A few pics and a question :) *smallish addition*

[Kiuru]

Hi all,

A few of my recent tests. Tomatoes, mainly :P



This one is a very quick setup which I do not intend to further work on.. I know it looks odd.


Now, the question-part.. I haven't upgraded my system in a long time and have no idea what would be worth checking out nowadays. I know there have been a few topics about upgrading in the Offtopic-section, but the budget varies. Mine is around 2000 Euros, but if a seemingly more efficient workstation would cost 3000E it would not be completely out of the question. So if anyone can recommend me a good article on the subject or better yet, point me directly to some options I'd be grateful!



**EDIT** trying to keep the thread alive long enough to gather more information (check my last post in this thread), a small animation
http://www.saunalahti.fi/kiurvi/tomaatit0.avi
And moved the images away from Imageshack.. plus put up the original tomatoes with black backround..

[panthon]

Nice renders!

I would like to have a tomato like that in my stairs, this way i could push it and create an indiana jones big-ball-scene easily! And with ketchup!

I cant help about the question...

[DaForce]

Really nice renders!!!

Some information on your tomato shader would be greatly appreciated

[percydaman]

ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES!!!!

[insleight]

Hello. Very pretty tomatos. I like the small unripe one a lot.

Just curious...what is causing the black edges and small spots on the edges of the tommatos? At first I thought it was the texture's alpha when looking at the leaves, but the tomatos look as if they are doing the same thing. Is the entire render alpha'ed with a replaced BG?

[paulison]

lol that tomato on the stair is cool

[elitesouljah]

Hey Kiuru,

Don't know if you want to go this route, but I just bought a Dell Precision m90 mobile workstation to do renders, and it works great with Vray. I'm sure there are better computers out there, but Dell has some good offfers on both desktops and laptops for 3d graphics and such. As far as I know, dell is (for the most part) very reliable. Check out this site for starters, these are a couple of customizable workstation Dell reccomends specifically for 3ds Max.

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/g...page=20&~tab=1

[Kiuru]

Many thanks for the comments!

insleight: you are right, I've replaced the background. I had a black environment and had no intention to post it since it was a mere test.. but changed my mind afterwards

DaForce: it's nothing special I think the look is mostly to thank for strong reflections and HDR.. reflection glossiness of 0,7 with phong.. desaturated (and contrasted) variations of the diffuse-maps in RGlossiness, Reflect and Bump.. slots toned down to values of 25-40.

elitesouljah: thanks man, I'll check that out - during the last 24 hours and the research I've done, I'm beginning to lean towards Woodcrest.. Motherboard and all that stuff aside, what RAM would you people recommend nowadays? I'd prolly not go under 4 gigs. Just don't know about the quality yet.

And as a ridiculous attempt to keep this thread alive long enough to gather more info, more tomatoes:

http://www.saunalahti.fi/kiurvi/tomaatit0.avi

I'll stop now, I don't want to be known as the guy with the tomato-fetish.

[elitesouljah]

4 gigs sounds just fine. I honestly only use 2 in my laptop and its good enough for my purposes. Your computer will just be all the better.

[DaForce]

Wow that movie is pretty damn good!!!

So are the textures take from real tomatoes?

[jacksc02]

kiuru, the animation is fantastic! did yuo use reactor for the dynamics?

[Dman3d]

Looks great, congrats

[jonnybefree]

, really nice one!!!!

what about some squirting water?

[Kiuru]

Wow, thanks for your feedback! I'll consider adding water to the bowl

Yeah it's reactor dynamics.. Overall very simple animation but that's why I like it, fast to get result.. good therapy after a hard day at work

DaForce: the textures are hand-drawn, wasn't much point taking photos of tomatoes to get a red diffuse :P besides I wanted to make them a little stylized and oversaturated like so:

[DaForce]

Excellent, nice tex. Well made

What i reckon would be a cool animation would be a low camera shot and tomatos droping from the sky and bouncing and splashing water as they have been freshly washed.. you often see something like that in an ad for salad dressing or something.. haha

Anyway, great stuff