Here’s a trippy one for you. Took two photo’s from slightly different points of view. Shot while in search of natural hot springs, British Columbia, Canada.

Went on search the other day to see if there was an alternative to 3Ds max’s physics system, Reactor. I soon came across Physx from Nvidia. Its currently still in public beta which means you can download it for free once you sign up to the nvida developer zone (You can also Google the links).

Once I installed it I soon realised that this was 10x better than Reactor. With out looking at and instructions I managed to work my way round the controls in no time (its that intuitive to use). After a bit of practice and looking at some of the example scenes they provide, I was soon creating some pretty interesting things.

The best thing about this program is the ability to play the simulation real time in the view port. This is something you could only dream of doing with Reactor. Because its so quick to view the simulation it means you can play around with different things and see the results almost straight away.

For my first experiment I’ve taken my new logo, divided it up in to small sections and dropped it through this pinball style course..

I have quite a few ideas I want to try out so keep tuned for more :)

So I’ve been meaning to update the old DigitalAnthill look since I started my new job.. that was 8 months ago now! I finally had a weekend where I was free and it was raining so I was encouraged to stay indoors. This was a perfect opportunity to get the job done. Alex was about too so I asked for his help in designing a logo and identity for me. First we went through various fonts trying to find one which was suitable. At first we chose neue Helvetica and Alex played around with the position of the text until he came up with the current look.

Helvetica looked good but I didn’t really want it, so we looked some more. Finally came across Code Pro. I loved it as first sight, so we did a quick mock up and it worked perfectly. I decided I might as well purchase it. Got the full font family for £30. Not a bad deal I think.

We then continued to fiddle with the poisoning till it looked sweet. It was looking slightly off balance next to the top right L so we stuck in a ® for good measure. Yes I know DigitalAnthill is not a registered trade mark but hey it looks cool, so what ever. If anyone asks, it stands for Rob ;)

Click more to see how I created the 3D Logo..

Once the flat vector was finished, I could then import it in to 3Dsmax. With a bit of extrusion and edge chamfering I had my 3D model. I set up a vRay scene and played around with different angels until I got the desired look.

Here vRay is doing its thing..

Below is the final high res render of the new logo.

Here’s another example of a slightly different idea for the logo..

For the footer I created my very own digital anthill, it has a minecraft feel about it. I think the digital cube thing is going to be my new mark..

Once I had the 3D renders I then used Photoshop to lay out the the new blog.

With a bit of help from Greg, my house mate, we managed to get the new theme up and running.

Below is the portfolio section of the new site. I’m pretty pleased with the clean and clear look.

For the record here’s how the old site used to look, quite different to say the least..

I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out. I now finally have a logo and font that I can use through out my work from now on. There nothing like consistency :)

Let me know what you think..

Tribe Brand Communication Showreel 2011 from Tribe Brand Communication on Vimeo.

So I’ve been a busy bee the past 3 months, working on the tribe showreel. It’s finally complete and released into the wild..

I’m putting together a how it was made post soon..

Past couple of days at Tribe I’ve been busy working on the last two exhibition stand concepts. Tracey who works at tribe again came up the floor plan and style. Simon provided me with the graphics that are on each vertical panel.

The first stand is based on three different styles you might find in home, Modern, Classic and a Hall Way. Tracey gave me a rough idea of what she wanted in each section. It was my job to create the furniture to match the style. This was the first time I’ve modelled chairs like this. I was a little apprehensive at first to whether I could do it. I nearly decided to just down load some chairs of the net. But I carried on and cracked it in the end. I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out.. They’re not perfect and improvements could be made on the texturing but I just didn’t have the time to tweak them any further…

Below are some renders with the chairs in place. Over all I’m happy with the results.

Below is the other model I created. Not as complex as the above one but complete none the less.

I have noticed again a huge improvement in the speed en-which I can produce a piece of work like this, which is a good thing because today I was under a great deal of stress to get this finished by the evening. With out the practice and time spent learning as many short cuts as possible I know it would have taken me a lot longer!

Any questions just comment below..

A few months back Simon at Tribe came to me with a cool brief. It was basically to produce two lines that flow around in a 3D space. It would be used as the background on a holding page for the company Parallel Pictures.

Simon did the design and Ben sorted the code.

The site has recently gone live! Below is a screen grab of the finished holding page. Here’s a link to the site (It may have changed).

More on how this was done after the break…

I created the lines in 3Dsmax by first producing a spline then changing its angle so it created an interesting path. I then created a long cylinder and applied the path deform modifier and told it to follow the spline. I duplicated the cylinder and off set it slightly. I set up a camera and made it move forward to give the lines more depth. I played around with the rendering methods to get the desired effect.

Below is the first test where I added a slight transparency to the lines. The reason they are colourless is because I took the rendered images into After Effects and applied the colour then. This allowed for greater flexibility.

I also rendered out a z-depth pass that I originally planned to add to the above render for a depth of field effect. It ended up that I actually colourised the z-depth pass and used that as the final video.

I also added a slight blur and grain effect. I added a black vignette over the entire video so the edge of the flash movie could blend in with the black background of the website.

Below is the rendered video from After Effects.

This week has been super hectic at Tribe! I have a lot of different projects running simultaneously at the moment. One project that needed to be done before I left for the the Alps was a 3D visualisation concept for a exhibition stand.

I started work on this on Monday but really got into it on Tuesday. I was firing on all cylinders on Thursday trying to get everything modelled, textured, lit, and rendered. I have noticed a huge improvement in the time it takes me to set up a scene now. I guess the term practice makes perfect rings true here.. Not that this perfect but I defiantly feel I am pushing for a higher level of quality with every piece I produce. Tracey came up with the concept and Simon provided the graphic textures. I even created some bump maps to add to the realism. The rug was created with vRay fur which I hadn’t used before (but will be in the future :p) All was rendered with vRay. I still need to master all the settings in vRay, I know there is some serious room for optimisation on render times… Any who hope you like the visuals :).

Note: This is only an initial mock up..

I was briefed in on new project to create some Christmas trees that look like they are pealing out the page for an e-card.

This is what I did:

I created a spline in the shape of a xmas tree, then extruded it. I added a sub divide modifier so when the xmas tree bends it looks smooth and not made up of big polygons. I then added the bend modifier and animated the various properties until I got the desired look. I took a clone of the trees and used them to boolean out a hole in a plane. I put a orange coloured plane under the scene. I then set up the camera and lighting. Then rendered it out at 10fps (because its a gif and a high frame rate would mean big file size) and imported it into AE. In AE I animated the Logo and text transition. I then rendered it out from AE as a Quicktime file. I imported the video in to Photoshop where you can use the ‘Save for web & devices’ feature to save it out as a animated gif.

And there you have it a quick run down of how to create a animated gif. I’m really pleased that I now know this process because this technique can be used quite a lot in the web world.