Innehållsförteckning för June 2023 från 3D World

Feature The Voice in the Hollow There's a rich, longstanding connection between animation and fable, and that dynamic is vital to the sensibility of the animated short film The Voice in the Hollow from Miguel Ortega and Tran Ma. Both have notable backgrounds in visual effects work, with credits that include work on Transformers, Thor, Alice in Wonderland and Avatar to name just a few. The Voice in the Hollow marks a major moment in their filmmaking evolution. For Ortega, the short film is a fable and, in keeping with that tradition, he and Ma found themselves embarking on a creative journey into unknown territory where discoveries and creative revelations were made. Guillermo del Toro has recently reminded audiences that animation can be more than only a medium for the family…

Technique focus Modular scenes MAGIC MOORLAND Software Unreal Engine 5, Maya, Adobe Substance suite, ZBrush, SpeedTree Year made 2023 MODULAR SCENES I created this environment with the goal of improving my skills in set dressing and worldbuilding, while allowing my creativity to flow freely. After blocking out the scene, I created a wooden plank kit with modularity in mind. This allowed me to build all the wooden assets using just that one kit. Combining it with the foliage, the tiling textures, and some mesh cards for the clouds, I gradually assembled everything in Unreal Engine. Final touch-ups like wind and dandelion particles put life into the scene. Spending a significant amount of time planning the modular kit and ensuring consistent quality of details can offer opportunities to generate new assets,…

he first Avatar film, released in December 2009, has since become the highest-grossing box office film of all time. Its closest competitor, Avengers: Endgame, came close to surpassing it, but has so far fallen short. For years, the film world has eagerly awaited the sequel to Avatar, keen to find out if it would ever be able to surpass its predecessor. At time of writing, after a handful of months in the cinemas, Avatar: The Way of Water has risen to third in the box office rankings; a position that falls short of the first film, but is still an admirable feat. To think that James Cameron has managed to create so many films with such appeal is nothing short of incredible. But it's not just Cameron who deserves the…

The Pipeline Create realistic ocean waves HOUDINI | NUKE In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the sweeping aerial shots of the Royal Sea Leopard against the Atlantic Ocean set the stage for the dramatic final battle on the water, but most audiences never realised these shots were entirely CGI. Shooting a scene like this on the water would be complicated, expensive and impossible to control. In the time it takes to set up a camera, the sun could begin to set or disappear behind clouds, making continuity next to impossible. Directors would rather be able to say just how choppy the waves are or what time of day the scene is. Enter the 3D FX artist. Because oceans in 3D and in real life vary quite a bit, there is no…

SOFTWARE: CINEMA 4D | ULTIMAKER CURA Artist Q&A Your CG problems solved Mike Griggs replies One of the most productive ways to use a 3D printer is to just make stuff. A 3D printer can make tool holders, tools, prototypes, and figures and busts, which may have been the artist's intention when purchasing a 3D printer. FDM printers especially have a massive range of filaments of various qualities, including food-based, which means the possibilities of what can be created is practically limitless. Creating handy little tools, such as a bespoke drawing tablet pen holder, can be a fantastic way to personalise an artist's desk and enhance their workflow. However, when it comes to software and design, there is a feeling that an artist needs to learn a CAD program such as…

The Hub The Last of Us TV INSIGHT News and views from around the international CG community Apocalyptic and postapocalyptic stories have long had a hold on audiences and The Last of Us, originally a video game now adapted for television, takes viewers into an intensely realised end-of-the-world adventure story. In bringing the game to TV audiences, and ensuring that images of collapse and breakdown carried a plausible aesthetic, DNEG's wealth of experience saw the studio engage with the challenge of tapping into the source material, thinking cinematically as they produced 135 shots across the series. Our conversation with DNEG began with a valuable big-picture observation from VFX supervisor Stephen James. “The foundation for everything was looking back at the video game,” he said of the aesthetic the studio developed and…

PRICE £7/$9 monthly/£60/$70 annual COMPANY Light Engine WEBSITE lighttracer.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. + PROS Cheaper than many other renderers Focused development Enhanced animation features – CONS Lacks features artists would expect New features require tweaking for optimal implementation IMPROVED CONTEXT MENU A number of improvements have also been made across the board. One area this is noticeable is with the Object context menu. I'm a big fan of context menus because they make available the exact tools and options appropriate for that specific point in time. Light Tracer's menu now includes a ‘Look here’ option, which adjusts the camera's orientation so the selected objects are centralised in view.…

“IF YOU DON'T HAVE A GOOD BASE, YOUR CHARACTER WILL LOOK WEIRD” “This piece is one I created during a CGMA course. The original concept is from Meng Fan, whose work is awesome! I started this project painting some basic forms over the concept within Photoshop. I find that this helps me a lot so I can match the proportions more accurately. After that, I started the blocking in ZBrush. For me, this stage is the most important. If you don't have a good base, your character will look weird. The hardest challenge was the hair, where I spent some time finding good forms for every section.” • artstation.com/aitor-ls ARTIST Aitor Ligorred Sasal SOFTWARE ZBrush, Substance 3D Painter, Maya, Marmoset Tootbag…

The Gallery CG art to inspire (artstation.com/konstantin) “For my personal projects I choose unusual characters with a story. When working with the concept, I try to keep the form and the mood, but at the same time try to bring in meaningful details for the character's development. I love deep, old and grim stories, which is why I chose great art by Konstantin Kostadinov for inspiration. Here, I tried to recreate the light and sense of a still image or movie that I'd like to see myself. I think the fur coat is the second main character here, so I paid special attention to creating realistic fur. This was my first experience using XGen. I always avoid using Photoshop for retouching in my final renders, so in addition to a…

Feature Tangram 3DS Why did we stop going to the Moon? This question tugs at the mind of many who stare into the night sky and are reminded of the immensity of the universe around us. Since the last lunar walks in the 1970s, humanity has established the International Space Station and landed robots on the surface of Mars, but a space programme committed to our return to the Moon has stalled, largely because of a lack of three interconnected elements: budget, political will, and public interest. Some dedicated people never lost sight of their lunar ambitions. And now with budgets expanding, thanks in part to private-sector space companies, political will opening, and public interest being revitalised, those who never gave up on their dreams of lunar exploration are finding…

The Pipeline BLENDER INKSCAPE Design and render a film using Eevee Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills Emiliano is an Italian 3D artist and concept designer with over 20 years of experience for clients including Fox Networks Group Italy, Turner and Discovery Media. bit.ly/40BfUUa Blender's own render engine, Eevee, enables us to experiment with and handle new types of projects in an innovative way. I used it to make a short film named Spectral to great effect. In this breakdown, we'll analyse the basic steps for making a short film, from the initial phase right the way up to the post-production. 01 THE CONCEPT Spectral shows a future reality where humankind as we know it doesn't exist anymore. What remains is the eponymous spectre, outclassed by an…

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 Paul Hatton After graduating with a first-class computer science degree, Paul Hatton has spent nearly two decades working within the 3D visualisation industry. 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 GET IN TOUCH EMAIL YOUR QUESTIONS TO rob.redman@futurenet.com Glen Southern replies ZBrush is the de facto 3D sculpting program on the…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3Dworld-hollow Pietro Chiovaro replies Creating edge wear in Blender can be a relatively simple task. This process is fully procedural and doesn't require any external resources; all you need is a little time to spare, and with these steps you can be finished in no more than five minutes. One of the first steps is to set the Blender render engine to Cycles, and after that we can create a material, give it a name and enable the Use Node option on the shader panel. At this point we are good to go for the material set-up. First of all, add Geometry and Bevel nodes. These are two of the key elements to define the wear position, but in order for it to work we also need…

INDUSTRY INSIGHT The Hub Vizoo How is a digital textile made, and how are real fabrics analysed, quantified, and translated into digital, manipulable versions? Material capture specialists Vizoo are among those companies making it possible to achieve advanced levels of realism in the world of texture mapping, courtesy of their scanning and software combination. Such development is becoming increasingly vital as the physical properties of fabrics, growing in importance as digital assets, help to determine how a material behaves when used in simulation. INTRODUCING VIZOO Vizoo, based in Haar, Germany, specialises in material capture and help digitise materials in the fashion, transport and furniture sectors, often to make digital twins. It has a combination of hardware and software in xTex and physX, as well as a digitisation service that allows clients…

The Gallary CG art to inspire “This project was done during internal training time between projects at Atomhawk. I was inspired by Lars Sowig's workflow on Learn Squared to get back into Fusion 360. I was given the freedom to make just about anything I wanted. Loosely inspired by watching some Cowboy Bebop, I started roughing out ideas for a small craft with mech legs in Blender. As the idea developed, I ended up giving it a military vibe. I kind of rediscovered my love for the control of Fusion 360 for hard-surface design.” ARTIST Jeremy Hunter SOFTWARE Fusion 360, Blender, KeyShot • artstation.com/jeremy_hunter…

The Gallery The Rookies 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 SOFTWARE Blender, Photoshop YEAR CREATED 2022 “Tetsu no Hada is a personal project born from the closure of Japanese borders, which resulted in multiple cancelled trips. This project was a good outlet and a way to work on contrast, an element that is very present within this culture. In this world, the threat from under the mist grows, and the populations are at risk by taking the dangerous Iron Road. This road is shaken…

Feature Westworld Season 4 “WE'VE ALWAYS BEEN ABLE TO TAKE WHAT WE DID PREVIOUSLY AND ADD ONTO IT IN A NEW AND CREATIVE WAY” Jay Worth, VFX supervisor Ever since HBO debuted the reimagining of theme park androids revolting against their exploitative human corporate owners and patrons in Westworld – originally conceived by novelist Michael Crichton and expanded upon by creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy into a four-season, mindbending odyssey – visual effects supervisor Jay Worth has been involved from the pilot to the series finale. Each season was a building block for the next one when it comes to story and visual effects. “We've always been able to take what we did previously and add onto it in a new and creative way,” notes Worth. “Lisa and Jonah…

Artist Q&A Your CG problems solved SOFTWARE: BLENDER Paul Hatton replies One of the little known features of Blender is that it has a fully fledged video editor contained inside. In Blender terminology this is known as the Video Sequence Editor (VSE). More experienced Blender users will know that it is possible to edit videos using the Compositor, but in answer to the question we'll only be looking at the VSE. Any user would be forgiven for thinking that Blender is renowned for its 3D visualisation capabilities rather than its video editing options. It's fair to say it's very much a piece of 3D software first and a video editor second, if not even further down the pecking order. There are far more extensive and capable video editors on the…

PRICE £195/$275 annually COMPANY iToo Software WEBSITE itoosoft.com/forestpack 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. + PROS Greater scattering flexibility Tools are simple and straightforward Improvements in multiple areas – CONS Rebuild sometimes required with Forest Sets and Layers Interface at risk of becoming too squeezed RANDOMISE POSITION ON PATHS Forest Pack is great at randomising the distribution of objects, and it now goes one step further by allowing the position of objects to be shuffled when using path mode. The objects will still follow the defined spline, but allowing specific randomisation like this makes everything that touches more natural and believable. Forest Pack is one of the big players in 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 textures from and build your own asset library with these incredible free bar themed models from in our monthly model and texture giveaway. CREATE A SHORT FILM WITH EEVEE Get to grips with Blender and its real-time renderer Eevee to create complex projects. GROW PROCEDURAL PLANTS IN TAIAO Learn to add organic details to your archviz scenes in Cinema 4D using Insydium's plugin. NEXT MONTH We celebrate our 300th issue! Plus we speak to ace artist Annibale Siconolfi ON SALE 16th MAY Subscribe today: www.bit.ly/3dworld-subs…