Phoenixart's blog – *simulacrum

Hard Surface doodles

Piero July 10, 2021 July 10, 2021

I find doing some hard surface modeling somewhat relaxing. It’s an exercise of forms, and shapes.
I decided to test the Creative Bundle again. As for any hard surface add-on, there are specific workflow advantages tied to each of them.

Fluent is a very polished add-on, with a clear UI, and streamlined workflow. For some reason, I find it more suitable when I want to focus on the bigger parts. When it comes to tiny details, the Creative Bundle seems to fit better my needs.

The render times with the latest Cycle-X are about 10 seconds per frame on a dual 1080ti machine.

Testing Cycles-X

Piero June 24, 2021 July 10, 2021

With the development of the new Cycles branch, namely Cycles-X, I wanted to give it a spin, and see how well it performs.

At a resolution of 1920 x 820 it took about 25 seconds per frame using 256 samples with adaptive sampling on.
I forgot to use the animated seed to improve the noise a bit, but in the end I’ve used OIDN denoiser in Fusion, so it wouldn’t probably make much difference.

It’s worth to mention that currently, Cycles-X can use 1gpu only.

3D assets provided by Poly Haven

Blender 3D | Cyclex-X | Fusion

Physical Starlight Atmosphere add-on

Piero June 20, 2021 June 20, 2021

The new Physical Starlight Atmosphere add-on for Blender just got released, and it’s so fun to work with!

Blender 3D | Cycles | Fusion

Gaea, 2nd test

Piero March 9, 2021 March 15, 2021

Having fun with Gaea — here’s a second test.

Blender 3D | Cycles | DaVinci Resolve | Fusion | Quadspinner Gaea

Quadspinner Gaea, 1st test

Piero March 7, 2021 March 9, 2021

This is the first output after experimenting with Quadspinner Gaea. The process seems pretty straightforward using the nodes provided by Gaea.
I’m trying other procedural terrain generators but at first glance, it seems Gaea is more fun to play with, the results have sort of a more organic feeling to them, and the interface is quite clean and easy to grasp.

The render below is a combination of a height-map and a flow-map imported into Blender — all from a 1k image map as I’m using the Community Edition.
Compositing done in Affinity Photo and Fusion.

Affinity | Blender 3D | Cycles | Fusion | Quadspinner Gaea

StN _ Signal to Noise update #4

Piero January 8, 2021 January 8, 2021

Blender 3D | Cycles | DaVinci Resolve | Fusion

Signal to Noise – first animated sequences

Piero December 23, 2020 December 23, 2020

I started rendering a couple of scenes from my latest personal project Signal To Noise (the title may change).

For this part, I also used a bit of C4D MoGraph and x-Particles.

Signal to Noise _ more shots

Piero December 20, 2020 December 20, 2020

After a short break, I’m now back on this side project.
Here are some stills from the new shots I’m working on.

Blender 3D | Cycles | DaVinci Resolve | Fusion

Signal To Noise

Piero December 3, 2020 December 3, 2020

This started as a hard-surface exercise and it’s turning into an animation piece.

Modeled in Blender with Fluent add-on. Rendered in Cycles. Compositing done in Fusion with a final CC in Resolve.
Also, quite pleased with Oidn Denoiser in Fusion (before and after below)