Indice dei contenuti per February 2017 in 3D World

IN EVER Y ISSUE … UNRI VALLED ACCESS From Pixar to ILM and Blizzard, the best artists write for 3D World IN-DEPTH TUTORIALS Training covering the latest trends and software in easy-to-follow tutorials FREE RESOURCES Get videos, models, textures and project files every issue to develop your CG skills MONEY OFF ADOBE! We have teamed up with Adobe to offer 20% off the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan* (including Photoshop) when you subscribe to 3D World. That’s £20 off! SUBSCRIBE TODAY www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/3DMAG Call: 0344 8482852 Overseas call: +44 344 848 2852 TERMS AND CONDITIONS Prices and savings quoted are compared to buying full-priced UK print and digital issues. You will receive 13 issues in a year. If you are dissatisfied in any way you can write to us or call…

Francis-Xavier Martins replies In this training, I’ll demonstrate a few techniques that I use to create scales in ZBrush. I’ll be using this Chameleon I recently made for a pitch to show the processes. One of the most important things to pay attention to when sculpting a creature with scales is to make sure the underlying forms are established. You want to be able to see musculature underneath the scales, otherwise it will look mushy and not very convincing. I usually get my creases laid out using the Dam Standard brush. Lazy Mouse is usually turned off for this because I want a natural stroke and not one smoothed out. I then build around the crease with the Clay Buildup brush on a low intensity. Reference is very important for…

News and views from around the international CG community Generally the hype surrounding the technological advances for 3D movies, which began with the release of Avatar in 2009, has been replaced with the push to produce virtual reality content. Entering into the high-tech gold rush along with Facebook is newly formed Baobab Studios, co-founded by veteran animation filmmaker Eric Darnell, who believes that the young, virtual medium will grow in mainstream appeal. “At least right now, VR is a singular experience. You have this headset on and you’re locked out of the world,” states Baobab Studios’ chief creative officer Eric Darnell, who made his feature directorial debut with Antz in 1998. “I don’t really have any vision on how it will become this group experience in the future, but it…

Over the last few years, we’ve become used to software developers embracing virtual reality, now Unity has targeted what could be the next big tech advancement: mixed reality (MR). Led by Microsoft with the recent launch of the industry-facing HoloLens, Unity 5.5 enables the exploration of the future of augmented and mixed reality using the Unity Editor. MICROSOFT’S HOLOLENS HAS TAKEN A LEAP FORWARD IN HOW WE INTERACT WITH COMPUTERS, WHICH IS CHALLENGING CREATORS Marcos Sanchez, head of global communications, Unity Technologies “Microsoft’s HoloLens has taken a leap forward in how we interact with computers, which challenges creators to think in new ways about the content they create. It also means they’ll need the right kind of tools and platform for bringing their ideas to life,” says Marcos Sanchez, head…

The VR bubble is inflating. Every year the hype fills it a fraction more. But VR headsets are yet to proliferate through our living rooms, and until that happens, many developers, studios and artists won’t see a return on their investments. According to the director of Chaos Group Labs, Chris Nichols, we’re in the moment of discovery as everyone seeks to find solutions to VR’s problems – mapping the format’s standards and cracking the unknowns. If you want to get into VR content creation, the moment has arrived. “Right now, early VR projects are facing the same challenges big brands faced when they first jumped into the internet,” says Chris. “In the early days, Ford could make a website and hype it in their commercials, but did people know what…

BLURGHA: THE BEAST ARTIST Victor Gaza SOFTWARE ZBrush, Topogun, Maya, Substance Painter, Marmoset 3, Photoshop Victor, a game developer at Guerrilla Games in Amsterdam, created this beast as an R&D production model to test Substance Painter’s new features. “Trying new stuff and techniques like texturing and baking entirely in Substance Painter was good fun for me,” explains Victor, who also enjoyed limiting himself to using as little photographic and painted texture information as possible. “The main focus on the texturing phase was to attempt to get as much procedural texture in there as possible,” he says. “Of course, it’s not all procedural, but, for example, the border between the green and bright skin is basically a plain mask with a bunch of warp stacks to make it random and organic…

OFF DIRECTOR Martin Nabelek COUNTRY Czech Republic ABOUT Martin works in motion graphics, graphic design, illustration, VR, cinematography and sound design RELEASE DATE Out now WEB www.vimeo.com/nabelekm The standard of student animated shorts has been getting higher and higher, year on year; and OFF, by recent graduate Martin Nabelek, is just one that has caught our eye recently. Created using 3ds Max and Corona, OFF is a haunting short that has echoes of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Interstellar. It contains some beautiful simulation work and subtle art direction. As an animation student at Tomas Bata University in Zlín, in the Czech Republic, Martin’s final assignment was to create a short, three- to five-minute film. Traditionally, the school is focused on 2D animation and traditional techniques, but Martin made a…

AUTHOR Beat is a 3D generalist with a special interest in lighting and rendering. He currently works at Blur Studio in Los Angeles, California. www.artofbeat.com The aim of this project was to gain a better understanding of cinematography in general and explore how real sets are lit. Working in commercials taught me how important lighting is. If we want to achieve a cinematic look and feel we should also light that way. In order to learn more about this topic, I started watching videos from Tony Zhou and Rishi Kaneria on Vimeo and Wolfcrow, and the Cinematography Database on YouTube. These are all great at analysing movies and breaking down shots. The dramatic lighting and the rain in this shot creates a very interesting look, as Blade Runner’s main…

Kevin Kleyla replies Creating a cage or lattice structure can be as easy or as difficult as you wish. With most 3D software you have ability to achieve the same or similar results with numerous variations. In my Art Bar image, I created two lattice structures for the spherical pendants. In order to do so, I used two different techniques to achieve the desired geometry for both the flat and the round lattice structure. Each step here represents one way to create a lattice structure. Keep in mind that any solution greatly depends on your specific needs, and each has its pros and cons. Think of this as an exploration of different options or possible techniques. Hopefully the following steps will give you some good ideas to further develop…

The Harry Potter film franchise put many VFX studios on the map, so when J.K Rowling returned to her Potterverse for a series of new films, it was clear CG visual effects would play a big role. Set in 1920s New York, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them follows magizoologist Newt Scamander as he attempts to track down and capture the bizarre creatures that have escaped from his suitcase. Production VFX supervisors, Tim Burke and Christian Manz, lined up some of the industry’s leading houses, including MPC, Framestore, Cinesite, Image Engine and Rodeo FX. Method Studios, who contributed to the opening and closing shots, as well as key environment and creature shots, was also key to the film’s visual effects. “Production wanted the apparate/ disapparate [teleporting] effect to have…

Doctor Strange, Marvel’s latest superhero film, featured some outstanding VFX work. In issue 214, ILM gave us an overview of the work it did, and now VFX supervisor Richard Bluff goes into detail: “During pre-production phase we would sit around and talk at length about the previz and photographic reference supplied by the filmmakers. As we planned everything out, I challenged each and every artist to take ownership of the work, to not be afraid of bringing new ideas, I wanted everyone to ask themselves the question: ‘What can I add to the story and imagery to enhance the filmmakers’ ideas?’ It was critical that the mind-bending nature of the visual effects didn’t overshadow the storytelling or become an excuse for simply showing off new visual effects capabilities.” A PARALLEL…

VLADISLAV OCIACIA ROLE 3D character artist and 3D concept artist COUNTRY Ukraine CLIENTS Intel, BBDO, PNY, Pepsi, Chian Inc., 42Entertainment, ZOHO, Damac WEB www.bulldozer-vfx.com When it comes to rendering robots, creating shiny, glossy, hard-surfaced mechanical marvels, there are few doing it better than concept artist Vladislav Ociacia. The Kiev-based artist uses 3ds Max and V-Ray to create his ongoing series of android renders, which mix human forms with mechanical expression and detailing. “I’m a filmaholic, game maniac and concept designer,” Vladislav says. “I love futuristic characters; robots were the main theme of my childhood drawings, so now that I’ve been able to convert my hobby into a job, it’s great.” The artist found his preferred modelling software, 3ds Max, when he was a student and a friend showed him a…

AUTHOR Sarah is a 3D generalist who incorporates her fine arts background into her 3D work. Her passion is surrealism and abstract elements. www.sarahbromleyart.com To help me explore the workflow of Substance Designer and Substance Painter when texturing a complex character, I created the Ivory project. I picked up Substance with the aim of creating a new workflow for environment work but after spending a few weeks experimenting in Designer and Painter, I realised that Substance was going to be more important than I had previously thought. I started seeing the potential of Substance as a creative design tool during the early stages of my workflow, and not simply as a finishing step in the main texturing pipeline. During the course of this tutorial, I will be going through…

Pietro Chiovaro replies In this training I’ll take you through the process of creating a brick material using only the internal texture in Blender. First of all, we need to select the mesh to which we want to assign the material. To do that, go to the Node Editor panel and add these elements: the input Texture Coordinate, the input Fresnel, the shader Diffuse BSDF, the shader Glossy BSDF, a Mix Shader, the Hue Saturation Value, the vector Bump, two Brick Textures, two Voronoi Textures, a Gamma and finally the Material Output. Now we have our unwrapped mesh, connect the Texture Coordinate to the first Brick Texture and the first Voronoi Texture, that we added before. Now connect the Brick Texture with the Hue Saturation Value and with the…

Brexit means Brexit. This is the mantra of UK Prime Minister Theresa May as she sets about guiding the United Kingdom out of the European Union. But what does this change in the political and economic landscape have in store for the UK’s thriving animation and VFX industry? The UK’s film and video games industry has always looked outward. The huge success of the Harry Potter franchise and the recent Star Wars movies has seen the UK’s post-production industry flourish. GOING IT ALONE The referendum vote to leave the EU and subsequent fall in the value of sterling, in effect making the US dollar stretch further by nearly 17 per cent, means UK services are cheaper for overseas clients. The UK is already the number one global destination for animation…

The trend towards GPU rendering is now taking hold in VFX studios across London. Fluid Pictures’ co-founder and award-winning animator David Throssell is experimenting with the technology, by introducing Redshift into the studio’s Arnold pipeline. Speaking at the recent Software Sessions event held by Escape Labs, a new initiative run by Escape Studios, showcasing some of the most innovative new trends within the industry, David says: “The trend is to move rendering onto the GPU.” WE ALL WANT THAT 10-MINUTE RENDER. BUT WE NEED TO PLAN FOR THE INFRASTRUCTURE CHANGES AND CUSTOM TOOLS NEEDED Amaan Akram, lighting and rendering supervisor, The Mill He believes Redshift has the advantages of interactivity and speed over other renderers. “We no longer get to spend all day setting up a frame and throwing it…

ISSUE 216 JANUARY 2017 RECREATE THE STAR WARS LOOK • Discover the secrets behind the new Star Wars film • We reveal how to model a Star Destroyer in 3ds Max • Learn how to texture a weathered droid in Substance Painter • Model photoreal foliage for video games using Unreal Engine • Downloads Free video training, setup files and morel ISSUE 215 CHRISTMAS 2016 MAKE A SPLASH WITH YOUR RENDERS • Disney’s animation team reveal how they created Moana • Ubisoft’s Pascal Blanché explains his character design process • Improve your creature concepts with Quixel and Substance • Master Clarisse 3.0 to create a rocky, watery environment • Downloads Free video training and setup files ISSUE 214 DECEMBER 2016 THE BLIZZARD VFX PIPELINE • Blizzard shares its Houdini pipeline…