Table of contents for December 2017 in 3D World

Whenever you see a comic-book hero flying through space or crashing through a wall, chances are they’re a digital double of a real actor expertly crafted by a visual effects studio. But how is an actor’s likeness captured with such absolute photorealism? These days that’s often the domain of 3D scanning providers, which rely on portable – and often custom – photogrammetry rigs that they can bring right onto the set. That way they can whisk actors in and out of the scanning process and generate a CG model of their face and body as fast as possible, helping save the film studio a lot of expensive production time. One company in the 3D scanning services fold is Vancouver-based Pixel Light Effects. Using its mobile photogrammetry setup, the studio recently…

AUTHOR A motion graphics and VFX artist from Pakistan with nine years’ experience, Syawish loves motion graphics and making video tutorials. www.bit.ly/syawish In Maya, nParticles are one of the most powerful features in your toolkit. Not only can you do amazing things with them, but you can also create expressions to manipulate every single particle. You create an expression and Maya actually evaluates on every frame what that expression dictates and manipulates each particle accordingly. The Maya expression system in itself is very powerful, so the possibilities of what you can do with expressions in Maya are limitless. In this tutorial, we’ll create a simple forest scene using nParticles and I’ll show how to use expressions to make the forest look random and realistic, as well as how to create…

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 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 time we are looking at the Bridge function. Bridge is one of the most helpful functions in a 3D artist’s arsenal. It is a hugely versatile function that can create the foundations for a complex build, or create curved and twisted geometry all by itself with a single click of the mouse. One of the key…

As an artist, I know how important it is to have a library full of assets ready to be used in any project I get to work on. It helps a lot when the schedule is tight and with a deadline approaching, all you want to do is focus that precious time and energy on more bespoke parts of the project. Whenever I find myself between client projects, I like to update and expand my library of assets, and this time I am focusing on sculpting a realistic human eye. No two eyes are exactly the same, so unless you have something very specific in mind, it does not matter how perfectly you copy the reference material. As long as you understand the anatomy and get the general shape right…

News and views from around the international CG community JOIN THE COMMUNITY Gnomon events offer priceless education, information, and inspiration for artists of all specialties and calibre – and best of all: it’s free! If you’re lucky enough to live in Los Angeles, check Gnomon’s event calendar at gnomon.edu/events. For the rest of us around the world, we can simply tune in at livestream.com/gnomon to catch all the action. To make sure you never miss out: sign up to the mailing list at gnomon.edu/enews. When we hear the word ‘Gnomon’, we will most likely immediately think: ‘Education’. Whether this association comes to us from the internationally famed, award-winning school in Hollywood, or from our trust of the online training platform from Gnomon School’s sister company, The Gnomon Workshop, the common…

THE CRYSTAL PALACE 1900 ARTIST Simon Edwards SOFTWARE 3ds Max, ZBrush, Marvelous Designer OnyxGarden, V-Ray and Photoshop Architectural visualiser, Simon, spent roughly two months researching and creating this incredible image. The majority of the image was modelled using 3ds Max with V-Ray, plus additional ObjectID and Depth passes. As Simon explains, “ObjectID was very important in order to isolate different areas for varied treatments in Photoshop (especially with the glass) and then ZDepth was used for additional scene depth with those treatments. The scene is rendered using a V-Ray physical camera with a small amount of distortion applied. I didn’t like the distortion on the high balloons so they were rendered separately and without distortion and then composited back into the scene later in Photoshop.” With a scene of such magnitude, you’d…

Imagine you’re on location with little equipment and only a few minutes with your actor. Getting an accurate scan and generating a useable CG model is now possible with just a smartphone and a laptop running Agisoft PhotoScan software. LA-based Emmy and VES Award-winning visual effects artist, Johnathan R Banta, from Agrapha Productions (http://agraphafx.com), breaks down his five-step ‘RapidCapture’ photogrammetry process, taking advantage of professional tools. STEP 1. GET THE ACTOR READY Have your actor sit or stand (either is fine as long as they remain stable) and fix their gaze on a point in the near distance. Try to avoid direct sunlight or hard shadows. Our example here was in a room with fluorescent tube lights, but any ambient illumination is fine. Clothing does not matter too much, but…

FOLLOW THE VIDEO www.bit.ly/vault-227-legend AUTHOR Simon works freelance at 3DArtvision. He has worked professionally both as an architectural visualiser and 3D artist for 20 years in Holland and the UK. www.3dartvision.co.uk A significant amount of the time taken in building this scene was inventing various scenarios and mini dramas for the people in the image. After sketching ideas over rough printouts, I could begin building individual characters. The scene includes more than 160 individuals who, between them, share 140 different poses and five costume designs with additional variations in the choice of fabric patterns. Marvelous Designer (MD) comes ready-loaded with a small library of basic characters that can easily be manipulated within MD (rather than importing avatars from 3ds Max, as I have done). However, I found the structure of…

FOLLOW THE VIDEO www.bit.ly/vault-227-legend 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 MASH is the procedural modelling and animation toolset for Autodesk’s Maya software. Developed by the UK’s Mainframe (North) to help add motion graphic procedural tools to Maya, MASH went on to become an essential plug-in for many motion graphic artists using Maya in their workflow. Autodesk saw the potential of MASH and bought the plug-in. In the past few Maya releases, MASH has become an increasingly integrated tool within the core Maya offering. MASH offers a range of tools to make any 3D artist drool, with procedural modelling, animation tools and texturing all available within a couple of clicks. One of…

Ambient Occlusion (AO) is essential for pretty much every model that you will texture. Its application for creating fine shadows, surface wear and tear or even dust makes it a very handy texture. Every renderer will provide you with a map that simulates it and Substance Designer is no different. Quite recently Substance Designer made some pretty impressive improvements to its AO map, so I’ll run through how to do this from version 5.6. Prior to this new AO node, you had to bake your AO map from your 3D mesh. This wasn’t necessarily a major problem but it did require an extra step and therefore added extra time to your workflow. In version 5.6, though, Substance Designer decided to completely overhaul the node and give us a new one!…

VIEW Conference is one of the events on the yearly circuit that offers its attendees a slightly different approach. Of course, it boasts a large number of exceptionally talented speakers, including Joe Letteri, and Oscar winners Paul Debevec and Hal Hickel, among many others. However it’s not just the level of keynote speakers that there is to look forward to. VIEW has broadened its scope over the years and now there is something for anybody with even a passing interest in CG animation, from visual effects and games development to VR, which has had an explosive impact on the show season this year and looks to be here to stay. “This year’s VIEW Conference continues our traditions, while adding even more great speakers to our line-up to showcase games and…

AUTHOR Djordje works as a generalist TD at Double Negative, usually focussed on lighting and the development of how projects look. When not working, he is being inspired by films, especially Korean cinematography, and music. djordjeilicvfx.com Lighting is fundamental in any project you work on. At the most basic level, it’s a way of making objects visible. But speak to any cinematographer, and they will tell you how lighting is much more. Lighting enables you to bring mood to a piece and set the tone. It allows you to subtly manipulate the viewer to look where you want them to and draw attention to specific areas. It is also a way to elevate your work out of the 3D realm, giving the warmth of an oil painting or the feel…

Ever wondered what happens when you mix Maya character animation, projectors, hand-held cameras and lots of polystyrene blocks? London-based multi BAFTA award-winning animation studio, Blue Zoo did, and then found out! Its short, Mamoon, is the latest offering from the studio’s in-house animated short film programme that was established in 2012, designed to push the studio into new creative directions, while nurturing both the in-house talent and a creative culture in the studio. “Generally, agencies request work that features heavily in our showreel” explains Tom Box, co-founder/managing director. “So the short film programme helps us to push the studio forward, experimenting with new technologies and styles without commercial pressures. Over the past five years, the programme has been a great success with short films gaining worldwide recognition and bringing a…

When it comes to rigging in Maya, it’s never a case of one size fits all. Each technical artist will have their own techniques, which makes each rig unique to them. With that said, there are foundation techniques that everyone will use at one time or another to adapt and build upon to create a rig to suit their particular needs. One of these techniques, which has been around for a while now, is known as the ribbon rig. Broken down to the bare bones, this rig essentially puts control of the joints in the hands of a NURBS plane. You then deform the plane how you want and the joints follow. The beauty of this type of approach is its flexibility in that you can move the CVs around…

TUTOR Karen is an environment artist at Sony’s London Studio working on PlayStation VR. www.kazperstan.co.uk The need for high-quality textures is one that will always play a part in your life as a 3D artist. Whether for games, TV, or film, models will need a renderable surface. On occasion, a basic shader may suffice but sometimes the only solution will be to get your hands dirty and manually paint the textures you need. That is fine for a lot of the time, as a procedural texture will be the best fit for the task at hand. On these occasions, Substance Designer can offer the tools to really help you get the job done but, as with any new software, you’ll have a little learning to do. With that in mind,…

FREE This issue we have a free video course from Pluralsight, teaching the basics of Substance Designer FOLLOW THE VIDEO www.bit.ly/vault-227-legend VIDEO + STEP IMAGES DESIGN A CHARACTER FROM SCRATCH Pedro Conti shares his secrets for designing a character from scratch and bringing them to life. VIDEOS BOOTCAMP – MASH In this issue’s bootcamp, we take a look at one of the most useful and powerful modules for Maya: MASH. VIDEO + STEP IMAGES MARVELLOUS AVATARS Simon Edwards shows you how clothe and pose your figures.…