I have recently been doing a lot of Vector Illustrations at work. This is a compilation of some of my favorites from the past couple of weeks. The Guitar really made me proud :)
Welcome! My name is Jonathan Kaplan. I am a Designer, Animator, 3D Artist, Graphic Specialist, Web Guru, Illustrator, Painter, and overall Creative Consultant. Currently I work in the Architecture and Interior Design Industry as a 3d Artist and Animator but I am also interested in Marketing, Special Effects, Game Design, Film, Animation, and Music. This is my work and inspiration. Checkout my company website www.kaplandesignlabs.com or email me at jonakap1@gmail.com :)
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Vector Art: April 2012
Hey there!
I have recently been doing a lot of Vector Illustrations at work. This is a compilation of some of my favorites from the past couple of weeks. The Guitar really made me proud :)
I have recently been doing a lot of Vector Illustrations at work. This is a compilation of some of my favorites from the past couple of weeks. The Guitar really made me proud :)
Friday, April 13, 2012
Mental Ray VS. Vray
Howdy!
As I mentioned in my last post, recently at work we did some comparisons between Mental Ray and Vray. It was a bit of a competition. The Super Bowl of Render Engines. This post is to give you some insight on our results:
What we found is that Mental Ray and Vray are VERY competitive. There is little difference in the end result and the aesthetics of the renders come down to personal preference; however, we have a consensus that it is much quicker to just dive into a scene and in a matter of minutes make photo realistic renders using Vray. Mental Ray seemed to take much more time adjusting settings and textures to obtain the desired results. Keep in mind this is with 4 years experience using Mental Ray and only a couple months of experience with Vray. This was a major factor in our decision to use Vray over Mental Ray.
Here are some comparison renders of the same object with similar render preferences, lighting, and textures between the two render engines. The model was purchased from Evermotion
As I mentioned in my last post, recently at work we did some comparisons between Mental Ray and Vray. It was a bit of a competition. The Super Bowl of Render Engines. This post is to give you some insight on our results:
What we found is that Mental Ray and Vray are VERY competitive. There is little difference in the end result and the aesthetics of the renders come down to personal preference; however, we have a consensus that it is much quicker to just dive into a scene and in a matter of minutes make photo realistic renders using Vray. Mental Ray seemed to take much more time adjusting settings and textures to obtain the desired results. Keep in mind this is with 4 years experience using Mental Ray and only a couple months of experience with Vray. This was a major factor in our decision to use Vray over Mental Ray.
Here are some comparison renders of the same object with similar render preferences, lighting, and textures between the two render engines. The model was purchased from Evermotion
Mental Ray
Vray
We were very impressed by both the renders; however, we felt that the shadows, reflections, and crispness of the Vray render was more realistic. The Render time of both was pretty equal. I am a die hard Mental Ray fan; however, the ease of using Vray and benefits of Distributed Rendering make Vray a great choice.
Things to Consider:
On the other hand, if you are just getting into doing advanced rendering, Mental Ray is a great starting point for a few reasons: 1) It comes free with both 3ds Max and Maya. 2) If you are not experienced with texturing, Mental Ray has a vast amount of preset textures that come with the software (including presets for plastic, metal, car paint, stone, and many other advanced textures) and in a matter of a few clicks you can have a decent relatively professional texture. 3) Mental Ray can be easier to grasp for beginners in the sense that Vray can be a little more complex if you consider having to learn how to use Vray Cameras, Textures, and Lighting to be a challenge; however, once you know your way around basic rendering, texturing, and lighting settings -as I said above, Vray seems to be much faster when the goal is to obtain crisp, noiseless, high quality renders. Vray also comes with several of its own perks as well such as an easy to use Distributed Rendering system.Try doing a comparison for yourself and you be then judge! Share your results in the comments section below :)
Things to Consider:
On the other hand, if you are just getting into doing advanced rendering, Mental Ray is a great starting point for a few reasons: 1) It comes free with both 3ds Max and Maya. 2) If you are not experienced with texturing, Mental Ray has a vast amount of preset textures that come with the software (including presets for plastic, metal, car paint, stone, and many other advanced textures) and in a matter of a few clicks you can have a decent relatively professional texture. 3) Mental Ray can be easier to grasp for beginners in the sense that Vray can be a little more complex if you consider having to learn how to use Vray Cameras, Textures, and Lighting to be a challenge; however, once you know your way around basic rendering, texturing, and lighting settings -as I said above, Vray seems to be much faster when the goal is to obtain crisp, noiseless, high quality renders. Vray also comes with several of its own perks as well such as an easy to use Distributed Rendering system.Try doing a comparison for yourself and you be then judge! Share your results in the comments section below :)
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Tutorial: Using Backburner and Vray Distrubted Rendering in Perfect Harmony
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| Tutorial Brought to you by Jonathan Kaplan of Kaplan Design Labs |
Hello internet world!
Disclaimer:
A) This tutorial pertains to 3D Artists.
B) You will already need a basic understanding of Vray Distributed Rendering and Backburner in order to understand this tutorial until I have time to make "word for word" steps and edits so anybody can understand this without the fundamental knowledge.
Background/ Why this tutorial is relevant:
I recently got a new job (which I am completely in love with.) I am now doing 3D Modeling, Rendering, Texturing, and Lighting full time, with a little illustration and graphic design mixed in. I was recently approached by my boss about setting up a render farm for the company to ease our workflow. After comparing Mental Ray to Vray we decided as a company to use Vray as our primary render engine. This turned out to be a great decision in more ways than were immediately obvious. By going with Vray as our main render engine, we were able to benefit from Vray Distributed Rendering. For those of you who don't know, Vray Distributed Rendering in essence can use all the computers on a network to combine processing power and work on rendering a single frame. This is different from Backburner in the sense that traditionally, Backburner assigns a single frame to a single computer on a network (so if you have 20 computers on a network and 20 frames to render, each computer will render 1 frame at a time rather then combining forces to render each frame together.) I enjoyed the benefits of Vray Distributed Rendering because I feel like I would rather have more finished frames when I come in the next day than having 20 frames all %50 completed. Also, using Distributed Rendering seems to exponentially speed up render time in general.
This is where the problem came into play. While Vray Distributed Rendering was our office's preferred method of using our network as a render farm, there is no out of the box Render Que for you to prepare projects and autonomously have them render one project after the other without having to sit there and hit render every time a frame was done; however, Backburner is known for having a built in Render Que where as you submit projects they wait in line and automatically are sent to free slaves/ nodes (unused computers) as they become available and finish jobs.
At this point I decided I would attempt to find a way to use the benefits of the power of Vray Distributed Rendering in conjunction with the Render Que and "Monitor" aspects of Backburner. My first instinct was to take to Google and search every forum I could to find a method for using Vray DR and Backburner together. To my surprise, this was IMPOSSIBLE. While there were rumors that new versions of Vray DR and Backburner could function together, there was no documentation or tutorial at all and no one in any forums seemed to have any insight on this.
Despite not being able to find anybody who had already tackled this complex issue, I decided to see if I could figure it out, and I DID :) Here I present to you the necessary steps for setting this up.
Tackling the Problem:
Before you get started, decide which computers you want accepting jobs/ frames from Backburner and which computers you want to use Vray DR to contribute to those machines using Backburner. For instance, I am using 4 computers to start/ accept jobs in Backburner, and 6 computers to just use Vray DR and contribute to the render speed of the 4 computers using Backburner.
1) Make sure 3DS Max, Backburner, and Vray are installed on all of your machines in the Render Farm. If you need to use the trial version of 3DS Max on your slaves/ nodes, this is okay, you do not need to have a working licence if you are just using the computers as slaves and it is perfectly legal.
2) On your main stations/ Manager Computers, In Vray, go to Settings > Distributed Rendering > Settings. Here you will add the IP Address of all the computers you wish to use to contribute to the Distributed Rendering. In this window it is also a good idea to check the save in future scenes box. Close out of this window and make sure Distribute Rendering is checked in the box.
3) ONLY on all the computers you want to contribute to Vray DR, go to Start > All Programs > Chaos Group > Vray Adv > Distributed Rendering > and right click on Launch Vray Spawner, and run this program as an ADMINISTRATOR. In the bottom right hand corner of the taskbar, a small Vray icon will appear. This step is finished at this point.
4) Now your stations should be setup for Vray Distributed Rendering. This is where it gets a little tricky. Only on the computers that you wish to accept frames/ jobs from Backburner, Go to Start > All Programs > Autodesk > Backburner, and click on the Server button. Repeat on the other Backburner Machines. On your command station ( the machine you will use to distribute/ submit jobs ), Go to Start > All Programs > Autodesk > Backburner and click on Manager. These two programs should automatically recognize the network.
5) Now, With Backburner "Server" Open on half your machines ( or however you wish to distribute them ) and half your machines running the "Vray Distributed Rendering Spawner," you are now ready for a test render. Until you get the hang of it just test it on 1 or 2 jobs. Submit a job via Backburner from your command station and if everything is setup right, you will notice that the Backburner Slaves should have the computers with Vray Spawner open contributing to the machines that have Backburner "Server" open. In this way, you are now benefiting from the Render Que and Distribution that Backburner is great for, and your frames are getting done twice as fast by bringing Vray Distributed Rendering into the equation.
This should complete the basic steps of setting up Vray Distributed Rendering to work with Backburner. I will work on a video tutorial and add pictures/ edits to this tutorial as I get more time but for now I wanted to share this with the world.
If you have any specific questions or concerns feel free to leave me a comment.
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