Table of contents for November 2018 in 3D World

Digital sculpting has many uses, from creating vinyl toys, to huge sets for TV and movie projects. We show you some of these projects as well as sharing some expert top tips to help you make the most of your own projects, using ZBrush. Elsewhere we delve into Cinema 4D R20 to find out if it’s a worthy upgrade. rob.redman@futurenet.com FREE Eclipse Charger, worth £69.99 When you sign up to a print subscription – turn to page 26.…

With films such as The Jungle Book, Alien: Covenant and Blade Runner 2049, MPC has established itself as one of the leading studios for delivering photoreal characters. Helping the studio achieve that status is a specialised group inside MPC called The Character Lab that’s behind so many of those photoreal assets. 3D World asked several members of The Character Lab for their expert takes on modelling, rigging, grooming and lookdev from specific assets made for those recent films. Here they talk about the tools and techniques behind their work, and provide their practical tips for delivering the most photoreal creatures and characters possible. RE-IMAGINING AN ICONIC SPECIES MPC senior modeller Damien Guimoneau was responsible for the high-resolution sculpt of the terrifying CG Xenomorph that appeared in Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant.…

Furtility is a GOP (Geometry Operator) based fur system with an interface that allows you to stack the operators and even nest them, which we do when clumping fur in levels. When you create a fur system, by default there is a distributor node which allows you to distribute fur across a geometry. There is also a width GOP to set the root and tip width of the fur and a colour GOP to preview a root and tip colour. You can adjust how far up the curve the root width is used by adjusting the bias and offset values. Almost all attributes can be adjusted using an in-house plugin we have for Maya called Paint. In Paint we can create canvases on the geometry and create channels to connect…

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 As well as having the best name of any digital content creation application, Marvelous Designer has the power to revolutionise the creation of any soft-bodied object for a variety of uses in CGI. The software has become synonymous with clothing creation, but it also has a wide range of other abilities. One of the unique things about Marvelous Designer is that its workflow will be familiar to both 3D artists and those from a fashion background, as the software sees polygons as cloth elements which are creased and sewn together just like a tailor to hang on the chosen ‘Avatar’ mesh. What is initially surprising…

CUSTOMISE EVERYTHING You can assign custom keyboard shortcuts, as well as any function to a mouse button. You can set custom colours for the entire UI or even design your own interface with custom button images and positioning, down to mimicking the UI of the other applications in your pipeline. (RE)LEARN TO SELECT To speed up your workflow even more, learn how to quickly jump between selection modes: A for Vertex Selection, S for Edge Selection, D for Face Selection, G for Multiple Selections, F for Object Selection. REDUCE CLICKAGE Reduce mouse clickage and keystrokes by using sticky keys and selection highlighting. Unlike tapping a key or key combination and escape to release it, holding a key – making it sticky – will give a different effect, especially for many…

“Shogun was designed in partnership with Industrial Light & Magic as part of a government-funded project through Innovate UK,” explains Doubleday. The software was designed to run in real-time and allow traditional offline processes to be done more quickly and efficiently on set during a shoot. Doubleday uses the example of calibrating a motion-capture performer: “In the past you would have to capture the data, load it into post, reconstruct the 3D markers, label them and then calibrate the actor.” He continues: “With Shogun, the calibration is performed as the actor does their range of motion or ROM. The process is run in the background and once they are finished they are already part of the motion-capture system. This helps save hours on a shoot and allows teams to start…

AUTHOR PROFILE Steve is a freelance tech journalist and CG artist, with an unhealthy addiction to 3D apps and plugins. www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jarratt Originally a plugin for Softimage, Forester was ported to Cinema 4D in 2015. After a dozen minor updates and bug fixes, we’ve finally received the first major addition in the shape of an expansion pack. Basically, it’s a collection of 51 trees – some real, some fictional – consisting of a traditional mixture of broadleaves and conifers. The trees come in three different variations: Adult, Young and a Low-Poly version, which is ideal for distant objects or creating instanced forests. And since the meshes are all procedural, they can still be edited in Forester, providing a practically unlimited array of species and forms. The pack works hand in hand…

GET YOUR RESOURCES You’re three steps away from this issue’s video training and files… 1. GO TO THE WEBSITE Type the following into your browser: www.bit.ly/vault-239-zbrush 2. FIND THE FILES YOU WANT FROM THE LIST Search the list of free resources to find the video and files you want 3. DOWNLOAD THE FILES YOU NEED Click the Download buttons and your files will save to your PC or Mac PLUS There are more files and resources waiting online… VIDEO: Get the video tutorials for a selection of this issue’s training FILES: Download the high-resolution tutorial assets for all of our training…

Gaurav Kumar Since discovering ZBrush, self-taught sculptor Gaurav has slowly shifted from hard-surface modelling to purely sculpting and texturing characters. artstation.com/harrygk Oscar Juarez Oscar is an archviz specialist creating in many apps, but has a keen interest in Unreal. He shares some of his secrets on page 74. www.fibrha.com Pietro Chiovaro Pietro is an Italian 3D artist who creates 3D assets and environments, and is currently working on an open-source game. pietrochiovaro.artstation.com Maya Jermy Maya is a 3D artist and animator based in the UK. She started her career five years ago remaking and animating characters for Oddworld. www.mayajermy.com Ian Failes Ian is a regular contributor to 3D World, and in this issue he has investigated how MPC creates creatures for the big screen. www.vfxblog.com Mike Griggs Mike Griggs is…

1. Dealing with damage: We needed to have damage variations for the Neomorph after it had been shot at. I created the bullet wounds on the Neomorph and tried to keep them connected, whilst keeping in mind that the creature was growing from baby to adult in seconds! In ZBrush the Morph target is extremely useful for this kind of thing, you can create all of the damage you want and also restore what you want to keep intact with the Morph brush. It was also interesting to create the thickness of the blood in this model, I then created a mask and passed it on to MPC’s texture artists 2. When you need super-detail: This is the sculpt I used for the final displacement, showing the muscle fibre and…

NOW SHOWING Digital sculpting tool ZBrush has long been a contributor to the world of film and television. Prior to ZBrush figures were sculpted in clay before being scanned to produce 3D assets, in a process that was as time-consuming as it was costly. Such was its game-changing nature that in 2014 Pixologic co-founder Ofer Alon received an Academy Award for his design and implementation of the software. CG modeller Jose Limon retells his first encounter with the tool: “ZBrush was first introduced to me while I was attending The Art Institute of California-Inland Empire, somewhere between 2007 and 2011.” Currently lending his talents to the teams at A52 VFX and Elastic, Limon has seven years’ experience in crafting characters for TV, film and animation, primarily using ZBrush. “I started…

AUTHOR Maya is a 3D artist and animator based in the UK. She started her career five years ago remaking and animating characters for Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee – New ‘n’ Tasty. artstation.com/mayajermy Humans are creatures of habit. We always search and strive for improvements in our daily routines. It helps us survive, and that is why we aim to create a constant in the things we do, including art. All artists have their own unique workflow when working in ZBrush. It can mean a bunch of techniques or a hierarchy in which you achieve certain stages. The more time and experience you get with ZBrush, the more advanced workflow you will create for yourself. However, advanced does not always mean more complicated. It is important to feel comfortable and confident…

Maya Jermy Maya is a 3D artist and animator based in the UK. She started her career five years ago remaking and animating characters for Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee – New ‘n’ Tasty. www.mayajermy.com Oscar Juárez Oscar is a 3D generalist based in Mexico City. He has been running Fibrha Studio since 2010 and specialises in archviz rendering, animations and Unreal Engine. www.facebook.com/FibrhaStudio Pietro Chiovaro Pietro is an Italian 3D artist who creates 3D assets and environments, and is currently working on an open-source game. pietrochiovaro.artstation.com Antony Ward Since the early 90’s Antony has worked for many of today’s top game and VFX studios, as well as written three technical manuals and many online tutorials. www.antcgi.com SOFTWARE: ZBRUSH HOW DO I RENDER TRANSPARENT MATERIALS IN ZBRUSH? Maya Jermy replies Sam Forman,…

Taking THU to Malta meant more than merely changing the location of the event. We could no longer count on everything we had developed and achieved during the last five years, like local partnerships and infrastructures. We knew we would have to start from scratch. We knew it would be hard and expensive. So why did we do it anyway? We still get this question a lot, and we’re honestly not surprised, because who in their right mind would go back to the start and face all the issues we had already struggled with in the beginning? Well, we believe that a little insanity can be good as long as you keep your feet on the ground and are aware of all the risks. I knew that if we wanted…

AUTHOR PROFILE Rob is a 3D artist and creative director, working across TV, film and print. When not in the studio he is often found presenting at various events, or editing this magazine! www.pariahstudios.co.uk There are a number of reasons you might want a monitor arm. The most common use is for easy repositioning during the working day, whether for minimising glare or to bring the monitor closer for certain tasks. Another common use is to aid in setting up a workspace in such a way that alleviates strain on the neck and back, reducing physical problems associated with working at a desk. Ergotron offers numerous such devices and this LX version seems to follow the company’s other designs in both form and function. The arm itself is solidly constructed,…

1. Reference is key: Whenever I pick up a new character I start gathering a lot of references such as slow-motion videos, skeleton images, and learn about the species history and specifics on Wikipedia/YouTube. I have been looking at birds recently; I’m trying to gather a lot of knowledge about their anatomy and how it defines their motion, for example the role of the wishbone and how the pectoral muscles are involved in the lifting of the wings. I like to be informed when I start working on a character so I can rig it with confidence and also assist other departments like animation if questions come up. 2. Some first steps: I start by placing skeleton geometry inside the model followed by a joint layout, skin cluster and a…

01 SET WORK SCREEN A very basic but important thing to do is set your work screen in a way that lets you utilise it fully. Go to Document in the toolbar and set the size of your document monitor resolution to make sure there are no unused areas. You can also change the ZBrush screen from grey to gradient black for a consistent background screen. Thirdly, I would suggest that you change the material from MatCap Red to MatCap Grey or basic grey material. Gaurav Kumar 02 CUSTOMISE YOUR UI This is a very effective way to increase the speed of your work. Go to Preferences in your toolbar, select Config>Enable Customize. By pressing Ctrl+Alt you can move any button, pallet or brush onto your ZBrush interface. Once you’ve…

Sarah Alexander, California Oscar Juárez replies Years ago simply adding trees to renders was pretty slow and both time- and RAM-consuming, but thankfully nowadays the use of several tools enables us to get the job done a lot easier, including MultiScatter, VRayInstancer, Forest Pack and Corona Scatter. These tools all make adding a large amount of polygons much less RAM-consuming but, sometimes I’ve noticed that we all just settle there. We use a scatter, add several models and it’s done. We have a forest. However, in this tutorial I want to show you how to add randomness to our forest, this time using Corona Renderer’s MultiMap. This adds greater realism to our render. We can then add that randomness to every model scattered. STEP BY STEP ADD RANDOMNESS TO A…

Back in the late noughties, Nevercenter’s Silo was quickly becoming a modelling staple on multiple platforms for many. But just when it seemed they were doing well, with an increasing user base and recognition, it suddenly went very, very quiet. Until September 2017, when the lights came back on with a bang and a fresh release. WHERE THE HELL HAVE THEY BEEN? After holding our horses to see if the lights were back on for real, we recently reached out to Thomas Plewe, creator and founder of Nevercenter – creators of Silo, camera software and games. And of course, our first questions were: Where have you been? What the hell happened? The answer contained less drama than we suspected. In addition, the #PCMasterRace may be pleased to hear we might…

AUTHOR PROFILE 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 Cinema 4D is no longer a teenager! Version 20 is a milestone for any application, so MAXON has decided to imbue the latest release of its digital content creation application with a range of new features and toolsets, which have the potential to ensure that Cinema 4D is fighting its corner in adulthood. MAXON, for a few versions, has been updating the core code of Cinema 4D. With Cinema 4D R20, the first real fruits of this long and mainly unsung task are starting to bear fruit; as with any Cinema 4D update, a read of the updated ‘What’s new’ section is essential, as…