6Ws about tomGlimps

 

Who, What, Where, When, Why & How..these are the questions that form what is known as “5W and one H” or simply 6W’s. I’ll try answer those.

   Who is behind the tomGlimps.com

As You might guesed so far =) my name is tom & I’m a self-tought computer graphic artist focusing on Artificial Photography or simply Architectural Visualisation.

   Glimps..what?..

Actually Glimps is a simplified spelling of english word glimpse.

Glimpse [glimps] noun
1.a very brief, passing look, sight, or view.
2.a momentary or slight appearance..

Visualisation is nothing more than a very brief look of the idea in the head of an architect or designer.

We are constantly trying to sharpen up our skills in order to efficiently translate these ideas through visual outcome helping creatives to comunicate fluently with their clients. But it doesn’t matter how far we are going to push – it’s not going to be reality – it will always remain just “slight appearance”, reflection or “partial view”, only a glimps of an original idea.

   When did all this start?

While studying Engineer Architecture, I understood that this really wasn’t what I was expecting..piles of technical drawings, building regulations & calculations..

I was searching for something, probably myself =) questioning what I wanna do with my life & how to find something I could really enjoy doing?..I dropped the university..At that time I found some software used by architects. Started to learn, comparing one package to the other, always looking forward, reading everything I could find online..

This trigered a lot of different interests later as I got to understand that knowing software is not enough. Started experimenting with photography.

 

Then a bit with photoshop learning retouching & postprocesing techniques.

 

Somehow I even started learning webdesign. Found about project called wordpress (this site is using it too =). Later heard about typography, about what easy readability does, about fluid layouts and all the other things important to everchanging landscape of web..

..time goes & I’m still in persue of this dream..- I could not get architecture out of my head, photography still resonates =)

 

So, I keep digging deeper & deeper into CG. Now into GPU rendering..

   Why GPUs? Why now?

Have You ever heard about GPU revolution? It’s comming and it’s coming fast into our field too =) A while ago when I knew almost nothing about this topic I found an article from RenderStream. The same company a bit later showed us amazingly powerful render beast called VDACTr8 rendering scene almost in real time using Octane Render. I mentioned this software package not without a reason. As well-known companies are strugling to adapt and ‘translate’ their code into the language of GPUs (for CUDA capable devices) we see new companies getting into the field. Here and there You can find some news about amazing useage of this technology. Let’s take a look at what Bertrand Benoit recently showed us. His rendition of  “Octane Corners” took a second place in a open competition organiced by creators of Octane Render. While these are tests (an indeed very nice and highly pfofesional) some guys are actually using this software that is still in Beta stage not only for tests but for real production work. Here’s a simple product animation from Pure3d..etc.

   But how?..

The only way to to use the technological progress to Your advantage – slice render times & at the same time increasing output quality – is to learn how to use available tools properly and get in the boat early enough, before the process doesn’t come to be too complex or too widely used. But because there’s not so much info about this field the learning will be in hard ‘test & error’ way! Though early adopters can benefit gaining a competative edge.

Where to find answers? What software to use, what parts to buy for an upgrade?..- a lot of questions rise as you start playing around..knowing the limitation of technology might help as well not to stuck with Your project.

I’ll get into various technical details in the future articles as this is the theme that drives me crazy in these days =) that’s one of those reasons why I’ve created this site and I’m eager to try a lot of stuff & share it with You soon.

   Where is tomGlimps?

If You got interested in some of the ideas expressed here – feel free to follow me on twitter  & I’ll inform You when something new will appear or simply once a while check this website =) I’m sure that You’re going to find here something usefull in the future =)

 

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