Table of contents for June 2019 in 3D World

Tim Burton helms the latest Disney liveaction movie but there is still plenty of visual effects goodness. We take you behind the scenes to get the lowdown on the making of a modern classic. Elsewhere we look at Missing Link and bring you a host of training and reviews. rob.redman@futurenet.com 5 for £5 in our spring sale! When you sign up to a print subscription – turn to page 49.…

ARTIST Arturo Ramírez (Limkuk) SOFTWARE ZBrush, Maya, Substance Painter, Arnold Renderer, XGen, Photoshop Arturo Ramírez is a freelance creature and character artist, working across films, cinematics and games. This particular image took him around three weeks to complete, working sporadically. He explains: “Some days I had a lot of work to do and couldn’t do anything with the model, and some days I’d spend one or two hours on it.” To create Jafar’s cloth garments Arturo utilised ZBrush’s Surface Noise feature. “It’s so powerful and helps a lot with high-detail texturing. For the skin I used Texturing. xyz’s multi-channel face maps, which can really help you to obtain micro details.” Throughout his pipeline Arturo most enjoyed the look development and likeness sculpting processes. “I really like creating the concept of…

ARTIST Massimo Righi SOFTWARE Maya, Arnold, Shave and a Haircut, Mudbox, Photoshop Freelance creature artist Massimo Righi worked with greyscale textures to create this majestic image. “I love B&W photography and this time I wanted to try a different approach when I created the image,” he explains. “Instead of desaturating the output in post, I directly worked with greyscale textures, so I was able to play with the lighting and shaders accordingly and get the result as a straightforward render without any post-work.” The textures were originally created in colour, meaning Massimo had to desaturate them. “I used a skydome (IBL) for the global lighting and added a couple of area lights to get a more dramatic effect; it’s been fun testing the lights on the greyscale textures and fur.…

Working freelance means that you are your own boss, which, as Sofia Gariazzo explains, comes with its own unique advantages: “You get to choose your projects, your schedule, and work from home, or wherever you want. As long as the project is done in time how you do it is your business. Sick days, vacations, party days, you get to choose. Getting up late on a Monday after a busy weekend is particularly amazing.” However, there are also a number of disadvantages to be considered before choosing the freelance life. “You’re pretty lonely,” Gariazzo admits. “Even though I chat with co-workers during the day it’s not the same as being in a studio.” There’s also the numerous technical challenges, like “if you have a hardware problem, you have to fix…

1. Non-simulated workflows: Simulations are an excellent tool for creating beautiful FX, but nonsimulated techniques are often more art-directable and quicker to set up. On Life, I hand-animated the bending and rolling motion of sections of the ISS, adding a lot of weight and realism. There was also a shot in Venom where Riot punches through and peels open the roof of an ambulance. I cut the metal pieces up with Boolean fractures and used a combination of Houdini’s soft transforms and bend deformers to peel open the metal sheets. 2. Yes… even for fluids: I’ve even used non-simulated techniques for fluid effects! Houdini’s SOP solver is a great tool for this. To animate blood trails dripping down the villain’s face in A Cure For Wellness, I traced/accumulated an attribute…

AUTHOR Mike Batchelor Mike Batchelor is the product designer/manager and design director for INSYDIUM LTD. He has worked in the broadcast motion design industry for over 15 years, so has a good understanding of what designers require to assist them in the production of their work. INSYDIUM LTD was founded in 2013 from the forge of its flagship product X-Particles. www.insydium.ltd The field of rendering has come a long way in the last ten years, with the introduction of GPU renderers using Biased Path Tracers making final renders more realistic than ever. And with the new interactive preview render GUIs making iterating through setups more user-friendly, artists are now finding a new level of rendering abilities at their fingertips. In this tutorial we will use Cycles 4D, a GPU- and…

Pietro Chiovaro replies In order to show you my baking process I created the ‘Coronation Stone of Motecuhzoma II’. First, I uploaded the reference image of the stone as the Background Image (pressing the ‘N’ key) and selected the image, this way I followed the geometry of the model in the 3D view. Then I switched the view of the 3D window from Perspective to Orthographic and selected the right view. I went to edit mode and scaled the cube in proportion with the reference. I subdivided the cube, modelled the four corners of the stone and extruded the edges of the mesh by pressing the ‘E’ key. At this point, I created a new material using the reference image and unwrapped the model. Then I duplicated the mesh and…

PRICE From $10 per month | DEVELOPER ftrack | WEBSITE www.ftrack.com AUTHOR PROFILE Mike Griggs 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 FEATURES Online artist management Easily and securely send assets for client review Standalone tool – does not need full ftrack licence to work LESS IS MORE When first loaded, the ftrack Review UI can seem lacking in tools, that is because ftrack Review works best when filled with content. The ftrack Review UI is simple to learn and well thought out. Having the ‘+’ button in the same place, whether it is for a new user or project, makes working in ftrack Review seamless. With excellent and consistent browser support (we…

Michael Tschernjajew Michael works for New Communication, a leading creative agency in Germany. This issue he shows you how to use C4D to create military machines on page 50. new-communication.de Oscar Juarez Oscar is an archviz specialist creating in many apps. He’s a regular on our expert Q&A panel, which you’ll find starting on page 72. www.fibrha.com Lorna Burrows Lorna Burrows, Head of Content at Immersive Studios, advises on how to plan out branching narratives for VR and 360 projects on page 91. www.weareimmersive.co.uk Glen Southern Glen Southern is an industry veteran and regular contributor to these pages. In this issue he shares his VR sculpting process on page 42. www.southerngfx.com Trevor Hogg Trevor is a regular contributor to 3D World, and in this issue on page 84 he investigates…

Walt Disney’s Dumbo captured the hearts and minds of an adoring public as a 2D-animated feature in the 1940s. Now the story of a flying baby elephant with trademark giant ears has been reimagined by director Tim Burton, and it’s thanks to the efforts of MPC that the character can be at the centre of the new live-action film. However, crafting the photoreal elephant did not come easily. MPC had to analyse real creatures for all their specific behaviours, while also ensuring it delivered a cute and endearing Dumbo that audiences could relate to. 3D World, with MPC visual effects supervisor Patrick Ledda, explores the many parts to crafting Dumbo’s digital performance. MAKING AN ADORABLE ELEPHANT First on the agenda for MPC was what kind of ‘shape’ to give to…

One of the biggest challenges we faced was due to the nature of the simulation itself, it is difficult to predict the very exact timing and movement of the results. The artist had to spend lots of time tweaking the timing and communicating back and forth with the animation department, who were dealing with the movement of the body parts. The final result was achieved with one main explosion and a few smaller ones. The main explosion took up 5TB of disk space and three days to simulate including the post-processes. However, it was five times faster after culling the simulation’s bounding box based off the camera. A CVEX shader was used to add more detail so that the main explosion didn’t need to be as high-res. To aid with…

AUTHOR Glen Southern Glen runs SouthernGFX, a small Cheshire-based studio specialising in character and creature design. He’s been using and training ZBrush in the UK for over 18 years and is a Wacom Ambassador for the UK and Ireland. www.southerngfx.co.uk Did you ever want to make dragons and robots when you were a kid? Did you watch movies like Tron, and more recently Ready Player One, and want to be in a virtual world where you can actually do that sort of stuff? Well, welcome to the future, and this tutorial and series of videos are going to get you off to a good start. Using an innovative piece of software called Gravity Sketch on an Oculus Rift VR rig we will take a look at how to design and…

AUTHOR Mike Griggs 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 At first glance, learning how to effectively collaborate with other artists and clients may not seem as important to a CG artist as creating an amazing animation or a fantastic character. The truth is, however, that creativity thrives from collaboration. Artists can clear up misunderstandings about direction, and clients can make sure that their money is being well spent if an artist can keep them involved with systems that are easy to manage and intuitive to operate for anyone, even if they may not be familiar with the technical software. While many large VFX studios use complex, but efficient, project management systems, these…

Maya Jermy Maya is a 3D artist and animator based in the UK. She started her career in 2012 remaking and animating characters for Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee - New ‘n’ Tasty. mayajermy.artstation.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 Maya Jermy replies Tileable textures are useful when creating anything with some sort of pattern. It can be used for a building (roof tiles, brick wall, wood etc) or even patterns on clothes. Many artists use Photoshop for these tasks and they have very good reason…

When the team at Notch turned their attention to VR, they soon realised that it bears certain similarities to the live environment. “With VR the importance is to be able to design in the environment, and it’s the same with live events,” says founder Matt Swoboda. “The importance with live events is designing while looking at the end result. I think the same is true in VR, you need to work iteratively with what you’ll really see.” Notch seemed like a perfect match for the needs of the VR community. Swoboda continues: “It seemed like a lot of the tools being used to make content were making it a slow process.” Notch allows artists to build and edit in the VR environment, without coding, and preview their 360 renders. Users…

PRICE £1,134 / $1,295 | COMPANY Blackmagic Design | WEBSITE www.blackmagicdesign.com AUTHOR PROFILE Rob Redman 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 FEATURES Multiple resolution and codec choices Latest firmware includes BRAW Takes standard Canon LP-E6 batteries Record to SSD, SD or CFast 2.0 cards 5-inch touchscreen IT’S ALL IN THE CAGE Choose a cage that accommodates a top handle, has multiple threaded mounting holes for gear, and allows access to the ports. My preference is the SmallRig cage and NATO handle. I want to start this review by mentioning that this assumes the camera has the latest firmware installed, which deals with some of…

ARTIST Jason Huang SOFTWARE Maya, Substance Painter, V-Ray 4.0, Nuke “It took me about two to three weeks using after-work hours,” says automotive visualisation artist Jason Huang, when asked how long it took him to create this intricate design. Due to the high number of UDIM tiles on the asset, Jason had to employ a notable technique to bring it to life: “I had to separate the character into multiple Substance Painter scenes based on material assignment to efficiently interact and texture it with all the procedural masks Substance Painter provides,” he explains. “Also, taking advantage of the fully re-written IPR in V-Ray Next for Maya – to use the debug shading mode and responsive feedback – really helps with the lookdev and lighting process.” Working with hard-surface models and…

The shot sees Dumbo rise up out of a clump of straw and hay, his large ears covering his eyes, and bits of straw and hay clinging to his skin and falling down to the ground. “For that shot,” says MPC visual effects supervisor Patrick Ledda, “we created a great setup. I have to say our effects team really did an amazing job.” Tim Burton did not necessarily want Dumbo to be dirty or filthy, so MPC proposed that layers of hay and straw could add to the character, and add to the cute and adorable factor. To then simulate the pieces on and around him, the team had to imagine they were, notes Ledda, “almost like thousands of sticks, all intertwined, which in principle is great, but it’s quite…

One of the fundamental drives of Digic is to continually improve its next-generation 3D and computer animation technology in order to be able to create high-level visual content. It was this that led them to create a dedicated company, Digic Services, which provides highend motion capture and 3D photoscan services. As well as their own motion-capture studio they have a dedicated team for photogrammetry-based scanning, and a custom-built, professional, ultra-portable photoscan system of 112 DSLR cameras (112 x 24 mpx) for fullbody scanning and 56 DSLR cameras (56 x 24 mpx) for face scanning. Digic Pictures uses these 3D scan services for its own award-winning animated films, and on projects including Mars, Robin Hood and the Oscarwinning Blade Runner 2049. They have also launched a special department called Digic Studios.…

1. Re-thinking animation: The gross animation for some of the symbiotes was unusual – we had done effects tests first and then had to reverseengineer our animation rigs so that they could control the effects. Animation would deliver a cage, basically, that you could wrap the effects into. It isn't like how you would animate a skeleton and then put muscles on top of it. It was kind of the opposite. You'd animate this cage and then use that to pull all these fluid sims around. 2. Face-wrapping: When the symbiote wraps around Eddie’s face, first there was this black sweat that would happen, and that would come out and then there'd be a thicker goo. That was a FLIP sim in Houdini that would add the effect of 3D…

“If we had to start from scratch with all new people every time, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do here,” notes Arianne Sutner, producer and Head of Production at Laika. “A lot of the people we are keeping because we’re doing what they love to do and we’re doing it steadily. There’s a home for them rather than chasing these projects all across the world. Sometimes I look for a disrupter type because it’s scary and enthralling to have somebody come with fresh eyes and be able to try some things. “In the case of Missing Link we have a version of Around The World In 80 Days,” remarks Sutner. “Every location is a wildly different part of the world. When you start to hire more and…

Notch has been embraced by a vibrant and active community of users. “Real time is a relatively new thing for content,” adds Matt Swoboda. “All these people, alongside us, are figuring out what it means.” The team at Notch were determined to create a small community event for their users to gather, share their projects, and swap insights. “Our users, particularly across the live space, are working on a lot of the high-profile projects that you’ll see today,” Swoboda says. “It expanded considerably and became a conference with two talk tracks and 160 attendees. It was a really successful event.” The two-day celebration saw talks from a host of high-profile Notch users, including the likes of content creators Meptik and J.T. Rooney of Silent Partners Studio, which has led projects…

PRICE Studio: $2,299 / Indie: $999 | DEVELOPER Isotropix | WEBSITE www.isotropix.com AUTHOR PROFILE Cirstyn Bech-Yagher Cirstyn has moved from Radeon’s ProRender to the RizomUV team, where she does product management as well as modelling, UV mapping and tutorial writing. www.twitter.com/cirstyn FEATURES New surface constraint lets you clone scene items to (animated) geometry New Volume shader and geometric Volume display options AOV-based render diagnostic tools for speeding up and tweaking outputs Adaptive AA provides faster renders with less noise New Alembic layering gets rid of previously huge caches WATERMARK-FREE PLE Freelancers or other non-students can learn and showcase their Clarisse skills via the Public Learning Edition (PLE). You can generate watermark-free renders in the PLE version. You get three such renders per 24 hours at 2,560 x 1,440 as long…

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-247-dumbo 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…