Table of contents for July 2022 in 3D World

The Pipeline Render a striking 3D character ZBRUSH | BLENDER In this tutorial, I will show you the main techniques I use to build a character based on a concept. I'll focus on the blocking step and how important it is to organise your model properly. What makes a good model for me is its foundation, its ability to be beautiful without texturing and complex lighting. In this guide, I am not going to focus on modelling specific elements, but on building an object as a whole using simple techniques and simple brushes. This is not a model meant for animation or production, so you can take some liberties to create something visually beautiful. For modelling I will be using ZBrush, but the concepts taught can be replicated in the…

The Pipeline Model a mech from concept art WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3D-world-unreal5 MAYA I MARVELOUS DESIGNER | ARNOLD | PHOTOSHOP As a modeller, you always hear about the importance of developing a strong portfolio – but how? An important skill to demonstrate is the ability to work based on a concept. In most companies you will likely be required to work with concept artwork, and you'll have to follow all the shapes and forms. In personal works, you have the freedom to change your model and make the process easier, avoiding some of the tougher challenges, but at work you can't avoid them. Proving to recruiters that you can model from a 2D concept is vital for your portfolio. In 2D sketches, there are so many hidden parts – areas…

Technique focus Model in virtual reality MODEL IN VIRTUAL REALITY I used a VR headset and a program called Gravity Sketch. I did 3D drawing and then modelled my face according to it. This is why VR is comfortable for me; after making a good drawing, you just fill the spaces with geometry. Gravity Sketch is great for handling both techniques. I started with big shapes and defined the proportions. After that I started slowly adding features to make a basic head (you can see it in shadow on the right side of the image). After that, I found a few references for each expression and did drawings in virtual reality on top of the basic face. I then transformed features of the face to match the drawing of expressions.…

The Hub A day in the life A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A… NAME Jason B Milligan JOB TITLE Pixel Sergeant STUDIO Butcher Bird Studios LOCATION California, USA ABOUT Jason is a freelance filmmaker in Los Angeles. His experiences span animation, design, visual effects, comic books, TV news, puppetry, directing, podcast hosting [G. O. Get Outside] and adventure filmmaking. WEB chinnvstvie.com Jason Milligan is a generalist with varied experience, having worked in news graphics, comic books and manga, puppetry, VFX, video production and animation. His favourite projects tend to meld multiple disciplines, especially those that combine techniques from 2D and 3D with live-action in stylised ways. Jason co-founded Butcher Bird Studios in 2010 where he typically works as creative director amongst other responsibilities. Sometimes he gets to direct cats…

Reviews Maya 2023 SOFTWARE REVIEW PRICE £246 / $225 monthly | COMPANY Autodesk | WEBSITE www.autodesk.co.uk AUTHOR PROFILE Paul Hatton After graduating with a first-class computer science degree, Paul Hatton has spent nearly two decades working within the 3D visualisation industry. + PROS USD support in Bifrost Updated Boolean modelling workflow Streamlined retopology workflow Unreal Live Link for Maya - CONS Expensive for anyone with a minimal budget UNREAL LIVE LINK FOR MAYA It is now possible to stream your animations directly from Maya to Unreal, all in real time! Talk about seamless working! There is now no need to export your animation from Maya and import it into Unreal. It's that time of year again; the season of product updates for a range of Autodesk packages. This time round…

Reviews Huion Q11K Pen Tablet HARDWARE REVIEW PRICE £64 / $84 | COMPANY Huion | WEBSITE Huion.com AUTHOR PROFILE Ben Brady Ben is an artist and illustrator based in Bristol. He works in traditional woodcut, drawing and digital mediums. He reviews drawing tablets and styluses, as well as the latest and greatest digital software for artists, for our website Creative Bloq.benjaminbrady.co.uk + PROS Wireless, meaning less desktop clutter Generously sized drawing surface Stylus is responsive - CONS Stylus not battery-free No tilt function Huion's Inspiroy range offers some perfectly serviceable budgetlevel tablets, with the Huion Q11K sitting just above its cheapest, mostly due to its wireless capabilities – which needless to say is the Q11K's headline feature, apart from its generous size. We tried it out using a few different…

LITTLE GIRL AND ROBOT BULLET 3 ARTIST MUNABU SOFTWARE ZBrush, Blender, Photoshop “This work is the third shot in my ‘Little Girls and Robots’ series. From 2D design to 3D completion, I tried a lot of software effects using ZBrush, Blender and Photoshop. I would like to thank Mr. CrazyJN for his guidance.” artstation.com/munabu THE TEAL WHEEL TAVERN ORIGINAL CONCEPT BY JOURDAN TUFFAN ARTIST Lotte de Brabander SOFTWARE Blender, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Unreal Engine 5, Photoshop “Recreating Jourdan Tuffan's beautiful concept in 3D allowed me to practise with trim sheets, which was something I hadn't had the chance to do in prior projects yet. So with the guidance of Lucas Annunziata, who mentored me throughout this project, I finally managed to cover that knowledge gap! My favourite part in the…

The Pipeline Create concept art in Unreal Engine 5 UNREAL ENGINE 5 | PHOTOSHOP | ZBRUSH OR RELEVANT MODELLING SOFTWARE | SUBSTANCE PAINTER I often receive questions from artists about what software they should be using to create concept art, and how they are conflicted on which software to sink their time into learning – I agree! You see one person on social media do an amazing painting in Blender, another in Photoshop with no 3D whatsoever. Concept artists are not lacking for choice on software and are often lost on what to use for their work – and in my experience there is no one correct answer! I have used my fair share of programs, such as Octane, Blender and even SketchUp, but Unreal Engine offers unique advantages: real-time…

The Hub News and views from around the international CG community INDUSTRY INSIGHT This May marks 45 years since cinema-goers were introduced to the concept of holograms, thanks to a lowly moisture farmer in a galaxy far, far away. Rather than heading off to the Tosche Station to pick up some power converters, young Luke Skywalker became the recipient of eight words that changed his world – and ours right along with it. Although Star Wars didn't invent holograms, Star Wars: A New Hope was what educated the public on what holograms were, and more importantly, what they could be. Like flying cars and hoverboards, audiences accepted that it was an inevitable technology. It's been a few years since the rebellion landed on Luke's doorstep, but the image of a 3D…

Reviews 3ds Max 2023 SOFTWARE REVIEW PRICE £246 / $225 monthly | COMPANY Autodesk | WEBSITE www.autodesk.co.uk AUTHOR PROFILE Paul Hatton After graduating with a first-class computer science degree, Paul Hatton has spent nearly two decades working within the 3D visualisation industry. + PROS Better retopology tools Physical Material now Autodesk Standard Surface Compliant Working pivot updates - CONS Lacks any game-changing new features Subscription prices still out of reach for many people ARNOLD RENDERING UPDATES Arnold's rendering plugin has received some updates, including better tri-planar projection. The projection of textures onto surfaces that face in a particular direction has a huge number of applications, including applying different materials to a surface that may attract things falling onto it, such as snow or dust. Arnold now also supports a sheen…

IN THE VAULT MODELS AND TEXTURES EVERY MONTH Download these models and textures to use in your own projects FREE ASSET DOWNLOADS Download a set of fantastic textures from and build your own asset library with these incredible free ‘furniture’ models from in our monthly model and texture giveaway. MODEL A MECH WITH MAYA Follow along with Vahid Ghobadi’s tutorial with his accompanying video guide. CREATE A TILE MATERIAL Pietro Chiovaro demonstrates how to make a tile material using Substance Designer. ISSUE 288 NEXT MONTH Go behind the scenes of DreamWorks Animation's The Bad Guys ON SALE 21ST JUNE Subscribe today: www.bit.ly/3dworld-subs…

Feature Yamination: Serious Play Sitting in his office at Yamination Studios, an animation company specialising in stopmotion animation in Digbeth, Birmingham, Drew Roper says with quite some enthusiasm that post-lockdown, daily working life is “back to 100mph, but it's nice to get back to some form of normality. It's like things have started to kickstart in a stronger gear again.” In establishing his studio, founded in 2009, Drew has stayed true to his West Midlands roots and has gradually seen Yamination develop, grow and enjoy recognition nationally and internationally. “I've had a lot of support and the talent that I get to work with makes us who we are,” Drew notes. “Every medium of animation and filmmaking enhances what we do. Stop motion is our forte but I love all…

The Pipeline Retopologise in Blender BLENDER | RETOPOFLOW BY CG COOKIE There is nothing on the market like Blender; it is both amazing and still 100% free after all this time, and getting more and more feature rich as the years roll by. There are so many reasons to use Blender these days, including to sculpt amazing characters and creatures as you would in ZBrush or 3D-Coat. But what about when you want to take the sculpt to the next stage and think about rigging and animation? Well, Blender excels in these as well. In this quick tutorial, I want to introduce readers to retopology in Blender – and although you can do it right out of the box, there are actually fully featured add-ons that make the process even…

Artist Q&A Your CG problems solved SOFTWARE: CINEMA 4D | INSYDIUM FUSED John Collins, Reading Mike Griggs replies Finding inspiration when modelling can be tricky, not to mention time-consuming, especially when trying to meet deadlines while making everything look fantastic. Maxon's Cinema 4D has an excellent reputation for being one of the quickest and easiest 3D content creation tools to help artists meet their goals, while at the same time maintaining a high quality of creative output. One of the reasons Cinema 4D has this reputation is the excellent ecosystem of plugins that complement and enhance the core feature set. Premier among these plugins is the Fused collection from Insydium, which has become an indispensable part of many Cinema 4D artists' toolsets, from the incredible X-Particles simulation system to landscape…

SOFTWARE: AUTODESK MAYA Brandon Tobin, Oxford Antony Ward replies When working on any project, be it for a game or visual effects studio, you can expect your rigs to be constantly evolving. As the project moves through its various stages, features are inevitably added, so the character rig then needs to be updated to account for these. This could be adding a single joint to aid deformation or extending a rig to add an accessory or body part, but if not done correctly, this could end up being more work than it needs to be. The problem is, once you've spent days refining a character's skin weights you don't want to then add more joints to the skin cluster, something that can result in the weights being changed and sometimes…

The Hub The art of CG battles PROJECT INSIGHT Having been the lead vendor on all previous seasons, BlueBolt have completed the fifth and final season of historical drama series The Last Kingdom, delivering an impressive 782 VFX shots for the hit show produced by Carnival Films for Netflix. The VFX requirements for this project were vast and varied and included elaborate environment extensions, sprawling CG armies, historically accurate CG ships, blood addition and modern cleanup. Plus, a substantial amount of motion capture was used in this season, with BlueBolt purchasing two motion capture suits, allowing them to body track stunt performers and use these actions on their CG characters. BlueBolt VFX supervisor, Richard Frazer, explains the importance of this. “When working on the large battle scenes, we would sometimes…

The Hub Fan-favourite villains return PROJECT INSIGHT IF you haven't been keeping up with all things superhero at the cinema, then Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: No Way Home might be a little confusing. It's the 27th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the 32nd property overall including the recent Disney+ TV shows (but not counting the Netflix/Marvel shows, despite the appearance of one of those characters in the film), and the third film in star Tom Holland and director Jon Watts’ series. And those are just the obvious connections. Along with its place in the MCU, Spider-Man: No Way Home is an unofficial sequel to both Andrew Garfield's Amazing Spider-Man duology directed by Marc Webb, and Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man trilogy directed by Sam Raimi (who, to add…