3D Artist No. 109

This issue, we took to the quaint English town of Horsham in Sussex, UK. It was a seemingly unlikely location for one of the oldest games studios in the country: Creative Assembly. Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Creative Assembly has been kind enough to give us exclusive tutorials from its two latest releases – Total War: WARHAMMER and Halo Wars 2 – and you’ll learn industry-standard techniques for working with game assets and environments. Elsewhere, more and more artists are turning to speed modelling. We’ve found that partly, these artists are using speed modelling to hone their skills, but they’re also testing more efficient methods and best practices for an accelerated workflow. Speed is of the essence in our industry of course, as artists work to tighter and tighter deadlines,…

JOHANN TAN artstation.com/artist/johanntan Creative Assembly’s senior character artist Johann Tan gives us the expert lowdown on modelling a character and adding quick details for Total War: WARHAMMER on page 48. 3DArtist username taalart GAëTAN PERROT korann.fr Like Johann, Gaëtan works at Creative Assembly too as an environment artist, and he’s given us his pro tips for creating architecture for games this issue over on page 56. 3DArtist username korann TONY CAMEHL artstation.com/artist/tony_eight “Fly my pretties, fly!“ Creature artist Tony Camehl has created this excellent flying monkey concept this issue and teaches you about anatomy essentials on page 66. 3DArtist username tony_eight PHILIP MULLANY 3dartistonline.com/user/philM Want to rig a quadruped? Philip has got you covered, with his 13-step tutorial on working with spines, arms, legs and IK solvers. Read his tutorial now on page 76 of the magazine. 3DArtist username philM MIKOłAJ VALENCIA Flowbox.io Mikolaj is the CEO of…

“I created this project to serve as my lighting demo reel opener. I also heard that creating tasty-looking CG food was a challenge, so I wanted to give that a shot too”Julian Santiago, A Monster Among Us, 2017 Julian Santiago juliansantiago.artstation.com I am a freelance 3D artist with five years’ experience in VFX, advertising and animation Software Maya, Redshift, ZBrush, Blender, Fusion Work in progress… “This might be a way-too-strong reference to my favourite movie. If it wasn’t for Terminator 2 I wouldn’t be here doing computer graphics. The idea of the hovercraft came from early Star Wars bikes mixed with Blade Runner and other Eighties movies like Robocop”Valentine Sorokin, Hoverchopper VS-28, 2017 Valentine Sorokin valeksorokin.com Valentine is a CG generalist with a focus on concept design and hard-surface modelling Software 3ds Max, Quixel Suite, Photoshop, Corona Work in progress… “This image…

A more efficient workflow is the obvious benefit of improving your speed sculpting technique, but that’s not the only advantage; it can also boost your creativity, helping you to produce even more interesting and vibrant work. Frankie DeRosa, senior character artist at Blur Studio, puts it like this: “When you work fast, you will get different shapes that you might not have initially thought about doing. These happy accidents really help take the character in a particular direction that can sometimes be really fun, and even spark ideas for a theme.“ Of course, the key to perfecting your technique is usually practice; for example, if you want to sculpt anatomy quickly and confidently, the best way to achieve this is to do lots of sketching exercises to help you master human…

bit.ly/2rHqzAC 01 Preparation is key To sculpt something fast you need to plan ahead. When I’m speed sculpting I have many references on a second monitor that show the head from many different angles, including above and below. By using a referencing app such as PureRef, I can quickly navigate to different views to help with whatever I’m working on. You will also save a lot of time by customising your user interface with speed in mind. You want to be able to access your most-used buttons and brushes very quickly. Learn all the hotkeys, then make your own. You can even create hotkeys for your own custom menus. 02 Reinforce what you already know The biggest thing I’ve learned about sculpting at speed is that it’s not about how quickly your…

bit.ly/2sGpLvs What is your process for speed sculpting? There are many ways to start a speed sculpt; usually I start from scratch using a simple sphere in ZBrush, then I look for interesting forms and silhouettes. Sometimes I use basic figures to establish my main proportions; for example I use a sphere for the head, then I insert a cylinder for the neck and jaw and so on. This way I have a little more control over each part, so that I can establish different proportions for my base and start the speed sculpting process. As a concept artist, I try not to spend a lot of time getting all the details super crisp and perfect from the outset. When I have the main forms established and a nice structure for the…