3D Artist No. 101

Have you recovered from issue 100 yet? You’ll be pleased to know that as soon as it flew off to the printers, we were straight back on the horse to put together an equally amazing issue 101 for you this month. For starters, we’ve got two very special treats in store for fans of Blender – six essential projects for you to try today, and a superb Hard Ops masterclass to show you just how incredible your hard-surface modelling can be in the free program when you have the know-how. Recently, we’ve been speaking to loads of artists, friends and partners from around the world about game engines and their virtues, not just in the games industry, but also in the fields of VR and design visualisation. More and more of you…

JÜRI UNT cgstrive.com If you’re a Blender fan you’ll recognise this month’s cover image straight away. It’s so good, the Blender team has splashed it all over its site! Head to our Blender masterclass on p22 to find out more. 3DArtist username cgstrive JERRY PERKINS masterxeon1001.com Jerry heads up the development of Hard Ops, a fantastic hard-surface modelling plugin for Blender. Join him on p60 as he takes you through key features and builds a stunning sci-fi asset. 3DArtist username masterxeon1001 MIKE D MCCALLUM reallusion.com You can’t go anywhere at the moment without everyone talking about VR, especially now consumer headsets are hitting the market. Mike walks you through a VR workflow in iClone on p76. 3DArtist username n/a ERIC KELLER bloopatone.com Not content with studying and perfectly replicating insect specimens that he’s ordered online, resident entomologist Eric has decided…

“I tried reproducing the mood of an early morning in Japan. So with artist Yoii’s character and rooftops as a focus point, I used a low sun to get soft shadows and also mostly diffuse reflections and a shallow depth of field to keep a smooth atmosphere. I also used light coming from down the street to break the shadows on the character”Julien Crochet, The Observer, 2016 Julien Crochet juliencrochet.wixsite.com/portfolio Julien graduated from LISAA animation in Paris in 2014 and now works as a 3D generalist Software 3ds Max, V-Ray Work in progress… “I started modelling this robot to improve my hard-surface ZBrush skills. First I created a low-poly version to define a basic shape and find the right proportions. Most of the robot’s protective shells originate from that base geometry, which is why their shapes…

If you haven’t tried to use Blender yet then why not? You can sculpt and model, unwrap meshes, composite, perform simulations, create games, edit footage for film, render in GPU or CPU, render physically accurate shaders and much, much more in Blender – and best of all, you can do all of this without spending a single penny. On top of that, it’s open source and the code is being improved all the time by a dedicated community of Blender users and developers. It may sound slightly grassroots, but Blender has actually been used to deliver shots for feature films, such as first-person action movie Hardcore Henry and others. VFX supervisor Yaroslav Kemnits from Division LLC explained that this was thanks to the software’s innate flexibility and modern toolset. The fifth…

oceanthebard.artstation.com 01 Plan your model A good 3D model starts with a good concept. Choose an image that you like and break it down into its simplest shapes by drawing over it. This will help you plan how you’ll approach modeling your character. I used Ryan Lang’s ‘Kappa’ concept. This is an ideal concept, providing material and lighting references for our final render. 02 Model and sculpt Next you will create your character’s base mesh. You can either PolyModel it or use Blender’s Skin modifier to generate geometry. Then separate any complex parts of your mesh, such as the head and hands. You can use Dynamic Topology sculpting on these parts for creative freedom while minimising the amount of retopology necessary. 03 Retopologise and texture Once you’re happy with your sculpt, retopologise it,…

www.themantissa. 01 Enable the microdisplacement This feature is still in the experimental Cycles engine, so we’ll have to set that up first. With your renderer set to Cycles, go to the Render tab and select Experimental in the feature set. Microdisplacement uses lots of RAM, so you can experiment with CPU and GPU rendering if you’re getting memory errors. 02 Prepare the mesh Before we add the material, we’re going to make sure we have our object set up properly. Ensure that you have a clean mesh topology with evenly-sized quads. In the Modifiers tab, add a Subdivision Surface modifier and set it to Adaptive. This will enable the displacement to subdivide your mesh. 03 Create the material In the Node editor, create a new Material for your object. Add a texture (either…