yes2design

Lotus Clock on sale at AHALife in New York

dripta — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 17:35:23 +0000

Today is great for my studio. The very discussed Lotus Clock is now on sale for American customers at AHALife in New York. Come have a look at the product and the great work AHALife has put into promotion the product. The product is made in London, UK and is available for all US customers through AHALife and the rest of the world through Dripta Design Studio.

Lotus Clock for sale at AHALife.com

Whats in my bag…or should i say in my workplace!

dripta — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:53:59 +0000

Been getting a lot of requests lately of what I use to do my work. So I thought I give you guys a breakdown of all my design tech!

Lotus clock headed for New York!

dripta — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:04:42 +0000

So finally, Fedex arrived to day to pick up the first two clocks heading towards New York. Being one of the large reason I had barely anytime for the past 3 months to write my articles and work on my freelance projects as I was busy completing the clock for my customers in New York and Sweden. Finally the clock is completed and works perfectly. The clock is now available for sale at dripta.com and will be available at ahalife.com in September. The clock’s toughest design aspect was to keep all the petals firm in one place yet smooth moving all in one characteristic. As the mechanism I designed is under patent pending I can disclose the exact design but once approved I will share this design solution with you guys. All in all the past months have been tough and fun at the same time. My eye to details and my need for perfection in terms of the finish of the clock delayed the shipment to New York as even a small mark on the clock was rejected during inspections last week. Its now all done and as promised I have shared some quick pics with you guys showing parts of the process. Enjoy!

Ok so lets start with some pics of the after the first prototype was completed. Pictures below shows the project manager showing how the mechanism for the smooth movement works!

Butterfly position

Open position

horizontal position

Vertical position

Next are some pics of the fun photo shoot at the Atton Conrad studio in London.

Lotus and me

Hands close up

Open view

Lotus on black background

Finally, today I managed to get some quick pics with my phone on the packaging, the final white clock and the pink limited version before it was shipped. Unfortunately, the pics looks very different on a camera phone but its a beauty in real life. Enjoy

Lotus Packaging for NYC

The White Lotus

Pink Limited Edition

dripta.com goes live…new products available for order!

dripta — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 13:50:50 +0000

Hey guys, I have been extremely busy getting the new site ready. As most of you know dripta.com was always a flash site. Finally, the new site has been made and now on-line for every one. Its faster and easier to navigate for customers and bloggers. New products are regularly updated. View past freelance work too and find out what the studio can do for you as a customer. Currently, the Lotus clock is available for order and a few new items are going to be available for Christmas 2010. Hope you all like the site. Leave your comments on what you like below. See you guys in the next post. I have some great photo shoot pictures of the Lotus clock to share.

the new site ready for everyone

London Mela 2010

dripta — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 22:28:47 +0000

So today I was at the London Mela. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it was a collection of great musicians and food. The two things Indians love the most. I terms of music, I was mostly glued to the Desi Hip Hop stage and at times the classical stage. This was the most chilled, relaxed and perhaps best London Mela I have seen, the programme wasn’t the best, but what was recaptured was the focus on people invited to come and enjoy themselves and they did, mellowed by the summer sun.
The Main stage was a real mix this year with the more traditional performers of Pandit Dinesh & Kishon Khan sharing the programme with the likes of Sukshinder Shinda, Surinder Rattan and the Sona Family, but the most interesting element at this part of the Mela had to be the Rishi Rich Showcase.
You’ve got to admire the guy, I know it’s his business, but better than anyone Rishi Rich continues to introduce, develop, promote and mentor, up and coming talent on to the scene.

No more talk, just enjoy the pics and videos! [AUDIO WARNING | PLEASE KEEP YOUR SPEAKER VOLUME DOWN] Forgive me for the video sound, realised later that the loud volume completely destroyed the sound reception of the video in my iPhone. In any case you guys will see it was a lot of fun.

People just People!

Love the little kid eating his Dosa!!

Danielle looking great as usual.

3D SpaceNavigator Review

dripta — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 07:07:03 +0000

Sorry for such a long gap between my last post and this one but I assure you it was well worth waiting. I have been extremely busy with my new product release in September in New York and as you guys may know its hell trying to make sure the suppliers coordinate properly and make the product properly. Thankfully, we are in the final stages prior to shipping and it all seems to coming in order. But more on this post. From my last post I wrote that I had won the SpaceNavigator from the SolidSmack rendering contest. Well, I have received it and promised a few of my readers that I make a video of the product. Enjoy the review!

YES2DESIGN wins the iPad rendering challenge from SolidSmack!

dripta — Mon, 24 May 2010 14:08:38 +0000

Long awaited results from SolidSmack is out today. A few weeks ago I received an email notifying me of an iPad rendering challenge by SolidSmack and as you all know how much I love rendering. The great part of this challenge was that we were allowed to use any rendering software of our choice. I decided to use Maxwell Render 2 for the simple fact that I love the photo realistic results I get. So finally, on a scorching hot Monday afternoon in London, I checked out the site and found out that I won the rendering challenge. The winner receives 3D Connexion SpaceTraveler! I can’t wait to get my hands on the puppy and see how it imporves my Rhino 4 workflow.

To see all the renderings that entered the contest and my winning renders click here.

iPad

Realflow 5 released!

dripta — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:26:19 +0000

Today has been exciting. Woke up to find a mail from Nextlimit confirming that Realflow 5 is ready for download. I had pre-ordered my copy so I had been given all the instructions on how to activate my version. Realflow 5 has a great interface and quite easy to understand off the back. I have never really used Realflow but I figured its a good time to learn for future projects. My philosophy of buying something all depends on me hearing about something that interests me and finding one selling point that will tip me over the edge to make that payment. Without every really using Realflow before I am not about to list all the new features but that tipping point for me was one function that Realflow 5 does have called the plug-in ‘Morph’ which will come in handy for my clients such as Gillette. Now I know it can be done with After Effects but I am a 3D person and so Realflow 5 being able to be incorporate itself with my Maya and Renderman work-flow begged to be bought! Check out the video below and you will know what I am talking about

grass anyone?

dripta — Tue, 18 May 2010 23:43:03 +0000

Like you, I have gone through various processes of creating realistic grass in Rhino 4. Now I know many of you will comment that using a bumpmap will be the easiest way to create grass but will it give the most realistic results? Not really. The tip I will provide Rhino users today will help create something realistic and in addition this technique will not be more than 5 min. Its called’ Heightfield from Image’. When using a bumpmap, you merely imitate the difference in height when it comes to creating a surface of some sort.

Heightfield from Image on the other hand transfers the contrast between high and low parts of the image onto the surface. With a bumpmap, it will nearly always look flat at some angle; i.e. rendering from the edge of the model will display a smooth surface. With Heightfield from Image, everything is spread out over the underlying surface, and that includes the edges. This process will ask for your imagination to some extent, but you are not really a renderer now are you if you lack that quality? You can create an ocean with an image of a sand plane or the content of a flower box with a simple image of a hedge.

So how do we do it? In your Rhino interface, go to Surface, Heightfield from Image in the Menubar. You will be directed to a submenu where you will have to select the image you will use. In my case I decided to use the image below.

JPG used for Heightfield process

Soon after you choose the image, you will be asked in another submenu how many sample points you want to use and the height of your surface. The image below shows me the results Rhino created when I used the default setting of (20 x 20 points, height of 10).

Height from Image (20x20)

Now this is not really what grass looks like but the magic happens when you start changing the values of sample points and height. Below is a second attempt using the same image but with new custom values (200 x 200 points, height of 15). Below is the results I got. Getting closer to what I want. Play around and soon you will great the result you are looking for.

Heightfield from Image (200x200)

Below is an image of the render in VRAY just so you guys can clearly see the resulting image.

Vray results of Heightfield from Image

The trick is to find the right image for Heightfield to transform. I remember using this technique for a client who asked me to render an architectural building in London. I had used this method to create the grass shown below. The process took me less than 5 min which would have been otherwise a much longer and tedious task to complete using bumpmaps, especially since the client wanted renders from the ground up where the use of bumpmaps would result to smooth edges. You could use displacement maps but then again this technique is not native to Rhino and you would need to purchase VRAY. This way its cheap, easy and fast.

Heightfield from Image used (pre-render)

Grass rendered using Maxwell Render 2

more Iron Man…

dripta — Mon, 17 May 2010 08:57:02 +0000

All right guys, I know its been a while since my last post but work has been keeping me busy. Note to self, multiple deadlines at the same time is not a good idea. Finally after a week of crazy work, I have some free time in my hands today. Having watched Iron Man 2 last week, I was dying to render a model for you guys, so here it is. The process started in Maya with the modeling, the model was then exported to Rhino as a (.obj) file. Finally, lighting, emitters, the HDRI and materials were applied in Rhino 4. I am sure you guessed it by now, it was rendered in Maxwell Render 2 with a little post production work in Photoshop CS5! I must say, the longest part of this work flow was trying to match the reflections created by the materials when in contact with the environmental lighting in order to make it look like the one in the movie. It isn’t perfect but its close. Maxwell Render has a great material creation interface where each material is built with stacked layers that can be tweaked to create the perfect colour of the material, and the colour of the reflections that appear in your rendering. A tutorial on stacked material system in Maxwell can be found here.

Maxwell Material selection

At the end of the day it will depend on the project you are doing. In some cases, my clients want my renderings to match a certain material they have in reality. In these cases, Maxwell material depth database comes in very handy. In some cases where this is not so important, one can get away with using the VRAY engine to make a quick render and send it off to the client. For those who use VRAY this is not an insult so please no emails trying to prove how great VRAY is, I know its great and I use it a lot. In this case, Iron Man looked quite good in Maxwell. I guess I should not be surprised with the Maxwell’s results, I have never been disappointed.

Maxwell Render 2 Iron Man

I hope you guys enjoy the visual. On a side note, I have just purchased Pixer’s RenderMan 2. I will be doing a detailed work flow review very soon. Keep an eye on my tweets for it!