Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 109 i 3D Artist

This issue, we took to the quaint English town of Horsham in Sussex, UK. It was a seemingly unlikely location for one of the oldest games studios in the country: Creative Assembly. Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Creative Assembly has been kind enough to give us exclusive tutorials from its two latest releases – Total War: WARHAMMER and Halo Wars 2 – and you’ll learn industry-standard techniques for working with game assets and environments. Elsewhere, more and more artists are turning to speed modelling. We’ve found that partly, these artists are using speed modelling to hone their skills, but they’re also testing more efficient methods and best practices for an accelerated workflow. Speed is of the essence in our industry of course, as artists work to tighter and tighter…

artstation.com/artist/liu_k 01 ASSIGN HOTKEYS TO THE FREQUENTLY USED COMMANDS It makes sense to create keyboard shortcuts not only to the most frequently used tools, but to such actions as changing display/shading modes, switching between different selection methods and opening various editors. You can modify default hotkeys and assign combinations that are more convenient for you. Though it takes only a couple of seconds to open a menu and find the command you need, these micro pauses distract your attention from the modelling process itself. For speedy modelling you have to stay focused all the time. 02 UTILISE CUSTOM SCRIPTS AND PLUGINS Various scripts and plugins not only expand the range of your modelling options and tools, they save a good deal of time as well. For easy access custom scripts…

bit.ly/2tE6SX4 Do I need ZBrush to sculpt with every workflow? No, you don’t. One way of faking cloth is by adding a subd modifier to your model followed by an editable poly (for selection), then a noise modifier. This way you can push in/out shapes with a random factor. You can even push it further by first making a plane; to do this, add a pattern (such as thickness/bevels/chamfers and so on) then add symmetry a couple of times, bending the shape if it needs to wrap around something. Following that, add a noise modifier, then finish it off with a turbosmooth. This gives you a really good base before you start sculpting, and this workflow is non-destructive. Another way of achieving this is to add some edge loops; select…

JOHANN TAN Treeman (Total War: WARHAMMER), 2016 Software ZBrush, Photoshop, Quixel Suite, Marmoset Toolbag, xNormal, 3ds Max, Simplygon Learn how to • Create a videogame character • Sculpt forms focusing on flow • Create tree details quickly • Methodically bake large amounts of subtools in xNormal without cages • Create low-poly models • Texture with multiple texture sheets Concept The Treeman ancient character is based on the latest version of the Games Workshop miniature, as well as the in-house concept by Theo Stylianides With a huge variety of fearsome creatures and characters to create, working with Games Workshop has been one of the most satisfying professional experiences for the team at Creative Assembly. In this step-by-step tutorial, you’ll learn more about the enjoyable process of translating the Warhammer miniatures…

CREATING TRIMSHEETS Trimsheets can be used to add many interesting details to your game environments at no additional cost. It’s an efficient, economical method that can ensure variation and interest when it comes to surface detail, without the need for additional texture baking. We’ll cover the whole pipeline, from the trimsheet’s design to its application on the actual environment. MODELLING TECHNIQUES We at Creative Assembly have various modelling techniques supported by scripts and tools. These techniques help us to push the visual fidelity of our art to the next level, as demonstrated in our previous productions. UNIT READABILITY One of the main focuses of this tutorial will be making sure that the playing area is as easy to read as it is visually appealing. Supporting the readability of the action…

“My aim is to create a world of cheerful, positive and sometimes weird creatures”Mary Shan Fazzolari, third-place winner. 3D student and concept artist Tailored for artists seeking to improve their skills by creating 2D digital art and 3D renders based on the announced weekly topic, the Weekly CG Challenge reached a milestone this year with its 100th challenge. Fame and glory plus prizes from a range of sponsors including 3D Artist await the best three entries selected by the jury. For the Video Game Boss competition in particular, challenge artists were invited to create an awesome design of a nasty level boss. First place was awarded to Pratik Solanki (weybec.com). “My friend reminded me about a fun-paced game called Giana Sisters and I couldn’t resist the idea of creating a…

Specialising in previs and postvis with virtual production, techvis and VR also on the horizon, Michelle Blok discusses the current arsenal at The Third Floor and what’s in store in the future: “At The Third Floor, we do a majority of our asset building and shot creation in Maya. We have previs editors working in Avid, and we have artists using After Effects to do compositing for shots. If we are postvis’ing a project, we use Nuke and After Effects for comping. We are starting to utilise other visualisation tools, such as virtual reality, to develop virtual scouting.“…

JOHANN TAN artstation.com/artist/johanntan  Creative Assembly’s senior character artist Johann Tan gives us the expert lowdown on modelling a character and adding quick details for Total War: WARHAMMER on page 48. 3DArtist username taalart GAëTAN PERROT korann.fr  Like Johann, Gaëtan works at Creative Assembly too as an environment artist, and he’s given us his pro tips for creating architecture for games this issue over on page 56. 3DArtist username korann TONY CAMEHL artstation.com/artist/tony_eight  “Fly my pretties, fly!“ Creature artist Tony Camehl has created this excellent flying monkey concept this issue and teaches you about anatomy essentials on page 66. 3DArtist username tony_eight PHILIP MULLANY 3dartistonline.com/user/philM  Want to rig a quadruped? Philip has got you covered, with his 13-step tutorial on working with spines, arms, legs and IK solvers. Read his tutorial…

bit.ly/2rHqzAC 01 Preparation is key To sculpt something fast you need to plan ahead. When I’m speed sculpting I have many references on a second monitor that show the head from many different angles, including above and below. By using a referencing app such as PureRef, I can quickly navigate to different views to help with whatever I’m working on. You will also save a lot of time by customising your user interface with speed in mind. You want to be able to access your most-used buttons and brushes very quickly. Learn all the hotkeys, then make your own. You can even create hotkeys for your own custom menus. 02 Reinforce what you already know The biggest thing I’ve learned about sculpting at speed is that it’s not about how…

frankiederosa3d.com How do you approach a character speed sculpt? I usually start with a vague idea of what kind of character I want to do: male, female, cute, heroic, funny, stylised, realistic and so on. From there I will start with a super generic head base mesh that has some decent edge loops and polygroups for easy selection and masking. This enables me to work even faster when it comes to doing human-type characters. From there it is all about working fast and finding good forms and silhouettes. When you work fast, you will get different shapes that you might not have initially thought about doing. These happy accidents really help take the character in a particular direction that can sometimes be really fun, and even spark ideas for a…

Creating 3D art for a videogame requires much closer attention given to the size of files and data, often reducing down high-quality art assets simply so that they can run more effectively on a broad range of computer hardware. To achieve this requires the smart use of the right software, but what does Creative Assembly use in order to create an effective, smooth-running workflow? “Well, we pretty much use anything and everything,“ says art director Kevin McDowell on the matter. “Our main modelling package I would say is 3ds Max, but I don’t know if that’s really true. It might be ZBrush. Max for modelling, then we use Maya for rigging and animation, and we variously use Quixel and Substance depending on the department and team. We obviously use Photoshop,…

Our experts The best artists from around the world reveal specific CG techniques Maya 2016 Philip Mullany  3dartistonline.com/user/philM A student studying Computer Visualisation & Animation at the NCCA, Bournemouth University Flowbox Mikołaj Valencia  flowbox.io A VFX supervisor and animation director, currently designing software for artists at Flowbox In this tutorial we are going to learn how to rig a quadruped, specifically a dog. These techniques can be applied to other quadruped creatures like cats or horses, with some minor alterations. We will be focusing on creating the spine and legs for our dog rig, as these parts are the more complex areas. We will also look at various rigging techniques such as joint placement and orientation, basic animation controls, creating nodes to gain functionality and using the spring IK solver.…

yVR 1.0 is a new tool for viewing mono and stereo 360-degree in-progress renders directly on Android 4.4+ and iOS 9+ devices, in Google Cardboard mode or 360-degree video. During rendering, rather than viewing a 2D image, you can instead look around exactly the same as you would with a completed render. Supported renderers include V-Ray, Corona, Redshift, AMD ProRender, FStorm and Mantra. Other renderers that support 360-degree cameras may have limitations. A standard licence costs 50 euros and lets artists run two yVR clients.…

PROCEDURAL TEXTURING Unwrapping can take ages, which is why I usually like to use tileable textures with triplanar mapping. To enhance the surface, I have developed material that automatically generates all the dusty corners and scratches on the edges. By combining different materials like this, I usually end up with a pretty complex shader tree. Tomi Väisänen www.tomivaisanen.com Tomi is a 3D generalist from Finland, currently working at Ubisoft RedLynx Software 3ds Max, Corona, Photoshop Mantis Anti-air Platform, 2016…

bit.ly/2sGpLvs What is your process for speed sculpting? There are many ways to start a speed sculpt; usually I start from scratch using a simple sphere in ZBrush, then I look for interesting forms and silhouettes. Sometimes I use basic figures to establish my main proportions; for example I use a sphere for the head, then I insert a cylinder for the neck and jaw and so on. This way I have a little more control over each part, so that I can establish different proportions for my base and start the speed sculpting process. As a concept artist, I try not to spend a lot of time getting all the details super crisp and perfect from the outset. When I have the main forms established and a nice structure…

artstation.com/ artist/andresrios CLOAK SCALING For the cloak I inserted a sphere, then scaled and adjusted it with the Deformation menu. I applied DynaMesh to it and adjusted the shape with SnakeHook and ClayBuildup. Then I used ZRemesher and added subdivisions to create detail with the Standard brush, and adjusted the shapes a little bit more with SnakeHook. CREATING GUMS For the gums I added a cylinder and gave it form with SnakeHook and DynaMesh. I duplicated it and rotated the duplicate for the inferior gum. For the teeth I inserted spheres on upper and lower gums and used SnakeHook to give them form. Then I used ZRemesh and added subdivisions, then used ClayBuildup, Dam Standard and hPolish for the detail. JAW PLATE DETAILS This part of the jaw was an…

In the history of performance capture, Weta Digital knows a thing or two. It’s been part of its creature pipeline for years, from the Lord Of The Rings films to King Kong and Avatar. But one of the significant challenges in crafting the visual effects for the Apes movies has been filming and motion capturing actors in rugged outdoor conditions. “When we were developing the tools on Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, there was nothing off the shelf in terms of hardware,“ relates visual effects supervisor Dan Lemmon. “We were inventing it as we went along, even soldering LEDs to speaker wires and taping it to the stunt performers’ bodies. It wasn’t particularly robust.“ Things changed, however, for Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes. Tougher LEDs were…

LIGHTING After watching countless hours of Bob Ross, I like to approach lighting like a painter. Start with your base light (Sun/HDRI) and work from there. You can do more with bounce lighting by adding another light with the same tint of that bounce. Add complementary colours to light your shadows. It’s all about painting! Guilherme Henrique sepultura.artstation.com Guilherme is art director at Poliigon, in charge of promotional artworks, mentoring artists and R&D Software Blender, ZBrush, Substance Designer, Photoshop Extreme Makeover, 2016…

“We’re very careful about who we hire,“ explains Jude Bond. “I don’t think we have a high amount of staff turnover. A lot of people come here and stay here, so I think we must be doing something right.“ Despite the positive working environment that really emphasises the freedom of creativity, the studio is quite particular about its staff hires because of the atypical production method it has opted for. “At the point where they get the concept,“ says Kevin McDowell, “they’re going to have to do the modelling, the texturing and ideally get the thing running in-game as well. The whole spectrum of the work. We want to make sure our artists are responsible for the whole gamut. Occasionally when I’m speaking to contractors that’s all that they want…

Rotoscoping is a process that seems, for many, to be difficult, laborious and with limited room for creativity – but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Creating a quality mask quickly requires strategic thinking, a combination of multiple techniques and creativity. On the flip side, working with a green screen is usually not ideal. DoPs are not big fans, since they create bothersome light reflections, increase the cost of production during shooting and steal valuable time on set. All of this leads film, commercial and TV productions to return to rotoscoping. Every professional compositing artist should be able to handle complex roto. And, if you are just starting out, keep in mind that at most VFX studios, artists typically start their career with rotoscoping. When you’re planning your roto…

Smartsuit Pro is a wireless mocap suit capable of converting any location into a professional motion-capture stage. Its 19 integrated sensors connect via cables that run through tunnels in the fabric, to the suit’s central hub. The hub is Wi-Fi enabled with a maximum range of 100 metres, supports real-time streaming to 100 fps and has a USB port for battery pack connection. Data is fed into the proprietary Smartsuit Studio software for recording and exported via FBX and BVH. Retailing at $2,495, the Smartsuit Pro caters for indie game developers and small film studios looking to produce high-quality content and compete with major big-budget studios. “At Rokoko we seek to do nothing less than break the fundamental assumption of what it costs to capture and access quality digital human…

Mari 3.3 Mari’s Marquee Select tool now comes equipped with a Lift Action tool that enables artists to lift baked paint (paint that’s already committed to a model) back to the Paint Buffer. There’s also performance improvements with faster Shader recompilation, GPU-run colour space transformations for faster exporting and texture management optimisations. RealFlow 10.1 This patch introduces a range of updates to RealFlow’s multi-physics solver Dyverso including Viscous Materials such as honey, toothpaste and caramel plus Viscoelastic Materials for simulating forms that regain original shape over time. Features like Vorticity Boost give fluids more convincing behaviour and enhance vortices and splashes. Mari Extension Pack 4 Mari Extension Pack 4 is developed by artists, for artists and is led by developer Jens Kafitz. New features include: 200+ feature additions; dozens of…