FG Basic Tutorial here

Hi all!

I hope this help someone, here is a small tutorial on how set up a basic FG scene
http://shared.zanqdo.com/echelon/index.php?file=FG%20tut.pdf

Cheers Farsthary

Where to follow volumetric progresses?

Hi all, this is one of the maintainer of the blog

Just to tell you that many great advancements are currently being added by the great blender dev, main author of the refactored volumetric (sim_physic branch) and artist Matt Ebb. They will be extremely useful especially for people working with datasets, as an example in the medical field. Please check regularly his blog, both him and Daniel Genrich are the great guys who make the integration of volumetrics and smoke simulator possible in the short term, a requirement for the Durian project (a lot of VFXs will be used that for)

Using FG build

Though I haven’t made a small tutorial about using FG (should I have done before released) I want to mention an important factor that have to be taken into account: Normals

normals have to point at the same side where ligt is, for example in a typical cornell box scene the interior small boxes should have thier normals in the default creation direction, that is , outside them , but for the enclousing box, the walls, normals have to be inverted pointing inside.

If some scene give you troubles try with normals. I will upload soon a small tutorial if someone don’t do that first because many people are already experts in FG

I’m gladd even that some issues have being fixed, thanks to all

Credits

Hi all!

If I have ever seemed as I haven’t give proper credits I apologize for that, I always say that i’m standing on the shoulders of giants and in open source development if there’s no money what at least a developer expects are credits.
I want to thanks Matt Ebb for all of his help in volumetrics and photonmapping/Final gathering, seems that in my last post I haven’t mention him.

I feel really sad every time a normal-because-we-are-humans small issues arise with a blender dev, perhaps I should work on myself to be less sensible. I don’t like subjective numbers but I will make an estimate about my collaborations on the Sim_physics branch Farsthary: 10 % Matt Ebb: 90%
in Photon map/Final gathering i have made a release but Matt’s code is several times better and is what will be officially committed, I’ve said that from the very beginning:
Photonmap/Final gathering Farsthary 30% Matt Ebb 70%

I also want to thank the countless names of the blender community that have helped me and although they don’t have written a single line of code one way or another has influenced in the causality chain, even the single line mail: go on! is a contribution and I appreciate that.

And up above I want to thank my parents that have give me live and have made so many sacrifices to allow me to do this sort of stuffs because what I do here is simply a luxury even for the ‘well positioned’ families here. They are the true heroes of my history.

Cheers to everyone Raul Fernandez Hernandez.

PD: I’m not thinking clearly now, hope next posts will be more optimistic.

Multilight set ups now work as expected…

Hi all!

I have found a really silly bug preventing multiple light set up to work correctly, it was only a misplaced parenthesis but for builders will be easier to simply replace the old photonmap.c file with the corrected one aviable in http://www.pasteall.org/6323/c

here is also a new multiple light set up test .blend file:
http://shared.zanqdo.com/echelon/index.php?file=FinalGatheringMultiligth.rar

and some test images, hope you like them

The Smoke simulator is being integrated!

Hi all, this is one of the blog maintainers.

For those of you who are still not aware about this, our beloved Daniel Genrich started a few weeks ago the integration of the smoke simulator inside blender! In addition to that, this includes volumetric preview in blender 3D view, and the highly realistic smoke algorithm from Nils Thuerey. Big Kudos to him!

So stay tuned by regularly checking his blog

He’s also planned to buy a brand new computer to quickly perform simulations to speed up his development process, so you can consider small donations so that he can buy a killer computer (the donation bar is above 100%, which means that he can buy a good one,  but with 200% he could buy a core i7 system allowing him to run algorithms in fractions of minutes..).

Once the integration is done, this will greatly ease Farsthary’s job of integrating his cool VFXs, such as the instable fire or the pyroclastic smoke (explosions).

regards

Thanks to everyone

note: this post was planned 2 weeks ago, but the main blog’s manager was not available to feed the blog

I recently returned from a national scientific student colloquium in Matanzas city, where I showcased volumetrics in blender; I got there lots of congratulations from other students that also like blender

I was very pleased to receive congratulations emails because June, the 8th, was my birthday also (everything good have came together this month )

this is a short video about myself in my thesis discussion, I haven’t included audio because I have recorded that without sound

hope many of you know me better now than in stills  

Cheers

Farsthary

Or one at YouTube with music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR_xQxqmyeQ

Zip file of all the files for Final Gathering Test Build

Farsthary sent these to Blendiac and I and asked us to post them for him (source files, a blend file etc). To download the files please go click here to download from MediaFire.

Cheers,
Wife of Blendiac

Final Gathering test build ready

Hi all

As the title says, the first FG build is ready for public test,

here: http://graphicall.org/builds/builds/showbuild.php?action=show&id=1040
I repeat, is an experimental and not production ready build but hope you enjoy them.
Currently is non optimized and in the future many parts of the code should be redisigned but still some good results could be achieved.

is better suited for indoor scenes contrary to AO that is for outdoor scenes.
The user could choose between raw photonmapping and Final gathering.
the patch is against the2.49a tar ball

Hope you like it

Cheers Farsthary

I´m officially a Software Engineer ;)

Hi all !
I have get graduated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow! I have being talking for about an hour and everyone where very interested. I will post soon some pictures and if bandwith allows me a small video. I have no time to enjoy the success because tomorrow I will go to a National Software event in matanzas, another province of Cuba and again I will be representing Blender there (I will be there for two weeks)
When I translate and format the thesis I will make it publically aviable, as an advance, Matt Ebb and Marc Chambon where tutors of that thesis and I have thanked there all the blender community. Things are not smooth yet, there´s some issues regarding my final job but I don´t want to talk now about that, I don´t care where I end up as long as I could get internet access once in a while. I don´t want to get isolated again
I hope God have a plan for me so I will accept with pride whatever the destiny have for me
Don´t worry because as long as I live I will not give up and I have arrived for staying (WOW! I´m staring to sound like a hollywood actor )

I end up introducing in my thesis the Bazaar Development Model (BDM) used intuitively in every open source project but this time with some formalizations that hopefully will serve as a path for other thesis in my country that where afraid of open source projects due to the lack of software engineer formalized model.
Once again I owe all of you to much

Cheers Raúl Fernández Hernández (Farsthary)

Some words

Hi,

This is a friend of Farsthary and one of his early supporters. One year has passed since he announced that he would develop a volumetric engine for Blender. Now, thank to his and Matt Ebb’s hard work, this is a reality, and we all wish him good luck for a Cum Lauda PhD.

The DURIAN Project garantuees that all this hard work will be fully integrated in an official blender version and optimized for Movie-quality VFXs.

Support has played a huge role by showing to Farsthary the community’s consideration and carefullness, that keep him hoping despite hardnesses like the terrible hurricanes.

This is why I am introducing today brother sites of other very talented programmers so that they know similar and happy futures:

Janne Karhu for advanced particles effects: you can enjoy hair/fur shown in  the Big Buck Bunny open movie and available since Blender 2.46 mostly thank to this guy: if you support him, be prepared to have more incredible VFX based on the particle system, such as managing huge amount of caracters like birds or people in a convincing way.

Joseph Eagar for NGONS modelling in blender. Here is a comment of Big Buck Bunny artist William Reynish:

I donated to the Bmesh project, and here’s why:
I expect it will make modeling much more enjoyable, faster and more efficient. Not having n-gons is one of the biggest drawbacks of Blenders modeling system. Yes, you can achieve similar results without, and yes, it’s best to have your final models be all quads, but what n-gons help to improve is workflow. Aside from n-gons, Bmesh should make it easier to make create powerful modeling tools, more akin to the ones found in apps like Modo and Silo.
Here’s a video of Silo in action, using n-gons and other tools:
http://www.nevercenter.com/videos/tu…minotaur_3.mov
I see Bmesh as a very important project for Blender, and especially now with 2.5 coming up with its new tool API. I hope Bmesh can make it in 2.5 – also means developers don’t have to re-implement tools twice, one for 2.5, and one for Bmesh

So let us  keep supporting all the restless developpers: they use significant amount of their “lifespan” to give us beautiful CG tools…

regards

Another utility of vector input

Hi all!
few weeks ago I have implemented a simple patch for texture nodes, the vector input for every texture node type.
An important use of this feature is that it could transform (distort) a texture based on any input, that means an easy way of animating texture offsets, for cloud animations, etc and transformation, if as an input ,animations textures, time node , simulated datasets (voxeldata textures) are used.

Cheers and see you latter!
Farsthary

A short post for a big event

Hi all!

this week is my thesis discussion!!!!!
things are a little messy here so little time to post. I want to thank you all because you have made me reach this point and I hope God allows me go on further
Cheers the soon-Informatics-engineer Farsthary

Final Gathering at last ;)

Hi all !

Long time without news! I’m currently facing the most important time in a student life, its graduation,
that’s why I have posted previously that may-june will be a very busy time for me so I have near zero time to spend in my current projects, but zero coding is something simply impossible to ask to myself
so to motivate me a little last nigth I open up blender source and review againg the so awaited Final Gathering
for the photon mapping algorithm, and this time with a fresh mind I could finally implement it.
The principal paremetter that now is added to the previously in the photon mapping build is final gather samples.
My previous development in the pathtracer was of big help because FG is in essence a hybrid algorithm of photon mapping and a pathtracer,
that’s why render times are longer that plaing photon mapping images but shorter than pure pathtraced images
(though nothing is absolut in this world

FG overcome many limitations of photon mapping at a price, it introduce high frecuency noise , only removed with many samples.

The essence of FG is very simple : firstly build the photon map in a preprocess stage, before the rendering actually begins and then at render time, when a shading samples is requested, instead of find illumination values in the photon map for a single value, many rays are traced in all hemispherical directions and then request illumination values at intersection points in the photon map and finally integrating all those samples.
(is a single bounce pathtracer of a photonmap)
Once the render internal of Blender get the benefits of faster raytracing many projects will get boosted at the same time like volumetrics and photon mapping so things may gett better in the future for all of us

There’s still many features that currently lacks the photon mapping build, like texture support and is very unstable and buggy for now, I will soon upload a new build with the Final Gathering in order to all of you toy with it.

Take a look at some test images, hope you will like them. with final gathering now is necesary in many cases to tonemap the images, I show here only the untonepapped ones.

Cheers to all Farsthary

PS: WOW! I have missed posting here

FG 8 OSA 100 FG samples Time 1min 59s

FG 8 OSA 100 FG samples Time 2min 4s

FG 8 OSA 200 FG samples Lamp samples 16 T 5min 33s

FG 100 OSA 8 Time 2min 16s

FG 100 OSA 8 Time 2min 56s

OSA 8 FG samples 100 Time 1min 46s

Time 2min 41s

Path tracing hairs

Hi all !

At some point Luxrender will include blender hair support, since my pathtracer is build on top of Blender it has native support for blender hairs so I wanted to take a sneak peak of reference GI hairs
hope you like them