New batch of Gnomon DVDs (inlcudes GI with Vray)

[cpnichols]

dvd now available, bouh ! 59$ is honest, but 115$ with shipping is way too much for a single dvd, and i want this one only, shipping to europe is so expensive... :\ and so beloved custom taxes, do i get gold with the dvd ?

OK so I checked and tried to make an order for myself of the DVD to belgium If I select 3-7 day it is only $21 for the shipping, if you select 2-4 day it is $59... Make sure you select 3 to 7 day Global Express.

[chris-x//]

usps is kinda shitty, never received something in time with them, 3-7 days but it will be more like 15 days + the time it will stays in customs +21% belgium vat + 15€ of standard parcel detected at customs... and it's always like that with usps. that makes a lot. I'm angry because I watched the dvd pics on the gnomon site, and it looks simply amazing, the image with the after rain mood is impressive, you have amazing skills.I wanna listen to your voice explaining all that . Guess UPS will be the only fast way and my only way.

thx

[jacksc02]

sold!
Hopefully will be here soon

[apexmotion]

Just went through the whole Gnomon DVD. It's very well done, a must have. Can't wait for the interior DVD...

[cpnichols]

Wow... great. You are the first non-friend feedback/review. Glad you liked it. Working hard on finishing the interior one.

[Buck]

I haven't gone through the entire DVD yet, but so far it looks real good. I already knew most of the first few chapters, but it was good to get some confirmation that I'm using the correct methods. The explanation of the sampling was superb

[djembe]

Hi Chris.
I just finished watching the Global Illumination: Exteriors training DVD and I learned a great deal. Very well done. I'll certainly be purchasing the Interiors title as soon as it's available.

What I would really like to see next, is VRay training videos covering displacement mapping, the finer points of VRay materials & lights, getting good results with DOF and basically as much as possible not covered in the first two titles

I imagine that a DVD focusing specifically on the ZBrush->VRay workflow just sounds too good to be true, but I'd be ecstatic if such a title were to be created

[cpnichols]

glad you guys like it... don't be shy and tell me if there are things you would like to see more of.

As far as specifics are concerned, it was our philosophy to keep the DVDs broad so that they could serve a lot of people (not just Vray). I still have a few DVD ideas going right now.

[jacksc02]

Chris, i am a bit dissapointed with your dvd.
The spiel for the dvd talked about texture baking for large exterior sets. There was no texture baking. There is irradiance mapping which you have called texture baking.
Now to me texture baking is the process of baking lighting and textures onto surfaces to reuse at render time. Am i worng?

[cpnichols]

Chris, i am a bit dissapointed with your dvd.
The spiel for the dvd talked about texture baking for large exterior sets. There was no texture baking. There is irradiance mapping which you have called texture baking.
Now to me texture baking is the process of baking lighting and textures onto surfaces to reuse at render time. Am i worng?

Sorry you are dissapointed. Actually it mentions Light baking, not texture baking. Irradiance map baking is an important part of baking light into a scene and I thought it would be best covered for the exterior DVD. If it has said light caching (another valid was of calling it), it would also be confusing. Texture baking as you mention is another method that also have some very important benefits. I find that this method is more suited (for teaching reasons) for interior scenes as there are more surfaces and more lighting to be baked. I think you can see where I'm going. So I'm sorry you expected it on THIS DVD, but I will talk about. I hope that you found other parts of interest.

[jacksc02]

I have been working on some very very large exterior scenes, and to trim render times i was looking for some texture baking tutorials and i thought your dvd was going to be a winner.

[cpnichols]

Actually for very large exteriors, I would say that using Irradiance maps is the way to go. The problem is that you would need lots and lots of very large textures, and that will be a huge memory issue for Vray. Renderman is smarter about this since it mipmaps all the textures. You can still texture bake, but the "light baking" should be done with irradiance maps IMHO. Feel free to PM or email me if you want to give me more info or discuss it further.

[cocolas]

hi Chris,
this is definitely one I'll order up....if nothing else just to see your workflow methods and get/learn some snippets of info here and there or things I didn't know/use.

are you preparing a DVD for interiors as well?...I'm currently working on some interior animations right now, and would be interesting if you were doing an interiors lighting DVD touching on that topic.....


paul.

[_jaro]

I have received the disk just today and in my humble opinion, I would say it is awsome. I would really love to see next DVD from you on Gnomon. Maybe GI: Interiors

[czoog]

I have the disk as well, and while I'm only through the second chapter I really like it. I especially appreciate the easy explanations of diffuse scatter, hemispheric rays, subdivisions, under and over sampling and how they relate to various vray settings. I've read all this info before, but it has finally "clicked" in my head, lol.