Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 96 i 3D Artist

“This time we wanted something different – a new challenge. Creating an animal was so much fun to do but also very challenging! It was such a good way to learn more about sculpting and grooming”Jordan Soler & Felix Ferrand, Sleepy Bear, 2016 Jordan Soler & Felix Ferrand artstation.com/artist/lartichau Felix and Jordan work together. They found a perfect balance and complete each other Software ZBrush, Arnold Work in progress… “This was born from the desire to explore my low-poly style and push it further. I was thinking about exploring low poly on the edge of toy/ product design for a long time now, and it has finally happened”Mateusz Szulik, The PolyWood: Deer, 2016 Mateusz Szulik matszulik.com Mat is an art director, illustrator and 3D artist living with his family…

When Pixar released Finding Nemo in 2003 it found itself with an instant classic on its hands and the movie has proved to be one of the most popular of the studio’s feature films to date. Finding Dory, directed by Andrew Stanton and co-directed by Angus MacLane, has already proved hugely successful, having enjoyed a terrific opening weekend in North America. The new movie tells the story of Nemo’s sidekick, the memory-challenged Dory, as she sets out on a journey to seek a way home. The film marks yet another instalment in Pixar’s evolution of its application of digital toolkits. 3D Artist recently spoke with Pixar about what it took to dive back into a sea of creative possibilities, revisiting characters, creating a gang of new ones and building environments…

The goal of this tutorial is to create a realistic 3D blood pool effect quickly and easily all within the same program, Blackmagic Fusion, which can be downloaded for free from blackmagicdesign.com. Creating realistic blood is a very common visual effects request, adding believability to any fight sequence, and the work on short film ‘Temple’ – which has been awarded Vimeo Short of the Week – proved no different. One of the fight sequences in the film involved a character dying on the ground, a pool of blood slowly growing underneath him. Creating this blood pool on set with practical effects was out of the question due to the budget. The solution emerged after testing Fusion. The program generated fast 3D liquid effects with realistic displacement and reflection maps so…

Kless Gyzen kless.artstation.com Kless is 21 years old. He is a self-taught artist and has been modelling for about three years Software Blender LightHouse, 2016 LIGHTING I really enjoy creating environments and landscapes – when it comes down to how I make an environment, lighting is a super important aspect for making a believable scene. With most of my scenes I like to use Pro-Lighting Skies: an add-on for Blender that streamlines an HDRI setup and makes lighting a scene very easy.…

The latest release of MODO focuses mainly on improvements for game artists. It features a number of new features and upgrades to make life easier for work on game assets and baking. It boosts an already-solid modelling program with some much-needed tools that make it easier to work with real-time engines. The largest new features and improvements lie in the new games layout and the tools within it. The Game Tools layout is a new tab that gathers many of the game-art specific tools in one place, with export settings and options for FBX, baking information for baking out textures, as well as a section for editing vertex normals. Many of the new additions are things that you were able to work around in earlier versions of MODO in various…

Krita started out as a traditional open source project: a small group of volunteers working in their spare time. In 2013, the Krita Foundation was set up to coordinate development and search for funding to pay for development. Krita’s latest fully funded Kickstarter campaign is called Let’s Make Text and Vector Art Awesome! “The process is important because it’s a yearly get-together with the wider Krita user community,“ explains Boudewijn Rempt, project lead at Krita Foundation. “When we make a list of features to vote for, we use the input we’ve got from users over the past year and try to make sure there’s something for everyone. We were ambitious this time because we felt there were two or three really big issues: our text tool – inherited from a…

Described as a completely new application, stand-alone crowd simulation tool Anima 2 has been completely rewritten and sports a brand-new simulation engine for improved animation. Developed for architects and designers to rapidly populate scenes, artists can quickly set up simulations by drawing a path and adding actors from either the Asset Library or custom third-party rigged characters with motion-capture data. Options are available to vary poses, texture maps and motion for more realistic scenes. Walkway tools provide controls to determine distribution, spacing, direction and clustering, and AI anticipates collisions between actors. Anima 2 is available on Windows for €249.…

Some updates are Max/Maya specific but changes common to both versions in V-Ray 3.4 include CPU and GPU-accelerated automatic denoising, up to 15 per cent faster global illumination calculations, GPU rendering improvements and colour control for atmospheric haze. The VRayDenoiser node works non-destructively by returning both the original render and a denoised version for further adjustment in post. The workflow aims to reduce render time by up to half and can be used progressively while rendering or after rendering, with support for animation and enhanced blending between frames with the stand-alone Denoiser tool. An incremental update to 3.40.02 adds minor modifications and bug fixes.…

ADAM NORDGREN adamnordgren.se Adam joins us for the first time this month to show off his considerable modelling and materials chops in Blender. Jet fighters look amazing when they’re done as well as this. 3DArtist username adamnordgren JONATHAN LAMPEL jonathanlampel.com Jonathan has taken time out of his busy schedule at CGCookie.com to show you how to use Blender to model and pose a dynamic sci-fi character. His tutorial is over on p54. 3DArtist username JonathanL PAUL HATTON cadesignservices.co.uk As you know, 3ds Max 2017 was recently launched, bringing with it a wealth of new workflow features. Modelling has had a bit of a revival, and Paul shows off some of the new tools on p60. 3DArtist username Phatton SANTIAGO MENGHINI santiagomenghini.com More and…

The showreel or portfolio is the first thing that employers will look at and is “most certainly someone’s calling card when it comes to getting a job,“ says Amy Smith, global head of recruitment at Framestore (framestore.com). That doesn’t mean that CVs, work experience and recommendations aren’t important, but as Smith notes, “We always appreciate recommendations from our existing team but we don’t give recommendations any kind of preferential access to roles: we always come back to who has the best showreel at the end of the day.“ At Envy (envypost.co.uk) most of the junior artists taken on are “home-grown from our runner contingent of 40 plus,“ explains head of client services Tom Morgan. “Runners intending to pursue a career in 3D/VFX build relationships with members of staff they wish…

We all know that Blender can be a powerful tool for 3D content creation. But with so many features, it can sometimes be hard to take advantage of all that the software has to offer. Enter 3D Artist’s Blender experts, who we’ve gathered from around the world to share their best Blender tips and hacks. Over the next few pages, our experts will reveal a range of tricks you can employ to help you get the best performance out of Blender, such as UI customisations, ways to improve your workflow and time-saving hotkeys. There are also Blender add-ons to consider, how to optimise renders, compositing tricks and scripting hacks. If you’ve ever thought Blender was too complicated to use then now’s your chance to go under the hood. Our Blender…

Jonathan Lampel Jonathan won an Autodesk CG Student Award in 2014. He loves working at CG Cookie and is working toward a degree in Digital Gaming and Animation. Waking the Dragon King, 2016 Blender, Substance, Photoshop This image is the result of a 3D environments class exercise. Jonathan made a sketch of the scene a couple years prior, and was really excited to finally be able to make it come to life. The Reading Room, 2016 Blender, Photoshop A modern interior designed for a college project on home environments. Jonathan loves reading, tea and minimalism, so he made a spot he would love to relax in. Freedom, 2015 Blender, Photoshop A steampunk marionette automation cutting his strings – but is it real freedom in the long run? This piece was…

We will be taking a close look at the iClone 3DXchange pipeline and showcasing how quick and easy creating a customised character ready for animation can be. First we will jump into iClone with the add-on Character Creator. There we will begin morphing our character’s proportions and features to get the model started by simply clicking on the highlighted areas of the mesh and dragging the cursor. This will become our base mesh for the remainder of the pipeline. Then we will import the model into 3DXchange to create a file we can bring into ZBrush to sculpt and paint on. Think of 3DXchange as our bridge program, enabling us to maintain proper files for our mesh, textures, and rig for animation throughout the pipeline. Once we complete our sculpting…

“The M2000 will certainly find its way into millions of workstations” The last Quadro card in the line-up to use NVIDIA’s ancient Kepler design, the M2000 has been updated with a more efficient Maxwell architecture for the popular £400 to £500 price point. NVIDIA really took its time with improving it too; the first Maxwell-based Quadro cards launched last year, and until now the K2200 was left behind as a far slower, poor choice as a professional GPU for artists, compared with the other cards in that line-up. The card is a single-slot GPU, and at only 16.7cm long, slightly shorter than its predecessor; it will squeeze comfortably into all kinds of workstations. It’s just fine for a dinky desktop system, it will fit into a custom corporate chassis or…

Dragonfly Macrophotography by Fredi Walker 3DA username Fwalker Fredi Walker says: “I wanted to replicate the appearance of SEM (scanning electron microscope) style photos. Rendered in Arnold with the use of a custom rim shader, the mesh was sculpted in ZBrush and post effects were applied in Photoshop.“ We say: Fredi has achieved the desired style and then some – this is almost indistinguishable from SEM imagery. It would be great to see the same style applied to a variety of different creatures. Sky Whale Tours by Ian Best 3DA username Husbandofemily Ian Best says: “This was a game model I got carried away with. I had to teach myself volumetric clouds using online tutorials – it took a long time before I was happy with them!“ We say:…

For over 25 years Fusion has been used to create visual effects on thousands of blockbuster films, TV shows and commercials. Fusion features an easy to use and powerful node based interface, a massive tool set, true 3D workspace and GPU accelerated performance all in a single application! Now with Fusion 8 you can use the same powerful software to create your own blockbuster effects! Hollywood’s Secret Weapon Fusion has been used to create groundbreaking visual effects and motion graphics for Hollywood films such as The Martian, Thor and The Hunger Games, as well as on hit television shows like Orphan Black, Breaking Bad, Grimm and Battlestar Galactica! If you’ve ever gone to the movies or watched television, then you’ve seen Fusion in action! Work Faster with Nodes Fusion uses…

“The showreel that I presented to MPC was for FX,” explains German. “Created mainly in Houdini, it features a viscous FLIP fluid simulation of hot caramel being poured over a cold chocolate ball and melting” “A showreel’s goal is mostly to advertise how you think as an artist and problem solver,” says German, as well as “how much attention to detail is given.” Here, she set herself the problem of melting chocolate, and solved it As well as showing your work, you also need to show what work you’ve done, so break that down into plates, show your wireframes or whatever you need to do. Here German “also shows each layer of effects created by themselves” German’s was an appealingly short-and-to-the-point reel, running to 42 seconds. The second asset was…

Adam Nordgren Adam works freelance and dwells in the cellar of a 19th Century bookstore during the day. He is a 3D generalist, a hobby photographer and an amateur chocolate taster. Adam works mostly with arch vis where environments are his core strength. He also likes to work with vehicle modelling. Rävlyan, 2016 Blender Concept house inspired by Ex Machina, Adam wanted an over-the-top architecture piece in his portfolio and fell in love with an in-ground house in Alaska in real life. Saab 93F 1960, 2015 Blender It’s just another Saab but it’s a bit different this time as it was made as a commuting vehicle instead of a Cold War vehicle – a beautiful car none the less. Ljusdal’s Watertower, 2015 Blender A…

There is nothing quite like having a great shader to complement the other aspects of your setup or scene. It can make a texture go from looking good to looking great, and it can complement an already well-designed light setup. Building shaders often requires an observant eye and a fair amount of patience. Whatever 3D software you use, each one of them will offer a slightly unique approach to shader building. For this tutorial we will be using Houdini, but we would like to think that this approach can be followed along in almost all 3D packages, since it is the methodology that is the most important aspect of this. The purpose of this tutorial is to hopefully help you to understand certain aspects of building a metallic material using…

“Roto and prep artists will be thrilled to discover that revisions and fixes to the RotoPaint node make it far more efficient” The old adage of ‘why fix it if it’s not broken’ comes to mind with the release of NUKE 10 – but in a positive way. There’s been no unwarranted tweaks to the UI, thankfully, or gimmicky tools added. Instead The Foundry has focused on customer feedback to squish a stack of bugs, and honed in on bottlenecks that artists face on a day-to-day basis with new features and performance improvements. We loaded up full-fat NUKEX to try them out. Roto and prep artists will be thrilled to discover that revisions and fixes to the RotoPaint node make it far more efficient than before. With increasing amounts of…

“Feedback from last year’s winners has been extremely positive, and we are thrilled with the meaningful impact that this initiative has had”Nick Brooks, head of not-for-profit at Kingston Smith Hosted by Bournemouth University’s NCCA and the Arts University Bournemouth, BFX has again partnered with media accountants Kingston Smith and its Creative Vision Award to offer charities the opportunity to win an industry-quality animation worth an estimated £150,000. The animations are created entirely by the talented students selected to compete in the competition. More than 150 charities applied, with Refuge and Create Arts being selected as the recipients of the final films. Meanwhile 40 students working in teams of five were chosen from over 100 applicants as the 2016 competitors. During their seven-week residency, which runs from 11 July to 26…

On 31 July Autodesk will cease selling Design and Creation Suites, and then from 1 August offer a new selection of software bundles. The new Industry Collections, titled Architecture, Engineering and Construction; Product Design; and Media and Entertainment are aimed at providing end users with greater flexibility and better value. It marks the next phase in Autodesk’s transition away from software purchases as each collection will now be available as monthly, quarterly, annual and multi-year subscriptions. The all-encompassing Media and Entertainment collection removes the previous choice of three different editions by bundling together Maya, 3ds Max, MotionBuilder and Mudbox and includes additional cloud services and storage. This makes it comparable to the Entertainment Creation Suites’ Ultimate Edition minus Softimage, which was discontinued in 2014 but continued to be offered in…

01 Skyjet by Facundo Giovannone 3DA username 3dpihilosophy Facundo Giovannone says: “The vehicle represents a retro and modern design blend of a flying artefact. The design principle is based on rusted metal and a vehicle that has been used in combat or used in expeditions.“ We say: Facundo’s choice of materials really makes this vehicle stand out, and the roughness around the edges gives it a sense of context. It certainly wouldn’t be out of place in a dusty old spaceport like Mos Eisley. 02 Dwarf Warrior by Panuwat Bovornsirisarp 3DA username Eternity-nu Panuwat Bovornsirisarp says: “Here is my latest work, Dwarf Warrior. I designed and sculpted the form in ZBrush and I used KeyShot for rendering. I was inspired by World Of Warcraft.“ We say: This is…