless, I've enjoyed the workflow of having this Interplexa place in my head, then just walking around in parks and scanning whatever little odds and ends feel like that location (the cement blocks, sidewalks, cement retaining walls, rocks), then putting them all together out of the scavenged bits to create the place.
I've always lived in the Pacific Northwest, which is a gorgeous place, but you can very rarely see the horizon, and I think that's affected the way I tend to design environments. It feels great to open stuff up a bit.
And actually- at the risk of going on a bit too long here- almost all my dreams are location based- I mean, there are people there**, but we're always exploring something (Catacombs? Under my house?). The fact that I can sit up late at night assembling decontextualized bits from my real life into whole new places that don't really exist seems fantastically on-the-nose from a dream perspective.
Anyways yeah! Hopefully getting these assets up in a couple hours here. Talk soon!
*I will say that plugging anything into the density slot seems to slow things WAY down- keeping a uniform density appears to be the best way to keep volumetrics practical right now? At least from what I've seen.
**Most of my dreams have a half dozen or so friends milling about- it's always that nice feeling of effortless belonging. Waking life's so full of scheduling/transportational logistics and we always have to friggin' figure out what we're going to eat what do you want to eat what are you feeling right now I'm not sure I should do more dairy today.
Comments
Lukas Sprehn
Zeke was right?!
Pablo Nicolas
I'm trying to reverse engineer this, and it may be: • a Plane at the water surface level with a semitransparent water texture (alpha hashed for eevee), • just below that a cube with blue (cyan, green, whatever) Volume Absorption and no surface node. • some bottom geometry to see, ideally with slopes to appreciate the volume Adjust density to taste.
Aman Bhargava
Hi Ian! Would you be able to go into how you made the blue water in one of the images? It looks simply gorgeous. How are you optimizing it if its using volumetrics?
Update comes end of this year, lol :)
Hahaha! On closed inspection, it is indeed so! (facepalming)
Ian Letarte
bird = skull :)
Pretty sure none of the apps in the App Store are using the api shown in the photogrammetry example, because you need to be on beta macOS and iOS to compile/run it. It does look very exciting though.
David McSween
Well that video just sold me an M1 imac! :D
Baebearr_
Wooow it works. Thank you so much
Ian Hubert
It's great! Like not even, "for a phone app" great, but just across the board!
Wayne Yip
Holy crap that is incredible. Mind is blown.
John Cliff
Apple's Object Capture is an API they announced at the WWDC back in June, you feed it photos and it outputs the 3d. Geeky details in this vid if anyones interested: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/10076/
Jodi Chamberlain
The underwater surfaces are AMAZING! Well done on creating mystery, beauty, and chaos!
Phil South
On your suggestion I just tried the Polycam app. Sweet jeezus. Even with really crappy lighting on my janky old 6S the level of detail is astonishing. Thanks for the tip.
aRANDOM
Great post Ian! Opening up makes these posts really enjoyable to read!
Something that hurts my eyes/brain here: proportions. Not sure why, but on the first picture, a guy on top of the rock looks like a King Kong on top of a very huge mountains, although the real dimensions are probably correct. Maybe it is volumetrics or camera settings making this illusion? A second bug that hurts a lot: that giant bird on top of gasoline station. Either gasoline station is a toybox small, or bird is just mutated and then escaped Chernobyl in Ukraine (I don't comment on relatively new looking gasoline filling systems — even hoses are still there!!, installed among almost trashed wooden leftovers from a dock — that hardly makes any sense, but I understand, work in progress, OK).
It has been pointed out up there already, but yes! I think you should feel free to open up in here with long posts, insights, creation process, ideas and whatsoever, when you feel like it :) It's always nice to get more on the "inner process" and not only the technical aspect of it, very inspiring
Stijn Windig
I concur :)
Zeke Faust
ctrl + shift + right click drag with node wrangler enabled
Baebearr_
I have one stupid question. What is the shortcut that you drag one shader to another shader then ' mix shader ' appear?
Sam Goldwater
Natural looking floor surfaces: my nemesis. Very curious about this too
Sam Goldwater
I suspect I speak for everyone in saying: longer form written posts hearing about process not just technically but personally as an artist is a pleasure to read and immensely valuable :)
Oh you know I am making an artwork that gets featured on BlenderArtists with your assets... again XD
Lovely renders! I dream in locations too :) geography and architecture always make the happiest dreams.....
Aaron Gutierrez
Hi Ian! :) I had a quick question about your ground in the bicycle image. It looks amazing! Is it perhaps a mixture of Photoscans and materials with displacements? Would you happen to have a link to a tutorial on how you create your complex floor setups. Oh oh! And also I wanted to chime in on the phone scanning stuff. Have you tried the "3D Scanner App"? Its 100% free and really awesome! I am not sure if Polycam yields better results than 3D scanner app, but just wanted to bring it up here. Happy Tuesday! :)
Mammoth update! So cool + love the world building and direction for the new idea
I mentioned the Apple APIs for photogrammetry on one of your posts which you responded to. If you're interested, here is the documentation: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/realitykit/creating_3d_objects_from_photographs You can basically do this in a few lines of code so hopefully this will get more photogrammetry apps with even more features out the door! I haven't proved Polycam uses this API specifically but it aligns with their release. I will say I too am incredibly surprised at the accuracy these little iPhone apps have!
Ian Hubert
Hey Carson! I've been using photo mode- LIDAR's only really given good results in very specific situations (scanning large rock areas where tiny details aren't as important as getting the large shapes quickly)
Carson Reader
Hey Ian! Have you been using the LiDAR mode on Polycam, or the photo mode?
Ian Hubert
Wait volumetric solids- you mean like... translucent rocks or something?? Wouldn't those still have postive anisotropy values? Or- OH! Are you talking about something like a smoke cloud, where it's a volumetric not made of refractive particles? I think that makes sense, yeah! AND MAN YEAH- can't believe how effortlessly the water is rendering! I would have thought it'd be render time poison.
Ian Hubert
Thanks for the explanation! And I'd love to see that comparison! And yeah- I was mostly curious if this was a situation where folks are like, "Oh whoa Polycam's giving great results" but they just happen to be the first to take advantage of the API.
On the topic of Apple Object Capture, it's an API that Apple developed that is still in Beta though should be available fairly soon as it comes packaged with their new MacOS coming out soon. So to answer your question, yes it is something apps can 100% take advantage of. Best of all is that it's free! From my research it tends to have a much lower polycount than other programs on its scans, but preserves detail fairly well. Not sure how, but if you want I can link you a Reddit post from a week or two ago where someone did a good comparison of Meshroom, Reality Capture, and ObjectCapture.
JerBearT
I’m here spending $84 a year for the energy and 3am ramblings.🤣 kinda got away from blender bc I’m new and it is a tad overwhelming but greatly appreciate your assets and tutorials as I plunge back in.
Ian Hubert
Thanks! And eh, I feel like I brought up Polycam too much; it's effectively doing the same thing every other photoscan solution is doing (you can always upload the photos to your computer and use Reality Capture or Meshroom or one of those programs and get the same result)- it's just unexpectedly handy to have it phone based.
Zeke Faust
I looove the way volumetric water looks. Never been able to render it but now I got a 3090 as well and it's really made it so much easier Here's another tip, most liquid volumetrics exhibit forward anisotropy (positive numbers), whereas solids exhibit backwards anisotropy (negative numbers)
Ian Hubert
Blake the water isn't real! Ahaha but yeah I've been timing my outings to coincide with low tide :D And yeah! Most of the scans were done directly across the sound from Alki, so probably super similar geology!
I Like it Hardcore Tv
This is looking amazing, keep the scans coming I can't afford an iPhone lol so maybe the polycam is an alternative...oh also could you possibly explain what you stated here: " plugging anything into the density slot seems to slow things WAY down- keeping a uniform density appears to be the best way to keep volumetrics practical right now" or show volumetrics a little more ...thanks.
Ian Hubert
Ahahaha Kaitlin has shelves and buckets full of bones she's found out in the woods so I just had to pick the "whale skeleton looking ones"- weirdly hard to figure out how to set them up so I could get the best 360 scan.
Those are looking soo beautiful! I got Polycam as well and I'm loving it - pretty excited with the assets you made there!
Blake Rizzo
Love the dream musings next to dynamo dream updates! Those scans look so dang sweet! How did you go about getting the beneath knee-deep water textures? It's giving me mad Alki Beach vibes!
Phil South
Gorgeous
Ian Hubert
WOoooo! And yeah! It's a game changer for me, for sure- the results can be so much more realistic, but they're also real quick to work with (at the cost of flexibility, sometimes). Reality Capture's great!
Brock
So, so inspiring! And I JUST got into photogrammetry on my android using reality capture so this totally helps me to see the possibilities of where u can kitbash a scan!! WOoww!
Luka Hrgovic
♥️♥️🦴
Amazing environments
Mack Lawrence
looks amazingggggggg!
These are lovely Ian!
