As part of the ever evolving techniques in CG lighting, image based lighting is something you can create yourself with your own camera. Granted, you will need to invest in some camera gear to get the image you want (i.e. wide angle lens for environment maps) but the technique of HDR images is pretty much the same and can be quite enjoyable for any photography you might be doing.

Here’s a few links to get you started and educated in the techniques of HDR photography:

Bracketing, Basic HDR information, Some Digital Photography and HDR tutorials

A first in a series, the CAD files to Rendering is a documentation of issues and thoughts of how I recommend moving from a CAD application (I’ll be using Pro/ENGINEER) to a rendering application (I’ll be referencing Softimage XSI, Cinema 4D, PolyTrans).

To move our CAD files to a rendering application you will want to flavour the solutions based on the end use intent. Some examples:

1. Visualization (i.e. real-time) or gaming centric type applications you will be aiming for high polygon efficiency (low poly count) and good visual accuracy.
2. Photoreal rendering (stills) will require polygon precision (high poly count) and high visual accuracy. You will want to preserve features like fillets and chamfers, but this can drive poly counts insanely high.
3. Animation will typically require medium to high polygon precision (medium to high poly count) and high visual accuracy. If we are doing simulations it is important that we are trying to establish the proper ‘mass’ or body topology of the object(s) so that we can properly apply gravity, fluid and other physical effects.

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Bernard (aka Atyss) posted a long ago written document on the ways of BSP and how it relates to optimizing your renders.

I stumbled upon 3DMastermind through a post on the new Softimage|Net community site. So I ventured off, read the article at CG Channel and watched the 25 minute demonstration. I am impressed, the content looks solid and while the kit is 11hrs long the 25 minute snippet had piles to show and something you could walk away from having learned something.

I hope to review the kit more in depth, but check it out and for $59 I doubt you can go wrong. Manny Papamanos is a long time Softimage employee and instructor in the ways of rigging.

Windows and Linux see 32 and 64 bit versions of Crosswalk 2.5.2 available for download.

Sourceforge is showing a modo 302 Collada exporter is under works.