3D Artist – Issue 100 2016

ISSUE 100

Jenue www.jenue.net Software Cinema 4D, ZBrush, OctaneRender

Discover 100 essential 3D secrets

Page 24

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ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL EDITION

FRIENDS FROM AROUND THE WORLD HAVE BEEN KIND ENOUGH TO SEND OVER THEIR 100TH ISSUE BIRTHDAY GREETINGS!

“Happy birthday 3D Artist magazine! for years you’ve provided a platform for artists to showcase their incredibly creative and fascinatingly complex work. For that, the industry is a better place. So with this, the publication of your 100th issue, we at Pixar send a hearty congratulations Steve M cto,Pixar as we look forward to enjoying Animation your next 100 issues… Studios and beyond!” 4

y

“We would like to wish a big happy birthday to the fantastic team behind the publication helping to shape the talent in our industry. Since 2009, the team at 3D Artist has been taking talent to the next level, revealing the techniques needed to make it as a success in this industry!”

Ian

irby

“Congratulati on your 100t anniversary issue – here’s to many more!” Kevin M Dowell art director , creative assembly

founder/creat ive director,The Sequence Gro up

“Congratulations 3D Artist magazine for 100 issues’ worth of keeping us in the know on the latest developments in 3D, and for inspiring future generations of greg talmage executive artists to get into the field!” producer, blur studio

“At Animatrik, we love that 3D Artist covers all aspects of the industry, from rendering right through to what happens on the mo-cap stage. That insight is important to artists at all levels. A big congratulations to the team for reaching that important milestone”

Brett I eson president and cto, animatrik

“From across the globe, our team of remote artists wish 3D Artist a big happy birthday! We love to check out the magazine each month and see how t supports the artis in their journey from hobbyist to professional. Well done team!”

James Hattin co-founder, vfx legion

“Happy birthday to a great magazine! 3D Artist has helped inspire and develop many of the top artists acros this industry and even some at our studio. It’s often found on our coffee table, giving visitors a chance to check out some of Shawn Walsh the most inspiring vfx Executiv e talent in the Producer and General industry today” Manager, image engine

“Happy 100th issue, 3D Artist! Thanks for being an endless sourc f inspira Keep the gre work Lynette Clee

creative con tent manager, gno mon school

“From exciting effects to insights into the world of advertising, we’re always thrilled to see what 3D Artist is covering when it arrives in the mail each month. It’s great to see the magazine reach such an impressive milestone, and to have watched it develop over many years”

Brian Drewes co-founder, zero vfx

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Features Editor Carrie Mok Art Editor Newton Ribeiro de Oliveira Editor in Chief Amy Hennessey Senior Art Editor Will Shum Photographer James Sheppard Publishing Director Aaron Asadi Head of Design Ross Andrews Contributors Ian Failes, Alvaro Matas Ferrer, Robert Nathan Garlington, Philippa Grafton, Mohanad Hossam, Pablo Castaño Norkus, Zacharias Reinhardt, Robert Wilinski, Aldo Vicente

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100 influential artists reveal 100 essential techniques Page 24

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Disclaimer

W

hat a pleasure it is to be the one to welcome you to issue 100 of this very special magazine. 3D Artist first launched way back in March 2009, and although the tools may have changed, the trends may have evolved and the wider industry may have shifted in new, exciting directions since then, our mission hasn’t changed a bit. This is the hundreth time either I or one of my talented predecessors has used this space to highlight the unparalleled quality of the content you’re about to enjoy, and my promise to you is that our dedication to quality will never change.

Before I let you loose on this very special celebratory issue, packed with incredible insight that you won’t find anywhere else, I’d like to say thank you. Not in a vague way where I thank industry partners, studios and everyone who’s ever bought an issue – that should all be a given at this point. No; this magazine is, and always will be, about you – the artist. On behalf of myself and my amazing team, thank you for your ongoing interest in 3D Artist – it is always a pleasure to put it together for you every month, and we couldn’t do it without your support and input. Now stop reading my nonsense and go and enjoy issue 100. Go and join the party.

The publisher cannot accept responsibility for any unsolicited material lost or damaged in the post. All text and layout is the copyright of Imagine Publishing Ltd. Nothing in this magazine may be reproduced in whole or part without the written permission of the publisher. All copyrights are recognised and used specifically for the purpose of criticism and review. Although the magazine has endeavoured to ensure all information is correct at time of print, prices and availability may change. This magazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein. If you submit material to Imagine Publishing via post, email, social network or any other means, you automatically grant Imagine Publishing an irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free license to use the material across its entire portfolio, in print, online and digital, and to deliver the material to existing and future clients, including but not limited to international licensees for reproduction in international, licensed editions of Imagine products. Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither Imagine Publishing nor its employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for the loss or damage.

Steve Holmes, Editor © Imagine Publishing Ltd 2016 ISSN 1759-9636

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This issue’s team of pro artists…

JENUE

ZACHARIAS REINHARDT

ALDO VICENTE

jenue.net

zreinhardt.artstation.com A Blender Foundation Certified Trainer, Zacharias spends his time teaching people around the world. This month he’s on hand to show off his vehicle design skills, with a twist… 3DArtist username zreinhardt

aldovicentecg.com We’ve worked with Aldo an awful lot over the years, so it’s great to have him in this special issue. Over on p58 he’s incorporated super-fast GPU renderer Redshift into his Maya pipeline. 3DArtist username AldoVicenteCG

ROBERT NATHAN GARLINGTON

ROBERT WILINSKI

MOHANAD HOSSAM

garlingtonartgallery.com If you want to learn how to nail good composition and create stunning environment scenes in Blender, look no further than Robert’s expert guide over on p66. 3DArtist username robertgarlington

robert_w.artstation.com We’ve covered quite a bit of Substance Painter recently, but this month we’re looking to its older, node-based sibling Substance Designer. Robert takes it for a spin on p74. 3DArtist username ro311974

mohanad_hossam.artstation.com There’s no getting away from it – if you want to create lizard or amphibian renders, you’re going to be doing a lot of scale work. Mohanad shows you how to achieve more realism on p80. 3DArtist username Mohanad Hossam

PABLO CASTAÑO NORKUS

IAN FAILES

EDDIE PERLBERG

facebook.com/eletecedateando Following a rebrand of its professional GPU line, AMD has recently launched its own renderer, Radeon ProRender. We’ve asked Pablo to test it out and show you the basics on p84. 3DArtist username Ltcdata

vfxblog.com

autodesk.co.uk/products/3ds-max/overview We were lucky enough to sit down with long-standing 3ds Max product manager Eddie this month to chat about his career to date, and the future of his favourite tool. His fascinating insight is on p94. 3DArtist username n/a

It wouldn’t have been issue 100 without a big gold number on the cover, so we enlisted Jenue’s help to get it done. It’s also a fitting opener for our extra-special feature over on p24. 3DArtist username n/a

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We gave respected VFX writer Ian a really difficult task this month – track down personnel from the biggest studios in the world to reflect on the industry to date. Don’t miss his feature on p40. 3DArtist username n/a

Populate your game world. Procedurally.

$†um|oo†7bmbŝvruo1;7†u-Ѵ‰ouhYo‰|o1u;-|;;Šr-mvbˆ;ķub1_Ѵ‹7;|-bѴ;7-m7;m7Ѵ;vvѴ‹ˆ-ub;7‰ouѴ7vĺ |f†v|ŪƐƖƖķo†7bmbm7b;bvr;u=;1|=ou]-l;7;ˆ;Ѵor;uvom-0†7];|ĺ(bvb|SideFX.com|o7-‹ĺ Artwork: Anastasia Opara, Max Berends, Jeroen van Dongen, Anna Richter, Loek Gijsbertse, Corne Willemsen, Baiba Gedrovica, Tim Paauwe. Houdini modular building tool by Anastasia Opara. Based on a level design by Tim Baijens.

What’s in the magazine and wh

News, reviews & features 14 The Gallery A hand-picked collection of incredible artwork to inspire you

86 Subscribe today! Save money and never miss an issue by snapping up a subscription

98 Technique Focus: Intrepid Explorer Simon Smalley gives us the lowdown on

I think one of the key points is readability. If the design of the creature is not clear within the first few seconds looking at it, it needs some fundamental improvement Ben Erdt's top tip on creature modelling Page 26

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100 ARTISTS, 100 ESSENTIAL SKILLS To celebrate our monumental issue, we’ve gathered 100 of the world’s best artists to give us some fundamental tips, techniques and career advice over 15 pages. Don’t miss it!

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30 YEARS OF VFX In this special feature, Pixar, ILM, Weta Digital and other industry heavyweights revisit the explosion in CG over the past few decades 10

Render a robot with Radeon ProRender

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Turn to page 86 for detai

Model realistic scales

Build stunning environments

66 50

Create a robot vehicle in Blender

The Pipeline 50 Step by step: Create a robot vehicle in Blender Zacharias Reinhardt teaches us the ins and outs of modelling complex hard-surface objects

58 Step by step: Render with Redshift for Maya Discover the speed of Redshift and learn how to make productionready art

66 Pipeline techniques: Create stunning environments

John Lasseter had devoted ten years to understanding the capabilities and limitations of the technical staff at Pixar Tom Porter on the key ingredient to Pixar's success Page 45

Robert Garlington from Blender Guru tells us how he used rock and grass assets to compose an eye-catching clifftop

74 Pipeline techniques: Create an icy surface in Substance Designer Learn how to create a convincing procedural texture

80 Pipeline techniques: Sculpt realistic scales 40

Find out how Mohanad Hossam used NanoMesh and hand sculpting for his bearded dragon model

The Hub 90 Community news We’ve teamed up with SideFX on its latest contest titled ‘Marvelous Machines’! Find out how to enter

92 Industry news Blender 2.78’s huge release, plus Pixologic brings us a surprise ZBrush 4R8 before version 5

Create an icy surface in Substance Designer Visit the 3D Artist online shop at

Render with Redshift for Maya

94 Industry Insider: Eddie Perlberg 74

The 3ds Max product manager tells us how he’s still excited to get up for work every morning, even after ten years in the company

96 Readers’ gallery for back issues, books and merchandise 58

The very best images of the month from our online community www.3dartistonline.com 11

Free with your magazine MARI & NUKE video tutorials

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Plus, all of this is yours too… ࠮ ;OYLL WYLTP\T TVKLSZ MYVT *.(_PZ for you to use in your work ࠮ )3,5+ MPSL SH`LYLK 7:+ MPSLZ HUK hi-res screenshots to accompany V\Y ]LOPJSL [\[VYPHS PU )SLUKLY ࠮ :JYLLUZOV[Z HUK H O\NL HTV\U[ VM extra images to help you master icy materials in Substance Designer ࠮ 4V\U[HPUZ VM X\HSP[` ZJYLLUZOV[Z [V help you follow our vast array of additional expert tutorials

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Fabricio Moraes and Guilherme Formenti www.behance.net/RemyTrapp Fabricio and Guilherme met at Seagulls Fly studio, and they’ve worked together ever since Software PhotoScan, 3ds Max, ZBrush, Substance Painter

Work in progress…

This started as a study of photogrammetry. We started to take 3D model pieces and rearrange them in 3ds Max. For the characters we made a base mesh in 3ds Max, detailed in ZBrush, generated Displacement and Normal maps, then made all textures in Substance Painter Fabricio Moraes and Guilherme Formenti, Slug Race, 2016

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Guilherme Henrique sepultura.artstation.com Guilherme is the art director for both the Blender Guru and Poliigon websites Software Blender, Photoshop

Work in progress…

Artwork made for Poliigon, partially biased towards my love for wine and grapes. The soul and character of an object lies in its small details, from the little dust particles to the bigger liquid stains. The details were the reason why I created this scene Guilherme Henrique, Wine and Grapes, 2016 16

Gorshenin Stanislav Aleksandrovich handfighter.artstation.com A childhood filled with robots and sci-fi films has hugely influenced Gorshenin’s work Software 3ds Max, Marvelous Designer, KeyShot, Photoshop

Work in progress…

This image uses many different rendering passes in KeyShot, such as the usual pass on which everything is built, a Depth pass, a Clown pass, a diffuse shadow pass, point lights on the model pass and a curvature pass, which can help you to render masks for chips and dirt Gorshenin Stanislav Aleksandrovich, Rescue Labor MCH-01, 2016 17

Igor Golovkov artstation.com/artist/astiil Igor Golovkov is 27 years old and is currently an animation artist at Plarium Software ZBrush, Maya, V-Ray, Substance Painter, Photoshop

Work in progress…

Seeing characters from game trailers including The Witcher, WoW and The Elder Scrolls inspired me to create something similar. Here I used Substance Painter for the first time and learned what a great texturing tool it is Igor Golovkov, Beast Hunter, 2016 18

The project started out as a catapult model, but I got inspired to add some more to it. I made the ship soon after and the dragon was added somewhere along the way. Eventually this intense battle appeared on my screen Joel Zakrisson, Cog Ship Battle, 2016

Joel Zakrisson joelzakrisson.com Joel studies 3D graphics at Future Games while working as a VR consultant at Vobling Software Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Marmoset

Work in progress…

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In depth

Robert Nathan Garlington www.garlingtonartgallery.com Rob has worked the gamut of CG production as a director, producer, writer and artist. Software Blender, 3ds Max, Grow FX, After Effects

Work in progress…

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Originally intended to be just a simple demo scene to showcase various 3D trees and foliage packs to be sold on blenderguru.com, the scene really took on a life of its own when I decided to make it much more epic in scale than it needed to be. I’m glad that I did, because to this day it still continues to be one of my most popular artworks Robert Nathan Garlington, Huangshan Mountains, 2013

The inspiration for the colour scheme came primarily from my love of cherry blossom trees, and even though I toyed with various setups, the trees were the one constant that helped me nail down this final design. Always go with that kernel of an idea that you love and develop around that Robert Nathan Garlington, Huangshan Mountains, 2013 BLOCKING OUT RIGHT Blocking out a scene with basic geometry and a harmonious colour palette is the most important step for me to ensure a pleasing composition and I don’t carry on with the scene until this step looks right.

RENDERING RIGHT Even with optimised particle systems the scene memory usage was too large to render on my GPU, so I split it into three render layers, which turned out to be very useful for After Effects compositing.

MODELLING LEFT Blender didn’t have a tree plugin that was sophisticated enough to create these cherry blossom trees, so instead I made them inside of 3ds Max using the fantastic GrowFX plugin by Exlevel.

PARTICLES RIGHT The particles were made to be as lowpoly and efficient as possible because I knew that there would be a great number of them needed to make such a large scene.

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or our milestone issue 100, we thought about the best ways to celebrate with you, the reader. We didn’t think it was enough to just look back at the magazine’s past – we thought we had to do something a bit different, a bit special. We wanted to both give back to our readers and to celebrate with all of the artists that we admire and have enjoyed working with for the past 100 issues. Getting 100 tips, whether from specific disciplines or of essential career advice, was a no-brainer, so we got to work collating top techniques from industry legends like Ben Mauro and Gavriil Klimov. But again that

didn’t seem enough, so then we went back to the drawing board and gathered 100 of these professionals to give us a tip each, including some of the best artists in the world today, as well as up-and-coming artists who we think will be making the world of 3D more exciting and more awe-inspiring for years to come. From ILM to Ubisoft, Scott Eaton to Dave Wilson, from modelling experts to top rigging instructors and effects TDs – we’ve called together 100 of the most influential artists from around the world to give us their essential advice and teach you the things you need to know to get ahead.

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100 INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS, 100 ESSENTIAL TECHNIQUES

it’s best to work all the way down to the level of details the scene needs. Squeeze your eyes together, step back from the monitor or use thumbnails. What looks good in that view always looks good in the big picture too.

inefficient for smoothing large forms, due to high polygon counts. I like to use the Trim Dynamic brush in ZBrush, as it works extremely well as an aggressive smoothing tool even on ultra-highpoly models.

PAUL HATTON 3D visualisation studio lead C A Design Services cadesignservices.co.uk --------------------------------------------------------I’d say the thing that has been of most benefit over the years is the Isolation tool in 3ds Max. Opt/Alt+Q isolates the selection so everything deselected disappears. Isolating parts ensures that you can focus on what’s important.

ARDA KOYUNCU Senior character artist Sony Santa Monica ardakoyuncu.com --------------------------------------------------------It gets quite difficult to manage topology when you work with a very dense polygon distribution. Start simple – make sure you are placing more topology where the model bends and deforms. If you need more density you can subdivide after. When your topology is in place, you can reproject your subdivision levels accordingly if needed.

05 ZACHARIAS REINHARDT Freelance 3D artist & Blender Foundation Certified trainer artstation.com/artist/zreinhardt --------------------------------------------------------Sculpting in Blender is so much fun because we can combine standard modelling techniques with sculpting. The Sculpt Tools UI add-on is a big help. First, shape the base mesh using subdivided cubes, then apply all modifiers and merge all meshes using this add-on. Now we can go crazy using Dynamic Topology sculpting.

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MARKUS VOGT 2D and 3D digital artist Freelance markusvogt.eu --------------------------------------------------------If you are going to plan a hard-surface design, always try to start out with the easiest possible way. For example, make use of 3D primitives like cubes, spheres or cylinders and transform them into interesting shapes and silhouettes using the Knife tool and various types of extrusions. Then start the experimentation phase by combining your modelled primitives with transformations and duplications

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BEN ERDT Character/creature artist Guerrilla Games benerdt.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------I think one of the key points is readability. If the design of the creature is not clear within the first few seconds looking at it, it needs some fundamental improvement. Ensuring that the silhouette, proportions, the flow, anatomy, forms and so on shine in the first place also makes the next steps way more fun.

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MARTIN TEICHMANN Environment modeller Naughty Dog mayday.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------Always keep the big picture in mind and block out the big shapes first. From there

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DANIEL ORIVE Senior character artist Riot Games danitchu.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------The key with stylish hairstyles is to show each strand and allow it to be chunky unlike a real hair. To achieve this using FiberMesh the most important values to change are Coverage and Max Fibers. Basically the goal should be to balance the thickness of the hair with the quantity needed to cover the head.

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ANDREW HODGSON Hard-surface modeller ILM andrew-hodgson.com --------------------------------------------------------Make hotkeys for anything you can, as speed is essential in the film industry. It may seem like you are only saving a fraction of time by pressing a button instead of looking up to click on a tool in your UI, but all of these fractions of time add up really quickly when you are modelling all day, every day. It also breaks the flow if you are constantly looking around your UI for tools instead of focusing on what you are modelling. After my colleague Mark Keetch introduced me to making hotkeys for everything, I noticed my work speed increase dramatically.

GUILHERME HENRIQUE Art director Blender Guru sepultura.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------Tired of unwrapping your high-poly models? Change the texture projection method from Flat to Box, while using the Object Mapping Coordinates, and enjoy your brand new UV-less workflow. Now you can sculpt your background objects and use their decimated versions straight into your scene, without having to worry about retopology.

IAN SPRIGGS 3D character artist For Neill Blomkamp ianspriggs.com --------------------------------------------------------From doing a couple portraits now, I have learned to try to work backwards. I tend to try to imagine my image finished before I start, so I’ll gather references, do quick sketches, think about lighting, moods, and personality of that individual and what it is I am trying to represent. I will usually know my composition before beginning my work. Once I know what I want, I can break down the complexity of it all and start working on smaller chunks of what I need to accomplish. By breaking it all down, this it makes each step feel more achievable.

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KURT PAPSTEIN Principal character artist Pocket Gems artstation.com/artist/ikameka --------------------------------------------------------ZRemesher helps me clean up DynaMesh models for accurate sculpts and clean edges. It will keep hard edges hard by adding more geometry on edges, and smoothing fewer verts allows for fewer dents in your model. DynaMesh is fast up front, but ZRemesher is the finishing move.

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RICO CILLIERS 3D artist Freelance squareyes.co.za --------------------------------------------------------When sculpting, there are scenarios where a regular Smooth brush is

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GURMUKH BHASIN Concept artist and concept design instructor, conceptartworkshop.com gurmukhbhasin.com --------------------------------------------------------Don’t be afraid to test out different modelling and design directions. When

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NEILL BLOMKAMP World-famous director, with credits including District 9 and Chappie imdb.com/name/nm0088955 --------------------------------------------------------Along with Ian’s portrait of me, 3D Artist asked me to write a short blurb on tips or techniques I have picked up over the years. But because it’s been a long while since I have really used 3D software and things have changed a lot, I thought perhaps it would be better to offer a different kind of advice. Here’s my advice: hire Ian Spriggs. In fact, currently he is busy building a monster for an upcoming project of mine. It’s amazing. Reinforcing my own advice. Yes – hire Spriggs if you can.

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68 doing hard-surface concept design and models, I often find myself testing out different aesthetic directions I can take in 3D. Something as simple as softening or hardening the Smoothing radius on the edges of your shape can give your design a completely different design language and overall feeling. I often find myself designing parts multiple times in 3D until I am absolutely in love with each piece of my design. For me I love to do my hard-surface designs in 3D in Maya because I am really able to explore and test out so many different options and possible directions of the design I am working on. MARK VAN HAITSMA Senior artist Epic Games mvhaitsma.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------Being a production artist with ever looming deadlines, kitbashing is an essential part of my workflow. Spending time on the iconic shapes of a model is most important to me and it is convenient when I don’t have to do that with all the little bits. There are emotional highs and lows when working on each model, and kitbashing helps minimise those lows by getting me to the end result, faster.

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PABLO MUÑOZ GÓMEZ Lead animator at MedAdvisor and running zbrushguides.com zbrushguides.com/work ------------------------------------------------------DynaMesh in ZBrush is one of those things that once you have tried it, you cannot go back. It not only lets me spend more time exploring shapes and designs, but it can be integrated seamlessly into any 3D workflow. Whether I start working on a polished piece or just sketching out new ideas, DynaMesh is an essential part of my process. There are no restrictions when I need to go back and redesign something.

ANDREW HICKINBOTTOM Character artist Freelance andrewhickinbottom.com ------------------------------------------------------Sometimes, the most basic methods work best. Block out the full proportions of your character first using simple primitives like cylinders and spheres. Once you have the shape, silhouette and stance that you are happy with, work on these separate limb objects (with mirrored and instanced left-to-right sides), adjusting position, rotation, scale and shape before attaching them to the body and working on it as one mesh.

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HASAN BAJRAMOVIC Character artist Blur Studio hasanbajramovic.com ------------------------------------------------------Creating topology with 3D Coat couldn’t be easier and more user-friendly than it already is. You can create a rough topology with bigger quads or Ngons and then you can just subdivide it until the desired density is reached. This will also clean up all of the Ngons on your new topology. Be sure to relax only the areas that you need with the Relax brush.

STEFANO TSAI Designer Freelance stefanotsai.com --------------------------------------------------------Start off simple from a basic shape. Make sure that you don’t over complicate it, as the simpler the shape is when you start off, the easier it will be for you to combine or merge all of the parts together seamlessly later. It is wise to keep the model pipeline lightweight and reversible so that you can modify models easily between each end.

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play around with different shapes and insertion points without messing up the torso when working on arms and vice versa. BORISLAV KECHASHKI Senior character artist Ubisoft Sofia b_kechashki.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------I tried so hard to think of some really cool techniques that I use while I’m sculpting, but I don’t think there are any secret tricks. The one thing that I think helped me the most is this: as long as I’m not 100 per cent sure that it’s the best that it can be, I learned to scrap everything and start all over again, no matter how much time I’d spent working on it.

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ELIJAH MCNEAL Concept artist Freelance el1j4h .artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------Establish where you want to go early on, whether using tools such as 3ds Max, Maya, ZBrush and a number of others. I find that when working with ZBrush in particular, it really goes a long way if you treat it in it in a manner as similar to traditional clay as possible. You’re going for big shapes, loose gestural proportions and a sense of the idea; just like you would in live drawing or sculpting.

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56 MAXENCE FLEURET Senior character artist Santa Monica Studio mfleuretart.com --------------------------------------------------------I see a lot of artists using meshes straight out of Marvelous Designer, because ‘it’s been simulated, so it must be correct’. However, I try to keep the Marvelous Designer work as minimal as I can, using it mostly to create the overall silhouette and large fold shapes. Then, I will move on to refining everything in ZBrush and manually sculpting wrinkles based on real-life references. This is essential to breaking down that too-recognisable, artificial look of a simulated clothing model.

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DANIEL BYSTEDT Lead character artist Bläck studios dbystedt.wordpress.com -------------------------------------------------------A big improvement in my workflow when creating creatures and characters in ZBrush was when I started working with body parts as separate SubTools instead of with one connected mesh. It does a lot of difference and works a lot better than masks and PolyGroups. This lets me

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VICTOR HUGO QUEIROZ 3D artist Freelance vitorugo.com --------------------------------------------------------Always try to keep in touch with the rest of the team when modelling. It’s also important to touch base with the rigger and the look-dev artist. Some look-dev artists like specific UV layouts and some riggers have a preference for a neutral pose. Also, if you’re modelling after someone else’s design, it’s really useful to show WIPs to the concept artist – they always have some great insights.

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TIM BERGHOLZ Senior weapons specialist Digital Extremes chamferzone.com --------------------------------------------------------For the best texturing workflow, always start with a pristine version! Create masked folders of your different elements and apply your base materials in them. Try to combine unique wear and tear for each element like plastic damage with overall effects, such as dust or speckles.

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JÜRI UNT 3D generalist Freelance cgstrive.com --------------------------------------------------------A powerful texturing workflow takes advantage of composition software, such as Fusion and After Effects (with Element3D). It enables systematic, non-destructive and iterative editing while having excellent real-time 3D preview. It’s great for characters, where photo-based textures need to be wrapped to match the UVs. Basically it is ideal as the last step in a PBR texturing pipeline.

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BEN KEELING 3D environment artist Creative Assembly benkeeling.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------I use Substance in my pipeline to create realistic environments. I always get my main structures, such as the walls and floors, into the scene first. Substance Designer allows me to be flexible and iterate on my tiling textures, and I often come back to these at a later stage. Once I enter production, I use Substance Painter to create full materials for any props. This iteration and flexibility allows me to keep pushing my realism and achieve believable environments.

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PAUL H PAULINO Texture painter/look-dev artist Scanline VFX paulhpaulino.com --------------------------------------------------------I believe that every single texture painter must be able to develop the ability to observe and study the patterns that we see in the real world. After a while, that skill will integrate into your brain, and you’ll be able to create any texture from scratch. Observation is absolutely the key to achieving realism.

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JOSHUA LYNCH Senior environment artist Monolith Productions joshlynch.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------When creating a material, it is helpful to analyse and understand your reference, as

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100 INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS, 100 ESSENTIAL TECHNIQUES

this will help you inform your creation process. Working the larger details first sets up a solid foundation, then working your way down to micro detail really enhances the realism. Additionally, establishing a believable material response from the Roughness/Gloss pass is crucial. AYI SANCHEZ Senior environment artist MachineGames kratos.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------Over the years that I’ve been working in games, I realised that the most important thing is visual hierarchy. Always consider the final scale of the asset or texture, how close the camera will be, and the time that you need to spend on it depending on this. Avoid noise patterns or over-complicated shapes.

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MYRIAM CATRIN Senior texture artist Weta Digital myriamcatrin.com/portfolio --------------------------------------------------------When I have to start an asset, the most obvious but most important thing for me is to prioritise the references. Building my own library with unique textures or tiles will make the work of painting itself so much more efficient. I always start with the Color channel, like a concept, and then build my textures with a compositing mindset, using both masks and colour correction non-destructively so that I can use these for other channels as well.

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MARIANO STEINER Character artist Rockstar Games marianosteiner.com --------------------------------------------------------In order to get nice results quicker, I tend to make more use of masks rather than wasting time trying to build good-looking materials inside of PBR applications. Focusing on generating masks (Dirt, Damage and so on) for editing textures in Photoshop later on can help to make the job faster and flexible for any future changes and adjustments.

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LEIGH A VAN DER BYL Surfacing artist Award-winning VFX facility leighvanderbyl.com --------------------------------------------------------NUKE is an absolutely great companion to MARI when it comes to texturing – in addition to its High Pass and other filters being significantly faster to apply and having a more accurate colour and tone-grading toolset, you can also use the Keyer node for making detailed Grunge maps from existing imagery, which makes the process much quicker.

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VALENTINA ROSELLI Texturing TD MPC vimeo.com/117526785 --------------------------------------------------------When a shot allows you to work closely on a character, I will start to texture while always focusing on breaking levels of detail down in layers, from low frequency to micro. Collect plenty of high-resolution references of your subject, think smartly about UDIMs, and sculpt in ZBrush or Mudbox to get yourself some useful maps to use in MARI.

JONATHAN BENAINOUS Senior environment / texture artist Ubisoft Paris jonathan_benainous.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------The key as a texture artist is to constantly keep pushing the realism of your work further. Studying the matter physically will help you to understand how to make it look as real as possible. You will also need to have a good eye for the finer details by observing the environment at all times.

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REINIER REYNHOUT 3D artist Hectic Electric Eindhoven reynhout.eu --------------------------------------------------------When you drive shader parameters with different Texture maps per parameter you get a randomness that is more realistic. The randomness of the values within a texture that blends with other properties creates a high diversity of randomness in the materials.

JAY HOWSE Senior 3D artist Playfusion Ltd jay_howse.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------When you are adding wear and tear to textures, you should think about how the object is used and how a material is affected in different ways by different processes – a rubber grip may become smoother and more glossy over years of handling, whereas metal or paint may become less glossy.

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DANIELE ORSETTI Texture artist ILM London dayno.it --------------------------------------------------------Be methodical and keep your workflow flexible. Try to start with a solid procedural base by using masked tileable textures or tri-planar projections in MARI and then build up on those with painting and projections of photographs. This way if you want to update your model you will be able to re-use most of your work.

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SETH NASH Senior character artist Infinity Ward sethnash.com --------------------------------------------------------When texturing I find it really useful to block in colours, but then drop the base colour/albedo to a mid-black so that I can balance the gloss correctly and get better material reads before adding it back in.

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MATTHIAS DEVELTERE 3D artist MachineGames – ZeniMax develterematthias.wordpress.com --------------------------------------------------------When making a high-poly asset, you still want to tell a story with it. Textures help a lot with that. But, of course, you don’t want to unwrap everything manually. That’s why there is boxmapping in KeyShot – a kind of planar unwrap. Combine this with tileable textures or decal textures and you’ll find yourself with an interesting model in no time.

GLENN MELENHORST Visual effects supervisor Iloura glennmelenhorst.com --------------------------------------------------------When rigging in Blender, I use Snap To Volume to arrange my bones in the centre

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DANIEL BEL Digital sculptor Freelance danibel.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------One of the most important things to think about when you are working with characters is their proportion. To be sure that everything is in its proper place, in ZBrush I will create a new layer with a 3D skeleton inside of the characters and then put it in the same pose. This is really helpful as it means that I will not lose the proportion of any figure.

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GLEB ALEXANDROV Founder Creative Shrimp creativeshrimp.com -----------------------------------------------Lighting is much more than just three-point lighting, and I can’t believe it took me so long to figure this out. Lighting is a gracefully burned out film, it is a geometric abstraction, it is an enormous dynamic range compressed to fit your granny’s monitor. Lighting is a hyper-real gun in the hands of a 3D artist. I still feel like an idiot when it comes to lighting.

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IGOR SOBOLEVSKY Senior 3D designer ZAGG Inc igoq.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------Consider the environment in which your model resides. If the final image is to be composited into a scene, make sure that the lighting scheme on the model is consistent with the rest of the image. If the model is being rendered into a studio environment, think about the lighting that showcases the model’s features. A little mystery is good thing. Use spot or area lights to bring focus to a certain part of the render, while letting the rest fade into the background.

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of fiddly areas like the fingers. I make a single bone for each finger, snap it in Edit mode to the base and tip of the finger, then subdivide the bone twice, moving each joint into place and automatically snapping it into the centre of the finger’s mass. FRANCIS-XAVIER MARTINS Character artist and CG generalist Freelance polyjunky.com --------------------------------------------------------Curves versus straights is something that I like to emphasise, especially when working with cartoon characters. Utilising this will greatly emphasise the gesture better than if they were stiff or curvy symmetrically. A couple of examples are the curve of the bicep against the back of the arm or a round belly versus a slightly straighter back.

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PAUL CHAMBERS Freelance CG generalist, artist evangelist at Sketchfab paulchambers3D.com --------------------------------------------------------Whether you plan to animate a model yourself or hand off to an animator, don’t rig any more than necessary. Ask yourself (or your animator) which poses and movement are essential and rig only what you need. Simplicity will cut down on rigging time and make animation easier to manage.

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GABRIELA SALMERON Hair and fur TD and VFX generalist Consulado gabi_ruch.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------To animate with Yeti’s feather system for a wing, there are some additional steps that should be added to create a link between the mesh rigging and the behaviour of the feathers. Guide curves can be used to bind each feather, and then its deformations and position can beattached to the feather.

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JAHIRUL AMIN 3D trainer Double Negative jahirulamin.com --------------------------------------------------------Now this tip is nothing new, as it’s something that has been around for many hundreds of years. It’s a tip (and I am presuming here, by the way) that was employed by some of the great artists in history such as da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Constable, Monet and all of the other greats. And as relevant as it was all of those years ago, it is still probably the most important tip for us today. So what is this tip? It’s simple: observation. As artists of any discipline (modelling, surfacing, rigging, animation and so on), to be successful at what you do, observe and analyse the world around you and then transfer your findings to your

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work. Obviously, you should add your own stamp on top of your findings, but work from something that is grounded in reality if you want it to be believable and realistic. For example, if you want to get into animation, then you should study the movement of people, animals, vehicles and so on. Examine the weight shift of an elephant as it walks and tell me, can an elephant actually run?  If you are looking to get into rigging, on the other hand, then you should study the placement of joints, the origin and insertion of muscles – and can you answer this: what connects the upper limb to the axial skeleton? If you’ve managed to read this article up until this point, then I am presuming your eyes and your mind are functioning just fine, so why don’t you go outside, look around you and absorb as much of the beautiful world around you as you can… and then create some CG! LEO RIBEYROLLES CG artist Blur studio tontonkoutal.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------Most of the time I will do a quick biped rig/skin to put motion capture on the character or pose it. I will always work for animation goals, never thinking about a fixed image. I try to make my work animated ready to tell stories!

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STEPHEN GRAHAM Lead animator Axis Animation axisanimation.com --------------------------------------------------------Over the years our rigs and our animation have become more sophisticated, but the process remains the same. I never thought we would be doing a performance capture of a dog, but that’s what this technology allows us to do. However, it’s important that we still inject that creative spark, the extra level of detail. We strive to capture perfect realism, but what we often forget are the little imperfections: the tiny moments that bring a character to life. 

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RAINER DUDA Houdini TD, CEO and founder RD Innovations rd-innovations.de --------------------------------------------------------To achieve great-looking plasma effects take the input geometry, colourise it and add a turbulence function to one colour channel for a visualisation that is slightly animated. Then, colour information can be transformed as an animation driver by multiplying it with object normals on a Transform node.

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CRISTIANO RINALDI Concept artist Freelance simultan.it --------------------------------------------------------With the help of software like Photoshop you can use the Levels pass generated by the Multipass layer to improve the lights, shadows, reflections or to emphasise isolate elements through the use of masks to work they separately. The Blend mode, for example, lets you fine control every aspect of the final image.

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SEAN KENNEDY Compositor CoSA VFX openvisualfx.com --------------------------------------------------------If I’m working on a shot where I have to add FX to an object in the scene, like something that an actor is holding, then I will do a quick (but accurate) matchmove of the object by eye. Then I will roughly match the camera perspective, make simple geometry that matches the object, then I will animate its position, rotation and scale so that it lines up perfectly with the real object. Technically this is all wrong, since I’ve not tracked anything or entered any camera data at all, but it’s a technique that has worked for me over and over.

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PAUL PEPERA Co-founder/artist at System Era Softworks paulpepera.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------Cloth simulation is a double savings since you can generate results more realistically than anything that you would be able to sculpt by hand in ZBrush and in a tenth of the time. Even though Marvelous Designer was created specifically for fashion design, its tools are powerful and general enough to be applied to other uses – this makes it an essential software in any 3D artist’s arsenal of tools.

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ANDREW PRICE Founder Blender Guru andrewprice.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------To make the final render ‘pop’, I go to the compositor and add a Filter node set to Sharpen, then reduce the amount to something around 0.1 to 0.2. It’s a simple trick, but it really helps to bring life back to the image textures!

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ALDO VICENTE 3D generalist 3DExcite aldovicentecg.com --------------------------------------------------------Utility passes like Normals, Depth, or World Position can be used creatively in compositing to quickly create effects that could otherwise be expensive, or require re-renders if done in 3D. For example; we can use one of the colour channels in a Normals pass as a Matte for an Exposure adjustment to quickly add fake directional lighting to our image.

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NIELS PRAYER Director and designer Freelance niels.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------When you are apprehending FX and visual art in 3D, you need to build a setup as strong as it is effective. The key method is to think and create things procedurally. You can have great flexibility, even if you are working with complex simulation systems. Take the time to pay the same attention to the artistic and the technical part of

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your work. Doing a thing one time is cool, but being able to doing that same thing a lot of times is what it makes you a professional. BLAIR ARMITAGE 3D character artist Freelance blairarmitage.com --------------------------------------------------------Marvelous Designer is becoming more essential to the game artist’s toolset. You can take your garment all the way to final quality within MD, or you can simulate large folds and drapery and transfer over to ZBrush to sculpt a higher level detail. I found bending the arms and legs of my avatar model gave me more interesting drapery than the limbs being completely straight.

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MIKE KIME Senior character artist at Epic Games pseudo-pod.com --------------------------------------------------------When using Marvelous Designer, try simulating cloth over static cloth. Sculpt or simulate a proxy of what you want and import it as an avatar. Take a new cloth and simulate it over the top. The instant you hit Simulation, yank the areas where you’d like to see folds. The moment you see something you like, stop the simulation. Mix and match quality pieces rather than sculpting in ZBrush, because it’s about appeal, not reality.

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CARLOS PARMENTIER Senior FX artist El Ranchito facebook.com/Carlosparmentier --------------------------------------------------------When I want to make beach waves I personalise the wave force before the sim, customising the Velocity Volume of the ocean evaluate SOP and using a Volume Vop SOP. I then have a BB connecting vector to float and every ramp parameter in XYZ to control the force each direction. Also I eliminate all Come Down using the Absolute in the Vel Y. Visualise using Volume Trail SOP to help see the results in view panel.

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GRANT HEWLETT VFX supervisor Axis VFX axis-vfx.com --------------------------------------------------------When you are supervising a VFX shoot, take reference of the set using a digital camera. Measure at least six things in the shot so that you use this for scale later. When you get back to the office run your photos through agiSoft photoscan and make a 3D model of the set. Once you have scaled this using your dimensions you can speed up matchmoving dramatically. You will also have all you cameras in the correct relative position to the set, which speeds up shot lighting.

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100 INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS, 100 ESSENTIAL TECHNIQUES

DR COLIN URQUHART CEO Dimensional Imaging di4d.com --------------------------------------------------------I always advise users of our high-fidelity facial performance capture tools to put as much effort as possible into capturing a great performance in the first place – and then to touch the captured data as little as possible. The objective is to re-create the actual captured performance – not to try to enhance or edit it.

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TOMI VÄISÄNEN 3D artist Ubisoft Redlynx tomivaisanen.com --------------------------------------------------------Have your presets ready! When compositing images with multiple passes, the setup may be time-consuming. For efficiency, have a preset workfile or a script that automatically organises your passes in the right order.

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TONI BRATINCEVIC Senior environment modeller Blizzard Entertainment interstation3d.com --------------------------------------------------------Fusion 8 is my choice of compositing tool because its non-destructive workflow. A small trick that I use with Color Corrector node is that I go to Shadows and Mids and I start tweaking Contrast for R, G or B independently. This usually produces some very unique colour corrections.

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ADAM CONWAY Artist and director The Digi Monsters thedigimonsters.com --------------------------------------------------------If I’m ever struggling to paint an effect in Photoshop I’ll go into AE or Maya and simulate it, render the effect onto a black background from many angles and use these in my paintings. Set the layers to Linear Dodge or Screen and use a Curves adjustment to edit the effect. It’s great for building up your effects library over time.

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DUŠAN VUKČEVIČ 3D generalist Freelance vudumotion.com --------------------------------------------------------Try not to reuse lighting setups. Always use different lighting techniques and try out various HDR images. This process is extremely fast and interactive when using GPU-accelerated render engines. The result you’ll get is a series of different-looking renders, which is important for your portfolio.

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NICOLAS DELILLE 3D artist Freelance modern-age-studio.com --------------------------------------------------------To achieve great lighting, you have to bear in mind what kind of texture and shape you want to light before everything. Photographers won’t light metal, wood and glass in the same way, so I recommend you buy at least one book about lighting techniques for photographers.

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BERTRAND BENOIT Digital artist Freelance bbb3viz.com --------------------------------------------------------I light my interiors with an HDR map plugged into a Domelight as well as whatever artificial lighting may be necessary. V-Ray 3 handles noise well by default, but if you’re using an older version, then you can always crank up the light’s Subdivision. Don’t overexpose your render because it will slow down rendering and you will lose details. If you save a 32-bit image, then you can raise the exposure dramatically later in post-production.

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DUŠAN KOVIĆ Lead cinematic artist Eipix Entertainment dusankovic.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------When rendering something, use render passes to have more flexibility later in post-production. Also, when doing your post work, always add photographic elements like depth of field, chromatic aberration, film grain, flaring and so on, as these will increase the realism and organic feel of your artwork. Don’t overdo it, though – try to be subtle.

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ERIC KELLER Digital artist Freelance bloopatone.com --------------------------------------------------------The best way to learn lighting and rendering is to take a photography course. Just as character artists must understand the

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human form, lighting and rendering artists should learn how light works. Its also crucial to understand the main tool for capturing light: the camera. Get a DSLR and practice! CARLOS PECINO ALBORNOZ Senior 3D artist automotive RealTimeUk colorsponge.net --------------------------------------------------------For me, finding the appropriate light in each scene is the most difficult. It’s not just setting a VrayLight and you’re done. The lights tell us a story, providing hue and enhancing the shaders. I always start work with a VrayLight Dome with HDRY. This light will be the base illumination and configure the camera values in the same time.

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REYNANTE MARTINEZ 3D generalist/storyteller/ lighting artist reynantemartinez.com --------------------------------------------------------Keep your lighting setup as simple as possible. It can often be very tempting to start off your scenes with a lot of light sources, reducing as many shadows as possible. However, often this method creates artificial-looking renders. Embrace shadows as much as you would with the illuminations. Much like how the chiaroscuro treatment in traditional painting works, try to replicate it in your renders.

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MATTHEW TREVELYAN JOHNS Senior environment and vehicle artist Foundry 42 trevelyan.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------When lighting an environment, I always try to introduce contrast whenever possible to highlight areas of interest and make a scene feel more dynamic. One way of emphasising this is to place a large, dominant light source on one side of your environment and then to complement this with much smaller, lower intensity lights on the other. This will create a visible gradient from light to dark that will introduce contrast to your scene and help to direct the viewer’s focus.

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AMARU ZEAS Senior 3D artist Ten Gun Design amaruzeas3d.com --------------------------------------------------------Start testing the lighting before you add in any textures and complex materials. The usage and combination of Image Base Lightning and area lights is extremely important to create amazing realistic visuals, as they will deliver accurate lighting, exposure control, soft shadows, and their light rays will bounce perfectly throughout your scene.

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ANDY JONES Senior 3D artist Mullen Lowe Group bit.ly/2e2DcPa -----------------------------------------------My best advice to a fellow artist starting out is to fill sketchbooks up as fast as possible. When I first started out, I didn’t have access to computers, so I filled up any sketchbook I could get my hands on. Even if you dont think you can draw, just fill the pages with anything – doodles, circles, whatever. If you fill enough pages with random doodles, you’ll start seeing patterns in your own lines, and these are the seeds of what will someday become ‘your style’.

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87 HUGO CASTAÑO Senior environment artist Ubisoft Montreal hugocastano.com --------------------------------------------------------A PBR pipeline simplifies the tedious work of creating the base of a texture and instead, I can concentrate on the fun part of texturing. It removes the guess work of finding the perfect value for materials. My secret is to use photo references and stick to the values of the scans, as this will result in life-like textures across different engines.

Octane Settings>Settings>Env and change the default colour swatch to Black. This will ensure that you aren’t using anything to light your scene or model other than your chosen HDRI or direct light source.

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JEAN-MICHEL BIHOREL Digital artist Freelance jmbihorel.myportfolio.com --------------------------------------------------------A major revolution for me the past year has been GPU rendering. Working with Redshift opened many possibilities – I can test many light conditions super-fast and even render a short film on my computer without a render farm!

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MOHSEN HASHEMI President Phoenix Archviz Team behance.net/mohsen-hashemi --------------------------------------------------------It’s inevitable for me to use render elements. I always use render elements not only in my post-production work, but also during rendering to understand any rendering errors and how to fix them, reduce noise and applicable sampling.

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PAUL MASSEY 3D artist/VFX/compositor Freelance zeclipse.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------When rendering an image to composite using Octane with Cinema 4D, go to

‘look’ filter that emulates a specific film stock and then further fine-tuning it with some powerful Curves adjustments for instantly beautiful renders.

ROBERT NATHAN GARLINGTON VP of Production Blender Guru garlingtonartgallery.com --------------------------------------------------------Blender has an absolutely fantastic Color Management system that enables you to create professional-looking colour grading, all in a real-time viewport preview using the Cycles render engine. This is done by simply choosing a stylistic

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GAVRIIL KLIMOV Art director at NVIDIA Corp gavriilklimov.com --------------------------------------------------------The best approach to maximise your time for a new task is to be prepared. Being prepared consists of organising the steps that you need to take prior to the beginning of the work session. Then take these tasks and divide them up in smaller tasks. You can analyse it and quickly realise how much time you might need to complete every sub-task so that you can assign deadlines to each, which will ultimately help you reach deadlines without the awful stress of being underprepared.

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SÉRGIO MERÊCES CEO and lead 3D artist Merêces Arch-Viz Studio sergiomereces.com --------------------------------------------------------To highlight the dramatic look in a image, I use a Photoshop plugin called Vivenza. I push the Structure slider to get the desired look and you’ll see a huge improvement on the final image in details and dramatic look.

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ADAM SACCO 3D character artist Freelance soulty.com --------------------------------------------------------I have found that being very diverse is key to growing as a 3D artist. It is as important to practise your art as it is to continuing to learn new software. Being a character artist, I would recommend others try traditional sculpting and photography to help you practise both form and lighting, and to get you off the computer. On the other hand, learning new software and tools as they come out and being open-minded when it comes to new, evolving workflows will benefit you in the long run and keep you employable.

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ARMEN KEVORKIAN VFX supervisor and ECD Deluxe’s Encore VFX bydeluxe.com --------------------------------------------------------The key to innovation is trying what others say can’t be done, and using your knowledge from that to lead the way.

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DAVE WILSON Creative director Blur Studio blur.com --------------------------------------------------------In our ever-changing, technologically driven world – and more so in VFX – be ready to adapt. The landscape changes, the tools change, methodologies are rewritten and every project is different from the last. Surviving requires

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constant re-evaluation and reinvention, and those who pioneer the change thrive in the new environment they helped create. WALDEMAR BARTKOWIAK Senior modeller ILM mancubus.artstation.com ---------------------------------------------Don’t hold on to one software or technique. For example, to make a tree you can use SpeedTree, PlantFactory or Sapling for Blender. Mix techniques, extrude splines to create branches, photogrammetry to get Displacement details for trunk and instancing to populate leafs. Do your research when starting a new project, leave your comfort zone and check what different 3D packages have to offer. There are many ways that you can create a chain or rope, make realistic cloth wrinkles or cut clean Booleans. Just don’t let a brand-new UI throw you off – have fun while learning.

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COLIE WERTZ Digital artist ILM coliewertz.com --------------------------------------------------------My background as an architect has helped me to both visualise and organise ideas as I made the move into 3D years ago. 2D sketching in perspective was very valuable when it came to figuring out spaces in architecture with clients. It’s collaborative and communicative. This aspect, when applied to 3D, helps me cut to the chase with design in 3D, especially when so much work is done back and forth. Clarity between parties is a necessity in collaborative design prior to execution of something time-consuming, eg as a fully built asset.

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ARMANDO SAVOIA Concept artist/art director Freelance armandosavoia.it/concepts --------------------------------------------------------I have been developing my own technique day after day. Facing problems of a different nature is the engine for growth. Determination and commitment to solving problems push you to study new techniques, combinations of colours and textures, which become part of the creative process and define your own style in the end.

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FREDERIC D’AOUST Character artist BioWare Montreal fredericdaoust23.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------No matter what software you are using, it’s always very important to customise it as much as you can to optimise your

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workflow and to make it more efficient. A couple of years ago I spent more the 40 hours over three weekends on customising my UI, macros and hotkeys in ZBrush. Once done, it gave me almost automatically a 50 per cent faster workflow. JUSTIN HOLT Texture painter supervisor Sony Pictures Imageworks justinmholt.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------Like so many others, this industry comes down to people and how you are able to work with others in a creative and highly collaborative environment. I can talk about certain tools or tricks that technically help me in my painting process, but I don’t think that is as important as your ability to positively interact with others. I would hire someone who is slightly less talented but a great person to work with than someone who is extremely talented and impossible to work with. Schools don’t typically touch upon the social aspect of being successful in this industry, but it is a paramount part of not only growing as an artist but building a reputation that will work for your career. Your reputation ends up becoming more important than your showreel. And when you get to the point where you are in a senior role, give back. A tool is just a tool; it does not define you as an artist, so check your ego at the door and share your knowledge openly and willingly. If you do, I promise you that great things will come to not only you but the people around you you’ve paid it forward to.

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BRENNAN LETKEMAN Industrial designer Freelance brennanletkeman.com --------------------------------------------------------The one thing I couldn’t live without, no matter what software I’m using, is macro buttons. My mouse has buttons, my keyboard has hotkeys. Efficiency and speed equal time and money. Learn them, know them, make your own, and make them reflexive. Eliminate the barrier between your brain’s creativity and the scene you’re making so that it flows naturally and at the speed you’re thinking.

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SCOTT EATON World-renowned anatomy expert, sculptor and educator scott-eaton.com --------------------------------------------------------The most important thing I’ve learned is to spend time learning the fundamentals. Whatever your discipline – compositing, concept art, animation, technical direction, creature design – be sure to strip away the superficial layers of tools and buttons, and really spend the time to learn the core knowledge of your discipline. Software and other tools come and go, but a deep

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100 INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS, 100 ESSENTIAL TECHNIQUES

and rooted understanding of your art will give you a solid foundation that you can always rely on, no matter what upheavals you might end up facing in the industry. JARROD MARK HASENJAGER Senior modeller and lighting artist Triggerfish Animation Studios hasenjager.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------Study your subject matter, because you can’t re-create something that you don’t understand. Be inquisitive, ask questions about it and never settle. Learn the art of backward engineering, as this is the key to understanding how much detail there actually is. Develop your critical eye and push yourself further each time. Don’t give up.

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ALEX FIGINI Senior concept artist BioWare alexfigini artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------My top tip would be to get comfortable with both 2D and 3D in your workflow. I use both in my work, most of the time in conjunction with each other. Knowing when to use them – as well as understanding the advantages and disadvantages of both – will become very valuable for both film and game development, so spend time getting to know both.

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GERALD BLAISE Senior hard-surface modeller  ILM gerald-blaise.com --------------------------------------------------------I’ve worked in a few different visual effects companies and the most important aspect of any role is to be open minded to methods and working styles. You must be able to adapt to different supervisors’ techniques and tastes, and continue to evolve and learn new tools. You must actively seek to expand your knowledge and be willing to share it with others.

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ANDREW MAXIMOV Lead technical artist Naughty Dog artisaverb.info --------------------------------------------------------One of the most important things that I’ve learned so far is that ‘making art is a process of assigning meaning’. Colour, shape, detail, composition, subjects – all of these things have meaning in your work. Make sure that you are very conscious of what you mean in your work. If you don’t deliberately assign the right meaning, then you are going to have to live with the wrong one. Or even worse than that, you might miss it entirely, in which case you are most likely not making art anymore.

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69 DENZIL O’NEILL Senior character artist id Software artstation.com/artist/denziloneill --------------------------------------------------------Do what you enjoy and learn from those who do it better! I’ve worked in all aspects of the art department in gaming, from props and environments to VFX. If you work on the area you enjoy the most – even if it is currently not your strong point – you can eventually make it in that field and be happier as an artist. Learn as much as you can from those around you, especially the artists you admire, and that area can become your strongest point.

DAMON WOODS Senior character artist Survios dkwoods.com --------------------------------------------------------Learning all of the latest tools and techniques is a great way to get ahead, but without the right kind of attitude, you’ll always be at a disadvantage. Surround yourself with driven and positive people and you’ll be amazed at just how contagious their energy can be. Your network should be more than just a list of people who can get you a gig. They should be the well that you can draw from when you need to find inspiration or motivation.

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JOEL ERKKINEN Art director Meditech Communications hothotweezly.artstation.com --------------------------------------------------------When you are beginning a project, try to hone in on what it is that you feel most passionate about. With passion you will find that you will work your hardest and enjoy every minute of working on it.  But always listen to and check with peers before you find yourself falling down a rabbit hole.

WARNER MCGEE 3D Artist Freelance warnermcgee.com --------------------------------------------------------With the abundance of tools for 3D artists today choosing the right one(s) can be overwhelming. While having the ‘right’ tools helps with the technical and creative processes of making 3D artwork, I believe what matters most is what the artist behind the tools can dream up.

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30 YEARS OF VFX

A Resistance X-Wing attacks a First Order TIE Fighter in this stunning shot by ILM

In Guardians Of The Galaxy, both Groot and Rocket Racoon were fully CG characters

Weta Digital produced the final imagery for Avatar from mocap data

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Gravity featured live-action footage incorporated into CG environments

MPC’s photorealistic animals and environments reached new levels in The Jungle Book

In The Abyss, ILM’s water tentacle had to not only appear as a moving, liquid object, but also take on the form of actors in the film

30 YEARS OF VFX In this special feature, Pixar, ILM, Weta Digital and other industry heavyweights revisit the explosion in CG over the past few decades

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udiences have perhaps always marvelled at the skill and impact of special effects in films, whether they be miniatures or matte paintings, explosions or man-in-suit monsters. Yet the advent of computer-generated imagery in live-action and animated features – which has only really been seen in the past few decades – has taken us into new worlds with more believable characters and creatures than ever before. Over the next few pages, 3D Artist has gathered together several industry heavyweights to take a look back on the biggest developments in CG and VFX so far. Many of these contributors were there right at the beginning of the dawn of the digital age of effects and animation, while others have been major contributors to the art and technology behind some of the most memorable and breathtaking visual effects and CG films of recent times, from Toy Story in 1995 all the way through to 2013’s Avatar.

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30 YEARS OF VFX

The big breakthroughs The discussion of CG and VFX breakthroughs is often punctuated with ‘firsts’, and a number of films often claim the mantle of first use of proper CG in a motion picture. These include Westworld, which had an android POV realised with digital image processing, Star Wars: A New Hope, which used raster-like graphics for the Death Star trench simulation, and Looker, which included a rendered model of a naked woman. But the early possibilities of CG imagery are probably most widely attributed to the Genesis Demo in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. Here, the Lucasfilm Computer Division (a separate entity to Lucasfilm’s visual effects powerhouse ILM, and which would eventually go on to become Pixar) was called upon to do a terraforming planet simulation. For that, some early research in varying fields of computer graphics would find its way on the big screen. “I had Loren Carpenter, our fractal genius, on board, so I put fractals in the piece,” Alvy Ray Smith, who concepted and directed the Genesis

Phil Tippett animates a stop motion speeder bike and trooper for Return Of The Jedi

computer graphics could bring to filmmaking. That inspired software developers, too, including Bill Kovacs who had previously worked on Tron. Together, he and Larry Barrels started Wavefront Technologies in 1984 and were later joined by Roy Hall. Wavefront developed The Advanced Visualizer, a forerunner to Roy Hall, Wavefront Technologies future 3D animation software. “The industry was small at the time,” recalls Hall. “Most animation houses had built everything special purpose, and there were not sequence, says. “I had Bill Reeves, our particle many animation houses around. Pretty much systems genius, so I put particle systems in it. I anything you did was new – the barriers were had worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in pretty low, so you didn’t need to do all that much Pasadena briefly with Jim Blinn doing planetary to be hot. With Wavefront, the big thing there was flybys, so a planetary flyby went into it too. I had making it – animation, rendering, compositing – a Tom Porter, our painting genius, so a painted commercial thing accessible to anyone, so they scene went into the piece, and finally I had Tom could focus on story, not software.” Duff, a texture mapping and bump mapping That went for other software too, such as the genius so that went in too. And I had David procedurally-based Side Effects’ PRISMS, which DiFrancesco, our camera whizz, who would later became Houdini. Over time, procedural ensure we could get the frames out of the solvers and shaders have been added to the mix computer and onto film.” as the software matured. “Developing procedural After Wrath Of Khan and films such as Tron, dynamic solvers such as fluids, rigid bodies and more and more people saw the potential of what wires that interact was a tough but rewarding problem to solve,” says Kim Davidson, president and CEO of Side Effects Software. “Artists want to experiment and art directors want to control simulations and procedural solvers allow them to do this.” Going back to the late Eighties and early Nineties, several other 3D packages also seemed to emerge at that time, such A revolutionary as Softimage 3D. The difficulty, effect by ILM for though, was that hardware was so Terminator 2: Judgment Day expensive and only larger studios

Anything you did was new – the barriers were pretty low, so you didn’t need to do that much

One of the earliest examples of visual effects – Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan

PIXAR ON TOY STORY How the studio made audiences fall in love with CG, and changed animation forever When Pixar completed John Lasseter’s Toy Story in 1995, many at the studio had no idea if audiences would turn up to the first fully computer animated feature film. For several years since being spun out from the Lucasfilm Computer Division, Pixar had been tinkering away on shorts and continuing to develop its rendering software, RenderMan. But a full-length animated feature was another level. “Just to give you a sense of things back then,” begins Pete Docter, a supervising animator and storyboard artist on Toy Story who went on to direct Up and Inside Out, “Someone on the crew ran around town with a camera asking random people, ‘What is Pixar?’, and no one had heard of us. So while we all hoped Toy Story would be a success, I don’t think anyone really had any idea of how big it would actually become.” The huge accomplishment in modelling characters, animating them and rendering out a full-length feature came despite some giant technical hurdles. RenderMan could certainly handle large and complex scenes, and it was capable of dealing with smoothed curved surfaces such as Bézier, B-spline and NURBS patches. It also had the ability to produce ‘in-camera’ motion blur and depth of field. But there was one big, missing ingredient: support for ray-tracing or other methods of global light transport, which is pointed out by Rick Sayre, who worked in modelling and animation system development and as a modeller and shader on Toy Story, and who is now a supervising TD at the studio. “To compensate, I had developed a simple ray-tracer inside the renderer, implemented entirely within the light and surface shading languages, for television commercials we had done previous to Toy Story,” says Sayre. “For the film, I extended the system to support A-buffer – supporting many objects, analytically anti-aliased – ray-traced render queries. While it could only ray-trace textured primitives, such as cones, spheres and cubes, this allowed us basic support for environmental reflections and rudimentary image-based lighting. We used it for environmental reflections, eye highlights and sometimes even to apply texturing to our models with a type of 3D paint.” The result was a film that proved computer graphics could be used to tell compelling stories, even in what were still early days of the technology. It also ushered in an era of efficient pipeline management and shot production, without which the films would never be finished.

From wireframe to final frame, these progression images show how Woody and Buzz were realised in Pixar’s Toy Story

Someone on the crew ran around town with a camera asking random people, ‘What is Pixar?’ Pete Docter, Pixar Animation Studios

“When we got the green light for Toy Story, our existing technology was oriented to making state-of-the-art short films and TV commercials but it lacked the infrastructure sub-systems needed to make a feature-length film – boring components such as render scheduling or asset management,” says William Reeves, now a supervising TD at Pixar. “Aside from that, we tried hard to not push the tech too far, and to concentrate on making a great film.”

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AVATAR: MANY MILESTONES IN ONE The world’s highest grossing film changed the game in performance capture, texturing, rendering and many other aspects of visual effects

Weta Digital brought the world of Pandora to life in Avatar

Director James Cameron seems to push forward visual effects with every film he works on. The Abyss, Terminator 2 and Titanic were huge game-changers in CG, while also combining a mix of practical, miniature and digital effects techniques. With Avatar in 2009, Cameron would take a leap even further into VFX innovations by applying a virtual production approach to shooting actors and then generating them completely synthetically, while retaining the feel of a live-action film. Weta Digital led the VFX effort on the show and had to up its game when it started working with the director. “Jim does a lot of prep in all phases of the film,” says Weta Digital senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri. “He knows exactly what he wants and he works very hard to make sure what he puts up on the screen is the best it can be.” Matt Aitken, a VFX supervisor at Weta Digital who contributed to Avatar, notes that the combination of the performance capture with a virtual camera gave Cameron the ability to view the CG characters as the audience would see them in the virtual scene in real time. “In this way,” says Aitken, “the filmmaking process was put back into the hands of the director, giving

James Cameron the opportunity direct the CG in real time and shape the narrative organically.” During Avatar’s production, Weta Digital also extended its technical toolkit in several ways. One was the implementation of its Facial Action Coding System approach for translating the facial capture to the CG characters. Another involved a physically based solution to muscle and skin simulation – known as Tissue – and yet another involved new approaches to rendering with spherical harmonics. Perhaps one of the biggest breakthroughs came in the area of 3D texture painting. Aware that an extra level of detail was needed for texturing in Avatar, Weta Digital developed MARI. The software would later be purchased by The Foundry and has become one of the go-to texture-painting tools in the industry. Weta Digital’s success on the film, of course, was measured by how enamoured audiences were with the story. “My favourite moment was the confrontation between Neytiri and Jake,” begins VFX supervisor Wayne Stables. “You no longer see her as an alien on an alien world. All you see is a moment where Zoe Saldana’s performance is translated through to a digital character in a digital world and it’s flawless.”

Milestones in CG filmmaking Hollywood has propelled the art of visual effects and computer generated imagery along at breakneck speed. Here are just some of the highlights

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tended to be able to afford the Silicon Graphics workstations required to make computer graphics even doable. One of those studios was ILM, which had adopted some commercial software while also producing its own bespoke solutions. Stefen Fangmeier, who was a visual effects artist on Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park, and later became a visual effects supervisor on Twister and The Perfect Storm, outlines the state of play in the early Nineties at ILM. “The basic approach was to model rigid 3D objects that could be rigged and animated. Shape deformation could be done by moving CVs on B-spline patches to create various shapes that a rigid object could deform into, all driven by an animator. However, mathematical deformation of objects via a sim was truly not available. Hence, much custom software was created by the programmers at ILM to provide another layer of animation capability.” It was all new and exciting for both artist and audience. By the time Pixar made the first fully computer-generated animated feature film in Toy Story, the industry had woken up to the possibilities

Jurassic Park heralded the arrival of living, breathing CG creatures, made possible by further advancements in digital VFX at ILM

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WESTWORLD RELEASED Known as the first feature film to use digital processing, Michael Crichton’s Westworld featured work by Information International Inc

GEORGE LUCAS FORMS ILM ILM had humble beginnings as a miniatures and models shop for Star Wars: A New Hope, but it went on to become a premier VFX facility

of CG, even if a film about animated toys surprised many with the emotion it could generate. “Back in 1995, we were proud that we could even deliver 90 minutes of computer animation,” reflects Pixar’s Tom Porter, now senior vice president, production, at the studio. “But the real honour came with the positive critical and audience reaction to the film. In my view, the key ingredient was that John Lasseter had devoted ten years to understanding the capabilities and limitations of the technical staff at Pixar, while holding firm to the principles of character animation and the need to tell a story.” Of course, Pixar was not the only company that recognised the power of CG-animated filmmaking. Pacific Data Images (PDI) and Blue Sky Studios had strong research-based and industry-experienced founders behind them, and both would eventually go on to make groundbreaking fully CG-animated films. Like Pixar, these studios had high ambitions right from the start. “Around 1984,” relates one of PDI’s founders Carl Rosendahl, “We set a long-term goal of creating our own fully animated feature films someday. Everything we did after that was with the intent of building the creative and technical skills and tools that would make that possible. We moved from broadcast graphics into commercials, then into doing film effects and animation for TV. And eventually we made it to the top working with, and then as a part of, DreamWorks.” In recent times, developments in CG and VFX do not seem to have slowed down. Instead, the quest for achieving photorealism or creating the most dynamic shots have continued rapidly. Just some of the major advancements include progress in physically plausible rendering and lighting, highly detailed texturing, realistic simulation of skin, muscle, hair and clothing, fast and realistic sims of natural phenomena like water and fire, facial capture and animation (and with that the ever-closer move to

replicating humans in digital form), and in digital compositing. Paul Debevec has been one of those behind the push for greater fidelity in capturing the essence of actors when replicating them digitally, something done via his Light Stages at the University of California,

The fictitious Tangiers Casino, built for Martin Scorsese’s Casino

Back in 1995, we were proud that we could even deliver 90 minutes of computer animation Tom Porter, Pixar Animation Studios

Berkeley and additionally at the University of Southern California. “By 2006,” Debevec says, “we had developed a new Light Stage facial scanning technique capable of recording 0.1mm accurate facial shape based on polarised gradient illumination. I showed it first to our Spider-Man 2 collaborator Mark Sagar who was then at Weta and recommended for VFX supervisor Joe Letteri to visit us, and from that meeting we got the opportunity to scan five of the main actors for Avatar for their digi-doubles and Na’vi characters. 

Since then we’ve applied the Light Stage high-res facial scanning process on over 20 movies including The Jungle Book, The BFG, Central Intelligence and Suicide Squad just this year.” Indeed, several prominent industry experts pin-point James Cameron’s Avatar as making a giant leap in how digital creatures and human-like characters were brought to the screen. But it also ushered in new ideas in CG filmmaking, such as virtual production techniques and the incorporation of stereo. “Jim didn’t just make a digital movie, he brought the best of both worlds together and made what is now considered to be the best example of virtual production,” outlines Weta Digital VFX supervisor, Guy Williams. “What made it special was that he brought more of the traditional process into the mix. He blurred the lines between the two processes to the point that it felt like a traditional movie, but with lots of digital assistance.”

Effects legacy: ELTLIA P@ELLIQB@EKFNRBPCLRKA >T>VQLPROSFSB Before Avatar, Hollywood had been powering ahead in its love affair with CG and digital visual effects. But those artists who had trained in

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STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN RELEASED The terraforming planet sequence in Star Trek II: Wrath Of Khan is considered the first major use of CG in a feature

TRON RELEASED Steven Lisberger’s now-iconic film Tron is fondly remembered in the industry for some of the earliest computer animation in a feature film

YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES RELEASED The first ever 3D character in a feature film was a young knight from this Barry Levinson film

PIXAR FOUNDED Apple’s Steve Jobs provided investment money for a group from Lucasfilm Computer Division to form a spinoff company that went by the name Pixar

PRISMS RELEASED Houdini began life as PRISMS, 3D software that came out of a now defunct CG studio called Omnibus. Many of Houdini’s abilities can be traced back to this incarnation

PHOTOSHOP CREATED John Knoll and his brother Thomas created Photoshop (known as Display). It would become the most popular image editor on the planet

SOFTIMAGE 3D RELEASED Popular early 3D software Softimage became one of the mainstays of big VFX studios, including both ILM and Digital Domain

THE ABYSS RELEASED Director James Cameron imagined a water alien tentacle mimicking facial expressions. It also featured the early use of digital compositing

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30 YEARS OF VFX

STAND-OUT STUDIOS INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC Year Founded: 1975 Founder: George Lucas --------------------------------------Artists at ILM literally invented ways to bring about George Lucas’ space opera visions, combining the services of scale models, motion control cameras and optical printers. ILM has continued to innovate in VFX, being at the forefront of CG techniques that came predominantly through The Abyss, Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. It has also led the way in software development, open standards and on-set capture techniques – all part of its massive visual effects pipeline.

TIPPETT STUDIO Year Founded: 1984 Founder: Phil Tippett --------------------------------------Phil Tippett famously referred to his job becoming extinct during the making of Jurassic Park when Steven Spielberg moved on from using stop-motion dinosaurs to computergenerated ones. But the VFX supervisor and his studio never really looked back, delighting audiences with the bugs of Starship Troopers, Cloverfield’s classic monster and the wolves in The Twilight Saga. While Tippett himself misses the good old days of stop motion, he has clearly embraced the CG world – albeit from slightly afar.

traditional forms of animation or in practical and optical effects techniques did not necessarily get left behind. To varying degrees, they applied their skills to the digital realm. One prominent old-school VFX artist, Phil Tippett, felt the change perhaps more than most, when his planned stop-motion contribution to Jurassic Park was altered due to the arrival of ILM’s digital techniques. Tippett and his studio still contributed animatics, animation supervision and even a digital motion-sensor ‘Dinosaur Input Device’ to the production, but for the supervisor, VFX would never be the same. “One of my VFX supes, Matt Jacobs, said it best a few months back,” says Tippett. “He explained that if George Lucas walked into the shop and the Death Star was square, he’d say, ‘Who the hell’s fault is this? Why is this Death Star square? Someone get down here and fix this.’ And someone would say, ‘Sorry boss, I don’t know what I was thinking. Here, I’ll take care of it’. “Nowadays if you pull up a shot and the Death Star is square, you ask what happened and it’s 45

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These facilities have given us some of the most unforgettable moments in movie history DIGITAL DOMAIN Year Founded: 1993 Founder: James Cameron, Stan Winston, Scott Ross --------------------------------------Digital Domain has made a major contribution to VFX since its inception by some of Hollywood’s biggest heavyweights. In the process, DD has worked on scores of blockbusters and its artists have been recognised with Oscars for Titanic, What Dreams May Come and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. The studio has moved to advertising and VR work after historically being an innovator in both the practical and digital worlds. NUKE was born out of the Digital Domain, for example.

minutes of people saying things like, ‘Well the command line wasn’t cached correctly, so the node that controls the blah blah blah blah…’ I don’t understand any of that at all. To me, stop-mo is something you can touch and photograph. Objects speak to you and tell you

We were seeing our first glimpse of the future and a new way of creating environments for movies Craig Baron, Magnopus

what they want to be. With computers there are many other factors at play, and none of them are straightforward. At least not to me. That’s why I hire smart guys to handle that.” Matte painter Craig Baron, who worked at ILM and then his own facility, Matte World Digital,

MPC Year Founded: 1974 Founder: Mike Luckwell --------------------------------------Now owned by Technicolor, MPC has become one of the powerhouse VFX studios both in film and TV, and it has the locations to match: London, Vancouver, Bangalore, New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Montreal, Paris and Shanghai. The studio has contributed to numerous films, including Oscar-winner Life Of Pi (2012). This year, its completely believable digital creatures and environments for The Jungle Book cemented its place as a tier-one studio.

and who is now creative director for Magnopus, transitioned from glass painted matte paintings to the digital world. “The most amazing experience I had transitioning from matte painting to 3D environments was the Scorsese film Casino,” he says, referring to his creation of the fictitious Tangiers Casino in Las Vegas using global illumination rendering. “The shot took us over three months to render – in fact, SGI stepped in to help us finish or we might not have made our deadline. We were seeing our first glimpse of the future and a new way of creating environments for movies, beyond what we could do with matte painting.” Meanwhile, visual effects supervisor Volker Engel straddled both sides of practical and digital effects right as CG was just becoming a mainstay in the filmmaking world when he oversaw the work on Independence Day. “20 years ago for ID4, we would always approach a shot the same way,” he begins to

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LIGHTWAVE 3D RELEASED Originally developed as VideoScape 3D, LightWave was eventually incorporated by NewTek into Video Toaster in 1990

3D STUDIO RELEASED Autodesk’s 3ds Max began life as 3D Studio in 1988 made by The Yost Group. The company then released the software in 1990

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY RELEASED New animation and rendering enabled the film’s main liquid metal character to ‘act’ alongside reallife characters

THE LAWNMOWER MAN RELEASED This Brett Leonard film that made use of mo-cap and digital synthetic environments by Angel Studios and Xaos Incorporated

JURASSIC PARK RELEASED ILM took enormous strides in computer animation for living, breathing animals for this dinosaur film from director Steven Spielberg

TOY STORY RELEASED Pixar’s Toy Story was the first in the wave of CGanimated films and inspired several other CG studios, including PDI, Blue Sky and Disney

TITANIC RELEASED James Cameron’s film heralded the use of motion capture for background and stunt extras and digital water simulations

MAYA RELEASED Maya, now one of the most central 3D computer graphics software tools, was first released by Alias but is now in Autodesk’s stable of 3D packages

explain. “Do everything practical with miniatures or cloud tanks as far as it makes sense. Then, once we had over a dozen jets and alien attackers in a shot, we turned to computer graphics.” Another supervisor who made the significant transition from practical to digital is Scott Squires. He got a start on Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, working with cloud tanks, and also worked with miniature submarines for The Hunt For Red October before becoming heavily part of ILM’s digital – but also continued practical and miniatures – work on DragonHeart and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. “I think anyone who worked with pre-digital visual effects brought a lot of real-world experience with them,” suggests Squires. “Pre-digital we had to be innovative to use any technique that worked. Shot design, determining true requirements of a shot, problem solving and general approach to visual effects were things that didn’t change. We [already] knew about the need for pre-planning, patience and when we could take shortcuts.” “We knew we were striving for cinematic realism within context of the film,” he says. “We

At the dawn of the industry, stop-motion puppetry and model work were dominant art forms

MOTION AND EMOTION How motion capture went from experimentation to major implementation in visual effects

For Ted, director Seth MacFarlane wore Xsens’ MVN inertial mo-cap technology, which allowed him to freely interact with the cast and crew while sending data that mimicked his movements and mannerisms.

Right now, real-life actors win Oscars for their real-life performances. But could we soon see motion capture performers, and even visual effects artists take the top prizes in acting? That might sound far-fetched until you realise that some of the more memorable characters have been brought to the screen via motion capture and animation. The most well-known performer is Andy Serkis, whose turn as Gollum in the Lord Of The Rings films changed motion capture forever. Motion capture is now just one of many tools that filmmakers use to get performances on the screen, sometimes as fully-fledged digital characters, but also as background actors or for stunt purposes. It was once much more of a mechanical and measuring tool that would typically be used to analyse golf swings, but filmmakers soon saw the benefits of being able to capture the unique motion of living beings. In visual effects, motion capture perhaps caught mainstream attention when Titanic VFX supervisor Rob Legato and Digital Domain had wide shots of passenger and crew on the cruise liner be animated using mo-cap. ILM was also a major convert to motion capture and its notable early uses there were on The Mummy and then the Star Wars prequels. Around this time, Peter Jackson and Weta Digital would also begin utilising motion capture for Gollum.

Things ramped up when Robert Zemeckis combined with Sony Pictures Imageworks on The Polar Express for fully motion-captured and animated human characters. Zemeckis continued to make these forms of movies with his ImageMovers outfit, never quite escaping the curse of the Uncanny Valley. But that was broken with Cameron’s Avatar and its reliance on performance capture, virtual production techniques and improved facial animation. Improved fidelity, real-time ability, locationbased shooting and better capture techniques, especially in the areas of facial motion capture, have helped studios take mo-cap as a jumping off point into final animation and turn the data into compelling performances. Things have changed, too, in the accessibility of mo-cap. Lightweight suits and markerless systems exist, and are getting cheaper, meaning you don’t have to be a major film or VFX studio to access the tech. Even directors have jumped on board, with Ang Lee jumping into a suit during the making of Hulk to help inform ILM’s animators and Seth MacFarlane donning a mo-cap suit when making Ted. There’s also been a rise in what might be termed ‘quasi-motion capture’, such as the use of specialised tracking suits worn by actors to inform motion. In the end, it’s still very much up to an animator to refine a performance.

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THE MATRIX RELEASED The bullet-time effect in The Matrix was done by filming action with multiple cameras and combining them with optical flow techniques

ZBRUSH RELEASED Pixologic first showcased its digital sculpting tool in 1999, allowing artists to treat 3D models as if they were almost in clay form

FIRST LIGHT STAGE Paul Debevec led the development of several Light Stages, used to capture how an actor’s face was lit from every possible lighting direction

LORD OF THE RINGS BEGINS Weta would showcase huge creative and technical developments in mo-cap, character creation and crowd simulation

THE FOUNDRY RELEASES NUKE The compositing software began life at Digital Domain in 1993 before The Foundry took over development of the software back in 2007

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON Many sequences were photorealistic creations from facial mo-cap of Brad Pitt and animation by Digital Domain

AVATAR James Cameron used new developments in real-time mo-cap and Weta Digital improved 3D texturing, rendering and facial animation

GRAVITY Long 3D stereoscopic shots are a feature of Gravity, along with completely photorealistic views of space, vehicles, space suits and actors

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30 YEARS OF VFX Independence Day (1996) Number of scale-model elements and table-top miniatures shot

Anatomy of alien invasions, two decades apart Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day was a practical, miniature and digital FX milestone in 1996. 20 years later the sequel, Resurgence, capitalised on advances in CGI

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) Number of visual effects shots

1,700 Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) Data required for simulation by Scanline VFX of atmospheric effect of alien mothership entering Earth’s atmosphere

10TB

(1 billion + voxels per sim)

were used to studying visuals, both real and cinematic. Model builders would weather models to make sure they looked real and fit in the environment. With digital it is easy to get lost in perfection that doesn’t exist in real life, or creating realism that has no cinematic value. Is this just more eye candy or is it an interesting shot that helps tell the story?”

VFX and CG in the filmmaking process That last point by Squires about the role of an effects shot in telling the story has become an important one for VFX artists. Partly this is due to the heavy reliance now placed on digital imagery to bring together key characters and story points, but it’s also a response to criticism often levelled at some films for being ‘too CGI’. Still, CG and VFX artists aren’t necessarily involved in the story creation process and so can they be blamed at this level? Ken Ralston, a multiple visual effects Oscar-winner (Return Of The Jedi, Cocoon, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Death Becomes Her, Forrest Gump) who worked at ILM and is now at Sony Pictures Imageworks, says the role of a VFX artist, in particular, is presently incredibly wide-ranging. “It’s our job,” he explains, “to become the director’s vision, and to help fight the good fight to put it up on the big screen. Our involvement begins early on with the concept art, storyboards

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Independence Day (1996) Number of visual effects shots

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Independence Day (1996) Total length of alien destroyer spacecraft miniature

Independence Day (1996)

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Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) Digital model of Moon Cannon destroyed by green alien spaceship beam

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Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) Number of scale-model elements and table-top miniatures shot

high digital model using MPC’s Kali finite element analysis simulation software

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and pre-visualisation. We are on set during principal photography all the way through post-production as we put all the pieces of the visual effects shots together.” Matthew Butler, a visual effects supervisor from Digital Domain, agrees that VFX is there to feed the vision. But, he notes, expectations in terms of quality and involvement have increased. He says that many directors these days are more open to story contributions from a VFX perspective. “I was lucky enough on Ender’s Game that the director Gavin Hood, who was the writer as well, would have lunch with me and he would open up his laptop and start typing up the questions I had – and he was changing the script based on what I was saying,” recalls Butler.

It’s our job to become the director’s vision and to help fight the good fight to put it on the big screen Ken Ralston, Sony Pictures Imageworks

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Miniature White House destroyed by green alien spaceship beam: 3m x 1.5m model using

Independence Day (1996)

Materials injected into cloud tank for atmospheric effect of alien mothership entering Earth’s atmosphere: white opaque liquid with underwater lights Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) Real-world diameter of new alien mothership digital model

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“That’s an example of [how] if you’re open enough it can allow you to contribute early and add your flavour to it.” Fellow experienced Digital Domain visual effects supervisor Jay Barton remarks, additionally, that he is constantly asked to be a major part of the filmmaking process by making “something no one has ever seen before”. He then adds that “anticipating what those things will be and having a team and technology in place [is what] allows us to jump on these requests with competitive schedules and prices. We are constantly getting together to look into our crystal ball to make sure we are developing for the next generation of entertainment across multiple platforms.” Along with storytelling contributions, VFX and CG artists continue to have a wide scope in their on-set and post-production roles, reflecting the diverse opportunities in the industry. MPC visual effects supervisor Adam Valdez, who worked on The Jungle Book, sums it up by saying, “A VFX supervisor is most often similar to a second unit director – someone who has to contribute action and shots into the film, following the overall design of it. We similarly make work with big units of people, and apply storytelling as well as technical skills. When so much of a movie is synthetic, this becomes even more important. Often we are making movie stars, too – performing characters on the screen. I always say we make scenes, not shots.”

Expert advice from industry professionals, taking you from concept to completion

All tutorial files can be downloaded from: filesilo.co.uk/3dartist

Create a robot vehicle scene in Blender Use popular paid-for plugins to bolster your vehicle scenes, and get to grips with advanced modelling, texturing and rendering

I

n this tutorial we will create a complex robot vehicle scene. We will use Blender as our tool, Cycles as our render engine and Photoshop for post-processing. We will also take a look at paid Blender plugins and products that will help to save us a tremendous amount of time – in particular, these include the Cycles Material Vault (CMV), The Grass Essentials and The Grove 3D. First we’ll cover how to easily design a believable sci-fi vehicle and how to translate it into 3D using a simple blockout. After that we will replace the blockout parts piece by piece with high-resolution elements. For creating these elements, we will cover different approaches to hard-surface modelling in Blender. This will be interesting, because the vehicle consists of three completely different parts (the car, trailer and robot legs). Then we will shade it, using and customising shaders from CMV. A simple HDRI setup will help us to light our scene. A minimalist environment and additional elements will help us to tell a story around our main object. Then, with some post effects, we will finish our render.

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CREATE A ROBOT VEHICLE SCENE IN BLENDER

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A simple recipe to design a sci-fi vehicle Here is an easy way to design a sci-fi vehicle: take a vehicle that you like (in this case a Lada Niva) and then leave the main shape as it is or combine it with another completely different vehicle or machine that exists in reality (like a trailer, in this case). At final stage we can add robot legs or other sci-fi wheels or nozzles. With this simple guide, we can create tons of different interesting sci-fi vehicles. Imagine combining a sports car with a tank or a baby carrier with robot legs!

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Visualise the vehicle design Mischief is a useful tool for sketching out ideas. For creating a design like in Step 1, there are a lot given elements from the different vehicles, so we need to focus on how everything is combined and add in believable sci-fi elements. We can grab parts from other machines and vehicles and add them to our creation, and we can add objects that we use day to day to make it more believable. In this render, a suitcase, a boot, a towel and a water can were added to purvey a sense of reality.

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Block out the vehicle in 3D Creating a simple 3D

blockout, we have much room for research and testing. Now we will see if our concept works in a space with real measurements and perspective. We can use a simple 3D character to check the vehicle’s size and if a human could interact with it. It’s no big deal if we delete or replace objects we don’t like, but we should always check if the proportions of the different parts fit together. This blockout will serve as the basis for the final model. We will use this as the foundation and replace the low with the high-resolution parts step by step.

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General hard-surface modelling techniques

The fewer polygons we have to take care of in the Edit mode, the less trouble we will have. We’ll use modifiers to add higher quality to low-resolution objects. For our vehicle we will use two main modifier setups. The first is for objects with volume. A Subsurf modifier plus a Mirror modifier (if things should be mirrored) will do the job. This gives us the freedom of combining smooth and hard surfaces by adding Loop Cuts. The second setup is used for flat surfaces with a slight thickness, such as bodywork. We’ll use the same setup as before, plus a Solidify modifier and a Bevel modifier. 01

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Try to add Loop Cuts in the right positions to add holes for things, such as for the headlights

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Model the body of the car For modelling real cars we can add blueprints (which are available online from www.the-blueprints.com) as background images. Be sure to add at least a front and a side view. The images should align together perfectly. In most cases a Plane is a good object to start with. We can use the second modifier setup for thick surfaces. Now we can start modelling the body, according to the blueprint. Start positioning the Plane in Edit mode and extrude new faces along the main features of the body. Try to add Loop Cuts in the right positions to add holes for things, such as for the headlights. A car body consists of different pieces – it is helpful to model all parts separately.

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Model the body of the trailer For the trailer we

need to model one side, adding a Mirror modifier and extruding it to the centre to close the rest of the gap. Now the Subsurf modifier and Loop Cuts will help us to define the shape. For the trims and the seals, add a simple shape on top of the surface and use a Subsurf and a Solidify modifier for the thickness. Remember to cut holes for windows, the door and where the trailer and car will be joined together. Use the cut-out elements for the glass and the door.

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Model the legs The legs are the only parts that are completely fictional. Here it might be useful to paint an extra concept or a 3D blockout for the functionality. The robot legs are roughly built up like a human or animal leg – the inner part is like the bones, the pistons are like the muscles, while the cables are like the veins and the bodywork is like the skin. Make sure that the legs are heavy and strong enough to carry the whole vehicle. To speed up the modelling process, model everything in one object, copy faces or whole elements and re-use them for other parts. For the armour, simple flat faces are enough if we use the Solidify modifier method.

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Model the feet Re-using elements for another

purpose is a great way to add interesting details. Here, a tyre was reused for the feet. Create one segment of a tyre, mirror it, and duplicate it along a curve using an Array and a Curve modifier. After applying all modifiers, we can cut it into pieces, which we can use for the feet. After one leg is finished, we can copy it to the back. Here the vehicle is heavier, so increase the size of the leg. It’s worth changing the model a bit here so that it doesn’t look too much like it was copied.

Sketching in 3D If you’re no good at painting or Photoshop, you can also use your 3D software as a concept tool. Put your idea together with simple, low-resolution 3D elements. This gives you the freedom to see how it looks in 3D from the beginning. It can also help to add simple materials to test out colours. If you can paint, but you’re not good with proportions and perspective, you can use the blockout as a basis for an overpaint. Put the render into your painting application to add colour and details.

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CREATE A ROBOT VEHICLE SCENE IN BLENDER

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Add bolts Bolts are a simple but effective way to

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add finer details to our legs and other parts of the vehicle. Model a simple bolt head and place the origin at the bottom. With the Snap option (Snap Element>Face) and Align Rotation With The Snapping Target enabled, we can move the bolt onto the surface of other objects. Now we can duplicate the bolt all over the leg and vehicle.

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Add the details We have to think about where adding details supports the main subject and invites the viewer’s eye to linger for longer. All the tiny elements need to make sense. We shouldn’t add details just because they look cool – we should add them because they have a function, such as lamps, an exhaust and cables. Create your cloth objects like the sunshade and towel using the cloth simulation and pinned vertices. To add to the overall used look of the car, add a Displacement modifier using a simple procedural Clouds texture to the body and armour. This will add tiny dents to it.

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Add cables and ropes Cables and ropes are a great

way to add dynamic elements, which will add plenty of smaller detail where there simply isn’t much to be found. In Blender, make use of curves (Path) for this purpose. For a cable with a smooth surface, set the Fill mode to Full (Object Data>Shape) and increase the Bevel Depth (Object Data>Geometry) of the curve. In Edit mode, adjust the shape and duplicate the whole cable. For cables with a individual surface, duplicate one segment using the Array modifier and shape it along a curve using a Curve modifier.

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Create realistic soil If you want to add the extra amount of detail to the ground to make it look like a rough, muddy surface, you can add an extra particle system. As a particle object, add a cube, subdivide it and shape it randomly. Now add a Subsurf and a Displace modifier with a Clouds texture. Create some variations of this object and add it to the particle system. Distribute it randomly across the ground and change the random size, so that every piece looks a bit different.

Connect the different parts A simple trick to

combine the trailer with the car and hide any holes is to implement cloths. Model simple quad meshes to fill the holes and add a Multiresolution modifier. Increasing the subdivision of this modifier, we can add folds using the Sculpt mode. Use the SculptDraw brush for the areas between the folds and the Inverted Crease brush to give the folds a little more sharpness. The Solidify modifier adds thickness to the cloths. To hide parts where the legs and the engine are connected and the base is open, we can add even larger surfaces.  09

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Use paintovers for finding ideas If you are creating your environment and don’t know what to add to make it more interesting, make a quick render, put it in Photoshop and start adding details using simple strokes, or copy and paste elements from photos. This way you will get a lot of new ideas and input to build up your environment. This method is much quicker than trying things directly in 3D, and it is a great way to research if certain things would fit well into your scene.

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Sculpt the environment An environment does not

need to be epic to be interesting – we simply have to place our main subject in a surrounding that we’re familiar with. Here, our vehicle has been placed in a field near a forest. First of all, choose the camera position, then add a Plane inside the frame and start shaping it in Sculpt mode. After we have edited the main shape, add a Subsurf modifier to add extra subdivisions. With a Displace modifier using a Clouds texture, we can add tiny bumps to the surface, for higher level of detail. For the background, add another simple Plane, which will cast ground shadows from the trees.

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Set up shaders using CMV The Cycles Material Vault (www.cyclesmaterialvault.com) is a really great paid product to speed up the shading process. It comes with over 100 Cycles shaders and great documentation on how exactly to use it to make the most of them. It allows us to import shaders and adjust them using sliders. For even more control, we can even adjust the whole node tree. Many of these shaders don’t even need a UV map. For our scene we can prepare a few shaders that we can use over and over again. In this case, these would include a scratched car paint, rubber, metal, glass, soil and wood, among others.

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Add trees and grass The trees in the background can be created using the paid Blender add-on The Grove 3D (which is available from www.thegrove3D.com). It allows you to grow trees of varying ages, starting with a small sapling. It also gives us plenty of options to let nature take its course to grow realistic trees very quickly. The twigs of different species, which can be purchased separately, add the final touch to the trees. For adding grass we can use the The Grass Essentials (which can be found on the Blender Guru website at www. blenderguru.com). It offers a variety of grass and weeds to create lawns, meadows and fields. With a few clicks, we’ve added realistic grass to our scene.

The power of reuse To make your modelling process faster and your model more consistent, copying and reusing parts is the solution. All the pistons on the legs were made out of the same model. All in all the whole leg was created out of very few elements, which were used over and over again. To add a bit of a variety, adjust the copied parts or combine parts of two or more different elements. For this it’s easier to model most of the parts of one section in one mesh. Larger elements like the whole leg can also be copied and adjusted.

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CREATE A ROBOT VEHICLE SCENE IN BLENDER

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Add story elements To add life to our scene, we can add a dog and birds. Here, we’ll use an image of a dog’s head, project it onto a simple model and add Hair particles. The same method can be used for the birds. This is a fast way to create background characters. We can add a seat on the top of the trailer in order to make the environment feel more alive. Adding in an old fence in front of the vehicle really adds to the scene’s charm.

Zacharias Reinhardt Zacharias currently works as a freelance 3D artist and Blender trainer after having worked at AgenZas Brothers with his brother for the last four years. In his free time he loves creating funny 3D creatures and sci-fi related vehicles and environments. He also likes to share his knowledge with the community.

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Cute But Dangerous, 2016 Blender, Photoshop, Instant Meshes, PixPlant This was a personal project that created for the Facebook group, Weekly CG Challenge (www.facebook.com/ groups/weeklycgc) with the topic ‘Cute but Dangerous’. 17

Memories of the Past, 2015 Blender, Photoshop, Skanect, iPi Mocap Studio This is an example scene for a video workshop called ‘Movie Scene Creation in Blender 3D’. It was created together with his brother Vincent Reinhardt.

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Render and post-processing We’ll be rendering using the Cycles renderer in Blender.

For the lighting, add an HDRI map (www.hdrihaven.com) to the background, which will provide realistic lighting. We can add additional spot or area lamps to highlight areas of interest. Render the scene with a transparent background (1), an Ambient Occlusion pass (2) and a Mist pass (3), then combine everything in Photoshop (4). The Mist pass can be use for fog (A), while the AO pass adds stronger shadows to the scene. The background should be filled with a morning sky photo. For the smoke, use a smoke photo from www.textures.com and apply it over the top of the render, with the Blend mode set to Screen (B). For the warm colour, add an orange-to-blue gradient with the Blend mode set to Hard Light. For the final touch, add an image with tiny white dots to fake small dust particles, as well as some chromatic aberration (C). Done!

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Monster in the Closet, 2015 Blender, Photoshop This was another personal project created for the Weekly CG Challenge Facebook group, this time based around the topic ‘Cute Monsters’.

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Global Illumination engines GI engines can be used exclusively or in combination for Primary and Secondary GI. In the Render Globals>GI tab, we can assign a Primary GI engine to collect first bounce illumination and a Secondary engine to collect further bounces. Redshift includes Photon Mapping, Brute Force, Irradiance Cache and Irradiance Point Cloud. Brute Force calculates GI for every pixel. It’s accurate and straightforward, but intensive. Irradiance methods are more complex but faster by calculating points throughout the scene and interpolating to approximate the rest of the image. Photon Mapping is less efficient, but can be used for Reflective and Refractive caustics.

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Local and Global optimisation Redshift shaders include local trace depth overrides under the Optimizations dropdown. Here we can set a custom Trace Depth for our material’s Reflections and Refractions that will override the Global trace depths we set in the Optimizations tab of our Render Globals. We also have a Global Sampling Overrides dropdown in the Output tab of our Render Globals. Here we can globally adjust sample values for Reflections, Refractions, AO, Lights, Volume and Single Scattering. With a single slider, we can replace or scale all applicable sample values, making it easier to identify the source of noise or artefacts.

Set up Irradiance Cache GI We’ll use single

bounce GI for our outdoor scene. Let’s set Irradiance Cache as our primary engine. If set to Mode: Rebuild, our engine will calculate and save an Irradiance data file upon render. When set to Load, instead of re-calculating Irradiance, it will load up the previously saved file to reduce render time. The Min and Max Rates dictate how many Irradiance Cache points can be cast per pixel. Redshift starts with the minimum subdivisions and adds more points based on the Color, Distance and Normals Thresholds defined below, therefore concentrating points in the more detailed areas of our frame.

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Set up Progressive rendering Redshift supports two different kinds of rendering modes: Progressive rendering, which updates automatically as we make adjustments, and Bucket rendering, which is the traditional stop-start method. Progressive mode is particularly effective with Redshift’s lightning-fast rendering. Let’s go to the Progressive Rendering dropdown in our Output tab and check Enable. Next we’ll open our RenderView window and click IPR to get it started. Redshift will continue to process until we make an adjustment or it reaches the set number of passes. Progressive rendering ignores all Unified Sampling settings. If our scene incorporates SSS or Photon Mapping, we should use Bucket rendering instead. 04

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RENDER WITH REDSHIFT FOR MAYA

The Architectural shader is energy conserving, meaning it will manage and return light in a physically correct way

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Set up Bucket rendering Bucket rendering in

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Get started with the Architectural shader

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Redshift is set up by default when Progressive is not enabled. With Unified Sampling, Redshift starts by calculating each pixel with the number of samples we define in the Min Samples. The Adaptive Error Threshold tells Redshift whether or not a pixel needs more sampling. Lower threshold values result in more sampling, until a pixel is clean enough or until the Max Samples limit is reached. Filters help to reduce the need for more samples by softening pixels. We can choose our Filter Type and Size to ensure our pixels don’t get too soft or blurry.

Let’s type RedShiftArchitectural in the Create panel in our Hypershade window. This super-powerful shader can create a large majority of common materials. It is energy conserving, meaning it will manage and return light in a physically correct way. It includes a Diffuse Reflection layer, a Transparency and Refraction layer, and two Specular/Glossy Reflection layers with individual Fresnel controls. Fresnel values can be defined through IOR, Medium type and Extinction Coefficients or input manually with Facing and Grazing reflectivity values. It even has built-in Occlusion, Diffuse Translucency, Depth Fog effects, Local trace-depth overrides, and of course Bump inputs.

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Metal materials Create a new RSA shader for the iron on our character’s armour. Iron is a Conductor, so we’ll go into our Primary Reflection’s Fresnel section and switch Medium Type to Conductor, and set the Extinction Coefficient (k) value for iron. Navigate to the Refraction dropdown and input our Index of Refraction. Define our Weight values for Diffuse and Reflection, and connect Color Input maps for variation. We can set our BRDF technique to control how our rough reflections are calculated. In the Ambient Occlusion dropdown, let’s check Enable, and set the Max Distance to 50.

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Add wood materials Create a fresh RSA shader for our wood material. We could leave the Medium Type as Dielectric, or disable Use Index of Refraction to customise our Fresnel effect and define our own Facing Reflectivity value. If we have a wood Normal map, we can create a RedshiftNormal node in the Hypershade, connect it to the Bump attribute in the RSA Misc dropdown,and plug in our map. Connect the Color maps and define Diffuse and Specular values. Untreated wood should be very Diffuse, with very low Specularity.

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Make the refractive glass materials With a fresh RSA Shader, let’s zero our Diffuse weight and set our Reflection weight to .1. Refraction weight dictates how much incoming light will refract through our object, so let’s set it to .85. We can use the Color input to add variation to our weight. Let’s lower the Glossiness to add Roughness, like we see in frosted glass. Our IOR defines how light will bend as it passes – higher IOR means more bending. We can enable Fog to add tinting, set our End Colour and set the Distance that light has to travel internally to reach that Colour.

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Add detail with Displacement Let’s create an RSA shader and assign it to our character’s shirt. Let’s also create a RedshiftDisplacement node and plug in our Displacement texture map. Now let’s go to our Material Shading Group, open the Redshift Dropdown and plug our RedshiftDisplacement node into the Displacement Shader slot. Now we’ll enable Tessellation and Displacement in our geometry in their respective dropdowns in the Shape tab. Here we can also use Minimum Edge Length to define which faces need more subdivisions, and use Maximum Subdivisions to set how many times our geo can be subdivided. Screen Space Adaptive gives distant objects less Subdivision.

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Set up subsurface scattering Let’s look at the

Render Globals>SSS tab. Redshift gathers subsurface lighting data from points projected onto our surface in a render pre-pass. When we’re in Rebuild mode, this data is gathered and saved, and then can be recalled by switching to Load mode, significantly cutting down on render time. The Rate defines how many points are projected. If we’re using less than 1 per pixel, Redshift will interpolate for the pixels in between using the Interpolation Quality. We can also dictate the number of rays used to sample GI contribution. The default settings work well for most circumstances.

Displacement Map types The RedshiftDisplacement node can support both Height Field Displacement and Vector Displacement and lets us define the Displacement type in the Map Encoding attribute. We can also use the Change Range attributes to control how our Displacement values will be read. Depending on what software we used to bake our Displacement map, we may need to apply a Range adjustment here. Most commonly this would be adjusting the Old Range Min value to 0.5 in order to remap the grey value on our map to 0. This is necessary for maps that set 50% grey as the no-displacement point.

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RENDER WITH REDSHIFT FOR MAYA

It might seem like a little step, but it’s an absolutely vital one if you want to really enhance the realism of your render

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Shade the skin with subsurface scattering Let’s

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Add in some dirt with a Material blender

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Set up our final outputs Redshift supports a long list

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create a RedshiftSubSurfaceScatter material. This shader comes with a list of common Presets. Let’s choose skinBrown and tweak our IOR to 1.44. The subsurface scatter colour should be our character’s skin pigment. It determines the colour shift as light enters the skin. The Scatter colour should be closer to blood red than the character’s skin itself. After all, this is what determines how the light’s colour shifts as it travels inside the skin. Our Scatter Radius is just how far the light will be able to travel inside the skin, and the Scale value can multiply this. The Diffuse Amount weakens the subsurface scattering effect. SSS Reflections attribute work similarly to RSA Reflections. 16

Redshift comes with several types of Blending nodes for combining different types of Utility maps and Shaders together for different effects. Let’s create a RedshiftMaterialBlender and a RedshiftAmbientOcclusion node. The blender has an input for a Base Material and subsequent Layer Materials. Let’s use our Iron material for the base of this blender. Now let’s make a dirt material and plug it into Layer 1. Let’s select our RedshiftAmbientOcclusion node and set Bright to Black, and Dark to White, and set a Max Distance of 1. This node will drive the blend colour, giving us an awesome procedural dirt effect in the crevices of our armour! It might seem like a little step, but it’s an absolutely vital one if you want to really enhance the realism of your render.

of Arbitrary Output Variables, which will help us in compositing. In our Render Globals>AOV tab, we can select AOVs from this list and click Add to move them to the Active AOVs list. From here, we can edit parameters of each AOV by clicking on its input icon. When rendering OpenEXR, we can save all of our AOVs in a single layered file by giving them all the same file name prefix. Let’s also enable AOV clamping to ensure that our pixel values stay reasonable. Finally we’ll choose our desired AOVs and render our work! From here, you can do any post-production you want in Photoshop.

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Compositing with Redshift Redshift AOVs give us lots of useful image compositing data, and great control over the different layers of light contribution in our scene. In our compositing package, light contribution outputs like Diffuse Lighting, Global Illumination, Specular Lighting, Reflections and so on should be added together with a ‘Plus’ Merge node in NUKE or a Linear Dodge blending mode in Photoshop to build our final beauty image. If our AOVs all saved into a single OpenEXR, we can use a Shuffle node in NUKE to shuffle them out. Otherwise, they will be separate files populating the same folder as our beauty render.

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BUILD STUNNING ENVIRONMENTS

66

Build stunning environments Evoke a mysterious, atmospheric vibe to create a breathtaking outdoor scene that wouldn’t look out of place in blockbuster movies

O

ver the next 17 steps we’ll be going over the design, workflows and some quick tips that were used to bring Vigilant to life in Blender. Since composition is the key to creating a memorable and lasting image, we will be exploring various simple but powerful compositional techniques developed by classical and digital artists. Then, once we have blocked out the foundations of the scene, we will be diving into the details and learning how to use assets from The Rock Essentials assets to create convincing looking rubble, cobblestone and custom sculpts with photoscanned brushes. We will also explore how to add particle grass from The Grass Essentials assets to specific parts of the models for that extra fine level of detail. Ultimately the renders will be exported using the OpenEXR format and brought into Adobe After Effects, where colour grading will be applied to make a final image that stands out!

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BUILD STUNNING ENVIRONMENTS

01 ROBERT NATHAN GARLINGTON Vigilant, 2016 Software +#-"#1Ĕũ
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02

up plans and use precise measurements for their creations, an important first step for the 3D artist is to make sure that their scene units are set up using a real-world scale. Fortunately, Blender has the option to set the scale using either metric or imperial units depending on your preference. Setting this up from the beginning grounds your digital stage in reality and helps the mind to consider the size and weight of how the CG objects will be used, placed and scaled together.

02

Vision and scene blocking Many successful

works of art are born out of having a clear and definitive vision at the start of the project. However, not everyone has access to a concept artist to help them flesh out their ideas, so a great way to work around this is to block out your scene with basic geometry. Not only is this inexpensive, but it’s the most effective way to see if your composition will work conceptually in 3D space.

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03

Play with the camera Just as important as the

blocking, the placement of the camera will dramatically affect the overall mood. It helps to create multiple cameras saved at various angles so that you can switch between them and help to narrow down your final position. For an outdoor scene like this one, it was important to grasp and capture the largeness of the surrounding environment, and so a nice, wide focal length of 28mm was used. It’s advisable to keep experimenting with the camera positioning until it looks good to you and then make sure to lock it down so that it cannot be moved by mistake.

04

Decide on the focal point As you are blocking out the scene, the positioning of the objects should be geared and designed to purposefully lead your eyes through the digital canvas and directly to the focal point, which in this case is the spectral guard character. To aid in this, artists throughout the centuries have developed simple tricks to lead the eyes of their viewers towards the focal elements in their artworks. In this example, directional lines have been added to show how the objects in the scene can be positioned and angled to subtly point towards the focal element. 01

YOUR

Use a real-world scale Just as architects must draw

04

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The human touch Another effective method for making sure that your scene is looking correct in regards to scaling ratios is to insert a human figure, which can be visible at all times while working. Even if your scene doesn’t have a human in the final render, just having a stand-in will help you greatly with the appropriate sizing of the other objects by simply comparing them side-by-side. If done correctly like this at an early stage and before the objects are firmly established in the composition, you can save a lot of time and avoid potential headaches that could have been easily solved earlier.

Artists throughout the centuries have developed simple tricks to lead the eyes of their viewers

05

Establish the lighting early on The lighting direction and hence the general mood is also very good to have established at the very beginning of an artwork. A simple sun can be added to give general direction to the light, but it’s far better to use a high dynamic range image (HDRI), which will also give realistic ambient sky lighting. To do this, a Blender Guru add-on called Pro Lighting: Skies was used to quickly play around with a multitude of HDRI light setups. It’s as simple as selecting a thumbnail preview and adjusting the various sliders within the add-on to achieve the desired light strength and direction.

06

Model the basics Now it’s time to further define the shapes and work out the more specific details of the ruined tower. This is done with simple box-modelling techniques by extruding faces to the general width and height of the tower, and ultimately forming the foundation for the detailed sculpting later on. It is also very important at this stage to layout the UV coordinates correctly to avoid the hassles of texture stretching later on.

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Gauge the negative space Modelling and blocking

out a scene is all well and good, but the real litmus test for your composition is how well the scene reads when looking at its negative space, which can be done by rendering out a silhouette cut-out of your primary subject matter all in black and then putting it against a pure white background. As you can see in this example, the negative space for the ruins creates a strong and dynamic shape that creates interest for the viewer. Also bear in mind that if a negative space silhouette is scaled down to a thumbnail size and can still be clearly made out, you’ve got yourself a winner!

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Pre-made assets The Rock Essentials also includes over 20 pre-made large rock cliffs meant to be used as supplementary objects in your existing scenes. They were used extensively in this piece in order to save time and consists of all the large rock ground surfaces that can be seen. The background mountains were initially made using World Machine, then finalised in Blender, and were included in the initial launch of The Rock Essentials.

Add the textures For the texturing, the website www.poliigon.com was used because of their seamless high-resolution images and accompanying maps for PBR workflows. These maps included: Ambient Occlusion, Displacement, Normals, Gloss and Reflections. For the eroded wall structures, several varieties of medieval cobblestone and their accompanying Displacement maps were used, and since the UV coordinates had been done previously, texturing turned out to be a breeze. 08

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09

Use The Rock Essentials The Rock Essentials is a

09

Blender Guru collection of hundreds of photoscanned rocks. Photoscanning is a process that takes multiple photos of any given subject and then re-creates its shape precisely in 3D. This collection also comes with an assortment of 33 Sculpting Cliff brushes that were similarly photoscanned from real cliff faces, as you can see in the example. The great advantage of photoscanning rocks over more traditional methods is that you are able to extract the realistic height information, which is extremely useful for sculpting your own detailed rock formations in your scenes.

10

Embrace the Multiresolution modifier One of

the most powerful tools in Blender is the Multiresolution modifier, because it allows you to subdivide a low-poly mesh and then sculpt in the fine details in a similar fashion to ZBrush or other popular sculpting tools. Used creatively with the Sculpting Cliff brushes, many elements on the ruins, including the steps, had erosion details easily added to them with this modifier enabled.

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Create the trees For creating trees there are a couple of good options inside of Blender. The first one is a free add-on called Sapling, which gives a nice degree of fine-tuning control in order to create very convincing-looking trees. However, if it’s speed you are looking for then there are also commercial tree add-ons such as The Grove by Wybren van Keulen, which allows you to create complex trees with just a few clicks. The Grove also has an assortment of bark textures and fantastic twig meshes, which can save a lot of valuable time in your artistic creations.

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Hand-place the rocks Once the large elements are in place, it is time to start adding some individual stone details to the ruins, again using The Rock Essentials. Now while it would be easy to randomly place the rocks using a particle system, usually, hand-placing such elements will give your scene a more personal touch and subconsciously make the render look less computer generated to the viewer. Also, if you look at the archways, individual rocks were placed along the rim to emulate a rough cobblestone feel. Now in addition to its individual rocks, The Rock Essentials also has five large rock heap piles available, which were very useful to quickly add the look of rubble to the areas surrounding the ruins. 

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Primary render layers If possible, breaking the scene up into foreground, middleground and background passes is an easy way to render it out, while at the same time offering a great deal of both simplicity and control. Then, other passes can be added to fine tune later in compositing, including characters and environmental effects with the ultimate aim that there would be less of a need for re-rendering later on.

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Know when to quit Leonardo da Vinci famously once said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned”, and every artist must come to accept the bitter truth of this statement. There inevitably comes a time when the artist must make a conscious decision to put an end to their tweaks and alterations, and intuitively develop a sense as to when to leave their work ‘abandoned’, despite any flaws you feel it might still have. However, this is also the beauty behind art and it’s a healthy mindset that should be embraced by every artist.

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Work with The Grass Essentials The Grass Essentials is another Blender Guru product for effortlessly adding greenery to a scene. It consists of 28 species of grass and weeds, hand-modelled and optimised into individual particle systems that work seamlessly in Blender. Because there are so many varieties of grass species to choose from, it’s possible to mix only a few types together and create some incredibly detailed, unique and diverse grass setups.

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Apply vertex painting Next, we need to start

defining areas where details such as the grass particles will appear. To aid in this, Blender has a great tool called Weight Paint, which lets you define these areas by painting the vertices of a mesh with varying degrees of influence, saved into a vertex group. This is visualised by a colour spectrum ranging from blue to red, where blue shows areas of zero influence and red shows where the greatest concentration of particles will be. You can also create as many of these vertex groups as you like for the purposes of mixing multiple particle systems together.

15

Add environmental cloud effects For the clouds there is a simple trick to add volumetrics to any mesh using a simple node setup with the volume shader inside the Cycles render engine. Just create a mesh shape, subdivide it and then displace it with a Fractal texture (such as Noise) for some random extrusions and then apply a simple volumetric material. Any hard edges that are visible can then be either masked and blurred out, or you can continue to refine the node settings and base mesh to your exact specifications.

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BUILD STUNNING ENVIRONMENTS

16

Robert Nathan Garlington For over 15 years Rob has worked the gamut of CG production as a director, producer, writer and artist in the industry. Art happens to be one of his greatest passions, and he especially enjoys working on creative collaborations with other artists of a similar creative mind.

16

Add in the character For the spectral guard character, the intent from the beginning was that he would be a semi-transparent silhouette, and so his mesh was incredibly simple and no fine details were needed. Then to achieve his mysterious and ethereal quality, a tweaked version of the clouds volume shader was used to flesh out his form. Later on, a few compositing effects were added to change his colour and distort the overall shape with some finer details.

Bag End, 2015 Blender, After Effects This is a fan-made adaptation of Bag End from The Lord Of The Rings. Its vibrant and warm colours are designed to make the viewer feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

17

British Columbia, 2014 Blender, After Effects Inspired by the beautiful landscapes of British Columbia, this image seeks to emulate the misty and mysterious feeling of the mountains in this region.

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A passing grade Because of the density of polygons mixed with heavy amounts of particle systems, it was necessary to break the scene into multiple render passes and then bring them into a separate compositing software. Blender has a solid compositor, but it can’t outshine a dedicated program like Adobe After Effects, especially when you factor in all of the fantastic third-party plugins that you can get for specialised tasks. Usually working in a 16 or 32-bit format is preferable, and Blender exports a powerful OpenEXR format for such tasks. Having this rich depth of colour information available will really help your renders to shine with proper colour grading and also give you a myriad of other tweaking options. Remember, the compositor is where you really get to let loose with being creative and it can easily be the most enjoyable part of the process, so have fun!

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The Caribbean, 2014 Blender, After Effects While playing through the video game Assassins Creed: Black Flag, this image was made to evoke the swashbuckling excitement of treasure hunting on the high seas.

Techniques Our experts The best artists from around the world reveal specific CG techniques

Substance Designer Robert Wilinski artstation.com/artist/robert_w Robert currently works as a senior environment artist at Respawn Entertainment on the new Star Wars game

ZBrush Mohanad Hossam mohanad_hossam.artstation.com Born in Cairo, Egypt, Mohanad turned an early interest in art into a burgeoning career as a 3D generalist

SUBSTANCE DESIGNER

Create an icy surface in Substance Designer B

efore we begin, we have to think of what the texture needs to look like in order to create a convincing icy surface. It should have a blue colour, some imperfections should be visible on the surface, and it should have some big visible scratches, a few smaller ones, plus more scratches that will be visible under the surface of the ice. This will give our texture an extra depth. This can be achieved by creating a specific shader or by using a few transparent layers on top of each other in order to get a better 3D effect. When creating textures for games, you want to keep the shader’s complexity to a minimum. By having everything placed in just one Diffuse texture, it makes the shader much easier to tweak later. Keep in mind that the final image was rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 2, so what you see in Substance Designer is not exactly what you will see in any other 3D program you use for displaying your textures (Unreal 4, Unity, CryEngine and so on). After you’ve prepared your textures in Substance Designer, you almost always have to tweak them after exporting to other 3D packages (in particular, the Roughness texture needs some tweaking). Also, for this tutorial make sure that you set up your texture resolution in Substance Designer to 4096x4096px. 01

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01

Base for the ice ground I always start the creation

process for my textures by creating a Normal map first, mostly because in my opinion this is the most important element of any texture – once the Normal map is good, then the rest of the creation process becomes much easier. Also, later on I can reuse the Normal map for creating the Color map (Albedo) and Roughness map by converting it to grayscale using Curvature nodes in Substance Designer. I created the main base for my ice surface using Moisture_ Noise and scaled it up using a Transformation_2D node. Next, add some randomness by plugging the result into a Slope_ Blur_Grayscale node using a Clouds2 node as a Slope for this. Then, plug the output into another Slope_Blur_Grayscale, this time using Fractal_Sum1 as a Slope. Now plug the result into a Non_Uniform_Blur_Grayscale node, where we can reuse the Clouds2 node for the Blur Map, but running it through the Histogram_Scan node to get darker areas where we don’t want blur. We will call this node the Main Ice Ground node. As an additional subtle noise that we will use for our ice ground, I used Directional_Noise, scaled it up about four times and plugged the result into a Warp node and reused the Clouds2 node once again for a Gradient Input of the Warp node. We will call this group Additional Details node.

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When creating textures for games, you want to keep the shader’s complexity to a minimum. By having everything placed in just one Diffuse texture, it makes the shader much easier to tweak later 75

TECHNIQUES

02

Make the main scratches For the main scratches I

02

used two Scratches_Generator nodes – one was blended with a Clouds2 node (modified by Histogram_Scan node) and used the Multiply Blend mode, and then the result was blended with the second Scratches_Generator node with the Blend mode set to Copy and using another Clouds2 node as a mask (modified by Histogram_Scan node as well). The result was then plugged into an Invert_Grayscale node and connected to a Slope_Blur_Grayscale node with a Moisture_ Noise node plugged into Slope slot. This step will give our scratches some subtle imperfections. Next, connect the result to the Contrast_Luminosity_Grayscale node and plug the result into the Background slot of the Blend node. For the Foreground slot of the Blend node, reuse one of our modified Clouds2 nodes connected to the Safe_Transform_Grayscale node (tiling it four times) and reuse our Slope_Blur_Grayscale node that we inverted using Invert_Grayscale node as a mask for the Blend node. Set the Blend mode to Screen and Opacity to 0.56. The Safe_Transform_Grayscale node should be used instead of Transformation_2D node if we want to make sure that our texture will be tiling seamlessly.

03

Create edges for the scratches We need to create bumpy edges along our scratches to add a bit more realism. As a base, use our Blend node. Run it through Histogram_Scan, then connect it to a Distance node to make the scratches thicker. Then, take our inverted Blend node and connect it to Histogram_Scan and then blend those two nodes together with Multiply, using our inverted and modified third node for the Foreground slot and Distance node for the Background slot. To add some variety to the edges, run our newly created Blend node (fourth node) – which we will also use as a mask for blending – through Slope_Blur_Grayscale (with Clouds2 connected to Slope slot) and set the Blend type to Overlay and its Opacity to 1, with Clouds1 (modified with Safe_Transform_Grayscale to tile it five times and tweaked by Contrast_Luminosity_Grayscale node). Connect our new Blend node to a Gradient Map (set to Grayscale) to tweak the slope of the edges. Next, blend it with our main scratches node created previously using Add (Linear Dodge), with Opacity set to 0.0075. Name this node the fifth node. Before we move on and start adding ice shards and ice pebbles, we have to blend our fifth node with our ice ground nodes. First, blend the Additional Details node with our fifth node and as a blending mask we used previously created Slope_Blur_Grayscale node that we now run through Histogram_ Scan (Position: 0.14, Contrast: 0). Name this mask Scratches/Ground Mask and set the Blend mode to Copy and Opacity to 0.005. Blend the result with our Main Ice Ground node, setting the Blend mode to Overlay, Opacity to 0.1 and using the same mask we have just mentioned above. Name this Final Node.

to give our pebbles slightly more random shapes. For now we will name the result as Node A. Tiny ice pebbles were created in the same way – again, I used modified Dirt2 and Clouds2 nodes (I just changed a bit Random Seed and Disorder parameters) and blended them together with the blending mode set to Subtract. We will name the result as Node B. Then I blended Node A with Node B using Screen as the Blend mode and Opacity set to 0.57. This way I created the final node for the ice pebbles, called Node C. Now we need to create a new Blend node called Node D and plug Final Node (the one we created in Step 3) into the Background slot of Node D and Node C to the Foreground slot of Node D. Set the Opacity to 0.15 and blending mode to Screen.

There are many ways to create a Roughness map, but for me the quickest and the best way is to create two Curvature nodes

04

Add ice pebbles This part was pretty straightforward. For the medium-sized pebbles I used Dirt2 and Clouds2 nodes – both of them were modified by a bunch of adjustment nodes and then blended together using Subtract as a Blend mode. Then they were blended once again with a modified Fractal_Sum_2 node and the result output was then run through a Warp node with Clouds1 as a Gradient Input

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05

Add shards In this step we will create ice pebbles

that will be placed along big scratches. For this we create a few Dirt2 nodes, modify them with Safe_Transform_ Grayscale and blend with each other. Name the resulting node as Node E. Now blend Node E (Foreground slot) with Node D (Background slot) and set the Blend mode to Add (Linear Dodge) and Opacity to 0.15. Name the new Blend node as Node F. For the mask of Node F, named here as Mask E, reuse one of the Blend nodes we created earlier in Step 3. Before we connect the mask, run it through adjustment nodes like

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Histogram_Scan, Distance, Gradient_Map (Grayscale) and Slope_Blur_Grayscale. To create ice shards, just use a Dirt2 node and run it through a few Safe_Transform_Grayscale nodes, blending them together and scaling up the whole thing at the end around two times. Then plug the result into the Foreground slot of a new Blend node named Node G and plug Node F into the Background slot, set the blending mode to Screen and Opacity to 0.1. Connect it to the Normal node and set the Intensity of the Normal map to 12.

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Create a Roughness map There are many ways in Substance Designer to create a Roughness map, but for me the quickest and the best way is to create two Curvature nodes – Curvature and Curvature_Smooth – and plug our final Normal map into each of them (the Curvature node will provide us with a very detailed grayscale texture, while the Curvature_Smooth creates much more subtle shades of gray). Then blend those Curvature nodes together, with the blending mode set to Multiply and Opacity set to 0.87. Next, run the result through a Contrast_Luminosity_Grayscale node to darken it a bit and then blend it again with a Clouds2 node (modified by Histogram_Scan and Invert_Grayscale nodes). Set the Blend mode to Switch and Opacity to 0.11.

07

Create the Color map For our Colour (Albedo) map, we will create five groups of nodes and later blend them with each other in the proper order. Start with creating a Shallow (color) group called Under Ice Scratches –

this group will provide extra scratches that will give the fake impression of a three-dimensional ice surface. As a base for this group we will reuse two previously created nodes: the Scratches/Ground mask node and the Gradient Map node that we created for the Scratches Edges group in Step 4. Keep in mind that if you want to blend a Grayscale node with a Color node or connect it to any Color node you have to first convert it by connecting into the Base_Color_2_Inputs node. I used those nodes to create a new Normal map to use it as a source for the two Curvature nodes that I later coloured and tweaked using a Gradient_Map node, some Blend nodes and two HSL nodes. The bottom part of the graph is used to create a new mask that we will use later. Gradient_Map and Histogram_ Scan nodes in the bottom part of the graph are used to make the scratches in the mask thicker. Similar effects can also be achieved by using a Distance node. The colours for the Gradient_Map were created by using a very useful feature of Gradient_Map node called Pick Gradient. To get to this option you have to double-click on your Gradient_Map node, then in the Gradient window click on Gradient Editor. A new window will pop up, so choose Pick Gradient and the cursor will change into a cross symbol. By holding the left mouse button and dragging the cursor across your screen you will pick coloor values for your Gradient_Map node. What I usually do to pick up cool colour values for my gradients is to search for some photos on the internet and drag the cursor over them. Once you release the left mouse button, the colour values will be stored. For later use I named the final Color node Color A.

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TECHNIQUES

08

Create the Color map – part 2 Next, we are

going to create two groups of nodes – Ice Ground Color and Scratches Edges Color. For the Ice Ground Color group, start by connecting our previously created Final Normal Map node to a Curvature_Smooth node and then run it through Gradient_Map to convert the grayscale map into a blueish Color map that we will name G1. To get proper colour values for the Gradient_Map node you just need to use the Pick Gradient option and drag the cursor over the gradient stripes. Next, reuse the Blur_HQ_Grayscale node. Modify it with Invert_Grayscale, Histogram_Scan and Blur_HQ_Grayscale (we use the result as a mask), but also connect it into a new Gradient_Map node, named G2, and finally blend it with the G1 node, setting the blending mode to Copy and Opacity to 0.45. Name the result G3. For the Scratches Edges Color group we will be reusing the Gradient_Map node. Connect the node separately to Gradient_Map and Histogram_Scan (which we will use as a mask) and blend it with the G3 node using a Blend node (named G4) with Copy as the blending mode and set the Opacity to 1. Next, create Under Ice Scratches – Deep (color) group. This group will add more depth to our Color map by faking the effect that some of the scratches are barely visible under the thick layer of ice. We’ll be re-using two nodes from the Under Ice Scratches – Shallow (color) group. Blend them together and run them through some adjustment nodes (Safe_Transform and Slope_ Blur – keep in mind that for adjusting Color nodes you need to use a coloured version of the adjustment nodes) and finally connect the result into the HSL node (Hue: 0.5, Saturation: 0, Lightness: 0.48), which we will call Color B from now on. Now we will create the Ice Shard’s Color group. To create this group we will reuse a few of the previously created nodes from various groups – the relevant step’s picture shows how the connections between nodes should be made. Finally, we can blend all of our five groups of Color nodes together to create our final Color / Albedo map.

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Prepare our Substance Designer texture maps to use them in other 3D packages What

you see in Substance Designer is not exactly the same as what you will be seeing in other 3D packages like Unreal 4, Unity, CryEngine or Marmoset Toolbag 2. No matter how perfect your texture looks in Substance Designer, most likely you will have to tweak some values of the Roughness map or Color / Albedo map, so be aware of that. If it is needed you can create additional maps using Substance Designer, such as a Height map, for example – simply connect our Final Normal Map node into the Normal_ To_Height node. Then all you have to do is to create a new Output node, double-click on it and from the menu on the right click on the ‘+’ sign next to Add Item option and choose height from the menu above. Remember to change the Identifier (which you’ll find in the upper right corner) for that node (and name it Height, for example) so that you can see it correctly when you start exporting the maps. To export all the map as textures, just Ctrl/right-click on the graph name (visible in the explorer window on the left side of the screen) and choose Export_Outputs_As_Bitmaps – you can then choose the destination folder, format of the textures and check which one of them you want to export. Keep in mind that your textures will be exported in the same resolution as the resolution of your graph.

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TECHNIQUES

ZBRUSH

Sculpt realistic scales for a bearded dragon A YOUR

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80

s 3D artists we all seek to create challenging scenes and visuals to get us to the next level, and the key to having stunning visual is details. In terms of creatures – specifically the bearded dragon – details make all the difference, so we must pay attention to its scales with all their variations. Sculpting scales straight on the main body won’t give us the result we’re seeking, so we’ll deal with each scale as a unit and scatter them over the body in different SubTools, with variations to fit the model. In this tutorial, you’ll see how I built the model using hand sculpting and NanoMesh.

01

Build the base mesh and initial sculpt First we’re

going to create the lizard’s body with the right proportions and positioning to be a base mesh for the scales that will cover it. We’ll use ZSpheres as a starting point inside ZBrush, which is a very powerful tool to make an initial dummy shape with the right joints for hands, legs and fingers. Then, we’ll turn it into a mesh with a low subdivision. After that we’ll subdivide our shape a couple levels and begin to sculpt the main features of our lizard, trying to keep our lowest subdivision with a suitable topology for a better sculpting experience. If you

need to edit the topology on the fly, use ZRemesher and tweak the vertices with the Move Topological brush.

02

Refine the sculpture and add spikes After

03

Make PolyGroups and different scale types

02

03

creating a suitable base mesh with a couple of subdivisions, we’re going to start refining the main shape. Now’s the time when we’ll start sculpting in some details, such as adding some wrinkles to the back and some facial details, especially at the lower jaw, cheeks and the ears. Next, we’re going to create some variations of the ear spikes in a new SubTool and start distributing these around the ears and the cheeks one by one by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+left click then dragging, using the Move Transpose line to create copies.

Now it’s time to make some polygroups from the body of the bearded dragon, depending on the distrubution of scale type and direction on its body. Take a copy of each polygroup in a different SubTool and cover it with the suitable type of scale. We’re also going to create four different types of scale based on reference photos, so it’s very important to study and analyse these carefully.

04

04

Create the beard Now we’re going to use three types of scale and the Transposing Line (Move-ScaleRotate) to make copies of the scale in a new SubTool to cover the neck. To create that awesome beard, we’re going to use the smallest-sized scale (first in the picture), copying and placing it

Save time 1) Colour the tip of the scale with a lighter colour, as this will give a sense of translucency to the tip. It’s also worth PolyPainting your scales before distributing them, as this will make your texturing process easier. 2) Make just one side with full colours and collapse your NanoMesh into an OBJ or mesh. Next, duplicate it to the other side when you finish, as NanoMesh becomes heavier through the process and can consume more memory than ordinary meshes.

05

01

81

TECHNIQUES

manually over the neck and then repeating this process using the medium-sized scale, then the biggest scale to complete the shape until the beard becomes almost like a gradient. You’ll notice how much the PolyPaint makes a difference in visualising our creature as we assemble it, and it manages to make it look more continuous.

07

05

Use NanoMesh for the chest First we’re going to duplicate the chest PolyGroup with the lowest subdivision in a new SubTool and then we’re going to use NanoMesh for the chest, as we are about to cover a big space with the same size and type of scale. Be sure to randomise the size and rotation a little bit from the NanoMesh menu. The NanoMesh workflow is very easy – you just have to turn the scale model into an Insert mesh, then make it a NanoMesh from the brush menu and use a ZModeler brush to distribute it.

06

Make the arms We’re going to repeat the same NanoMesh technique again here with the arms, duplicating and splitting the PolyGroups of the arm that we’ve just made before then using NanoMesh with the suitable scale type to distribute it over the arm part we split.

08

07

Create the legs Repeat step six with the same scale type. Bear in mind that you’re going to need to scale down the size for the feet and the hands so that it looks logical. Also, try to make your pieces complementary to each other and blend well. If you need to fix some regions by hand just do it – make your model perfect, because not everything can be automated. You need to turn the scattered scale from NanoMesh to Mesh from the inventory inside the NanoMesh dropdown menu, and don’t forget to delete the duplicated PolyGroup that you scatter on.

08

Detail the back Now let’s crack on with some sculpting by using Alphas and brushes to detail the back. The main brushes we’ll use for sculpting are the Standard brush, the Slash brush and the Inflate brush. Try to make your sculpt fit in well with the placed spikes and scales so that it can blend as one body at the end.

09

Build the side spikes We’re going to model the

side spikes and scatter them randomly by using NanoMesh along the sides of the bearded dragon’s body. You could split a strip of polygons from the sides and duplicate it in a new SubTool and scatter on it, but you could also place some of the spikes by hand to fix the regions that simply can’t be filled automatically.

09

06

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All tutorial files can be downloaded from: filesilo.co.uk/3dartist

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84

e live in a time of information and learning, and with thousands of incredible artists around it can sometimes feel like an impossible task to get noticed and to keep your head above of the water in such a vast and talented industry. What we must remember, however, is that the most important thing that we can do is to keep on learning; to keep the wheels of our intellect rolling. As digital artists our toolbox is filled with software, plugins, templates, brushes, knowledge and many other intangible goods that make us who we are professionally, and it’s our duty to ensure that this set of tools and skills grows every single day. The model that concerns us today is a robot made in ZBrush, which was originally rendered in KeyShot as a personal project. For this tutorial we are going to go a step further and rework the topology, materials and scene, and then render it 3ds Max using a new render engine from AMD, Radeon ProRender. As you might expect, the model has millions and millions of polygons – something that could make the most powerful computer blow through the roof! For that reason, we’ll have to decimate all the SubTools in ZBrush. Next, we’ll export the model from ZBrush and import it into 3ds Max. The next step will be to prepare the scene, which includes creating the camera, the environment and the lights. We will be assigning the materials to the model, and for this we are going to use the extensive material library from Radeon ProRender. Once all of this is complete, we’ll be rendering our main image and the relevant render passes.

With all of our images rendered we’ll then jump into Photoshop for compositing and then to After Effects for post-processing. Remember that the new technologies can unveil a world of possibilities and creativity – with that in mind, let’s see just what Radeon ProRender is capable of!

01

Move from ZBrush into 3ds Max The first step for our project is to load the tool with the model in ZBrush. Once we’ve done that, decimate all the SubTools within. Export a few SubTools without decimation, such as the structural parts of the face and the body, as these are lower subdivision versions that could be imported directly in 3ds Max. Be sure to pre-process the rest of the SubTools and decimate them with a 20% topology density. Export each OBJ with the SubTool Master in the plugins section of ZBrush (pro tip: GoZ doesn’t always work). Then import all the OBJ files into 3ds Max with Jos Balcaen’s Batch Import script.

  02

Create the light, environment and camera

Radeon ProRender works with the physical cameras of 3ds Max, so create one and freeze it in place. For the environment, use the RPREnv light (go to the Create panel and press Lights) and load an HDRI image into it to create realistic lighting for the scene. Radeon ProRender has wonderful GPU Active Shade performance for previewing the scene in real time. I realised that my HDRI didn’t gave me all the light that I needed, so I created a simple Photometric light with a disc shape pointing directly to the head of the model.

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03

Assign materials to the model I planned to

01

‘make’ my textures after the render in Photoshop, so I used the materials from the built-in material library available for download with the engine. The library is quite large and covers all the typical categories that you may need for working with the engine. In this scene we’ll mainly use plastics, metals, glasses, car paints and rubber. Simply scroll down the galleries in the Material Editor and drag and drop the chosen shader onto your model – it’s as simple as that! For the blue, red and orange cables we can use a Radeon ProRender material type called Uber Material, which is quite powerful and looks amazing in the render. For the ears and the eyes we can use a cold emissive material from the library.

02

03

04

Render the base image Once we’ve completed the scene and material assignment we’re ready to render the image. For this, change the Render Type from Active Shade to Production in the Render Configuration of 3ds Max. In terms of quality, I went to the renderer’s Advanced Settings and set Performance Settings to Production, selecting the Mitchell Filter from the Anti Aliasing dropdown. Back in the Common tab, set the size of the final image to 3000px width and check the Save File checkbox. You can always set the render setup in Active Shade Mode and hit the Save icon when you think that the quality of the real-time render is good enough.

04

05

Create additional renders Next, create three more materials using the Uber Shader. I picked a light brown colour that was similar to sand or dust and set the Reflection to the minimum amount. The second material was the same as the previous one, but I chose a dark-grey colour for it in order to use it as a primer paint pass for compositing. For the third one I boosted the Reflectivity to get a chrome material. With these, we can make three more renders, using these three materials for the whole model. Of course, I kept the emissive material in the ear and the eyes.

06

Finalise the composition and post-production

With all the renders, make a single PSD file and create a black layer mask for the additional passes. We should also drop a rust texture over the whole layer stack. Then slowly reveal small parts of each layer by painting white on each layer mask. For the decals, place small graphics over the image and tweak the Transfer modes of the layers. As a final touch, we should replace the background by combining three photos: a desert, a sky texture, and a skyline of a city. In After Effects we can add glow to the emissive parts, adjust the colours, apply a vignette, some film noise and a film footage of flying dust by using the Add Transferring mode.

05

06

UV for concept design If you are making a concept design and don’t want to deal with UVs, you can make multiple renders in your render engine using different materials and compose the image in Photoshop. You can also throw some textures and decals on it. An ID pass (also known as a Clown pass) can help you to mask each part of your render in order to apply textures more precisely. If you like to use decals on your models keep an eye on the Brightness and Saturation. Pick the Eraser tool with a texture brush and erase parts of the decal for a more realistic effect.

85

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I do have a tattoo of the 3ds Max logo! So you can see my dedication to the software, what it can do and what the customers that are using it [can do]

The inside guide to industry news, VFX studios, expert opinions and the 3D community

Eddie Perlberg, Autodesk 3ds Max product manager

090 Community News

SideFX launches new contest We’ve teamed up with SideFX for a brand-new competition! Find out how to win a 30-inch monitor, AMD FirePro and more!

092 Industry News

Blender 2.78 The new Blender release has plenty of new features, plus Pixologic surprises with ZBrush 4R8

094 Industry Insider

Eddie Perlberg The 3ds Max product manager tells us the secret behind his decadelong love for the software

096 Social

Readers’ Gallery 94

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The latest images created by the 3dartistonline.com community

89

COMMUNITY NEWS

3D Artist and SideFX join forces for special competitio Top prizes include a 30-inch Dell monitor, a Houdini FX licence, an AMD FirePro W8100 graphics card, a 3D Artist subscription and much more!

W

hat do you think of when you imagine machines? Awards for the Best Overall category, for Do you think of gigantic mechs protecting the example, will include a 30” Dell monitor, Earth from destruction, or do you think of sleek Houdini FX, an AMD FirePro W8100, an Intel SSD micro-sized gadgets? We’ve teamed up with SideFX to 800GB, a 3D Artist subscription and a Pluralsigh launch a new contest titled ‘Marvelous Machines’, which will subscription. The Animation category will see win have plenty of great prizes available. To be in with a chance presented with Houdini FX, an AMD FirePro W71 of winning, the contest is asking for artists to show “the SSD 800GB, a 3D Artist subscription and a Plura machines of your mind” and make them into awe-inspiring subscription for first place; Houdini Base, a 3D Ar entries using Houdini and Mantra. subscription, Pluralsight subscription and Substan “Every day at SideFX we’re Designer for second place; inspired by the talented artists from Houdini Indie, 3D Artist sub around the world creating incredible and Substance Painter for th artwork with Houdini,” explains If you’re triumphant in the I Christopher Hebert, marketing category you’ll get Houdini director at SideFX, of the creation of AMD Fire Pro W5100, an In the competition. “The Marvelous 800GB, a 3D Artist subscri Machines contest brings these Pluralsight subscription for artists together to compete for some Houdini Base, a 3D Artist s pretty awesome prizes.” Pluralsight subscription and Substance Christopher Hebert, In order to win these amazing Designer for second place; Houdini marketing director at SideFX prizes, there are several categories. Indie, a 3D Artist subscription and

Every day at SideFX we’re inspired by the talented artists from around the world creating incredible artwork with Houdini

90

Substance Painter for third place. Finally, win the Splashscreen award and your entry will be used as a Houdini splashscreen with artist credit and you’ll win a Houdini Swag Pack full of t-shirts, a giant Houdini beachball and more! If you’re more of a 3ds Max mech head but still want to take part in the competition, don’t worry, as SideFX has made the competition free to any file format, any resolution and you can use any software to help you create those renders. However, SideFX suggests that the more Houdini is used the more likely that the choice of using it will be taken into consideration and using COPs instead of After Effects or Photoshop for compositing will net some more brownie points, too. On the judging panel are modelling leads, industry experts and supervisors from top studios including Peter Claes who is VFX lead at The Mill; Michael Frederickson, technical director of set extensions at Pixar; Ronny Franken, visual arts coordinator and lecturer at International Game Architecture and Design at Breda University of Applied Sciences; Rohan Dalvi, CG instructor; Manny Fragelus, program director CGMA and CGWorkshop modelling lead at Pixar; Marc Horsfield, production technology supervisor at Method Studios; Matt Estela, CG supervisor at Animal Logic; Gavin Graham, global head of Double Negative VFX and 3D Artist editor Steve Holmes. You can start working on an entry now and the tool for uploading artwork goes live on 1 December 2016. Entries will close at 11:59 EST on 31 January 2017. Final artwork should be zipped and named “yourname_final” so that the judges know which entry belongs to which artist. Judging will take place from the 1 February to 14 February 2017, with the criteria being aesthetics and originality. Winners will be announced on 15 February on www.sidefx.com. Good luck!

DAVE School teaches its students ‘hands-on’ VFX Joshua Rivas tells us how DAVE School helped prepare him to work as a compositor at MPC As an avid comic book reader growing up, Joshua Rivas was a massive fan of the X-Men series. He spent hours re-drawing characters, trying to make them just like the originals. Being able to work on X-Men: Apocalypse is a standout moment in his career: “Getting paid to do essentially what I did when I was ten years old in my free time was awesome!” Thanks to his education at DAVE School, Rivas was well prepared to take on the professional world of VFX. “[DAVE School’s] unique ‘hands-on’ approach is a great way to learn,” he begins. “By diving right in headfirst I found that it helps me absorb and retain all the new information. Allowing the students to see their results quickly is a huge payoff. Not only does

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this approach reward them for their effort, but it also provides excitement and enthusiasm to continue learning. Simulating the production environment is another key approach the DAVE School implemented that helped me transition from a student into professional. These are just a few of the examples of the training I received.” In spite of contracting bronchitis, Rivas graduated with the highest grade on the final exam and passed at the top of his class. “There is this great quote by Abraham Lincoln that I really like,” he says. “’Good things may come to those who wait, but only the things left behind by those who hustle’. I don’t think there is a replacement for diligence.”

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INDUSTRY NEWS

ZBrush delays version 5 Instead, Pixologic reveals 4R8 alongside pricing for ZBrushCore at its Summit

The splash image for version 2.78 was made by Juri Unt

Blender goes big with 2.78 release This version aims to be more stable to prepare for v2.8 It’s been over six months since Blender’s last release, but version 2.78 is now finally here. With optimisations, an improved viewport and support for rendering spherical stereo images for VR, Cycles has received some great updates. There are also improved subdivision and micro displacement, whereas smoke volume, fluid simulation and more shading nodes than before are now supported.

Identifying the Blender ID add-on Blender ID is the new authentication system add-on, and it is needed for logging in to Blender, the Blender Cloud, Blender Store, access to Blender Conference talks and much more. Once you’re in, Blender ID can provide a more tailored experience for any third-party tools.

The Grease Pencil has seen an overhaul and is now a production-ready 2D animation tool that provides drawings that can be mixed with 3D objects. Beginners to rigging will enjoy the new Bendy Bones feature, which helps make advanced B-Bones simpler to use with shapes controlled with properties. An Eyedropper tool adds easier setup and keyframe control, too. For modellers, there is now a new Freehand Curve drawing tool, a Decimate Edit-Mode tool and Dissolve tool, and Ngons support for the Decimate modifier. Alembic support for importing and exporting basic operators is brand new to Blender, as are the add-ons for Blender ID authentication, Archimesh, object Boolean tools and vertical alignment of text objects. Existing add-ons, such as Sapling Tree Gen, Node Wrangler and ANT landscape, have all been updated too. CPU thread handling has been improved and a dynamic base mesh now allows the rest shape of cloth to be animated.

It looks like 4R7 was not the final iteration of ZBrush’s version 4 series after all, as Pixologic had originally stated back in early 2015. At ZBrush Summit, Paul Gaboury, 3D product development manager, explained: “What we’re doing for you is we’re giving you some of the features that we would have developed for ZBrush 5 now, because we’re just very excited about the things we’ve added.” 4R8 will have a new Vector Displacement Map feature for brushes that will work like a 3D alpha. Multiple VDMs can be added to a brush, just like the Multi IMM brush. In the Alpha tab, there is now a Transform 3D window that enables you to take custom brushes and modify them. A new 3D transform gizmo can do global scale, movements and rotations along with the ability to create new custom gizmos. On top of these, LazyMouse has gained consistent depth and a new LazySnap slider for continuing the same stroke. Finally, 4R8 and ZBrushCore will now have French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Simplified Chinese language support.

The Create MultiAlpha brush can make custom brushes by mixing vector Displacement maps

HAVE YOU HEARD? The Lion King is getting a CG re-imagining that will be helmed by none other than director Jon Favreau 92

Thinkbox releases Frost Max 2.0

Close-up of a macrophage rendered in Frost. Image courtesy of Khye Kading

MX 2.0 includes speed improvements and dynamic memory allocation Frost Max 2.0 brings better integration with V-Ray and double the speed in meshing particles. The new V-Ray Instancing mode makes use of memory allocation to render hi-res meshes using a small amount of memory. The Region Of Interest option is a new option for enabling easier defined custom bounding box regions applied to viewport meshing. This will create faster previews when the settings of complex particle data sets are adjusted and can remove unwanted areas in render-time meshing. A new Frost menu bar in 3ds Max’s main menu will also enable better and quicker access to Frost objects, auto adding new sources to a Frost object and plenty of other features. For more information, be sure to visit the Thinkbox website at www.thinkboxsoftware.com/frost.

ArionFX for NUKE and AE Many of the HDR editor’s new features stem from ArionFX version 3.5 for Photoshop RandomControl’s ArionFX add-on has been released for NUKE and After Effects, bringing the ability to add physically-based effects to HDR images for composites. Bloom and Glare can be achieved in both softwares via physical simulations based on the iris shape and the raw intensity of pixels. Chromatic aberration and vignetting can also be very easily simulated, and hot pixels and firefly artifacts can be removed thanks to the ArionFX despeckler algorithm. Other new features include tone mapping, support for Dirt maps and colour grading.

Software shorts Cycles 4D Insydium, the maker of X-Particles, has announced that its Cycles render engine bridge for Cinema 4D will be released before the end of 2016. Cycles 4D will have a node-based user interface and can render with either CPU or GPU. It will also have full X-Particles support. Cycles 4D will be £185 with three free render nodes per licence.

MODO gets final version 10 release Version 10.2 is The Foundry’s first multi-part development offering aiming to speed up The final instalment of MODO 10 has been released. Among some of the updated features before the release of version 11, MODO gets reworked MeshFusion to make it easier to cut, combine and intersect geometry. MeshFusion will also now have cleaner outputs and better viewport visibility. New features to 10.2 include automatic retopology for creating quad meshes at any density, and deformer caching. Procedural modelling has been given enhancements such as the ability to package assembly aliases and additions or updates to slicing, drilling, cloning and duplicating tools. Rendering has also received improvements to the Preview Renderer and the Advanced Viewport.

y

g

sources in MODO 10.2

Bringing you the lowdown on product updates and launches FurryBall 1.4 GPU renderer FurryBall has added better Maya, 3ds Max and Cinema 4D integration for scenes with importing and exporting. Rendering Arnold material is now faster than ever, and the Advanced Toon shader gets contours, textures and advanced settings. Texture baking is also now supported for use in 3ds Max.

Amazon Lumberyard 1.5 beta Amazon’s Crytek-based game engine is currently in beta for version 1.5. Improvements include a Particle Editor, which aims to improve iteration speed; the Component Entity system, which provides a modular method of building elements; and the Lumberyard Asset Builder SDK enables the process of different asset formats.

DID YOU KNOW? Vue 2016 has shown off new terrain modelling technology called Heightfield Terrains in a preview 93

INDUSTRY INSIDER

Eddie Perlberg Job title Autodesk 3ds Max product manager Location San Francisco, CA Education Marquette University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee Area Technical College Website www.autodesk.com/ products/3ds-max/overview Biography Eddie is responsible for Autodesk’s third most used software by overseeing internal and customer strategy and messaging. He’s also tasked with identifying long and short-term opportunities, such as AR/VR development and partnership to enhance customer experience. As well as this, he deals with the development road map, such as industry trends and potential subscriber needs. Measured on customer satisfaction and adoption, he’s proud to be part of ‘The Biggest 3ds Max Ever’. He’s active on the Autodesk AREA blog, Twitter and Facebook. Portfolio highlights ěũ3ds Max 2007 – Present ěũ'+#1ũ+3#1ĔũĉććĎũIJũĉććĐĔũ ěũũ.'+Ħ2ũ'#"0413#12Ĕũ 2003 – 2006 ěũũē
ēũ,(3'ũ3(.-+ũ 2003 – 2004 ěũũ 23#11/'(!2Ĕũ 1997 – 2003

94

With a decade at the helm of 3ds Max, what keeps him excited about the tool year after year?

W

ith a background in architecture, it would have been easy for Eddie Perlberg to have embarked on a different career path than being a product manager for one of the most widely used 3D tools in the world for ten years – and 3ds Max could have been a different product altogether. It was not to be, though, as Perlberg instinctively knew that being an architect wasn’t really what he was most interested in. “As my classmates were all excited about architecture and all the different styles, it was really the technology that I was most excited about,” he explains. His love for the software behind the visualisations led to work at some resellers. It was here he found the product that would become a big part of his future profession. “On the first day, they showed me where my desk was. My first task on my first day was to clean up the area… and one of the things in the area was this box of 3D Studio DOS 4.” Perlberg was curious about 3D Studio, and this intrigue led him to work with the product by himself and eventually he was able to teach classes, work in videogames and with motion graphics inside of 3D Studio. He then became a technical specialist at Autodesk for seven years for 3ds Max, Revit and other products before eventually becoming product manager in 2007. 3ds Max isn’t just part of Perlberg’s career though, it’s also a part of him. “While this didn’t help with the job interview phase, I do have a tattoo of the 3ds Max logo! So you can see my dedication to the software, what it can do and what the customers that are using it [can do].” With a decade in his role, Perlberg is still very much devoted to building the product. “It’s seeing every day what our customers are doing and every day seeing what my designers and developers are creating for the future,” he enthuses. “That’s the kind of stuff that gets me jumping out of bed every morning and can’t wait to get to work.” He’s eager to see what the future holds and how it may affect 3ds Max too. “It’s very exciting that within one’s lifetime, you get to experience what I consider to be a disruption in technology, and the reality is that AR and VR will transcend so many different industries… Am I excited? Absolutely, because of the open eco system at Autodesk and the fact that 3ds Max has evolved [to encompass these kind of industries].” But will Perlberg be getting a tattoo of the 3ds Max 2017 logo? He laughs. “Each of our initiatives have a project name. The very first project name we had was Project Phoenix – 3ds Max 2016 – then we had Project Kirin, a mythical creature. Our current project name is also a mythical creature. So rather than logos, I’m considering [getting] a mosaic of mythical creatures that will represent all of the different project names we’re working with. So I think that if I went into the tattoo shop today that’s what I’d get.”

01

02

BUILDING THE 3DS MAX OF THE FUTURE Eddie Perlberg explains all the methods he undertakes for building new features Perlberg is driven to create a better 3ds Max with help from notes that he takes at personal meetings, at events like SIGGRAPH, at the offices of developers and via User Voice, 3ds Max’s online feature request tool. While a lot of day-to-day struggles are coming up in these meetings, some trends emerge that then lead Perlberg and his team to build “big-ticket items” many years in advance. He then brings them to “chartered customers, some of them call them lighthouse customers or advisory board, that sort of thing. We kind of bounce ideas off of them, so that before even one line of code is written we can get feedback.”

Image courtesy of Eidos Montreal

03

While this didn’t help with the job interview phase, I do have a tattoo of the 3ds Max logo, so you can see my dedication Eddie Perlberg, Autodesk 3ds Max product manager

05

01 Perlberg says of the crew behind 3ds Max, “I think we’ve been really successful in putting together a great team for a great software.” 02 “I kind of parachuted in through the top and used that method as my trajectory path,” says Perlberg 03 “One of the unique things about 3ds Max artists, like myself, is that I would work where the jobs were,” Perlberg explains 04 Rendering of One Vanderbilt produced by Neoscape, Inc for SL Green Realty Corp

04

05 Perlberg believes that his team is one of the best in the business. “I think many of our competitiors would be jealous of the talent we have!”

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Images of the month

Image of the month

These are the 3D projects that have been awarded ‘Image of the week’ on 3DArtistOnline.com in the last month 01 Homeless by Hossein Diba 3DA username Hossein Diba Hossein Diba says: “I really like Lee Jeffries’ photography, and when I saw his homeless photos I had to make one of them in 3D. I love the mood he creates in his portraits.” We say: And we love the mood that Hossein has created here! Check out all of those fantastic pores, wrinkles and skin imperfections. This is a fantastic character study and a strong, brooding composition.

02 Black, White & Gold by Mohamed Ayman Elfiky 3DA username Mohamed Ayman Mohamed Ayman Elfiky says: “A simple, classic interior design based on three colours. Black is the main colour, white was used for the chairs and then gold for the molds and details. In terms of image composition I tried to keep things symmetrical.” We say: This is a really elegant interior arch-vis scene from Mohamed, and we were really impressed with both the sculpted details of the finery on the walls and the marble material applied to the floor.

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03 Enjoy a Cup o’ joe by Torkuma Shija 3DA username Torkuma Shija Torkuma Shija says: “This ant enjoying a cup o’ joe was a visual created for the workers’ day. It was especially interesting creating foliage, terrain and depth to effectively represent objects with respect to scale. It was modelled in Cinema 4D and ZBrush, then rendered in V-Ray.” We say: We chuckled when we first came across this scene. There’s a lot of character to what Torkuma has created here, with an interesting anthropomorphic touch.

04 The Guardian by Vincent Chai 3DA username vincentch20 Vincent Chai says: “Inspired by Orientalism after my visit to the Musee d’Orsay, I was trying to create a 3D artwork that had the feel of a painting, combining character design, posture, expression and staging to communicate with the audience.” We say: Vincent’s image is a masterclass in lighting, and we’re big fans of the detail in his character’s armour and the stone dragon in the background. Stunning work.

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03

The Basilisk by Fabio Ceccarello 3DA username Darky Fabio Ceccarellosays: “The main concept here was a mix of a big snake and a dragon in a forest cave. I wanted to create a realistic scene with a lot of details. I spent a lot of time creating good textures. To get the final look I added fog and dirt and emphasised the eyes.” We say: This fearsome render shows off a fine imagination, and the attention to detail on display is great – especially the drool! 02

04

Breakfast by Lai Jun Yit 3DA username Jun Yit Lai Jun Yit says: “I wanted to create a Nineties-style restaurant, and on the wall you can see some interesting dinosaur graffiti based on the Penang street art murals of Ernest Zacharevic.” We say: There’s a sort of gloomy nostalgia that hangs over this piece. Adding the scuffed graffiti on the wall was a neat touch, and those pancakes looks delicious! 97

TEXTURING

Simon Smalley Incredible 3D artists take us

behind their artwork

TEXTURING To create this character’s weathered snow effect I used Substance Painter’s ‘Moss from Top’ smart mask. I edited the settings until the snow displayed only on the mesh top and in mesh cavities. Smart masks require these texture maps to work correctly, so when beginning any Substance Painter project I make them with the built-in texture baker.

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www.smallanimations.com I’m a 3D artist currently working as Art Director for mobile game developer Fuzzy Frog Ltd Software LightWave, OctaneRender, Substance Painter

Intrepid Explorer, 2016

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