Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 124 i 3D Artist

If you’ve been to see a major superhero or action film lately, or caught one of the several must-see television or streaming shows, then you’ve probably experienced a meticulously crafted opening titles, main credits sequence or prologue. These pieces, which tend to come at the start of a film or show, but also exist as ‘main-on-end’ titles, help to set the mood, sometimes hint at the story to come and of course also have the purpose of crediting the main creatives behind the work. These days such sequences are entire productions in and of themselves, and typically involve significant design, 3D, animation and visual effects work, sometimes by specialist studios. Coming up with an effective scene is also categorised by extensive pitches, concepts and attempts to tap into the minds…

ESPEN NORDAHL Visual effects supervisor, Storm Studios stormstudios.no CONTROLLING SAND Storm’s sandification tool included controls for ‘jittering’ grains to make for more broken-up silhouettes. Sand and dust was also made to trail off of all the assets with an unseen wind. CROWD SIMS Crowd-simulated armies appear in many prologue shots, often in backgrounds. “It’s kinda funny that the most epic part of the sequence is out of focus, behind lots of smoke, with the camera travelling past quite quickly,” notes Nordahl. MAKING SAND Storm firstly tried a ‘macro’ lookdev for the sand, but the initial sims appeared dull and uninteresting. “We flipped the scale and went for a slow motion, larger scale approach which was a lot more cinematic,” says VFX supervisor Espen Nordahl. GRANULAR DETAIL “All of our…

With this article we will cover some of the techniques used in the creation of the Mars Ranger. During the process, time was a major limitation and so it was very important that the workflow was trimmed down wherever possible in order to create a great design in an efficient manner. We will look at some of the workflow enhancements and shortcuts used within Modo to allow more time for the design portion of the project as well as provide some general tips that might help you in the future with your design work. The Ranger was built as part of the HP Mars Home Planet modelling competition so it needed to not only impress designers but also engineers. We will discuss how this affected the design process later in…

Abraão Segundo A graduate of advertising and 3D, Abraão is from Natal, Brazil. Today he lives in Vancouver, Canada, working in the 3D character artist field. He works as a freelancer for Prime One Studio, doing characters for collectibles. Darth Malgus, 2015 ZBrush, Maya, V-Ray This project I did for a challenge. The theme was to make a redesign for a character from the Star Wars film series. Dolmen Main Character, 2017 ZBrush, Maya, Marmoset This is a Brazilian sci-fi game, in production with Massive Work Studio. I’m responsible for the characters. For this I made the concept inside ZBrush and all the process. Captain Iron, 2015 Maya, ZBrush and V-Ray This image was created for a Comic Con challenge in 2015. This character…

Working in real-time enables artists to focus on their creative ideas all through the creation process. In this tutorial, Notch’s particle engine was used to re-create the surface of an animated 3D character using 120,000 cubes, as well as motion-tracking features and post-processing effects to produce a high quality shot. This tutorial uses an animated deer from Truebones Mocap Studios: truebones.com/free-demos. We will also be adjusting lighting and post processing effects to taste. For brevity, these steps are not covered in the tutorial, but can be seen in the accompanying DFX file when opened in Notch Builder. 01 Import and place your 3D model Notch can import models and scenes in FBX, C4D, ABC, LWO and OBJ formats. Drag the model from the resource panel to the node graph and…

Vicon has announced the release of Origin, a location-based virtual reality (LBVR) system that blends Vicon’s tracking abilities with tools that make it easy for anyone to set up and operate. The new solution has been designed to empower VR creators big and small, by offering unparalleled quality and reliability. “The location-based VR industry is poised to explode, but for fans and developers to really embrace it, the experience needs to be flawless,” says Dreamscape Immersive co-founder and CTO Caecilia Charbonnier. “When Vicon first approached us about working with them on Origin we demanded the highest level of precision, and Vicon did not disappoint.” Origin includes three brand-new pieces of hardware, along with software created specifically for Vicon’s new LBVR system. Following three years of development alongside creators like Dreamscape…

There are many times in a movie you may not see or even are aware that the skill of the highly talented model shop is involved Visual effects all started with models – actual models that were welded, crafted, sculpted and sometimes hammered together and Lorne Peterson is possibly the most skilled having worked on more than 42 movies in his career, taking scripts and devising ways to enable the story to come to life in the most realistic ways possible. Although Lorne began his career on his knees applying small pieces of tape to the Death Star for Star Wars – A New Hope, he explains that there are many times in a movie you may not see or even are aware that the skill of the highly talented…

“This image is a part of my personal sci-fi project titled Fracton 8. The action takes place in the distant future where humanity is exploring new worlds using super advanced technology. The entire project is divided into three chapters. First, futuristic cities/constructions on Earth. Second, human colonies in spaces and third, discovering mega alien constructions by human expeditions”Jacek Pilarski, Vegas N27, 2018 Jacek Pilarski jacekpilarski.com Jacek is a senior digital matte painter/generalist and concept artist at Framestore. He also specialises in photogrammetry Software Photoshop, Mandelbulb 3D Work in progress… “An image always starts with a fantasy, then develops into a good idea, and comes together when you have the pleasure of creating. The character in my other image The Gray People, the prince of an isolated world, long sought a…

Scott Ross possesses three decades of experience in the VFX industry. He is the reason visual effects house Digital Domain exists today, and before being a cofounder, he used to run George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic in the Eighties, his expertise led to Academy Awards. It makes sense then to take heed of his advice when he explains the pitfalls of current movie VFX work from the production company to the movie house to the enticement of government subsidies. “Movies are driven by access to free money or cheap money,” he says unabashedly, “a lot of VFX workers look at the corporate entity,” not from an understanding of how things work, movies are always chasing low cost. Outside of LA, London is currently the vibrant capital hub of visual…

JOSE LIMON Lead 3D artist, Elastic elastic.tv RAOUL MARKS Lead animator and compositor, Elastic elastic.tv 01 Revisiting Westworld As he had done on season one’s main titles, director Patrick Clair led the design effort for these follow-up credits. Some new imagery was introduced, but in general the titles reflected the idea of these mechanical forms being 3D printed like the ‘hosts’ of the HBO show. 02 Toolset for the titles Much of the modelling was done in ZBrush, with Cinema 4D being the main 3D tool, including for rigging and animation. Some hard-surfaces for the robot attachments were handled in Fusion 360, while X-Particles made the ‘pearl’ simulations possible. Rendering was carried out in Octane. 03 Sculpting mother and newborn Underlying anatomy needed to be part of the…

MERT KIZILAY Creative director/art director, yU+co yuco.com 01 Classic Tomb Raider totems The end titles included familiar Tomb Raider iconography, and yU+co crafted a story around things from Lara Croft’s notebook. “Sometimes the camera travels between elements, sometimes we just morph them into each other, but there is still a narrative that ties them together as a whole,” says creative director Mert Kizilay. 02 Tools of the trade “We did a lot of line work, sketches and brush strokes on paper,” explains Kizilay. “Sometimes we used them as scanned elements. Sometimes we projected the artwork onto 3D images to give analog sketches depth. 3D objects, texturing and camera moves were done in Cinema 4D, with a little Maya and ZBrush for detailed models.” 03 Entering the third dimension The…

WELCOME! The CG Awards is a pure celebration of recent achievements in computer graphics, from art created by the lone student artist to the biggest Soho studio and everybody in-between, as well as a special mention for the next Hall of Fame inductee. This year we are opening the vote up to the public too until 15 November, so head over to bit.ly/CGAWARDS to have your say! Carrie Mok, 3D Artist Editor carrie.mok@futurenet.com Rob Redman, 3D World Editor rob.redman@futurenet.com EMAIL 3dartist@futurenet.com WEBSITE 3dartistonline.com FACEBOOK facebook.com/3DArtistMagazine TWITTER @3DArtist…

This image, King Of The Streets, is a personal project that was born from a meme that I found that said ‘Sit back. Relax’. I decided to transform it into a full-of-attitude small creature to send a positive message about the power of attitude, with a badass frog that might be tiny but rules the forest! Every project starts from some research but do not get lost, you have to take decisions and I tell you this because it usually gets me trapped. Since this species has approximately 15-30 colour variations, I needed to explore a lot, Substance Painter was key for quick test workflow. After some exploring I chose this poisonous strawberry dart frog that kind of looks like Deadpool. I accentuated the anatomy and added some cool gang…

Creating believable cloth shaders can be tricky, time-consuming and just straight up confusing. In many production environments, each texture is individually crafted by skilled artists using high-resolution photographs as reference. In this tutorial, we will go through the process of creating believable cloth shaders using V-Ray, Thunderloom, and Maya. Thunderloom is a free plugin for V-Ray created in collaboration with the CG department at IKEA, which is responsible for a significant portion of the images in the IKEA catalogue. It is used to produce woven fabric, and it gives the ultimate flexibility over controlling each parameter of the fabric such as yarn size, bend, twist and more without the need of bringing the external maps in. This is a step-by-step tutorial where I will show you my way of making…

“The built-in GUI gives access to various preset colour options for PC and Mac use” The Viewsonic VP3881 breaks new ground by being the first desktop monitor to combine a 38-inch (37.5 inch viewable) ultra-wide, curved, 21:9 IPS 3840x1600 resolution display, with colour accuracy that makes it suitable for graphics professionals. The VP3881 has advertised 100% sRGB coverage, 10-bit HDR colour and a Delta E (colour accuracy rating) of below 2, along with a wealth of settings to tweak the image, offering the tools artists need to ensure they can get the best image possible. The ultra-wide form factor first showed up a few years ago, pitched for use in games and for watching movies over design use. But it’s brilliant for any desktop task, as the sheer width of…

For says professional illustrator and concept artist Carlos Dattoli, “Lighting is the most important factor in giving your picture a feeling.” Whilst the most important factors can change from image to image, getting the lighting just right is always going to make or break the final product. The trick is to find a solution that works for your image to make it compelling and with so many options available that can be a time-consuming prospect. Luckily 3D Artist has assembled 23 top tips from a host of professionals in one handy article. Everything from strategically placing shadows to gathering references is covered. So whether you’re in need of inspiration or entirely new to lighting, the next few pages will enrich your work with some top tips and tricks. 01 USE…

JOHN LIKENS  Creative director, Method Studios New York methodstudios.com Can you tell us how the opening titles for Deadpool 2 were conceived? I had this idea to take Deadpool through all the visual tropes of a traditional James Bond-style sequence, but with a unique Wade Wilson twist. I created a set of style frames that visualised all the different kind of images and compositions that we could explore for a Bond-esque approach and we pitched it to production. As it turns out director David Leitch and VFX supervisor Dan Glass loved the idea as much as we did. Can you talk about how you went about planning out the sequence? I started a rough animatic that basically communicated how the camera would move, what the character animation would involve and…

“Today’s display technologies have a maximum achievable brightness, which are orders of magnitudes lower than in reality, and the saturation of each colour component limits the gamut” The nature of the tasks that 3D artists usually do is kind of a mixture of many art forms such as photography and painting. Painters start with a blank white canvas and compile the wide range of colour values of reality into their much narrower palette to achieve a compelling image in its viewing environment and lighting. They can achieve brighter colours than the white of the canvas using special pigments, but it does almost nothing if we hang that painting on the wall of a movie theatre with the screening light settings. However if we put it in front of the screen…

Houdini has been taking the FX world by storm for some time now, and if you’ve been looking for an opportunity to branch out and become an FX wizard there is no better time than now to get started. Since the release of Houdini 16.5 the software from the team at SideFX has never been more accessible and user friendly especially for first time users. In this tutorial we will learn a simple yet effective technique for creating amazing particle simulations using Houdini Pyro as an advection source to create ethereal flowing particle caches. Using a simple Pyro DOP Network we can drive the emission, force and velocity of a POP Sim and create this amazing effect in less than ten nodes! 01 Source your Pyro Before we can create…

Creating compelling portfolio work is a vital part of your tool set in demonstrating to potential employers that you have the right skills. However, it’s not all about tools and techniques, without a strong sense of art direction and the correct planning your work could feel weak and miss that personal touch that makes you stand out. This tutorial takes you through some of the key steps of creating a game environment, from pre-production through to finished project. Starting with the initial brief and creating style guides, we also discuss the impact of scheduling and blocking out through to environmental storytelling and finally lighting and post-process. At Escape Studios we were very fortunate to have Ian Palmer, art director at Supermassive Games, mentor and guide our students. Ian’s keen insights…

“We are delighted to welcome talented artists and professionals from around the world”Sofronis Efstathiou, BFX festival director When you think of visual effects, blockbuster movies, Hollywood and A-list actors spring to mind, right? Not a little seaside resort on the south coast of England. But when it comes to VFX, animation and gaming, Bournemouth is one of the hottest places to be. Not only is it home to the Bournemouth University and its world-class National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA), it’s also where the university gathers some of the world’s leading artists for its annual BFX Festival. A three-day event, the BFX Festival celebrates everything visual effects and CGI. Returning for its sixth year, this looks set to be the biggest and best one yet, with the 2018 event boasting…

Kilograph has received a prestigious CGarchitect Architectural 3D Award for its work on a multi-sensory VR experience, Suspension House. The project received the accolade for its unique blend of 3D audio, gaze cues and exploration-based triggers. The award was presented during a presentation ceremony at the d2 conference in Vienna. Now entering its 15th year, the 3D Awards are the arch vis industry’s highest honour. The 2018 Interactive category, which also includes AR, VR and emerging technologies, was judged by a panel of 15 industry experts.…