Table of contents for July 2018 in 3D World

The Commuter © 2018 STUDIOCANAL • I, Tonya © 2017 NEON and 30 West • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri © 2017 Fox Searchlight Pictures • The Greatest Showman © 2017 20th Century Fox • Darkest Hour © 2017 Focus Features “DIGITAL VERSIONS OF THE CHARACTERS FIGHTING WERE CREATED TO AID THE TRANSITIONS BETWEEN THE PLATES, AS WELL AS THE ENVIRONMENTS AND TRAIN INFRASTRUCTURE” Stephane Paris, Cinesite’s The Commuter visual effects supervisor Most of the major feature films and television shows you see covered in the pages of 3D World are of the effects-driven variety, filled with incredible photoreal computer-generated characters, vast digital environments and complex effects simulations. But in recent times more and more films and television series are featuring effects of a different kind – invisible ones. They…

The Beyond is the latest sci-fi project by Hasraf ‘HaZ’ Dulull, a London-trained VFX artist, now supervisor turned director. The Beyond is presented in a raw, grounded and voyeuristic style, often seen in modern documentary films. The story follows a group of scientists on a mission to send the next generation of astronauts into a newly discovered wormhole, following their research on this dangerous interstellar journey. HaZ has captured performances in a candid, interview style. This fly-on-the-wall approach was a way for him to present the format with realism, while still being set against a sci-fi background of advanced technology and space exploration. Scenes throughout the film are designed to give the impression that it is constructed from multiple sources, similar to the ‘found footage’ genre of Cloverfield. Not only…

Almost two decades ago, Fight Club and The Matrix were two of the first big-budget movies where creators used virtual cinematography methods for certain scenes. Now, it seems that every week at least one of the premiered films will feature such scenes. However, in those old days it was those scenes that inspired people to become VFX artists. I’m one of them, the sweat droplets on Edward Norton’s virtual forehead with shallow depth of field burned into my brain forever. Now, at the dawn of AI, it seems solo artists have at least the same opportunities as VFX studios back then. With this project I explore the possibilities of virtual cinematography techniques for indie studios, doing so with a seemingly simple scene, but with attention on the details. Of course,…

With the massive amount of high-quality education available online, self-directed studies are the go-to avenue for many people to level up their skills and transition to their dream career. Achieving this though – as with any project – requires a clear vision and proper planning, to ensure that the time and resources spent are contributing to our goals. Unfortunately, for many, this translates into backing every single tutorial available on the internet without ever getting a chance to study them. In this article, I’ll share the seven steps I used to create my learning path and transitioned from a tutorial hoarder to a lean-mean-learning machine. When I initially did this exercise, I wanted to align my actions with my learning goals, so I mapped them in MindNode. The return on…

Sometimes you can indeed get by – or at least started – with a little help from your friends. Founded by three old buddies who first met at Animation Mentor in 2007, Theory Studios began in 2013 after one of their founders, David Andrade, was let go during the Rhythm & Hues collapse. Armed with the theory that artists all over the world can work together on any animation, game or VFX project, anywhere, anytime, Andrade, Juergen Grieder and Mark Olson pooled their resources and set up VFX shop, named after their theory – and on a Blender pipeline. Five years later, and having worked on several successful TV shows like The Man in the High Castle, Silicon Valley and Ray & Clovis, as well as receiving an Emmy and…

PRICE $895 (Single User licence) | COMPANY Pixologic | WEBSITE www.pixologic.com Another free update from Pixologic! There can’t be many software development companies that give their annual upgrade away for free, but Pixologic still manage to do so. This version sees a naming convention change, going from 4R8 (Version 4 Release 8) to the year number 2018. This update may not be the biggest they’ve had, but the new features are incredibly powerful and most definitely a great addition to the creation toolset. First let’s talk about the addition of Sculptris Pro. Pixologic acquired a piece of software called Sculptris a few years ago and gave it away for free ever since. It was a Voxel-based sculpting package and apart from initial tweaks and changes in the first year or…

“The CG tent shot is an important one because it reveals the new life of Barnum at the end of the movie,” discusses Rodeo visual effects supervisor Martin Lipmann. “The director wanted first to reveal the tent as a reflection on a water puddle, and then see three kids stepping in the puddle as they run towards the tent. First we shot the three kids in a studio against a greenscreen. “From there we re-created the entire environment from scratch. We matchmoved the children to create all interaction with the puddle, the snow and also to get shadows and contacts on the ground.” This frame shows the CG tent and ground plane asset. “The entire environment, including the Brooklyn Bridge, was modelled, textured and lit,” explains Lipmann. “We used CG…

1. Concept This is an illustration by concept artist Rob Hilson, depicting the top-down view of Bay City and its futuristic intertwining buildings and structures. The show’s art department, led by production designer Carey Meyer, embraced the design aesthetics of Blade Runner that have influenced so many productions since. Concept artists also had to establish three levels of ‘living’ for the city, from the ground to the middle twilight area and then the incredibly wealthy Aerium top level. 2. CG build Double Negative generated around 30 to 40 buildings in total for Bay City, and then re-purposed them for different views and even fly-throughs. The studio has in recent years adopted Isotropix’s Clarisse toolset for assembling large environments and then carrying out lookdev, lighting and photorealistic rendering all inside the…

If you’re new to CGI, you may feel that 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 can be armed with the knowledge of which tool is best. This issue we start exploring different types of materials and shaders by focusing on Diffuse properties. One of the simplest ways to bring some extra life to any 3D object is to add colour and texture to it. There are a variety of names given to this process, adding shaders or materials or even textures. A rule of thumb is that a ‘texture’ is an image that is used to drive a property of a ‘material’, which defines…

PRICE $149 standalone / $75 upgrade | COMPANY Allegorithmic | WEBSITE www.allegorithmic.com Allegorithmic has spent the past few releases making Substance Painter probably the most famous texture-painting application on the market. The uptake of Substance Painter can be attributed to many factors, from a huge array of genuinely useful content that ships with the application, which can be augmented from a wide range of sources both first and third party. There is also the integration with the rest of the Substance toolset such as Substance Designer, and the excellent variety of export options which caters for a large variety of application uses. With its expanding user base from the game development community, to an ever-growing use within the ‘traditional’ digital content creation space, what does the latest release of Painter…

VIDEO + STEP IMAGES MASTER PROCEDURAL MODELLING IN 3DS MAX In this tutorial Paul Roberts, training manager at iToo Software, explains how to use RailClone to create a visually interesting architectural scene. VIDEO + STEP IMAGES BOOTCAMP – HDR LIGHT STUDIO Mike Griggs talks us through the basics of the IBL creation tool, HDR Light Studio. VIDEO + STEP IMAGES MAKE VEHICLE ANIMATIONS WITH ICLONE 7 Adolf Navarro demonstrates how to create interactive vehicles in iClone, taking us through step by step. FREE This issue we have a free video course from Learn Squared, teaching you efficient learning processes.…

DYSTOPIAN RIDER ARTIST Paul Braddock SOFTWARE Maya, Hard Mesh (Maya plugin), Marvelous Designer, ZBrush, RealityCapture, Megascans, Substance Painter, Redshift, Photoshop VFX artist Paul Braddock has over 15 years’ experience working for Animal Logic in Sydney, Australia. This mysterious image was completed in a few weeks’ worth of spare time, largely consisting of early mornings and weekends. “All of the clothing was created with Marvelous Designer. I used photogrammetry, and scanned my own motorcycle boots and gloves. The midground rock formation is from my local beach. In Maya, I use a plugin called Hard Mesh for hard-surface work, and all texturing was done in Substance Painter,” explains Paul of his software choices throughout the process. As a child of the Eighties much of Paul’s inspiration comes from that era’s plethora of…

The original plate with actress Lily James as Elizabeth Layton. Framestore was called upon to add dirt to buildings to help establish the 1940s era. “The big challenge of adding dirt to buildings is to make it look realistic and not ‘painted’,” says visual effects supervisor Stephane Naze. “We didn’t want to get a 2D feel to the buildings, or make it seem like we’d added something to the surface.” To help with adding actual grime and dirt to the buildings, Lidar scans of each building were acquired. This gave the studio a 3D representation of the geometry on which they could re-project textures. It also helped facilitate shots with camera movement and in doing any further era fixes for the shots. The intent, of course, is that the audience…

The simulations, or Constructs in the show – used when a character is being interrogated or even to aid in the rehabilitation of others – had a distinctive VR feel. In fact, they were deliberately filmed with a spherical Nokia Ozo 360-degree camera to provide for an ‘unwrapped’ stitched image. “On set we had a little remote control vehicle that the camera would travel on,” says Burrell. “So when you filmed, you had to clear everyone out completely – nobody could be near the set except for the actors because you would see everything.” “When we got the material back, we had to go through a little trial and error on how to unwrap it and keep it seamless,” adds Burrell. “Double Negative helped me figure that out. One of…

Creating animations involving vehicles with wheels can present some complications, as the motion of the model has to be synchronised with the rotation of its wheels. Depending on the speed of the vehicle, the wheels have to spin faster or slower in order to create a convincing effect. Other factors like friction and inertia have to be considered, as occasionally the wheels can drift over the terrain when the vehicle accelerates or suddenly brakes. In the first example, the wheels start spinning fast but the car’s body motion is more gradual, gaining speed and inertia until it’s fully synchronised with the wheel’s rotation. In the second case it happens just the opposite, as the wheels stop spinning but the car keeps moving while drifting over the terrain until it gradually…

Image-based lighting (IBL) has become one of the most popular techniques for lighting CG scenes over the past few years, as it offers a realistic lighting and reflection model that is quick both in terms of artist and render time. For many occasions an IBL or high dynamic range (HDR) image is usually sourced from an online library, of which there are many high-quality options available. However, when it comes to an artist needing to create a bespoke lighting solution, there are only a few choices on offer. Thankfully though one of those options is HDR Light Studio, which is a fully featured IBL creator. HDR Light Studio has been around for a while and in its latest ‘Carbon’ iteration it has added some important new features, including the ability…

Back in 2016, the team behind the Unity game engine created a proof-of-concept short film, titled ADAM, to show off its cinematic abilities. While it was never intended that the story of a robot escaping a prison would eventually turn into a fully fledged series, the film garnered enough attention that Unity Technologies knew they had to continue the tale. As a director who’s gained critical acclaim for his depictions of dystopian futures and its robots, the team turned to Neill Blomkamp and his team at Oats Studios to help complete the task. The District 9 director launched Oats Studios only last year. The idea behind the studio was to create a space where he and his team could experiment with short films and release them for free online,…

Having sat in screening rooms at ILM and Digital Domain for well over 18 years, I’ve heard my share of comments from big-name film directors regarding their review of shots for their films. The comment we were always hoping to hear was “Final”. When the director said that magic word, a thunderous cheer was often heard from the men and women that had toiled for countless hours over that five or so seconds of film. But, when the team felt that the shot should be “Finaled” and the director said “CBB” (Could Be Better), we knew we were in for the long haul, because oftentimes the director had no idea what he or she was actually looking for. Brexit could have some very serious consequences and implications for the visual…