Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 105 i 3D Artist

Leading visual effects and creative studio Zero VFX was founded in 2010 by industry veterans Brian Drewes and Sean Devereaux in a Boston basement. “We came together at exactly the right time for the amount of knowledge we both had in the industry,“ explains Devereaux. “We knew what worked in the industry and what didn’t, and I think we had a clear vision of what we wanted to build. It was the perfect timing for everything and I think that’s why we are still around today. We started a company at a time when VFX companies were going out of business. Using knowledge of all the places we worked, we [built] a place that could handle the ebbs and flows, while maintaining a strong artist base, a producer base and…

The digital environments you find in film, TV and games projects might traditionally be ‘in the background’, but they almost always serve as key players in the stories being told. Take the freeway chase in the film Deadpool, in which the ‘merc with a mouth’ cuts down a bunch of his adversaries. Partly shot live action but also fleshed out in fine CG detail by Atomic Fiction, the environment was crucial to the hard-hitting action. The same can be said for Rodeo FX’s Meereen city environment made for season six of the TV series Game Of Thrones. The VFX studio built in layers of detail and a sense of ‘place’ while also revealing the city under siege. Game environments are of course huge storytelling devices in their own right, too.…

JOãO VICTOR FERREIRA Super Hero, 2017 Software 3ds Max Learn how to • Create an IK Spine • Develop a stretch system for the spine • Make a twist system for the spine via expression • Create a stretch system for the arms via MAXScript • Produce a bend system for the arms • Develop a traditional reverse foot system • Create standard FK hand rigging and head rigging Concept I made this character to explain how to create interesting systems for cartoon rigging. These systems provide nice deformations for cartoon animations. Rigging, however complicated, is one of the main processes in the animation pipeline. It will inform the software how the virtual mesh will change, move and how the animation will look at render time. The technical director’s job…

As an artist you can’t afford to miss out on developing creative skills in virtual reality. As the popularity of VR grows, each day demands new experiences – those are more opportunities for VR-ready content that you could be helping to create. But with high-end video cards and headsets costing a premium, how can you gain some initial VR experience before investing in hardware? Thankfully you can start creating immersive VR experiences with just the smartphone in your pocket, a Google Cardboard and the 3D software you’re already familiar with. By uploading to www.sketchfab.com you can publish to VR, test what you make, and share it with others without needing to invest in any additional software. Developing for mobile VR comes with a particular set of challenges regarding scale, movement…

“The community wanted to hear these types of stories… this type of information can really benefit the industry – as long as it is made public” “Many ideas that Chaos Group puts into practice actually come from conversations we have on the podcast” “It’s energising to have great conversations with creative, innovative people” With an astonishing 110 episodes live at the time of writing, CG Garage is perhaps the most prolific and recognised podcast for computer graphics in the entire world. In a little over two years, CG Garage achieved the million download milestone in February 2017. Its growth has been astronomical, with guests including Blur Studio founder Tim Miller, Oscar-winning director Brenda Chapman and legendary architect Art Gensler. The brains behind the popular show is Christopher Nichols, who hosts…

Silicon Studio, the Japanese game innovation company, has announced that its C# game engine Xenko will be available commercially from April 2017. Xenko is the only commercial engine to support the latest C# and was shown off at the recent GDC 2017, with new features including high-end rendering, VR support and a scene streaming system as part of Silicon Studio’s showcase. Xenko is open source, fully multithreaded, VR ready with a full toolchain for asset creation (including scene editor, nested prefabs, a UI editor, sprite editor, curve editor and more) and has C# 6.0 scripting. There is also full support for Vulkan, physically based materials, alive shader and code recompilation and a flexible, customisable rendering pipeline.…

01 Prepare model for baking Instead of ‘exploding’ the model for baking, we can use the baking-by-names feature inside of Painter. Simply alter the Match setting. However, this feature requires the proper naming of our objects (see image). Objects with the same colour have the same name, but with added suffixes: ‘_low’ for low poly and ‘_high’ for high poly. 02 Split the model (texture sets) I had to split my model into several 4K texture sets, because I needed high quality. I’ve achieved this by assigning different materials in Blender for each part of the tank. If the dividing line went through the same object, then I had to adjust masks (dirt, scratches) by hand (see example image). In total, I used seven texture sets. 03 Texture layers of…

Jonathan Benaïnous Jonathan started in the videogame industry almost ten years ago as a 3D artist and environment artist. He has a passion for creating a wide range of images, including vehicles, environments and lighting. He also appreciates high-tech and hard-surface works. San Mateo & Agua Verde Provinces – Ghost Recon Wildlands, 2016 3ds Max, ZBrush, Photoshop As coordinator and principal artist, I was involved in creating the different landmarks in the scene. Rosario Prison Village – Ghost Recon Wildlands, 2016 3ds Max, ZBrush, Photoshop For Ghost Recon Wildlands I was in charge of creating this village, the layout, the world building, and also the most of the rocks in the background. Carzita Island – Ghost Recon Wildlands, 2016 3ds Max, ZBrush, Photoshop For…

“Artists from all branches gain intuitive workflows supported by highly optimised tools” Houdini 16 from SideFX comes with a great collection of new features. Before we begin to look at these, it’s important to consider what has happened under the hood, and hence what is not visible to the user. The developer has revamped the core architecture of the software, and as a result artists from all branches – from animators and modellers to VFX artists – gain intuitive workflows supported by highly optimised tools. In version 16 you get better access to the tools by using the radial menus in the perspective viewport – just like you know it from Maya. There is also no need to constantly switch from the perspective view to the Node Network Editor and…

Technology learning platform Pluralsight has launched new courses as part of its Game Environment Modeling path. Aspiring game developers can play the free, downloadable game Swords And Shovels and then learn how to build it over a series of courses teaching gaming environments, character modelling and gameplay elements. Swords And Shovels is a free dungeon-crawler that comes complete with a full story and combat mechanic that can be adapted on the course. “As technology becomes more complex, the art of creating games will become increasingly interdisciplinary,“ said Andy Rahden, VP of creative, design and engineering at Pluralsight. “By embracing hands-on, interactive mediums like Swords And Shovels and the Game Environment Modeling learning path, we are helping game developers understand the full inner-workings of a game, see where every little piece…

“It was like I’d entered the NFL and was working, and competing, with giants”Ari Rubenstein, Lead compositor, Blue Sky Studios Job title Lead compositor, Blue Sky Studios Location Greenwich, CT Website www.curvstudios.com Biography Ari Rubenstein is from Maryland. From an early age he was inspired by comic book art and kung fu movies from the Chinese film production company, The Shaw Brothers. He has worked at Xaos and Tippett Studio and started his own company Curv, before joining Blue Sky Studios Portfolio highlights • Ice Age: Collision Course, 2016 • Epic, 2013 • Rio, 2011 • Horton Hears A Who, 2008 • Charlotte’s Web, 2006 • Constantine, 2005 • Starship Troopers 2, 2004 • Hellboy, 2004 • The Matrix Revolutions, 2003 • Alter Echo, 2003 • Africa’s Elephant Kingdom, 1998 It’s the Nineties and Ari Rubenstein had just returned from…

“I created this image for an ArtStation challenge and was lucky enough to win first prize. I focused on storytelling and tried to create something everyone can relate to. I decided to get inspiration from personal experience and capture a moment from a family vacation as my interpretation of the theme – The Journey ”Wojciech Piwowarczyk, The Journey, 2016 WojciechPiwowarczyk wojciechpiwowarczyk.com Wojciech is an environment artist and creates worlds for games, short films and TV Software 3ds Max, V-Ray, Quixel SUITE, ZBrush Work in progress… “ To attain realism in my artwork I created Raspberry in my spare time. This piece of art was also good experience in creating realistic renders, as well as enhancing my shading and lighting skills. My primary challenge was to reach lifelike details ”Shubham…

PROCEDURAL BRICK TEXTURE The main challenge was to catch interesting reflections. Having control in my graph over the size, rotation and other parameters with instant results makes me keep choosing Substance Designer for creating my tileable textures. TEXTURING VEGETATION Substance Painter can be a very strong tool for vegetation texturing. Using only fill layers and Smart Masks I was able to achieve realistic results in the plants’ maps. All alpha work was also tackled in Painter. PROCEDURAL MUD TEXTURE Fully created with Substance Designer, this mud texture was core in giving a wild and wet feeling to this piece. The Water Level filter made adding the puddles to the texture easy and gave me amazing results on the spot. OLD GAS PUMP Texturing all props in Substance Painter allowed me…

The currently available 3D apps for VR are still pretty limited, which is simultaneously the beauty as well as the downfall of working in VR. The absence of serious modelling tools forces you to move fast and not look back. As a result you can crank out dozens of concept models in minutes. But at the same time, creating proper 3D assets is pretty much impossible with the currently available software. Therefore, I treat VR sculpting primarily as a sketching and ideation tool.…

ANASTASIA OPARA Procedural Lake Village, 2016 Software Houdini, Photoshop Learn how to • Automate the creation of a production-quality asset • Break down a complex procedural system into small and understandable chunks • Create procedural patterns and assets • Combine both pre-made and generated parts • Design abstract rules that help to achieve realism • Understand the importance of relations and dependencies inside of a procedural network Concept This is one of the early prototypes for the Procedural Lake Houses, which was a logical continuation to my exploration of relations in building creation from my previous Houdini Unreal 4 Building Tool project To appreciate what ‘realism’ means in the context of procedural art creation, let’s first discuss certain aspects of our perception. Humans are great pattern-recognition machines. We deal with…

“For slow shots with no intense movements, we were able to render the character and environment together” Our experts The best artists from around the world reveal specific CG techniques Fusion Tom Hankins  www.colorbleed.nl Tom is co-founder of Colorbleed, completing everything from advertising projects to game cinematics Sketchfab Paul Chambers  paulchambers3D.com Paul is a freelance CG generalist based in NYC. Paul also works at www.sketchfab.com as artist evangelist Back in 2011, I was just another VFX student. After being inspired by Pixar back in high school, I’d decided to begin studying computer animation and, like many others, completed a final graduation short together with a few friends in my last year. We called it ‘Mac ‘n’ Cheese’. Ultimately, our hard work on the final short really paid off. To our…

“Using the curve node, you can now edit a curve profile as if 3D modelling it from a side profile” Substance Designer 6 is the latest release from Allegorithmic in the Substance Suite. It boasts some powerful new nodes, new features and improved baking options. Two of the newest nodes added to Designer are the curve and text nodes; these long-awaited additions offer greater potential to the already well-established set of tools. The text node enables you to create text within your graph in any Windows-installed font as well as imported text. Although creating text has its advantages across materials such as trim sheets, it can also be used in creative ways for extracting complex patterns and shapes. Shapes that are much harder to author in Substance such as neoclassical…

Chaos Group announced V-Ray 3.5 for Nuke, a significant update that means Nuke artists will be able to make use of the V-Ray Volume Grid node for rendering and importing fire, smoke and other fluid simulations as OpenVDB files from applications like Houdini for the first time. Compositors now get even more control over lighting and volumetric effects, and volumes rendered in V-Ray for Nuke are fully compatible with deep compositing. Deep data can also now be generated directly in Nuke, saving load time and disk space. The V-Ray Denoiser is included in the update as well as the Light Cache GI, which speeds up renders with V-Ray’s global illumination. V-Ray for Nuke is a free upgrade for V-Ray 3.x for Nuke customers.…