Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 128 i 3D Artist

As one of the most exciting artists working today, Maarten Verhoeven is a force to be reckoned within the ZBrush community. Coming fresh from his win as champion of the ZBrush Sculpt-Off 2018, he’s given us an inside guide on creating stunning concepts using his trusty sculpting tool of choice from Pixologic. You can find his tutorial on page 46. Image Engine also gives us the inside scoop on their work on Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald this issue. Not only that, but they’ve also kindly given us two expert tutorials for re-creating some of their genius effects. From hair transformation to pro Marvelous Designer techniques for film, they’ve covered it all. Don’t miss it! Elsewhere you can discover the impact of arch viz, learn to relight CG in…

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The carriage intended to extradite Grindelwald to Europe is pulled by six Thestrals, skeletal Pegasus creatures that are invisible to all that haven’t witnessed death. “We initially received a scan from the first movie,” recalls Culpitt. “We rebuilt the model and topology, then added more detail. The camera gets quite close, so we spent some time readjusting the look dev.” Essentially Culpitt and his team needed to make sure that the Thestral’s felt like emaciated horses with wings. “Bat wings were our main reference,” he says. “In the end we created six of them, with subtle differences. It was also a challenge to figure out the size and scale of them and how they’d fly as a group.” Image Engine also created the Chupacabra, a six legged, sharp-toothed creature that…

Substance has been used in game development for years, but what is it that is making it popular in architectural visualisation now? For years there has been a larger revolution going on within arch viz where game technologies and real-time pipelines have become more important to the workflow. When teams look to the leaders in that field, they find us. And since PBR material creation (or sourcing) is now more important to them, we are able to meet that need in a visually appealing way. Most of the time we are replacing Photoshop, which can be an amazing tool for retouching, but not for PBR material creation. Videogames need to balance realism with technical restrictions, but arch viz doesn’t necessarily suffer from this. How does Substance cater to this greater…

JÉRÉMIEALBA artstation.com/jeremiealba  Character artist at Inviro Studios ANDREA GOH artstation.com/andreagoh  Layout (camera & staging) artist at Pixar Animation Studios MENG GUAN artstation.com/mengguan  Senior character artist at Starbreeze Studios SZE JONES artstation.com/szejones  Senior character artist, previously at Outpost Games, Square Enix and Naughty Dog PRAVEEN NATARAJAN artstation.com/paladinpraveen  Lead character artist at Ubisoft Mumbai MATT WAGGLE artstation.com/mattwaggle  Character artist, previously at Illfonic, Trion Worlds…

Bio Anna Fedyukina has a master’s degree in architectural department and specialises in interior design and 3D visualisation. She has considerable experience in interior design and has been cooperating with other interior designers and design studios. Software 3ds Max, Corona Renderer Learn how to Create a simple landscape Use Corona Scatter Learn lighting techniques Implement fog effect Add artistic mood with DOF and bokeh Use Corona post-processing Concept The scene was inspired by nature and countryside life. The task was not only to copy the nature but to add some artistic mood, to tell a short story with special details and character.…

For the plants in the scene you can create your own textures from scratch using photos taken on the location. Shoot as many different samples as you can: leaves, bark, flower petals. Another way is to gather leaves and scan them, but you probably will not be able to scan the bark of a tree. For both methods you need to edit the images in Photoshop before you can use it in 3ds Max. Create diffuse texture, cropping your photos if necessary. Use the Transform tool to align lines and shapes. After that, make textures for reflection, bump and opacity. You will get unique textures for your close-ups renders.…

Bio Alexia has a traditional art background and a lifelong passion for shapes and colours, character creation and storytelling. She holds a master’s degree in 3D and spent one year after graduation in Paris with Illumination Mac Guff working on Despicable Me 3. She now teaches 3D and freelances with studios such as Blur and DreamworksTV. Software 3ds Max, Ornatrix, V-Ray, ZBrush Learn how to Createrealistichair Work with Ornatrix Render hair with V-Ray Organise your workflow Optimise your scene Use high-end grooming techniques Choose your modifiers wisely Create accurate technical maps Create hair shader and textures Experiment with parameters Concept The concept comes from a mix of brainstorming with reference images and ideas with a speed sculpt in ZBrush. It helps a lot with placing the first guides and…

Don’t shy away from manual solutions. When working on a shot specific effect, it’s usually less time consuming to find a manual solution than a procedural one, and it often ends up looking better anyways! Try to set up manual tweaks in a way that won’t break if the input data changes. Deform using generic geometry, and group or delete based on consistent attributes. Aim for 90 per cent procedural, 10 per cent manual. Clearly mark any manual edits in the network so they can be quickly checked when inputs are updated. Manual animation is a powerful tool to work around minor simulation issues.…

NOEL POWELL creationeffects.com Bio Noel Powell is a VFX artist with 15 years of experience in After Effects. He is the creator of creationeffects.com, which features custom visual effects templates for After Effects. When it comes to having flying or swimming critters in our shots, nature is unlikely to cooperate. That leaves us to address the issue in post. Stock footage can be a great option if you can find footage of critters behaving the way you want, if the angle and lighting matches your shot and if the stock footage can be easily keyed and composited. We could also create a 3D model of our animal, texture it, rig it, and animate copies – a time-consuming and costly option. There is a third option that is inexpensive, quick, and…

Erik Lehmann, senior build TD at DNEG, has created a set of tools that aim to speed up everyday tasks and assist artists’ workflows in Maya. After working on a number of high profile shows and assets, Lehmann came across a number of things he felt could be simplified and automated. Currently on offer are: UV Toolkit, Shader Toolkit, Curve Toolkit, Selection Toolkit and Renamer. The kits are available for purchase on gumroad.com/eriklehmann, and video overviews of the tools can be found at vimeo.com/eriklehmann.…

Visual effects artists are often so focussed on the technical aspects of their role, they forget about the other aspects of being a successful VFX artist. Due to this, it can be very easy to get ahead by focussing on what others are missing, allowing you to stand out with the same amount of work. Throughout my compositing career I’ve made notes on what I believe to be the contributing factors for successful people within the industry. This has lead to me spotting patterns across the most successful artists within the VFX industry. What makes a successful VFX artist will be different for everyone so I would encourage you to do this same exercise. In this article I will go over what some of these factors are and how you…

SHADING & RENDERING This is an alternate version of one of my demo scenes. Most of the ‘winter’ changes are solely shader-based, working with global gradients and directional masking to add snow layers to the base textures and to add appropriate reflection and displacement. The snow materials make heavy use of procedural shaders, so I could apply them universally. They also strongly depend on SSS, to emphasise the soft appearance of snow. Christian Otten christianotten.artstation.com Christian enrolled for a VFX/animation course and graduated in 2017. Software Maya, ZBrush, Wynyard(Winter Version), 2018…

MAARTEN VERHOEVEN artstation.com/mutte ZBrush Sculpt-Off 2018 champion Maarten is a wizard when it comes to digital sculpting and concepting with ZBrush. Re-create his Queen Of The Dead image on page 46. 3DArtist username mutte ANNA FEDYUKINA behance.net/annafedyukina Anna specialises in interior designs and 3D visualisations. This issue she explains how she created this incredible environment scene, inspired by Ukrainian countrysides on page 54. 3DArtist username Anna F ALEXIA RUBOD alexiarubod.com Alexia teaches 3D and freelances with studios such as Blur and DreamWorksTV. This issue she teaches us how to create realistic hair with Ornatrix and 3ds Max on page 60. 3DArtist username AlexiaRubod JOSH PARKS compositingpro.com Compositor Josh Parks works at Bluebolt, previously having worked at the likes of DNEG, MPC and ILM. This issue he tells you how to…

“There’s a sequence with Queenie and Jacob walking down a London street,” explains Martyn Culpitt. “They’re having a conversation then she gets pissed off and disapparates away.” The sequence was originally shot on a London street, which needed to be closed for filming. “With performances it’s hard to always get what you want and I don’t think David got the story he was after,” Culpitt continues. “He got both actors back and did another shoot against a green screen. Back on the street they’d done LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and taken photos. They wanted us to create a full digital version of that street. When we were done David was absolutely blown away by it. He didn’t question whether each shot was in that street or not.”…

You’ve been around for quite some time. How has arch viz changed over the course of the company’s existence? For the longest time there was a push towards photorealism. Once achieved, the next wave became real-time and doing more with your design interactively. We are finally at a point where both tracks are operating in tandem, so artists can get immediate feedback through real-time without giving up the ability to call up photorealistic rendering whenever they need it. If you could pick one defining thing about Chaos Group and V-Ray, what would you say it was that helped to make it such an integral part of arch viz? V-Ray is really a Swiss Army knife. When it comes to designers and arch-viz artists, they are generalists at heart. They are…

In this breakdown of this project we’ll show you how Maarten created the Queen Of The Dead. He’ll try to give an insight into how he completes these types of projects. So let’s take a look at how you can speed up your workflow, learn about what you can create in ZBrush and how you can maximise your concepts, using simple tools and primitives, and how to maximise your results using KeyShot for rendering. We will also share some interesting tips and tricks on lighting in KeyShot that he discovered when making this piece. 01 Use of a base mesh You like to work fast, so what’s the best way to start quickly? Start with a base mesh. We knew what the initial final design was going to look like,…

TEXTURING AND LOOK DEV Once I had all the displacement done in ZBrush I created the maps with the multimap exporter to import into Substance Painter. For the cloth I used the same technique and I like to use some smart masks to create more random grunges. In Maya I created the look dev with Arnold. For the hair I used XGen. Limkuk Art artstation.com/limkuk Creature and character artist, lover of the aliens and sci-fi stories with four years of experience. Software ZBrush, Maya, Substance Painter, Arnold, Photoshop VincentvanGogh , 2018…

To make your vegetation scattering more realistic and random, use the transformations settings in Corona Scatter. Set different amounts for elements translation, rotation and scale. You can use the Corona Distance Map to keep paths, roads and the area around houses clear of plants and trees. To make it work create simple geometry – shapes where grass should not grow, and add the shapes to the node input and assign near and far distance in Corona Distance Map settings. Don’t forget to set the map to distribution scattering settings.…

This is valid for any kind of project, but especially if you are working with clients that are going to give you feedback. Always plan ahead to avoid painful time-loss in the future. Consider having safety zones. For example, make the emitter a bit bigger than you think it should be. Increment your files and your maps, don’t replace them. Duplicate your hair systems, your shaders, your lights and so on when you achieve a look that you like but want to keep experimenting.…

GOOD REFERENCING When creating a texture in Substance I always start with gathering references. I treat the reference gathering stage as a way to inspire myself and get excited about the texture I’m going to create. Once you have an understanding for these elements in your reference it becomes much easier to translate them into Substance. Shreni Agarwal artstation.com/shreniagarwal Shreni Agarwal comes from Agra, India. She’s been in the games industry since 2014 and currently works at Dhruva Interactive. Software Substance Designer, Marmoset Toolbag BambooSticks , 2018…

Localisation is a great way to improve control over any operation. Calculate a transform matrix using a centre point with N and up. Multiply the inverse of this matrix with a rest matrix to get a reverse transformation. Now multiply the input data by this matrix to localise it. For volumes, extract translate, rotate and scale from the matrix, then use them to drive a transform SOP. Localise and invert velocity to drive a wind force, and store the original P to sample noises in world space. Enjoy the ease of operating with wrangles, SOPs or DOPs orthographically!…

Allegorithmic’s fall 2018 update to Substance Designer offers a host of new features and updates designed with help from the Substance community. UX bottlenecks have been smoothed out, creating a more responsive workflow. A new PBR rendering node has also been added, increasing photorealism in a single map. Feedback from the community helped Allegorithmic to make a number of workflow improvements. This includes the ability to access the Node List through tab or spacebar. What’s more is after users select a node all connected parent nodes can also be revealed and highlighted. Allegorithmic founder and CEO Sebastien Deguy adds, “As we continue to add new features and improvements to Substance Designer, we rely more and more on our community to help us identify the areas that are costing designers time,…

Flix 6.0 With the latest release of its collaborative story development tool, Foundry has put in place a complete re-architecture, giving Flix a more intuitive UI. Key features of the release include: a collaborative hub, a virtual production assistant and new review tools. For information on licences or to request a demo head to foundry.com/products/flix. finalRender Drop 2.0 The latest release from cebas debuts a new biased Light Cache system, biasHybrid. Edwin Braun, head of the cebas development team explains, “We have developed a the Light Cache that works on GI. Our users can expect even greater rendering power in future updates as we work on combining biased and unbiased path tracing to reflection depth-of-field and denoising.” Katana 3.1 Key features of this release include improved 3D scene processing performance…

01 Alien Creature Concept by Daniel Pantaleon 3DA username Danpants Daniel Pantaleon says: “I made this as part of a speed sculpt in ZBrush and then rendered in Marmoset Toolbag, which gave me a quick and fast creature design.” We say: It’s funny how the slimy look of this creature makes it instantly more gross but also more of a compelling image at the same time. We’d love to have seen more of this speed sculpt too! 02 Flax – Sh*t In Space by Gianpietro Fabre 3DA username Ganjica Gianpietro Fabre says: “This space station was built as a digital asset for a short film made by Bacon OSL for Flax, the Norwegian Lottery. This is one of the renders I did after the film was released, just…

3 Textures from Renderhub Get amazing hand-painted wood, grass and more 3 Premium CGAxis models A collection of models to use in your work 25 Textures from 3DTotal.com Download plenty of high-quality textures Plus: all of this is yours too… • Video to accompany the Critters After Effects tutorial • Surfaces and clouds for the countryside scene tutorial • A huge selection of essential high-res and work-in-progress imagery to accompany the rest of our unmissable tutorials in ZBrush, 3ds Max, Nuke and more 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…

Character modelling can be one of the most challenging things you will do as a 3D artist, but it’s also a great chance to show off your creativity, ingenuity and talent. Capturing a gesture or emotion in your model and conveying personality takes a lot of practice, but as you hone your skills you’ll start to build up techniques for making your characters unique and expressive. In this article top artists who work for the likes of Pixar Animation Studios, Ubisoft and Square Enix explain how they go about designing and sculpting live beings. Dreaming up fantastic creatures is an opportunity to unleash your imagination and create something your audience has never seen before, such as a feathered robot with three faces, all of which are made of avocado –…

Bio I’m specialised in digital sculpting and concepting with ZBrush, for 2D images as well as 3D rapid prototyping. Being a digital sculptor I work on many different types of projects including concept sculpts, creature, jewellery, props, toys, statues, collectibles and fine art. Software ZBrush, Marvelous Designer, KeyShot, Photoshop Learn how to Master Sculptris Pro Use IMM brushes Polypaint Use Noisemaker Work with FiberMesh Light in KeyShot Make materials in KeyShot Work in post-production with Photoshop Concept The concept started when I saw some images of some Dia de Muertos girls. I loved the tiaras and flower crowns that the girls wear during this feast, and this, in combination with the imagery of Santa Muerte, sparked my imagination and this is how the Queen was born.…

Copying references is a good way to practice, however, the next step is to create something new and different from the reference. Use the same techniques, but do it your way. Design something that you haven’t seen yet. You can combine techniques and ideas from different sources, for example, take the story from your own photo, add colour scheme from the other artwork and implement the lighting scheme from the third source. Be observant and capture successful colour and lighting combinations from real life by using your camera. Use these photos for your creative work!…

It is difficult to have a clear idea of what your hair really looks like in your viewport. Things like antialiasing, light placement, hair width, hair shaders and so on will play a big role on your final result. To have an effective workflow it’s always good to set yourself up with some proper lighting and render parameters from the beginning and run some tests whenever needed. That way you will get a better feel of how your parameter changes actually affect what you’re doing and you’ll have a visual trace of what is working or not.…

Attribute management is one of the most important factors to maintaining control throughout the script. The easiest way to keep the data stream lean and consistent is to branch operations and then copy relevant attributes back to the main stream by ID – including P. When working with hair, use prim IDs and prim points to copy data in an attribute wrangle. This will enable carving and resampling curves without worrying about scrambling attributes. Aside from that, keeping a UV attribute on the curves is one of the best ways to add an extra level of control during operations.…

“Upon revisiting the script, they realised how much Shrike needed to emote so the decision was made to give him a hybrid facial rig rather than a full metal face,” reveals Weta Digital animation supervisor Dennis Yoo who incorporated flesh elements inspired by Stephen Lang’s onset performance. “Christian Rivers wanted us to explore ways of key framing that did not make him look like a guy in a mocap suit so his motions were simplified. “One thing that we didn’t expect to do was having to bake in his flowing jacket as Christian wanted to see it in our animation.”…