Table of contents for November 2022 in 3D World

Aardman,an employee-owned company, based in Bristol (UK) and co-founded in 1976 by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, is an independent,award-winning studio that occupies a space at the centre of the animation industry and animation culture. In 2022,the studio finds itself at an exciting moment as media platforms continue to develop and evolve and offer new outlets and formats for storytelling and interactive entertainment. A recent, new arrival at the studio is its chief technology officer Steven Shapiro, and 3D World recently had the opportunity to talk with him about his role, the changing dynamics of the studio, and opportunities to be embraced. Our conversation begins with Shapiro explaining his role at the studio. “There's a high importance on the physical aspect of what we do (stop-frame animation) and, therefore, the…

The Pipeline ZBRUSH | ANY POLYGONAL MODELLING TOOLS | MARMOSET TOOLBAG | PHOTOSHOP Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills SCOOTER GIRL This high-poly sculpt is still just a WIP. Keep an eye out for the fully textured scene, with environment and animation, coming soon! I have been a big fan of everything Japanese since childhood, especially Japanese motorcycles. During my career as a character artist, I've had thoughts of making a racing car driver or a biker character. But at first I lacked skill, and later enough free time to get involved in the project. The idea of creating this character was spinning in my head for about a year. The main idea was to show the connection between the vehicle and its owner; in…

Technique focus Character likeness study EL CUCUY Software Houdini, Karma, ZBrush, Substance Painter, XYZ Texturing Year made 2022 CHARACTER LIKENESS STUDY I started this project as a likeness study to improve my facial sculpting skills. I chose Tony 'El Cucuy’ Ferguson to challenge myself as he has very interesting and unigue facial features. To add to the challenge I also chose to put him in a dynamic pose. One mistake that I made is that I posed the model too early before being happy with the level of likeness, which made it difficult to tweak the facial features. I would advise against posing the model before getting the likeness to a good point. After that I started exptoring the Karma render engine that ships with Houdini and Sotaris, and I…

Mike Griggs replies Part of being a 3D artist is asset management - yet keeping an up-to-date reference of which files are where for what material is historically a pain. Cinema 4D users have been helped out recently by updates from Maxon to the Asset Browser, which can manage a wide range of assets, presets and other elements. However, many C4D artists are users of the excellent 'Plus’ suite of tools and resources from Greyscalegorilla for a wide range of tasks. One of the (many) tools that come with the Plus suite is HDRI Link Plus, which is a manager for HDR images. These are used to create realistic lighting environments from a single image that has been captured in the field or created in software (such as a render…

Artist Q&A Your CG problems solved SOFTWARE: SUBSTANCE DESIGNER WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3Dworld-291 Pietro Chiovaro replies I will show you my working process for creating a simple and realistic roof tile material using Substance Designer. For this type of material, I selected the Physically Based (Metallic/Roughness) Graph Template and removed the Metallic output since it isn't necessary for this type of substance. Now we can start to add the nodes useful for this material, so from the Substance Designer library we need: the Gradient Linear 1 and Gradient Linear 2 patterns, the Fractal Sum Base noise and the Tile Sampler (these are the base elements of this material). Then we need the Height to Normal World Units Filter (or just Normal), two Levels filters, two Blend filters, and a Gradient…

PRICE Apprentice: Free Indie: £225 Core: £1.660 Houdini FX: £3.820 COMPANY SideFX WEBSITE www.sidefx.com The latest release of Houdini, the longestablished VFX and motion graphics software from SideFX, has been described by the developers as a “quality of life“ release. There are times in the lifecycle of any piece of software where they just need to pause from making major architecture changes and focus on firming up and streamlining the beast they've made. I have to be honest though, describing a release like this didn't fill me with a huge amount of excitement and I wonder if that will be the case, on face value, for a lot of users. But even though the developers are particularly downplaying the release, there are still an impressive set of updates that will…

The Gallery CG art to inspire “I ALWAYS TRY TO STRIKE THE RIGHT BALANCE BETWEEN CHALLENGING AND ENJOYING MYSELF” “I had the idea for this project when I came across prídrangar lighthouse photos on the internet and I was immediately impressed by its pristine area. I wanted to create a place to have fun and tried to design a small house by myself that can have everything at my fingertips. Personal projects allow me to move away from the limited, sometimes even boring world of busiess and create something perfectly suited to my liking. At the same time, personal projects are a great opportunity to either showcase specific skill sets or seek out new challenges and improve in additional areas. Therefore, I always try to strike the right balance between challenging…

The Gallery CG art to inspire ARTIST Vishwesh Taskar SOFTWARE ZBrush, Houdini, Maya, Substance Painter & Designer, Mari, Nuke “Henry Cavill as ‘Geralt of Rivia’. What started off as just a small likeness practice evolved into an incredibly interesting project filled with opportunities to try out new techniques and upgrade my workflow. I got my first few kicks of inspiration to start this one while re-watching The Witcher. Once I dived into it, I kept asking myself every step along the way: “How can I do this in a different manner and find ways to do it faster?” So rather than just racing for the finish, I took it slow to do a bit of R&D using Houdini, Substance and RenderMan after the likeness was achieved. Houdini's scattering and groom…

The Gallery CG art to inspire “CREATING XGEN HAIR… DEMANDS PATIENCE AND A METICULOUS EYE, SO DO NOT RUSH IT” ARTIST Carlos Eduardo Soares SOFTWARE ZBrush, Blender, Maya, Marvelous Designer, Substance Painter, Unreal Engine 5 “ My goal with this project was to learn how to create XGen hair and apply it to Unreal Engine 5. The process is simple, but it takes a long time to define the small details and the randomness real hair requires. It demands patience and a meticulous eye, so do not rush it in your own projects. I have created hair using cards in the past, and I loved it, but I think this workflow gives me more possibilities while allowing a better result. But know this: it is resource demanding and it will…

A brother and sister (Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer) running a horse ranch in California try to document an otherworldly phenomenon while a neighbouring theme park owner (Steven Yeun) attempts to profit from it in the third feature directed by Jordan Peele, Nope. One of the first heads of department brought onto the production was visual effects supervisor Guillaume Rocheron (Ghost in the Shell). “We did six months of shot design as Jordan was writing the script. Like some of these sea animals that change form, this UFO is one form of a creature that proves to be a creature of the wind. It is a light grey, almost white, barely any texture to it. There is a hole at the bottom and is very slick and simple, which is different…

One of the characters gets blown away by the wind. “Often, we tried to do as much practically as we could because it's a movie that wants to be grounded,” observes Rocheron. “We didn't want to do something that you couldn't put a stunt person through. It was a lot of wire work. We had stunt performers hanging on and being pulled by helicopters on the line to try to get that. We did a few digital doubles here and there to help the movement; however, we were going to pull off stunts with cranes or helicopters to get the scope and scale. That helped us to ground it.” There is a lot of digital dust. “Having the real dust from the helicopter gave us the look, speed and scale…

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/SouthernG FX/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. Antony Ward Be it game development, rigging or recording in-depth courses for his YouTube channel, Antony boasts experience in most areas of 3D. www.antcgi.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…

Artist Q&A Your CG problems solved SOFTWARE: AUTODESK MAYA Antony Ward replies There are many modelling tools we work with daily that we take for granted. A simple bevel, weld or extrude works as expected, and we have come to rely on them being stable. This is how things should be, meaning that you can work without issue and hit all those deadlines - however, the same cannot be said for one other tool, and that's the Boolean. A tool seen in every major 3D program, it's used to join, subtract or weld one model to another, saving time and allowing for some complex shapes to be created quickly and easily, yet it's something I personally never use. You see, my history with the Boolean, like a lot of people,…

The Hub Bubble PROJECT INSIGHT News and views from around the international CG community Exploring the darkness of human nature has been common theme for filmmaker Tetsuro Araki who has directed episodes of Black Lagoon, Death Note, Highschool of the Dead and Attack on Titan. However, the anime feature Bubble for Netflix offers the same sort of kinetic action sequences with a more optimistic outlook, despite being set in post-apocalyptic Tokyo that is partially submerged and separated from the rest of world by mysterious gravity-defying bubbles. “For more than ten years, I'd been making nothing but dark films, and to be honest, I was getting a little burnt out,” states Araki. “As such, I wanted to make something cheerful, fresh and fabulous. Around the time we were working on season two…

PRICE £19.30 /mo (£231.60 /annually) COMPANY Maxon WEBSITE www.maxon.net/en/redshift Many people will know Redshift as being a GPU Tenderer. Since its inception this has been its boast and one of its defining characteristics. The first thing you see if you open up its website is this claim: “The world's first fully GPU-accelerated, biased Tenderer.“ It will probably come as a surprise to many to learn that Redshift now also has CPU capabilities. What? Did anyone see that coming? I certainly didn't. The more I've thought about it though the more this move makes sense. Both CPU and GPU rendering approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. CPUs are slower at rendering but can handle a lot of data, whereas GPUs are quicker at rendering but can't handle as much data. Time…

The Gallery The Rookies SOFTWARE ZBrush, Marvelous Designer, Substance Painter, Maya, Marmoset Toolbag 4 YEAR CREATED 2021 I am very passionate about being able to create diverse characters for representation in games, so I was very excited to work on an Asian female soldier. I also loved the contrast between the innocent face of the character and the strong armour outfit. Her outfit is not very common for a medieval soldier, but historically accurate from the Korean Joseon Dynasty. Since I love realistic adventure games, I thought it was great to have a historically accurate character in my portfolio. ARTIST Sain-Sain Thao LOCATION Canada I am a character artist for games. I previously worked in marketing and management but, in 2021,I decided to change career and studied at Think Tank…

For 3D artists, visualisers and content creators, there really is no getting away from conversations about the ‘metaverse’ - this futuristic virtual network that is currently dividing opinion and provoking some strong emotions and responses. However we define it and whatever it may look like in the future, this virtual world is going to be made up of 3D content, with technology that will be built on top of existing tech that we're all currently familiar with. It'll probably be largely down to studios and innovative individuals to really forge the way into the unknown, but any developments are sure to ripple down and affect every artist, all around the world. Understanding what has got us here, where we are right now and where it might be heading will help…

The Pipeline Create sci-fi city concept art BLENDER PHOTOSHOP REMNANT CITY An abandoned sci-fi industrial city, with a space western vibe Often concept artists are given specific tasks with strict directions; other times, the ideas behind the desired outcome are much more vague, so the artist's freedom and creativity are called to action. In both cases some fundamental ground rules such as composition, colour, light, mood and storytelling are absolutely essential, and they have to be established in the very first steps of concept creation. In this article I will guide you through a problem-solving process that I find extremely effective, and I hope will help you as well. After successfully transitioning from accounting to concept art, Christos has worked as a freelance concept artist for the industry since 2019. www.artstation.com/marmeris…

Artist Q&A Your CG problems solved SOFTWARE: BLENDER Paul Hatton replies Compositing, strictly speaking, is the combining of multiple images to make a final single image. The results of compositing can be seen in films in which green screens have been utilised. In this type of workflow, the background is keyed out in compositing and a backplate inserted into the background. Over the years this process has become increasingly more advanced, enabling directors and artists to achieve some incredible results - but the compositing process has also become increasingly demanding. For 3D artists, compositing encompasses a whole host of corrections and edits that are made to a render before the result is finally finished. Some of this will be compositing in the strict sense of the word, and some of…

From Fight Club to Mank, David Fincher is a master at using low-key lighting and dark palettes to explore the pitfalls of human morality. Now, the director has taken his characteristic aesthetic to Bad Travelling, a thriller about a dishonest crew sailing alien seas - and a monster who strikes a murderous deal with the ship's captain. The Love, Death + Robots episode marks Fincher's first completely computeranimated film. It's also the first time he's directly contributed to the Netflix anthology he executive produces alongside Tim Miller. To create the nautical world of Bad Travelling, Fincher worked with the team at Miller's VFX firm, Blur Studio, who used V-Ray for 3ds Max's lighting tools to help Fincher embrace the darkness. “David Fincher read the original short story that inspired Bad…

The Hub A day in the life We caught up with Chris Jestico, who talked us through his typical day working for visual effect powerhouse Goodbye Kansas Studios at their office in Stockholm I have had the opportunity to work at a number of the major VFX vendors over the past 12 years in London, Singapore and now in Stockholm contributing to over 50+ feature films. I have also worked directly on the studio side of production, most notably alongside Steven Spielberg in managing the virtual cinematography process onset for Ready Player One. My most recent work history centres around managing motion capture studios and facial capture services, championing virtual production projects ranging from VR scouting on Star Wars: Rise ofSkywalker to real-time LED volume shoots on films such as…

PRICE Solo: £29.90 /mo. £358.80 /yr Premium: £44.90 /mo. £538.80 /yr COMPANY Chaos Group WEBSITE www.chaos.com The Chaos ecosystem is well and truly alive. With every passing year, Chaos products not only get better but the connections between them get stronger. I can envisage a day when artists will be able to handle the majority of visualisation tasks using Chaos products. That day isn't here yet, but it's a little bit closer with the release of V-Ray 6 - the first of what will be a whole generation of updates before version 7 comes along. V-Ray is stronger than ever because of its Chaos connections. This is evidenced by the inclusion of Chaos Scatter, Chaos Cloud Collaboration and even the introduction of procedural clouds which was only made possible by…