Planets

Created these planets for the tutorial ealier.

Creating a planet in Photoshop

All right people, here is a simple trick i learned in Photoshop to create a Planet of your own. Sit back, turn on your music, grab a drink or whatever you need and here we go.
First of create a new document in Photoshop. I created one that is 3500 x 3500 pixel. The reason of using such high pixel is so that u can get a fine and nice detailed texture on the planet surface. Now...leave that page, find a nice picture for your earth surface (you can use pictures of rocky ground or earth or any texture you like).
this is the texture that i chose. If your texture file is too small, try to patch it up on a new 3500x3500 document to patch the textures together.

After some patching and color burns, this is what i got. Go to Edit and select Define Pattern
Name if after ''The Texture of Planet Awesomnus'' ....you can name it whatever you want. Lets just call mine Planet Awesomnus for now.
OK..Now go back to the new document file, select Elliptical Marque Tool, hold down shift key and drag a uniform circle across the screen. Create a new layer and name it 'planet ground'- select paint bucket tool - go up to the tool bar and change from FOREGROUND to PATTERN. Select the pattern that you created earlier and fill up the marque area.
There you go.. This is what you will archieve. The image here seems flat so im going to add a filter to it. Go to Filter - Distort - Spherize it babeh! you will then get something as below
Notice the difference? Good..carry on..
Next, we're gonna work on the atmosphere of the planet. use your magic wand to marque the Black colored area, right click and select inverse. Turn off the earth layer and create a new one. Name the new layer as Atmosphere. Fill up the marque area with the color you want for your atmosphere. For this tutorial im going for a blue atmosphere for my planet. Below are the settings.You should be able to get something like this...Now...create a new layer and name it shadow. Place the layer on top of atmosphere. Now, again with the magic wand technique but this time set the Tolerance to 50...marque the circular area and fill it up with black color. You will then get something like this.


Alright, now you have a nice eclipse but thats not what you want rite? Select your shadows layer and move it lower to your bottom right if the sun direction is from the opposite angle. try to resize it holding down the shift key until u get the shadows coverage you want. Here is mine below.
Last but not least...turn on your Planet Ground and place it in between your Atmosphere and Shadows layer. Then set it to screen. Wahlah..you're almost there!
well, you can add in some of the details such as clouds or touch up the shadow layers. Play around with it and spend some time testing with multiple layers to create different atmosphere on the planet. i added in a bit of clouds and another layer of earth just to detail it a little bit more. Here's the final image. Enjoy!
PLANET AWESOMNUS!

creating a tyre in 3ds max

Here's an easy tutorial on how i use bend modifier to create a Tyre in 3ds max.

First draw out a the shape of grips. I drew out the outlines of the shape and extrude it. Then edit mesh with chamfer on the edges. You can do any pattern that you like.

After that copy the shapes for around 15 to 16 times. Make sure all the points are connected. You can use the bridge modifier in poly edit to join the shapes. then weld all those shapes together.(if you guys have problem welding it, just group them together.) You can mirror it on the other side to get a symmetrical form. And now, the fun part and almost the end of the tutorial- told you its easy.

Go to the modifier panel and select bend. Change the direction value to 90 and angle to 366. Try to play around the value to get a better understanding of what it does. You can change the bend axis to curve it in different axis and angles. To close up the sides, use FFD 4X4 or 5X5 to scale down the sides.

You can also do something like this..

or this...


well..i ended up with something like this

after rendering some photoshop matte painting..this is what i got. Not quite that detail yet. Still working on the detailing.

Hope you guys learned something from it! Cheers.

invasion of the feeders.

Rendering and modelling done in 3ds max..

After photoshop. Added in the comet and asteroids images ,and drew the smoke and burst after that. Check out the tutorial session on how to model tyres in 3ds max..you'll be surprise how simple it is.

Sanctuary

Design Intention
A proposed canteen in the midst of an industrial area using 20 footer shipping containers. Container architecture was proposed because no piling works were allowed on site for the adjacent buildings were too close. So we proposed a temporary structure which can within stand our tropical weather with an industrial touch.

ArtworkThe modeling and rendering was done in 3ds max 2010 with mental ray photometric lightings. In the matte painting i added in the smokey skies done in seperate layers, a broken window in the foreground and some details such as shoes hanging on the wires, crows and black feathers creating a dramatic scene. The idea was to create a dim of light in darkness. Where one can find hope when all else has died. Below are the images that you may need to create a similar scene.

Some random interior renderings..

Renovation

BEFORE
this is the image of the house before renovation.










AFTER
the client wanted to add in another floor. well since we're gonna change the roof anyways, so why not throw in a new roof. Industrial finishing on the outside and contemporary on the inside.







and another option done in minimalism with clean cuts and pure forms.

Spanish House

the Spine

the Spine

A proposed shop houses design in Ipoh malaysia. The site sits in the center of the town with a linked bridge to an old building across the road. A bridge was proposed as a link between the new and the old. Reminding us that our roots will always lies inside us because that is what made us who we are today.

The dynamic form columns holds the bridge up as in cuts through the outer part of the building and infected the inner courtyard with repititions of the columns created a totally different environment.

learning 3dsmax modelling and mental ray rendering

My motherboard was fried the other day and so was my vray for 3dsmax 9. So i have to learn how to render with mental ray 2010. Here's a simple robot that i created just for fun and tutorial. Turns out that 3dsmax 2010 takes up a lot of ram. Upgraded my workstation for quad core with 4gbs rams but still not enough. The graphic is a bit off because im currently using a NVIDIA graphic card (i know..i need a better graphic card). Check out some of the tutorials to learn more about lighting and modeling in 3dsmax.