Table of contents for April 2017 in 3D World

If you want to work in games, then you may need to learn how VR development is affecting modelling. On page 16, Epic Games’ art team share what they’ve learned creating Robo Recall. There’s more game art advice too, with a free Pluralsight video course to learn the core skills for environment modelling. ian.dean@futurenet.com SUBSCRIBE FROM £11.25! Get print and digital editions every month, turn to page 30…

ROBO RECALL DEVELOPER Epic Games TEAM SIZE 15 TIME TAKEN 12 months SOFTWARE Unreal Engine 4.14 RELEASE DATE Out now WEB www.epicgames.com/ roborecall Increasingly we are being told that virtual reality is a growing sector, where CG artists can find new work, and explore new and creative ways to push modelling and animation. Video games and VR is one area you’ll want to explore. Epic Games is at the forefront of promoting VR as a viable environment for CG artists. The latest game developed by Epic to promote new tools in Unreal Engine is Robo Recall, a spiritual successor to the company’s VR demo game Bullet Train. VIRTUAL GAMING Robo Recall has been developed by a team of 15 artists and programmers in one year in order to illustrate what…

We knew that the setting in which Treeface mostly lived was characterised by plenty of deformed and mutated vegetation and we wanted him to fit into this setting perfectly. Treeface is also a magical creature who use magic to heal himself and the other demons. During fights he would rather take cover and stay behind and support other monsters. However, he still needed to look scary. After several iterations, the final concept was done.…

AUTHOR Dmitry is a video game and VFX character artist who is working in LA with Insomniac Games on SpiderMan. Other projects he’s worked on include Halo 5 and Evolve. www.artstation.com/artist/ neverwintered Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is packed full of really cool characters so I was spolit for choice when I wanted to create a character from the movie to hone my skills. Eventually, I chose to create a model of Baze Malbus (played by Wen Jiang), as I wanted to tackle sculpting in ZBrush, as well as develop in some technically challenging areas, such as hair grooming and character sculpting. This tutorial will mainly focus on hair, but I will cover other fundamental areas of the sculpting process, such as head and organic sculpting and armour or…

Rob Redman replies This is a question with a few answers. There are many times when you might want to mix materials on one mesh, but first let’s define what we mean. We’re not talking about different parts of a model having different materials, but rather different parts of the same geometry having separate materials. This could be a chessboard where the white squares are made from ivory and the black are made of ebony. It’s easy to create two materials and apply them to polygons, but in many cases that won’t work. So is there a way in which you can apply one material to the whole mesh and have that material represent two surfaces? The obvious solution would be to UV unwrap the geometry and paint the textures…

Francis-Xavier Martins replies I’ll be using my completed model from Issue 218 of 3D World to explain this. There are a multitude of ways to create hair in Maya; exported FiberMesh curves applied to a particle system (which I covered in issue 201), Yeti, even XGen. Each method has its merits but I want to talk about Ornatrix and explain how I used it to create the hair for my model. Ornatrix was exclusive for Max users but Ephere released a Maya version a few months ago, and I decided to give this trial a go. I wanted a geisha-like haircut and I had already modelled the shape, so I split it into strips using the Detach tool. When you install Ornatrix, you get a dedicated shelf with all the…

PRICE £60 (Annually)|COMPANY SiNi Software|WEBSITE www.sinisoftware.com AUTHOR PROFILE Paul leads a UK-based studio of visualisers. He delivers a whole host of projects including video and interactive environments. www.cadesignservices.co.uk/services/3d-studio FEATURES Fast mesh building on render time External/scene file saving Asset protection with date lock Colour and texture variation Viewport display optimisation Software such as 3ds Max has made some incredible leaps forward in recent years, and one of those advances has most definitely been in the area of handling large scenes. If you’ve ever worked on even a reasonably large scene, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. Models that I created a few years back which ground 3ds Max 2013 to a halt can now be handled with optimum ease in version 2017. During these challenges of model size, we…

Pawel Libiszewski Pawel is art director at video game developer Flying Wild Hog. On page 24, he shares his process for character design and modelling. www.plwell.artstation.com Josh Lynch Josh is an environment artist at video game studio Infinity Ward. On page 32, he shares his techniques to create realistic albedo brick textures. www.josh-lynch.com Matt Thorup Matt has eight years’ experience as a 3D character artist and has worked at many studios, including Disney. Read his hard surface tutorial on page 38. www.gumroad.com/redbeard Eric Cunha Eric is the CG director at Aardman Nathan Love and an instructor at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. This issue, he shares his process for recreating Stranger Things’ Eleven on page 56. www.ericcunha.com Joseph Herman Joseph is an animator, filmmaker and VFX artist from…

AUTHOR Kevin is a character artist in the video game industry, working at Riot Games in Los Angeles. He has been in the industry for six years and loves using ZBrush for character modelling. www.kjones.artstation.com The reason I made this character is because Paladins are cool, inspirational and a very common archetype found in games these days. The Paladin archetype is seen in Warcraft, Warhammer, Dungeons & Dragons, Final Fantasy, Diablo, Fire Emblem, EverQuest, Guild Wars, Lineage… the list goes on. But video games aren’t the only medium where the Paladin is showcased. You’ll see him in different sorts of media from anime to fairytales and from movies to comic books. Who doesn’t love the heroic dogooder? Even if playing as the Paladin doesn’t suit your gaming style, you probably…

AUTHOR Eric is the CG director at Aardman Nathan Love and an instructor at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. He’s well versed in the entire CG pipeline, with a focus on look development. www.ericcunha.com After a few days of binging on Stranger Things on Netflix, I was feeling inspired by the world and characters in the show. I sat down to sketch in ZBrush and, like many of my personal projects, the rest evolved pretty organically. A quick sketch turned into a few nights of fine-tuning fibres on a jacket and modelling dust particles I’m a sucker for high-quality CG renders, and I really wanted to push my work into that elusive realm of tangibility, where you feel like you can reach into the image and touch the…

Rafael Duffie Rafael is a designer, digital sculptor and a CG generalist with over 15 years’ experience. He specialises in design and modelling. www.rafaelduffie.com Rob Redman Rob is a 3D artist and creative director working across TV, film and print. He also presents at events such as Siggraph and FMX. www.pariahstudios.com Paul Hatton Paul leads a studio of visualisers based in the UK. He delivers a host of projects, including video and interactive environments. www.cadesignservices.co.uk Kevin Kleyla Kevin has worked within the arch-viz world for the past 16 years. He currently works as a 3D designer for NA Collective in New York. www.akueous.com Francis-Xavier Martins Francis-Xavier is a character artist and CG generalist based in Brighton, with over a decade’s experience in video games, media and TV. www.polyjunky.com GET IN…

We’ve had a number of fantastic beasts and creatures grace our screens in recent years, but few compare to the stunning tree-like giant of A Monster Calls. Like a gigantic Groot, MPC’s monster (voiced by Liam Neeson) is built from entwined wood and foliage, but the scale of the character put extra pressure on the animation and VFX team. Led by MPC Montreal VFX supervisor, Ferran Domenech, the vendor provided 180 shots for the film, including emotional scenes with the monster as well as set extensions, to bring to life director Juan Antonio Bayona’s vision during the transformation sequence and the many close up shots of the monster. “It was definitely a challenge,” states MPC’s lead rigging TD, David Gower. “The face rig was made up of hundreds of individual…

Ben Grossmann, Magnopus CEO and visual effects Oscar winner for Hugo says: “I’m fortunate to have been honoured by the Academy for work we created with V-Ray, and I’m glad to see Vlado and his team get the recognition they deserve for their contributions. Many of us owe them a lot for their support of cinema over the years.” Raytracing has been a key part of ScanlineVFX’s pipeline since the studio’s work on 300 ten years ago. Stephan Trojansky, ScanlineVFX’s VFX supervisor and Sci-Tech Oscar winner for Flowline, says: “We’ve depended on V-Ray to deliver thousands of shots on over 50 feature films since that time. We couldn’t be happier for Vlado and his team.” Eric Barba, VFX Oscarwinning VFX supervisor, used V-Ray on Disney’s Tron sequel. “On Tron: Legacy,…

PRICE $199 (Artist) to $1,995 (Producer) | COMPANY E-on Software | WEBSITE www.e-onsoftware.com AUTHOR PROFILE Cirstyn is a freelance CG artist and educator, with over 15 years’ experience in 3D. Her clients range from AMD to Exalt3D and Future. She is currently collaborating with AMD as technical artist for Radeon ProRender for 3ds Max. www.twitter.com/cirstyn FEATURES New growth node LoDs Preset variations Quads Editor optimisations E-on Software’s latest update to its procedural plant generator, PlantFactory 2016 provides both hero and animated plant functionality. Still only three releases old, it nicely fills the standalone gap between hero plant modeller The Grove and film- and gaming-oriented SpeedTree. Like the other generators, PlantFactory’s graph and nodebased approach makes it a powerful and versatile addition to your vegetation toolbox, and it will generate gorgeouslooking…

SLUG RACE ARTIST Fabricio Moraes and Guilherme Formenti SOFTWARE ZBrush, 3ds Max, PhotoScan, V-Ray, Nuke It may be a whimsical scene, but Slug Race is closely based in reality. Brazilian Fabricio Moraes and his collaborator Guilherme Formenti used Agisoft PhotoScan to generate 3D spatial data from digital photos. As co-founder of CG studio Gingerpic in Rio de Janeiro, Fabricio is a veteran 3D artist, but he says he had never used PhotoScan before. “Photogrammetry was a technique that I had always wanted to try. So I scanned a lot of trees, rocks and ground to get a more realistic approach,” he says. The pair used 3ds Max and ZBrush for modelling and lighting, V-Ray for rendering and Nuke for compositing. Fabricio says the most enjoyable part of this personal project…

Follow The video If you see the Play icon, use the link Author Matt has eight years’ experience as a 3D character artist. He’s worked for a number of different studios, including Disney, and is currently working at Chair Entertainment in Salt Lake City. www.gumroad.com/redbeard ZBrush has several features to specifically designed for hard surface or mechanical sculpting. In this tutorial, I’ll be going over a variety of ways to do hard surface modelling in ZBrush. I will discuss how to implement hard surface into character design in order to improve your model and give depth and appeal to your characters. I’ve studied both 2D and 3D character design principles for many years, and sometimes these ideals are forgotten when working in hard surface. Therefore, I thought the best way…

AUTHOR Tom works at the feature film company Luma Pictures in Melbourne, Australia. His work as an asset artist means he models, sculpts, textures and look develops assets for films. gumroad.com/tomnewbury Over the course of this tutorial, I will be explaining my texturing process when trying to achieve realistic skin for characters. This is the same process that I would use in production on a feature film. A big part of this process is using the textural resources from the website, www.texturing.xyz. This website provides both high-quality diffuse and displacement maps, which are perfect for the creation of realistic skin. When it comes to texturing realistic assets, I find it’s very important to use textures as close as possible to the real thing. This is why I use texturing.xyz, the…

Rafael Duffie replies For this tutorial I will be going over my process for concept sculpting in ZBrush, refining the lighting, and then finally compositing it all together in Photoshop. I normally tend to begin by warming up for 10-15 minutes, just to get my creative juices flowing, before I begin the real work. This helps me a lot when I’m trying to come up with fresh ideas and I also think it helps to get the bad ideas out of my system. In the end, I decided to create a creature. I’ve always found it’s a good idea to try and build a narrative for your characters while you’re thinking of the idea, in order to give it a backstory. My backstory is quite simple: this human-like creature killed…

Sometimes doing something for the pure passion of it can reap rewards. That’s just what the artists at VFX and advertising studio Ars Thanea have discovered – first with their project The Ash and now with new piece MOM?!, which depicts a giant, psychedelic spider lab experiment spying its potential parent. “When you realise that your only limit is your own imagination, you start acting,” says lead digital art director Marcin Kowalski. “The idea for MOM?! was born because we felt the need to experiment with colour, organic matter, different materials, technologies and techniques. We like to challenge ourselves with some difficult tasks and bring them to life while exploring different techniques. That gives us countless opportunities to analyse, study and discover more unconventional ways of working.” WHY LIMIT OURSELVES…

AUTHOR PROFILE James has been writing about technology for two decades, focusing on content creation hardware and software. He was also editor of PC Pro magazine for five years. webmediology.com VR NEEDS THE FUTURE OF GPUS Because VR is stereoscopic, it requires the same scene to be rendered twice from slightly different perspectives – once for each eye. So it requires twice the 3D power to produce, meaning faster professional graphics will be a necessity. For the last year or so, virtually every professional graphics card we have seen in a workstation has been from Nvidia. One of the main reasons for this is that AMD’s FirePro range hadn’t seen an update since 2014, whereas Nvidia has released a couple of new iterations over the same period. At long last,…