Table of contents for December 2020 in 3D World

ARTIST Mariano Merchante SOFTWARE Maya, Redshift, Houdini, ZBrush, Photoshop Mariano Merchante is a software engineer with a particular focus on real-time graphics technology. He’s been embracing 3D art techniques from a young age and has built a career on learning the artistic and technical principles of computer graphics. “Most of my professional work is graphics and game development related,” he adds, “I keep the purely artistic 3D aspect for my side projects.” One such project is this stunning reconstruction of the old neoclassical building that used to be New York’s Police Headquarters. “The building was manually modelled, with some instancing of elements along curves with a native Maya plugin I wrote,” Merchante explains. “All the materials are procedurally set up on the shader network, so there are no UVs or textures.…

Tsushima Island is crowded with mountains and dense forests. “While we were there, the local people mentioned that it was difficult to travel through the island until modern times when they were able to build more roads and bore tunnels,” states Joanna Wang, environment art lead at Sucker Punch. “Based on our open traversal goals for Ghost, and to keep some creative freedom, we decided not to match the island 1:1. We took essential elements of the island, mixed with some inspirations from mainland Japan, and built this unique world for Ghost.” “While you are exploring the game, you will journey through lush forests, cross boggy swamp lands, and enter into frozen mountainous landscapes,” remarks Wang. “The map is divided into three regions, filled with dozens of different biomes and…

Two characters in a sci-fi movie are arguing in hushed tones over a computer screen depicting data about the invading alien force, the fleet of next-gen fighter planes in the air or the insertion of a new sequence into a DNA strand to create a super soldier. “Right there,” the gruff commanding officer says, pointing animatedly at the screen. “No,” says the devil-may-care hero who plays by his own rules, pointing elsewhere, “over here we’ll extract more of the reverse quantum polarity quotient.” We cut to a close-up of the sleek, flat, silver-backed computer monitor they’re arguing over and see… a blank screen. Without user interface (UI) designers – the people who work in a specialised subset of the VFX field – that’s how it would look when the good…

01 START THE HEAD 01 BLOCK IN ZBRUSH I start with a blobby DynaMesh sculpt to look for an idea for the head. Since the premise is to work without a plan and keep it under three hours, I keep this as loose as possible at first but also fast. Then I see what my subconscious will produce under these conditions. I consider this part of blocking/concepting like reading a Rorschach test. The more you push and pull the sculpt, the more different ideas you start to see. 02 SOMETHING EMERGES Pulling from various mental images and using intuition, I come up with something. In this step I define the major features. I’m pulling out ears with the Snake Hook brush using Sculptris mode then DynaMeshing again. I’m constantly switching between brushes…

You saw an ad, a post, a mention in a thread about Sony’s Talent League by THU. You got excited. It piqued your interest. You bookmarked the page. And then you proceeded to forget it existed. “Who am I kidding, my stuff’s not good enough to submit…”, “Why bother, I never win anything,” “All of my ideas have been done before, I can’t think of anything good.” And so you convinced yourself it was better to let the deadline lapse than to make the effort to do something you want. Here are five great reasons to shake things up and shift that perspective. YOU MISS 100% OF THE SHOTS YOU DON’T TAKE Let’s be honest, most of us don’t think our work is good enough. Self-criticism, imposter syndrome, the competition,…

Foundry, the leading developer of creative software for the entertainment and digital design industries, made a splash recently with a raft of announcements at the summer edition of Foundry Live – their biggest online event of the year, which took place between 16-23 July 2020. After the event 3D World spoke to Christy Anzelmo, Foundry’s director of product – compositing and finishing; Jordan Thistlewood, director of product – pre0production, lookdev and lighting; and Rory Woodford, Mari product manager to get a roundup of why you should be excited for what’s to come from the developer. NUKE INDIE Among the big announcements was the reveal of Nuke Indie, an accessible version of Nuke Studio for eligible solo artists. “Nuke Indie includes the industry-leading node0based compositing toolset of NukeX and the conform,…

MODELS + TEXTURES FREE ASSET DOWNLOADS Download a set of fantastic textures from and build your own asset library with these incredible food-themed models from in our monthly model and texture giveaway. VIDEO & HIGH-RES SCREEN GRABS BLENDER CHARACTERS Diana David shares her process for creating characters with personality in Blender. VIDEO & HIGH-RES SCREEN GRABS Q&A Our expert panel is back to answer your CG woes. Get the high-res screens and video here. MODELS AND TEXTURES EVERY MONTH Download these models and textures to use in your own projects ISSUE 267 NEXT MONTH Next issue, we explore the stylized world of the synthwave aesthetic ON SALE 3RD NOVEMBER Subscribe today: www.bit.ly/3dworld-subs…

Diana David 3D artist Diana shows you how to use Blender to create beautiful character models with buckets of personality. Luis Yrisarry Labadía Our cover artist this issue, Luis takes you through his process to create a kid alien hunter using ZBrush. Trevor Hogg 3D World regular and industry writer Trevor Hogg takes you behind the scenes on Ghost Of Tsushima. WEBSITE 3dworld.creativebloq.com FACEBOOK www.facebook.com/3dworldmagazine INSTAGRAM @3DWorldMag TWITTER @3DWorldMag…

ARTIST Alexandria Federico LOCATION United States I am a budding character artist and recent graduate of Gnomon School of Visual Effects. YEAR CREATED 2019 SOFTWARE Maya, ZBrush, Mari, Substance Painter, Marvelous Designer, Nuke I like to take 2D fantasy concept pieces and see how well I can match and push them in 3D. It’s like an extreme sport, really. I’m as constantly exhausted as any athlete. www.artstation.com/alexandriafederico The Rookies is a platform to help digital artists get discovered without having to compete with professionals for attention. You’ll get to the front page of those sites one day, but for now, we’ve got your back and want to help turn your passion for creative media into a successful career. WWW.THEROOKIES.CO…

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“From a cinematic perspective, we researched film to try and understand what are common cinematic traits in the samurai genre of films,” states Jason Connell, art/creative director at Sucker Punch. “This actually spans into modern-day movies that have taken inspiration from old-school samurai films. We looked for patterns and then looked for ways to employ those tactics or shots inside our game. We have a saying, ‘look for breathing moments.’ Oftentimes, drawing out a shot a little longer can do a lot for the mood and in some cases is the difference between a shot working or not. Don't be afraid to hold on a shot!” “When setting out to make a game about a wandering samurai it seemed natural to keep the camera in a third-person perspective, watching as…

In this tutorial you will learn my step-by-step workflow for creating a cartoon character, starting from a 2D concept illustration to a fully rendered 3D character. After working on some characters for the Tom and Jerry movie I wanted to do a cartoon character, and this cool alien hunter kid concept by the amazing Cory Loftis got my attention. It has lots of personality and is full of attitude! I really want to thank him for allowing me to share this project based on his concept art. For cartoon characters the main rules are stay simple, less is more! Proportions are key, try to avoid straight and parallel lines, and exaggerate features as much as you need! Try to revisit your progress often and add notes to it, I found…

07 BLOCK OUT THE BODY I'm keen to do something really dynamic for the body, showing a lot of action! My first thought is to do something similar to Venom from the old Marvel vs Capcom games, where he constantly transforms when attacking, but I also really want to do a boxer, so I'm going to try to combine those two ideas. It’s a lot to pose, so I'm going to have to block out a body fast. I’m loading up a scan I have of a vaguely athletic-build male that I purchased at the 3dScanStore. This gives me good proportional reference, and some anatomy I can refer to as I block out. My first block out is a little too bulky, almost like a troll, but I'm mainly just…

The inspiration for this work came to me when I saw various photos of moving sports cars on the internet. All the cars were accompanied by motion blur, which is a beautiful effect that simulates moving volumes, and I was very fascinated. This idea led me to do even more research into this area so that I could display the car in other modes, such as various types of advertisements and showrooms. The technique used in this scene, which was rendered with the Corona rendering engine, is the ‘photo backplate’ technique. In this scene, an attempt has been made to define a story, presented in the form of an advertisement. Therefore, the car must be rendered in different modes, colours and scenes, such as outdoor and indoor, moving or still,…

Maya Jermy replies There are so many ways to create textures and all artists have their own preferred way to do it. Whether you texture your models directly in ZBrush or any other software, you want the process to be as smooth as possible. The less hiccups on the way, the better. Pixologic provides us with a nice little plugin, ZAppLink, which enables users to export a model out of ZBrush and into your favourite image editing software. It skips the whole part where you need to export maps or entire OBJ, making it super easy and efficient. ZAppLink is very useful when creating quick designs, because it takes just a minute or two to have the painting process complete. It is a built-in plugin that seamlessly integrates almost any…

FOLLOW THE VIDEO bit.ly/3DWorld-gameart Pietro Chiovaro replies I will break down my process for the creation of a simple rock material using Substance Designer. For this type of material, I selected the Physically Based (Metallic/Roughness) Graph Template and deleted the Metallic output since it isn’t necessary for this substance. The first step is to add the nodes useful for the stone material, so from the Substance Designer library we need: the BnW Spots 2 and Grunge Map 001 noises (these are the base elements of the stone material), the Height to Normal World Units filter (or the Normal filter since they are almost the same), three Levels filters, a Blend filter, a Blur filter and the Gradient Map filter that will give colour to the rock. Now it’s time to…

After graduating from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in 3D Animation, Marty Hon has spent years honing her craft as a CG artist. Prior to joining Digital Domain, Hon created realistic renders and high-quality models for freelance clients, before moving into the realm of TV commercials where she contributed character and prop rigging, hard-surface modelling, texturing, animation, rendering and compositing. For the past five years Hon has been lending her talents to Digital Domain’s Vancouver studio. 08:00am After I get to the office, I start my day with a cup of tea, a light snack, and a look through my emails for updates or changes to any assets. I’ll go through each one to see if there are any notes, any new requests or schedule changes for any specific…

I WANTED TO APPROACH CREATING THESE PUPPETS HOW AN ARTISANAL WAYANG MAKER WOULD ARTIST Kasita Wonowidjojo SOFTWARE ZBrush, Maya, Mari, XGen, V-Ray, Wrap, Marvelous Designer, Nuke Recent Gnomon School of Visual Effects graduate, Kasita Wonowidjojo, created this piece for a look development class taught by Miguel Ortega. The image, which takes its name from a Javanese term meaning shadow puppeteer, took Wonowidjojo ten weeks to complete. “The puppets were the most interesting piece workflow wise,” she tells 3D World. “I got my hands on two of these puppets and disassembled them for reference. I wanted to approach creating these how an artisanal Wayang maker would.” The traditional process would have involved cutting a huge piece of water buffalo hide as a base, which Wonowidjojo replicated by modelling the puppet’s silhouette…

ARTIST Roman Zhuravlyov SOFTWARE 3ds Max, Fusion 360, KeyShot, Photoshop This intricate vehicle took hard-surface concept designer Roman Zhuravlyov just two weeks to complete. He didn’t employ any unusual techniques, simply blocking out the vehicle in 3ds Max, where he could experiment with the outcome. As an artist and concept designer, Zhuravlyov is fond of using a sketchpad alongside 3D software. “Depending on the task, I think about where I can make an initial sketch in 3D, or if it will be a pencil sketch,” he explains. “First, I make a 3D dummy that I can print out on paper and throw details on it with a pen or pencil, or I do it in Photoshop.” When it comes to references, Zhuravlyov says that anything and everything can be used, but…

The use of CGI cutscenes or cinematics is a significant chapter in the history of video games. Whether used as a trailer for an upcoming release or to advance the story within the game itself, each new generation of gaming platforms brings CG artists an opportunity to push the boundaries of the artform. With the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and a whole new era for console gaming on the horizon, cinematics are also levelling up. After their breathtaking E3 trailer for CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 bagged itself a Webby award and clocked over 55 million views online, 3D World caught up with Goodbye Kansas Studios to discuss the project and get a glimpse into the next generation of game cinematics. Goodbye Kansas’ expert panel consists of director Fred…

Branching out from the inFamous video game franchise where present-day humans with supernatural abilities decide to become either forces of good or evil, Sucker Punch travels back to late 13th century Japan in Ghost B Of Tsushima where a samurai goes from following his code of honour to adopting guerrilla warfare tactics in order to quell a Mongol invasion. “We chose the Mongol invasion of Tsushima in 1274 because the stakes of the battle were right there,” explains Nate Fox, creative director at Sucker Punch. “You would play as a samurai defending his home from foreign invaders, warriors who brought gunpowder weapons for the first time to Japan. What moral lines would that samurai have to cross in order to safeguard the people that he loves most? How would he have to evolve, bending his samurai…

When lists are made of the greatest samurai movies of all time, a name that is always present is legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who collaborated with iconic actor Toshirô Mifune to create Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Sanjuro and Yojimbo. During the production of Ghost Of Tsushima, Sucker Punch approached the estate of Kurosawa for permission to name a mode after him, to make players feel as if they are in the middle of one of his movies. “There are several hours of cinematics in Ghost,” states Billy Harper, animation director, Sucker Punch. “With a cinematic scope of that size, it is key to define something that can help achieve cinematic cohesion. During our visits to Tsushima Island we discovered the significance of the Kami – or Divine –…

DEATH STAR DESTRUCTION PLAN STAR WARS, 1977 Computer animation artist Larry Cuba got the assignment to create the briefing room Death Star attack plan for Star Wars: A New Hope (1977/1997). Given the era you might assume it was hand[-animated, but Cuba worked off matte paintings and model pieces of the Death Star surface to create a digital model on a system called GRASS (GRAphics Symbiosis System), a programming language created to script 2D vector graphics animations. The sequences were then back projected onto a black screen on the briefing room set. Prior to the Lucasfilm gig, Cuba had produced several computer-animated short films, beating Pixar to the punch by decades. Watch ‘Making of the Computer Graphics for Star Wars (Episode IV)’ on YouTube for the full story (www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMeSw00n3Ac). Nerd…

Ever tried creating a mashed-up character, by folding a slip of paper over and passing it around? You may be surprised to know that it’s a 100-year-old game called ‘Exquisite Corpse’. New York-based artist Scott Denton has gathered a group of artists to revive this game, and wants to get as many people involved as possible. About 100 years ago, surrealist artists let loose from stifling professional demands by creating the infamous art game called Exquisite Corpse. In this game, a person would start a work of art and others would finish it by using only a small portion of the original work as reference and then continuing it from that point. The end result was often hilarious, amusing, confusing or terrifying. Without a fixed goal, the artists were free…

13 BASIC SHAPE I wanted to just jump right in and go wherever my whims took me, so I masked off the top of the torso cutoff that I got from Adam and used the Snake Hook brush with Sculptris Pro mode turned on. This let me simply pull out legs free-form from the hips. Then, I used Move, Inflate, Smooth and Clay brushes to flesh out the position and volumes a bit. As I worked, I had the impulse to make the legs into tree trunks, branches and roots, so I let the shapes be a little more ropey and sinuous. 14 ROCK FOUNDATION Rather than make the leg trunks at the end of the foot just sit on the ground, I thought it would instead be cool if…

Mike Griggs replies Redshift in Cinema 4D allows lightning-quick, GPU-powered renders. Still, like everything with computer graphics, even it can slow down when textures become complex. Also, not all 3D artists use Redshift or Cinema 4D for that matter, so how does an artist create texture assets that are efficient and easy to share? The answer is to bake textures using the Redshift baking toolset. So what is ‘baking a texture’? Usually, a material or shader on a 3D model is reacting to the lights and environment it is in. Baking creates a texture file that embeds all the sophisticated shadows and light falloffs into the texture file so that it can be applied to a simple model. This technique is common for game engines where it can also be…

Since 2011, The TrailerFarm has been making creative content and jaw-dropping trailers for the biggest names in games, hottest indie studios, TV networks and associated businesses. The team is part of Keywords Studios – a technical and creative services provider to the videogames industry, with 50+ operational studios across 21 countries and four continents. In short, The TrailerFarm has incredible reach across the globe, contributing some of the games industry’s most iconic campaigns – whether you’re looking at an amazing trailer, previs/postvis, key art, marketing collateral, motion graphics, idents or cinematics. The studio’s cinematics lead, Daniel “Stubby” Stubbington, now reveals a little bit more about life at The TrailerFarm and how he uses Unreal Engine to lead projects like Borderlands 3, Shadow Warrior 3 and Serious Sam 4. Tell us…