Table of contents for July 2016 in 3D World

GET PUBLISHED EMAIL YOUR CG ART TO ian.dean@futurenet.com Visit the online Vault to download extra process art for these projects: www.3dworldmag.com/vault/3dw209 I don’t take care about topology, UVs or stuff like that because all my work is focusing on concept art and illustration SB-87 ARTIST Santiago Betancur SOFTWARE ZBrush, KeyShot, Photoshop This 3D illustration took Colombian artist Santiago two days to create using kitbashing techniques. He used assets downloaded from the Badking library (www.badking.com.au “My work is focused on concept art and using these tools I can go through the process more quickly and produce great results,” he says. The SB-87 project was created for an online course in which Santiago shares his concept modelling process. With this project, he wanted to explore the happy accidents that can happen; “the…

ANDREW STANTON Andrew is an Oscarwinning filmmaker based at Pixar Animation Studios. His film credits include Finding Nemo, A Bug’s Life and Finding Dory. www.bit.ly/209-stanton Using Presto, the animators were able to ‘draw’ Hank’s complex tentacles Finding Dory is only a month away from its release so we’ve gathered together the key facts that have been revealed to build a picture of what this release means for Pixar and its development of RenderMan RIS. With the new technology available to Pixar and developments in its proprietary software, Andrew Stanton reflects on how things he struggled with on Finding Nemo are now taken for granted on the production of Finding Dory. “There’s one shot I think in Nemo where the camera goes around a bend in the glass of a fish…

EXPERT TIP Make use of glare diffraction In a real world camera, depending on the quality of that camera and the lens attached to it, you may get light glare diffracting into the individual wave lengths. Use the simple ‘Turn on diffraction’ tick box to recreate this colour splitting directly inside of the V-Ray glare lens effect. Paul replies Thankfully this is something that is easily achievable natively within V-Ray. It is an effect that is applied in post which means it is only applied after the render has completed. This also means that the effect can be updated interactively as you change the lens effects settings without requiring a re-render. Brilliant! V-Ray’s lens effects are split into bloom and glare with different parameters for each. These can be found…

PRIZE DRAW! Win a Blackmagic Design ‘Filmmaker’s Kit’ HOW TO ENTER Courtesy of BlackMagic Design, we have one great prize to give away. To enter the prize draw for your chance to win the ‘Filmmaker’s Kit’ simply fill in our entry form at www.futurecomps.co.uk/tdw209magic. The lucky winner will be chosen at random after the closing date of 31 August 2016. Terms and conditions apply: these are available via the website address above. This issue, we’ve joined forces with the creators of the world’s highestquality video editing products Blackmagic Design to offer you the chance to get your hands on a great set of tools to help you create your very own films. Included in the ‘Filmmaker’s Kit’ are a Pocket Cinema Camera (worth $995), Fusion Studio (worth $995) and DaVinci…

Dentist turned director Nguyen-Anh Nguyen and a small indie group of filmmakers and visual effects artists gained worldwide acclaim when they completed work on The Akira Project. Now the same production team have recently released their latest proof of concept: science fiction cyberpunk thriller, Temple. A team of international artists was led by VFX supervisor, Santiago Menghini, and they constantly needed to adapt to problems raised by making a film on a tight budget. “A good example is an arm texture effect that we created where one of the characters needed to have the tattoo-like pattern on his skin light up during the main fight sequence,” Santiago explains. “Originally, the arm effect was supposed to be entirely practical, done through a cast with prosthetics and makeup. Then, because of budgeting…

ARTIST PROFILE Julian SantiagoJulian is a freelance3D artist. He hasworked on TVcommercials, visualeffects, and visualsfor special events.bit.ly/209-santiago Back in 2015 I entered the Trojan Horse was a Unicorn Golden Ticket Challenge and won third place. One of the prizes was a one-year V-Ray licence. I had heard of a Blender implementation of V-Ray and thought that this would be a great opportunity to test it. I decided to learn V-Ray for Blender using my usual method: to dive in head first and create a project with it. The end result is the image you see here, as well as a short animation. V-Ray for Blender is interesting to me because it is a productiontested, primarily biased renderer. While it is capable of creating realistic images on par with its unbiased…

FOLLOW THE VIDEO If you see the Play icon, use the link ARTIST PROFILEVaromixVaromix has beenworking in the CGindustry since 1998,first in 3ds Maxand Cinema 4Dbefore moving toMaya. Houdini isnow his main tool,which he uses inhis role as a VFXsupervisor andDOP assistant.www.varomix.net TOPICS COVERED Using referencesSimulationRenderingColour correctionCompositing Creating visual effects for feature films and advertising is always a challenge. Aside from the difficulty and technical ability required to create the actual CG effect in Houdini, you are creating something that is someone else’s vision, and that is far more challenging. That said, you have to be able to have control over the simulated effect so that it does what you want. Supervisors and directors will never accept something that’s different from the project’s vision, simply because a piece of software…

MAIN FEATURES Integrated FX plug-in for Cinema 4D Full FLIP liquid simulation Gas and smoke simulator Full 3D meshing Indie version for freelancers and hobbyists INTEGRATED FX PLUG-IN FOR CINEMA 4D Effex grew from the plug-in DPIT, and is a full featured FX solutioncreated by the small team at Navié, in Germany. It has long beenknown as one the premiere FX solutions for Cinema 4D. While Effex does offer a complete FX solution, it does take a lot of effort to get it to work AUTHOR PROFILE Mike GriggsPolishing pixels since1995, Mike is a UKbased freelance 3D, VFXand mograph artist,as well as a freelancetechnical writer. creativebloke.com Effects simulations arebecoming an increasingmainstay of 3D work. Withthe latest release of Effex, Navié hasprovided a full-featured simulationpackage which combines a range ofsimulation solutions…

PRO ADVICE Turn to page 39 to read how our cover artist created his mech designs for Kill Command. ON THE COVER Fausto De Martini is one of the world’s leading concept artists for film production, specialising in designing and modelling realistic robots and mechs. The robot on this issue’s cover was modelled by Fausto for the indie sci-fimovie Kill Command, and you can read his interview and advice starting on page 39 in our massive Start Your Career in Filmmaking article.…

The big issue The use of GoPro set the tone for Hardcore Henry but it was difficult for the team to work with I see it as a groundbreaking piece that I’m very proud to have supervised Dan Cayer, VFX supervisor, Zero VFX The one-shot, low-budget, 90-minute action movie filmed on a GoPro, Hardcore Henry is pushing back on the expectations of independent filmmaking. “It’s always great to work on something unique. Especially something like this: an independent film that no one sees coming,“ says Don Libby, CG supervisor at Zero VFX, who worked on digital stitching and CG effects for the film’s stunts. “I see it as a groundbreaking piece that I’m very proud to have supervised and been a part of for Zero,” agrees Zero’s VFX supervisor Dan…

Not since Avatar have we been thrust into the kind of densely populated CG world seen in Disney’s The Jungle Book. Every modern technology was harnessed to bring the story of Mowgli to the screen, including virtual cameras, simulations and digital characters. More than 800 CG artists worked for over a year animating over 54 species of animal (224 unique animals), crafting full CG environments, and simulating earth, fire and water to bring the dense Jungle to life… on a backlot in LA. MPC’s Bangalore studio took over 100,000 photographs of real locations in the Indian jungle to create a massive reference library. A complex previz process ensured all the environments related to the story. MPC’s head of CG Elliot Newman says, “Our job was to turn these conceptual worlds…

EXPERT TIP Using displaced geo I prefer to use displaced geo rather than strong bump for SSS effects. Real geometry will always produce more accurate results. You can use custom texture maps for virtually any input channel the shader nodes offer Daniel replies I’ll be using the Cinema 4D to Arnold workflow for this example. Start with your basic preparations: Import your geometry with UVs and adjust the dimensions to realistic scale so the SubSurfaceScattering calculation can work properly. Either use Subdivisions and Displacement maps for the detailing or render the high-res object directly. Arnold handles both scenarios just fine. Create an Arnold Shader Network and add an alSurface shader as well as your texture files via drag and drop onto the Node graph. Create a lighting setup and render…

HOW TO GET STARTED “Very often you’ll hear people say “just go and make one,” which I never found very helpful. So my advice is write a script or pal up with someone who can. My film got made because I wrote the script. If I had just put myself forward as a director I guarantee nothing would have happened. If you have a script you can show to people, they might back you. If that doesn’t work you can use your VFX knowledge to try and make it yourself. Either way it’s a start and it’s also the cheapest part of the filmmaking process.” Steve Gomez, Kill Command What was it that inspired the main robot design? When Steve contacted me he mentioned that his intention was to be…

FREE DOWNLOAD! Get your video course:www.creativebloq.com/vault/tdw209 About the artist: Delano Athias Delano is a keen animation tutor, who started his career at animation studios like Shilo (www.shilo.tv). His animation and rigging background help him create and teach some of the most-watched training at Pluralsight. www.bit.ly/209-Delano This issue, we’ve joined forces with Pluralsight (formerly known as Digital-Tutors) to offer you a comprehensive four-hour video training course that you can download from our Vault for free. In this Retargeting Mocap to Custom Rigsin Cinema 4D course, artist Delano Athiaswill demonstrate a straightforward approachto transferring a motion-captured performanceto a custom rig. You’ll start by getting your source data readyfor retargeting. Then you’ll go on to learn aboutthe few modifications you’ll need to make to yourcustom rig to get it to work. After this,…

The latest version improves efficiency...the Smart Paint Tool is a seriously useful bit of kit MAIN FEATURES A new raytracing renderer Enhanced RotoPaint node Extended GPU support WHY IS NUKE SO WIDELY USED? Being node based, Nuke enables you to have a non-destructiveworkflow, so you never have to alter the original image. It’s also 32-bitlinear, so you have greater flexibility in the quality of your work. The Foundry has released its latest revision of its much-anticipated, professional compositing software Nuke. With it come some improvements, as well as some new tools to get us to our final image quicker. For this review, I looked at Nuke and NukeX. The first update is one thatcompositors who have been usingNuke for a while have been waitingfor; being able to have more than70-odd…

FOLLOW THE VIDEO www.creativebloq.com/vault/3dw209 MATTHEW GRATZNER Co-founder of New Deal Studios, Matthew and New Deal’s VFX credits include Iron Man, The Avengers and The Dark Knight. bit.ly/new-deal-studios It would seem that all software in 2016 needs a set of VR tools, which led The Foundry to work with key studios to develop its Nuke plug-in Cara VR, such as New Deal Studios who created a unique music video for indie rock band Galvanized Souls. However, a 360˚ VR video raised some technical and creative issues. “Initially, I was told that you can’t cut, it has to be first person and you can’t move the camera – I had no idea how to tell a story and a narrative without doing those things,” says Matthew Gratzner, director and co-founder of New…

EXPERT TIP Diagnose your scene To help diagnose a scene and see if it is exceeding things such as the texture cache limit, go to the Diagnostics tab and under the Verbosity drop down, set it to Warning + info, this will give you more information in your render log to help diagnose any errors/warnings occurring in your scenes. We also convert all textures in the scene to.tx files. This can speed up the translation of the scene Mike replies I use Arnold at The Mill, and would like to answer this question by explaining to you how I used this software for the Audi project where we dealt with a fully CG environment in which the surfaces were both reflective and diffuse. Once we had done the initial look…

EXPERT TIP Set your lights Make sure you set up your lighting in scene carefully and ensure you have a back light set correctly, or the skin won’t look realistic. Tituoan replies To interpret the skin, a subsurface scattering shader is generally composed of three levels; I prefer to think of them as layers: Epidermal scatter, subdermal scatter and back scatter. To understand their roles and the importance of each of these layers, it’s essential to know what they do and how the lighting impacts and interacts with the shader. The epidermal scatter is simply the first layer and will represent the epidermis, the first thing you can see on the skin. That’s where you can put your colour map. The subdermal scatter is the second layer and will represent…

EVENT ON THE HORIZON? Hasraf finds people to work with at festivals and trade shows, and social media has become a must for finding like-minded people, often willing to work pro bono and help on the project. “The tools I use are things like Google Docs/Drive to ensure everyone is accessing the same information in terms of shoot details, schedule and so forth.” Hasraf Dulull, The Void 1. BE NICE The first advice I tell everyone is to be nice to your crew; don’t go all Christian Bale on them, because remember, they are here to help you make the film. The other advice I would give is to always come prepped but also be open for suggestion. 2. STAY CALM Do not engage in a debate about shot creative…

DAN DELEEUW Dan is an Oscarnominated VFX supervisor. His credits include Iron Man 3 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. imdb.to/1YToXK5 Marvel Studios’ VFX supervisor Dan DeLeeuw and filmmaker siblings Anthony and Joe Russo, who have re-teamed for Captain America: Civil War, have forged a formidable creative partnership. Dan was in charge of delivering the movie’s 3,000 CG shots, recruiting the creative talents of ILM, Double Negative, Method Studios, RISE Visual Effects Studios, Trixter, Luma Pictures, Cinesite, Lola VFX, Cantina Creative, Animal Logic and The Third Floor to bring the comic book epic to the screen. And they all needed to be on the same page… “The last show [Captain America: Winter Soldier] was great in the way the Russo Brothers’ mantra was that everything needed to be grounded in…

ARTIST PROFILE Manuel GradManuel is a 3Dgeneralist working inMunich, Germany. Hewants to specialisein environment andmatte painting.www.manuelgrad.at Creating an apocalyptic sci-ficity scene in 3D is something many artists might shy away from doing because of the vast complexity of the subject, models and textures needed. But with smart ways to tackle it, it is very much doable. There are many different pathsyou can choose to achieve thefinal visualised image you havein mind. In this tutorial, I‘ll shedsome light on the process I usedto make this night-time scene.I try not to limit myself too muchwith a strict and predeterminedworkflow, or the software I use.My workflow may differ minimallyto vastly depending on theproject I’m working on. Softwarepackages are just different toolsthat help you to get things done. Most of my projects start witha…