Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2024 i 3D World

 The Gallery CG art to inspire “This Ninja Turtles diorama was one of the most complicated projects of my life, because I had to create four characters in less than a month. It was a big challenge, but with some effort and focus I managed to finish everything on time. Even though this project was difficult, I was able to improve my skills in both composition and anatomy. I'm planning to create more of this type of work in the future.” • artstation.com/serghaz “I MANAGED TO IMPROVE MY SKILLS IN COMPOSITION AND ANATOMY” ARTIST Sergio Khazov SOFTWARE ZBrush…

“We needed a warehouse full of props in order to populate the village sets,” Jarvis explains. “The village sets were the biggest challenge. Creating the tools, all of the objects for in and around a flourishing village, that took up a lot of time. Our set dressers got cracking right away manufacturing like crazy. Dean Eilertson [property master] did loads of research and he had buyers in Japan. Things came in by the container load. It was a real mixture of things built for the show and modified. Sometimes we could buy things that were obviously 19th-century because it was hard buying things from the 17th century, so a lot of adaptation went on.”…

Technique focus Weathered effects TEXTURE ONLY FULL SHADER + TEXTURE WEATHERED EFFECTS Here I'm experimenting with a wear and tear shader in Blender, using edge detection and ambient occlusion overlays. To get a nice, cohesive weathered look, it's important to have the wear in the texture map be the same colour as the edge detection wear in the Shader node. Here it's a sort of yellow. To get the sunburnt look on the metal I experimented with an ambient occlusion overlay and colour mixing nodes. I suggest you play around with different ways of colouring the ambient occlusion effect, as well as all the different blend modes. Think of it in the same way you'd think about the layers in Photoshop, and you'll realise just how many playful options you have…

Using a particle system can be computationally expensive, especially when incorporated into a full 3D scene. Sometimes that's unavoidable and render times just have to take a hit, but in many situations you can get away with doing it in post. This will depend on factors like objects in the scene or camera placement, but if you can get away with it, turning to something like Fusion or After Effects can be a real time-saver. I covered the process for adding atmospheric rainfall last issue and this time I'm going to look at falling snow, which, to really sell the effect, requires a little more input. Whereas rain is quite simple in look, snow has more detail, both in the flakes you use as particles and in the motion itself.…

Mike Griggs replies Unreal Engine offers so many creative opportunities for 3D artists that it can be almost bewildering for them to find a route into Unreal that suits them. It can do so many things, such as character creation and animation with the incredible MetaHuman creator, or easy scene layout with its vast array of assets available in the marketplace. For many artists who are used to 3D content creation applications such as Cinema 4D and Maya, Unreal presents a new way of working that takes time to learn. However, the potential speed of the real-time rendering options Unreal offers makes it a tempting program for 3D artists, especially those who specialise in product and motion graphics rendering, which is a core area for Cinema 4D users. Handily, Maxon…

01 SET RENDERER TO CYCLES In the Render rollout of the Properties panel, specify your render engine as Cycles. If you try and find the feature when using EEVEE, you'll be sorely disappointed because the options don't even appear in the interface. Personally I think the options should still appear, but with a note to change the renderer to Cycles. Otherwise it could be initially confusing for beginners who can't find the necessary settings. 02 CREATE YOUR COLLECTIONS As Light and Shadow Linking operate using collections, we must set these up first. Collections are created by right-clicking in the Outliner and selecting New Collection, with individual objects then able to be dragged into them. Using collections is a good way of keeping your scene organised as well. It's also possible to create…

The Hub EVENT INSIGHT The Hub Vertex 2024 News and views from around the international CG community We had a blast at Vertex 2024, our live digital art event held at London's Business Design Centre, organised with our friends from ImagineFX and Creative Bloq. It was wonderful to absorb the artistic goodness, speaking to a roster of talented speakers, going hands-on with new and exciting products fromleading exhibitors like Wacom and Xencelabs, and witnessing the imaginative and hilarious sketch wall designs crafted by attendees. We hope you had a great time too if you spent the day with us! The day ran smoothly with talks across three stages, plus live demonstrations from the best in the business and life drawing sessions offering inspiration for visitors to draw from. Did we mention the…

MODELS AND TEXTURES EVERY MONTH Download these models and textures to use in your own projects FREE ASSET DOWNLOADS Download a set of fantastic objects and build your own asset library with these fantasy/medieval blacksmith-themed models from in our monthly model and texture giveaway. MASTER HOUDINI'S FEATHER TOOLS Follow Mario Leone's in-depth training on using the brand new feather system in Houdini 20. CREATE A SNOWFALL EFFECT Learn how to quickly and easily add falling snow to your scenes using After Effects. NEXT MONTH Explore the next simian evolution in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. ON SALE 18TH JUNE Subscribe today: www.bit.ly/3dworld-subs…

“ALTHOUGH IT TOOK ME FOUR MONTHS TO COMPLETE THIS PIECE, I ENJOYED THE JOURNEY IMMENSELY” BASED ON THE CONCEPT BY IGGU (artstation.com/artwork/d0k0zA) “When I saw this concept designed by iGgu, I fell for it straight away and set out to remake it in 3D. Although it took me four months to complete this project, I enjoyed the journey immensely. I'm so grateful to the concept's original artist for creating this piece. The cartoon style is my favourite and it excites me to do something I love! I started in ZBrush for the blockout before moving on to ZModeler, and developed a final version several times with DynaMesh and ZRemesher. I didn't use too much sculpting as I felt that the model would look clean, more stylised, and remain in my…

“In my last project, Memories, I refer to the famous circus trick where a chained performer needs to escape a water tank in a single breath. Along with happy thoughts, there's always something hiding in our memories that limits us, cuts off our oxygen, and pulls us down. In order to loosen the tight chains and get out, the performer exhales deeply, thereby consciously getting rid of what is obviously supposed to keep them alive. This is a risk, but only by diving headlong into this essence are thoughts born that can show you the path to liberation. In all my artistic endeavours, I aim to delve into profound spiritual concepts. I strive to convey that 3D art is primarily a means of self-expression, where technical proficiency and software knowledge…

In Episode 104, John Blackthorne instructs Lord Yoshii Toranaga's army on how to use the cannons taken from the Erasmus. “The training fields are the same fields that double as Toranaga's army encampment field in Episode 105, and there's a huge earthquake,” reveals Cliett. “In this earthquake the mountain collapses and a massive landslide comes down and covers the army, killing 75 percent of them. That's about 80,000 people. These mountains had to be a big part of the story. The location that we actually shot at was a flat area here in British Columbia. We have numerous mountains here, but where we found the best place to shoot was this spot out in Langley; it's a suburb in Vancouver and is flat, and the mountains are nowhere near the…

J.M. Blay is a director and designer, and founder of Blay Studio. With over 25 years of experience working in the creative industry, he has worked for films, television, advertising and video games. blay.studio WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3dworld-shogun The idea for this project stemmed from my love of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn novels and my desire to visually realise the world I was reading about. Choosing to invest time into this personal project rather than taking on any additional client work was a conscious decision, driven by my passion for fantasy literature and visual storytelling. My creative process mirrored my usual approach working with clients, involving idea generation, script-storyboard development, style frame creation, animatics and shot finalisation. However, the freedom allowed me to push my boundaries and experiment creatively more than…

01 THE CINEMA 4D FILE For this tutorial, a Cinema 4D scene has been created of a car model. It doesn't have anything within the scene other than the model itself, although the Maxon Cineware importer can import the complete scene data, including animation. The file does need to be saved as a Cineware version. The Maxon Cineware plugin for Unreal is available for free at www.maxon.net/en/downloads/unreal. 02 GET ATLUX AND CHECK UNREAL PLUGIN Atlux is available as a plugin at atlux.ai and has its own installer. However, both Atlux and Cineware for Unreal need to be enabled in the Unreal plugin menu (Edit>Plugins), and then the Unreal project needs to be restarted. Once Unreal has restarted, there should be an Atlux icon by the Platforms dropdown. Press on it to…

We explore the latest software and hardware tools to see if they are worth your time or money PRICE Free COMPANY DreamWorks Animation WEBSITE openmoonray.org AUTHOR PROFILE Paul Hatton After graduating with a first-class computer science degree, Paul Hatton has spent nearly two decades working within the 3D visualisation industry. bit.ly/3vuv0AT PROS Features for VFX workflows Open source XPU rendering CONS Designed for bigger studios Steep learning curve LAYERED MATERIALS MoonRay provides a full set of layered materials including metals, skin, fabric and hair that offers a fantastic starting point for representing common material types. There's also a multipurpose shader that can be customised by users. MoonRay has been on quite a journey these past few years. What originally began as an in-house renderer at DreamWorks Animation has now gone…

Reviews MotionBuilder 2025 SOFTWARE REVIEW PRICE £1,725/$2,145 annual COMPANY Autodesk WEBSITE autodesk.co.uk/motionbuilder Recent years have seen creative heavyweight Autodesk focus its development efforts on a few products, including 3ds Max and Maya, to the detriment of its other applications such as MotionBuilder, its 3D character animation toolset, and Mudbox. Neither have received any significant upgrades in the past few updates, and I was half expecting that to be the same again for MotionBuilder. I was wrong. Version 2025, thanks almost entirely to its adoption of Pixar's Universal Scene Description (USD), has made it into the realms of a fairly decent update. USD is a piece of opensource software that enables 3D scenes to be robustly and scalably interchanged. These scenes can contain a massive number of assets, as evidenced in…

The Gallery CG art to inspire “I've always found old, mysterious and atmospheric locations in films, books and games inspirational, so I often explore such worlds in my personal art. It's a fun way to practise new skills. The goal was to rely less on paintovers and make most of the work in 3D so the scene could be used for cinematic shots. I started with pencil sketches, which I find the most liberating way to explore ideas. I made the ruins in Medium by Adobe, as I had a specific look in my mind for the damage on them, and it's a joy to sculpt such elements in VR; it's fast and intuitive, and you can really feel the scale there. The rest of the work was done in…

The Gallery CG art to inspire ARTIST Andrey Dobraeb SOFTWARE ZBrush, Maya, Marmoset Toolbag, RizomUV, Substance 3D Painter “The style of this piece is reminiscent of my favourite dark fantasy games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring. I'd like to work on similar games in the future, so I decided to practise this style. I also wanted to try something unusual, like moss on the character. For the sculpt I used ZBrush, and since my goal at the moment is visual effects, I created the character mesh with decimation. I used RizomUV to create UV maps and Substance 3D Painter for the textures and moss effect that I wanted.” • artstation.com/dobraeb…

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 ARTIST Fred Lopes LOCATION Canada A Brazilian modeller and texture artist, I've dreamed of working in film since watching Star Wars and Jurassic Park as a child. • www.therookies.co/u/fredlopes Storm is one of my favourite characters from the X-Men. For this project, I decided to draw inspiration from the incredible design of the Brazilian artist Lucas Werneck – check him out at @lukaswerneck on Instagram! It was also a lot of fun to be able to add some…

“We've got the cliffside where Kashigi Yabushige runs out of rope and lands in the water,” says special effects supervisor Cameron Waldbauer. “That was definitely one of the more complicated things. Even building something big enough and getting the camera close enough to film was interesting, as we had to get Technocranes in places to be able to get the camera in close while not getting hit by water, and making sure all the angles were going to be covered while not wrecking the equipment we were using. Even crew access to that set was difficult because the way they wanted to build it was an enclosed inlet, and there wasn't a way for a crew to walk in and out of there without pulling the set apart every time.…

Feature Masters of the Air Over five decades as a director and producer, the legendary Steven Spielberg has brought landmark World War II stories to movies and TV. In doing so, millions have encountered an important era of our human history. Spielberg's TV series Band of Brothers and The Pacific have been landmark events, and in early 2024 on Apple TV+, the latest Spielberg-produced World War II drama, Masters of the Air, launched. Amid the series’ battles for freedom in the skies, DNEG was in the midst of the creativity as the main VFX partner. In total, the studio delivered over 1,600 shots and more than 200 assets across 32 sequences that featured in eight of the nine episodes of the series. DNEG's work on Masters of the Air spanned…

BLENDER | PHOTOSHOP | 3DCOAT The Pipeline Combine skills in your concept art Gaëlle is a concept artist specialising in digital environments who uses CG, digital painting and photobashing. Her work includes Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. bit.ly/4ah4rhl This image, which I've titled Storm Peaks, is one that I believe reflects my overall workflow pretty well, because it has combined 2D, CGI and brainstorming elements. When I start, the first step is the brief, either from a client or from myself. Here I wanted a mountain environment with dramatic lighting and Gothic ruins. While working on this piece, I wanted it to be a homage to the art of legendary The Lord of the Rings artist John Howe, who captures Middle-earth so well. While I admire a lot…

01 BASIC TOOLS The core of a polygon modelling app is the ability to select and manipulate the individual components. Using the buttons at the top of the screen in Valence, you can switch between faces, edges and points. Then with the buttons down the left-hand side, you can scale, rotate and move the selected items as needed. This is the basic way to form a shape rather than sculpting. 02 SUBDIVISION If you're working with a model and have extruded faces to make complex parts that have ended up looking blocky, you can use subdivision to round the model off. There's a red button on the right side of the interface that allows you to activate subdivision and then see the rounded result. It can be turned on and off to…

Paul Hatton replies As of Blender 4.0, it's possible to dictate which objects in a scene are affected by which lights. Considering Blender is now 30 years old, it's mind-boggling to think this feature has only just made its way in. Unsurprisingly it's one of the most requested features, and it's great that Blender has been able to make it happen. Blender's solution is something called Light Linking. It's currently only available with the Cycles renderer, so any die-hard EEVEE users will have to wait a little longer for this feature implementation, I'm afraid. Even though it took a while, Blender has done a great job of creating an easy and intuitive workflow. It all centres around collections, where objects in the scene are added into specific collections, and then…