Table of contents for November 2017 in 3D World

Recent notable work has included Ghost in the Shell, The Martian, and Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation. Working on such high-profile projects has implications at final render time, which Territory Studio’s creative director, David Sheldon-Hicks, explains: “Most of our film projects, including Ghost in the Shell, are not allowed to go to the cloud for security reasons. Up until very recently security protocol with feature films forbid cloud usage. This is being loosened to some extent, through better encryption and security measures at specialist facilities.” Also because lead VFX facilities on a film have started to distribute assets to other studios to minimise the translation and rebuilding effort, this has led to other issues, as David explains: “The Iron Man models we received from ILM for the first Avengers wouldn’t…

Dawn of War returns once again to the battle-scarred frontlines of Warhammer 40,000, bringing the conflict of Space Marines, Eldar and Ork to the lost planet of Acheron. Read on to learn how Axis Animation and director, Abed Abonamous, took inspiration from classical paintings to build the game’s brooding expository cut scenes, revealing a world where beauty and violence sit side by side and make for strange bedfellows… Axis Animation first stepped into the ominous nightmare world of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III in early 2016. Relic Entertainment – the creator of the lauded real-time strategy series – called on the studio and director Abed Abonamous to create an announcement trailer that would challenge the expectations of the Warhammer franchise, revealing a darker take on the universe and its characters.…

ZBRUSH | MAYA | XGEN | ARNOLD | PHOTOSHOP | MARMOSET TOOLBAG 3 | MARI | SUBSTANCE PAINTER | HANDPLANE BAKER AUTHOR Claudio works as a specialised senior character artist at Foundry 42 with over ten years experience in VFX and the games industry. When he is not working on some project, he is teaching his workflow. www.artstation.com/artist/claudioclemente Bringing a 3D portrait to life is a process involving a dozen different disciplines, from sculpting all the way to rendering. Being able to achieve the best result on every single detail certainly takes a lot of time but, from my experience, it has always been an appreciated quality and ultimately helps you become a better artist. With this 3D portrait of Peter Dinklage playing Tyrion Lannister (from Game of Thrones), I…

AUTHOR Ziz, (full name Zihao Zhu) is a concept and character artist, in addition to being an illustrator. He is from China and has been living in the US for five years. He recently graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design, with a BFA in Animation and a in Concept Art for Games. www.artstation.com/artist/phenixju In this tutorial, I will be sharing the approach I usually take when creating a mechanical sci-fi character inside ZBrush. I will be focusing primarily on how to sculpt a clean hard surface efficiently, along with the essential tools you will need to know and some handy tips to make things easier. I will also share some of my thoughts on design in general. From my understanding of design, there are several keys to creating…

AUTHOR Mike Griggs is a 3D and visual effects artist with vast experience across the industry, as both a creator and a technical writer. www.creativebloke.com When approaching a model or scene that requires the refined modelling offered by sculpting, many 3D artists might assume this would be best achieved in a dedicated sculpting application. However, this may not be the best route because many of the leading 3D applications have their own sculpting workflow. This is true for Cinema 4D, which has an impressive sculpting platform, especially when mixed with BodyPaint, Cinema 4D’s 3D painting toolset. The sculpting toolset in Cinema 4D offers all the core features that most sculpting tasks will need, including symmetry, wax, and a non-destructive layer system, which is a powerful tool for managing the detail…

There is one key factor of Trojan Horse Was A Unicorn (THU) that anybody who has attended can attest to and that is the transformative nature of the event, which has affected not just the warriors (those attendees) but the Knights (speakers) and even the Messengers (press). It’s hard to not get carried away by the tidal wave of enthusiasm that everybody exudes, but that won’t hold an event forever. Yet THU has gone from strength to strength with other events, realising that the old way might not be best. You won’t see trade stands, branding banners or demo booths, which to some may feel odd, but what you will find – in abundance – is a group of creatives, of all levels, rubbing shoulders with not only their peers…

“I KNEW I WANTED TO DIRECT EARLY ON, BUT I NEEDED TO UNDERSTAND THE ENTIRE PROCESS BEFORE I COULD TAKE THE LEAP” Miguel Ortega, Director DIRECTOR Miguel Ortega ABOUT Before The Ningyo, Ortega ran the model and texture department at Digital Domain Vancouver on Thor: The Dark World. Managing as many as 28 people taught him lessons that helped manage his very own film crew. He’s worked as a VFX artist, modeller, and creature designer on over 20 games and films. PRODUCER AND PRODUCTION DESIGNER Tran Ma ABOUT Ma has worked as a designer, character artist, and environment artist with roles at CafeFX and Digital Domain Vancouver. She is currently focused on production design, storytelling, and producing with Ortega. Other credits include Alice in Wonderland and Thor, among others. W hen…

Canadian animation studio, Tendril, has just used the GPU biased render engine, Redshift, to create one of the stand-out moments of the first season of the American Gods TV show, based on the Hugo Award-winning Neil Gaiman novel. In the fifth episode of the season, directed by Vincenzo Natali, the Coming to America animated sequence tells the tale of the holy woman, Atsula, and her relationship with her God, Nunyunnini, as her tribe arrive on the new continent after being led across the land bridge from Asia. Tendril had used Redshift previously, but only for pitches. This was the first time Tendril had considered using a GPU-based solution for an entire production. Tendril’s lighting and texture artists, Christian Hecht and Alexandre Veaux, created a style frame in Redshift to see…

AUTHOR Paul has been a designer for about eight years working mainly with Cinema 4D, BodyPaint and Photoshop. His artwork tends to be cute and stylised. www.behance.net/therustedpixel In this tutorial we are going to use Cinema 4D to create a toy-like model of a fire engine. We will use primitives to block out the shapes we need, then use a collection of modelling tools to build a cute toy fire engine. In the following steps I will explain when and how to use each of the varied modelling tools. There’s always more than one way to approach modelling, so feel free to try something different if you have a preferred method. Our goal is to use the subdivision surface found in the C4D toolbox to round our edges and give…

EXPERT TIP KEEP EXPERIMENTING Don’t settle for the first nice lighting effect you get. Write down the angle when you like how things look and then keep trying new ones. Even changing vertical values can give totally different results. Keep experimenting and noting your settings until you get something special. Oscar Juárez replies If you’re wondering how to get started with lighting, whether to use VRaySun, HDRI or something else, all I can tell you is that every scene is a new chance to try different techniques. This time I’m going to go for HDRI because I want to have some cool tones and shadows. For this example I’ve rendered a whole new scene that will give us some good shadows and contrast. The first thing we need to do…

This issue, we’ve joined forces with Pluralsight (formerly known as Digital- Tutors) to offer you a comprehensive video-training course that you can download from our online Vault – for free. Simply visit our online content downloads page at www.bit.ly/vault-226-ningyo In this course, brought to you by 3D modeller Rafael Duffie, you will go through the entire creation pipeline with ZBrush using the ZModeler brush to make a complete character. Over the three hours and 30 minutes, you’ll gain in-depth training. Starting with ZBrush, the lessons cover everything needed to sculpt a character, including accessories. Beginning with the blocking out stage, you will learn all you need to rough out the forms, before moving on to use ZBrush’s powerful sculpting tools to detail your mesh and build the armour and other…

FREE This issue we have a free video course from Pluralsight, teaching character modelling with ZBrush and Maya FOLLOW THE VIDEO www.bit.ly/vault-226-ningyo VIDEO + STEP IMAGES SET UP YOUR ARCHVIZ SCENES FOR REALTIME WITH UNREAL ENGINE Oscar Juárez shows you how to master using a real-time engine to set up, light and prepare your scene for a fully interactive experience BONUS STEP IMAGES CREATE A ZBRUSH PIN-UP CHARACTER Go into more depth with extra step images for this guide on how to use ZBrush 4R8’s new features and Modo tools to create a pin-up character VIDEO + STEP IMAGES IMPROVE YOUR SCULPTS This video shows you tricks to add some personality to your assets…

LATE SHIFT – SERVICE DRONE ARTIST SOFTWARE Maya, Quixel Suite, Unreal Engine 4 Wiktor works as an art lead at Quixel creating learning material and promotional art, but in his own time he creates amazing imagery such as this. For Wiktor, the joy comes in arranging the composition, and this project was no different. Kicking off with some SubD modelling, then texturing in Quixel Suite, the environment was created using Quixel Megascans assets and materials. Wiktor has developed a tried-and-proven workflow for his artwork, as he explains: “My general workflow for scenes like these is that I find reference or concept art that I’ll use, then I move on to modelling the highpoly, which I’ll then create a lowpoly from/for that. I do this in Maya. My Maya’s actually pretty…

ARTIST SOFTWARE ZBrush, Unreal Engine 4 For this image, Tyler set about creating particle effects by using ZBrush to conjure up fractal art that then panned over spheres in UE4. The Array Mesh tool came in play here, for creating repeating fractal shapes that were then taken into Photoshop to be transformed into a tile texture. Once done, this was panned over a shape in Unreal Engine 4 with the Panning Material Editor. This image became a crash course in patterns for Tyler, where he learnt the importance of needing a balance of empty and filled space. Without a good balance, the end result will look flat. For Tyler, this kind of image is becoming a firm favourite. “A big part of my process now is experimenting with panning tile textures…

Rendering has always been the ‘problem part’ in any CGI project. It has been the single biggest cause of headaches, lost nights and panic for artists. Render machines fall over, animation frames can have an unforeseen issue, or there simply isn’t enough time to render to the quality level that is needed without a huge investment in render machines. But with new technology looking to fix these problems, could the way we think of rendering change? “BEING ABLE TO UTILISE A LARGE PUBLIC CLOUD MEANT THAT THERE WOULD NEVER BE A LIMIT TO MACHINE AVAILABILITY” Todd Prives, Google HEADS IN THE CLOUD Many of the most popular render engines are CPU-based, which means that for every new render node, a new PC has to be purchased. This is coupled with…

“Relic Entertainment approached us with a brief that was both concise and open in equal measures,” reveals Abed Abonamous, director. “Warhammer 40K and Dawn of War usually produce a certain type of cinematic: compressed battle scenes highlighting various units, often structured to culminate in some sort of plot twist or suspenseful reveal. This is mostly portrayed in photoreal or hyperreal state-of-the-art CG. “The issue that we immediately encountered was that even just thinking through that type of approach amounted to going through the motions. We’ve seen it all before in various degrees of quality. It feels like in the vast landscape of the Warhammer 40K lore, depictions are often reduced to tiny little sub-stories. That’s to be expected for a short cinematic, but the big picture of a messed-up universe…

AUTHOR Oscar Juárez is an architect who loves creating CG. He has his own studio in Mexico City called Fibrha Studio, established in 2010. www.fibrha.com They say the devil is in the details, and when it comes to interior scenes, that’s certainly true. You have to be a 3D artist and interior designer in one, plus everything needs a photorealistic finish. To help you on your way, this tutorial will teach you how I approach creating interior scenes in Unreal Engine. Most of the archviz I do is usually with V-Ray, but Unreal Engine has become more and more popular. The fact that you can move around the whole scene is obviously beneficial for letting clients visualise a project, but in truth it is helpful for artists as well. Creating…

AUTHOR Mike Griggs is a 3D and visual effects artist with vast experience across the industry, as both a creator and a technical writer. www.creativebloke.com If you’re new to CGI, it can often feel like there are far too many tools to choose from in a dizzying array of software. This series aims to break everything in CGI down to the very basics, so that every artist will be armed with the knowledge of which tool is best. In this part we look at the Bevel tool. The Bevel function is one of the most powerful tools in the 3D artist’s arsenal. While to many it is just the tool to give rounded edges to basic or new geometry, it can also be used to add architraves to room interiors,…

News and views from around the international CG community Originally from New Zealand, Conrad Allan has been working as a 3D artist for over 10 years, and is currently a matte painter at Image Engine in Vancouver. With credits including Game of Thrones, Logan, and Assassin’s Creed, his career has not been without its challenges. But one particular problem has really stuck in his craw… “I was lucky, I started out in a matte painting role rather than going through the normal generalist rite of passage,” he explains. “And the first thing I realised was: finding references just sucks. “As a junior matte painter, especially, you’re looking at a lot of reference for other artists and gathering stuff for shots, but there’s very little available.” So in the last few…