Table of contents for February 2023 in 3D World

• The Gallery CG art to inspire “IT WAS IMPORTANT TO ME TO CREATE A PIECE THAT WAS VERY FLUID AND DIRECTIONAL COMPOSITIONALLY” “As a huge fan of Hollow Knight, it was always a dream of mine to create my own fan art for the game. For this project I took inspiration from various different sculptures, which I tried to emulate. It was important to me to create a piece that was very fluid and directional compositionally. The whole project was sculpted using ZBrush, where two brushes did most of the heavy lifting. The first was the Slash2 brush, which creates a layering effect and is so useful for organic structures. The second was the Trim Smooth Border brush, which is in my opinion the best tool for rocky surfaces.…

• technique focus Insect modelling Software ZBrush, Maya, Marmoset Toolbag, Redshift, Yeti Year made 2022 INSECT MODELLING I started this model a white back as part of a ZBrush tivestream. I quickly fell in love with this species of bee. This is a male orchid bee, of which there are many species almost all found in Central and South America. I chose to do a mate Euglossa dilemma, which I believe is known to pollinate crepe ginger flowers among many other types, including orchids. I'm working towards creating an animation that explains the mechanics of this bee's long tongue, also known as the glossa. I sculpted and painted in ZBrush, and textured in Marmoset. I rigged it in Maya, created the fur using Yeti, and rendered the images in Redshift.…

• Artist Q&A Your CG problems solved SOFTWARE: CINEMA 4D 2023 Mike Griggs replies Creating transitions in 3D can be a complex process. While the safe option may appear to be handling the transition in compositing, this can make the transition look flat if done using 2D transitions. More effective is if the transition can be done within the 3D animation itself, and retain a degree of flexibility when iterating the animation to provide effective feedback before the scene goes to a final render. For Cinema 4D artists, Vector Maps have long been a powerful tool to be able to manipulate geometry and materials to create amazing effects, however getting started with them can be confusing. Now though, artists can easily enable Vector Maps on an object and use the…

Reviews We explore the latest software and hardware tools to see if they are worth your time or money Alot of major digital content creation software enables developers to create plugins that extend the functionality of the core product. As a long-standing 3ds Max user. I've downloaded many plugins over the years through places like ScriptSpot and they have enabled me to create things that would otherwise be impossible. Unreal Engine (UE) has made this possible for a while and developers all around the world have taken advantage. The available plugins achieve what you would expect, such as modifying or adding new engine features, but they can also bring runtime gameplay functionality to the party. UE is already an incredibly powerful application but with a range of plugins its functionality…

Reviews unreal Engine plugins Atoms Crowd is a framework that provides the foundation for a series of different applications, including a plugin for Unreal Engine (UE). With the rise of crowd scenes in films over the past decade or two, it's no surprise there has been an increase in crowd simulation software. Atoms Unreal is built into UE and provides a great real-time option for creating both simple and complex crowds. One of the most defining characteristics of this plugin is that it's skeleton based. This enables highly customisable character animation and ensures you get a high level of quality. Skeletons can also be instanced, which is perfect for making the best use of your system's resources. I've been impressed with the continual improvement the Tool Chefs developers have made…

Follow the link to download your free files https://bit.ly/3Dworld-poppapercity MODELS AND TEXTURES EVERY MONTH Download these models and textures to use in your own projects MODELS + TEXTURES FREE ASSET DOWNLOADS Download a set of fantastic textures from 3dtotal and build your own asset library with these incredible free bathroom models from CGAXIS in our monthly model and texture giveaway. TUTORIAL IMAGES CREATE STUNNING PAPERCRAFT SCENES Learn to design gorgeous animated projects with this tutorial from Pop Paper City. TUTORIAL IMAGES VISUALISE WITH BLENDER Discover how to create outdoor scenes in the worldbuilding process of your next project.…

GUNDAM SERIES “This series of Gumdam paintings is my homage to the nostalgic anime of my childhood years. Combining my adoration for anime and movies, I chose to light and render the iconic Mudrock character in a way that mimics my personal tastes in film cinematography. Projects like these are so important and fun for me because they help me to evolve as an artist. It allows me to keep my artistic blade sharp by testing new techniques and skills. Here, I used a blend of HDRI lighting and VDB-simulated particles to add depth and visual interest. I then used After Effects for the final composite and grading techniques to complete the feel of cinematic quality. Learn to use light like a paint brush. The more effectively you use light…

• The Gallery The Rookies ARTIST Daniel Tolland LOCATION Scotland I'm an aspiring 3D environment artist studying computer arts at university. • www.therookies.co/u/DanielTolland This scene was created for one of my university modules. It was heavily inspired by a concept from The Last of Us by John Sweeney. What I loved most about this concept art was the colours, mood, storytelling and lighting in the shot. I used this as a starting point to then create my own, unique bedroom. My goal for this project was to create a believable teenage bedroom, focusing on high-quality assets with a variety of interesting textures. THE ROOKIES 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…

Pop Paper City's world has been designed to inspire children at home to want to make it themselves. The show's CG artists helped to achieve this by giving objects a paper feel, which you can try for yourself in Cinema 4D. For the first step, drop a standard primitive cube into your Viewport and make the object editable, then select the Edges section. Right click on your cube to bring up your Modelling tools, and using the Disconnect tool you'll be able to select specific lines to move around and alter. You might want to make some of the edges of the cube overlap, or even use your Line Cut tool to make a small fold or crease in the cube. Play around with these tools until the box has…

The Pipeline Create stylised Blender worlds BLENDER | PHOTOSHOP Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills AUTHOR Andrés Aponte Andrés is a Colombian freelance visual development and background artist for the game and animation industries. He is mostly self-taught and enjoys learning challenging new tools to expand his skillset. andresaponte.com Nowadays, 3D is becoming an essential part of preproduction, worldbuilding and concept art, including realistic and stylised approaches. Free and friendly, I believe that Blender is the perfect entry point for artists to get into 3D, especially those that have only previously dabbled in drawing and painting. There are many ways Blender can be advantageous and speed up the concept process. There is no way to replace fundamental expertise though, and adding 3D to your skillset can…

Along with the release of Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) came a range of new features. Designed to power the development of next-generation video games, AAA studios throughout the industry have utilised UE5's upgraded set of features in their titles, as well as those working in film, TV and animation productions. Each of the Nanite virtualised geometry system, the Lumen global illumination system, and other tools have been gamechanging innovations from its predecessor Unreal Engine 4 (UE4), but that also means there is plenty more to learn and adapt to, and extra skills to pick up, which I'm here to help you with. I'll run through the power of UE5's new tools and features, and the benefits of utilising systems such as Nanite, Lumen and One File Per Actor. By the…

• Artist Q&A Your CG problems solved SOFTARE: BLENDER Paul Hatton replies Creating grass terrains is a matter of scattering objects and there are a range of ways to achieve this in Blender. They generally fall into these two categories: first of all, utilising particles in Blender, or alternatively by utilising add-ons. The first is probably the most longwinded of all the options, but it's helpful to take a look at it so we understand the general process of scattering objects across a terrain. With this underlying knowledge, you'll be better placed to try out alternative solutions in the future. Let's take a look at it now. The first step involves creating your terrain, followed by your clump of grass. The terrain can be a simple subdivided plane with a…

MECHANICAL ANIMALS This mechanical dog design was inspired by the German shepherd breed as the art director had requested. It comes with two faces. The Alpha looks tamed and elegant as opposed to the aggressive and wild appearance of the Betas. German shepherds have a docile aesthetic, which we loved, however these machines are absolutely terrifying for Augencore enemies, so we wanted to maintain that contrast. The voluminous presence of the German shepherd is predominantly given by its fur, which is quite complicated to translate to something mechanical. We thought we could get away with it by simply thinking of it as a hairless dog, and gained back the German shepherd look by borrowing the colour pattern. When designing machines, specifically ones with limbs, you must consider the movements. There…

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A… NAME Andy Elliott JOB TITLE Lead virtual studio developer STUDIO dock10 LOCATION Manchester ABOUT Andy brings years of experience in video game development to his role working at dock10, applying innovative technology to the production of popular television shows. WEB dock10.co.uk I cut my teeth in game development, so never in a million years did I think I'd be working in TV! Then I got the chance to join dock10, one of the UK's leading television facilities. They wanted someone creative with game engine knowledge to help set up virtual production sets. The only problem? Back then, the technology was so new that we couldn't even decide on a job title! Before long we'd settled on ‘virtual studio developer'. My mission was clear…

Reviews Unreal Engine plugins This amazing plugin from Adobe lets you make use of Substance materials directly inside Unreal Engine (UE). UE enables artists to create materials directly inside the engine, as you'd expect, but if you want to take your materials to a whole new level while utilising Adobe technology, then this Substance plugin will be perfect for you. One of the biggest benefits of using this plugin is the unbelievably huge amount of ready-to-go materials; over 10,000 to be specific. Most major digital content creation apps are devoting a lot of attention to providing tools that enable artists to create scenes with off-the-shelf models and materials. Substance for UE puts this type of functionality into the hands of artists. This enables them to focus more on the process…

• The Gallery CG art to inspire ARTIST Alireza Heidari SOFTWARE Unreal Engine 5 “It was almost four years ago that I started the Temple of Light project with my friend Rafid Zufar, inspired by a concept from Eddie Mendoza. I hold this project dear to my heart as it was my first in Unreal Engine and shaped my future path. Four years and many projects later, I came back to see how I could improve this piece with all the experience I've gained. I started by reworking the lighting, playing with background composition, and remastering my previous water and foliage shader. UE5's Lumen technology was also a big help to get what I wanted with the mood. When I compare the new renders with the old ones, I can…

• The Gallery CG art to inspire ARTIST Mikel Rekondo SOFTWARE ZBrush, Maya, Substance Painter, Arnold, Mari, Photoshop “I designed this creature for the last ArtStation challenge; Dragon's Rise: The Forgotten Realms. I was attracted to the idea of making a dragon with golden armour in the style of the Persian Empire. The idea behind the creature is that it belongs to a race of beasts that have been bred for years by the Dashiat Empire, until they found the perfect weapon in the Nuskhar, a kind of mix between a dragon and a bull. For its creation in 3D I combined different techniques, starting with ZBrush, texturing with Substance and Mari, and creating the final renders in Arnold. I'm a big fan of video game cinematics and my idea…

• The Gallery CG art to inspire “In this piece I adapted Airi Pan's Ambrosia series of concepts. For the render, I was inspired by Arcane and its beautiful artistic direction. I wanted to give the feeling of a great and majestuous city through the lighting system of Unreal Engine 5. For this shot, I wanted to show the scale of the city, its complexity and to make it feel a bit winding. The antique feeling of the original concept was what caught my attention. It could have been an ancient city, but when you really dig into the details, you see elements of fantasy out of place.“ • artstation.com/gc-sozzi ARTIST Ghjuvannu-Carlu Sozzi SOFTWARE Substance Painter, Unreal Engine 5, Blender…

Recent years have seen a full-on explosion of technology devoted to the creation of high-fidelity digital humans for industries including film, games and visualisation. This list of uses is by no means exhaustive as the world has started to see an upsurge in digital humans being used across the board, including on social media, as chatbot alternatives and in training videos. The increasing popularity of game engines has led to the creation of digital humans that can be used across these industries, rather than having to create something from scratch for each end purpose. The same digital humans can be rendered at ultra-high resolution for a film, display lifelike movement in a game context, and be interacted with on social media. Two companies appear to be emerging as front runners…

In the chase for animation perfection, it turned out that imperfections were the vital ingredient for the world of Pop Paper City, the new 3D children's series that has recently launched on Channel 5's Milkshake! The show, produced by Bournemouth-based animation studio LoveLove Films and distributed by Aardman Animations, is the first long-form children's series ever created using Cinema 4D and other Maxon One products. It comprises 52 episodes of 11 minutes each, which mix vibrant 3D animation with composited live-action footage. Beyond the launch on Milkshake!, the show will soon be followed by a global rollout, capturing children's imaginations all over the world. The eponymous Pop Paper City is the capital of a captivating paper world. The series follows a cast of unique paper friends - Plom, Phoebe, Mae-Mae,…

When creating Pop Paper City, we became the first long-form children's series made using Cinema 4D. In this tutorial, I'll take you through the CG process behind producing a series using Maxon's software. The show combines crafting with adventure, aiming to inspire creativity in children, and is currently airing as part of Channel 5's Milkshake! programmes. I joined the series back in August 2020 and have helped to oversee the CG department throughout the early stages of production, and into the delivery of the first episodes to be aired. Pop Paper City is set in the capital of a captivating paper world, and focuses on a group of unique friends named Plom, Phoebe, Mae-Mae, Hooper, Zip, and Fly as they go on adventures and find new ways to have fun…

• Technique focus Real-time alpha card-based fur MountainDog Studios Mounti created by Sathish Koththolla and Sanne van Dijk mountaindog-studios.com We are an art outsource and game development studio based in the Netherlands. REAL-TIME ALPHA CARD-BASED FUR Our dog was sculpted in ZBrush and textured in Substance Painter, before we made the fur strips using Maya XGen. Next, we arranged a 4k camera to the model and locked it. After that we rendered strips by applying the Arnold Hair Shader. We took the colour, ID, height, normal, spec and alpha passes using Arnold, and then gathered the textures we needed to arrange fur cards. We created the cards by using those fur textures and then set them out on the dog by hand, one by one.…

Artist Q&A SOFTWARE: NOMAD SCULPT | PROCREATE Your CG problems solved Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills Glen Southern replies Mobile sculpting is ubiquitous now, having risen from obscurity in recent years. Apps such as Nomad Sculpt and Forger App have made it possible for artists to sculpt, paint and export high-quality models and textures. But what about illustrators who want to add some 3D elements to their workflow? 2D drawing and painting packages have been around since the iPad was released and they have become a common sight on the tablets of concept artists, illustrators and even comic artists. There are many ways for illustrators to add 3D to their work including programs like Blender, ZBrush, Cinema 4D, and similar programs found on desktop PCs…

• Artist Q&A Your CG problems solved SOFTWARE: BLENDER WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3dworld-poppapercity Pietro Chiovaro replies In this tutorial I'm going to show you a simple way to create a stained glass window in Blender. The process is fully procedural and doesn't require any external resources. By following these steps, you can be finished in five minutes. Without further ado, let's jump in. One of the first things we have to do is set the render engine to Cycles. With that done, we can now create a material, give it a name and enable the Use Nodes option on the Shader panel. At this point we're good to go for the material setup. First of all, add a Voronoi Texture node and then duplicate it. Keep the default settings for…

You can create whole planets and vast landscapes with WorldScape. It's responsive and amazingly powerful with noise being driven by height maps as decals. At run-time the plugin makes use of 64 bits for amazing precision. My favourite thing about this plugin, which may come as a surprise, is less about the terrains that can be created and more about the lighting. I love how the whole atmosphere of the world changes based on the position of the sun. It updates in realtime as you rotate or transform the sun; moving it lower for a setting sun and higher for midday. Because the lighting is easily driven by the sun's position, artists can change the feel of their worlds with incredible ease. But let's get back to what Worldscape is…