Table of contents for January 2017 in 3D World

John Knoll Industrial Light & Magic’s chief creative officer and senior VFX supervisor discusses the need for familiarity in Star Wars: Rogue One on page 20. www.ilm.com Jacob Norris Jacob has over 10 years’ experience creating art for video games, and offers training and assets on his PurePolygons website. Follow his advice for modelling perfect game foliage on page 72. www.purepolygons.com Ansel Hsiao Ansel is a microbiologist and freelance 3D artist based in Saint Louis, Missouri. On page 52 Ansel shares his process for modelling a Star Destroyer in 3ds Max. www.fractalsponge.net Francis-Xavier Martins Francis-Xavier is a character artist and CG generalist based in Brighton, with over a decade of experience in video games, media and TV. He joins our Artist Q&A team on page 88. www.polyjunky.com Riyahd Cassiem Riyahd…

To give the team more re-usability out of just a few meshes, a majority of the materials for the structures used world-space projection to save time with UVing. “Some unique textures were combined in the shader with the tiling textures to give each building its own AO and Normal (some were sculpted in ZBrush), as well as a unique mask that allowed some te xtures to be blended in,” says lighting artist Brian Leleux. On top of the shader, numerous decals were placed to add even more variety to the buildings.…

Mos Eisley is all baked lighting, with some dynamic shadows from the major light sources, explains Brian Leleux, lighting artist at Obsidian Entertainment: “I was not too happy with Light Projection Volumes, Distance Field GI, or Distance Field AO for this project, as they offered too little control or had too many visual artefacts at the time.” Brian says he generally starts lighting a scene using as few post-process effects as possible, “including no bloom, colour adjustments, or any major exposure tweaks. This allows me to focus solely on the lights themselves, while still seeing the diffuse textures and the original colours of the area I’m working in.” When lighting any scene, Brian starts with whatever the dominant light source is going to be. For exteriors this would be the…

Pierrick Picaut Pierrick is a freelancer 3D artist and founder of P2design. He’s a Blender foundation certified trainer and also produces tutorials and digital courses. www.p2design.eu Blender offers some really nice sculpting tools, with a good Dynamic Topology system that enables you to generate geometry – as well as add and remove details. Although ZBrush’s DynaMesh allows sculpting without constraint, you still need to update your mesh often in order to sculpt further. However, Blender’s Dynamic Topology sculpting generates geometry on the fly, allowing you to increase or remove details on parts of your mesh, without needing to flood fill the model with the same volume of polygons – that’s one of the big strengths of Blender’s sculpting tools. It also includes a smooth tile system in Sculpt mode, which…

Framestore’s VFX supervisor Ivan Moran explains world building Along with the disappearance of the alien spaceships, Framestore did some environmental work for Arrival. “Choppers are flying towards the ship and there’s a huge standoff,” remarks Ivan Moran. “We did quite a few shots in that sequence that were entirely CG. One shot is from behind a chopper in the engine exhaust slipstream, which is all CG and a particular favourite of mine.” There’s also an almost-POV shot from a helicopter pilot where Framestore built the cockpit and all of the instrumentation. “In those shots we took matte paintings from the other vendors and did a panorama for the background. We never created an environment from scratch but used existing material,” explains the VFX supervisor. There was another disappearance shot created…

ARTIST Santiago Betancur SOFTWARE ZBrush, Photoshop, Best Preview Render (BPR) “I love to do abstract things,” says concept artist Santiago. “This time I was inspired a lot by artists like H.R. Giger, Zdzislaw Beksinski and Peter Gric, after I looked at their work I felt motivated to do something like them.” The artist uses a simple workflow, ZBrush and Photoshop, with rendering being handled inside ZBrush by BPR. “I use BPR a lot for my work, it is so fast and gives me nice results, and I can have a lot of control over my render passes,” explains Santiago. Once rendered, Santiago likes to bring the scene to life using photobashing techniques. Every new project is a chance to learn. “This [project] took me entirely out of my comfort zone,…

“The Twin Ion Engine, or TIE Fighter, was originally only intended as a fly-over low-poly asset to help create movement in the environment. As it began to take shape, we quickly realised what an iconic shape the TIE fighter was and that it deserved more than a low-poly representation,” explains Terry Hess, senior environment artist at Obsidian Entertainment, who was charged with creating the famous asset. “The start, as with most assets, is to gather reference,” says Terry. “I gathered images of primarily screenshots from A New Hope but it also included reference from the [scaled replica] EFX model. Scale and proportions are crucial for the balanced look of the TIE Fighter, most of the block out time was spent making sure these were correct.” Standard box modelling in 3ds…

“I had the task of providing support and additional props for the Mos Eisley project,” says environment artist Matt McCorkell, who was responsible for creating environment assets such as the satellite dishes. “Considering that most shots of satellite dishes and communication towers were usually far in the background of shots, I decided to study some of the props from various ships in Star Wars. Then I started modelling out several dishes at once,” says Matt. “After finding elements I liked and throwing out the ideas I didn’t like, I started to detail the dishes to break up the large surfaces. I repeated this process over a couple of times until I found some designs that I wanted to model out.” “While most detail was added along a radial alignment I…

Self-taught artist and Star Wars fan, video game producer Paul Johnson has crafted a niche for himself amongst film fans with his series of Star Wars themed renders and projects. “Like many in the entertainment industry a massive influence on me entering this field was Star Wars,” says Paul. “I guess I was at the perfect age when the first film came out, seven years old, and it has been a big creative influence and inspiration ever since.” With each new Star Wars project, Paul has aimed to teach himself new techniques and hone his self-taught CG abilities. Modelling and rendering the droids from his favourite film franchise looked like a great way to improve his skills. “Initially I did R2-D2 as I figured he is a cylinder with a…

01 GETTING STARTED By beginning with a box object, this will enable me to create the basic shape of the Star Destroyer. 02 CREATE THE HALF-WEDGE SHAPE I am now going to apply an Edit Poly modifier, then weld vertices in order to get the basic half-wedge shape. 03 APPLY A SYMMETRY MODIFIER Using Symmetry I am able to complete the basic shape quickly. Once half of the hull is complete, I apply a Symmetry modifier to finish the basic hull object. 04 MAKE ADJUSTMENTS Next I position the resulting vertices to match my desired hull profile and plan. This is a good time to make any last proportion adjustments by moving the corner vertices. 05 EXTENSIONS ON THE CORE SHAPE Extrude a face, weld vertices to generate the basic…

Riyahd Cassiem Riyahd is a freelance digital artist who creates VFX, motion graphics, 3D characters, illustrations and concept art. riyahdart.blogspot.com Over the course of this tutorial I will go through some of my workflows and techniques for creating a 3D character illustration Using ZBrush, KeyShot and Photoshop. I will use a mixture of 2D digital painting and 3D sculpting techniques to create the illustration. The brief I received was to create a Star Wars Rogue One-themed illustration. I started by gathering references from the Star Wars universe based on the brief. After compiling all the references and establishing the initial idea, I then create some concepts using 3D sculpting and digital painting techniques. I chose to focus on the new K-2SO droid and Darth Vader as my initial characters. After…

Jacob Norris Jacob has over 10 years’ experience creating art for video games, and offers training and assets on his PurePolygons website. www.purepolygons.com When creating environments, foliage is always a great tool to add interest, colour and detail into an otherwise bland scene. Some games I have had the opportunity to work on, such as Uncharted 4 and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, undoubtedly benefited from the use of foliage, and many consider these games to be very beautiful – partly due to their heavy use of foliage throughout the environments. Foliage can also become overwhelming, detracting from the realism of a scene when not used correctly. That’s why it is important very early on to do a lot of research to determine the climate of the environment…

Clarisse Billingtome, US Jason Knight replies Moving between programs can be confusing, and I tend to stick to these four food groups: Cinema 4D, ZBrush, DAZ Studio, and Marvelous Designer, to keep from going insane. Every program has its quirks and I seem to run into them all. In Issue 213 (November 2016) I wrote about how I primarily work in Cinema 4D, but how I often move my characters in and out of DAZ Studio to take advantage of the many clothing options and features, especially the vast posing options. Many people have asked me how I move back and forth between the two programs whilst keeping the exact same character position, scale, and world coordinates/settings. Unfortunately, the native .obj import option in Cinema 4D does some strange things…

1. PLAN EARLY Know what you’re trying to achieve creatively before you start. Sounds obvious but it’s all to easy to jump in too early. A clear idea of the style you’re going for before you start is invaluable. The technical stuff is hard enough, you don’t want the creative messing with things too. 2. WORK EFFICIENTLY As for the technical aspects of the job, Abraham Lincoln said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Prepare well with lots of R&D and establish a clean workflow. 3. THINK CREATIVELY Don’t expect to get everything in one beauty pass out of Maya. Sometimes it’s far quicker to do things in post. Motion blur for example, or depth of field.…

Price €548, €24.99 per month, €24.99 per year (student license) | compa ny Render Legion | website corona-renderer.com Paul Hatton Paul leads a UK-based studio of visualisers. He delivers a whole host of projects including video and interactive environments. www.cadesignservices.co.uk/services/3d-studio FEATURES Interactive LightMix Corona materials VFB features LUTs Corona distance map For those of you who have been asleep these last few years, Corona is an unbiased renderer available both as a standalone application and as a plugin for 3ds Max (other plugins are in development). With the recent release of version 1.5, and an impressive feature set appearing in recent versions, we wanted to put it through its paces and find out just what Corona can do. The rendering market is competitive and there is a wide range of…

Price €495-€695 (dependant on license and host type) | COMP ANY Next Limit | website www.maxwellrender.com Rob Redman Rob is a 3D artist and creative director, working across TV, film and print. When not in the studio he is often found presenting at various events, from FMX to Siggraph. www.pariahstudios.co.uk FEATURES Choice of CPU or GPU for rendering Multilight for relighting New searchable materials library Multiple host support HISTORY Next Limit Maxwell is developed by Next Limit, the company behind RealFlow, alongside some less well-known simulation software. This simulation background is key. Being a fundamental part of the company, this means that Maxwell isn’t an approximation or biased, but is a full light simulation, which is, in part, why the results look so believable. Maxwell Render has long had a…

Follow the link to download your free files www.bit.ly/vault-216-starwars 17 GB OF VIDEO & FILES 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-216-starwars 2. Find the files you want from the list Search the list of free resources to find the vide 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, art and resources waiting online… video: Get the video tutorials for this issue’s Artist Q&A training Artwork: Download the extra tutorial images that accompany Showcase files: Get the step-bystep images for our Unreal Engine 4 foliage tutorial video + files mix…

In his day job Matthew Carranza is an environment artist, but for the Bay 94 project he was tasked with creating everyone’s favourite droid, R2-D2 (as well as the one with the bad motivator, R5-D4). For reference Matthew used a mixture of stills from A New Hope and photos of real, life-sized R2-D2 droids built by fans. For modelling Matthew turned to 3ds Max 2013. “I start off any model by building out a high-poly model, and then making a low-poly model from the high,” says the artist, adding: “The astromech droids are, at their core, a collection of simple shapes. That was my core thought process while making these guys. If a piece I was modelling started to feel a little too complex I knew I was going about…

“My biggest challenge personally was that I wanted to make this shuttle as accurate to the original studio model as possible,” says Obsidian artist Thad Clevenger. “So I spent a lot of time attempting to get every piece of greeble in the right place. I had to make up a few areas that I didn't have great reference for, but hopefully the hardcore fans will appreciate the attention to detail.” Was it worth it, we ask? “Looking back that might have been a bit of overkill, but it was a good lesson in studying the time and care that the original model makers put into their designs. I chose to create a high-poly mesh first and then bake down to a low. The positive of doing that is you can…

Adding an authentic Star Wars weapon into the scene came late in the day and the team turned to Ken LeSaint, senior artist at Obsidian Entertainment, to complete the task. “Originally, we didn’t plan on creating a Star Wars-themed gun to replace the stock Unreal first-person weapon, however, once things got further along, we noticed how great everything was starting to look and were encouraged to take things further. We decided at the very last minute to add an E-11 blaster to replace the stock weapon,” says Ken LeSaint. Ken created the model in 64 hours – including texturing – by modelling only 40 per cent of the high-poly pieces, while the other 60 per cent were simply low-poly pieces with an Architectural and Design Mental Ray shader applied. “When…

Andrew Entwistle Andrew is a freelance 3D artist; most recent projects include leading the art of two titles for Sony Xdev Studios, that have just launched with the PSVR. www.bugzero.co.uk O ver the next few pages, we’ll be focusing on the texturing and rendering of this new character, K-2SO for the rebel alliance, that will feature in Star Wars: Rogue One. We will focus on texturing the droid using Substance Painter to make him fit into the Star Wars universe; slightly reflective, yet dull and worn for that truly lived-in appearance. This will be broken down by surface damage, scratches, micro-noise and the roughness properties of the robot’s surfaces, with a final layer of grime to build up depth like a true Star Wars prop. Finally, we will output everything…

Joseph Herman Joseph Herman is an animator, filmmaker and visual effects artist from New York City and operates his own studio, called Legend Animation. www.legendanimation.com The latest version of Cinema 4D R18 included many great new features, but a standout for me was the new Object Tracking function. Unlike Motion Tracking (introduced in Cinema 4D R16), which solves for camera motion, Object Tracking allows you to track moving objects inside of live action footage. Object Tracking allows you to do things like affix 3D models onto objects within a scene. For example, you may wish to add a blaster to the back of a pickup truck as it drives through a rugged terrain or put a mask on someone’s face as they rotate their head this way and that. For…

Price £1,199 | company The Foundry | website www.thefoundry.co.uk Mike Griggs Mike is a digital content creator with over two decades of experience creating Mograph, VFX and CGI for a wide range of clients. www.creativebloke.com FEATURES New Topology Tools MeshFusion Enhancements New MeshLighting options UI improvements Deformers can be cached With this third and final instalment in its Modo 10 Series, The Foundry has tightened up the ship, with a range of improvements to some of the core toolsets within Modo: mainly its procedural modelling capabilities. MeshFusion, the unique boolean modelling system has had a major overhaul with a much more intuitive UI, which doesn’t rely on the old tree system, (for power users, the schematic view is still available). Instead there is now a clear set of icons which…

Price $830 (workstation, plus floating user and sim licence) | company Chaos Group | website www.chaosgroup.com Rob Redman Rob is a 3D artist and creative director, working across print, film and TV. When not in the studio he is often found presenting at industry events such as FMX and Siggraph. www.pariahstudios.co.uk FEATURES Versions for different render engines Presets aid learning and jump-starting a project Comprehensive controls, logically laid out Output to Alembic HISTORY Chaos Group Although it’s best known for its widely loved V-Ray render engine, Chaos Group has developed a few tools for VFX artists, as well as having an active user group and the Chaos Group Labs, which is home to a fun and informative podcast, as well as a number of very useful user guides. Although simulations…