December, 2006: Winter Treehouse

[A.Alvarez]

Ok, time for the December contest...

The theme this month is to design a treehouse in winter... this is of course open ended as far as the type of 'house' and the type of tree, but I got the idea from this book that I recently found:

http://www.amazon.com/Treehouse-Book-Peter-Nelson/dp/0789304112/sr=8-2/qid=1165383231/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/103-6420476-0939816?ie=UTF8&s=books

Now this can be a single house in a tree, a village in a bunch of trees (treetown), etc.

For those doing 3D, the best resources for building trees as a start point/reference are OnyxTreePro, Vue, Xfrog or Maya Paint Effects... Plus Ethan Summers did a cool paintfx DVD where he shows how to start with a PaintFX tree and then refine it using zbrush.

good luck!

edit:

Ok, so here are the winners!
Really amazing entries this time around, and with the holiday spirit and all, well... we couldn't just narrow it down to four.
Thanks to everyone who participated! We really enjoyed seeing your interpretations of this month's theme.

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/alex_stuff/misc_forum_posts/GW_dec2006_winners.jpg

The winners will be contacted via the email used to sign up on the forum.
Happy New Year everyone...

-Alex

[Diabolos]

Hi,

I was on the site to add a few dvd's to my XMAS wish list and saw this contest - cool idea...

My questions:

I am making a 3D entry, do I post the final image here or do I start a new thread in the 3D image gallery?

Also, I am making an entry just for this contest - is that allright or does it have to be something that was already made?

Are there any image format requests, i.e. image size min/max - image extension, etc?

Thanks,

Diabolos

[RicardoGarces]

Hi Diabolos,

you post your final image in this thread. Do not open a new one.

There is no image size specification. Just post something that can actually fit into a standard 1600x1200 resolution. Otherwise we will have to scroll sideways to look at your image.

You can make a new image. Just check the previous months challenges and you can get an idea.

Take care... good luck... and Merry Christmas!

Ricardo.

[Kelvin]

Hi! This contest is great ! I'm pretty new to Maya, but getting gradually used to the interface. The only 3D graphic software I used in the past was "Infini-D.. v.4?", which had, well, a LOT of constraints compared to Maya. :)

I can't wait to participate to this contest so I can (maybe) learn a lot LOT more about the software. In a certain way, it's a little contradictory that the winners (that are the best of the participants), are the one getting to learn more... lol But I guess there's really no way out of this paradox.

Maybe if the prices were divided by skills?...

- 40 DVD's for the Expert (that has no time to wait to learn!, because he maybe already has a full time job in the industry, and would need to know things about the workflow of other softwares he's not already using).

- 20 DVD's for the Intermediate (That needs the 20 DVD's to complete his skills regarding that single software he's aiming for).

-10 DVD's for Noobs (like me! lol :o ) that are getting increasingly interrested in learning specific parts of a sofware.

Probably the problem here would be to determine what are the real skills of people,.. For exemple to get an expert to easely win the Begginer's price. That could be resolved by sending the .mb file? To see how desperately a noob has to go to get a simple scene correct. lol... The scene would be awfully constructed,.. well,.. at least different from an expert! (I guess).

I don't even know how to use "Mental Ray" yet... :eek: So If I build a treehouse, no matter how long I model it, it will never get that shinny look other contestants are achieving (in many cases, with several softwares at a time).

Anyways! :D I'll work on a treehouse and send it, even if it looks pretty AWFUL for the eyes of an expert. lol
See ya's!

[semios]

hi! there :)

wow not so easy the december subject... So, after 5 days working, here is my entry.
as usual, comments are welcome
sorry, the picture is realy bad quality, i can't upload more than 97Ko :(
here is the link for a good resolution :
http://www.3dplume.be/clients/gnomon/maison_arbre_final_1200.jpg

[andrei.szasz]

man this is great !!!
i think i'm in :D
i'll try to put something together for this mounth... but if i whon't i will shorlly do the next one.
good luck to everybody !

[Herbert]

I'm not quite sure if this entry can also take place in the challenge :confused:
So i posted this in the 3D-Section and here - sorry for the double posting

I would appriciate if anyone could delete one of those two posts.


So here the text again.

Hello!

A few days are left then its Christmas and Santa Claus is coming.
I decided to make my own chocolate Santa Claus.
Purpose was to achieve a handpainted chocolate look - with all the inperfection of the painted white and brown chocolate.
So the painted chocolate doesn't fits everything perfectly.


Modelled and rendered in Maya.
Compositing in Fusion and Photoshop.


Merry Christmas!

[correia]

Hi everyone,

This is my entry to the Dezember contest.

All modeling was done in Maya, Textures and Post Production in Photoshop.
I take the pictures near by, (i'm currently living in Swiss).

Allmost everything i did learn, was in Gnomon DVD's. (which are SIMPLY the best)

Merry Christmas for all.

link for a better resolution :

http://www.daboss3d.com/tree_house_final_jpg.jpg

[andrei.szasz]

so... here is my image on the tree house theme... it's not a realistic one... but hope you like it .

done with 3ds max , rendered with maxwell and composited in photoshop.

[Dmitry Sh]

Hi, this my entry
800*600
http://v3d.profit-production.ru/TEMP/DmitrySh_Final_GnomonDec2006_Low.jpg

http://v3d.profit-production.ru/TEMP/DmitrySh_Final_GnomonDec2006_BIG.jpg (1600*1200)

(Maya 7.0, Shake)

[Dmitry Sh]

http://v3d.profit-production.ru/TEMP/APPLE_Small_GnomonDec06.jpg

big:
http://v3d.profit-production.ru/TEMP/APPLE_Big_GnomonDec06.jpg

[A.Alvarez]

Happy New Year everyone!

We will be looking over the entries this week and should have the winners posted by Friday. Thanks again for particpating, as once again the entries are really really great... :) So many cool interpretations of the theme! Oi... this is going to be a hard one to narrow down to four. So far I'm down to 29. heh.

-Alex

[Kelvin]

Hi! :) Here I send my first attempt to this contest. I'm so amazed by the work of others that I don't expect to win anything. Though I'll never give up on Maya. :D (I started to try to learn it on my own for the past month, on a 6 hours per day basis).

Ok,.. I ran into different problems, and I hope somebody could shed some lights for me about them. I'm sending the final (Maya + photoshop), and the final render with mental ray, in which I circled regions where I had defenitly problems I could not get rid off, or get to work properly.

Final (Maya + photoshop) :
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p195/Kelvinzero777/treehouse_final.jpg

Render with problems :
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p195/Kelvinzero777/treehouse_problem.jpg

Problem 1 : After making a nurbs plane and displacing it manually to create some hills, I wanted to make every snowflakes on the snow to reflect randomly (like stardust)... So the only thing I could come up with (my knowledge) was to use a bump map + specular map, hoping that the specularity would give the "stardust" effect I was searching for. It didn't work as good as I expected, though the snow around the snowman looks like it was blown with a snowblower (which I'm happy with for the moment). The texture swimming on the hill to the right makes the snow looks dirty, but my real problem is that I couldn't get some part of the bump map (on region 1) to show grainy, even though I used the "UV texture editor" to cover more region of the texture. I thought that the bump map was linked to the texture map (humm,... I have no texture file used as a shader, only a blinn, I think). And even if I gave a lot of space to those UV's, and desperatly cutting the plane in 3 separate parts (Nurb plane 1, 2 and 3), it made no real difference to Region 1. My first question is : aren't bump maps linked to UV's ?

Problem 2 : I wanted to create several light bulbs with different colors everywhere around the house and the stairs, though I got stuck trying to fix my first point light! :( I realized too late that Raytracing is not rendering "light glow", and if I wanted to create chrismas light bulbs, I had to render my scene with Raytrace, and then with Maya software engine. All we can see on this picture is some specularity of red from my point light. My question is : what's the best way to create several small light bulbs without getting a very hard scene to render?

Problem 3 : Even though I used a production level of anti-aliasing, the cracks between each plank of wood for the house didn't return fine distinctive ligns. (minimum sample "0", max "2"). Is it me that's too picky about a 800X600 render?

The tree and the branches for the arms of the snowman are made from extruded nurb circles (I don't know how to use PaintEffects).

In general, the thing I'm totally happy with is the sleigh. Texture created in photoshop (cloud + blur + noise).

http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p195/Kelvinzero777/luge.jpg

Happy new year everyone! :D

[yogeshsherman]

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o167/yogeshsherman/yogeshWinter.jpg

Here is entry for the challange from my side.I modelled,textered,lit and rendered this images in maya no post process or touchup is used for this image.snow was also done with maya's particles.No GI solution is used.I wanted to give it a different look sort of partly toony or partly magical.soon i'll be coming up with the full animation.
Thanks and Happy new year to all

[A.Alvarez]

Ok, so here are the winners!
Really amazing entries this time around, and with the holiday spirit and all, well... we couldn't just narrow it down to four.
Thanks to everyone who participated! We really enjoyed seeing your interpretations of this month's theme.

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/alex_stuff/misc_forum_posts/GW_dec2006_winners.jpg

The winners will be contacted via the email used to sign up on the forum.
Happy New Year everyone...

-Alex
ps. great image yogeshsherman...
Regrettably we grab the images from the forum to begin reviewing them on the last day of the month (i.e. December 31st for this contest).

[yogeshsherman]

Thanks alex for your supporting comments,but i really don't know when the contest is going to end as I suppose it was not mention on the starting page.But I try to be punctual next time(but one more thing all the winners are chosen from only 2d category,atleast consolation prize for me lol)
waiting for the announcement of next challenge.I need those DVD's to improve my work.

Thanks again
Yogesh Sherman

[attman]

Wow, really nice entries on this contest! Definetely well chosen the winners.