Jonesborough,
Tennessee USAJonesborough,
Tennessee USAMatt Runion is a software developer and artist in both 2D and 3D software. His images demonstrate his versatility at design and graphics. He is one of the founding members and President of the Tri Cities Blender Users Group (TC-BUG.) He has presented at both the Kingsport Blender Conference in 2008 and the Kingsport Blender Mini Conference in 2009. Matt was the Second Place winner (Red Ribbon) for the 3D category for this image "Graphics Products."
"Graphics Products": This piece attempts to invoke an understanding of how to represent items that "feel" different. It contains items that are smooth, rough, metallic, glass, waxy, shiny, matte, etc. All "product" logos and labeling were done with images custom created and mapped to the items.[Image labels created in Inkscape and GIMP, product containers and set modeled in Blender 2.49a, and rendered using Lux 0.6. Lux was allowed to work on rendering the image for approximately 26 hours on an Intel Q8200 2.33Ghz Quad Core with 6GB RAM.]
Second Place winner (Red Ribbon) for 3D category
Sphere Casting a Shadow on a Plane Below It": This piece was created to show that digital are has many facets. There is more than spheres and planes and lights, there is the thought of what makes all those spheres and planes and lights work. One needs to see the beauty behind the image. The equations that make many of the images are beauty themselves -- discovered by brilliant minds many years before any concept of a "computer". [Image created with Open Office and GIMP.]
"Rusted Arch Linux Logo": This piece is one of three that attempt to study textures. This Arch Linux logo was chosen because Arch Linux is the Operating System of choice of the artist. The blue, rusted material has been made to look like a metallic, rough surface. The textures were "mapped" to the surface using multiple image maps and UV coordinates.[Image created and rendered in Blender 2.5 pre-release. Render time approximately 8 hours on an Intel Q8200 2.33Ghz Quad Core with 6GB RAM.]
"Lava Arch Linux Logo": This piece is one of three that attempt to study textures. This Arch Linux logo was chosen because Arch Linux is the Operating System of choice of the artist. The lava-like material has been made to look like a cracked, burnt and very hot surface.All textures were procedural textures (no images), and applied using the node-based material system. [Image created and rendered in Blender 2.49a. Render time approximately 2 hours on an Intel Q8200 2.33Ghz Quad Core with 6GB RAM.]
"Furry Arch Linux Logo": This piece is one of three that attempt to study textures. This Arch Linux logo was chosen because Arch Linux is the Operating System of choice of the artist. The fur material has been made to look like a snow leopard (which is a tip-o-the-hat to our Mac friends!). The fur color was produced from a hand-painted, simple leopard-spot image. The fur picked up the color of the texture. Because of the fur, this image had an enormous amount of vertices and faces -- over 10 million vertices and over 8 million faces. [Image created and rendered in Blender 2.49a. Render time approximately 22 hours on an Intel Q8200 2.33Ghz Quad Core with 6GB RAM.]
Matt Runion can be contacted at:
And his website at