Talent Scouting?

[di gama]

I was browsing the web, and I found someone who has been working on realRiven (in a sense), and made a version of Tay (blend file here) in Blender. It's phenomenal! And he's only 14! We need to recruit him to the GoW--we could use someone as talented as him over here (no offense to present company...). I have to know where he gets his textures.

[BAD]

He is probably using Riven game files to create them.

We don't recruit here. Just let him know about this place and what we are up to. I am sure he would at least be mildly interested.

[Lontahv]

I've got to see this.

[Nek'rahm]

Interesting find.

Though talent scouting may not be the "best" way of doing things, we should at least advertise where possible. Wear banners in your signature in other forums, and spread the word about the GoW where you can (without being too over-the-top). If you know of people who are doing such projects, go ahead and tell them about us. If they're interested, they may visit. If not, oh well.

No two ways about it, really :S (wait... do "yes" and "no" qualify as two ways?)

[Kato]

I sent him a PM

What I want to know is how he renders so fast (that YouTube animation was done in 30 minutes!). I've done a lot of prerendered stuff with Blender, and even multithreaded I just can't make it run fast. It got to a point a while ago where it took 30 whole minutes just to render a very simple scene (one that could easily be run in real-time).

-Kato

[Nek'rahm]

Mer... I dunno Kato.

That is interesting though, and I saw the video.

He's said he's done Blender work for years (if I recall) and a scene like Tay is very geometrical (apart from the tree roots, but even then) so for a seasoned user it might be a lot easier.

Plus, if he's had more experience with Blender in multiple fields, he would have had to develop ways to quickly and efficiently create something, am I right?

[Kato]

It's not the geometry--I mean, it's great and everything, but that's really the easy part. It's the fact that he rendered a whole animation like that in 30 minutes.

I've been working with Blender for years too, and it's renderer has always been atrocious, time wise. I keep thinking I'm doing something wrong, because I have a fast computer.

-Kato

[Nek'rahm]

Don't hate your computer. Love it.

Be glad you don't have my 9 year-old twice completely reformatted and refurbished piece of horse fertilizer...

[ZapperJet]

Good evening all,

I received the PM message on the MystCommunity forums and promptly registered myself here!

I'm glad you have taking interest in my renderings! I've actually only spent a year on Blender. I started last summer season learning the basics, and eventually I began creating "Rivenistic" renders to test my knowledge, and improve my skills. I've been working on finding the sweet spot for render times. The animation of "Tay" I produced was done with no special rendering effects like Ambient Occlusion. If you look at the blend file you'll notice the scene is lit with a sun ray light and a hemi light. The true magic is in the textures and final composite. I know the Blender Internal Renderer can be slow and clunky, but I've tried other ray-tracers like YafRay and Pov-Ray, and unbiased renderers like Indigo and LuxRender. I can assure you that the internal render is the best integrated.

I've been collecting textures from all over the net since I started with GMAX as a modeler, for game content. I touch them up in Photoshop and apply them to models using Blender's Node Materials. Using a normal map filter I created bump maps for each of the textures, and water. All in all, yes, it's a simple scene, but simplicity is often the key! And if you must know of a good texture site, CGTextures is a good place to start!

I was going to do a pre-rendered mini-sequel to Riven using Blender, but the time it takes to produce the realistic outdoor scenes is substantial, and it's hard to find time to do that. So I've started experimenting with real time graphics using the BGE, and hopefully Crystal Space will get an integration! All in all I'm a better game modeler than render modeler.

In any case I am interested in this project, though I have little experience with how URU works, and I've never played URU Live in any of its forms.
I can help where needed, but that's up to you. If you'd like to see my other work, I'd be glad to link it!

Cheerio,
John

[di gama]

@BAD and Nek'rahm: I don't think ZapperJet is using riven materials considering (as he said) that not all pieces (like number of windows) is exactly like the original. Also, I only mean "talent scouting" in the passive sense, i.e. if we find people with talent in 3d modeling (specifically Blender) and an interest in Myst, like ZapperJet, that we can suggest the GoW (in the nicest way possible). I'm certainly not suggesting ads or anything.

@Kato: I'm not sure how fast Blender renders (I never really liked it), but I downloaded the .blend file and the render (static image) only takes about 30 minutes. Granted, I have a new machine, but don't think the difference is that much.