Wow, its May of 2013

Man, things have been busy to say the least and my lack of activity on this blog is unfortunately the result.  Things are still plugging away on the Run 8 front. Maybe more than plugging away since I am absolutely swamped with asset projects for the sim and let me tell you when I say swamped, I mean swamped. For anyone that is into trains and has debated trying out Run 8 I would absolutely encourage you to do so as it is by far the most realistic train sim I have run. In addition to that there are a lot of really cool things in the works that go beyond the new, and absolutely awesome Amtrak equipment that will be coming out and not to mention the Needles sub.

Anyway I wanted to share a few items I've had the pleasure to work on. First is a pig from that particular rolling stock expansion that was released. This is rendered in Mental Ray with a few lights thrown in the scene. Ray traced shadows are being used as well. I opted to omit an AO pass since that information is already baked into the diffuse map. There is, however, some very subtle lighting information baked into the diffuse map as well. I generally tend to stay away from doing that, especially in a situation where there is dynamic lighting as things can conflict in what the sun is doing and what that particular asset is showing. However if the baked lighting is kept very very subtle then there is usually not much of an issue. For something like this I only baked a little spec into rivets, corners, tire rims, etc, in order to make them pop a little.

And a few other items. Model presentation is something I've always been big on as it was something that was kinda drilled into my education early on. Keep it clean and simple they say. Most will say definitely go for a good neutral background, something like 50% grey on a textured model. Doing so will keep the item from fighting with the background. For instance a black environment will make the model tend to appear dark and white will wash it out. Now with that being said I have started going against my own preaching as far as a white background. Sometimes it seems a bit nicer/cleaner for a product beauty shot. So I dont know, I do go back and forth a lot but I wont ever venture much from either of these two set ups.   The racks are rendered with the same set up as the pig, Mental Ray, couple lights, ray traced shadows. I did add some reflection to the environment then adjusted in Photoshop.