Rod Thonen (rockhead)

[Rod]

thanks for your comments mhyst, I don't know if I'm going to develop my new concept. It isn't really piqueing my creative juices very much. I really do want to move away from the moutain scean however. Too many others much better than mine <g>. I'm kicking around an island environment, some palms, a shape for the structure that mimics a boat form run aground. stay tuned......

[mhyst]

Hey! Don't give up so easily. There will be always better ideas, better people, better things in general. But what matters here is the process, not the winner. If you have fun modeling and creating new concepts, that's the best part of it.

Cheer up!

PD: At least, you model doesn't sucks, like mine :P

[Rod]

thanks for the encouragement mhyst, not giving up, more expanding into other realms. The neat thing about this challenge is there are so many ways to go, it's fun exploring, expanding myself, and being creative. mine is such a limited world with zoning ordinances, land use codes, etc limiting what I can do, this is a way to let the mind wander.... your's btw doesn't suck, it's just wanting you to give it some TLC, keep going...

[Rod]

ever say something that sticks a tune in your head? Well, I've been singing "In the middle of an Island" in my head all day. OK, so maybe I've installed one to many drain fields in my day, ergo, the clearing behind the house.
I'll put up a higher res, but now I"ve got to sleep and try to get it out of my mind!! LOL. Perry Como the singer.

[Rod]

another version, I still want to know where the sewer and water services are going to reach these places LOL

[mhyst]

I like these two last versions. I think I prefer this one, the latter. Looks very good. I love the stone wall or fundation that joins the house with the mountain. Hanging over the void is a very cool way to make a home.

By the way... I've started to work with Vue 8 Xtream... to be frank I've been trying to get a decent render. Firstly I tried with VRay inside Sketchup. I had done that before, but it was on windows XP and well... a simple scene kept the computer busy the whole day and still hadn't completed the render. I had had renders of two or three hours... but this time was too much. Well, I've been trying with Vue. I'm still testing and trying to get a believable environment for the house. I started with Vue yesterday. I agree that the model is big, but anyway... I haven't been able to complete a render, even when I left the computer aside and have been reading something all day. My machine is not that old and has a good graphics adapter (nVidia GeForce 8800gtx with 750 megs of devoted graphics RAM). I finally gave up with Windows 7 and booted my computer under my former instalation of Windows XP, with the same results. I've been now three days trying and haven't still a final render.

Can you tell me how do you do it, please?
For what I see, your last render used the card acceleration and it's not a final render. Am I right?

Thanks

[Rod]

I'll try to help as much as I can. The last render took me about 20 minutes to render. It is set one step higher than preview. Materials seem to really kick up the time to render with transparency and liquids the biggest time eater. Watch your final gather keep the bounce at 2 or so. For your lighting set up use this tut and then smooze from there I MAKE U - Vue Tutorial i found it very helpful. I'm doing XP only, and using the integrated Vue in Max. My plants are Vue plants, I always have used Onyx but I'm on Vue X-7 so I can't use them. If you're using Vray I can't help at all, can't use it but 8 has the capability I think, right? My machine quad Q9550 @ 2.83GHZ, 16 GB Ram,
Lighting is the biggest hurdle I think. See if that set up works for you, and I'll scratch my head to try to figure out something else that I'm doing.......

[mhyst]

WOW, 16 GB? Well, mine is much worse. It's only 2 GB and the processor is a simple AMD Athlon 3500+ (single processing nucleous). I think that can be an explanation why yours last 20 minutes

Thank you very much. I stopped the render and will resume it tomorrow. I'll post the pic if I can. The worst thing is that it was going to be a test. No real environment nor lights in place. Obviously I'll have to make my model much more light.

Thanks again. I appreciate your help so much

[Rod]

I do a LOT of heavy geophysical analysis with this machine, ergo the LOTS-O-RAM, Your very welcome. It is really annoying getting things to work with VUE, but I'm liking it more and more. With the expense of VUE I hated leaving it on my machine and not doing anything with it. . Thats why I love these challenges, gives you a chance to play.

BTW, get yourself some ram!!! LOL

[alias_marks]

I'm liking your latest scheme Rob, I think it might be neat to see how it integrates with the natural forms of the cliff a little more..

[Rod]

This is what I'm going to build on. There's a bit of a story behind it; my son and I were remembering a Long's Peak, CO climb we did a couple of years ago, where we got caught in a huge storm. The storm engulfed us in the Krummholtz and we got really wet, and cold, but what a show!!! Hope you like it, I still need to build some flag trees and other treeline flora.

[alias_marks]

This is what I'm going to build on. There's a bit of a story behind it; my son and I were remembering a Long's Peak, CO climb we did a couple of years ago

Does this mean we get to see the keyhole in the background somewhere?