When I first started modeling for Google I was in awe of the cameras my coworkers were able to model. Before long I found myself assigned to model this Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. I was intimidated, but it was nowhere near as crazy as some of the DLSRs I saw them modeling. At any rate, I set to work and even worked a little unpaid overtime because I felt like I really wanted to do well on this camera. I am proud of the model I made.

But that’s only half the story.

For work, we were tasked at rendering our products with Mental Ray, using Final Gathering settings. I only had a little experience with Final Gathering previously, but it didn’t seem too difficult. Until this camera. For some reason, Mental Ray has a bug (as near as I can tell) where it will render dirty looking artifacts on the surface of white objects. Sometimes it’s noticeable on other colors as well, but white in particular. After hours of research and studying I simply could not solve the rendering issue and it was driving me crazy. Literally no one on our team knew why this camera was rendering the way that it was.

At anyrate, we finally figured it out and all my Maya + Mental Ray renders after that were super sharp.

February 23, 2014 at 5:50 am | 3D Modeling