I'll preface my first post with what I have been up to recently as it relates to creative endeavors. Which is, delving back into the world of digital graphics and design after a decade long break. The first part of the journey has been checking out the latest versions of 3D graphics programs and the respective advancements made to the most popular programs, plugins, and tools. This has included watching a number of tutorial and demo videos, reading articles, loading up old 3d models & scenes, and generally re-acquainting myself with the whole field. Coincidentally, it seems that the primary software I used in the past (Lightwave 3D) actually disappeared for several years as well, only to recently re-emerge. A few noteworthy developments (among numerous others) since my absence has been sculpting and photogrammetry (or 3d photo scanning).
Like anyone else, I want to achieve highest quantity & quality results with minimal upfront cost of time & money when working on any project. This means that initially I'll stick with free and opensource tools whenever possible (GIMP, Blender, Audacity to name a few). As well as utilizing free and/or cheap model, animation, textures & sound assets if available. So long as they have acceptable licensing, and aren't overly generic. Now, the approach described above naturally leads to photogrammetry. This technology has advanced far enough that the barrier to entry is very minimal. You can get acceptable results with just a smart phone, and free to download software. The software I used for my "Quick Test" below is Meshlab. The Test This weekend I went on a camping trip with my girlfriend. During an afternoon hike I paused for a couple minutes to take 9 pictures of a rock along the trail that looked like it would be suitable for a test. Just my smartphone, nothing fancy. This would simply tell me what kind of result I could get, and if it would be usable. After getting home I gave it a try... Loaded the program up, clicked & dragged in a set of pics. Then clicked "Start". Using all the preset default nodes, it took about 5 minutes to generate the below mesh and texture. So, the result is... a rock. But not just any rock. The kicker: it's complex geometry with a high resolution photo texture, that took very little time to generate (<10min total for this raw mesh). The implication is that high detail, static scene assets can be generated much easier by using this method (interesting example here shows it cut the production time literally in half). AND, you get to leave behind the mundane clickity clacks of keyboard and mouse. You get to go outside and use nature and structures as inspiration.
0 Comments
|
Wu
Archives
October 2020
Categories
|