The designers from BBC Arabic requested some training at the Maxon UK offices in Bedfordshire, and Maxon asked me to be the tutor. We focused on materials, shaders, lighting and rendering. We didn’t have very much time to prepare, but with a combination of specific queries for the BBC team, some of their scene files as well as mine for examples, we had a constructive 2 day session, despite the sudden heatwave!

Maxon and I are considering doing some masterclasses where I dissect a few of my key images/scenes, and take a group through the processes involved in their creation, if you are interested in this, please drop me a line!

I just struck me as very close to the new iPad with keyboard dock!!?
Maybe a gift wrapped, full spec iPad with a not from Steve Jobs and Jonathon Ives would be in order!?

Here is a link to a larger version

At any rate, after getting the newest version of Cinema 4D, with render instances, and speeded up sub poly displacent, I did a couple of tests with large amounts of trees, and then started to put this idea to the test.

I was given the option to simply find a suitable ready made asset to animate, but instead decided to dive in to ZBrush. The final 2 million poly model was exported at a lower poly count to Cinema 4D, where the high poly displacement map was added, and the texturing and animation were then completed! - I’m just wrapping up the tutorial now, and when the issue goes live, I’ll also add the animation to the site - it’s looking creepy!