Innehållsförteckning för June 2021 från 3D World

NAME Hugo Guerra JOB TITLE Director and VFX supervisor STUDIO Rebellion WEB hugo-guerra.com Can you tell us how you got started using Nuke and how you’ve used it over your career? I’ve been compositing since 1999. I started in Portugal with After Effects and became a motion graphics artist working on commercials and short films. In 2006 I moved to Sweden and started learning Shake and Fusion because After Effects can only do so much. I first heard of Nuke in 2005 in a Cinefex article about the work of Digital Domain. It looked so futuristic but at the time it was only available to Digital Domain. I was so happy when it became available to the industry in 2007. I’ve now been using Nuke in production for 14 years.…

What if the viewer could be the protagonist in the narrative? Baobab Studios has been attempting to answer that question both creatively and technically since being founded by CEO Maureen Fan, CCO Eric Darnell and CTO Larry Cutler in 2015. Each project from Invasion! to Baba Yaga has expanded the understanding of virtual reality as an artform. “The power of VR is immersion, so it got down to us thinking about how we can tell stories that make the viewer matter,” states Darnell, who previously made a name for himself at DreamWorks Animation by co-directing Antz and the Madagascar franchise. “Not just where they sit there and watch a story unfold, or like a game where they have to go through a series of puzzles or challenges.” Simple gestures such…

At the root of any troublefree asset and its future uses, engine imports included, lies good and clean geometry. This means getting rid of superfluous polygons – like caps on cylinders that won’t be seen or loose leftovers from asset cleanup – as well as support edges and clean loops, and as few tris and ngons as possible. Even though a game engine will triangulate your mesh, the triangulation will always be better based on clean and regular quads. It will also make UV mapping significantly faster and easier. Once you have clean geometry it’s time to start unwrapping, and at this point many people just dive in and start cutting, welding, and unwrapping. Don’t do this. Make it a habit to consider your Texel Density (TD) first, especially if…

Brett Ineson has had a lifelong passion for animation and cameras. His career started at the age of 17 when he worked as a photographer’s assistant, eventually going to film school where he was introduced to the exciting world of animation while working on the world’s first 3D animated series, ReBoot. Animatrik Film Design has earned its stripes over the years, working with many major iconic studios on extraordinary blockbuster movies such as Ready Player One, Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Rogue One, as well as renowned AAA game titles such as Apex Legends, Gears 5 and Star Wars: Squadrons. 08:00am I am currently reading The 5 Am Club so I’m a little embarrassed to say I get up closer to 8 am at the moment. I quickly…

It makes you feel old to know that artists are starting out who are younger than V-Ray. Since its humble beginnings in Sofia, Bulgaria in the late nineties, Chaos Group’s V-Ray has become a multi-application industry staple. Taking a look at the 5.1.1 update since V-Ray 5 shipped last summer, it was and still is a release to be excited about; it seems they have taken several pages out of the Corona Renderer book and have focused the 5.x release series on creativity and ease of work more than anything else. The 5.0 release started with a new look and feel to the frame buffer window (VFB). It included the release’s key element for many: the new LightMix. This lets you relight a scene in the VFB by adding the…

“HAVING THE POSSIBILITY TO SEE INSTANT FEEDBACK OF LIGHTS AND MATERIALS IS REALLY SOMETHING REMARKABLE” ARTIST Damian Bilinski SOFTWARE Unreal Engine, 3ds Max Senior automotive artist Damian Bilinski was able to make this image in just three days, thanks to the instant feedback of Unreal Engine’s ray tracing features. “I really enjoyed the usage of Unreal Engine itself, and the instant feedback and freedom in creativity it gave me,” Bilinski tells 3D World. “I also love cars so it is a pleasure to work on supercars like Lamborghini.” Bilinski used Unreal Engine as a rendering software to create this high-quality and high-resolution image. “Every studio and artist is looking into it right now, trying to adopt Unreal Engine to their pipeline. Having the possibility to see instant feedback of lights…

“I’VE ALWAYS BEEN FASCINATED BY THE IDEA OF BEING ABLE TO CREATE INTERACTIVE AND IMMERSIVE WORLDS” ARTIST Jasmin Habezai-Fekri SOFTWARE Blender, Unreal Engine 4, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, ZBrush This stylised environment by Jasmin Habezai-Fekri is based on original concept art by Jourdan Tuffan. “I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of being able to create interactive and immersive worlds which gives people the opportunity to travel to different places virtually,” adds Habezai-Fekri. The project took a total of two months to complete. Habezai-Fekri utilised animation blueprints for several parts of the environment. “One of the most interesting parts I used it for was to animate assets such as the infuser at the entrance of the sanctuary. Here, the material simulates movement inside the material without the need to animate…

VIKING – UE4 REALTIME CHARACTER Software Unreal Engine, Maya, ZBr ush, S ubst ance Painter, Photoshop Year made 2021 Lin Zhang artstation.com/zerozhang Lin Zhang works for Tencent and creates personal projects, like this amazing Viking render, in his free time. REAL-TIME CHARACTER CREATION I have been very interested in Unreal Engine for a long time, so I tried to make a CG piece with Unreal Engine 4 and chose a Viking girl as the subject, because I think the Viking hairstyle is very cool. I made the model in Maya and ZBrush and used XYZ Texture to create the pore details and skin texture. The hair was done with XGen and took me a lot of time due to the complicated Viking hairstyle. Production in Unreal Engine was very challenging,…

FOLLOW THE VIDEO http://bit.ly/3Dworld-nuke One of my favourite realtime strategy space games is FTL: Faster Than Light. While not having the most up-to-date graphics, the gameplay has stood the test of time and still draws in players every year. The fanbase is loyal and I wanted to pay homage to the look and feel of the game by making some ships that reflect the style and simplicity. FTL was developed by Subset Games in 2012 and grew in popularity over the last nine years. It is infinitely playable and has the feel of an older game with bitmap graphics and top-down deck plans, in which the player looks after a single craft. Since I was a kid I’ve been drawing and modelling spaceships and I always used to draw the…

iPad sculpting has actually been around a lot longer than people realise. It’s grown in popularity in the last couple of years, but the first entry into the marketplace was the Forger app and that’s been in development for 11 years now. A newcomer entered the market last year, called Nomad Sculpt, and that has since gained a huge amount of popularity with anyone owning an iPad and an Apple Pencil. Nomad has the added advantage of actually being available on Android devices. Forger was acquired by Maxon (Cinema 4D) in February 2021, which shows that the big players are at least looking at the possibility of mobile sculpting. Both apps are very capable sculpting programs with a wide range of tools and brushes that you would see in ZBrush…

Richard Costin co-founded the Soho-based Rumble VFX with Tim Zaccheo, Max Wright and Joe Cork in autumn 2019, and is a senior 3D supervisor in addition to corunning the company. In their first year of Rumble VFX, the studio has worked on some amazing projects including season 4 of the Golden Globe-winning The Crown, the James Bond Super Bowl trailer as well as the BBC’s A Christmas Carol and Netflix’s Alien Worlds. At present, the team are finishing up 100 shots for the latest series of Epix’s Pennyworth. We interviewed Costin to find out more about Rumble VFX’s work, his personal career journey, and day-to-day life as a senior 3D supervisor. Do you have a background in 3D design or are you self taught? After some time attempting to self…

Gamers were given a welcome surprise at The Game Awards 2020 when a gripping cinematic announced the long-awaited return of Perfect Dark, the beloved firstperson shooter franchise. Legendary VFX studio Digital Domain was tasked with creating the cinematic that would introduce gamers to the rebooted version of Perfect Dark, an eco sci-fi secret agent thriller set in a near-future world and developed by The Initiative. The team at Digital Domain utilised a plethora of innovative techniques to realise their vision, testing out drones and studying climate data from Nasa, ESA and more. 3D World caught up with VFX supervisor Piotr Karwas and executive producer Nicole Fina to go behind the scenes of the exciting cinematic. How did this project come about? Nicole Fina (NF): Digital Domain was approached by Buddha Jones,…

ARTIST Thomas Rousvoal SOFTWARE Maya, ZBrush, Arnold, Maya, Substance Painter, Mari, Yeti, Nuke, Photoshop Character artist Thomas Rousvoal created this stylish fan art of Robert De Niro as part of his ‘Back in 90s’ series. An important aspect in the design was to give De Niro “his particular personality and legendary facial expression, balancing the reality and respecting my cartoon stylisations,” Rousvoal explains. Rousvoal paid close attention to applying noise and grain to the image, evoking the atmosphere of Martin Scorsese’s Casino. “I like to give life to my works, add defects to them. The human eye is full of imperfection, photo and cinema lenses imitate our vision. I try to get as close as possible to this,” Rousvoal explains. “I have my own anamorphic lens camera setup.” Rousvoal has…

ARTIST Lim Joe Yi LOCATION Malaysia I am an enthusiastic individual with a goal to work as an interior designer, to fully utilise my skills and knowledge while gaining real-world experience. As the COVID-19 Movement Control Order in Malaysia started, I wasn’t able to find an intern job after graduating in March 2020. This project came about as a 3D rendering practice during my days of staying at home, while the concept behind the Dark Luxury residential design was to design my dream house for this quarantine. • www.behance.net/limjoeyi 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…

NAME Ian Vicknair JOB TITLE Matte painter and junior art director WEB artstation.com/ianvicknairs www.ianv.co A multinational artist specialising in environments and matte painting across VFX, advertisement and games, Ian Vicknair lists Nuke among his primary software. “As a matte painter, Nuke is a must for any type of set extension, skydome, background replacement, patchwork, or CGI enhancement,” he tells 3D World. “Nuke helps elevate any work to a higher standard of visual development and refinement through colour corrections, composition and deep compositing.” It’s in his personal projects that Vicknair gets to really experiment with Nuke’s ability to push colour values and enhance visuals. “I get so much more freedom,” he explains, “it’s not like I’m doing the most epic stuff in Nuke, but that subtle added stuff gives it a…

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Originality is something we could argue about all day – perhaps every creative idea is inspired by something similar before it, but the execution of those ideas can, in my view, be original. For example, look at how the Subtle Knife cut through different realities in His Dark Materials with such a smooth, clean realism, or when the Inception trailer showed entire cities folding over onto themselves as if we were merely turning a page in a book. When you think that these creations started with a short line in a script saying something like “the knife cuts an opening to another reality”, it shows the ingenuity of the artist and VFX supervisor to be able to take that line and turn it into something awe-inspiring. Watching other people’s mastery…

One of the great things about Cinema 4D from Maxon is that it is one of the most accessible 3D applications to learn. The ease of use means that the Cinema 4D user base is hugely diverse in its skillset. This disparity in skills is catered for by a wide range of plugins that can make complex tasks in Cinema 4D almost a one-click solution. Chief among these solutions is lighting. With a wide range of solutions from bespoke HDRs to drop-in light setups, these tools can make a busy artist’s life easier. There are, however, some downsides with any plugin solution. First of all, there is a cost. Some plugins can cost as much as a complete 3D application, or require an ongoing subscription. Secondly, a quick-fix solution can…

That’s a nice question that would need more pages to be exhaustive, but let’s take a look at the main steps of the production of 3D environments. The very first step is the analysis of the concepts and references of the scene, where you can visualise the 3D environment before going to the software. After that, I usually do some simple sketches to figure out the main shapes for the environment. Next there’s the blockout, where using basic shapes and volumes we define the spaces, size, location and proportions of the elements of the scene. After that, we can replace the volumes with simplified meshes and start the modelling process of the assets. So at this point it’s important to take a look at the workflow for the creation of…

INDUSTRY INSIGHT Part 2 in this Procedural Cities series will explore the key design and control mechanisms for procedural architecture. Art direction is crucial in any design work and important to prepare well, especially when parts of the content creation process are technical and supposed to be automated. Control is key. If you can control it, do so! The better you’re prepped for pitfalls, the more time you free up to invest in actual design. 1. CONSIDER THE ARCHITECTURAL SCOPE Our last article showed that combining different building archetypes into one procedural system is challenging and needs careful planning – or multiple subsystems. So naturally, when planning a project, it is crucial that you precisely define the entire artistic scope of what you would like to build. The more archetypes…