The marketing team has decided that at least one of our product manuals should contain line art instead of photographs. I like this idea a lot, especially now that I’ve been able to spend a little time with Cinema4D’s Sketch & Toon renderer. Like everything else about Cinema4D, this tool is amazing. There are more…
Category: Work
Ion Torrent One Touch DX
Some of you will remember my photo of this instrument. The photographic image is used on our website and in printed materials, and it looks pretty good. Well, starting today, I’m hoping that we’ll be replacing all of our photos with renders created with my latest addiction – V-Ray. This renderer blows away anything else…
Thermo CostCalc App Icon
I’ll admit it certainly looks a wee bit garish and not entirely plausible at the enormous size above, but it needs to be bold to stand out on an iPad home screen, where it will be smaller than this: I’m not even sure what this App is, but I know it had to have a…
Ion Torrent PGM Dx II
After many years of practice and tens of thousands of renders, this is probably the most realistic-looking 3D render I’ve ever created. And I’m not satisfied with it. This week I’ll take the plunge and get a copy of what may be the best of the “photo-realistic” renderers – V-Ray. Stand by for a comparison.
Ion Torrent PII Chip
Today’s eye-candy is a photograph. Well, actually, it’s five photographs combined into a focus stack. This is one of the chips that goes into the S5 and S5XL seen earlier. (It can decode your DNA, dude.) For this shot, the clear plastic flowcell has been removed exposing the extremely high-resolution sensor below. I shot this…
Ion Torrent S5 XL
I’m getting excellent realism with the new Cinema4D version 17. After a few refinements and a days-long render at much higher resolution, a large version of this rendering will hang on the wall of our offices in South San Francisco and Guilford, Connecticut offices. I used Photoshop’s awesome Vanishing Point Filter to create this visualization….
I Am a Material Boy
I’ve been asked to provide several larger-than-life renderings for one of our offices. While I’m excited about seeing my renders prominently displayed, I realize that my materials will need to be absolutely perfect if they are to stand up to scrutiny from the engineers who designed the instruments and selected the actual materials. So, it’s…
2015 Ion Summer Party
We had a company picnic yesterday. As far as I can tell, there was no particular reason for it, but it was a beautiful day, and the pictures worked out well. View the rest of the photos here.
Ion Torrent PGM Dx
Another of my recent Cinema4D renders. From my company web site: The Ion PGM™ Dx System is a reliable and robust in vitro diagnostic (IVD) next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform that is designed to deliver the proven performance and simplicity of the Ion Torrent™ PGM system, while empowering clinical laboratories with the flexibility to develop molecular…
Ion Torrent S5
Now that’s it’s official, I can finally share some of the 3D work I’ve been producing for the last several months. Behold the S5! The ‘S’ is for Simplicity, Speed, Scalability… This amazing instrument has many applications. It has the potential to make the world a better place for all of us. I’m lucky to…
My 3D Server Room – Yay!
What you see is a fairly accurate view of the server room at work. If you’re interested, here’s how I created this. Note that the method I use is just one way to accomplish this. There are “easier” methods, like rendering directly inside of SketchUp with any number of snap-in renderers, (I like TheaRender) but…
This is My Brain on Protein
Did you know that there are databases in the public domain with free 3D models of organic materials like DNA, enzymes and proteins? Accurate and highly detailed, these models can be downloaded from a number of sites and imported into most 3D packages, including my favorite – Cinema4D. I have no idea what I’m looking…
Today’s Mystery Render
I often don’t know exactly what I’m rendering or how it works or how it will be used. I certainly have never seen one of these things. I’ve heard it referred to as a “cartridge”, and that’s about all I know. I’m pretty sure the real cartridge shell is not transparent – I’ll bet it’s…
Loving B&W Photography
I’m having so much fun shooting Black and white. It’s a real timesaver, and as a bonus, images look great. Nowadays, instead of trying to correct weird color shifts in images shot under terrible lighting conditions, I just whack the color altogether – and I’m loving it. (Rollover the image to see the original color…
A Dozen Protons
Another visualization. Cinema4D physical renderer.
My First Tethered Capture
I finally had the perfect excuse to try out Lightroom’s Tethered Capture. I’ve been anxious to try this since neighbor Steve Fossum used this method to photograph yours truly. This extremely simple rig made shooting the chip much easier than ever before. The ability to view the images at high resolution on-screen as I shot…
Latest Desktop Wallpaper
If you see moiré patterns, it’s time to get that 5K iMac!
Putting it All Together
It’s not only the knowledge of the HUNDREDS of eyeballs that will see this image on the cover of the extra-geeky Electrophoresis Journal cover that makes it satisfying. It’s also the fact that I get to use all of my graphics skills in one place to produce something this wild and whacky while at work….
More Fun with Materials
Experimenting with Cinema4D materials for an upcoming visualization of some of the amazing things that happen at the molecular level on a Proton chip.
D800 for Product Photography
I shot this on the floor in the hallway on a roll of white paper with my beloved FourSquare handheld overhead and a Nikkor 50mm 1.8 lens which I purchased for $95. (Ken Rockwell describes this incredible bargain as, “…among Nikon’s sharpest lenses ever“.) The LCD display and updated logo were added later with PhotoShop.
My, How We’ve Grown!
We’ve come a long way, Baby! What I find amazing about this group shot is that the cold weather kept a lot of people away. My guess is that there are at least 100 others that did not make it to the party. I’m going to need a taller ladder for the next shot! Many…
After Hours in the Virtual Lab
While working on a visualization for a new lab space, out of curiosity, I decided to render the scene after dark, and was quite surprised by the results. The dramatic light provided almost entirely by a single omni-directional shadow-casting light somehow makes the scene look more real than it does with the lights on. It…
Life Show Logo
Another super-fun project at work. This treatment is over the top again, but so much fun to create, AND it makes a whacky wallpaper for my iMac. Regular readers may notice that the scene was borrowed from an earlier experiment.
Latest Ad Mockup
As is often the case, I have almost no idea what this product is or what it does, but I think I understand what the ad represents – the fact that something which used to require a whole bunch of time, effort and money just got a lot more accessible and way cheaper.
Impossible Photo Shoot
Occasionally marketing asks for things that are (nearly) impossible to shoot. Like when they asked me to photograph a stack of sixty three 96-well microtiter plates on a white background. I don’t have a studio at work, but luckily, I do have one inside my computer. Thank you Cinema4D!
This Little Chip Will Change the World
View the announcement here. Pretty exciting stuff!
You Can Do It Too!
I made this totally original motivational poster for my company last weekend. Model Marina was awesome. She really nailed the part. Shot with a $95 lens and hand-held FourSquare against a yellow wall in the office. PhotoShop makes it perfect.
Happy Halloween!
Meet Guanine, Cytosine, Adenine and Thymine — who sometimes pose as Grace, Shauna, Lauren and Phoebe.
Another PGM Rendering
Most of you have noticed that I haven’t been posting a lot lately. The main reason for this is that I am so busy at work. When I’m not tending to IT tasks, I use every spare cycle rendering one thing or another. I really love doing this work, but it consumes a lot of…
Ion Torrent West
I feel extraordinarily lucky to be working with these fabulous folks every day — without a doubt, the best team I’ve ever worked with. It’s truly amazing what you can accomplish with the right group of people.