Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 95 i 3D Artist

From the earliest films and games to utilise 3D and VFX to the present day, iconic creature design has been a pillar of CG – from the astonishing dinosaurs in Jurassic Park to the Mars-dwelling hellspawn of id Software’s Doom reboot. There’s no real right or wrong way to approach designing your own creature concepts, but it can be a daunting task to sit down and start working from imagination. We’ve enlisted four incredible creature experts who have each explained their approach to everything from creating a backstory to working from wildlife references. In a similar vein, we’ve gone behind the scenes of Warcraft: The Beginning to find out how ILM weaved its creature magic to create a stunning visual spectacle. Also, we’ve spoken to long-term 3ds Max product manager…

Luiz Alves artstation.com/artist/luizalves Since Luiz was a child, he always loved creatures, animals and – of course – dinosaurs. He is a character and creature artist. “The best trick I could suggest is to look at references before starting any project. Take a look at concepts, real images of animals and everything you can’’ Hair In the initial concept I imagined a lot of feathers similar to Brent Hollowell’s concept, but after working on the creature I liked the details, so I decided not to hide it and make something like semi-feathers… the result was more discreet. Eyes In the eyes I tried to simulate a common deformation in crocodile eyes; something I think contributes a lot to giving a dangerous and alert aspect. Beak I imagined that the beak…

Boy Sichterman boysichterman.com Boy is currently working at Elite3D in Spain while finishing his studies in the Netherlands Software Maya, Photoshop, UE4, Quixel DDO, Marvelous Designer TheTunnel, 2016 TEXTURING Before texturing I always create a simple blockout and overlay textures in Photoshop to get an idea of the overall design and feeling of the scene and textures. I then create tiling base materials in Quixel that I can quickly apply to all the models in UE4, even though I know that I will replace some of them later.…

1988 Tom Hudson creates THUD, with Shaper, Lofter, Editor and Material Editor modules. Dan Silva joins the project and adds keyframing. Autodesk agrees to publish them. 1990 Autodesk releases all five modules together, as 3D Studio, for $3,495. It also opens up the Area section of its website for community news, software support and updates. 1992 3D Studio R2 released – image processing, procedural modelling, animation and surfaces are added. YOST Group produces several plugin suites. 1993 Renderer and Material Editor get overhauls in 3D Studio R3, with bitmap processing and keyframing extensions added. Work begins on 3ds Max Windows framework. 1994 3D Studio R4 is released – Kinematics, Fast (Shaded) Preview and Keyscript are added. The Craft and Jonny Mnemonic are created with this current version. 1995 3D Studio…

“On Warcraft, you had one art department working on sets, and the characters were designed by Blizzard. We looked at all the renditions of the character through the years. We went into the history of the characters. We’re always chasing photoreal. When you’ve got a videogame franchise, the resolution of those characters on a computer screen means you have to do drastic things to differentiate them. That’s what everyone fell in love with,“ he tells us. He recalls his team asking fundamental questions about believability in order to translate the game’s character designs to film: “‘Can we really make big spiky shoulder pads in the game work in the film? Can we scale it back but look more realistic?’ One of my first concerns was: once we get an orc…

LOGAN WILLIAMS Big Thump, 2015 Software Maya, Substance Painter, Marmoset Toolbag 2, Photoshop Learn how to • Model hard surfaces for games • Texture realistic materials • Achieve professional videogame rendering Concept I wanted to create a grenade launcher that wasn’t ballistic but slung grenades out by use of flywheels, using designs from the Fifties. “ Our idea will be transformed into a 3D model, textured and rendered all within a real-time engine ” We have all seen guns in real life and science fiction, and we all understand their function. In this tutorial we will look at what it takes to combine function and believability with a unique fictional vision. We will look at machinery and style choices from the Fifties and apply them to create a unique weapon.…

“As expected from Lenovo, the build quality and design of the P40 are of a superbly high standard” There are a number of options for modellers who want to try 3D design on a tablet: one is the 12.9-inch Apple iPad Pro and the accompanying Pencil stylus. But while you can export models from iOS and Android into a format that works just fine on the PC, it might make sense to have the tablet running Windows directly, so you can use the very same tools and environment as your main 3D system. Microsoft’s Surface line might be a better choice then, as they can run the same x86 software you have on the desktop. But Surface is a general-purpose tablet, and hasn’t been designed with 3D applications specifically in…

Madden previously held positions such as COO and head of production at The Foundry, and her new role has been created to reinforce the company’s renewed efforts on a customer-centric approach and commitment to being part of the technical innovation in the industry. What does these changes mean for you, as the customer though? Basically it means that The Foundry has identified that the very best tools in this industry are built by their users – looking across to engines and toolsets including Unreal, Blender, Unity and many others. The Foundry must see strength in the wider 3D community and is aiming to foster that sort of service/customer relationship itself within its company. “Our customers are one of our most precious assets,“ explains The Foundry CEO Alex Mahon. “We are…

JIA HAO artofjiahao.com off our feature on creating stunning creature concepts is Jia, whose image of Chief caught our eye immediately thanks to its sculpted details and strong approach to colour. 3DArtist username n/a REZA SEDGHI lowrez.artstation.com Sculpting just one highly detailed character can be a real challenge, but how about a scene full of them? On p44, Reza talks about how he put together his most recent composition. 3DArtist username lowrez LOGAN WILLIAMS LoganWilliams3Dart.com We’re big fans of FPS games, especially when they’re thematic. On p52, Logan shows you how to create a game-ready weapon that’s based on real-world tech, but has a bit of a steampunk edge. 3DArtist username L0WG0 RAINER DUDA rainer-d.de Rainer returns this month to bring his Houdini expertise into a real-time engine – in…

Pablo Muñoz Gomez artstation.com/artist/pablander A concept artist, 3D sculptor and educator, Pablo now lives in Melbourne, Australia and is a well-known presence in online 3D art communities. “ The more sketches the better. The first few sketches are full of clichés and visual references that you might have collected throughout the day… I feel that the designs get progressively more original and more interesting with every iteration’’ If there are three things that you bear in mind when creating creature designs, what would you say they are? When designing a creature, I like to imagine the world or environment that it inhabits. Having a rough idea of where the creature lives, or what the conditions of its surroundings are, helps me produce a believable design. Even if I never get…

Two decades – that’s how long 3ds Max has been around for. It’s a long time for any kind of software in any industry, but in the VFX world that’s practically a lifetime. Through a gamut of name changes and a whole catalogue of enhancements, the core premise of 3ds Max has always been straightforward: provide industry-standard tools for creatives to be, well, creative with. It’s a clear vision, and one that certainly hasn’t clouded with age. “For 2017 we wanted to affect peoples’ day-to-day lives,“ says 3ds Max product manager, Eddie Perlberg, bluntly. “So improving the UV unwrapping technology, the updates to the UI, performance improvements as far as the viewport is concerned – all of these we thought would have a direct impact on how people work day…

On top of the brand-new marquee additions to 3ds Max 2017, Autodesk has also worked to enhance existing tools to create a more streamlined, more powerful experience. We’ve outlined the key enhancements here, but the best thing to do would obviously be to go hands-on yourself and experiment with all the new speed and power you have to play with. ANIMATION • Animation productivity – these enhancements include new tools for manipulating key values and times, as well as copy, paste and reset abilities in Motion Panel list controllers • Text tool – after originally appearing in 3ds Max 2016 Ext 1, the Text tool now includes bevel and animation presets, custom value strings for displaying custom info text and you can now apply textures, animations and effects to text…

Key to the ILM art department’s creative work in expanding the orc culture originated in Blizzard’s own lead character designs. Alzmann reveals their techniques: “You’ve got a whole orc horde and we designed a lot of the midground and background clans and that was a really good introduction to the design language of Warcraft. “We used real, existing tribes and cultural references and we amortised that into our hero characters. There’s a lot of great nuance.“ In turn, this character work on the orc clans was brought to life via the mo-cap work that was supervised by Hal Hickel. “I haven’t done an awful lot of films with crowds on this scale,“ he says. “I supervised crowd capture sessions at Animatrik in Vancouver, from the very granular slashes left and…

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Jia Hao artofjiahao. com Jia is a self-taught creature and character designer. His passion is in designing imaginative creatures and characters. 01 Get inspiration Taking regular outdoor trips can be a great source of inspiration. During a visit to a local bird park, I was inspired by all the amazing species of birds that were there and wondered ‘what if a bird species evolved into a bipedal being on another planet?’. After choosing some of the photos I took, I put together a reference sheet to start sketching in ZBrush. 02 Sketch in ZBrush I started with a DynaMesh sphere at very low resolution and used ClayBuildup, Move, Move with AccuCurve, Standard and Dam_Standard to start sketching. I constantly sketch from all angles: upside down, and zooming in and…

Limkuk artstation.com/artist/limkuk Limkuk is a freelance 3D character artist from Mexico, lover of aliens and sci-fi stories, and CEO and founder of Lamprea Studio. “ Since I was a kid I’ve been a fan of aliens, sci-fi films and others related to the cinema and videogame worlds’’ There are many paths to becoming a creature designer – but no one really starts out doing it. “I am a graphic designer, but I decided to specialise in creation and conceptualisation of creatures,“ explains Limkuk. “I have been working as a freelance 3D artist and graphic designer for three years, developing characters for commercials – I have always liked creating new species.“ Like many concept and character artists, Limkuk began creating his own creatures after being inspired by the works of others…

Launched on 18 April 2016, 3ds Max 2017 makes a few major changes to the now traditional updates that consumers are used to. The most obvious change to take note of is the integration of the Autodesk Raytrace Renderer – something that is likely to disrupt the typical 3ds Max-to-V-Ray route that most professionals are used to. There are more additions to the 2017 version than just that one game-changing revision, though – we’ve massively simplified these updates and condensed them into a handy cheat sheet for your reference: ANIMATION • Geodesic Voxel and heatmap skinning • MCG animation controllers MODELLING & TEXTURING • Fast form hard surfaces • Text and shape map RENDERING • Autodesk Raytracer Renderer (ART) DYNAMICS & FX • Simple Simulation data import UI, WORKFLOW &…

“ Looking at the script and number of digital CG characters, we knew that our facial capture would have to pay off ”Jason Smith “ We’re getting into this world that many people are familiar with: a certain feel. We want people to feel [like] they are coming home ”Christian Alzmann Castles and winged beasts, deep forests and magical powers harnessed by sorceror’s hands – these are just some of the iconic images synonymous with the high fantasy genre. It’s a genre that hasn’t always been easy to bring to movie-life. ILM has played its part in this high-fantasy film tradition, notably with Dragonslayer (1981) and Willow (1988), and then with Dragonheart (1996), Eragon (2006) and the recent animated movie Strange Magic (2015). With Warcraft, ILM has marshalled its resources…

REZA SEDGHI Medusa on Her Throne, 2015 Software ZBrush, Marvelous Designer, KeyShot, Photoshop Learn how to • Create a 3D illustration • Sculpt stone-like characters • Pose characters • Texture in ZBrush • Set up renders in KeyShot • Composite an image in Photoshop Concept I was told to create a 3D illustration for a videogame which shows the power of Medusa. I decided to also show her sorrow for losing her beauty and hair, and stick to the original myth more. This Illustration of Medusa sitting on her throne was created for a videogame. To re-create this render, we will do some early sketches in ZBrush, then do character sculpting, posing and finally render our entire scene. We then use ZBrush for texturing our characters, clothes and the scene,…

Davison Carvalho  hellodave.co A lead interface/concept artist, Davison has worked on films like Captain America: Civil War Software Illustrator, PCB Creator, MODO, After Effects, Photoshop Seer, 2016 LIGHTING I exported the circuit patterns to Illustrator to get a more consistent circuit board look to mix with the circular tapestry-inspired elements. The eye was modelled in MODO with a basic tubular tool, so I could match the background film footage light and also have the spotlight on the 3D device to affect the eye tube’s luminosity from the inside.…

VR-Plugin 5.0 for Maya We’re going to be seeing a lot more VR-specific tools appear for the big 3D tools in the coming months – the big update for the simply-titled VR-Plugin grants support to Oculus and the HTC Vive, an improved user interface, high FPS recording, a desktop that is viewable/useable in VR as well as dedicated gamepad controls. Fabric Engine 2.2 Fabric Software has added Python support to canvas visual programming, making the system accessible to a wider range of technical directors and artists, and enabling better cross-pollination between departments. Fabric for MODO is also part of this 2.2 release, as well as an improved Script Editor with syntax highlighting for Python. NVIDIA Iray for Rhino Iray is integrated into Rhino, rendering directly within its viewports to give…

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