Table of contents for November 2016 in 3D World

JONNY 5 Artist Lauren Garcia Software Maya, Mari, Arnold, Nuke Lauren Garcia is a senior look development artist at ReelFX who has a passion for classic movies, VFX and robots. The challenge to create Short Circuit’s Jonny 5 and experiment with PBR shaders at the same time was impossible to resist. Lauren tapped into his pro set-up to create the scene – using Maya as the principle package, the UVs were created with UVLayout. “It’s fast accurate and easy,” says the artist. Mari was used for painting textures, “it’s the perfect software for an artist to create highresolution maps for VFX.” To render, Lauren used Arnold and preferred Nuke as a compositing tool over Photoshop because of its Linux framework, and also as “it’s a VFX standard tool.” When it…

Having worked on best-selling games like Halo, and World of Tanks, artist Mikalai Dzemiantsevich decided he wanted to create his own worlds. So, teaming up with friend and artist Serg Gricay, the pair set about designing Trickstership, a four-player combat game featuring elegant mechs. Impressed by his designs and modelling skills, we caught up with Mikalai to discover how these giant mechs were created, in particular the model Mikalai calls the Sniffer class. Over the following pages, Mikalai shares his process. “Since I’m a big fan of anime robots I decided to do something similar in my design, but I have adapted the style to a European style of art,” explains Mikalai. “This meant I needed to gather a lot of references from both anime and manga sources, as well…

ARTIST PROFILE Cirstyn Bech-Yagher Cirstyn is a freelance CG artist and educator, with over 15 years’ experience in 3D. Her clients have ranged from AMD to Daz 3D and Future. One of her current projects is with AMD as technical artist for Radeon ProRender for 3ds Max. www.nothern-studios.com As this set of tutorials focuses on the creation of a game level and its assets in Lumberyard, it pays to generate a game and level design before you dive in, in order to help structure your thoughts and creative process. Creating these designs is all about the brain, and not the paperwork, as their sole purpose is to solidify your ideas and concepts. There’s even a great part at this stage where you get to play games in the name of research.…

Rafael replies I’ve chosen to focus on making a Lamborghini Veneno. The final image was rendered using V-Ray for Maya. Over the past years, I have been honing my skills in lighting and rendering as well as some other techniques with various rendering engines like Arnold for Maya, Renderman, V-Ray, and mental ray, as well as other engines. The principles are the same for every render engine, but to make this car I will explain the principles and techniques that I use for V-Ray to get this render. Every render engine has three basic rendering principles: lights, camera and shaders. I live and die by these principles every time that I render. In physics there are three principles as well, which form the basis for this technique. For something to…

This issue, we've joined forces with Pluralsight (formerly known as Digital-Tutors) to offer you a comprehensive six-hour video training course that you can download from our online Vault - for free! Simply visit our content downloads page at www.bit.ly/vault-213-realtime for the files. This course is designed to teach you the workflow to create completely procedural setups that are both robust and controllable. You will learn how to create sophisticated setups that are required to achieve a completely procedural sticky slime system. First, you will learn to utilise Wrangle nodes extensively with VEX scripting to create a dynamic Sticky Constraint Solver that will be the driving force behind the whole system. In addition to the Sticky Constraint Solver, you will learn how Wrangle nodes can be used inside a DOP Network…

Artist profile Aqil Ashirov Aqil attended Azerbaijan Architecture and Construction University. He now works at Kepez Y.I.F. behance.net/AqilAshirov Topics covered Simulation Colour balance Compositing W hen creating a realistic environment scene, it’s important to have a goal in mind and know what you want the scene to look and feel like. For my beach scene, I wanted a realistic view, which meant overcast lighting and a blustery, windy mood. I began my research by tracking down photos that felt similar to the scene and mood I wanted to create. I looked at a holiday resort looking out over the sea, a windy day, and an amateur surfer on holiday at the beach. In order to create this 3D scene, I am using 3ds Max for the modelling and simulation of…

The big issue Formerly the CG Student Awards, The Rookies is the largest online awards for creative students and is an annual international meeting of young creative minds. The Rookies was established back in 2009 by visual effects veterans Andrew McDonald and Alwyn Hunt, who created the awards as a way to discover and showcase outstanding new talent emerging from higher education facilities. The awards also help graduates get in a foot in the door at the world’s top creative studios. For the last seven years, The Rook has attracted aspiring artists from all over the globe, showcasing their impressive portfolios in a number of creative categories – including VFX and Animation, Next-Gen Gaming and Motion Graphics. Entrants are in with a chance of winning not only a prestigious award,…

Rather than relying on a variety of visual effects vendors, filmmaker Steven Spielberg recruited Weta Digital to produce all of the 875 VFX shots needed for his cinematic adaptation of The BFG, which revolves around a giant kidnapping an orphan and taking her to his fantastical homeland. “Our goal was to be as invisible as possible and let the technology empower the actors,” states Weta Digital VFX supervisor Guy Williams. “In the beginning we thought if the BFG is our hero then the other giants are antagonists that need to be dark and evil. This wasn’t the case for Steven. They look at the BFG as the runt of the litter. There had to be this chance of warmth in the other giants even though they mock the BFG. Fleshlumpeater…

SideFX recently released Houdini version 15.5, this is an amazing release that brings improvements across the board for everyone from awardwinning VFX studios to indie game developers and freelancers. Houdini 15.5 has it all. Houdini is well known for its use in VFX, fire, destruction and explosions, and simulation in general has become a synonym for Houdini. Houdini delivers in these areas in spades, but in recent years, more and more people are using it in other areas of the pipeline and some are even using it as the pipeline, replacing all sorts of software with its powerful procedural workflow. This has brought many improvements in other areas of Houdini, such as modelling, animation and even virtual reality. Houdini 15.5 brings a set of really refined modelling tools that began…

This tutorial will describe the techniques I used while creating this stylised selfportrait. I’ve wanted to challenge myself to creating a self-portrait for a while now. It’s tricky to do because as you know yourself so well, you get very picky and have to think extra hard about shapes and forms; it’s also very easy to spot when something is off. However, it’s a great exercise that I think every CG artist should undertake at some point. In terms of the composition, I wanted to go for an image that’s easy on the eye. Recently I’ve noticed how much more I enjoy these kinds of pictures. Your eyes need space to rest and move around the frame and this is an exercise in allowing for that. Your gaze initially lands…

Paul replies Leather is a very common material in both architectural scenes and furniture, as well as clothes for characters. It is therefore very important to get your head around how to create a realisticlooking leather material. Before we dive into that, however, the first step is to ensure that your object – whether it is a chair or a piece of clothing – is unwrapped correctly. Depending on the complexity of the object, this process could be either really straightforward or mindbogglingly complex! There are plenty of tutorials on the internet that explain unwrapping, so I’d recommend checking those out and you can either use built-in tools such as 3ds Max’s unwrap solution or you can use plug-ins or external standalone solutions. Moving onto the actual material, first grab…

Industry advice When Escape Studio’s Simon Fenton was trying to break into the video games industry back in 1995, it was a challenge. The cost of software was high and workstations were expensive. The only way in was to start as an intern or a runner. “If you’re a student already, then Autodesk will allow you free access to its industry standard applications, which include 3ds Max, Maya and Mudbox,” says Simon. “However, if you’re not a student and are just interested in trying game development tools, you can start by making digital art with Blender for 3D and using Sculptris for sculpting. In terms of 2D, I’d have to recommend Gimp as the free Photoshop, and Krita for a more painterly feel, if concept art is your thing. When…

MPC did 700 shots for this film, and the range of work we did was also huge INDUSTRY INTERVIEW COMMUNITY Industry interview Robert Winter Robert is VFX Supervisor at MPC Montreal, his past credits include VFX supervisor on Goosebumps and CG supervisor on The Amazing Spider-Man 2. www.bit.ly/3dw-winter Robert Winter, who served as one of the visual effects supervisors on Suicide Squad, had a huge amount of work on his hands with this project. "MPC did 700 shots for the film," he says. "We delivered and finalised in Vancouver, Montreal and London. Our Bangalore facility contributed a lot to the building of assets and MPC London came in to take on additional work." Sony Imageworks also contributed to the visual effects work on Suicide Squad – handling the action centred…

Follow the Maya video training 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-213-realtime 2. FIND THE FILES YOU WANT Search the list of free resources to find the video and files you want. 3. DOWNLOAD WHAT YOU NEED Click the Download buttons and your files will save to your PC or Mac. PLUS! There are more files, art and resources waiting online… Files: Download the video and files to get more on our Lumberyard tutorial Files: Download the training for this issue’s Artist Q&A tutorials Artwork: Download the extra tutorial images that accompany Showcase Video: Download the videos to watch Ninja Theory’s Hellblade demo…