Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 104 i 3D Artist

Look close enough – and I mean really look – and you’ll see fingerprints all over The LEGO Batman Movie. Not figurative fingerprints, real ones, placed there by lead vendor Animal Logic to heighten the sense of realism and tangibility in the film. We aren’t watching animated digital characters, we’re watching animated digital versions of plastic characters. This is, of course, reflected in Animal Logic’s incredible attention to detail – fingerprints aside, individual bricks throughout the LEGO Batman world are scuffed, dented and damaged enough to look played with. This month we’ve been lucky enough to go behind the scenes at Animal Logic to learn all about the team’s artistic approach to filmmaking, the proprietary technology driving innovation and how crucial interesting and accomplished cinematography is in building an animated…

“Everything we develop for Robo Recall is actually going to be shared with the community”Jerome Platteaux, art director When Epic Games debuted its VR shooter demo Bullet Train at Oculus Connect 2 in September 2015, there was a lot of excitement over where this VR experience could take the videogames developer. Boundless possibilities and speculation arose from fans, though there was just the short demo presented: could the demo push Epic Games to publish a whole VR game, based on Bullet Train? Could this mean an even more empowered Unreal Engine with top-of-the-line VR features? For a while there was no news at all, but little did the fan community know that Epic had started work silently on another project in April 2016. Over the next ten months, five team…

A lot of us will use ZBrush for sculpting. We may all know how to manipulate ZSpheres to build up a creature mesh, combine SubTools for a character model or how to push and pull our sculpts with the Move brush, but there are plenty of other features inside of the much-loved tool that you should start using and paying more attention to. Take brushes for example. Have you ever considered going the extra mile and adding more finesse to your sculpts by creating your own custom brush? Or what about using Alphas? There are over 60 of these available inside of ZBrush for deforming your surfaces, but creating your own Alphas can make way for more detail on your sculpts and a more elegant finished result. You might have…

Our experts The best artists from around the world reveal specific CG techniques Substance Painter Leonardo Iezzi www.leonano.com Leo currently works at Ubisoft Reflections, having worked at Sony London Studio as an environment artist KATANA Rainer Duda www.rd-innovations.de Rainer has over a decade of experience in the visual effects industry. He owns a CG production company When making a game asset, we often have to endure time-wasting details such as seams, marks and so on. In this tutorial I want to provide some suggestions on achieving better results without wasting time. I’ll also share some tips to fix technical issues that we might encounter in our work. We will go through why Painter’s baker gives you some features worth using and how time-saving Painter can be with a non-destructive workflow.…

NVIDIA’s rollout of the Pascal microarchitecture to its professional GPUs, once again through sole manufacturing partner PNY, has begun with new cards across the board, ranging from the entry-level Quadro P400 right up to the monstrous P6000. The P5000 sits right underneath it as the second most-powerful 3D card in NVIDIA’s lineup. Pascal is NVIDIA’s most significant GPU architecture upgrade in years, as it finally shrinks the 28nm process that was used in previous generations, such as Maxwell and Kepler, down to 16nm. A smaller processor means more transistors can be fit into the same space and (theoretically) a similar power envelope, which translates to significantly better performance. The P5000 uses the same GP104 core as the gaming-oriented GeForce GTX 1080, albeit with various enhancements such as certified drivers and…

Rocket 3F, created by concept artist Andrei Samardac and programmer Kun Shi, is a simple polygonal modelling tool for capturing ideas and translating them into the 3D space. Rocket 3F has streamlined tools that allows you to work very quickly with only a mouse – or stylus – and without additional windows. Another tool called Preview allows you to see the model at the final stage without rendering. On top of that, Hard Edge and Organic Edge enable the user to work with different types of object, while the Creased Edges function creates creases easily and can be changed to hard or organic at any time. To learn more about the software or to get your own iteration, visit www.rocket3f.com.…

Like they were in The LEGO Movie, minfigures (or minifigs) are the main characters in The LEGO Batman Movie. Batman, Batgirl, The Joker, Robin and scores of other characters fill the scenes, each modelled and animated by the team at Animal Logic. The studio took the opportunity to revisit its approach to the minifigs from the original film, starting with a reassessment of their dimensions. “On the first film we pretty much modelled the minifig using photographs and our eyeballs… but this time we actually went out and did a 3D scan of a real minifig to get those proportions accurate,“ says CG supervisor Damien Gray. From that, a few extra details were incorporated into the models of the minifigs, such as the way the torso slightly overhangs the hips…

“The biggest technical roadblocks we have as modellers is [that] Normal maps are less effective in virtual reality,“ begins Epic Games’ Pete Hayes, senior artist mechanical, “and that’s the very small details, so you have to make sure you have enough geometry to support the medium to large forms because you won’t be able to fake as much… The other hand is the materials – we can’t do super-complex materials because drop calls are one of the biggest things we need to limit.“ To ensure that detailed models would translate in VR without breaking the immersion, Hayes explains that the back-and-forth iteration processes assisted in keeping the production efficient without compromising on quality. “We model very detailed prototype meshes and then test them out in-game before we really spend any…

ANTOINE COLLIGNON Freelance concept designer and illustrator antoinecollignon.com TRAVIS DAVIDS Freelance digital artist and content creator mrdavids.artstation.com ARTEM GANSIOR Motion designer at cinematic team, Plarium-South artstation.com/artist/gansior PASQUALE GIACOBELLI 3D lead environmental and character artist, Milestone s.r.l artstation.com/artist/pale PABLO MUñOZ GOMEZ Concept artist, 3D sculptor and educator zbrushguides.com MARLON R NUNEZ Freelance digital sculptor mrnunez.com TRISTAN SCHANE Concept artist tristanartform.com DAVID SCHULTZ Environment artist, Red Storm Entertainment (Ubisoft) artstation.com/artist/dtschultz ANDREI SZASZ Modelling/texturing TD, MPC andreiszasz.com MAARTEN VERHOEVEN Freelance digital sculptor verhoevenmaarten.blogspot.be…

Clinton is currently is a senior environment artist at The Coalition in Vancouver, having recently delivered Gears Of War 4. His primary focus is environment art, shader development and art direction. He has also released multiple video tutorials, articles and books. Saigon Office, 2014 UE4, Maya, Photoshop, Quixel, ZBrush This scene was created to establish a mood and look from the Vietnam War era. Colour tones and furniture design helped to shape the story. 2014 UE4, Maya, Photoshop, Quixel, ZBrush A old Soviet-era bunker retro-fitted for current-day use. This scene was created as a technical showcase of cave construction.…

LIGHTING I always stick to reality to make lighting as simple as it can be when working on arch-vis projects. Artificial sources were extremely important in this scene – I studied the intensity of these lights before selecting their shape, colour and position. Combined with the right camera setting, every aspect of the image gets along smoothly together. Mohammadreza Mohseni mohseni.info I am a CG artist with a masters in architecture and over ten years’ experience in 3D rendering Software 3ds Max, Corona, Photoshop, ArionFX, NikCollection Nuremberg Bathroom, 2016…

The 2017 Academy Awards has given a sci-tech Oscar to Chaos Group’s Vlado Koylazov for the “original concept, design and implementation” of V-Ray. “This award reflects the hard work and dedication of the entire V-Ray team,” said Koylazov, chief technical officer and co-founder of Chaos Group. “I am also immensely thankful to all the artists and studios for the great work they have created with V-Ray over the years. I would like to congratulate the other Sci-Tech winners as well – their efforts have pushed the boundaries of visual effects in film. We are looking forward to more great movies in the years to come.” Other winners of the sci-tech Awards include Marcos Fajardo for Arnold; Larry Gritz for the Open Shading Language; Kiran Bhat, Michael Koperwas, Brian Cantwell and…

iKinema LiveAction3 Version 3 of the mocap retargeting tool for Unreal Engine features automatic bone mapping and support for custom mocap systems. You can also stream real-time mocap data in real time for viewing in UE4. Other features include Template editor, custom name matching, skeleton matching on target rig and an improved workflow for ACP. C4Dome 2.75 Popular HDR lighting plugin C4Dome now supports Cinema 4D R18 with express compositing in just one click, easily adjustable HDRI tone mapping, three kinds of floor system presets for reflections, an HDRI painter for painting your own HDRI maps, as well as the additional ability to save and load lighting presets. Polybrush 1.5 The 3D modelling editor now has an updated interface. Bones is also now a mode instead of a tool for…

01 Navá by Oskar Füleki 3DA username Visumetrie Oskar Füleki says: “I was inspired for this project by a picture of an old antique kitchen. My goals were to create an atmospheric lighting situation and give the materials some realistic traces of usage.“ We say: There’s a really nice rustic feel to Oskar’s kitchen render and we love how it’s illuminated by that one stream of light coming in from the left-hand side of the image, creating a sort of early-morning atmosphere. 02 Elephant by Dmytro Teslenko 3DA username Dmytro Teslenko Dmytro Teslenko says: “Hello, I wanted to show off a project that I’m very proud of – an elephant made in 3ds Max, ZBrush and MARI. Post-processing was done in Photoshop. I hope you enjoy it!“ We…

“We want to make you feel like a total badass,“ begins Jerome Platteaux. “The more the players find creative ways to destroy robots, the more points they earn. Robo Recall offers satisfying gameplay and loads of replayability. We want the game to be as much fun to watch as it is to play. I cannot wait to see YouTube videos of players executing awesome combos. “The environments are based on existing buildings and streets in order to get the proportions of our levels as close to reality as possible. The more the environments feel familiar and believable, the stronger the sense of immersion is. I wanted the experience to feel grounded, to help the player understand his surroundings and evaluate the distances of his enemies faster.“ Ignacio Guajardo-Unanue says, “Robo…

MIDGE SINNAEVE Still Life, 2017 Software Blender, After Effects Learn how to • Use Cycles render passes • Extract them in After Effects • Composite them correctly in linear space • Tweak your render using the passes • Add post effects using the passes Concept I created this scene to help you gain an understanding of how Blender Cycles’s render passes work by going through the process of compositing them together correctly in After Effects. Learn about both the advantages and limitations of using render passes in your post-production work. This tutorial is about understanding Blender Cycles render engine passes and how to leverage compositing them together in After Effects for more flexibility in post-production. The guide takes you through the basics of multi-pass compositing. Learn about the benefits of…

LIGHTING After detailing the model I then proceeded to light and texture using Corona Renderer. For the lighting I used one Corona light rectangle for the window on the right, and another fill light on the left. Always try to use photographs as reference for your lighting because it will give you a sense of direction on what are you trying to achieve. Peter Ang dartofang.com Peter is a senior 3D visualiser. His work has been featured in Expose, Exotique and 3D Artist magazine Software 3ds Max, Corona, Photoshop, After Effects, Frischluft Cake Please, 2016…