Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 111 i 3D Artist

As one of the biggest animation studios in the world, Pixar has been creating inspiring and innovative films with RenderMan since 1988. Its two feature releases in 2017, Cars 3 and Coco, are just two examples of their technical prowess being taken to yet another level with industry firsts. RenderMan is the first commercially available renderer to ship with a physically based model for subsurface scattering. Now that RenderMan is being used at ILM and MPC as well as Pixar, you can truly achieve blockbuster effects in your home. So we’ve gone under the hood with Pixar’s big release for 2017, RenderMan 21.5, and with the summer hit Cars 3 to find out how Pixar makes the unreal photoreal. We’ve also collated 30 fantastic Maya tips this issue, including some…

For nearly two decades Maya has been a firm favourite among 3D artists, and now, with the release of Maya 2018, there are even more remarkable features to explore that will help you to produce some of your best work yet. Over the following few pages our eight passionate artists take you through some of the top new features of Maya 2018 and also set out some of their favourite tricks and techniques for getting the best out of any recent version of the software. For example, new in Maya 2018 is the MASH Placer node, which gives you artistic control over the distribution of your setdress elements. It enables you to add and change objects in the environment by painting on a mesh, and it can even do collision…

LVBO HUANG Vampire princess, 2017 Software ZBrush, Maya, Marvelous Designer, Mari, Substance Painter, Photoshop, Arnold Learn how to • Sculpt a female body in ZBrush • Create hair using ZBrush and Maya • Detail human skin with Mari • Make metal material in Substance Painter • Render with Arnold Concept A charming and very pretty vampire princess drinking blood. In this tutorial we’ll be looking at how we can approach a model-creation process step by step. First, by using Maya and Photoshop, we will create a 2D draft to define the modelling, body movement and lighting for the character. We will then make adjustments to the head and body as well as design clothes with ZBrush, and draw skin textures and colours with Mari. After that, we will texture clothes…

When it comes to creative people Koch admires, he cites producer, director and writer JJ Abrams as near the very top. Having worked with him on Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the 2009 reimagining of Star Trek, he got to see Abrams in action up close. “I’ve been able to work with him on Star Trek, Star Wars and Super 8 at turning points in my career. I remember standing on a Star Wars set and seeing him write dialogue on the script right there and then, and then seeing it in the movie – and that had all just come from the tip of his pen. It was a really inspiring moment.“…

1 Over the course of production artists created over 80,000 storyboards with 10,102 making it into the final sequences. This particular one was drawn by story supervisor Scott Morse to provide a rough idea of what the shot would look like. 2 Heightening the sense of imminent danger is concept art illustrated by Laura Phillips. Key additional elements include the stadium setting, muted colour pallet, Miss Fritter serving as a light source, rubber tyres and McQueen in the mud pit. 3 The concept art enters the digital realm with the different environmental elements and characters given shape and texture via modelling and shading. There is also the opportunity here to explore the various perspectives of the shot. 4 Facial expressions and body language are added as the animation team manipulate…

“We have a fantastic creative pedigree in sister company Axis Animation, who, based in Glasgow, have established themselves as a leader in animation and CG content for videogames, online entertainment and commercials,“ explains Schleicher. “On a recent project Axis completed all the animation and axisVFX did all the lighting and comp. Axis has a sophisticated technical pipeline and CGI firepower which axisVFX can leverage on bigger productions.“ Also based in Glasgow is Flaunt Productions, which Schleicher says is “an opportunity to express our softer side – working with clients in entertainment, broadcast and commercials that cast a spotlight on characters and humour.“ The London studio meanwhile focuses predominantly on providing pre-production work, including concept art, design, storyboarding, pitch materials and assets. “Our operations being based in Bristol and Glasgow with…

01 Simple shapes Simplify your shapes as much as possible; it’s easier to work with simple shapes and a single mesh, even if your object is complicated and unusual. It’s best to make each object as one simple mesh then divide it into parts. All of the armour models for this image were created with Maya, then polished with ZBrush (geometry of scratches, unevenness and so on). 02 Bevels All the bevels in this image were the final step in making each object, which is a good tactic for keeping your workflow comfortable and flexible. I used selection sets for all of the edges that needed to be strong, then I made a bevel in world space for each part of the geometry. 03 Unwrapping The best way to unfold…

ARA KERMANIKIAN Retopologised and UV’d model, 2017 Software ZBrush, Maya, Photoshop Learn how to • Modify 3D scan data for production • Retopologise a static model, both monochrome and colour, for use as a statue in a videogame, a still composition or a 3D print • Use ZBrush SubTool projection to transfer sculptural and texture detail • Understand the basic photogrammetry 3D scan process • Use DynaMesh and ZRemesher for retopology • Evaluate 3D scan results and clean-up requirements • Retopologise for animation for use in film, TV, VR, a game or a VFX project • Use Quad Draw in Maya 2017 for manual retopology • Clean up a 3D scan • Create quick UVs with UV Master Concept Agent WA is a cybernetically enhanced operative. She infiltrates information systems…

Lvbo Huang My name is Lvbo Huang, and I work in a company developing games. I’m an artist who is enthusiastic about characterisation, and I’m very lucky to be able to work in this industry. In order to improve my skills, I have been working hard and practising these years. Dark phoenix, 2017 Maya, Arnold, ZBrush, Substance Painter This is a likeness work of Famke Janssen. I like this role very much, so I made this project in my free time. Eldritch knight, 2015 Maya, Arnold, ZBrush, Substance Painter This project was based on a piece by Wayne Reynolds, during which I learned how to use Arnold to make character.…

In the new release of KeyShot 7, features include a wizard-driven Configurator for presenting model and material variations in real-time; enhanced options for existing materials plus new Plastic (Cloudy) and Measured material types; a complete refresh for Texture Mapping including an improved interactive mapping tool and new Image Texture types; Environment Tab updates with options to save and load environments and an integrated HDRI Editor; and real-time VR rendering.…

Job title Senior FX artist at Scanline VFX Location Vancouver, Canada Website andvfx.com Biography Eloi Andaluz Fullà studied architecture in Barcelona. 3D was his hobby at the time, but he decided to make it his main job in 2011, when he moved from a construction company to a full-time position at a Barcelona studio creating mappings and videos for operas all over Europe. In 2012, Eloi joined Moment Factory in Montreal, creating mappings and videos for rock shows and interactive installations. In 2014 he joined Scanline VFX Vancouver in 2014 as an FX artist and rose through the ranks to become senior FX artist. Portfolio highlights • Power Rangers, Scanline VFX, 2016 • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Scanline VFX, 2016 • Independence Day: Resurgence, Scanline VFX, 2015 • Miss Peregrine’s Home…

01 Black Haussmann by Romuald Chaigneau 3DA username Romuald Romuald Chaigneau says: “This image comes from a mix between a black haussmann style and a vintage style. Using Corona, it was a very good exercise for me to master the rendering of dark interiors.“ We say: Wow, we are blown away by the lighting and mood in this captivating render from Romuald. 02 Semsem by Rakan Khamash 3DA username rakan  Rakan Khamash says: “Semsem is a character I created after seeing the 2D concept by CreatureBox. I really liked the shape and character and wanted to re-create it in 3D.“ We say: Semsem’s disproportional limbs and pose are what stand out for us, drawing our eye immediately to his purple body. Amazing work. 03 36 Days of…

Pixar talks about how the mud effects were developed for the demolition derby scenes “The entire scene is seven minutes of cars sloshing around in mud and that’s something they had never had to do before,“ remarks director Brian Fee. “The effects team went to town spending a long time researching and developing all of the tools that they would need.“ The hardest effect to develop was the mud. “It was more difficult for our effects team than for anybody else to get it to look right in the computer,“ states supervising animator Bobby Podesta. “Our effects supervisor Jon Reisch would consistently say, ‘It’s not really a liquid or a solid. It is somewhere in-between.’ To do that in the computer and make it look right and believable is trickier…

RenderMan 21.5 might be best thought of as its own complete shading and lighting ecosystem, that’s more powerful, accessible and comprehensive than any previous release. However, the attention was turned to the forthcoming RenderMan 22 at this summer’s RenderMan Art & Science Fair at SIGGRAPH 2017. Pixar demonstrated several next-generation technologies, including a preview of the RenderMan 22 release. It features ‘always-on’ rendering embedded in artist applications, responding instantly to geometry, camera, light and material edits. This new live rendering mode delivers incredible interactive frame rates with the same renderer used for batch renders. Other RenderMan 22 technologies, like fast vectorised OSL shader network evaluation on Intel scalable-SIMD CPUs, were also shown. Finally, Pixar unveiled RenderMan XPU, a combined CPU/GPU solution now under development. The XPU technology renders on both…

As an artist who is new to the industry (straight from school or self-learned), there are four key points you should know: DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF People have different talents and different experiences. If you are in a studio for the first time, you will see other people’s work and 90 per cent of the time you will find it amazing; you will wonder just how can that person do that, and in only a day? That is the case and you wont escape it. Remember that everyone comes from different backgrounds and different talents. VALUE YOURSELF AND YOUR WORK Don’t do a job for free. If you can do the same thing a studio is asking you to do at home and they are not offering pay, then work at…

HUSSAIN ALMOSSAWI moxxawi.com Bio Hussain is an international product designer based in New York, working at the adidas Brooklyn Creator Farm. His style is a combination of modern, minimal and futuristic. In this tutorial, we will explore how to create interesting and realistic-looking materials using V-Ray, 3ds Max and Photoshop. We will go over some tips and tricks to making a material stand out and look realistic in a scene, and how different materials interacting together can give some very interesting results. First, we will cover glass and frosted materials, and how we can get a lantern effect without overexposing the materials. We will then look at V-Ray render passes, and how we can utilise some of those passes and composite them together in Photoshop to give more realism and…

VFX and production studio Jellyfish Pictures has announced new business RenderWise. RenderWise makes use of Microsoft Azure which integrates with an existing render farm enabling VFX studios to work remotely and on demand. Benefits include an increasing speed of provisioning, hyperscaling and seamless burst rendering to the cloud. With system admin costs outsourced to Azure, studios also save money on cooling equipment and running on-premises hardware. Jellyfish Pictures has also successfully implemented virtual VFX offices across several London locations. The entire company works via one virtualised central network giving access to the same drives and network at the same speed from whichever location. Phil Dobree, CEO at Jellyfish Pictures, said, “For as long as the VFX community can remember, we have been governed by on-premises hardware and infrastructure when tackling…

Nuke 11 Collaborative workflow in Nuke gets a boost with the addition of Live Groups. This new type of Container node enables multiple artists to work on different parts of the same shot as separate scripts. Frame Server background rendering has also been implemented, plus updates to Smart Vector Toolset, Denoise and Lens Distortion nodes. Massive 9 Massive Prime now ships with a universal plugin enabling support for almost any third-party application. There’s also a new Shader Network enabling artists to import, build and edit shading networks, a Horse & Rider agent and a Lanes as Generators option simplifying crowd movement through architectural areas. Cinema 4D R19 Highlights include Viewport preview quality and performance improvements giving near-final render results, a new Sound Effector for audio-reactive animation, expanded MoGraph Voronoi Fracturing…

Job title R&D director, The Future of Storytelling Location San Francisco Website imdb.com/name/ nm0462320 Biography After studying at Columbia College Chicago and Technical University of Munich, Koch began his career at Blue Sky Studios as a digital effects supervisor. He later worked as director of virtual production at Industrial Light & Magic and also served as head of CG, CG department supervisor, CG supervisor, technical director and in various artist roles. Portfolio highlights • Star Wars: The Force Awakens, 2015 • Red Tails, 2012 • Super 8, 2011 • Avatar, 2009 • Star Trek, 2009 • Transformers, 2007 • Poseidon, 2006 • The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 2005 • Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, 2005 • Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 2001 “I’ve been speaking to a lot…

“All days for me start with coffee, then checking Shotgun: you can see which shots have a closer deadline, or if there was a note in some shots that you are working on. You start working on your shots, checking if you need to update any of them because you get animation or model updates. The pipeline in Scanline is very consolidated and helps a lot when working together with multiple departments and getting notifications when anything you are working on has changed… Later on in the day we have dailies, where we check the shot with leads/supervisors [to find out] how shots can be improved or if it’s good to pass it to lighting or comp. We have different meetings during the week to keep up to date with…

MODELLING I used anatomy references to create special details like the zygomatic bone and the wrinkles next to the mouth. I then brought the mesh to 3ds Max and did the topology, but before this I used ZRemesher in ZBrush. After that I brought the mesh to ZBrush again and added details. I suggest using ZBrush layers to control the modelling intensity. João Victor Ferreira joaovictor3d.com João Victor Ferreira is a CGI artist from Brazil and works in the advertising industry. He has been in this industry since 2004 Software ZBrush, 3ds Max, V-Ray, Photoshop The Skipper, 2016…