Very happy to see my artwork used for the new Kateboy single ‘Midnight Sun’.
Multiple Scattering in Volumes
Here is a test I did using the new multiple scattering in volumes available in the latest release of Arnold.
I increased the Volume Ray Depth to 6 and increased the Volume Indirect Samples to 10 to reduce the noise.
Here is a comparison when rendering with and without Volume Indirect:
Another example below, with and without multple scattering. The difference is huge!
Oyonale
If you haven’t done so already, I seriously recommend you check out the work of Oyonale. A true hero of mine and a huge inspiration.
His variations series of images are amazing.
Its incredible how much he has achieved during the 90’s/ early 2000’s and how far ahead of the game he was and I think a lot of his work still holds up today. I don’t know what he is doing today, but I know I would love to see more work from him.
Even more incredible is computer graphics was a hobby for him and his day job doesn’t involve graphics at all!
This blog entry is also great and he also has a great photographic eye.
A true master of his craft.
Digital Emily: alSurface SSS test (Directional vs Cubic).
This is my first test render using the Emily model provided by The Wikihuman Project. The model is based on Actress Emily O’Brien (sorry Emily).
I wanted to test the different SSS types of Anders Langland’s alSurface shader with Arnold. Below you can see the difference when rendering with the SSS modes – Cubic and Directional. I think Directional looks better as it has less of a ‘waxy’ appearance.
And here is a gif which shows more clearly the difference in the SSS types.
DIGITAL PRODUCTION
There is an interview about me and my work with XGen and Arnold in this month’s issue of Digital Production magazine. 
Maya attribute editor
After admiring Maya 2016’s new cleaner look recently, I realised there is a lot of wasted space at the top of the attribute editor. I was thinking it could do with a rethink/ redesign considering its pretty much been like this since version 1. Any thoughts? Am I completely insane?
The proposed layout below. Shift the buttons to the top menu making space for preview icon on the left.
Akram Khan Company – Until the Lions
For the concept images of its new production ‘Until the Lions’, Akram Khan Company used make-up effects inspired by one of my 3D images rendered with Arnold.
Wax Crayons – alLayerColor and Utility shaders
I wanted to tint the color of the paper covering of some wax crayons. So, how to do this without having multiple colored paper textures for each wax crayon? The alLayerColor shader from the very cool alshaders by Anders Langland in combination with the Ai Utility shader is perfect for this kind of thing.
By setting the Color Mode of the Ai Utility to ‘Object’ each of the crayons will be randomly tinted because Object mode uses the name of the shapes to compute the color. Ensure that the ‘Shade Mode’ is set to flat as we don’t want any shading effect from the Ai Utility shader as the alSurface shader is being used for the wax and paper.
The Ai Utility and the grey paper.jpg texture are combined using the alLayerColor shader:
The same Ai Utility shader is also used to alter the Diffuse Color and SSS of the wax alSurface shader.
Deformations
I have recently been having lots of fun playing with some deformation tools in Maya to distort some 3D scans from Ten24.info to produce these images.
Featured on: KOTTKE, Buzzfeed, Mashable, Creators Project, aplus, VICE, BEAUTIFUL/DECAY 1 & 2, getinspiredmagazine, catalogdiseno, designboom, illusion.scene360, IGNANT, VISUAL NEWS.
FMX Workshop: Creating Topological Art with Maya, XGen and Arnold
I will be doing a workshop about my work with XGen and Arnold at FMX this year.
http://www.fmx.de/program2015/event/6015
arnold-rendering.com 
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