3D Artist No. 108

You may have noticed that our cover this month has something of a B-movie feel to it. There’s something timeless about that Fifties and Sixties style, when huge lizards, apes, aliens and sea beasts were made out of clay, juddering across the screen in iconic stop-motion sequences. The tools we use have changed a lot since then, but the style lives on, not least in recent pictures like Colossal and Pacific Rim a few years back. Our cover artist Emanuel Palalic has channelled his inner beast to create a stunning Kaiju sculpt, and has been nice enough to jot down his workflow, too. We’ve got a world-class array of artists in another packed tutorial section, plus we’ve put together 24 essential techniques for UE4, Creative Assembly has sent in an exclusive…

EMANUEL PALALIC artstation.com/artist/drheadpop Our monstrous cover image comes courtesy of the very talented Emanuel from id Software. Check out his tutorial on p50 for tips on how to create kaiju-style beasts for yourself. 3DArtist username DrHeadpop BAJ SINGH artstation.com/artist/baj_singh We’ve got a wonderful exclusive for you this month – Baj is lead character artist on Total War: WARHAMMER at Creative Assembly and is on hand to walk through the pro character pipeline for games. 3DArtist username n/a BLAIR ARMITAGE blairarmitage.com Blair last joined us for our special 100th issue at the end of last year, and it’s a pleasure to welcome her back to 3D Artist for a masterclass in texturing for games over on p64. 3DArtist username trianglesoup KWANYU YANG artstation.com/artist/yangkuanyu Marvelous Designer is a really useful tool if you’re looking to create accurate cloth simulations. Find out how KwanYu uses it to…

“This image was meant to be texturing practice for Substance Painter, which I’ve recently added to my pipeline. But then the idea of doing a metaphor for people’s behaviours and their values came into my mind. It’s certain that their hunger for followers at any price and excess of vanity is leading to an ill society. The result is a visual with modern engraved coins” Daniel D’Avila, Contemporary Coins, 2017 Daniel D’Avila davilastudio.com Daniel is a generalist artist based in Sao Paulo working in the advertising industry Software Modo, ZBrush, Substance Painter Work in progress… “I wanted to create a portrait of myself that gives the viewer an instant read on who I am as a person: a laid-back, low-energy guy that works really hard and doesn’t take himself too seriously” Eric Cunha, Self Portrait, 2017 Eric…

Since Unreal burst through computers in 1998 with enhanced graphics, detailed texturing, integrated rendering, collision detection and an advanced software rasteriser, the game’s own, original game engine – Unreal Engine – has been one of the most popular development platforms around. In the close-to two decades since its debut, UE has since had its fourth version released as well as being used as the core engine behind notable games in franchises such as BioShock, Gears Of War, Mass Effect, Tekken, Borderlands and Street Fighter. UE4 was made free in 2015 for everyone, save for paying royalties if your game makes over $3,000. All of the technology that is used by Epic Games is available to all, meaning features utilised by senior triple-A artists can be used by indie studios and hobbyists…

01 Set up the material Start by placing your heightmap and inverting it using a 1-x node. Then give it a multiplier. PDO is in World Space, so the multiplier should be the world texture size times the height ratio. While any material can use PDO, using it with BumpOffset or Parallax Occlusion Mapping gives the best results. 02 Correct for gamma angle To make the effect more stable, the incoming camera angle needs to be taken into account. This can be done by dividing the above result by the Dot Product of the Camera Vector and VertexNormal. Parallax Occlusion Mapping handles this step automatically. 03 Soften the blend The next step is to soften the blend using TemporalAA. Note that this step will only work if TemporalAA is the Anti-Aliasing method…

This tutorial on the creation of Isabella von Carstein from Total War: WARHAMMER will be a general insight into the workflow of producing a game-ready character, from the early stages of concept design to the final in-game asset. Some of the industry-standard tools that we used will be showcased here, from long-established programs like 3ds Max and ZBrush to newer tools such as Marvelous Designer and Quixel SUITE. Not only will you have an understanding of how the general production workflow is maintained, but you will also get an insight into how development teams work together to ensure that game-ready content has been produced to the highest quality, as well as methods for overcoming any hurdles that occur during the process. THE DESIGN STAGE Establish the blueprints of the character 01 The proxy Before…