Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 121 i 3D Artist

We’ve got a super issue this month. To celebrate the release of Incredibles 2, RenderMan 22 and 30 years of the brilliant renderer, we’ve teamed up with Disney•Pixar to not only get the inside scoop on the much-anticipated sequel, but also 30 tips for transforming your renders with RenderMan! And not just that, Dylan Sission gives us his expert guide for working with RenderMan 22. As well as this, we’ve got a special offer to get two Incredibles Funko Pop figures with a six-month subscription, or three with a year’s subscription! Plus, you could collect all four of our special covers fronting 3D Artist this issue, and we’ve also hidden Jack-Jack in three different places this issue. The first eagle-eyed reader to spot him and email his locations to us…

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RenderMan 22 is a remarkable release, featuring a broad rewrite of the ray-tracing engine and the RenderMan for Maya plugin to accelerate the artist experience without compromising scene complexity. The end result is a release that delivers incredibly fast and stable interactive rendering. In Maya, you can now launch RenderMan from the Viewport, allowing you to run the renderer during your normal Maya sessions, and that means you can work interactively during modelling, layout, look development and lighting. It’s a new level of performance which is changing fundamental workflows for creating VFX and animation.…

“All the way back to Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings, we have had this specialised area of digital performance-related work through to Kong to Neytiri in Avatar to Caesar in Planet Of The Apes to Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War,“ notes Weta Digital visual effects supervisor Matt Aitken. “We always work in collaboration with an actor to help to create the performance, whether it be Andy Serkis or Josh Brolin. We have a strong underpinning of technology where the body and facial performances are captured separately. There is always a part of the process, which is an animator taking that raw material and helping shape it on the digital character, which are always different in appearance. For example, Smaug was a dragon with a head shape that was…

To make the wood planks visible on each floors, the best method is to start by creating the fibre of the wood in a new graph. To do so, use a Perlin Noise Zoom, directional blurred and plug it into a Gradient (Dynamic) node. In the gradient Input, plug a Gradient Linear 1 node and set this tiling as 50 or 60. Use a Non Uniform Blur Grayscale node to blur your shape and keep distorting it using Warp, Directional Warp and Slope Blur Grayscale nodes. Once you’ve a got a good recipe, duplicate your tree and create two other fibre variations. Now, using Perlin Noise nodes previously clamped up with a Histogram scan, mask your three wood fibres all together using blend nodes and mix them harmoniously. Finally, using…

In the last few months, I’ve been starting to share some of my recent work on my Gumroad: gumroad.com/jonathanbenainous  My Substance file, called ‘Baroque Ceiling’, is now available at the following Gumroad link: gumroad.com/l/XsmUt. The package contains a full source Substance file with 30 graphs including baroque ceiling, cherub face, wings, keys, ropes, crowns, festoon, volutes, vase and much more. All of the graphs are well-organised with frames for ease of use, too. For this I recommend you to use rectangle links for better readability. If you have any feedback then please email me at jonathan.benainous@gmail.com and let me know what you think of the products. If you would like to support me or get more updates on future projects and products you can follow me on Artstation…

Substance Painter 2018 is being praised by the user community for its new UI and the way it handles painting. There are plenty of new bells and whistles, but the biggest surprise was how sleek and refreshing the interface now is. The shelf menus are tucked away to the right, and can be revealed with a simple LMB click. You can drag any of them out and snap them just about anywhere, or leave them floating in the viewport. You can really customise this new UI to fit your workflow. They have even updated the top left toolbar to change in respect to the current tool, and the tool menu that was there before is now positioned to the left. We’re also excited about the new Quick Menu, which pops…

Along with media server manufacturer disguise and real-time effects software Notch, FRAY co-founders Finn Ross and Adam Young are taking the animated magic of Disney and bringing it to life in the theatre. Ross and Young employed disguise’s latest media server, the gx 2, as their control component. The gx 2 servers come with an integrated Notch playback licence, meaning that FRAY did not have to contend with dongles or additional costs to concern the show’s producers. Weaving throughout the show, across the set’s LED backdrop, is a constantly shifting, immensely intricate and entirely live rendering of the northern lights. “It was revolutionary for me to see content shift in shape, speed and colour, with no cross-fade and no locking timecode. Being able to instantly respond to an idea in…

Marvelous Designer 7.5 The most notable addition in version 7.5 is a new UV editor that enables the user to view UV wires, edit locations and take snapshots. The option to change the smoothness tessellation on the avatar has also been added, as well as a new slash and spread feature. Marvelous Designer costs $300 (around £ 224.93) annually for a personal licence. Reactor 2.0 Reactor has been updated with support for DaVinci Resolve 15. It also brings shorter start-up times as well as improvements to error handling and logging. A newly added status column shows compatibility with the host application, and several new tools have been created to aid with managing local tool installs. Reactor is available to download for free from We Suck Less. SPECviewperf 13 Incorporates new…

Company Framestore Location London, UK Website Framestore.com Biography Andy Hayes has a wealth of experience in the VFX industry, having worked for the Australia-based Animal Logic and world renowned Dreamworks Animation. Now he works as head of effects at Framestore, managing teams in London and Montreal. Recently his department has contributed to Avengers: Infinity War, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Deadpool 2, and much more. Portfolio highlights • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) • Doctor Strange (2016) • Jupiter Ascending (2015) • The Martian (2015) • Edge of Tomorrow (2014) • Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) • How to Train Your Dragon (2010) “There’s always challenges, technical challenges, workflow challenges, artistic challenges” Andy Hayes, Framestore’s head of effects, was always interested in computers when he was young. “I remember SIGGRAPH being on BBC…

Assisted by model boat maker who meticulously documented his recreation of the iconic vessel, two artists spent nearly a month to create the digital asset. “It was the water simulation that proved the trickiest,“ notes Freefolk VFX supervisor Steve Murgatroyd. “The speed of the boat and the turning of the wheel weren’t fast enough to create the desired effect. We had a water specialist [Georgios Papaioannou] and our CG supervisor both working on it for several weeks before we got this one over the line. Utilising Houdini, they used massive prerolls and incorporated little cheats, such as extra paddles under water surface, to generate the kind of agitation everyone was looking for.“…

IAN FAILES vfxblog.com  Ian has put his super suit on this issue and has been speaking to Pixar about the wonders of the tech behind the new Incredibles 2. Hear about all the latest innovations over on page 22! 3DArtist username N/A DYLAN SISSON dylansisson.com  With 20 years of experience in 3D animation and VFX, there’s probably no one better than Dylan to walk us through how to perfect our skills with the latest RenderMan on page 40. 3DArtist username dylan.sisson JONATHAN BENAINOUS artstation.com/jonathan_benainous  Jonathan is a senior texture artist at Ubisoft Quebec. This issue, he’s revealing his techniques behind his awesome baroque materials. Check it out on page 56. 3DArtist username Jonathan Benainous PAUL H PAULINO & TITO FERRADANS artstation.com/paulhpaulino  & tferradans.com Texture painter Paul and compositor Tito have broken…

HARSH AGRAWAL Character shading TD harsh2art.com CHRISTOPHE HERY Rendering researcher graphics.pixar.com PHILIPPE LEPRINCE RenderMan software engineer renderman.pixar.com ANDREW KENSLER Sr. software engineer eastfarthing.com/blog/ MARK MANCA RenderMan product manager renderman.pixar.com CHRISTOS OBRETENOV Shading architect lollipopshaders.com LEIF PEDERSEN RenderMan specialist & 3D generalist leif3d.com EUGENE RIECANSKY Creative director rock-star.co.uk DYLAN SISSON Digital artist dylansisson.com ERIK SMITT Director of photography for Incredibles 2 pixar.com WAYNE WOOTEN RenderMan Software development manager renderman.pixar.com…

Pixar Surface is the same shader used at Pixar for FindingDory, Cars3, Cocoand Incredibles2.It’sareal production shader, so it has all the fancy controls artists demand at Pixar. It comes fully loaded. You’ll find lobes for three Specular responses (including Clear Coat), Diffuse, Iridescence, Subsurface Scattering, Glass, Glow, Fuzz and more. Pixar Surface is capable of creating extraordinary looks for all sorts of surfaces, including plastic, metal, glass, skin and hot lava. (Hey… if you need hot lava, you need it!) To make things simple there’s a fantastic library of materials in the RenderMan Preset Browser.…

For Weta Digital visual effects supervisor Matt Aitken, the most exciting element of the industry is the combination of technology and artistry. “No matter what you’re doing, whether it be writing new code to grow a forest or painting textures onto a digital character, there’s a strong artistic underpinning to it. We spend a lot of time in shaded rooms looking at images on monitors and projected screens but it’s important to get out into the world because that’s what we’re trying to replicate.“ At the end of the day it’s about making beautiful images for Weta Digital visual effects supervisor Anders Langlands. “Having a sense of what looks good and what doesn’t is one of the primary skills. Almost everybody can learn the toolset. There are different roles within…

For the peeling paint covering most of the wooden planks, start by creating a noise with a mix of Grunge Maps and Fractal Sum Base nodes. Then use the Cells 3 node, Slope blurred in Max to create cracks on top of your surface. Use a Perlin Noise node as a mask to erase them here and there. Now using a mask made out of your planks border, reveal the wood under the paint using contrasted grunge maps. To make the paint peel, apply a Non Uniform Blur Grayscale node on your hole mask, invert it and subtract your hole mask from the result. Now you just have to blend your peeling effect in Add and adjust the opacity slider to set the intensity.…

PAUL H. PAULINO & TITO FERRADANS artstation.com/paulhpaulino&  tferradans.com Bio  Paul is a 3D artist who specialises in texture painting for films. Tito is a content creator who does compositing in his free time. In this tutorial, we are going to guide you through the process of creating a photorealistic scene in Maya using advanced methods in V-Ray, Mari and Nuke. We are going to explain the importance of working as a team and how each role plays an essential part in creating a collab project. We will cover some methods to speed up your workflow, and also how keeping an organised scene can make your life easier. Assembling a realistic piece is a process that requires a lot of patience and understanding of light and colour. It also needs a…

To work with fisheye lenses you will need to select each camera and click on the Show One Input and Show Overlay buttons below the footage. Now, left-mouse button drag to adjust the framing of each camera and Alt+left-mouse drag to scale the camera to fit the yellow guide. You need to align the edge of the lens with this guide. This will give you a much better alignment of the cameras. Do this for each camera separately. You can also adjust yaw, pitch and roll in the Input Cameras panel to make fine improvements your alignment.…

To obtain 3D depth and shadows, we need lights. Here’s a starting point: 1 Ambient – Intensity 10 per cent. Two-point lights – 1-Intensity: 170 per cent. Position: 100,50,-150/2- Intensity: 100. Position: -200,-150,0. Increase the shadow diffusion value to get soft shadows. If the lighting suits you, and if the origin isn’t important in your scene, you can parent the point lights to the bird to keep it constant throughout your animation. Since we have several 3D layers projecting shadows on one another, you can decrease the Shadow Map resolution to avoid long render times (Composition Settings>Advanced>Options).…

As its global expansion continues, Mill Film has announced the opening of a new studio in Montréal, Québec. The news arrives just months after the launch of a location in Adelaide, Australia. Elsewhere Lauren McCallum has been announced as the global head of Mill Film, having previously lead talent on features such as Blade Runner 2049 and Wonder Woman. She will oversee all aspects of production as well as driving operations and strategy. “We want the brand Mill Film to inspire the next generation of visual effects artists through the commitment we are making to create a diverse, dynamic and driven team; using the latest technologies on groundbreaking work,“ explained Robin Shenfield, CEO of The Mill. “We are putting talent diversity and inclusion at the heart of Mill Film –…

The newly named RizomUV is a professional toolset that quickly provides distortion-free UV maps. “Artists come to us because we’re fast and we listen,“ said Rémi Arquier, creator of RizomUV. “This latest update is living proof, with a new UI designed for game and VFX users and tools that can tackle everything from an industrial design to photogrammetry. It’s our best tool yet.“ New features will allow users to compute UV maps in a single click, access the most commonly used features faster, easily edit and visualise texel density of polygons and shells in real-time, plus much more. It also now has extensive pipeline support and mouse and keyboard customisation options.…

“When you have a bulk of work, then you have to put more emphasis on making sure that your pipeline is good,“ asserts Andy Hayes. He explains that the larger the project is the smaller the problems are. “On Thor we had people focused on lightning work for nine months. Some people thrive on that, being given the opportunity to concentrate on a problem and evolve it.“ He’s also aware that to some, the role specificity could be frustrating. “I think jumping into a big company where you specialise could be a problem for someone who’s just getting into the industry and trying to figure out what they want to do, what they like doing and where their talents lie.“…

01 Offline by Grzegorz Buca 3DA username Gregorius Grzegorz Buca says: “This was created for the Evermotion Challenge – The Perfect Getaway. I really enjoyed creating the mountains with the help of World Machine as well as modelling the kayak’s technical details and its shaders. As usual, the whole image was created in a minimalistic form using 3ds Max, V-Ray and Photoshop.“ We say: Wow. We are absolutely blown away by the serene views. Not only are the colours perfectly balanced, the shader work really does make the finished render feel like a real photograph. 02 Super Nintendo Throwback by Kyan Etemadi 3DA username kyan101 Kyan Etemadi says: “Remember Friday nights? Going to the video store, ordering some pizzas and playing videogames? Take turns all night on Street Fighter…

Bird parts for the Origami tutorial Download the assets to follow along with the guide 3 Premium CGAxis models A collection of images to use in your work 25 Textures from 3DTotal.com Download plenty of high-quality textures Log in to www.filesilo.co.uk/3DArtist Register to get instant access to this pack of must-have creative resources, how-to videos and tutorial assets The home of great downloads – exclusive to your favourite magazines from Future! Secure and safe online access from anywhere Free access for every reader, print and digital Download only the files you want, when you want All your gifts, from all your issues, in one place Free for digital readers, too! Read on your tablet, download on your computer…

HAIR CARE: The grooms and hairstyles on Incredibles 2 were the first at Pixar to be created with the studio’s new Pele hair pipeline. In addition to being able to construct guide hairs and operators inside the Presto animation system, Pele also used the GPUs in Pixar’s machines to display all the interpolated hairs. This allowed the groom artist to make subtle cuts and stylings interactively for the first time. Pixar also made some significant advances in its hair illumination model, which is based on the Marschner Hair Shader – both to give more appealing blond hair for Mr Incredible and Dash, but also to optimise for rendering as initial tests were prohibitively slow. MUSCLING UP: Researchers at Pixar spent several months looking into a new finite element-based muscle system…

Origin of the name RenderMan Perhaps surprisingly, the name RenderMan is not related to superheroes, but comes from a conversation Pat Hanrahan had decades ago about futuristic rendering hardware so small that it could fit in a pocket, like the classic WalkMan but for VFX, and that’s where the name, RenderMan, came from. RenderMan Releases There have been 27 major and 56 minor public releases of the renderer, starting with PhotoRealistic RenderMan 3.0 back in September 1989 and culminating with RenderMan 22.0 today.…

The praxinoscope has 12 teapots and 36 planks. Adding variation to these objects is desirable for our final look, but it’s inefficient to add a separate shader to each individual object, especially if tweaks and changes need to be made later on. RenderMan provides tools to create this variation with a single shader node automatically, while also making the variation easy to edit: a ‘non-destructive’ workflow. Tools like pxrVary, pxrMultiTexture and pxrPrimVar are incredibly useful, and after using them it’s hard to imagine working without them. For more details regarding specific usage, please refer to RenderMan’s excellent documentation.…

JONATHAN BENAINOUS Baroque Ceiling, 2018 artstation.com/jonathan_benainous Bio Jonathan Benainous is a 3D artist, living in Quebec, Canada and is currently working for Ubisoft Quebec as senior texture artist. He’s also previously worked for Quantic Dream and Guerrilla Games in Amsterdam. Software Substance Designer 2018, Marmoset Toolbag 3 Learn how to • Push the limits of Substance Designer to create a hyperrealistic ceiling • Improve your use of the nodes panel • Tackle very complex shapes within the program • Make a PBR Material Concept The goal of this project was to create a baroque ceiling, inspired by the Basilica of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli in Rome, uniquely using Substance Designer. In this tutorial we’re going to make a very complex hard surface material, fully made in Substance Designer. The…

In architecture, everything has a name. From a single pattern, to a type of moulding, a cornice, a face, a leaf. Everything is grounded in history. The most common are probably the baby angels called cherubs, the big ornate shields called blazon or the volutes visible at the top of the Ionic columns. Knowing this information might be mostly useless, but can in many cases help you to find references and a better understanding of some shapes. For instance eggs-and-darts are an ornamental device carved in wood, stone or plaster. They are egg-shaped objects alternating with an element shaped like an arrow or dart. This pattern is part of the capital founded in Ancient Greek architecture and was used by the Romans. You can also find it in common neoclassical…

RENDERING This was rendered using V-Ray for 3ds Max. I rendered the image at 2800 x 3508 using a three-point light setup and dome light. I took an HDRI image and plugged it into the texture slot, then changed a few render settings, reducing the ‘render time’ to 0.00, forcing V-Ray to use the noise threshold of 0.004 and changing the light cache to 2600. Johnny Fraser artstation.com/divinitymagic A self-taught 3D artist, Johnny has always loved stylised characters, and feels he can portray characters from pop culture in this manner Software ZBrush, Marvelous Designer, Substance Painter, V-Ray MagnetolovesBeans!, 2018…

The long-serving production executive will take the helm on both the Method Studios and Encore brands as they endeavour to meet increasing demand for their services. Garrad will work closely with Deluxe’s president of VFX Ed Ulbrich and his counterparts across studios worldwide. Garrad says, “The Method/Encore studio in Vancouver was one of the first in town and it’s always been a focal point. “There’s strong VFX and post talent there. Ed has a great vision for the global Method organisation, and part of it is working to help each studio maintain its own culture.”…

The beginning of 2018 saw the rise of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. 2017 saw the power of the Women’s March movement. Women’s issues have always been around, but it’s been such a hot topic lately due to the fact that the focus has been on Hollywood, the source of our mass media. Most of that attention has been surface level, with the big celebrities and actors. But what if we looked deeper into the industries that are the backbone of film-making, including our own: visual effects? Statistically, women make up around 12 to 13 per cent of the visual effects industry. And for lead roles like VFX supervisor, women only make up 5 per cent. These stats were researched about four years ago, and as someone who’s been in…

Company Freefolk Location UK Website freefolk.com Project description Budapest is transformed into New York City of 1896 with recreations of locations like Washington Square, Stuyvesant Square, Greenpoint Docks and The Bowery. Biography With studios in London and New York City, Freefolk is a full-service postproduction and visual effects company established in 2003. Projects range from television, film to commercials with artists providing 2D and 3D visual effects, high-end colour grading, shot supervision, animation, design, concept and direction. Contributor • Kent Houston Production VFX supervisor • Wendy Garfinkle Production VFX supervisor • Steve Murgatroyd Freefolk VFX supervisor “Our work and that of the other vendors has genuinely enhanced the show” Oftentimes the shooting location and the setting of the story are different which was the case for the psychological thriller The Alienist. Overseeing…

MODELLING I model in ZBrush. Most important for me is to have references from the real world. For the skin I use the XYZ textures, for the rest I sculpt wrinkles for fabrics etc. As a character artist I do the modelling and texturing, for other parts I use the help of friends. The lighting/ grooming was done by Mickael Yon and compositing by Emeric Renard. Julie Tardieu tardieujulie.artstation.com Julie lives in Montreal and works in the games industry primarily on key art and game cinematics. She is also a character artist Software ZBrush, Maya, V-Ray, Substance Painter Jinx , 2018…