Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 99 i 3D Artist

Ahard-surface modeller is one of the most diverse and varied job titles in the industry; its definition varies from artist to artist. Some take hard surfaces to mean a model with a tight, clean mesh, few curves and hard edges. Others will take it to mean creating any man-made construct, so arch-vis would certainly come under this umbrella. But it could also mean a static rigid object that will not be animated – say, for example, a weapon. Not only is the definition so free, so is the level of inspiration for hard-surface designs. Markus Vogt suggests that the best references you can get are “of real-life hard surfaces and models.“ Hristian Ivanov agrees, and says that for truly believable models, you should look around. “Your model should look good,…

Over the next few steps, we’ll take you through creating superhero movie titling in Blender. Using the Text tool to create the text itself, we’ll go over shading, lighting and rendering. The final portion of the tutorial can be found in the files on FileSilo, where we bring our renders in to Blender’s compositor and add the final touches to make it look great, using free stock footage that can be found on the internet and some basic compositing tricks. Be sure to look at the final files on FileSilo as well for reference. 01 Create the text To start, clear out the default Blender scene of any pre-existing objects by hitting the ‘A’ key on your keyboard (select all) followed by the ‘X’ key to delete them. Then, hit…

Here we’ll be going over a workflow for baking textures using Blender’s Subdivision Surface / Multiresolution modifier and Substance Painter’s texture baking. The tutorial covers a variety of different processes, techniques and my favourite tools, so don’t let the title fool you! Because this tutorial is meant to cover the processes which come after base modelling, we’ll skip the preliminary designing and the actual modelling phase and use a mask where all these things have already been done as a base for this tutorial. I’ll begin the tutorial by showing the things that I usually do before the model is ready to be converted into a high-polygon model using Blender’s Subdivision / Multiresolution modifier. These will include adding additional edges to the model, useful tools and shortcuts – I know,…

Within a professional production pipeline you’ll usually find that a lot of complexity is involved in bringing CG assets from different departments into one major application for lighting and look development. It is obvious that such a software solution must be intricate to be able to handle all the data, but that’s not quite the case when it comes to using Clarisse 3.0 as pipeline tool. The new version of Clarisse has a completely new PBR shading system implemented, which gives CG artists plenty of flexibility when it comes to creating realistic renders – particularly when you bear in mind that most CG artists work directly on the final image itself, rather than the other way around. The Global Project setup is easy to use. In Clarisse, you work with…

The creativity and the talent that our customers have to create this stuff made me really want to helpGareth Williams, MD, YellowDog Gareth Williams’ admiration for 3D artists is clear. He speaks about them with such high regard that it seemed almost natural to see him starting a technical solution to ease their rendering woes. “My area of expertise has always been in product management. It’s always been about technological solutions,“ says Williams. “Before I started YellowDog, I did a ton of research in Bristol, talking to animation studios and 3D artists around here and they were really lovely… The talent that our customers have made me really want to help. So that’s how YellowDog came to be.“ YellowDog is a cloud rendering solution launched in November 2015, and Williams…

01 Skate Workshop by Timothée Maron 3DA username TimotheeM Timothée Maron says: “This work is a school project I made during my first year. The instruction was ‘still life, free subject’, so I decided to try to represent the manufacturing of a skateboard.“ We say: What’s immediately striking about this image is the superb lighting on show, but as you delve deeper, the finer details – like the dust and wood shavings – become more apparent. 02 Fractal Face by Heribert Raab 3DA username schwungsau  Heribert Raab says: “This is an experiment to remesh a human face with different fractal methods – in this case I used a flowfield. For the final rendering, I used Growing Splines driven by the flowfield. The best thing about this method is that…

01 Smooth group placement Setting Smoothing groups is essential for our Chamfer modifier to work its muscle. By doing so we define which bordering sections will get support edges. Those edges are key for the look of our high-poly model once we apply the TurboSmooth. Each colour indicates a separate Smoothing group. 02 Add the Chamfer modifierNow it's time to apply the Chamfer modifier, which has been part of 3ds Max since the 2015 iteration. Make sure to set your settings to Unsmoothed Edges, which will place the edge loops around the Smoothing groups. The Crease and Tension slider gives us full control over the hardness amount of our model. 03 Use TurboSmoothLet's subdivide the geometry by adding TurboSmooth on top of the Chamfer modifier, which results in our high-poly…

If you’ve seen the velociraptors whip into action in Jurassic World or the wolves run and leap in Twilight, or if you’ve laughed at the antics of the bear-about-town in Ted or felt transported by the environments reached in The Matrix then you’ve witnessed images and characters that are recognised globally. Then, too, if you have a smartphone you may have been entertained in recent years by the app, Efexio, which allows you to place photorealistic-looking animated creatures into your own short movie clips. Much more recently, if you’re a game player, you might have watched the amusing and strikingly animated commercial for the hugely popular Japanese mobile game Monster Strike. All of these creatures, characters and situations have been brought to life on various screens by Tippett Studio, based…

01 Extract low poly In my pipeline, once the high-definition model is finalised in ZBrush, I extract a low-polygon version. I then retopologise the geometry in MODO, creating the UV maps and defining polygon groups for each body part. 02 Match poly group with anatomy It's very important for each polygon group to match the anatomy and skeleton diagram of the animal correctly, so that joints will bend correctly and the posing will look natural. 03 Create a bone for each group DAZ Studio offers great tools for joint definition and Weight Mapping. The first step is to create a digital bone for each polygon group: starting from the hip I proceed to follow the skeleton structure, laying joints for the tail, limbs, torso and head groups. Remember that that…

Daniel Sian A Brazilian CG artist, Daniel Sian has been internationally awarded at Cannes Lions and Clio Awards. He worked as a freelancer in Sao Paulo, Brazil, serving local and overseas clients in USA, South America, Asia and Oceania. He currently lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand. Lovely Striped Love Beetle, 2015 Cinema 4D, Photoshop This was modelled in C4D and rendered with Physical Render and DOF. The biggest challenge was finding the right lighting to achieve the drama I wanted to see. The Lumberjack, 2016 Cinema 4D, ZBrush, Photoshop This character is part of a large project with three illustrations that show that when your voice fails, you may be in danger. Render, SSS and Hair made with Physical Render. The Owl,…

With the exception of Smoke, for the past 15 years I’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to use NUKE as well as After Effects throughout my work as a visual effects artist. I had never seriously considered Fusion, though. Originally developed by eyeon Software, Fusion is a node-based compositing tool that has a lot of potential, but in the past I had always been rather discouraged from using it due to its previously high price along with the very few training resources I could find online for it to help me learn the package. To top it all off, it was only available for Windows users. After the Blackmagic acquisition two years ago, though, things changed. Blackmagic made Fusion available to download for free and ported it to…

“I’m looking forward to seeing the return of two Bournemouth University graduates, who will present their work on two Academy Award-winning films”Sofronis Efstathiou, BFX Competition and Festival director Back again for its fourth year, BFX is set to be the biggest it’s ever been thanks to four specially targeted programmes. From 8 to 16 October, BFX Pro, BFX Core, BFX Family Weekend and Workshops will all be held at the Bournemouth International Centre as part of this year’s festival. BFX Pro, in partnership with The Foundry, is back for its second year and will focus on the latest technical innovations. BFX Pro’s theme for 2016 is ‘Tomorrow’s Innovation in the Creative Industries’ and will include panels from MPC’s Rob Pieke, who will discuss the 60-plus environments featured in The Jungle…

Revealed at ZBrush Summit 2016, ZBrushCore is set to streamline the process of learning 3D, sculpting and ZBrush. ZBrushCore can be used by all artists, but is a great fit for students, those that are new to 3D, illustrators, board game creators, comic book artists, designers, toy artisans, jewellers and 3D printing enthusiasts as it’s been especially designed to be an easier tool for beginners and those who are not ZBrush aficionados. Some of the same features in ZBrushCore can be found in ZBrush, too, as it has been built on the foundations of its sister software. Ready-made shapes and templates will also be available to help artists get straight into sketching, refining and painting a model. The finished model can then be rendered in ZBrushCore itself, or sent to…

After creating the 3ds Max to Cinema 4D plugin, Marcelo Luis Bruno has turned his hand to make scene transitions from 3ds Max to Maya easier. This plugin is perfect for those who have models in a MAX format, and want to quickly add them to a Maya project, or want to improve their 3ds Max project with Maya features. Max to Maya has V-Ray support to enable automatic conversion of lights, materials and settings. For similar materials and settings, the plugin will look for the closest equivalents, saving time in adjustments and tweaks. You’ll also be able to quickly create Maya libraries from 3ds Max models, or rig models in 3ds Max for animating in Maya. Max to Maya is $49 and is available at www.maxtomaya.com.…

  “I wanted to represent a picturesque landscape featuring only a man-made machine – in this case, an old trawler. As far as I’m concerned, the most interesting and challenging part of 3D is to represent used, damaged and imperfect objects”Rémy Trappier, The Old Trawler, 2016 Rémy Trappier www.behance.net/RemyTrapp I’ve been doing 3D for about five years now. I love working on specific visual scenes Software 3ds Max, V-Ray, Photoshop Work in progress…   “The image was created for the Trojan Horse was a Unicorn challenge on Artstation. In the scene there are two chemists trying to find the formula for the perfect society, and they finally found it. The ingredients are: empathy, individualism leading to pluralism, passion, respect for nature, tolerance, equality, creativity and liberty”Manuel Peter, The Experiment, 2016…

Creating top animal renders is no mean feat. Not only does it have to look real, there are a whole flock of nuances in every single part of the workflow – all with the goal of ending up with a captivating final image. Some artists have been enchanted by zoology from a young age, and have ended up dedicating their 3D careers to wildlife, as creature designer and 3D concept artist Tony Camehl tells us: “It all started when I saw Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace for the first time. I quickly got fascinated by the creatures appearing in that movie. After that I tried to copy the monsters from Pokémon and got hooked by creatures of all kind. Since I have been young, my family always…

Diego Sain www.iusalab.com 3DArtistOnline username DiegoSain Software Maya, ZBrush, KeyShot, Marvelous Designer, Photoshop The Last King, 2016 DETAILING I started with a solid personal concept to create a ‘realistic fantasy’ character style. I focused my attention on details, and for this ZBrush gave me the scope to try new tools and techniques. When the blocking phase was finished, I started to retopologise. To define the material surface I used a custom Alpha and a lot of classical hand sculpts.…

At first glance, it’s fairly hard to put a pin in what you can actually use Amberlight 2 for. This isn’t necessarily a criticism; more a nod to the fact that it’s hard to define the purpose of such a tool in a traditional way – you have to figure out what you want to use it for yourself. Abstract motion graphics, dynamic stills and psychedelic post-production effects are all fair game here, and the toolset is deep enough to engage, but easy to understand for users with even the most basic knowledge of creative software. It’s all about accessibility here. As soon as you boot the program up, Amberlight generates a random simulated image, which you can then adjust to your heart’s content. These simulations are generated from different…

A new open-source material standard called MaterialX is being developed by Lucasfilm, in partnership with The Foundry and Autodesk. Its aim is to bridge the gap in look development between various content creation tools. Doug Smythe, who is heading up the development of MaterialX, came up with the idea while working on the first Iron Man movie with other studios. “The studios really had to do a lot of work to try and match our look, and they were never able to get 100 per cent there for many reasons – not the least of which time. But it sort of underscored the need that this was going to come up more and more often, and it’s hard work to do.” Smythe is hoping to release the open-source codebase later…

"We didn’t use mo-cap at all. It didn’t make any sense to mo-cap anything,,Eric Saindon, VFX supervisor Dragons and movies have traditionally worked pretty well together, and Pete’s Dragon proves the case. Following the release of Disney’s latest picture, we were lucky enough to have a chat with Eric Saindon, visual effects supervisor at Weta Digital in New Zealand, about the complexity of the project and his team’s dedicated work on the film. Over a six-month period, Weta Digital worked on over 700 shots for the movie, which revisits the original Pete’s Dragon cartoon animation from way back in 1977, but with a much more modern approach. Saindon begins by explaining that a key challenge was always in “getting the emotion in a CG dragon, to make a dragon interact…

Lamborghini by Hamid Reza Nahavandi 3DA username NHRA Hamid Reza Nahavandi says: “I’m interested in cars and I love to render cars in CG. In this scene I used IBL and HDRI for lighting, and I tried to match the sense of space to the car model.“ We say: A decent composition and mysterious lighting really elevate this vehicle scene from Hamid. We really like the accuracy of the reflections bouncing up off of the chassis. The Nameless Queen’s Demise by Travis Davids 3DA username Travis Davids Travis Davids says: “A medieval sword buried in the sand, showing the demise of the nameless queen. The sword was created in Fusion 360 and rendered in OctaneRender.“ We say: We love the way the strong lines of the sword model…