Category Archives: Luxrender

April 6, 2019

Big Sister

By Peter

The underwater city of Rapture has always fascinated me ever since the game Bioshock was released in 2007. I instantly fell in love with the atmosphere, storytelling, game play, art and sound style and how things are broken and falling apart.
The commercials in the game are presented in a very unique way, making a really weird thing look commonplace and natural. Like putting a person on fire by snapping your fingers or sending a pack of bees on somebody.
Then Bioshock 2 came with even crazier plot twists, action and wtf-just-happened moments. I still remember the feeling in my gut when I saw Gilbert Alexander in the tank the first time.

This is the Big Sister from Bioshock 2. I had loads of fun modeling this weird and interesting character with her creepy long legs and short torso and unmistakable outfit. Based on some detail renders by Blur studios.

Bioshock © 2K Games

Download .blend file.
44MB, modeling: Blender 2.79, rendering: LuxCoreRender, texturing: Substance Painter

Leave a comment | tags: bioshock, blender, LuxCoreRender, luxrender, substancepainter | posted in Blender, LuxCoreRender, Luxrender, Substance Painter

November 27, 2017

Billiards

By Peter

Something simple at first glance but very very good lighting practice.

Lighting is hard. Very hard. So, they say one way of learning it is to re-create photographs and that is what I did with this thing right here.
The white parts of the balls required a little more work to look right. I ended up using a glossy material mixed with a scattering volume… and on top of that a glossy coating layer covering the whole ball.
The fuzzy look of the table carpet was achieved by using a lot of small scale displacement on a plane underneath the carpet and then placing it so the bumps just barely clip through the carpet.

Download .blend file.
36MB, modeling: Blender 2.78, rendering: LuxRender.

Leave a comment | posted in Blender, Luxrender

September 5, 2017

Creating a Jade Material

By Peter

A jade rock material can be rendered with LuxRender by using a volume. It supports three types of volumes each of them with their own strengths and weaknesses. This jade pendant is using a heterogeneous volume, which is slower to render than the other two types, but using it you are able to get some very interesting-looking volumes.

The volume color is created by mixing together several procedural textures. Procedurals being as flexible are they are, you can create just about any look you want.

Tutorial: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/Jade_material_2

Leave a comment | posted in Blender, Luxrender, tutorial

March 28, 2017

Abstract Wallpaper

By Peter

These are very fun to make because you can just make it up as you go. The only goal I had for this one was something dark and creepy. It is somewhat similar to my previous abstracts, in the way that something is emitting light(energy) and something else wants to absorb it. I figured some insect things with solar catching abilities would do the trick. And maybe these could be some spider like things that could easily traverse this environment.
So, some eight-legged insects with solar catching features. These exist everywhere, right?

It is a wallpaper so some space is left clear on purpose for the icons.
And no, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s abstract. It’s supposed to be weird.

Download .blend file
22MB, rendering; LuxRender, modeling: Blender, texturing: Substance Painter

Leave a comment | tags: abstract, blender, luxrender, substancepainter | posted in Blender, Luxrender, Substance Painter

March 5, 2017

Hair and Fur

By Peter

LuxRender supports a strand primitive allowing hair and fur to be rendered with hundreds of thousands of strands. It uses Blender’s hair particle system and creates the strand geometry based on that. You can choose between four different strand types depending on the look you want and four different ways to put color on the strands.

Tutorial: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/Setting_up_hair_and_fur

Leave a comment | posted in Blender, Luxrender

February 9, 2017

Volumetric Scattering

By Peter

Volumetric scattering is pretty simple to set up in LuxRender. When all materials/objects are inside the volume that makes it super-easy when you can use the scattering volume as the default volume, which makes LuxRender use that volume on all materials/objects.
Keeping track of the face normal is important when picking the exterior or interior volume for a material.

Tutorial: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/Setting_up_volumetric_scattering

3 Comments | tags: tutorial, volume, work light | posted in Blender, Luxrender

September 24, 2016

Landwasserschlepper

By Peter

The Landwasserschlepper was an amphibious tractor built by the Germans in the 1940’s. Its purpose was to pull stuff across seas and rivers as well as on land. Indeed a very interesting vehicle design

As cool as the 1940’s design is by itself, I wanted a little comical look to it. The boat hull is way shorter than the original and I wanted some exaggerated tank tracks for no reason at all. Those changes made the scale of things look wrong. Everything is modeled to scale, it’s actually the vehicle that is smaller than it looks.

Download .blend file
108MB, Rendering: LuxRender, Modeling: Blender, Texturing: Substance Painter

Leave a comment | tags: blender, free, landwasserschlepper, luxrender, lws, substancepainter, vehicle | posted in Blender, Luxrender, Substance Painter

August 21, 2016

Hotel Lobby

By Peter

This is a scene from 2014 which I forgot to upload here, for some reason. It was made for the GPU benchmarking program LuxMark.
The goal was to create a scene for the heavy benchmark category with about 5 million faces. Architecture seemed like a nice challenge so I based the scene on the Renaissance Sanya Resort & Spa in China.
Also the scene is lit by only one light source, the sun, because I wanted that challenge for an interior scene.

Download .blend file
41MB, modeling: Blender 2.77, rendering: LuxRender 1.6, texturing: Gimp

Leave a comment | tags: architecture, blender, chair, free, interior, Lamp, luxmark, luxrender, table | posted in Blender, Luxrender

August 8, 2016

Two of Spades

By Peter

Something simple and quick.

Ensiferum – Two of Spades. Track 8, on this album

Download .blend file
7MB, modeling: Blender 2.77, rendering: LuxRender 1.6, texturing: Substance Painter

Leave a comment | tags: blender, ensiferum, luxrender, substancepainter | posted in Blender, Luxrender, Substance Painter

July 25, 2016

The Twister

By Peter

Way back in 1997, a game was released upon the world that would set new standards for vehicle racing games. Featuring open world racing, new at the time, there was no need for boring linear racing between checkpoints. You could drive to the next checkpoint any which way you wanted. Actually, there was no need for checkpoints in the first place. There were multiple ways to win a race and one of them was to wreck your opponents’ cars, and that was a lot more fun.
I was fascinated by the vehicle physics and the car damage system the game had. Even today, I still enjoy it. The game was Carmageddon. This is one of the cars in that game.

The game got a reboot with Carmageddon: Max Damage in 2016, taking vehicle damage system to an insane new level and a lot cooler looking cars.
Stainless, the developers, did not disappoint. It is a monster and it follows the same gorgeous vehicular combat/racing type as Carmageddon (1997). The Twister is available in Max Damage too, but I wanted to stay true to the original, creating a somewhat real-looking version based on a low poly game car.

Rendering done with LuxRender.
Concrete textures, parking lines and oil spills from plaintextures. The rest are created in Substance Painter.
Carmageddon (1997) is available in its original low poly glory at GOG.com

Download .blend file
40MB, modeling: Blender 2.76, rendering: LuxRender 1.6

Right-click and ‘view image’ to see full res.