Artmatica News
The Alien/SciFi Skies Set is out now!
November/15/2008 17:21
I am very pleased to announce the release of the
Alien/SciFi Skies Set for Artmatic Voyager.
You can find all the relevant informations here
Cheers,
Dick
You can find all the relevant informations here
Cheers,
Dick
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Alien/Scifi Skies Gallery
November/13/2008 20:51
I am almost done with the Alien/SciFi skies
collection. Some of you might be curious to see what
the skies look like. I have just set up a gallery so
you can view each and every sky of the collection.
The pictures are renders from the Voyager scene files
included in the set. So the RGB surfaces used for in
the renders are also part of the set.
Enjoy!
-Alien/SciFi Skies gallery-
Enjoy!
-Alien/SciFi Skies gallery-
Asteroids
October/17/2008 20:46
When I went through my moon, planet systems I was
quite happy with my arsenal. Then I saw a image of an
asteroid. The most obvious about it was that the
asteroid was not perfectly round but rather looking
like an enormous stone.
I also knew that this would challenge me and I equally knew that this would not be easy to achieve with Artmatic.
There were earlier attempts to create stones, meteors and asteroids but they all failed. But they all were experiments I did a while ago and since my experience with Artmatic had been growing in the meantime, I was tempted to find out if I could work it out this time.
...and after days of trial and error I finally found a convincing way to do it (see below).
I also knew that this would challenge me and I equally knew that this would not be easy to achieve with Artmatic.
There were earlier attempts to create stones, meteors and asteroids but they all failed. But they all were experiments I did a while ago and since my experience with Artmatic had been growing in the meantime, I was tempted to find out if I could work it out this time.
...and after days of trial and error I finally found a convincing way to do it (see below).
Stargate City
October/06/2008 22:40
Someone was asking if it was possible to have cities with rounded shapes. Well, here is one that combines squared shapes and rounded shapes.
The sky is an example from the upcoming SciFi/Alien sky collection.
Click here to download the Stargate City bundle file.
Stargate City A.vy
Surreal Construct
October/02/2008 17:14
Here is another QTVR movie file. For the surface I
used one of Eric`s very cool city files.
The sky is a 360 environment. The technique used here makes it possible to have objects that span the entire sky. The construct in this example seamlessly surrounds the city. It`s a candidate for the Alien/SciFi sky collection...
-Surreal Construct-
The sky is a 360 environment. The technique used here makes it possible to have objects that span the entire sky. The construct in this example seamlessly surrounds the city. It`s a candidate for the Alien/SciFi sky collection...
-Surreal Construct-
Artmatic Moons
September/30/2008 15:29
Below is a link to a slideshow with some of my
favourite Artmatic moons. Many of them will be part
of the Alien/SciFi sky collection I am currently
working on.
They all share the following features:
1. 3D shading. The shading of the textures aligns with the light direction automatically.
2. Correct mapping of the craters
3. The texture can be rotated 180 degrees. (The entire moon can be rotated 360 degrees).
4. Packed into a single CT so they can easily be added to Voyager skies.
5. Variable contours added (shift of brightness, color near the edges.
Check it out!
-AM Moons slideshow-
They all share the following features:
1. 3D shading. The shading of the textures aligns with the light direction automatically.
2. Correct mapping of the craters
3. The texture can be rotated 180 degrees. (The entire moon can be rotated 360 degrees).
4. Packed into a single CT so they can easily be added to Voyager skies.
5. Variable contours added (shift of brightness, color near the edges.
Check it out!
-AM Moons slideshow-
QTVR Movie:Snowy Mountains
September/23/2008 17:42
Here is a QTVR movie (Panoramic view of a picture)
named Snowy Mountain. The clouds sky is a newly
developed seamless
360 Environment.
What`s cool about this approach is that you can not
only add Voyager clouds to it, but also that this
enables you to add any other elements to the sky,
like planets, moons, suns, sunbeams etc.
Another interesting aspect is the RGB Surface file. The snow, instead of taken from Voyager, is provided by the AM file.
The fact that the snow is generated by the AM file rather than directy by Voyager gives you more flexibilty.
1. You can make the snow appear where you like. It does not have to be altitude/slope dependent.
2. You probably noticed that Voyager snow, when used on edgy surfaces, is not smoothening out those areas. This tends to look unnatural.
When creating the snow with AM, all you have to do is make those areas, where the is supposed to be snow, look smooth (which is quite a challenge though).
As for the RGB Surface I made use of the newly added extra output option "Normal", which adds a bump map to the rock texture. The really tricky thing was to get the snow to appear only on shallow slopes AND to have no bump map applied to it, while having the rock texture on steep slopes with bump mapping.
As those techniques/features have great potential you will probably hear and see a lot about them.
See the QTVR movie - Snowy Mountains-
Another interesting aspect is the RGB Surface file. The snow, instead of taken from Voyager, is provided by the AM file.
The fact that the snow is generated by the AM file rather than directy by Voyager gives you more flexibilty.
1. You can make the snow appear where you like. It does not have to be altitude/slope dependent.
2. You probably noticed that Voyager snow, when used on edgy surfaces, is not smoothening out those areas. This tends to look unnatural.
When creating the snow with AM, all you have to do is make those areas, where the is supposed to be snow, look smooth (which is quite a challenge though).
As for the RGB Surface I made use of the newly added extra output option "Normal", which adds a bump map to the rock texture. The really tricky thing was to get the snow to appear only on shallow slopes AND to have no bump map applied to it, while having the rock texture on steep slopes with bump mapping.
As those techniques/features have great potential you will probably hear and see a lot about them.
See the QTVR movie - Snowy Mountains-
Artmatic and Voyager upgraded
September/20/2008 15:59
As you have probably heard there are new versions of
Artmatic and AM Voyager available. Those new versions
are a great step forward. Thank you, Eric and Edward!
So all the future freebies, tutorials, lessons and Preset Collections will require at least Artmatic 4.6/Voyager 1.6.
More content will be added soon...
So all the future freebies, tutorials, lessons and Preset Collections will require at least Artmatic 4.6/Voyager 1.6.
More content will be added soon...
Site Setup
September/20/2008 15:48
The new Artmatica website is still very young and
there might be links that do not work.
Also there might be some changes to the site setup.
I forgot to say, the "News" page has been renamed into "Blog" since, in the future ,you will find more than news on this page (In fact it`s a growing number of pages). Things like new tutorials and tips will be added to the blog also.
Currently it might be a good idea to click on home first and then start from there
Also there might be some changes to the site setup.
I forgot to say, the "News" page has been renamed into "Blog" since, in the future ,you will find more than news on this page (In fact it`s a growing number of pages). Things like new tutorials and tips will be added to the blog also.
Currently it might be a good idea to click on home first and then start from there
New price for the Clouds Sets
September/17/2008 18:50
The Clouds Sets can now be purchased for a lower
price.
The new price is USD19.90 instead of 29.90!
See the previews.
The new price is USD19.90 instead of 29.90!
See the previews.
YouTube Movie Page
September/15/2008 21:39
A new page has been added with YouTube movies
made by various Artmatic artists.
Simply click on the name and the video should show up.
When doing the page I realised that with very few exceptions the quality of the movies is far from excellent (I am not talking of the artistic quality of course).
You have certainly heard that movies can be uploaded to YouTube in a higher quality now. So in case that you make a new upload please let me know so I can readjust the link.
The choice of the movies on the page has been rather random and I might remove some after a certain time and replace them with other movies, The purpose is to have a selection of high quality movies.
If there is a movie that you would like to have on this page please send me a message with the YouTube link. But I would appreciate if they were in high quality since this has become possible now with the new YouTube options.
I have checked the new page but there might still be some errors somewhere. If so please let me know.
Underneath of each news entry there`s a comment link. Click on it and a small window opens where you can add a comment.
I would like to invite you all to make use of it.
Simply click on the name and the video should show up.
When doing the page I realised that with very few exceptions the quality of the movies is far from excellent (I am not talking of the artistic quality of course).
You have certainly heard that movies can be uploaded to YouTube in a higher quality now. So in case that you make a new upload please let me know so I can readjust the link.
The choice of the movies on the page has been rather random and I might remove some after a certain time and replace them with other movies, The purpose is to have a selection of high quality movies.
If there is a movie that you would like to have on this page please send me a message with the YouTube link. But I would appreciate if they were in high quality since this has become possible now with the new YouTube options.
I have checked the new page but there might still be some errors somewhere. If so please let me know.
Underneath of each news entry there`s a comment link. Click on it and a small window opens where you can add a comment.
I would like to invite you all to make use of it.
Website redesigned
September/14/2008 18:18
I am happy to announce that the Artmatica website has been completely redesigned
I wanted to keep the design as simple as possible. As you will see it`s a lot easier to navigate through the pages,
For now there is no new image/movie/freebies /tips content added but this might change rapidly. (There`s a lot underway!)
I hope you will explore the newly designed pages anyway.
The mayor changes are:
1. Slick dropdown menus on most pages so you can quickly go to anywhere on the site
2. I have added this newsblog to keep you up-to-date with the latest. You can also your own comments.
3. Maintaining the site will be much easier now, which means that there will be more updates.
4. The new architecture will make it possible to embed YouTube and other external content to the site in an elegant way.
5. For the galleries I am using "shadowbox", which looks really pretty.
Cheers,
Dick