Table of contents for June 2015 in 3D World

Take a long look at Nick Gaul’s amazing cover – you can create that render this issue. On page 52 Nick will guide you through creating hair and skin, as well as lighting and rendering a lifelike portrait. There’s more photorealism skills this issue too; on page 102 the Wonder Vision artists explain how they created a complex motorbike render and on page 68 Fernando Gasperin shares his techniques for rendering a realistic arch-viz interior. Finally, if you’re set on breaking into the CG industry then turn to page 75, where you can read profiles for the best colleges as well as advice from leading art directors on how to impress and land your dream job! ian.dean@futurenet.com SUBSCRIBE & SAVE UP TO 59% Now you can get the best of…

I’ve always wanted to use CG to showcase my favourite characters ARTIST: Wuling SOFTWARE: Maya, ZBrush, Mari, Photoshop As an artist inspired by all things Anime, 3D enthusiast Wuling’s rendering obsession led her to recreate some of her favourite characters. Soon she began creating her own stories, taking her time (this piece took her around 200 days), and learning techniques as she went along. “I’m just doing what I love,” she says. “Working more and working harder gives me the courage to always try new things.” The Orphan and the Jeweller deviates from Wuling’s Anime obsession and focuses on her love of gaming, namely Diablo III. “It’s a very attractive game. The main character Covetous Shen is the man sitting in the image. I chose the gorgeous fashion from the…

It’s been almost a year since Pixar invited us to a demo in London of the new RenderMan RIS, along with news of its free non-commercial release. And only now (as of late March) has the renderer finally been released for free for the public, to download at www.renderman.pixar.com. Good things come to those who wait, however, as Pixar has spent that time fine-tuning and developing RIS, with help from Disney and Pixar studios, as well as the likes of Double Negative who used the beta to create complex VFX for the forthcoming Ant-Man. In an early test the Double Negative team created 40 shots in a week with just five people. One test scene using Exodus as an example, didn’t render in RenderMan 18 but worked in RIS –…

AWARD WINNER Creative studio, Imaginary Forces, has won the 2015 SXSW Excellence in Title Design Award for the WGN America network’s Manhattan TV series. Watch the winning sequence here: www.vimeo.com/102685630. CINEMA 4D IS VITAL Imaginary Forces relied on several key features in Cinema 4D to ensure the Manhattan title design achieved the illustrated diagrammatic design they wanted. Jeremy Cox, Imaginary Forces’ art director, explains: “After experimenting with how the sequence would animate, we created a test using Cinema 4D where we were able to not only 3D animate the diagrams on the paper, but successfully model and animate the papers sliding around. EVOLVING THE ANIMATION “Using Cineware to import cameras and animated nulls into our After Effects comps gave us the ability to easily update the content of these pages…

Francesca Forzoni Frankie is a 3D artist and visualiser in London. She has recently moved from working in post-production to branding and packaging. www.francescaforzoni.com Jack M Gilson With over eight years’ experience in video game art, Jack is currently working on next-generation mobile games in Berlin. www.jmgilson.co.uk Mike Griggs Mike is a UK-based freelance 3D, VFX and mograph artist, who has been polishing pixels since 1995 for broadcast and commercial projects. www.creativebloke.com Christiano Pires Christiano is an audiovisual producer who has worked in video editing and motion design for nine years, and CG for four years. www.bit.ly/c-pires Rob Redman Rob runs a 3D animation and VFX studio, working for clients ranging from governments to rock stars. He’s also an industry commentator and trainer. www.pariahstudios.co.uk GET IN TOUCH EMAIL YOUR QUESTIONS…

How can I make my vinyl toy renders look more striking? Solomon Firth, US Rob replies The key to this sort of thing is to think about what your toy, or any other product, represents and to treat it accordingly. Rather than wrapping an HDRI around the scene, think a little more carefully about what it is you want to do. For my example, I created this little superhero toy, who, despite still donning his outfit, is perhaps beyond his prime. With that premise in mind, I decided to light my vinyl toy character less like a glossy brochure render – with lots of slick, carefully placed highlights and bounce cards – and more like a portrait shoot. The model was built using Cinema 4D, as was a simple cyclorama…

DARREN O’KELLY Darren studied for an MA in film at Dublin City University before working at Image Now films. He’s the managing director at The Mill, creating VFX for clients including Nike, Guinness, Sony and Coca-Cola, and has been running the London studio for five years. www.themill.com PORTFOLIO ADVICE “For me what stands out isn’t necessarily technical ability. If I was to give one tip it would be that showreels demonstrating an understanding of storytelling weigh more favourably than those that just demonstrate technique. We want to see the ability to create emotion and convey an idea – our craft is only a tool in the storytelling process.“ Darren O’Kelly The Mill The best place to find out how to get into the VFX industry is to ask the people…

FORGING A NEW LIGHT SETUP Enlighten 3 delivers cinematic-quality dynamic lighting through an accurate real-time simulation of global illumination. The new release now includes the lighting editor Forge; with full support for physically based shading, you can create dynamic real-time lighting for games with even greater speed and control. Forge’s modular design and support for Maya and 3ds Max enables Enlighten 3 to be used in most workflows. Forge also integrates YEBIS 3 Post Processing from Silicon Studio for previewing finalquality rendering. www.geomerics.com CORRECTION In issue 193 we published a tutorial titled Learning CGI for Advertising. We would like to make it clear that the Nespresso: Infinity images were created by Ars Thanea. Full credits are: executive creative director: Peter Jaworowski, art director: Pawel Nolbert, lead 3D artist: Piotr Kolus,…

EMAIL YOUR SHORT TO ian.dean@futurenet.com Some shorts simply show a character learning an important life lesson, others are used to show an action-packed segment of a bigger story. By their very nature they’re generally small-scale and self-contained. The creators of Wrapped, though, have taken the short film to its very limits: they envisage New York City overgrown with vines, trees and flowers. ROMAN KAELIN Roman is co-director of Wrapped. He studied architecture before majoring in animation and effects. He also worked with the Wrapped team on a.maize, a short used to launch FMX in 2011. www.wrappedshort.com “The complexity of nature and the fascination for the cycles that live within it were strong elements that we wanted to pursue,” says codirector Roman Kaelin. Of course, the audience isn’t used to seeing…

By drawing on his childhood love of fantasy miniatures, Spanish artist Albert Ramon Puig began creating Troll Gunner and his Crew, and in doing so devised a technique to replicate the dry brush painting style of miniature modellers. ALBERT RAMON PUIG Albert works at Gameloft Barcelona as a 2D artist and UI designer. He’s selftaught with experience in advertising and media. albertrp.weebly.com “I used the ZBrush polypainting technique, because it was like painting real miniatures,” says Albert, who searched for ideas and techniques that would help simulate the look of a real-life Warhammer miniature. This led him to discover the tutorials of Pablo Muñoz (Pablander), who shared his process for setting up lights and rendering in ZBrush, to give the model the look of feeling like wet clay or soft,…

ONE CREATE YOUR DISPLACEMENT MATERIAL Duplicate your base material for your object. This one will be used for the displacement texture. Leave the material as is, but tick on your Displacement Channel. If you have two objects, one with each of these materials on, there should be no difference between the two yet. TWO SELECT YOUR FACES Select the faces you want the displacement to affect. Then click Select>Set Selection. An orange triangle will appear in your Object Manager next to your object, this is a good way to keep a reference for that specific selection. If you click the orange triangle, and Select Polygons in Polygon mode, you’ll see your faces are selected. Drop your new material with the Displacement Channel ticked onto these selected faces. THREE ADD THE…

The two most common and affordable printing technologies, Fused Deposit Modelling (FDM) and Stereolithography (SLA), primarily use plastic and resin. Printing in metal requires more expensive and precision technologies, which creates an expensive barrier to entry for most local hubs and 3D print shops. Composite metal powders can be harnessed to print by using Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) and metal alloys by Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), as well as Electron Beam Melting (EBM), Robocasting, and Selective Laser Melting (SLM). Shop around to get the best deal; Shapeways, Sculpteo, i.materialise, and ExOne all print and cast in metal and for now they’re your best bet. Beyond the technology, the metal alloy itself is expensive and precious metals such as silver, gold and platinum are rare. Most companies that print precious…

I based the piece on concept art by the great artist Goro Fujita ARTIST: Aazeddine Serghini SOFTWARE: Maya, V-Ray, Mari, UVLayout, Photoshop “I’m a 3D generalist, so my experience covers modelling, texturing, shading, lighting, rendering and compositing,” explains Aazeddine Serghini, a Morroco-based creative who is currently studying at Infodesign. Inspired by Goro Fujita and Ian McQue, Robots is a small homage to the former. “I begin by building the entire scene with basic objects to have the overall composition and perspective that I’m looking for,” he explains. “After I get the desired result with base models, I lock my camera and start adding details for each piece. The first object I started was the robot.” Spending five hours each day, the piece took around five days to finish, with the…

I’ve always loved sculpting characters – it helps me to learn new things ARTIST: Kay Cho SOFTWARE: ZBrush, 3ds Max, V-Ray, Photoshop “Although I have a full-time job, I’m very willing to make time for my personal artwork,” says Kay Cho, a South Korea-based artist who’s love of gaming often inspires his work. “When I was introduced to 3D, I was working for an interior design company. Since then I’ve pursued what I love to do: games. Experience is my strength because I’ve done a lot of subcontract work for games like Aion, Icarus and Point Blank. Currently I do 3D modelling for game characters at Softnyx.” Also inspired by artists Michael Knowland, Hugues Giboire and Pawel Mielniczuk, Elizabeth and Skyhook took four months to create and is an example…

FASTER SHOTS Golaem Crowd 4.0 features instant previsualisation of crowd geometry in Maya’s viewport and even includes advanced animation, such as blend shapes and nCloth-based cloth simulation. You can cache simulations for Interactive Replay and Timeline Scrubbing; cached characters can be selected and directly moved or removed. SOPHISTICATED FEATURES The new Channels System gives information on a character’s type, the current Motion Clip, bone positions, orientation and colour – which can be used to trigger behaviours. NEW ANIMATION Get realistic crowd simulation from new features, such as SetBone Behavior. And you can use the new Animation Layers feature to extract a pose or secondary animation from an existing motion, and add it on top of other motions. Watch a demo here: bit.ly/195-golaem…

CINE MA 4D What is the best way to displace an object in Cinema 4D? Daniel Barrett, UK Francesca replies There are a few ways to apply a displacement map onto an object in Cinema 4D so it’s normally down to personal preference. The first way you can do it, which is probably the most common way, is to just turn on the Displacement channel in your object’s material. You should put in your displacement alpha into your Texture channel to control your strength, height and sub-polygon displacement directly through this channel. When I use this method I duplicate my material for the object and apply the displacement to the duplicated material, select the faces I want the displacement to affect and just apply the new material with displacement onto…

How can I create fluffy fur using the Hair tool in Cinema 4D? Eva Morely, UK EXPERT TIP Misaligning the fur If you want to create a misaligned fluffy fur look, to create a more natural, random effect, use the tool Simulate>Hair Tools> Brush, and brush the fur in many directions, until it looks right. Christiano replies Cinema 4D has two amazing tools for hair and fur simulation. You can get awesome results with the right configuration. I’ll show you how to accomplish this using my illustration, Adventure Time – Lumpy Space Princess, as an example. Select a sphere on the Parametric Objects box. Keep it selected then go Simulate>Hairobjects>addHair. Now set the length and the amount of hair. Select Hair then go HairObjects[Hair]> Guides>Roots. Set the parameters to the…

ONE PREPARATION AND INGREDIENTS Ensure Turtle is turned on in the plug-ins and it’s the selected renderer. Open up Turtle and go to Sampling then crank the Min Sampling Rate to 2. At the top click the dropdown Render Type to Baking. In Target Surfaces add your low poly mesh and in Source Surfaces add your higher poly mesh. Make sure your low-poly mesh is in the centre of the higher-poly mesh. TWO THE CORRECT MEASUREMENTS I recommend that you copy my measurements! These are the bearded lumberjack of measurements, durable, weatherproof and guaranteed to get the job done. Front and Back range set to 10 with Front Bias at 0.1 and Back Bias at -0.1; leave the rest at default. If you are baking multiple pieces to one texture…

ARTIST PROFILE Nick Gaul Nick works in New Zealand at Weta Digital as a senior modeller. He’s been in the industry for almost 10 years, and has worked on titles including Avatar, The Adventures of Tintin, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the last installment of The Hobbit trilogy. pinterest.com/nickgaul/my-work/ In this breakdown tutorial I’ll cover my steps and workflow for creating a digital portrait. I’ll try and point out some key things I find important and cover some of the technical aspects that go into it – pointing out which applications I use for certain parts, and why. You’ll get a good overview of how to use V-Ray as a renderer and I’ll provide some insight into how lighting and shading works within it. But remember many…

ARTIST PROFILE Amedeo Beretta Amedeo is a module leader for the six month visual effects for film course at Met Film School. metfilmschool.co.uk VFX is one of a handful of professions where technical knowledge and creativity are required in equal measures Amedeo Beretta, module leader, Met Film School In recent years visual effects have become more widely known to people working outside of the film industry. This is largely due to massive blockbusters featuring impressive CGI, the proliferation of narrative-led video games and wider use at consumer level of 2D and 3D CG software like Photoshop, After Effects or Maya. However, VFX has been part of the filmmaking process for many decades. It’s safe to say that every film you’ve watched has involved some kind of VFX, and with film…

ARTIST PROFILE Paul Schleicher Paul is head of production at Glassworks’ London studio, responsible for some of the best adverts on TV. www.glassworks. co.uk/work Growing up, I had a passion for storytelling. I was involved in a lot of theatre throughout my teens, both performing and helping to produce a number of productions at school and an independent children’s theatre group. After failing to graduate high school, I ventured south to study at Los Angeles Theatrical Academy. Realising my aspirations to become famous were maybe a long shot, I ventured north, studying Film Theory, History and Analysis at the University of California at Santa Barbara. It exposed me to the breadth and depth of genres such as noir, Italian neo-realism, new wave and more. I loved it. After graduating, I…