Innehållsförteckning för January 2020 från 3D World

YEAR CREATED 2018 SOFTWARE ZBrush, Substance Painter, Autodesk Maya This project was for a brief from Rewind in collaboration with the MA Games Art at the University of Hertfordshire. My goal was to create a ‘human’ cyborg. Online we see many sci-fi projects, and while they are always cool to look at, I get annoyed that there are so many ‘lifeless’ projects. In my project I researched giving cyborgs emotions. ARTIST Marleen Vijgen After starting out as a game designer, I decided that I preferred creating characters. Joining the Game Art MA at the University of Hertfordshire, I stepped into the games industry. LOCATION Cambridge, United Kingdom www.marleenvijgen.com THE ROOKIES The Rookies is a platform to help digital artists get discovered without having to compete with professionals for attention. You’ll…

We are perhaps used to the presence of lush characters and extensive environments in CG animated feature films. But that’s not always been the case in animated television series, where multiple episodes, tight deadlines and smaller budgets often drive the final look and feel of the show. Enter DreamWorks’ 3Below:Tales Of Arcadia, the second instalment of Guillermo del Toro’s Tales Of Arcadia trilogy (Trollhunters and the upcoming Wizards series are part of the franchise). For season 2 of 3Below, the animation production was ramped up to new levels to tell the story of a group of aliens coming into contact with some unlikely earthly friends. 3D World asked two of the creatives behind season 2 how they managed such high production quality. “WE HAD GUILLERMO COME IN AND REVIEW ANIMATICS…

What happens when a visual effects studio needs to generate natural phenomena – things like fire, smoke, water and ice? Or when it has to destroy something into a million different pieces? Those kinds of things are the domain of a studio’s FX department. At Milk VFX, that work is largely handled in SideFX’s Houdini by a group of skilled artists. Here, as part of 3D World’s deep dive into Milk’s process, particularly on the series Good Omens, the FX team share their insights into how they approach FX simulations. ALL THE FIRE In Good Omens – which is the Amazon Prime/BBC miniseries based on the 1990 novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman – Milk VFX’s largest simulation challenge was fire, seen in several incarnations. There was the ‘flaming’…

In the grand tradition of storytelling, in the realms of myth and fairytale, the act of being able to take flight has long possessed a resonance and allure, taking characters and audiences beyond the limits of reality and into something unearthly. This image is central to the Maleficent movie sensibility. In the first film, Maleficent (2014), a handful of moments saw its title character vault skyward, where she would soar and swoop, rise and fall, with imagery that was invested with a beauty, lyricism and kinetic energy. In the sequel, Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil, directed by Joachim Ronning, MPC had the opportunity to build on the work that they created for the original movie. “WE BASED MALEFICENT’S WINGS OFF OF EAGLES AND THEIR POWER”Seng Lau, animation supervisor Speaking with MPC’s…

FOLLOW THE VIDEO www.bit.ly/3DW-255 AUTHOR Rusty Hazelden Rusty Hazelden is a visual effects artist, writer, and YouTuber based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He makes videos on YouTube about movie visual effects techniques. YouTube.com/RustyHazelden PART ¼ For over 30 years Pixar's RenderMan has been used in the film industry to render movies featuring groundbreaking animation and visual effects. In this four-part tutorial series, we're going to discover how to harness the power of RenderMan by taking an animated shot from start to finish, and learn all of the techniques required to create a photorealistic animation using Pixar's RenderMan for Maya. Using RenderMan to create amazing photorealistic renders has never been easier. In this series of step-by-step tutorials we're going to begin with untextured objects in Maya, and learn how to create…

AUTHOR Haimeng Cao Haimeng Cao is a concept artist who works in the film and game industry. artstation.com/haimengcao In this tutorial we will go over the entire process of creating a highly detailed sci-fi cityscape by using Photoshop, 3ds Max and Clarisse iFX. First of all, our focus will be to use realistic photo references and refine a unique visual shape language from sketching. Then, we can start to make models based on concept sketches in 3ds Max. From this point, we need to make dozens of different objects in the scene for Clarisse iFX to create highly detailed effects with variations. After that, we import models into Clarisse iFX to organise the composition and render the final image. Photoshop will then be used to add extra details and an…

“THERE IS ALWAYS A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF DUST IN ANY ENVIRONMENT, SO DON’T FORGET TO SIMULATE THAT” LIGHTING AND COMPOSITION Elements like temperature, angles and shadows can all help to make the lighting in our images attractive. Look at interior shots by some of the best photographers, as this will help you achieve a fantastic sense of mood. You should also have a very clear perspective of what you are visualising. There is always a certain amount of dust in any environment which will affect the lighting, so don’t forget to simulate that in your image. Mohsen Hashemi renderexpert.info Mohsen Hashemi is a freelance architectural visualiser and illustrator, as well as a lover of art. New York Loft 2 019 Soft ware Corona Renderer, 3ds Max, Photoshop…

In October 2019, Google announced that they would be discontinuing their Google Daydream VR headset. Coupled with Samsung declaring their latest phones will not be compatible with their Gear VR headset, it’s safe to say that mobile phone VR – if not completely dead – is on its way out. Quite right too, says Lorna Burrows, Head of Content at Immersive Studios. It’s time VR is given the space it needs to be done right. A HELP AND A HINDRANCE In the early days of VR, when Google Cardboards were making everyone queasy and the Oculus DK2 had a month’s-long lead time, the onset of proper mobile phone VR was a revelation. And it was great – VR was easily accessible, and it offered pretty much the only practical alternative…

Although PC hardware isn’t particularly complicated, it’s easy to overlook how the mountain of acronyms, code words and limitless combinations of different products could be seriously daunting for designers who aren’t technical experts. Prospective buyers have to dedicate time into researching whether or not a computer that catches their eye is any good with the software they use, and as we all know not every laptop is great at 3D. Until now, the design industry has lacked a single simple branding, intended to let buyers know that a laptop has a specification that guarantees great performance in creative software. That’s why Nvidia has stepped in with RTX Studio, a labelling and set of base specifications that guarantees great performance and an all-round experience when it comes to animation, graphic design,…

FEATURES 15-inch 4K OLED touchsensitive 100% DCI-P3 colour-accurate display Intel Core i7-9750H (six cores) Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q 16GB RAM 512GB SSD Since its earliest beginnings, Razer has consistently focused on products with high-end features and performance, perhaps slanted more towards gaming than creative work, but that has changed more recently with its Razer Blade Advanced Model. “YOU PAY SLIGHTLY MORE FOR THE RAZER BRAND, BUT THAT ALSO MEANS BETTER MATERIALS, AND QUIETER OPERATION” With a solid black unibody aluminium case, the latest Razer Blade feels solid, even though it’s still thin. Both the keyboard and touchpad are noticeably roomy and aside from two speakers to the sides of the keyboard, it’s also a stark, highly minimalist design, which we consider superior to the gaming-oriented flashy LED design employed…

Follow the link to download your free files www.bit.ly/3DW-255 FOLLOW THE VIDEO www.bit.ly/3DW-255 VIDEO DISCOVER TRYPOGEN Follow along with Mike Griggs’ video on Trypogen, a plugin for Cinema 4D that enables the easy creation of complex abstract shapes. VIDEO + ASSETS RENDER LIKE PIXAR PART 1 All the project files you need to follow along with Part 1 of Rusty Hazelden’s RenderMan tutorial. VIDEOS Q&A Oscar Juárez and Pietro Chiovaro share their processes for their Q&A topics this issue. ISSUE 256 NEXT MONTH Weta takeover special! The editor gets exclusive access ON SALE 3RD JANUARY Subscribe today: www.bit.ly/3dworld-subs…

Ian Failes Ian is a regular contributor to 3D World, and in this issue he takes you behind the scenes on the Netflix show 3Below. www.beforesandafters.com Brad Thorne Our in-house staff writer Brad writes our lead features and keeps up to date with the latest industry trends. creativebloq.com/tag/3d James Clarke Journalist and writer James Clarke returns this month with a behind-the-scenes look at Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil. bit.ly/33md0pE WEBSITE 3dworld.creativebloq.com FACEBOOK www.facebook.com/3dworldmagazine INSTAGRAM @3DWorldMag TWITTER @3DWorldMag ENJOY SIX MONTHS OF 3D WORLD FOR JUST £24.99! turn to page 28…

A 3D WORLD FEATURE THE EARTH WILL NEVER FORGET! PRESENTED IN FULL CMYK COLOUR FOR THE FIRST TIME ARTISTS FROM RODEO FX AND MR X GIVE 3D WORLD THE LOWDOWN ON THE ROLE OF VFX IN HORROR CINEMA The horror genre is often celebrated for its use of practical effects, combining ghoulish makeup and grotesque prosthetics with sound and editing to elicit fear in an uneasy audience. Digital effects, however, are as important as any other element in creating scary stories on-screen, and studios like Rodeo FX and Mr. X have become masters of the art. 3D World has gathered top artists from these studios to discuss the role VFX plays in horror, the challenges it presents and their latest projects. Thomas Montminy-Brodeur oversaw Rodeo FX’s work on the killer…

1. CREATE THE SOURCE Before you jump into your fire simulation inside Houdini, it is important to consider what you are setting on fire. If you are working with an animated object you should check that the geometry interpolates correctly on sub-frames. Also, consider creating lower-resolution proxies for a more scrubbable timeline, or build closed-surface objects for better volume collisions. Next, spend time using noise patterns to craft interesting detail and break up a fuel (and temperature) source for fire, or density source for smoke sims. Experiment with the frequency of noise and speed of movement through the source in order to avoid over-saturation of areas that can create blobby or explosive results. 2. INITIAL DYNAMICS SETUP Bring your source volumes and collision objects into DOPs. The combustion model can…

AUTHOR Jingtian Li Jingtian Li is a fulltime professor teaching game development. He holds an MFA in Computer Art, and has worked on various animation and mobile game projects. www.tiansart.com In this tutorial, we will demonstrate a modular workflow that utilises Substance Designer as the tool to create trim sheets. The primary goal is to show how to use Substance Designer to create clean and detailed trim sheets that can help speed up the process, as well as how to properly set up modular pieces, stack UVs, and more. The artwork was created with a minimal number of models, polycount and textures. The software used in this tutorial are Maya, ZBrush, Substance Designer, Substance Painter and Unreal Engine 4; we will cover important and unique parts to the workflow 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 If you are new to computer graphics, 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 month we take a look at Cinema 4D. Having been on the market for nearly 30 years, Cinema 4D from Maxon has developed into one of the most popular digital content creation applications. Cinema 4D has a reputation for being the ‘easy’ 3D software. While it definitely has one of the lowest…

Billy Williams, Norwich FOLLOW THE VIDEO www.bit.ly/3DW-255 EXPERT TIP HIDE AND UNHIDE Once the rule of thirds is set in Photoshop you can hide it by pressing Ctrl+H, using the same shortcut to activate it again. Oscar Juárez replies Composition is one of the most important elements to consider when it comes to archviz. We might have an amazing project with so many great ideas, but then our final resulting render just doesn’t look so great – this can be due to several reasons, but one of the most common is an unappealing composition. In this tutorial, I will show you how to set the rule of thirds as a default in 3ds Max and also in Photoshop, so that when working in 3D we can have the grid visible…

I count myself lucky. I’ve had such a long and varied career and I feel like I’m just getting started. At my core I will always be a game developer, but becoming freelance allowed me to spread my wings and experience more areas of digital art and animation. In doing so it also offered me the opportunity to write three books and a wealth of tutorials, something I continue to do today. Come to think of it, I guess it’s true when they say that you make your own luck. I’m always pushing myself to improve and learn new techniques and it’s this driving force that’s probably helped me to be as successful as I have been, that and a supportive family. Do you have a background in 3D design…

Finding the perfect work-life balance remains an issue for many women working in the animation and visual effects industries. Negotiating the difficulties of balancing work with the demands of personal lives and the need for rest, relaxation and recharging is something many women can struggle with. Despite women working as much as men, women are often still expected to perform the brunt of emotional labour and housework at home, which means that even when they leave work they come home to more work of a different kind. Add to that the often demanding nature of working in animation and visual effects and the fact that smartphones allow us to take our work with us 24/7, and it’s no wonder we sometimes find ourselves exhausted, struggling to manage it all, spending…

Riot Games’ multiplayer action-strategy game League Of Legends is one of the most popular and beloved games in the world, drawing a daily peak of around eight million concurrent players, even a decade after its release. The game has also spawned a fervent esports community, which holds regional leagues all over the world and pulled in some 205 million viewers for its 2018 World Championship, held in South Korea. It was at this enormous event that Riot Games introduced the world to K/DA, a fictional K-pop group comprised of in-game champions with bold new character skins and their own song, Pop/Stars. In addition to an animated music video, Riot Games used augmented reality (AR) to depict the champions performing the song “THE AR CHARACTER REMAINED PERFECTLY IN PLACE ON THE…

In the era before bluescreen and greenscreen photography, actors were often transplanted into exotic locations courtesy of rear screen projection. The setup for this was relatively simple: the actor stood in front of a screen, and behind it was a projector projecting previously filmed images that the actor would pretend to be part of. It was an effects methodology that often worked well because it existed in a controlled environment where sound, lighting and timing could be managed. Front projection also became another incarnation. The projection techniques meant that a final ‘in-camera’ VFX shot could be captured with no further effects work required. Generally, rear and front projection fell out of favour once chromakey techniques (i.e. bluescreen and greenscreen extraction and compositing) were mastered. But in recent years, the techniques…

Acer’s Concept series of laptops and desktops is the firm’s pitch at products aimed at designers and creative work, adopting RTX Studio for the oddly named ConceptD 7. It’s a 15.6-inch laptop with a 4K screen that has lovely thin bezels around the side. Inside it’s fitted with an Intel Core i7-9750H, GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q with 32GB of memory and a 1TB PCIe SSD. It’s a great laptop specification indeed and actually identical to that of the other two RTX Studio laptops on test. Breaking it down, the Intel Core i7-9750H is a six-core processor, running at 2.6GHz with a 4.5GHz Turbo Frequency. The RTX 2080 Max-Q in the ConceptD has 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM and a 735 MHz clock speed, a big step down from the 1,515 MHz…

“IT WAS A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO HOW I USUALLY MODEL, BUT SNAPSHOT 3D IS A VERY POWERFUL FEATURE” BETA TEST ARTIST Franco Carlesimo SOFTWARE ZBrush, 3ds Max, V-Ray, After Effects 3D modeller Franco Carlesimo created this image during the beta stage of ZBrush 2019. “It took me around one month to do it from start to finish,” he tells 3D World. Carlesimo took full advantage of ZBrush’s new Snapshot 3D feature, which allows users to extrude 3D objects from a 2D image. “It was hard because it’s a different approach to how I usually model,” he adds, “but it was fun to test out and is a very powerful feature.” The ZRemesher 3.0 feature was employed in order to achieve the image’s detailed topology; according to Carlesimo, this feature works…

1 CONCEPT For this scene, a showdown with the evil General Morando, artists first composed a painterly image. Concept artwork like this informs other artists down the CG production pipeline how the final composition, colour and general feel of the sequence should be. 2 LAYOUT This is the stage where early CG models with no real textures or lighting can be placed – and moved – in the scene to match the concept frames. Again, it gives artists a chance to test composition and ensure that the right assets have been built for the sequence. 3 ANIMATION With wireframe or grey-shaded rigged models, animators bring the performances of the characters and vehicles to life, also with the aid of moving cameras. Often animators will film themselves with live action videos…

AUTHOR Ana Parmigiani I’m a 3D artist currently living in Argentina. I work as a freelancer for advertising, games and films. What I enjoy the most is to model stylised artworks. artstation.com/anaparmigiani In this tutorial we will be going through the process for translating a stylised concept to 3D using Maya, and then exporting to ZBrush to add further details. Since I wanted to improve my skills in stylised work, I picked this tea house to provide me with a challenge (original concept by Jourdan Tuffan). At first, when we are just starting, translating a concept to 3D can be a little overwhelming. After choosing the concept work with, we need to select the best tools for the job that will be able to simplify our work process and enable…

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 FOLLOW THE VIDEO www.bit.ly/3DW-255 Creating abstract shapes in CGI can be a tricky process, especially for new artists. It requires creating something that is both artistic and geometrically stable enough to be used for renders and animation. Trypogen by Merk Vilson is an inexpensive plugin for Cinema 4D. It allows an artist to take an existing mesh, whether procedural or a polygon-based object, and transform it into a beautiful abstract shape with a drag and drop. Trypogen works with versions R20 and below, and a R21 version is coming. There are a wide range of parameters in Trypogen that can allow artists to…

Antony Ward replies Everybody has their own approach to rigging, but one thing I like to do when building controls is to also make sure each one has its own offset group. This is simply a group that sits above the control, so the animator never sees it or directly uses it, but it is an essential part of the rig. So what are they and why are they so useful? When it comes to building control icons, which are often custom NURBS curves that are used to drive a joint-based rig, it’s important for them to try and match the orientation of the target joint. If they don’t, what will happen is when you use a constraint to lock the movement of the joint to the control, there will…

FEATURES 15-inch OLED 4K 100% DCI-P3 colour-accurate display Intel Core i7-9750H (six cores) Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q 32GB RAM 1TB SSD The Aero 15X is another RTX Studio laptop featuring the tried-and-tested combination of the six-core Intel Core i7-9750H and GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card. As with the other laptops on test, it’s a nicely thin and light design, with 32GB of memory in our review model and a 1TB PCIE 3.0 SSD. This internal specification (broken down in detail in the previous review) is more than capable of both high-end 3D design tasks as well as games, which could explain why we’ve seen it in multiple laptops. The stand-out feature of the 2019 version of this laptop is the advanced 4K HDR AMOLED display. OLED display technology presents…

We feel a little spoiled by modern computing hardware. 3D laptops were hideous, heavy things only a few years ago, as clunky as they were chunky, with battery life that was measured in minutes, not hours. But RTX Studio is an example of how those days are over, a showcase of how modern laptops can offer strong 3D performance without a weighty build. Noise levels are generally low and battery life in all the laptops we tested is good enough to carry on for roughly four to five hours, although this will drop off with 3D-intensive tasks. As a brand that is focused exclusively on high-end performance, none of the current line-up of (approximately 16) RTX Studio laptops that are currently on the market will disappoint in 3D application performance,…

I MANUALLY PLACED ALL THE PORES, WRINKLES, BUMPS AND OTHER SURFACE IMPERFECTIONS BY HAND SURFACE DETAILING In order to accomplish a high level of detail on the face for this image, I actually decided to do it by hand. By manually placing all the pores, wrinkles, bumps and other surface imperfections, I could not only decide where I wanted them to appear, but also adjust their size and intensity as desired. I created a couple of custom alphas in ZBrush and also made use of some stock ones. Patience is key but there is no need to go crazy, symmetry is always there to help you. This sort of stylised approach gives the artist more freedom to present a solid and convincing work, and most importantly in my opinion, it’s…