Innehållsförteckning för December 2021 från 3D World

Isaac Asimov’s classic sci-fi epic has finally hit our screens with Apple’s Foundation series; this issue, we delve into the spectacular visual effects in our deep dive feature. We also take a look at the wonderful real-time work done by Blue Zoo, in the final instalment of our studio series. If you are looking to upskill then we have a host of tutorials for you, including an in-depth article on getting started with Adobe Substance, training on beginning your journey with virtual reality projects, how to layout a scene like a Pixar pro, using Luca as a case study, and we show you how to convert your Corona scenes for use in Epic’s Unreal Engine. Plus, our expert panel is here to answer your questions, and if you are looking…

ARTIST Ramees Muhammed SOFTWARE 3ds Max, Corona Renderer CGI specialist, industrial designer and student Ramees Muhammed spent around a week working on this impressive project. “It was about setting the scene,” he explains to 3D World, “creating the right look and the way the image is presented was the most enjoyable thing. It took some time for me to settle with the desired camera angle.” The dramatic mood and lighting proved a challenge for Muhammed, but he cites it as another fun part of the process. Muhammed’s creative process on The Aspire Tower was relatively straightforward. “I haven't used any plugins other than the render engine,” he adds. The model was created using 3ds Max’s primitive tools and basic modifiers like Lathe, Edge to Spline and Spline to Surface. “I…

ARTIST Nikolay Demencevich SOFTWARE ZBrush, Photoshop, Corona Renderer CG artist Nikolay Demencevich and his friends run SWAME Studio, where they create game models. Demencevich spent three days working on this model and a further day on rendering. Once references are gathered and the concept is developed, Demencevich begins to block out the model, working on the bigger shapes. “I believe that 70% of the success of your work is a silhouette, so I devote a lot of time to it.” If the model requires a pose then this comes early in Demencevich’s process. “The pose is part of the design. Many artists neglect this, but for me, the pose is more important than the filling of the character.” With a busy schedule, Demencevich opts not to take classic approaches to…

Anuar Figueroa anuarfigueroa.artstation.com Anuar Figueroa is a lighting and compositing artist working on animated feature films with 11 years of experience. THE PATH Softw ar e Unreal Engine 5, Quixel Megascans Year made 2021 SET DRESSING Based on Lorenzo Lanfranconi's art, I had to achieve the fine transition from high-scale coastal cliffs to very fine details of leaves and rocks flowing naturally together in this scene. There was no way to do this by hand. Using the foliage painting tools was the fastest way to select individual or groups of assets at the same time and paint as I wished over the landscape or over the Megascans assets. Breaking the vertical placement, size and slope angle was the most-used settings and then it was just a matter of paying attention…

01A VR HEADSET Clearly, to create in VR, a VR headset is a must. There are a wide range of choices to suit a comprehensive variety of budgets. There are also different types of VR headsets; some use Windows Mixed Reality, which allows the user to see through the headset, which is more like a vizor. Most headsets, however, are fully enclosed, and use cameras to see the world beyond. Headsets also vary by their visual acuity, which is a mixture of screen resolution, the field of view and frame rate. The technology of the screen can also vary, as can the quality and size of the controller. Headsets can either be standalone with the computing power within the headset itself; alternatively, most headsets are tethered to a PC either…

Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills 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. cirstyn.com Glen Southern Glen runs SouthernGFX, a small Cheshire-based studio specialising in character and creature design. He has been using and training ZBrush in the UK for over 15 years. youtube.com/c/SouthernGFX/videos Mike Griggs Mike Griggs is a digital content creator with over two decades of experience creating VFX and CGI for a wide range of clients. www.creativebloke.com Pietro Chiovaro Pietro is a freelance 3D artist and YouTuber. An expert in the creation of game assets and environments, he shares many of his creations on his channel. www.pietrochiovaro.com Antony Ward Be it game…

Adding custom attributes to our rigs may be a fundamental part of the rigging process, but it’s also an extremely useful one, and can give the animator an extra level of control as they bring their creations to life. The most basic attribute is one which will blend the character’s limbs between the IK (inverse kinematics) and FK (forward kinematic) controls, so they can plant the hands, or make walk and run cycles easier by fixing the feet in place. Having this attribute is useful, but if you’re animating with one of the FK controls for example, but then have to move back to the main arm control to switch to IK, it adds an extra level of complexity. Instead, wouldn’t it be easier if we could access the IK/FK…

Maverick Media straddles two industries – marketing and video games. For 25 years, the team has made awardwinning, multi-platform creative campaigns for the world’s most prestigious game publishers, developers and brands. As part of the Keywords Studios family – a services provider to the video games industry with more than 60+ facilities in 23 countries – Maverick works with everyone, from indie developers to AAA publishers across a global stage. Now, we meet Maverick Media’s creative director, David Williams. With over 15 years’ experience spanning film, TV and advertising, Williams has been integral to multi-platform campaigns for Apple, Virgin Media and Warner Bros to name a few. As a life-long gamer and internet native since the days of 14.4kbps dial-up, Williams is an advocate for the potential of brand integration…

ARTIST Obafunso Sylvester Dorgu SOFTWARE PureRef, ZBrush, xNormal, Substance Painter, Cycles, Photoshop 3D character artist and graphic design student Obafunso Sylvester Dorgu created this majestic character piece in a little under three weeks. The piece depicts Princess Ira Giselle, a fictional African princess with gold gifted powers alongside her companion Amina the Lion. The Princess’ face painting was inspired by Nigerian traditional face decorations and her crown, adorned with crystals, crosses and chains, incorporates several design elements from different cultures that portray unity. Dorgu stuck to tried and tested techniques throughout the creative process. “Sculpting and texturing are some of my favourite parts of 3D art,” he tells 3D World, “but for this piece, I would say creating the composition and lookdev were the parts I ended up enjoying the…

Start with something like Unreal Engine. There are alternatives like Unity if you want to go down that route, but we found that Unreal suits us better and we've invested the time in it. Also things like Blender with Eevee. Then, I know it's not possible for everyone, picking up a VR headset and getting a copy of something like Quill. Learning to use the VR tools, sculpting tools and being able to paint on meshes are all things that potentially could become standards. Just having experience in that is going to help anyone. With Unreal, just knowing how to set up a scene and basic blueprinting would be very valuable. We've actually found that most of the people, when we're looking for staff, don't know coding, be it C++,…

In order to have more control over the devastation caused by suicide bombers, Rodeo FX was recruited to produce a CG version. “Trantor is basically a city like Shanghai or Hong Kong in its architectural density, but that spreads over the full planet surface, then layered in depth of about 200 city levels of approximately the same urban density,” explains Arnaud Brisebois, VFX supervisor, Rodeo FX. “The task was to basically tear a giant gash in it. We would get a collection of building builds from DNEG. For each of those buildings, we generated five destruction variants, from barely wounded to completely collapsed. We generated shading attributes through FX’s destroyed areas which would be picked up in look development to give various areas of each building’s destruction its own age,…

Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills AUTHOR Mike Griggs Mike Griggs is a veteran creator with a passion for explaining the process of digital content creation to new artists. www.creativebloke.com What is Substance? To those new to digital content creation, Substance is the name given to a suite of tools that has specialised in creating materials for 3D artists. However, since the Substance tools are now part of the Adobe Creative Cloud family, Substance now means a digital content creation set. The Adobe Substance 3D Collection still has all of the industry-leading material creation components as before, combined with procedural modelling and scene-building tools. These additions mean that for many artists who use Adobe products, the world of 3D is now only one click…

AUTHOR Bell Rodrigo I have 20 years of experience, teaching professionals and students, working for studios such as Pixomondo, and freelancing for companies in several countries. artstation.com/rodrigodedeus For a long time, 3D professionals used offline renderers as the only working tool, but now with the advancements in real-time rendering, and the launch of LED used in the TV series The Mandalorian, there has been a huge explosion in the use of Unreal Engine by VFX professionals. Recently with the release of Unreal Engine 5, which has already dominated a good portion of the gaming market, the software promises to strongly embrace the big screen, creating photorealistic scenarios and in record time. In this tutorial, Pixomondo's senior 3D environment artist will demonsrate how to convert your traditional 3ds Max and Corona…

The Quest 2 is the best value for money My current personal VR headset is the Oculus Quest 2, which is a significant upgrade from the tethered Oculus Rift S and costs exactly the same. The Quest 2 is my first standalone headset. It has had a transformative effect on my work, making VR creation genuinely portable. It works as a standalone VR headset and with a PC Since it launched in late 2020, the Oculus Quest 2 has received a range of firmware upgrades, making it even more versatile. Recent upgrades have included improvements to wireless tethering to a PC, as well as increased frame rates for smoother motion up to 120hz. The catch Why isn’t everybody buying an Oculus Quest 2? Well, there is a huge catch. Oculus…

AUTHOR Enrico Lambiase Enrico started his career in 2001 and has been involved in a variety of roles from director, to motion designer, VFX artist and concept artist for feature films, digital and broadcast. enricolambiase.com For A Better Life is a personal project, directed by Enrico Lambiase, about immigration and the lifethreatening journey of migrants across the Mediterranean to pursue a better life. This specific scene represents a migrant struggling to breathe under a sea made of human skin. You can see the finished title sequence here: enricolambiase.com/portfolio/for_a_better_life. In this quick tutorial, we take a look at a technique used to create the spec title sequence for this project, featuring a CG head under a cloth. This tutorial requires some working knowledge, but the principles can also be applied to…

EXPERT TIP HOLLOWING I used to hollow things in ZBrush, but now almost all 3D print slicing software comes with an option to hollow out a model. You need to have a hollow model to save on resin if you are using a resin printer, so having a good clean model before you export it is essential. Focus on making the geometry as good as you can and leave the slicing software to calculate the hard stuff! ZBrush is one of the best programs to get your 3D models ready for 3D printing. There are a wide range of tools built in that make it so easy to prepare the model. For scaling there is a dedicated 3D Print Hub in the ZPlugin menu, but you can still sometimes be…

NAME Sam Lazarus JOB TITLE Creative Director STUDIO Rokoko LOCATION USA ABOUT A VFX generalist living in San Francisco, Sam Lazarus is creative director for motion capture company Rokoko. WEB thejabberwock.com Based in San Francisco, Sam Lazarus started his career at GoPro in 2011. After helping to grow the content team there into a global, 120+ person media powerhouse, he left to pursue a Masters in VFX Dynamics and started working in freelance mograph. While working freelance, Lazarus bought a Rokoko mocap suit and fell in love with motion capture. Now he works as the creative director and chief evangelist for Rokoko and creates content in a wide range of CG software packages. Here Lazarus breaks down a typical working day, and answers our questions about his career journey. 08:00am…

1. Be precise At the beginning of the whole process try to place your guidelines on the image as accurately as possible, so the 3D camera position and field of view will be the closest to the original camera. Using loosely placed guidelines will give you false results and will lead to more and more headaches as you build your scene. 2. Go for low-poly where you can My experience is that most objects you create in your scene don’t have to contain a high amount of polygons. Since the image used for mapping is usually full of details and the camera movement is limited, you can get away with low-poly objects in most cases. 3. Lighting matters If you just recreate a photo in 3D then you don’t really…

Missing an issue of 3D World? Fill the gaps in your collection today! ISSUE 278 NOVEMBER 2021 STYLISED SCENES • Work with toon shaders to produce an amazing stylised scene • Inside Blue Zoo: Part 4, delving into the studio’s lighting and comp workflows for their popular animated children’s shows • The secrets behind the VFX of Those Who Wish Me Dead • We test, rate and review a range of quality ultra-wide monitors • Downloads Free models and textures, files and more! ISSUE 277 OCTOBER 2021 LUCA • We explore the gorgeous underwater visuals of Pixar’s Luca • Inside Blue Zoo: Part 3, how to overcome the challenges of storytelling on a budget • Go behind the scenes of sci-fi drama Intergalactic • How to sculpt fan art in…

ARTIST Darío Riquelme Fernández SOFTWARE ZBrush, Maya, Polypaint, Marmoset Toolbag 4, Photoshop With this charming character, 3D artist Darío Riquelme Fernández tried to achieve a fast workflow by working almost entirely in ZBrush and Marmoset Toolbag. “I made a quick retopology for some areas using ZRemesher and UVs in Maya for texturing in Marmoset, but other parts were just decimated and sent to the engine,” he explains. Fernández then gave the model some colour using the Polypaint tool and used the texture feature in Marmoset Toolbag to add the final details. The image was rendered using raytracing in Marmoset Toolbag. When it came to adding details to the character, taking advantage of the Polypaint tool meant Fernández only had to work on the shaders, setting up the roughness in each…

ARTIST Mehdi Hadi SOFTWARE Cinema 4D, Octane Render, Topaz Studio, Photoshop, Lightroom VFX motion designer Mehdi Hadi came to this atmospheric project with a clear idea of what he wanted to achieve and assets ready to use. Hadi enjoyed the process as an opportunity to experiment and play with light, materials and moods. “At some level, I consider my work more of a game than a job. I can lose myself for hours in an image to get the result I find satisfying,” he says. “Having the chance to create images that can trigger strong emotions in an audience is extremely fascinating and rewarding for me.” The hand was created using a hand scan from 3D Scan Store, an asset platform that is particularly useful for human assets. The skulls…

SOFTWARE Maya, ZBrush, Mari, Photoshop, V-Ray YEAR CREATED 2020 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 Nathanaël Langlais LOCATION Canada I was introduced to 3D arts while trying to learn programming, I fell in love with it and now I can’t stop practising it. To challenge myself during my mentorship at the Think Tank Training Centre, I decided to make Medusa, as she is one of my favourite characters from Greek mythology. Jonah Lobe did a really nice concept of her which I took…

Early on in production, a Foundation art bible consisting of mood boards and concepts was provided to Important Looking Pirates. “It gave us a good understanding of the visual intentions of the show,” states Nicolas Hernandez, VFX supervisor, ILP. “We were fortunate to have the opportunity to design most of the shots we worked on and we tried to stay true to the identity of the show.” The primary task was showing Synnax both from outer space and the surface. “It was a pretty complex task and we decided to go for an extensive 3D setup instead of doing DMP or just a sky replacement.” “As the planet is solely made of water, we realised that the reflection from the environment would be important,” notes Hernandez. “Also, the landscape was…

AUTHOR Sunguk Chun Sunguk Chun worked as a previs artist at The Third Floor, Inc. in 2019, before moving to Pixar Animation Studios in 2020 as layout artist in the camera and staging department. linkedin.com/in/sung-uk-chunb5a79a30 As a layout artist at Pixar Animation Studios, Sunguk Chun uses technical scene assembly and creative cinematography skills to set up shots and sequences that align with the director’s vision. His layout work in the pipeline is an important role in setting up animators and lighting for success. In this quick step-by-step, he breaks down a shot in Pixar’s Luca, depicting the characters on a cycling race through the streets of fictional Italian town Portorosso. Sunguk’s task was to work with different departments to build a string of shots for the sequence ‘Full Monsty’. He…

AUTHOR Mike Griggs Mike Griggs is a veteran creator with a passion for explaining the process of digital content creation to new artists. www.creativebloke.com Over the past year, virtual reality headsets have arrived in a big way. This is down to two game-changing events. First of all, Oculus released the Quest 2, the latest version of their standalone VR headset, for less than the cost of a next-generation console. The second event was a global lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This meant that people needed a method of exploring the world, exercising and meeting in ways that did not involve leaving the house. But in addition to this, a VR headset has the potential to be one of the most potent tools in an artist’s arsenal. A wide range…

law3d.art A game art hobbyist living in Germany, Lucas Alexander Waschk currently works at GENERATIONDESIGN as a 3D artist and animator. INTE RSTELL AR MERCENARY MECH Softw ar e Marmoset Toolbag 4 Year made 2021 RTX RENDERING IN MARMOSET TOOLBAG When it comes to presenting my work, Marmoset Toolbag was an easy choice. With version 4 they added RTX support, and turning it on can really make a huge impact on your render. I like the way it looks closer to an offline rendering than real-time, but I still have all the benefits of real-time rendering. Keep it simple and work with fewer lights, otherwise, you might be overwhelmed pretty quickly. For example, I only used a HDRI map (Atelier from Substance is my favourite) and two lights. The rest…

Sven Mrden svenmrdjen.artstation.com Sven Mrden is an artist based in Zagreb, Croatia. He is currently working as a freelance 3D environment artist in the games industry. MODEL TRAIN Soft ware Blender, Subs tance Painter, Photoshop Year made 2021 TEXTURING This train is part of my series of short cinematics set in a miniature world. I based the design on various vintage toy model trains and the main challenge with this project was to capture that miniature look. During the texturing, the most important thing was to make sure the material scale was correct. All the details such as damage, chipped paint, fingerprints and dust particles had to be larger than they would be on a real, normal-sized vehicle. I created my own set of stencils, but ended up painting the…

Can you tell us about your journey through the industry so far? I started as an editor – I love the process of building up an edit, matching cuts with music and slowly weaving the threads of a story into a powerful beginning, middle and end. I was lucky enough to start at GoPro when it was small. I got to travel the world, manage a team of talented artists and work on high-profile videos. I eventually started gravitating towards VFX, particularly dynamic simulation, so I left GoPro and started working as a freelance VFX artist while I pursued a Masters in Visual Effects with a focus on Dynamics. While freelancing, I bought a Rokoko Smartsuit for my work, and it just so happened that they needed an in-house media/VFX…

We explore the latest software and hardware tools to see if they are worth your time or money AUTHOR PROFILE Rob Redman 3D World’s Rob Redman is a veteran 3D artist and creative director of a boutique studio, working across film, games, TV and print. He was a 3D artist on the Webbywinning Plot Device. pariahstudios.co.uk + PROS Excellent levels of detail and finish Small footprint Low running costs - CONS Small build volume Resin isn’t as cheap as filament CRAFTSMAN RESIN It’s worth noting that for the best levels of surface detail and no layer lines the craftsman resin should be used, and it is worth the slight bump in cost. Details are crisp and there is almost no clean-up. Anycubic’s reputation has grown to make it one of…