Table of contents for July 2015 in 3D World

40 years. That’s how long ILM has been making the unimaginable, imaginable. So when we were invited to The Ranch this issue to look behind the curtain and celebrate the studio’s incredible life, we couldn’t refuse. On page 42 you’ll hear from the ILM veterans behind Star Wars, Indiana Jones and more. Plus, on page 48, we take a closer look at ILM’s recent work on Avengers: Age of Ultron. Our tutorial artists catch the ILM bug too, and let their imaginations run riot as Rubén Álvarez explains how to model an epic sci-fiworld in Modo (page 54), Ant Ward taps into Tim Burton for his Maya 2016 tutorial (page 72) and Simon Edwards shows how to create a stormy scene in 3ds Max (page 62). SUBSCRIBE & SAVE UP…

Björk’s Black Lake multimedia experience debuted at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in March this year, and was created with the aid of Autodesk’s software. The experience, which is a mixture of videos, music and sculptures, features panoramic visuals created by VFX studios Wolf & Crow and xRez Studio. Wolf & Crow completed post production while its artists were also developing looks for the CG portion of the video, from recreation of environments, to stitching scenes together. Flame 2015 was used to edit, linking to footage straight from camera cards at a lower resolution/debayer. After making the required changes, the footage was upgraded to full resolution using the new.Format Options.feature in the Flame timeline. The software made it easier for Wolf & Crow to work with and play…

GET PUBLISHED Email your short to ian.dean@futurenet.com Lucas Martell Lucas worked as writer, director and producter on OceanMaker and has developed several feature animation projects, notably Pigeon Impossible. He currently runs Mighty Coconut, a full-service animation studio in Austin, Texas. www.mightycoconut.com VITAL STATISTICS TEAM Writer and director Lucas Martell Composer Chris Reyman Head of story Michael Cawood Other contributors Tad Catalano, Tray Duncan, Christina Martell, Henning Koczy, Kat Nowlin, George Renner, Dannis Valk, Trevor Harris, Ryan Saper, Billy Lord, Kurt Lawson, Martin Coven, Amanda Bone, Kirby Meador, Brandon Thomas, Aman Johnson, Shelly Eager, Eric Watkins, Shane Davis COUNTRY US SOFTWARE Softimage, Maya, 3ds Max, mental ray, After Effects PRODUCTION TIME One and a half years Lucas Martell’s new short is an ambitious project that tells the story of a courageous…

This year, Industrial Light & Magic celebrates its 40th anniversary. The powerhouse visual effects studio began with a handful of people hired by George Lucas to create visual effects for the first Star Wars, which was released in 1977. Today, ILM is a thriving global studio with 1,200 people in San Francisco, Singapore, Vancouver and London. Many of those artists are creating the seventh Star Wars film, scheduled for release by Lucasfilm/Disney in December. Directed by JJ Abrams and with VFX supervised by Roger Guyett, Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens is destined to score a box office bonanza. But the studio has much more to its credit than Star Wars. Films with effects created at ILM have won 16 Oscars, and received 33 Oscar nominations for best VFX.…

AUTHOR PROFILE Barbara Robertson Barbara is an awardwinning freelance writer based near San Francisco. Many of her articles can be found on her site. www.barbararobertson. contently.com WATCH THE TRAILERS Catch up with how Hulk and Ultron look on screen www.bit.ly/196-av-1 www.bit.ly/196-av-2 www.bit.ly/196-av-3 Marvel Studios’ cinematic thrill ride continues with its latest action-packed offering, Avengers: Age of Ultron. The action is simply enormous, with each scene delivering new visual treats; building on the visual effects of the 2012 blockbuster. Joss Whedon returned to write and direct the follow-up as did the ensemble cast of actors playing the superhero Avengers. New to this film is James Spader who voices the sentient, troubled and villainous robot Ultron. Also returning was visual effects supervisor Chris Townsend, who managed over 10 studios for the last…

Ultron appears in his first incarnation in a party scene created by Trixter. But the next time we see him, he’s become something else, the villain played by James Spader, who drives the action. Towards the end of the film, Ultron armours himself with vibranium, and antigravity from Leviatian and with that, he lifts a city in order to capture hostages. The ILM-created shot – filmed in Italy’s Aosta Valley – shows Ultron raising a city, that was largely replaced with CG buildings. “Our generalist team [digital matte painting team] made a completely CG version of a fictional city based on scans and footage we shot,” explains ILM visual effects supervisor Ben Snow. “For the buildings we see close, we have interior structures, even furniture. There was so much to…

ARTIST PROFILE Simon Edwards Simon works freelance at 3DArtvision. He’s been an architectural visualiser for 18 years in Holland and the UK. 3dartvision.co.uk TOPICS COVERED Ocean wave simulation Environment and mood Post-production Henry Winstanley’s quirky lighthouse was built in 1698 on Eddystone Rocks, off the coast of Devon. Only five years later it was swept away during a violent storm, on the night of 27 November 1703. The deadly storm took the lighthouse, Henry Winstanley himself and five other men along with it. Henry Winstanley was an entrepreneur and a showman. He had a fascination with whimsical gadgets and a keen interest in architecture. However, as is apparent from his lighthouse, he was no engineer. This short-lived and tragically quirky lighthouse provided me with some fascinating and inspirational material to…

Full digital sculpting The ability to sculpt in Maya is nothing new, and for a long time now users have been able to deform models either by the built in Artisan brushes or through third party plug-ins. However, the problem is this is all you felt you could do – deform them – and it was never a full sculpting solution. Paying for both Maya and Mudbox was an expensive proposition. Now, rather than spend time enhancing the Artisan brushes, Autodesk has made clever use of its primary sculpting engine Mudbox, bringing its fundamental tools into Maya itself. This has greatly enhanced Maya making it a more rounded application, meaning its users have more flexibility when approaching a project. That said, the tools are basic at present and there are…

ADOBE RAMPS UP 3D PRINTING SUPPORT Adobe has continued to show its commitment to 3D printing by unveiling three new Photoshop CC technologies. The first new addition is 3D Mesh Simplification, a slider-based system that will let artists reduce the number of polygons used to produce a model. The tool should allow artists to move between high-res digital models and comparatively low-res printed representations more easily. On the 3D scanning side, artists can now control sampled colours with more precision. Many scanners capture colour data as vertex colour, which isn’t editable. That’s now a thing of the past thanks to vertex colour to texture conversion. Finally, Photoshop CC will now let artists make texture bump maps from photographs and heights and depths of embossment are fully customisable. MATTEL IS READY…

Price £3,639 plus VAT | company Fujitsu | website www.fujitsu.com AUTHOR PROFILE James Morris James has been writing about technology for two decades, focusing on content creation hardware and software. He was the editor of PC Pro magazine for five years. www.tzero.co.uk Fujitsu has been calling its workstations CELSIUS for a while, although the company probably isn't implying that they run at high temperatures. In fact, the M740 doesn't appear to be breaking a sweat even when it’s under heavy load – well at least where noise is concerned. However, the M740 still packs a healthy collection of powerful components. The CELSIUS range was upgraded to the Intel Haswell generation of Xeons towards the end of 2014, and our M740 sample comes with an Intel Xeon E5-1650 v3. The M740…

PRICE £675 plus VAT | COMPANY BenQ | WEBSITE www.benq.com AUTHOR PROFILE James Morris James Morris has been writing about technology for two decades, focusing on content creation hardware and software. He was the editor of PC Pro magazine for five years. www.tzero.co.uk When you can pick up a 24-inch monitor for under £100 these days, one close to £700 might seem like a waste of money. But with a cheap TFT you can never be sure what you’re looking at is a problem with your design or just an aberration of the display you’re using. So this is what BenQ offers with its PG2401PT: a screen so accurate you can use it to proof printed materials. The PG2401PT is the first member of BenQ’s new professional graphics (PG) range,…

PRICE £340+VAT (locked) £440+VAT (floating) £150+VAT (upgrade) | COMPANY Insydium Ltd | WEBSITE www.3.x-particles.com MAIN FEATURES The FLIP solver allows fluid sims to be set up with just three clicks of the mouse The FLIP solver also enables gas and fire to be simulated The new Elektrix and Spline Mesher objects allow the lightning to shoot between two objects Particle collisions are greatly improved with the new dynamics system Caching is faster and handles huge particle counts with ease X-Particles has become the standard for particle sims for Cinema 4D. So with the release of version 3, what new tricks have been brought to the particle playground? The MoGraph module has always been one of the main reasons artists use Cinema 4D. It is intuitive and powerful at the same…

VIDEO+KITBASH MODELS+ART MODEL A SCI-FIWORLD Download Rubén Álvarez’s models and video to follow his Modo and SketchUp tutorial VIDEO+MODELS PORTRAIT Get the video and files for Maya 2016 HI-RES ART 3DS MAX WAVES Get the hi-res art to follow the tutorial CUSTOM BRUSH VUE 2015 Örs Bárczy’s custom brush for the new Vue 3D PRINT MODEL GLASSES Print your own 3D cinema glasses 8GB 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 this into your browser’s address bar: www.creativebloq.com/vault/3dw196 2. FIND THE FILES YOU WANT Search the list of free resources to find the video and files you want. 3. DOWNLOAD WHAT YOU NEED Click the Download buttons and your files will save to…

Jurassic World is undoubtedly one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the year and for Corey Rosen, VP of creative marketing at Tippett Studio, it’s been an exciting time for the company as they’ve helped to reboot the creative DNA of the dino-series. Established by legendary animator and visual effects artist Phil Tippett back in 1984, Oakland-based Tippett Studio stands at the leading edge of the visual effects industry. Corey, who is himself a longstanding veteran of visual effects production work since the early 1990s, says the series set new standards: “Jurassic Park was a game-changer, not just for visual effects and Tippett Studios but for the entertainment industry. It changed the perception of audiences about the limits of realism that we can put on the screen.” Of the…

“42 and 43 were rectilinear,” says Bruce Holcomb, ILM’s digital models supervisor. “The 45 is a curvature-esque, snug suit. We tried to think of cool new weapons we could have. I designed a photonic blasting thing that turns off the Subultrons, but, he just uses the lasers.” The Hulk Buster, created in case the Hulk hulks out, is like a Russian doll made of iron: Tony Stark fits inside the Iron Man 43, which fits inside the Hulk Buster suit. “Iron Man motion is second nature,” says ILM animation supervisor Marc Chu. “But the Hulk Buster needed to feel more weighty, more robotic.” Modellers used Maya, ZBrush, ILM’s Zeno and, ’you name it,’ Bruce says. “It’s your basic giant robot construct. Joss [Whedon] wanted a big guy fighting a big…

FOLLOW THE VIDEO If you see the Play icon, click the link! ARTIST PROFILE Rubén Álvarez Rubén is a concept artist who has worked for Gameloft and Sidhe Interactive developing console games for publishers such as Activision. bit.ly/196-ruben TOPICS COVERED Concepting Modelling Materials Composition Welcome to this sci-fienvironment tutorial, where I would like to share with you my workflow for creating an epic alien environment. I will be drawing on classic science fiction illustrations and ideas in order to create a new and fresh world. I will guide you through all of the steps, from the initial sketching stage where I gather references, through to the final polished illustration. To create this sci-fiscene I will share with you some of the most common tools, tips and techniques that I usually…

Rendering changes in Maya 2016 If you’re a long time Maya user preparing to start your first batch render in Maya 2016 you may be scratching your head and wondering where the Render Passes tab has gone. Traditionally it has always lived in the Render Settings window but in Maya 2016 the workflow has changed. Don’t despair, the new approach isn’t complicated and in some respects the process has been simplified. Rather than creating new render passes in the traditional way all you have to do now is right-click on the current render layer in the Channel Box and go to Add New Render Pass. It’s here that you can associate various passes with a specific render layer. In practice this feels a quicker and more natural way to add…

DANNY CHOO Born in the UK, Danny now lives in Tokyo and is the creator of Culture Japan which creates TV Shows, character content and the fashion doll robot. www.dannychoo.com Japan-based designer Danny Choo has created a four-foot tall robot using a 3D printer that he says will become an essential ‘home appliance.’ The Smart Doll Plus robot is an evolution of the designer’s original Mirai Suenaga robot (or Smart Doll), the mascot for Culture Japan that stood 60cm tall. The Mirai Suenaga robot was also 3D printed and was controllable from a smart phone, but the new model is capable of walking and picking up objects using its AI. “The future of home appliances,” is how Danny describes his new robot. As well as being able to walk and,…

PRICE Starting from $99 / £67 | COMPANY Reallusion | WEBSITE www.reallusion.com MAIN FEATURES Render options include Indigo RT Physics tools Intuitive animation tools Extensive asset library Although there are huge benefits to real time workflows you still need to fit into a given pipeline to make the most of the opportunities the advances can offer, which is something Reallusion has taken note of with iClone 6. iClone is a hard application to pigeonhole. It makes for easy animation and scene layout, with a number of options for material, lighting and cameras, but none of the tools to create assets. This is a mixed blessing for studios; a production team can quickly and easily build previz animatics, with little need for specialist skills, however there’s still a need for a…

DENNIS MUREN: 40 YEARS AT ILM Senior visual effects supervisor Dennis joined ILM in 1976 and worked on Star Wars in 1977. As VFX supervisor for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, the first film with more than 1,000 VFX shots, he propelled digital VFX into the realm of the super VFX blockbuster. Dennis now consults for ILM. “I’m working on upcoming technologies and the aesthetics we want to bring into new shows,” he says. “I kinda miss having my head the entire way into doing a show, but it’s better for me to pass on what I know and step back.” SCOTT FARRAR: 34 YEARS AT ILM Senior visual effects supervisor Scott joined ILM in 1981 as an effects cameraman and photographed the famous Genesis sequence in Star Trek: The…

“For the finale, we shot the sequence at high speed because at some point the characters would go into slow motion,” says ILM visual effects supervisor Ben Snow. “We had stunt people on wires. We added the CG Subultrons, Iron Man, Hulk, a fully CG Vision, and did face replacements. It’s a 360-degree shot so we could see the witness camera and lights in the footage, which we removed. We did set extensions, explosions, and tracers from the Subultrons. Lots of destruction. We broke the Subultrons into small pieces so they could break apart. I told the crew I wanted this to be an orgy of bloodlust in terms of robotic destruction and they said, ‘Yeah, I get that.’ It’s a cool moment. You see all the Avengers working together…

FOLLOW THE VIDEO If you see the Play icon, click the link! ARTIST PROFILE Antony Ward Antony Ward has been provoking pixels since the early 1990s. In that time he has worked for some of today’s top studios and written three technical manuals. www.antcgi.com For a long time now I’ve had an itch. This lingering feeling at the back of my mind to do something different; to work on the type of illustration I have wanted to create for some considerable time. I’ve always loved the distinctive styles of Escher, Salvador Dali and Tim Burton. These twisted works have struck a chord with me since I was young, but the dilemma has always been whether I should take a risk, open this door in my imagination and appease my inner…

GET PUBLISHED EMAIL YOUR CG ART to ian.dean@futurenet.com Visit the online Vault to download extra process art for these projects: www.creativebloq.com/vault/3dw196 Film titles don’t get much bigger than Gladiator, Star Wars, Kingdom of Heaven, Thor, Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy – hell, let’s just say the whole Marvel movie universe, including the latest Avengers: Age of Ultron – and all of the above made it to the screen thanks to the designers at UK SFX workshop FBFX. The film specialist owes much of its recent success to 3D printing, as co-founder Grant Pearmain explains. “Over recent years I’ve helped oversee FBFX’s transition from a traditional effects and props workshop into the sector’s leading user of digital 3D, incorporating design, scanning, 3D printing and CNC robotic milling," says Grant. “Drawings…

Price $1,695 (full-licence) $680 (upgrade from Vue 2014) | company e-on software | website www.e-onsoftware.com AUTHOR PROFILE Örs Bárczy Örs has studied 3D art and animation for four years, the past two as part of the BA Animation course at Budapest’s BKF University of Applied Sciences. He’s currently working on his graduation film. www.barczyors.hu V ue xStream is a powerful and extremely useful tool for 3D artists all around the world. It focuses on environment visualisation, which is always challenging in computer graphics. The guys at e-on software can always develop the toolset and increase the number of creative opportunities when we cannot imagine anything further. This time e-on has significantly developed Vue xStream. There are a lot of general feature improvements, like faster rendering, as well as thousands of…