Table of contents for September 2018 in 3D World

If you’ve ever wanted to boost your Cinema 4D skills, now is the time. This issue we help you master sculpting, VR, motion graphics and more. Plus, learn how Framestore use Mandelbrots to create fantastical scenes, check out Ziva physics and set up your own visual effects studio, no matter your budget. rob.redman@futurenet.com FREE Eclipse Charger, worth £69.99 When you sign up to a print subscription – turn to page 26.…

Matt Ebb (mattebb.com), an FX lead at Animal Logic with credits on films such as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Lego Movie and Prometheus, outlines how to quickly visualise a fractal in Houdini using a signed distance field volume (SDF). 01 USING SDFS In each voxel, an SDF stores the distance to the nearest point on the surface. Houdini can interpret these distances, and visualise the derived surface as 3D geometry. This is very convenient since most fractal formulas take the form of a ‘distance estimation function’ – given a point in space, the function returns the distance to the nearest point on the fractal implicit surface. This means that you can put the results of the fractal function directly in each voxel and…

Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills AUTHOR Glen Southern Glen runs SouthernGFX, a small Cheshire-based studio specialising in character and creature design. He’s been using and training ZBrush for over 15 years and is a Wacom Ambassador for the UK and Ireland. www.southerngfx.co.uk For many years if you wanted to learn to sculpt digitally you would be limited to using programs like ZBrush and Mudbox. Now it seems like all major 3D programs have a sculpting solution built in. Cinema 4D by Maxon is no exception and it has a very powerful set of tools and features to rival the more dedicated sculpting programs. Digital sculpting differs from 3D modelling in the sense that you are interacting with polygons at high resolutions (more polygons,…

AUTHOR Rob Redman Rob is a 3D artist and creative director, working across TV, film and print. He runs a boutique VFX studio. www.pariahstudios.co.uk These Shortcuts pages are all about giving you bite-sized chunks of useful info to help you speed up your workflow and explore your software’s options. Maya is a huge application and you will spend many happy hours experimenting with its capabilities, exploring creative uses of its different tools and learning all the shortcuts. That’s all well and good but sometimes it’s worth returning to the basics and concentrating on making life easier for yourself; after all, the faster you work, the more you can create (and earn). Maya has options for just about everything, but one top tip is perfect for when you can’t quite grab…

“My work is all about using digital environments to tell stories, express concepts and provoke emotions,” explains Marc Zimmermann. His latest virtual-reality experience A Conscious Existence is his biggest project yet, one that he describes as “a natural progression and culmination of my earlier personal works.” The experience blends abstract, fantastical and hyper-realistic visuals in an effort to depict the inner mind as a reflection of the outside world – dealing with mankind’s appreciation of the beauty of nature, our universe and life itself. Explaining the inspiration behind the subject matter Zimmermann says: “I intend to praise life’s most precious achievement – our conscious mind. Our way of thinking about life influences our perception of the world around us. False priorities can act like blinders and make us overlook the…

Oscar Juarez Oscar is an archviz specialist creating in many apps, but has a keen interest in Unreal. He shares some of his secrets on page 74. www.fibrha.com Glen Southern Glen runs SouthernGFX, a small Cheshire-based studio specialising in character and creature design, and is also a ZBrush trainer. www.southerngfx.co.uk EJ Hassenfratz Motion graphics designer EJ is a MoGraph expert and shows you how to excel at using the Voronoi cutting tools on page 48, a great way to add interest to a project. www.eyedesyn.com Martin Nebelong Martin is a freelance artist living in Denmark. He has been working as an artist for 15 years. You can find his VR tutorial on page 60. www.artstation.com/martinity Ian Failes Ian is a regular contributor to 3D World, and in this issue he…

AUTHOR EJ Hassenfratz EJ is a multi-Emmy winning freelance motion design artist and educator based out of Denver, CO. He teaches motion graphic topics on his blog eyedesyn.com, as well as an intro to Cinema 4D course on SchoolofMotion.com. www.eyedesyn.com My love for Cinema 4D runs very deep, evidenced by being a user for almost ten years now and devoting much of the past few years to teaching artists how to use this powerful 3D software. One of the primary reasons for my affection is that Cinema 4D enables a very non-technical person like myself the ability to simply create whatever I envision using its many powerful yet intuitive features. One of my favourite new tools that was supercharged in the latest iteration (R19) is the Voronoi Fracture. It’s one…

AUTHOR Mike Griggs Mike Griggs is a 3D and visual effects artist with vast experience across the industry, as both a creator and a technical writer. www.creativebloke.com If you’re new to CGI, you may feel that there are far too many tools to choose from in a dizzying array of software. This series aims to break everything in CGI down to the very basics, so that every artist can be armed with the knowledge of which tool is best. Let’s continue exploring materials and shaders by looking at reflective surfaces. There is practically no surface in existence that does not reflect light. Therefore, the reflective value of a surface is probably the most important factor of any CGI material. For many years reflectance in CGI was effectively a cheat of…

Simon Edwards Simon works freelance at 3DArtvision. He has worked professionally both as an architectural visualiser and 3D artist for 20 years in Holland and the UK. www.3dartvision.co.uk Oscar Juárez Oscar is a 3D generalist based in Mexico City. He has been running Fibrha Studio since 2010 and specialises in archviz rendering, animations and Unreal Engine. www.facebook.com/FibrhaStudio Antony Ward Since the early 90’s Antony has worked for many of today’s top game and VFX studios, as well as written three technical manuals and many online tutorials. www.antcgi.com Pietro Chiovaro Pietro is an Italian 3D artist. who creates 3D assets and environments, and is currently working on an open-source game. https://pietrochiovaro.artstation.com SOFTWARE: ZBRUSH WHAT’S AN EASY METHOD FOR POSING A MANNEQUIN? Eve Mateo, Madrid Simon Edwards replies Putting people into a…

PRICE From $169 (Hobby) / $259 (Freelance) / $439 (Indie Game) | DEVELOPER Quixel | WEBSITE megascans.se/apps/mixer Quixel’s Megascans Studio has been given some serious workflow upgrades and is now called Megascans Mixer, and also comes complete with Bridge tweaks. Mixer arrives with UI enhancements as well as workflow improvements; the former finally lets you increase the UI size to read better on 4K screens, as well as providing users with improved library management. The asset library now has better sorting options, and you can access the online library in the asset browser similar to other applications like Substance Painter. However, the workflow improvements are where it’s really at with Mixer. First of all, you can now import custom assets, from full texture sets to brushes, without mucking about in…

GET YOUR RESOURCES You’re three steps away from this issue’s video training and files… 1. GO TO THE WEBSITE Type the following into your browser: www.bit.ly/vault-237-c4d 2. FIND THE FILES YOU WANT FROM THE LIST Search the list of free resources to find the video and files you want 3. DOWNLOAD THE FILES YOU NEED Click the Download buttons and your files will save to your PC or Mac PLUS There are more files and resources waiting online… VIDEO: Get the video tutorials for a selection of this issue’s training FILES: Download the high-resolution tutorial assets for all of our training…

Bones to begin: The underlying structure of the lion is a set of anatomically correct bones. Ultimately, having that as the base will impact on the simulation of the soft tissues in the layers above, allowing them to naturally flex, jiggle, collide and fold. Muscling up: ZIVA VFX’s Attachment Painting tool enables artists to quickly attach the lion’s anatomical components and assign custom attributes. Zeke's muscle and bone groups then react accurately to the strain and constraints of neighbouring anatomy. Fat and tissue: With those underlying structures solved, ZIVA VFX then facilitates secondary motion that follows the laws of physics. Varying levels of elasticity can be painted onto a single tissue, resulting in the non-linear wiggle and jiggle of fat under gravity and force. Lion skin: Skin, hair and lighting…

01 THE FOUNDATIONS Ask yourself some hard questions: Do I have a client base? Do I have a team of people to go into it with? Am I comfortable with the worst case scenario outcome? Will Cohen 02 BUILD A TEAM WISELY Hire people that are better than you. Alexis Haggar 03 GET READILY AVAILABLE HELP Get an accountant and have a solicitor that you know, that’s local, that you can call on if you need to. Rob Redman 04 DECIDE ON A VISION Have a vision about what kind of company you want to create and what it is going to be. It’s different to just having a plan. Will Cohen 05 PICK JOBS THAT SUIT Don’t be afraid to say no to jobs that don’t fit you or…

Cinema 4D is one of those 3D applications that has grown over the years to cater to users of all different kinds, from shader builders and texture artists to motion graphics and simulation experts, character modellers and animators. It’s a vast and capable tool, but that comes with a learning curve and although it’s one of the friendlier applications, you’ll need to put some time in to master all it offers. With that in mind we talked to the large, thriving community to discover the best ways to get the most out of the software, and have compiled this collection of tips that will give you a leg up the learning ladder, boosting your skills to make you more productive so you can concentrate on being creative. 01 ACCESS ANYTHING…

AUTHOR Mike Griggs Mike Griggs is a 3D and visual effects artist with vast experience across the industry, as both a creator and a technical writer. www.creativebloke.com BodyPaint 3D was a revelation when it was launched in 2000, as it allowed Cinema 4D users, as well as those who bought the standalone BodyPaint 3D application, a whole new paradigm for texturing CG models. Up to that point artists had had to work with clumsy workflows that involved round-tripping to 2D applications, or just choosing to ignore getting to grips with textures at all and relying on presets. BodyPaint 3D enabled artists to paint directly onto the surface of their model, using tools that felt very familiar to those found in 2D applications, with a range of filters and a robust…

AUTHOR Rob Redman Rob is a 3D artist and creative director, working across TV, film and print. He runs a boutique VFX studio. www.pariahstudios.co.uk When you are working with such a large and comprehensive piece of software as Cinema 4D, it can take a while for the muscle memory to set in and for the shortcuts to settle into daily use. Some elements like viewport navigation tend to stick pretty quick, but others less so. In this Shortcut I’m going to talk about the Axis mode, which is more helpful than you might think. You can activate Axis mode by hitting the L key, and once on it means your control widget no longer affects the geometry, but the point around which the associated geometry rotates. The most common use…

“It actually didn’t really start as a software company at all,” says MAXON’s vice director of marketing, Andres Hildebrandt. “MAXON started as a publishing company, when three students were made an offer to write a book about the Atari ST computer in 1986.” After deciding that magazine publishing was a faster and more lucrative endeavour, the trio founded the Atari ST magazine. Having quit their studies and started another magazine dedicated to the Commodore Amiga, business was booming. “They held frequent programming contests,” explains Hildebrandt. “One contest was won by two young brothers from eastern Germany, Christian and Philip Losch, who had written a raytracer called FastRay.” Although the software was incredibly basic in this early stage, the industry at large was blown away by the speed at which FastRay…

PRICE £TBC | DEVELOPER KnewKey | WEBSITE www.knewkey.com At first glance the Rymek Bluetooth keyboard could appear to be all style with no substance. Everything from the packaging to the glossy black case (a white version is available) and copper keys looks slick, but some of the throwbacks to old manual typewriters look a bit gimmicky, even if they are made of metal and fit together very well. However, after a little use things start to gel and make sense. The travel of the keys is greater than a standard laptop but feels easy to use, and they have a lovely tactility that feels good for prolonged writing sessions. More importantly, these extras actually make sense. The paper-feed wheel can become a scroll for your document, which feels like skeuomorphism…