3D Artist Magazine - Create Realistic Wet & Dry Fur (Issue No. 9)

WIN!
10 COPIES OF iCLONE4 PRO UP FOR GRABS – PRIZES WORTH £1,399

www.3DArtistonline.com
41Pages of expert
creative guides
09 Maya Use Ray Trace
Shadows to create transparency
Poser Construct, pose and
render a dungeon warrior
3ds Max Create a cheeky,
pint-sized superhero
09 Practical inspiration for the 3D community Vue How to use materials to

create wet-looking stones
• Feature
DR WHO
SPECIAL FX
How the new series' effects were made
• Step-by-step Maya tutorial
Build a
ISSUE 09
9
classic car
771759 963007
ISSN 1759-9636
es
Learn NURBS modelling techniqu
• Your questions answered

Master Face Room
£6.00
Create realistic wet and dry fur
09
pho into Poser
tos
Importing headshot
ma effects,
Plus: Prime Focus VFX – cine
Three great outfits for V4

Oriental outfit pack
Video tutorial + model
Pariah DVD content
urho od – not just an agency
The Neighbo
: ZBr ush 3.5, Ske tchB ook Mobile
Reviews
ins
ide
Scooby-Do o! The Mys tery Beg

ins
• Latest review
PIXOLOGIC
ZBRUSH 3.5
All the new features revealed
ON YOUR
FREE CD
• Studio Access 4 HOURS OF

3DS MAX VIDEO!
HYDROPHOBIA
Dark Energy explains all about
real-time water animation
CREATE REALISTIC
WET & DRY FUR
www.3DArtistonline.com
© Imagine Publishing Ltd

How to use the modo 401 fur engine to paint textures on your models
No unauthorised copying or distribution
001_3DA_09-coverfinala.indd 1 20/10/09 15:35:42

Learn in style
iPad Kindle
Printed full colour large format book
The TM
Series
Discover more with the Book series’ expert, accessible tutorials for
iPad, iPhone, Mac, Android, Photoshop, Windows and more
Also in this series Now available on
Bookazines HIGH
eBooks • Apps ST.
BUY IN STORE
www.imaginebookshop.co.uk High street Kindle Store ImagineShop.co.uk App Store

Artist info
Marcos de Moraes
Sampaio
Personal portfolio site
www.msampaio.com
Country Brazil
Software used Photoshop
and modo
Cover artist
Everyone’s talking about the

new fur capabilities of modo
401, but Marcos has gone out
and shown what can be
achieved with it. Fantastic
composition and, of course, fur.

003_3DA_09 Wireframe.indd 3 20/10/09 17:34:50

Imagine Publishing Ltd
Richmond House, 33 Richmond Hill
Bournemouth, Dorset, BH2 6EZ
☎ +44 (0) 1202 586200
Web: www.imagine-publishing.co.uk
www.3dartistonline.com
to the magazine and 116 pages of amazing 3D Magazine team

Editor Duncan Evans
[email protected]
If you spent part of your childhood ☎ 01202 586282
Every issue hiding behind the sofa when the

Editor in Chief Jo Cole
Sub Editor Sam Robson
you can Cybermen arrived or marvelled at

Senior Sub Editor Colleen Johnson
Group Art Editor Lora Barnes
count on… sentient lumps of rock, then you spent Head of Design Ross Andrews
Contributors
1 116 pages of your formative years watching Dr Christian Darkin, Dominic Davison, Julie Easton, Paul
Francis, Nicolas Garilhe, Charles Goddard, John Hayes,
creative inspiration Lance Hitchings, Andrei Kashkin, Ryan Knope, Daniel Lovas,
Who. The threadbare sets and questionable effects April Madden, Meleah Maynard, Marcos Sampaio, Sarah
2 Behind-the- Slee, James “Goldilocks” Shead, Will Shum, Rosie Tanner,
scenes guides to of the show – not to mention increasingly poor Greg Whitaker
images and artwork actors – eventually saw its demise. However, Advertising
Digital or printed media packs are available on request.
3 A CD packed full thanks to the marvel of CGI, the falling cost of Head of Sales James Hanslip
of creative goodness
☎ 01202 586423
[email protected]
4 Interviews with hardware and the increasing sophistication of Advertising Manager Hang Deretz
☎ 01202 586442
inspirational artists software, the decision was made to relaunch the [email protected]
5 Tips for studying

Account Manager Cassie Gilbert
series in 2005. We chart that return in this issue ☎ 01202 586421
3D or getting work [email protected]
in the industry and talk to The Mill, which had the challenge of Cover disc
6 The chance to see producing the VFX, on TV budgets, to make it Interactive Media Manager Lee Groombridge
Head of Digital Projects Stuart Dixon
your art in the mag! come alive. an Evans,

Dunc
Multimedia Editor Tom Rudderham
[email protected]
International
Editor 3D Artist is available for licensing. Contact the International

department to discuss partnership opportunities.
International Manager Cathy Blackman
This issue’s team of expert artists…

☎ +44 (0) 1202 586401
[email protected]
Subscriptions
Subscriptions Manager Lucy Nash
☎ 01202 586443
[email protected]
To order a subscription to 3D Artist:
☎ UK 0844 249 0472
☎ Overseas +44 (0) 1795 592951
Email: [email protected]
Marcos Sampaio Nicolas Garilhe Paul Francis Lance Hitchings 6-issue subscription (UK) - £21.60
Fur is all the rage and Want to know how to A new addition to the Lance runs a design
13-issue subscription (UK) – £62.40
Marcos has put the model a cheeky, pint- Q&A panel charged studio stateside, and
13-issue subscription (Europe) – £70
new features of sized superhero? with fulfilling your is also the chap 13-issue subscription (ROW) – £80
modo 401 to full Nicolas has the Poser needs, Paul manning the Q&A
effect in his splendid information you need also has a dungeon- helpdesk for your Circulation
Polar Bear tutorial in his tutorial tastic tutorial for you Maya problems Circulation & Export Manager Darren Pearce
☎ 01202 586200
Production
Production Director Jane Hawkins
☎ 01202 586200
Founders
Managing Director Damian Butt
Finance Director Steven Boyd
Dominic Davison Daniel Lovas April Madden Andrei Kashkin Creative Director Mark Kendrick
If there’s anyone If you have a question April is deputy editor A rain-pelted road in
better at creating about CINEMA 4D on Digital Artist the American Printing & Distribution
superrealistic and don’t know who magazine and a countryside, an old Printed by St Ives Plymouth Ltd, Eastern Wood Road, Langage
Industrial Estate, Plympton, Plymouth, PL7 5ET
landscapes using else to ask, then ask graphic artist. We diner, a driver pulled up
Vue, we would like Daniel because he’ll make her review all for a break. Check out Distributed by Seymour Distribution, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London,
to know! know the answer kinds of books the atmosphere EC1A 9PT ☎ 020 7429 4000
Disclaimer
The publisher cannot accept responsibility for any unsolicited material
lost or damaged in the post. All text and layout is the copyright of
Imagine Publishing Ltd. Nothing in this magazine may be reproduced
in whole or part without the written permission of the publisher. All
copyrights are recognised and used specifically for the purpose of criticism
and review. Although the magazine has endeavoured to ensure all
information is correct at time of print, prices and availability may change.
This magazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the
Rosie Tanner Sarah Slee John Hayes Christian Darkin companies mentioned herein.
If you see a blonde- Dancing through the John works as a Christian has been
haired woman lurking 3D garden, picking all character artist for getting to grips with
outside your uni, it’s your community Sega so he knows all the exciting new
our Rosie getting the stories, is pixie-like there is to know features of ZBrush 3.5
lowdown on the Sarah and her army of about games this issue. Sculpt like
latest CG courses gnome helpers character creation it’s 1999, Christian!
2009
Sign up, share your art and chat to other artists at

ISSN 1759-9636
4 ● 3DArtist
004_008_3DA_09 Front.indd 4 22/10/09 10:44:15

We don’t keep
secrets
iPad Kindle
TM
Learn the truth about iPhone, iPad, Android, Photoshop and

more with the Tips & Tricks series’ expert advice and tutorials
Bookazines HIGH
eBooks • Apps ST.
BUY IN STORE

INSIDE ISSU E N IN E
Get
09 3D Artist
every mo
de nth
livered dir
door and ect to your
sav
Turn to pa e 40 %
Discover how these images were created… ge
subscribe 110 and
today!
Create
realistic
wet and
dry fur
The sculpting
tools used the most
for this project are
the Push, Smooth
and Move tools
Six-page step-by-step walkthrough guide
46
58
6 ● 3DArtist
004_008_3DA_09 Front.indd 6 22/10/09 10:44:48

GU IDES & TECH N IQU ES
The Studio
74 Professional 3D advice,
techniques and tutorials
46 Behind the scenes:
Polar Bear
Almost all of the objects in the Time to get furry with this modo
401 tutorial set half-underwater
scene were made from primitives that
were converted to editable polygons 52 Step by step: Street Urchin
How to create a proto-superhero
Andrei Kashkin on the process for Lonely Driver. Page 74 in the form of a cheeky, streetwise
little youngster
Yoeusrtions
qu swered
an
? 56 I made this: Márk Mészáros,
El Chorro
Mad Max references ahoy, as we
visit the world of rusty battle cars
58 Main tutorial: American

muscle car
80 Maya: General
Discover Use Ray Trace for 70 Two-part Maya tutorial starts here
– build a stunning muscle car
Shadows to create reflections
68 I made this: Artur Gruszka,
82 Maya: Games characters Secret Agent
Hard-surface modelling The world of secret agents and
techniques to create robots outrageous spy gadgets revealed
re
83 3ds Max: Architectuective 70 Step by step: Dungeon Warrior
Create translucent, refl It’s time to show the Poser fans
water in a swimming pool some love with this fantastic
tutorial down in the dungeon
84 CINEMA 4D: General
to create
How to use Dynamics 74 Behind the scenes: Lonely
an animation sequence Driver
Check out the rainy and windswept
86 Vue: Landscapes vista of mid-America solitude
Use material properties to
create wet-looking rocks
84 Poser: Characters Continued overleaf

There’s even
Import your photos and map
them to models in Face Room
more inside…
Turn the page to discover the
interviews, reviews, industry
advice and more that we’ve
packed into this issue…
© Imagine Publishing Ltd 3DArtist ● 7
004_008_3DA_09 Front.indd 7 22/10/09 16:42:22

INSIDE ISSU E N IN E £1,399
09 iClone4
competition
prizes to be won
Inspiration • Interviews • Reviews and more Page 88
11 The Gallery
Have a bottle or two of the finest
3D beverages going in our gallery
20 Community
News, readers’ images and letters
from the 3D community
28 Interview: Prime Focus VFX

Formerly Frantic Films, latterly
North American VFX powerhouse
34 Feature: Dr Who
Forget plastic monsters, welcome
to the golden age of CGI
40 Interview: The
Neighbourhood
Arch vis? Advertising? TV and
product promotion? Yes to all!
46 The Studio
A world of tutorials and insights
into the most incredible images
80 Questions and answers

Got questions about using 3D
software? Get the answers here If you don’t fall in love with the
90 Review: ZBrush 3.5 Doctor and the companion, it
All the new features of the
sculpting software tested
doesn’t matter how good the
and reviewed effects are
Will Cohen on the strengths of the new Dr Who series. Page 34
92 Review: Autodesk
SketchBook Mobile
Autodesk making apps for the
iPhone/iPod Touch? Yes, so we
check it out
93 Review: Stoney Creek

Sprucevale
A brand new scene file for Carrara Inside guide to industry news, studios, expert opinion & education
users comes under the spotlight
98 Industry news
93 Review: Scooby-Doo! The Latest industry developments
Mystery Begins and announcements revealed
The end result of 3D work seen in
this all-new Scooby film 100 Studio Access: Hydrophobia
Creating realistic water is hard
94 Reviews: Books enough, but the guys at Dark
A selection of the best 3D books Energy are doing it in real-time
110 Subscribe today! 104 The Insider: Daniel Moreno

You don’t want to miss an issue What you need to know to get a
and it will save you lots of cash job as a character animator
112 On the disc 106 Uni Focus: Portsmouth

All the great content this issue, University
including an exclusive item for you We have a look at the BSc
from EvilInnocence (Hons) Computer Games
Technology course
8 ● 3DArtist
004_008_3DA_09 Front.indd 8 22/10/09 10:45:58

It’s a jungle out there.
Swing through it
iPad Kindle
Directory
TM
The definitive review listings for iPad, iPhone and Android apps
Also in this series
Bookazines HIGH
eBooks • Apps ST.
BUY IN STORE
Directory range single Ad 230 x 297.indd 1 01/08/2011 15:55

Not just for
dummies
TM
A clear, comprehensive series for people who want to start learning

about iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and Photoshop
Also in this series
Bookazines HIGH
eBooks • Apps ST.
BUY IN STORE
For Beginners range single Ad 230 x 297.indd 1 01/08/2011 15:57

THE GA LLERY
WELCOME TO
THE G A LLERY
Nine pages of great artwork from the 3D community
Bertolotti Simone
Featured artists
A highly detailed
I created this image because I wanted to test bedroom scene
with a great use
a V-Ray render engine and because I saw a of lighting
picture like this somewhere, and I Giorgia Baldissera

Water mess this
remembered that I was impressed with the bathroom is in! A
great 3D tribute
mood and the atmosphere to a CGI film
Sami Mustonen
Bertolotti Simone A vintage gun and
paraphernalia
Sweet-N, 2009 lends itself to a
scene full of detail
Dennis Mejillones
This menacing
demon warrior
got up on the
wrong side of bed!
Khurram Hamid Alavi
A personal
interpretation
of the G.I. Joe
Artist info
villain Zartan
Anders Lejczak
Wonderful WW2
aviation artwork
from this Swedish
digital artist
Jian Xu
Realistic and
Bertolotti Simone intricate portrait
brings some class
Personal portfolio site to these pages
www.imonfox.it
Roger Harris
Country Italy One furry friend
Software used CINEMA 4D, V- you wouldn’t want
Ray and Photoshop as a pet. Admire
from a distance
Get your artwork featured in these pages

Simply send it to the 3D Artist Gallery. Here’s how…
You’ll be missing out on a thriving 3D
Enter online
Email or post
community, but if you’d rather submit your

work by email or post, here’s how. Make
Hang your art in our online gallery sure your image is at least 3,000 pixels on
and get selected for the magazine the longest side, save it as a maximum
1. Register with us quality JPEG or zip it up as a TIFF and email
it to the address below. Please include your
Comment on Check out the website below and click on Register. Choose a
username and password and you’re ready to go. contact details! If you’ve created a Pixar-
more great www.3dartistonline.com beating animation and want to see that
3D art… 2. Upload your images

featured on the cover CD, then save it onto a
CD and post it to us. You can also send your
Head straight over to Once registered, you can upload images to your gallery – images on CD. The addresses are:
www.3dartistonline.com, there’s no limits on numbers but check the size criteria.
register and you can leave [email protected]
comments for other artists. 3. Tell us about them! The Gallery, 3D Artist, Imagine Publishing,
Some of the people featured Have an image you feel passionate about? Drop editorial an Richmond House, 33 Richmond Hill,
here already have their email at [email protected]. Bournemouth, Dorset, BH2 6EZ
galleries, so get online and
join our club! Create your gallery today: www.3dartistonline.com
011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 11 20/10/09 13:50:47

THE GA LLERY
Before setting up the scene, I first created the

creature inspired by the film The Water Horse,
then I tried to give context to the character,
modelling a dirty bathroom with various details.
Each object has been modelled with 3ds Max. I
used my digital camera and Photoshop to make
several kinds of maps. The scene was rendered
with the mental ray engine, adding GI
Giorgia Baldissera The Mischievous Waterhorse, 2009
Artist info
Giorgia Baldissera
http://giorgiabaldissera.
cgsociety.org/gallery/
Country Italy
Software used 3ds max, mental
ray, Photoshop, ZBrush
Work in progress…
I like the messiness in the room

– a real bathroom should have stuff
strewn all over the place. Or
maybe that’s just me!
Jo Editor in Chief
12 ● 3DArtist
011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 12 20/10/09 13:51:18

THE GA LLERY
The history of mankind and
invention has always interested
me. Initially, I built only the
Artist info
flintlock but then realised I
couldn’t stop there and soon I had
created an outlaw’s possessions
spread around the flintlock.
Creating a dirty, worn-out look is Sami Mustonen
always fun. Modelled in 3ds Max, Personal portfolio site
www.samimustonen.com
rendered with V-Ray, while Software used 3ds Max,
Photoshop
textures and colour correction Work in progress…
were made in Photoshop
Sami Mustonen Flintlock, 2009
Not only is this full of great detail, but

the textures are fantastic as well. Throw in
the lovely colouring and you have a
first-rate image
Duncan Editor

011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 13 20/10/09 13:51:36

THE GA LLERY
Scary and ghastly, yet also freakishly good. The

modelling is excellent and there’s a real sense of
menace and horror in the figure itself. The
chaotic background adds to it
Duncan Editor
Artist info
Dennis Mejillones
My goal in creating this image was to create www.pixelrapture.com
Country USA
something that looked like it came right out of a Software used ZBrush, 3ds
Max 2009, Photoshop,
Blizzard cinematic scene. At the same time I rendered in mental ray
wanted a character that would look brutal and had Work in progress…
a good range of surfaces that I could experiment

with. I am a big fan of Blizzard Entertainment’s art
and was inspired by its concept paintings as well as
its cinematic work
Dennis Mejillones Undead Warrior’s Wrath, 2009
14 ● 3DArtist
011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 14 20/10/09 13:51:53

THE GA LLERY
A sinister stare and well-

thought-out pose adds to the
overall ambience in this image,
not to mention the limited
colour palette that
speaks volumes!
Jo Editor in Chief
Artist info
Khurram Hamid
Alavi
http://leviathon.cgsociety.org/
gallery/
Country Pakistan
Software used ZBrush,
Photoshop
Work in progress…
This model was made for a

modelling challenge over at CGHub.com.
I’ve always loved this character but I’ve
never seen a modern interpretation of
him based on the old-school version
from the Eighties. This is my tribute to
this great villain!
Khurram Hamid Alavi Zartan, 2009

011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 15 22/10/09 12:16:42

THE GA LLERY
I’ve been building models and drawing since I was a

little kid but have replaced plastic kits and paper with
polygons and rendering engines. This render shows a
German Messerschmitt flown by a pilot named Hans Ohly
during WWII. Modelled and rendered with modo. It was a
personal project created just for fun. The mesh and
textures can be downloaded from my site
Anders Lejczak Messerschmitt Me109, 2009
Wonderful detail, from the hint of the

pilot’s clothing to the blur of the propeller. The
plane’s individual panels and insignia
mark the era of the piece, too
Ross Head of Design
16 ● 3DArtist
011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 16 20/10/09 13:52:42

THE GA LLERY
Artist info
Anders Lejczak
www.colacola.se
Country Sweden
Software used Luxology modo
Work in progress…

011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 17 20/10/09 13:53:04

THE GA LLERY
This is a girl on a chair

with an easy mind. I got the
inspiration from my wife. I The ornate carving on
had been thinking about the chair is beautiful and
adds a dignified
making a work based around edge to the image
a female, so I chose this Jo Editor in Chief
subject. I hoped it would be
realistic and lifelike
Jian Xu Girl on Chair, 2009
Artist info
Jian Xu
Country China
Software used 3ds Max,
ZBrush, Photoshop
Work in progress…
18 ● 3DArtist
011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 18 21/10/09 17:44:31

THE GA LLERY
Fantastically vivid colours and a great scene

to set the creature in, but the real star of this
image is the fur, which is one of the new features
in modo 401. Check out the Polar Bear
tutorial to see this in action as well
Duncan Editor
Artist info
Roger Harris
www.rogerharris.net
Country England
Software used Luxology mod
o
401
Work in progress…
I had just received the upgrade to modo 401 and wanted
to try out the new replicator and fur features. This scene was a
novel way of doing it. The raptor, which is a base mesh from
DAZ 3D, has feathery fur added and the ground is covered in
thousands of replicated debris, like leaves, sticks and rocks
Roger Harris Utah Raptor, 2009

011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 19 20/10/09 13:53:55

09
The latest news, tools and resources for the 3D artist
Designers had to create characters and

events that involved gadgets, guns, evil
geniuses and espionage in some way
Mission possible Digital artists scoop

prizes in the latest
CGSociety competition
T
he CGSociety has revealed the winners of its most Jose Alves da Silva from Portugal won the Image Master
recent challenge, ‘Secret Agent’. There were over Award for his piece Mouse Love, based on a story of a lab
a thousand entries for the competition, which rat seeking revenge. Meanwhile, Aurelien Rantet bagged
offered digital artists the chance to win more than the Individual Video Master Award for ‘Run For The
$100,000 worth of hardware and software prizes. To be in Artefact’. The Team Video Master Award was given to a
with a chance of winning, designers had to create group for ‘Agent Omicron’; team members Goro Fujita,
characters and events that involved gadgets, guns, evil Kory Heinzen, Nico Sanghrajka and Ryosuke Fujita created
geniuses and espionage in some way. The finished piece an Eighties-style TV show with a jazz soundtrack.
could be in the form of a video or a still image. Judges for the contest included the president of the
There were many different categories for artists to enter CGSociety, Mark Snoswell, plus over 20 other industry
work into, including Lighting, Landscape/Matte Painting, types and past challenge winners. The many different
Modelling, VFX and Texturing; three of these categories prizes up for grabs were provided by a wide variety of
– Individual Video, Team Video and Image – were eligible companies, including BOXX, Autodesk, Wacom, NVIDIA,
for Master Awards. Maxon and ZBrush. To check out the
full list of winners, visit http://
features.cgsociety.org/challenge/.
Did you submit an entry? Seen one you

like? Discuss these and more with other
3D artists at www.3dartistonline.
com/forum
20 ● 3DArtist
020-23_3DA_09 Community.indd 20 21/10/09 18:30:57

News, tools and resources ● Community
Kerby decided to
create this image
New sites and changes to your to learn more
favourites – it’s all here! about ZBrush
Legal Tender
Tender3D is a new online

marketplace that is dedicated to
the buying and selling of 3D
design work. Purchasers – those
with modelling and animation jobs
– place their listings on this
website or ‘out to tender’ and then
suppliers (essentially, the people
who can do the work) will then
bid on them.
What’s great about this service
is that it offers benefits for both
sides. Artists and designers have
another place to find work and
expand their client base, while
purchasers can get the best
person for the task and discover
some fresh talent in the process.
There are no details yet as to
how much commission is taken by
Tender3D – this was because it
was in its beta stage at the time of
going to print. However, the
service launched at the start of Weathered Master
November, so full details should be
available at www.tender3d.com. Temple the arts
Meet Cameron Brush up on your skills
Testing, testing Kerby – he’s a hard- Gnomon is hosting a selection of visual effects
Software development company
surface artist from masterclasses from 9-23 November 2009. Tutors
EPHERE has launched an open the USA. We including Craig Mullins, Sze Jones and Feng Zhu will
beta for Zookeeper and is now chatted with him offer their expertise on various topics, from female
looking for testers to offer
feedback. The scene-
about his work character creation to traditional art values. Lessons each
management system works with Cameron Kerby www.kerbywithane.com last around two to three hours, and one ticket gives you
versions 2009 and 2010 of 3ds Cameron Kerby originally chose to create this access to all 16 classes.
Max. The plug-in enables you to
work fast and effectively in the weathered temple to familiarise himself with ZBrush, The lessons will be held online via Gnomon’s private
program by organising, managing as he explains: “At the time I only had traditional 3D forum, which also means that you’ll have the chance to
and visualising complex scenes. It modelling practice and I was ready for a challenge.” chat to your instructor and ask them any questions
boasts advanced tree views, layer
panels and schematic views,
Much of the sculpting was done with brushes, but he about the subjects. Tickets start at £225 for students,
which mean you can view and edit says that most of it was created with the help of while a regular ticket costs £295. There’s also a studio
your work with 3ds Max. To apply reference images. The software used included Maya, discount on offer that could save you or your company
for a beta licence, visit http://
Photoshop, mental ray, Shake and, of course, ZBrush. anything from 10-20 per cent off the price of admission.
tinyurl.com/ephere-zookeeper/.
You can also check out the demo If you’d like to take a look at Kerby’s work, visit www. To sign up or find out more, visit www.gnomonschool.
video via that link, too. kerbywithane.com. com/master.
Creative Crash www.creativecrash.com

Highend3d.com and fxshare.com have joined forces software to view members’ images or bag some
and the result is Creative Crash, a site that looks to be freebies and read through tutorials in the
a one-stop shop for artists and designers. It Resources section. Models available in the
offers social and business networking marketplace are of a very high quality, too.
opportunities, 3D learning resources, a Creative Crash is a
community and a marketplace. well-designed site with
Even though it’s still at beta stage, the great ambitions.
range of resources on offer is impressive. Support the 3D
Users will be please to know that there’s no community and take a
application bias here – you can search by look for yourself.

09
Learning
Textures and models
Get your fill of models, textures and
more
Digital-Tutors has a
software from these here parts fresh new range of
training videos in
Artist-3D store for you
For a good range of freebies, take a look at this website
CG tutorial site Digital-Tutors (www. as well as other new tutorials. You can even opt
Web: http://artist-3d.com/
digitaltutors.com) has new lessons for for a free trial to test out the service, which gives
Artist-3D provides designers with design software such as Toxik, modo, you access to 12 preselected courses. If you
free models, including big chunks Nuke, Maya and After Effects. You can get decide on an annual membership, then you’ll
of rooms and even a few room
scenes. The models vary greatly an introduction to channels in Nuke, browse save $140 over the monthly or semiannual
from Buddha statues and the tops of through new modelling features in modo 401 or subscriptions. Visit www.digitaltutors.com for
aerosol cans to a bejewelled crown. learn about channels and steam nodes in Toxik, more details.
In addition to that, there are lots of
textures, 3D wallpaper and free
software to browse through. Check
it out.
Bike Shop Exterior

Back in issue three we covered a collection of images from
environment artist Alberto Hernandez – he’s sent us in an
update with the finished image
TurboSquid Alberto Hernandez www.albertohernandezjr.com
Think that this well-known 3D marketplace doesn’t deal in
freebies? Think again Alberto Hernandez’s aim when first starting Bike
Web: www.turbosquid.com Shop Exterior was to test out his texture and
TurboSquid is an established lighting skills. Using 3ds Max, V-Ray and Shader
website and it also claims to have Map Pro, he managed to create the scene in his
the largest library of 3D products spare time over the course of several months.
for sale in the world… and that’s
not all. There are over 7,000 free
Hernandez always has lots of projects on the go, so
texture maps and models on there. if you’d like to check out more of his work then visit
Granted, the quality of some aren’t his website at www.albertohernandezjr.com.
great, but who cares when they’re
free? Just filter your search and
set the price
boundaries
to zero and
you can see
the range
for yourself.
NASA
Space: the final frontier for freebies
Web: www.nasa.gov
If you’re looking for free 3D
models and textures with an
intergalactic theme, then you
might like to take a gander at
NASA’s website. Click on the
Multimedia tab for a drop-down list,
and there you’ll find the header 3D
Resources. There are base stations,
flight system supports, 70-metre
satellite dishes, plus textures from
planets such as Saturn, Venus and
Jupiter. What a discovery!
22 ● 3DArtist

09 What’s in next issue
www.3DArtistonline.com Practical inspiration for the 3D community
Dora, Rail Gun

Don Webster
www.websterandsonsstudio.com
10
www.3DArtistonline.com Practical inspiration for the 3D community

Learn how this incredible image was created
What’s in next issue Issue 10: on sale 9 December For more issue 10 info, visit
Software
shorts
Get the lowdown
on updates and
launches
Prehistoric
animals were
Maxi muscle
always a passion
of Lomaka’s She Freak V4 is available from
DAZ 3D. The muscle pack is
suitable for the Victoria 4.2 figure,
and her accompanying skin
textures will provide you with
BAMBOO
four body shapes and eight heads.
Toy story It’s currently in the sale for

$20.97, or Platinum members can
get it for the absolute bargain
Wacom’s second-generation Bamboo
range offers “multi-touch functionality”
Environment artist Chris price of $1.99. Wacom is well known for its with the help of your trusty
Lomaka talks us through how graphics tablets, and is now digits. This is, of course, all in
he created his latest image Asymmetric updating its technology to suit addition to the usual creative
Chris Lomaka www.chrislomaka.com Bridge people’s everyday computer
habits as well as being used for
functionality that one of
Wacom’s trusty tablets offers.
creative work. According to the The Bamboo range is suitable
Chris Lomaka has always had a passion for prehistoric If you’re looking for a fast way to company, these super-slim for left- and right-handed users,
animals. The idea for Plesiosaurus Playset came from a quick transfer data between 3D tablets offer “multi-touch has a lightweight digital pen and
sketch, as he explains: “I doodled a pterosaur of some sort applications, then you might like functionality with pen tablet features four customisable
Asymmetric Bridge. It’s a new technology” – what that means shortcut keys. It’s just come out
picking at a carcass with all these flowing lines that I love. I piece of software that enables you to us is that you can select an in Japan and is expected to hit
went for a stylised look that I could complete quickly, not to move models and animation icon or start an application with European stores soon after. To
really sure where it would lead me. As it went on it looked between programs. There are the tap of the finger. find out more on each product
loads of other great features of You can also flip through a in the range or check out
like a child’s toy and I couldn’t resist.” the application, so for more presentation on your Mac or PC, stockists, visit www.wacom-
To see more of Lomaka’s work, check out his website at details check out http://a-vfx.ru/ or zoom in and out of an image europe.com.
www.chrislomaka.com. en/inhousetools/.
Create your gallery, browse the artwork, chat with

experts and artists and get tips and techniques at

Reader’s Gal le
09
Picture
of the
month
Hail fellow 3D
enthusiast!
Let your eyes
feast upon
these, the
best images
uploaded to
the 3D Artist
gallery this
month
C
A The Willow Pond B Patroness C Mustang GT 2.0

» Dominic Davison » Peggy E » George Walker
Dom says: “Rendered in Vue with no postproduction Peggy says: “A warrior woman compiled in Poser 7 George says: “This is my updated version of Mustang 2.0 Angle 1. I made a lot of
work. This is a similar scene to the one featured in the with the look and feel being finished off in tweaks. The lighting isn’t so bright, the windows have reflections now and the
tutorial in issue 8 of 3D Artist.” Photoshop. She is guarding against the destruction railing is casting shadows. Most of this was done in Photoshop utilising different
We say: Great trees and a superbly composed scene. of the world.” layering techniques. Yes, I know the car isn’t moving! I used a variety of programs to
It has a real feel of a painting about it. All you need to We say: Nicely composed so that the figure has get this effect: 3ds Max 2, Photoshop CS3, Filter Forge 4, Paint Shop Pro.”
do is apply an Impressionist style in something like space behind her, suggesting the area that’s being We say: Nice effect from the glaring headlights to the wet tarmac. A closer view
Painter and hey presto, instant Monet! guarded. The colour toning in particular is excellent. would have been even better but great modelling on the car.
.
24 ● 3DArtist
024-25_3DA_09 Communitygallery.i24 24 21/10/09 18:35:50

al lery News, tools and resources ● Community
Pictures of
the week
HERE ARE THE LATEST IMAGES TO BE
AWARDED THE PICTURE OF THE WEEK
AWARD IN THE LAST MONTH
Steam Traveller
» Andrew Averkin
Andrew says: “An old
granddad who saw
probably the whole world.
I wanted to do this
monster long ago. In the
scene there are about two
million polygons; the
locomotive alone has
about one million
polygons. Rendering time
took about 12 hours at a
resolution of 2,700 x
3,600.”
We say: Excellent detail, a
great modelling job.
B
Longfellow House
» Dominic Davison
Dom says: “Rendered and composed in Vue. Plants and foliage from
Runtime DNA, Xfrog and Cornucopia3D.”
We say: Exquisite oil painting style with a great composition, leading
the eye all the way through to the neo-Georgian house.
Dora Awaits in Her

Tunnel
» Don Webster
Don says: “Famous German
rail gun sitting in her protective
tunnel. The scene used a
highly detailed model of the
gun, which was placed into the
rest of the scene. It was
printed onto a 14 x 40-inch
Giclée canvas.”
Share your art We say: Great model of the
gun and superb use of lighting
D Register with us today at to get the atmosphere in the
tunnel.
D Lobby looking at fountain The Berlin Express Arrives in Paris

» Elijah Bell Jnr » Len Krenzler
Elijah says: “This is a rendering I completed working at Len says: “Bill Overstreet of the 357th Fighter group chased an Me109
Murray Associates Architects, P.C. While working with under the Eiffel Tower in his Mustang named the Berlin Express. The 109
client Dan Schunkewitz,R.A.and Interior designer Rene
Lanza, I took the drawings and modelled this in SketchUp
www.3dartistonline.com crashed moments later. Bill is still alive, tough as ever, and signed the
prints. The Eiffel Tower was a test in patience to model. This image was
Pro 6 and rendered it with RPSystems, IRender Lite.” to view the art and chat done in LightWave and a bit of Photoshop postproduction work.”
We say: A nicely modelled scene with lots of curving lines
and reflective textures.
to the artist We say: Another great action image from Len here. The Eiffel Tower
alone is pretty complex.
024-25_3DA_09 Communitygallery.i25 25 21/10/09 18:36:58

09
Have your say

Write, email or Animator required Stranger in a strange land
use the website I was wondering whether you could kindly give me some My name is Miguel Duque, a 3D CG artist from Macau.
forums to get advice. I am a novice with regards to 3D animation. I am Today in Hong Kong I picked up 3D Artist for the first time,
in touch about looking to find a 3D animator for a project that I am working and I have to say that I loved it every bit of it. It’s definitely an
the magazine, on but don’t know where to start. I am looking for someone artist-friendly magazine, and I will recommend it to all my
your problems who could do photorealism, although am open to other friends. Congratulations for the great magazine and I will
or triumphs styles. I am aware of very high-end productions such as certainly pick up the next one. I have also registered on your
Send your Digital Domain’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, etc, but
wondered which smaller companies are out there. Your
website www.3dartistonline.com. I would like to share my
latest work with you and hopefully you will find it interesting.
letters to… advice and assistance would be much appreciated. On and off, it took four weeks to work on this 3D artwork,
Email the team directly Stevie Isaac, by email which I called The Wise Alien Cherokee. I wanted to
with your letter demonstrate a cultural fusion between an alien race and
3dartist@imagine-
publishing.co.uk You don’t mention what this project is but if there is only yourself ours. A shared knowledge and culture. The software
Log in and leave your working on it and you need another person to help out, then I packages used were Hexagon 2.2, modo 401 and ZBrush 3.1.
comments on the forum would guess it is a low-/no-cost project. That being the case, Miguel Duque, by email
www.3dartistonline. then I can’t really see even a small company getting involved
com/forum
POST TO:
unless you are offering a fee for the work. If it is just personal Thanks for sending the image in Miguel, it’s certainly an
The Editor, 3D Artist, work, then your best bet is to advertise for someone to help out interesting piece and topical with District 9 in the cinemas
Imagine Publishing, and list what you need, specifically listing the software packages, recently. The modelling and sculpting are both good, while we
Richmond House,
33 Richmond Hill,
the nature of the project, the time involved and the ultimate also like the texturing. The headdress is great as well. The only
Bournemouth, purpose or reward. There are numerous website forums that you things you should look at a bit more closely are the hair,
Dorset can post on – try ours at www.3dartistonline.com, or CGSociety, eyebrows and chin, making them extrude from the surface a little
BH2 6EZ, UK
CGHub, CGArena or ones that are specific to the software you more realistically. The eyes could do with a bit more detail, but
are using. otherwise it’s a good effort.
The Wise Alien Cherokee

For us, the eyebrows and goatee
add to the all-knowing feeling
beneath those black eyes. A great
image, especially the headdress
26 l 3DArtist
026_027-3DA_09 Letters.indd 26 20/10/09 10:32:42

News, tools and resources ● Community
Balanced contents
I received the latest issue on Friday 11 September. It’s great
being a subscriber, and it didn’t disappoint! Not to spoil
things too much, issue 7 is a great issue featuring some
fantastic-looking articles and disc content. The disc features
some great Blender tutorials, which provide fantastic hints,
tips and tricks for this great piece of software. There are also
some WW1 Navy Battleships (cool!) and some furniture
models (unfortunately, the furniture models are saved in
.max, format. Shame on you 3D Artist!).
This issue feels far more balanced, with less focus on
Autodesk products. The content is more varied, with modo
getting a good slice of the mag and featuring in both a full
article and a tutorial. Carrara and Poser also feature in
tutorials, which is fantastic. The Community section is as
useful as ever, featuring an article on earning extra cash from
your creations. The Reviews and Workspace sections also
have some interesting-looking reviews and articles.
All in all, this is a great-looking issue and I have enjoyed
the Blender tutorials. It’s great to see this superb piece of
software getting some recognition. Great work guys!
Homunculus, on the forum
We’re trying to get a balanced diet of tutorials across as many

software formats as possible. Obviously, as Autodesk is the
leading company in the industry, it has more software packages
and a greater market share than any others, so more images are
made with those packages. However, you can look forward to
more LightWave, modo, Poser and CINEMA 4D tutorials in the
issues to come.
Get your free stuff

Team Dystopia features items that have a Dystopian look
and feel to them, and it provides models for Poser, Vue and
LightWave. It also has freebies on its products page for Poser
and LightWave. Team Dystopia can be found at www.team- In the past I was able to go to my local online centre to Darth Jaydar
Jason McNamar sent in this image
dystopia.com. register and grab a serial or activation code by going to the titled Darth Jayder, in which he
Ghost Wulf, on the forum program’s website and registering from there. Would you produced a mutilated version of his
own head, as he explains: “It is a self-
consider offering an alternative along similar lines to those portrait as Darth, and was created so
Thanks for posting this, always worth getting stuff for free! of us who are not online so that we can install and register I could brush up on my 3D skills and
the programs? try my hand at a human character.”
Not bad, keep up the good work
J.T. Bradfield, Wirral, UK
No-go internet
I love the mag, 3D Artist, it’s the best cotton-pickin’ mag of Interesting question. It used to be that you just needed to register
its kind on the market today, so if you keep up the standard, a code to activate the program, but the software companies have
then I’ll keep buying! There is, though, one major gripe I have, decided that it’s even more useful for them to get your details
and that’s the cover disc. When it comes to this, all online and activate the program directly. It also helps reduce
magazines in this field frustrate me no end when it comes to piracy significantly. The bottom line in all of this is that we do not
installing the free programs that you offer. My gripe is that an dictate how the program works because we don’t make it. It’s
internet connection is needed either to access some files or down to the software companies themselves and this kind of
to install the programs in order to register them and get a registration is usually obligatory in order to get the software for
serial code, etc. As I am not connected to the internet, the disc in the first place. It also has to be said that by not being
installing the programs – especially Vue 7 Pioneer that I was online you are missing out on so much in the world of 3D,
excited about in issue 2 – is not an option. Why can’t you whether that’s from information and answers to questions,
consider people like me who are not online by offering a way showcasing your work to other artists, even getting free models
to install and use these programs without going online? and resources.

026_027-3DA_09 Letters.indd 27 21/10/09 17:46:31

Interview ● Prime Focus VFX
28 ● 3DArtist
028-33_3DA_09 Prime Focus.indd 28 22/10/09 17:31:22

Bringing VFX into focus ● Interview
Duncan Evans talks to Mike Fink, CEO of Prime Focus VFX,

about developing one of the world’s largest VFX studio groups
Bringing VFX
into focus Vancouver has benefited from a favourable
currency rate, strong tax credits and a long local
history of feature film production, so we’ve seen
a surge in film and TV production spending in
British Columbia
Mike Fink is CEO and senior visual effects supervisor of Prime Focus VFX
M
Company Prime Focus ike Fink is CEO and senior visual Bank of America while going to school at
Founded Frantic Films VFX, effects supervisor of Prime night to get my MBA. I eventually quit both to
recently rebranded to Prime
Focus, was founded in Focus VFX, based in Canada. go to art school. That was a long time ago.
Winnipeg, Manitoba, He’s been doing visual effects for 32 years, Before Prime Focus, I was a senior visual
Canada in 1997. Prime Focus
was founded in Mumbai, starting at a time when there were no effects supervisor on The Golden Compass,
India in 1997 classes, online courses or even books and won an Academy Award, a BAFTA award
Company website dedicated to VFX. Coffee-table books on and a VES nomination. I was also a visual
www.primefocusworld.com
Country LA, New York City, visual effects just didn’t exist. Fink’s first job effects supervisor on movies like Braveheart,
Vancouver, Winnipeg, in the industry was as an electronic X-Men and X2.
London, Mumbai, Goa,
Hyderabad, Bangalore,
consultant on The China Syndrome,
Chennai produced by Michael Douglas who also 3DA: We understand that you’ve just
Expertise Previsualisation, starred alongside Jane Fonda, in which he moved into a new purpose-built office in
animatics, equipment hire,
visual effects, video and helped build a nuclear reactor control room Vancouver, British Columbia. What can you
audio postproduction, digital and a computer. The movie was released in tell us about the facility?
intermediate, digital asset
management and 1978 and chronicled the story of a near MF: While we’ve seen feature film
distribution, R&D software meltdown of a nuclear reactor. The movie production languishing stateside, Vancouver
development
was released the same week that the Three has benefited from a favourable currency
Client list Major film studios
– 20th Century Fox, Mile Island meltdown accident happened, rate, strong tax credits and a long local
Miramax Pictures, and it was exactly as depicted in the movie – history of feature film production, so we’ve
Paramount Pictures, Warner
Bros., Summit Entertainment a strange case of life following art. This was seen a surge in film and TV production
and, of course, clients across Fink’s first movie experience and was an spending in British Columbia. When we
the entire Bollywood market
ideal one, because it was on budget, on decided to expand, it made sense to establish
Software used Autodesk
Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max, schedule and everyone was terrifically Vancouver as the primary visual effects
eyeon Fusion, Deadline, collaborative. The experience there facility for Prime Focus in North America.
Krakatoa, Flood, Awake,
CLEAR, Terragen, V-Ray, immediately seduced him into filmmaking. The new Vancouver studio is now four
FumeFX, Adobe CS4 times larger, and can house 150-200 artists
3D Artist: What were you doing or where
were you working before Prime Focus, and
A Mr Magorium’s Wonder b To create a more magical
what education or training have you had Emporium. The original film ending for the film,
relevant to this kind of work? production was never Frantic reconstructed the
designed to use VFX, it was scene using particle and
Mike Fink: Before The China Syndrome, I all puppetry and in-camera fluid simulation in almost
was a teacher and administrator at CalArts, effects. After viewing the every shot. The artists
original, final scene, the added 3D birds, ample
and before that had been a portfolio director decided to call in amounts of pixie dust and
manager in San Francisco for a division of the VFX cavalry a sunny, holographic light
B No unauthorised copying or distribution

C D
and support staff. It’s located in the city’s shots and sequences on the movie. At that
thriving downtown district, and has all the point, Frantic didn’t have a Vancouver office
fixings: the most up-to-date technological – it was just using production offices for
pipeline, a 50-seat screening room with whatever show it was working on. After X2,
stereoscopic 3D viewing capabilities, Frantic rented out a small space in
luxurious client meeting rooms and Vancouver, mostly to handle
individual studios for our different VFX previsualisation work, and that grew with
departments. We also have ultra-high-speed the addition of VFX supervisor Chris Harvey,
data connections and Polycom video who was fairly well known in the Vancouver
conferencing connecting the Vancouver market. During that time, Chris Bond was
studio with Prime Focus offices – and our spending so much time meeting with
clients’ facilities – worldwide. filmmakers and studios in LA that he moved
there, and that started the LA facility.
3DA: Additionally, why Canada? You have Of course, there are a lot of attributes about
offices in Winnipeg but also in LA, so why Vancouver that make it an attractive place to
go to Vancouver? do film, and I mentioned some of that above.
MF: Frantic Films VFX was founded in Canada offers tax rebates, has a long history
Canada by Chris Bond, who is now president of being a hotbed of CG development,
and senior visual effects supervisor for Prime stemming from companies like Alias,
Focus VFX. He lived in Winnipeg, so that’s Houdini, Discreet Logic and so forth. So
where the company was based. The story, there’s already a pretty wide talent pool in
however, of how Frantic set up the Vancouver Canada, and Vancouver is overall just a
office is that there was a small group from beautiful city. People like working here.
Frantic working on The Core for visual effects The Vancouver office will be
supervisor Greg McMurray in Vancouver, interconnected to Prime Focus’s network of
Key Project 1 doing previsualisation work and some shots

on the movie. I came up to Vancouver to
offices in Los Angeles, New York City,
Winnipeg, London and across India via
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra check things out for X2 and met up with Greg, CLEAR, Prime Focus’s proprietary web-
We contributed 124 visual effects shots for the Stephen who told me over dinner, “You have to check based media asset management system.
Sommers-directed movie G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra from
Paramount Pictures. Prime Focus’s Los Angeles, Winnipeg out the guys at Frantic who do great previs.” I
and Vancouver visual effects studios provided expertise in liked what I saw and got them to swing over 3DA: What are the main services that you
previsualisation, digital environments, fluid simulation and
high-volume particle rendering for the movie’s action-packed to our show, and they started doing offer and the areas of VFX that you cover?
finale sequence involving a complicated aerial scene. previsualisation in addition to a number of MF: We specialise in providing creative and
30 ● 3DArtist

E F
and we’re leveraging the incredibly talented

We specialise in providing creative and people on both sides of our building.
technical VFX services to the However, the main thrust and growth of
our company in North America is the
entertainment industry Vancouver studio, which is the primary
visual effects production centre for Prime
Focus North America. We’re building up
technical VFX services to the entertainment lighting and rendering, compositing, effects Vancouver’s abilities in every aspect,
industry, and have dedicated departments animation, previsualisation and simulation. including effects animation, simulation,
for 3D, 2D, matte painting, effects animation, Los Angeles focuses on matte painting and animation, lighting and rendering,
creature and character animation, R&D and digital environments, lighting and compositing and stereoscopic filmmaking.
other digital departments. In addition, we rendering, previsualisation, compositing, And we are all linked by Prime Focus’s
offer software packages such as Deadline, 3D, lighting and rendering, effects animation Global Digital Pipeline, which allows
our render management tool, and Krakatoa, and simulation. When Prime Focus acquired seamless working practices across the
our high-volume particle renderer. Frantic, it also acquired Hollywood’s Post international facilities.
Logic Studios, so our LA office also has digital
3DA: What functions do your other offices intermediate, colour correction and digital 3DA: You were originally called Frantic
around North America serve? postproduction capabilities. Films VFX, so why the change of name?
MF: Winnipeg deals primarily with R&D and What’s been great about Rob Hummel MF: Prime Focus acquired the VFX and
software but also production, mostly coming on board for Prime Focus as CEO of software/R&D portions of Frantic Films in
compositing, as well as effects animation postproduction for North America is that he 2007 (however, the live-action portion was
and simulation. and I are able to bring the capabilities of not acquired and is still in operation). Prime
Vancouver incorporates matte painting Frantic Films VFX and Post Logic together. Focus simultaneously acquired Post Logic
and environments, character animation, We’re in the same building in Hollywood Studios at that time as well.
Because Prime Focus was made up of a
number of businesses and brands in
numerous locations with differences in
C The pleasant d Wireframes and live- E Frantic’s Vancouver and F Ken Nakada, one of the
environment at the action compositing for G. Winnipeg facilities industry’s leading vision, culture, sector disciplines and ways
Vancouver office for I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, handled the bulk of the matte painters, of working, it was necessary to unite these
Prime Focus VFX, the summer action flick. 334 VFX shots for oversaw about 30
formerly Frantic Films. The final sequence Dragonball Evolution, with matte painting shots companies under one single brand with one
This is one of a number of featured a high speed VFX supervisors Chad from Frantic’s set of values, one clear brand position and
Prime Focus sites around aerial chase © 2009 Wiebe and Mike Shand Hollywood studio
the world Paramount Pictures. All overseeing the work one strategic vision. We launched under one
Rights Reserved global brand name, which was Prime Focus,

with launch galas in London and Los Angeles

on 1 October. For Red Cliff, we contributed a number of
3DA: A couple of recent releases you
visual effects shots, most notably for one of the
worked on were Red Cliff and G.I. Joe. What film’s key naval battle scenes
were you called upon to do for those?
MF: For Red Cliff, we contributed a number renderer Krakatoa, along with 3ds Max, to that you had to overcome, and if so how did
of visual effects shots, most notably for one of render out the billions upon billions of you do it?
the film’s key naval battle scenes. We were particles that make up the Nanomite cloud. MF: The finale sequence was particularly
tasked with creating the entire environment We also built a hybrid matte painting, challenging because we were not relying on
surrounding a massively destructive attack environment and 3D animation pipeline. any aerial photography, which would be
waged on an enormous fleet of ships – all Ken Nakata headed up the digital matte practically impossible to shoot at these
within an eight-week production schedule. painting department in Los Angeles to create speeds, but instead created nearly
For G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, we the CG sky and clouds using a combination everything digitally: the aeroplane, sky,
contributed 124 visual effects shots. Our LA, of fluid dynamics, matte painting, CG clouds and the destructive Nanomites that
Winnipeg and Vancouver visual effects simulation and particle simulation. Prime eat away the plane.
studios handled previsualisation, digital Focus also created missile contrails and built We also had as many as two 3ds Max scene
environments, fluid simulation and high- the White House and Potomac River entirely files, two Maya scene files, two Terragen
volume particle rendering for the movie’s in CG. In addition to the finale, Prime Focus scene files and multiple Photoshop files per
action-packed finale sequence involving a also contributed to the film’s opening shot. Keeping all of these render passes in
complicated aerial scene, in which a plane is sequence (in which a tank is destroyed by order was difficult enough, but there were
being eaten away by Nanomites, US- Nanomites) and provided interior shots and often camera changes, too! When this
developed bioweaponry usurped by evil set extensions for the Cobra base, as well as happened, new camera nodes had to be
forces that disintegrates metal on contact. digitally building the Night Raven plane, created for all the scene files for rendering
We contributed roughly 70 visual effects including its inner workings and engine, multiple passes from each scene file. All
shots for this aerial sequence, and developed which are revealed as the Nanomites eat these passes necessitated a large farm, so
a custom toolset to generate three- away the metal. rendering was a challenge.
dimensional clouds and sky environments. Clouds are unique entities with unique
We built a Nanomite animation pipeline 3DA: Were there any particular technical lighting qualities and their atmospheric
using our proprietary volumetric particle challenges on G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra integration into their environments is
G A VFX shot that Frantic H In the John Woo epic Red I Frantic was responsible for J A combination of matted K The basic geometry for
contributed for the Cliff, Frantic got involved 123 shots in a pivotal and elements on geometry, the White House in a fast
Superman Returns film. for the second part of the frenetic five-minute fully rendered geometry action flyby shot. By
This shot used the film, working on the sequence in which the and matte painting. Prime building virtual elements
company’s proprietary massive naval battle, film’s characters stand Focus also created missile for almost the entire scene
fluid mechanics system to which involved hundreds atop a raft on turbulent trails and built a complete the action was created at
generate the effect of burning CGI wooden 100 per cent CGI sea. CGI version of the White a speed that would have
boats with crews Picture courtesy of New House and the Potomac been practically
Line Cinema River for G.I. Joe impossible to film
32 ● 3DArtist

J K
complicated. We addressed this challenge by proprietary software tools Deadline,

investigating as many tools as possible to Krakatoa, Awake, Flood, CLEAR (our digital
replicate them, trying to find a pipeline that asset management system), Terragen, V-Ray,
utilised as few tools as possible. FumeFX and Adobe CS4.
We found we needed the strengths of
many different software packages, as well as 3DA: You also have a division called Prime
different VFX techniques, and opted to write Focus Software. What’s the remit of this
custom tools to achieve our goal, which led to division and what kind of products/
a cluster of fun trying to keep all the passes software has it come up with?
straight. Spreadsheets that each artist could MF: We’ve commercialised four primary
update simultaneously were key, and visual effects products: Awake, a set of
compositing had to be able to keep track of stereoscopic 3D plug-ins for eyeon Fusion,
all these passes as well. Everyone had to be
absolutely religious about updating their
Deadline, our very popular render queue
management software, and Krakatoa, our Key Project 2
elements and inform artists downstream high-volume point-based particle renderer. Dragonball Evolution
about the updates. In its former life as Frantic Films VFX, Prime contributed 334
shots to the feature film Dragonball Evolution from 20th
3DA: What are your plans and ambitions Century Fox. Directed by James Wong, it starred Justin
3DA: What other projects are you working for the company in the future? Chatwin, Emmy Rossum, Jamie Chung and Chow Yun-Fat in
on at the moment? MF: To continue to grow our Canadian the live-action film adaptation of the popular Japanese
manga comic book series. The Vancouver and Winnipeg
MF: We’re in the midst of production on production capability. Our Vancouver hub is facilities handled the bulk of the VFX shots, with VFX
several shows right now, including Tooth now capable of doing four times more work supervisors Chad Wiebe and Mike Shand overseeing the
work. Ken Nakada, one of the industry’s leading matte
Fairy, starring Dwayne Johnson, Julie than a year ago, and in a year we hope to be painters, oversaw about 30 matte painting shots from
Andrews and Ashley Judd, about a minor doing six times more work, and by the end of Frantic’s Hollywood studio, while additional rotoscoping and
paint work was completed at parent company Prime Focus in
league hockey player who must serve a one- the first quarter of next year or so we’re Mumbai. Prime Focus Group company Machine FX, in
week sentence as a tooth fairy. hoping to have 150-200 people in Vancouver. London, also contributed plate treatment to about 35 shots.
Frantic and its partner studios worked directly with the film’s
Unfortunately, we cannot talk about our We’ll be maintaining the size of our presence VFX supervisor Ariel Velasco-Shaw and VFX producer Janet
other film projects, but will be able to in a in Winnipeg and LA, but building out Muswell Hamilton.
“Because the movie is based on a very popular anime
few months. Vancouver as the main production hub. The series, and because fans tend to scrutinise comic-book
goal of Prime Focus Worldwide – and I also adaptations much more than regular films, Mike Shand and I
acknowledged that this was sacred material,” shares Chad
3DA: What software tools do you regularly hold the job title of president of visual effects, Wiebe, co-VFX supervisor at Frantic Films VFX. Mike Shand,
employ at Prime Focus? Worldwide – is to continue to grow and co-VFX supervisor at Frantic Films, also contributes: “This
meant we had to be extremely careful and thoughtful in the
MF: We use the latest versions of Autodesk expand our two main visual effects hubs in crafting of the visual effects, particularly regarding the look
Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max, eyeon Fusion, Mumbai and Vancouver. and development of the energy effects used by [characters]
© Imagine Publishing Ltd Goku and Piccolo.”
3DArtist ● 33

Feature ● Doctor Who
No more
rubberformonsters
new
the
DOCTOR WHO
Meleah Maynard talks to Will Cohen, Jean-Claude
Deguara and Nicolas Hernandez of The Mill about their
visual effects work on Doctor Who
W
hen BBC One relaunched the long- awards the following spring, including Best
running sci-fi program Doctor Who in Drama Series.
2005, no one expected it to be the Despite this success, shortly after the second
hit it has become, with an average of eight to series was announced Eccleston quit the show
nine million viewers per episode. The much- citing fears of being typecast. His replacement
loved show, which was cancelled in 1989 after David Tennant became the tenth Doctor, starring
suffering from poor ratings for some time (in first in 2005’s Christmas special ‘The Christmas
part due to bad time slots), was at first intended Invasion’ before joining Rose for another year of
to be educational when it aired in 1963. adventures until she left the series at the end of
The plan was to have Doctor Who, a Time the season. Her replacement Martha Jones
Lord from the planet Gallifrey, travelling through (played by Freema Agyeman) starred alongside
time in his ship, the TARDIS, which would turn Tennant throughout the third series.
into something appropriate for the period of each While continual shifting of main characters
episode – a pyramid, say, or a Trojan Horse. would be next to impossible for most shows,
Budget realities, however, meant the vehicle Doctor Who’s plot line that the Doctor can
needed to take one form, a Sixties police box, regenerate into a new form when mortally
and stick to it. The ongoing explanation for this wounded makes these switches more palatable.
was that the TARDIS’s chameleon circuit had Eccleston’s transformation into Tennant
malfunctioned so it was no longer able to happened in the season finale, aptly called ‘The
change form. Parting of the Ways’.
Although some of the actors who have starred After series three, it was announced that once
as the Doctor over the years have been more series four was finished, the show would be
popular than others, Christopher Eccleston, taking a break in 2009. Instead of the usual
who became the ninth Doctor when the episodes, Doctor Who would return in four
» The Last of the Time Lords
To create the aged Doctor who 2005 series kicked off, was an specials to be broadcast throughout the year.
appears in ‘The Last of the Time immediate hit with fans and critics. Tennant, who played the Doctor through the
Lords’ episode, The Mill used its
own in-house facial mocap In addition to winning the TV completion of all of the specials, will be replaced
system. It also created its own
hardware, which consisted of a Choice/TV Quick Award for by Matt Smith when the series returns in 2010.
head-mounted camera that could
give instant feedback on
Best Actor that year, Unlike the old series, in which stories were told
performance Eccleston, his likeable human in a serialised format, the newly launched Doctor
travelling companion Rose Who features 13 45-minute episodes that are
(played by Billie Piper) and meant to stand alone (or occasionally as two
Doctor Who all won awards at parts). Rubber monsters and the trashy special
the UK’s National Television effects of the past have been replaced with
Awards. The show also state-of-the-art CG created by The Mill, a
won two BAFTA London visual effects house.

034-39_3DA_09 dr who.indd 34 22/10/09 11:32:01

Doctor Who ● Feature
Key people
Will Cohen
Group director for Film
Nicolas Hernandez
CG supervisor at The Mill
Jean-Claude
Deguara
Joint head of Film/TV and
3D at The Mill
Rubber monsters and the trashy special

effects of the past have been replaced with
state-of-the-art CG created by The Mill
» Voyage of the Damned » Planet of the Dead » The Fires of Pompeii

The Titanic was modelled in Maya and composited Matte painting with green screen live-action This matte painting of Vesuvius was composited
Matt Smith copyright BBC Pictures in Shake using live-action elements of explosions foreground footage in Shake using multiple particle passes

034-39_3DA_09 dr who.indd 35 22/10/09 11:33:58

Standout episode
Bridgestone Gecko 2009
Blending computer graphics animation with
We have worked with Bridgestone Australia
live action is a tricky challenge
for over tem to attempt
years on its Gecko character,
producing much of their television and
advertising
Critics had very positive thingsmaterial.
to say We’ve delivered
about the the
Gecko into his own unique 3D environments,
effects used to create the Adipose, short, white,
animated and integrated into live action, blob-
like aliens that appeared in the
printed onto ‘Partners
mugs in Crime’
and mousemats, ten-
episode in the fourthstorey
series.billboards and everything
A departure from in-between,
Doctor
so recently we were excited to be involved in
Who’s usual offering of scary, imposing
a project that rebranded Bridgestone
monsters, the
Adipose were smallAustralia
and looked across a itsbit likeretail chain. We
entire
marshmallows. They werewere made from
commissioned human
to create body
a series of TV
» Partners in Crime
This turntable of the Adipose
fat after a companyspots
calledwith a softer, warmer feel with a
Adipose Industries began
human touch to place the Gecko within
mother ship was modelled in Maya marketing a dubious-sounding
inviting real-world diet pill with claims
situations.
that ‘the fat just walksWorking
away.’under And,the indirection
fact, it did
of in the
The best of the VFX

form of these alien Showpony
creatures, Advertising
which spawnedin Adelaide,each
we have
produced eight 15-second commercials
night from the dieter’s
sincefat.
the beginning of the year. Each spot
The Mill made the wasarmy of Adipose
completely with Massive,
CG and portrayed the
which is most oftenGecko
usedinto a unique
create3Dcrowd environment related to
sequences.
the particular campaign or sale on offer by
Being a big Doctor Who fan, Stephen Regulous, the
Bridgestone at the time. Each spot was
As with most things, the first year of Mill’s artists made for the show. Muscular creator of Massive,briefed
cameand to required
The Mill for four
delivery withinweeks
a week,
creating visual effects for Doctor Who was to the point of being ripped, as Davies had to help work on thesoepisode.
we needed“We had our
to rework to animate
pipeline to 50
suit
the hardest. The learning curve was requested, it appeared in over 50 shots, cycles that were thenthe speed
imported of thisinto
type of production.
Massive andWe
completely rejigged our pipeline to suit a
steep, hours were long and The Mill’s TV including extreme close-ups, so the fur used to make the characters
much faster method‘think’ofabout theirusing
production
and Film department consisted of just five had to be photorealistic. “This was a movements,” Deguara explains.
Blender’s system of libraries. This system
people. “At first we had animators and massive challenge for our early pipeline,” allowed us to access assets from library files
that would automatically be the latest file
modellers working on each creature, explains Deguara, adding that the fur was any artist was working on. This meant we
everyone was just doing everything created using Maya’s useful Shave and a could have many artists working on the
really,” recalls Jean-Claude Deguara, joint Haircut plug-in. same file without fear of overwriting each
other, and it meant the lighting and shading
head of Film/TV and 3D. “But as time In addition to tackling the challenge of
artists could work from day one, making the
went on and we added more structure to fur, The Mill’s artists created a dramatic entire process much faster to deliver. This
our process, animators were sticking to close-up transformation sequence where method proved invaluable for this type of
animation and modellers were sticking to the live-action actor transforms into the
modelling, so things ran more smoothly.” CG werewolf inside a CG cage. “The
By the time series two was under way, werewolf was a real turning point for us,”
the creative team had developed a Deguara adds. “It was when we realised
streamlined system for working closely we could do a full CG creature.” From that
with the show’s executive producer and point on, The Mill’s TV and Film
head writer, Russell T. Davies. “Russell department began to grow.
learnt quickly not to overwrite anything,” To help streamline the process, The
says Will Cohen, group director for film Mill’s CG supervisor Nicolas Hernandez
and TV. “He would pick up the phone and developed a whole new render pipeline
ask us, ‘First off, can I have a digital specifically for the project. “We wanted
werewolf?’ And we would say yes and to do more of the conceptualising of the
explain that the parameters were that it creatures, so we made a miniature film
could emote but not speak, it could be pipeline for TV,” Hernandez explains.
partially covered in hair and it needed to Most episodes took four to six weeks to
appear only in night-time.” complete. Artists used Maya for
The werewolf, which was featured in modelling and animation, Photoshop and
» The Adipose
‘Tooth and Claw,’ the second episode in ZBrush for texturing and painting, The Mill made the army of Adipose who
take to the streets of London in the
series two, was the first big creature The CINEMA 4D for matte painting and ‘Partners in Crime’ episode with Massive
David Tennant, copyright BBC Pictures
23 29 21 3 8 21 16
November October June January June March March
1963 1966 1969 1970 1974 1981 1984
THE
DOCTORS William Patrick Jon Pertwee Tom Baker Peter Colin Baker
OF DOCTOR Hartnell
(the first
Troughton
(the second
(the third
Doctor)
(the fourth Doctor) Davison
(the fifth
(the sixth
Doctor)
WHO: Doctor) Doctor) Doctor)
36 ● 3DArtist
034-39_3DA_09 dr who.indd 36 22/10/09 12:23:43

For an episode in series three simply
Standout episode
Blending computer graphics animation with
called ‘42’ (which, perhaps not
coincidentally, was the answer to Life,
the Universe and Everything, according
live action is a tricky challenge to attempt to Douglas Adams’s book The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), The
Mill used Maya to make the freighter
ship SS Pentallian, which was textured
in Photoshop.
The Doctor, along with his then
companion Martha Jones, have 42
minutes to save the crew and their ship,
which is hurtling through space toward
a fiery star. The star was created using
Maya 2D fluids driving a displacement
on the star’s surface. The corona effect
was made with the Stroika particle
plug-in. “We rendered out 40,000
elements for this,” Deguara explains.
“Then we composited those in Shake as
» Gridlock » 42 a single 1,000-frame sequence, which
Matte painting made in CINEMA 4D. This matte painting The SS Pentallian was modelled in Maya and textured using Photoshop. For the flaming
was in 2D, which allows for 3D-style camera moves star, artists used Maya 2D fluids driving a displacement on the sun’s surface was used in 20 shots.”
Mudbox for displacement. Nuke and Hernandez explains: “We created our were worried about marketing the show,
Shake were used for compositing. own in-house muscle system that we because everyone had a huge affection
Although CG-heavy characters used to create the facial rig. Then we for the first show and its rubber
appeared regularly on the show, the TV captured David Tennant’s performance monsters,” Cohen recalls. “Nobody knew
and Film team can name several that they and transferred the data onto the facial what it was going to be like to try to make
think stand out from the crowd. Among rig, giving us almost 90 per cent of the a show in today’s world of Harry Potter
those are the Pyroviles, humanoid-like facial animation.” that could stand up to what children are
creatures with a rock-based form that Having been with the show since its watching on their TV and videogames.”
appeared in ‘The Fires of Pompeii’ relaunch, The Mill has seen budgets for Making the budget stretch over an » Tooth and Claw
Photorealistic fur on the
episode in series four. “The rocks were digital effects go up every year as it entire series can be tricky, but over time werewolf was made with
Maya’s Shave and a
rigged to move over the lava skin and not became apparent to everyone that the team has worked out a system for Haircut plug-in
collide with each other,” Hernandez impressive CG was part of Doctor Who’s balancing CG-heavy episodes with others
explains. For a later scene where the renewed success. “We started out doing that rely more on matte paintings than
character shatters into tiny pieces, artists it at a cost of about £700,000 out of love effects. “We talk a lot so we know where
achieved the effect using a combination for the show,” says Cohen. By the end of we’re saving money and where we’re
of rigid body particles and hand the fourth series the budget had swelled spending it on something people can
animation. FumeFX was used to make the to £2,000,000, with The Mill working on really sink their teeth into,” Cohen says. » Planet of the Dead
Pyroviles breathe fire. several episodes at one time. Budgets for “It is amazing because we’ve had to This stingray concept was
created in Photoshop. “In-
In an odd twist, the Doctor himself the one-hour specials are handled master making monsters, animation and house concepts help us
with modelling and
becomes a creature in the ‘Last of the separately, with the last two coming in at compositing; it’s like working on a whole rigging,” says Cohen
Time Lords,’ the season finale in series about £650,000. “I think at first they new TV show every month.”
three. With the Master in power and the
human race enslaved, the Doctor appears
as an aged prisoner in this episode. The
The Mill has seen budgets go up every year
old Doctor, as the character is known,
was the first character on which The Mill
as it became apparent that impressive CG was
used its in-house facial mocap system, as part of Doctor Who’s renewed success
6 27
December May 1996
BBC released the
6 7 1989
The show was TV movie Doctor 26 March to
December September discontinued Who as a co- 18 June
production with
1986 1987 US TV network 2005 2005 show is relaunched 2010
Fox
with new CGI by The Mill
Sylvester Sylvester McCoy Christopher David Tennant Matt Smith

McCoy & Paul McGann Eccleston (the tenth Doctor) (the eleventh
(the seventh (the eighth Doctor) in the (the ninth Doctor) Doctor)
Doctor), Doctor Who television movie

034-39_3DA_09 dr who.indd 37 22/10/09 11:35:49

» Pyrovile concepts
An early concept of
the rock-based
Pyrovile aliens made
in Photoshop
The many specials

of Doctor Who
Following the success of the Past specials include:
first Doctor Who series, the
2008/9:
BBC began producing specials
‘Music of the Spheres’,
to accompany the show,
seven minutes, aired on
including an annual Christmas
1 January 2009
episode. In addition to doing
all of the CG for the series, The ‘The Next Doctor’,
Mill also creates the visual 60 minutes, aired on
effects for each special. 25 December 2008
With no series airing in 2009, 2007:
the BBC opted to do four one- ‘The Infinite Quest’,
» The Fires of Pompeii
hour specials before the start animated serial, aired Pyrovile turntable on
of series five in 2010, not Vesuvius backplate, created
2 April – 30 June 2007 in Maya using Mudbox and
including the 2008 Christmas ZBrush for displacements
‘Time Crash’, and textures with Maya
special ‘The Next Doctor’. The particles for smoke and fire
eight-minute special, aired
first of the four, ‘Planet of the
16 November 2007
Dead’, ran in April as the Easter
special. The second, ‘The ‘Voyage of the Damned’,
Waters of Mars’, was scheduled 72-minute special, aired
for an autumn release, while 25 December 2007
the last two specials are 2006:
planned as a two-part story
‘The Runaway Bride’,
Matt Smith and David Tennant courtesy BBC Pictures. All other images
that will air over Christmas

60-minute special, aired
and possibly New Year’s. All of
courtesy The Mill. Doctor Who images are copyright BBC Pictures
25 December 2006
the specials have been written,
or co-written in some cases, by 2005:
Russell T. Davies, who will be ‘Doctor Who: Children in Need’,
leaving the show in the capable seven-minute special, aired
hands of new executive 18 November 2005
producer and head writer ‘The Christmas Invasion’,
Steven Moffat in 2010. A 60-minute special, aired
Scottish television writer and 25 December 2005
producer, Moffat is a longtime
fan of Doctor Who and has ‘Attack of the Grask’, 14-minute
already written several interactive episode, aired
episodes of the new series. 25 December 2005
38 ● 3DArtist
034-39_3DA_09 dr who.indd 38 22/10/09 12:24:50

being slightly nerdy and he packaged it up and
WILL COHEN INTERVIEW made it fun for the whole family. He

rediscovered an audience on British television,
an audience they didn’t know they had.
When Phil Collinson got the job as producer of Doctor Who, he called Will
Cohen to let him know, as The Mill had worked with him in the past. “We 3DA: Why did the BBC decide to do specials
said, ‘You have to let us pitch for it’,” Cohen recalls. The Mill was given a rather than a whole series in 2009?
couple of scripts to break down and budget, and there were some tests to WC: They’ve had a lot of success and
do before meeting with Russell T. Davies and producer Judy Gardner. “And everyone’s been working flat out this whole
then they gave us the job,” Cohen continues. It wasn’t until much later that time. I think it was time to give the brand – and
they learnt the reason for their good fortune. “Russell said it was because everyone else – a bit of a rest.
we said we just wanted to help tell the stories, and we were nice and had a
3DA: A lot of things are going to change in
good laugh with them.” series five. David Tennant will be replaced by a
As they head into the making of the fifth series, we asked Cohen and new Doctor and Steven Moffat will be taking
Deguara to talk a little bit about their experience doing all of the visual over from Russell T. Davies who is leaving the
effects for Doctor Who. Here’s what they said: show. How is it going so far?
WC: We’ve already started work on the next
series. We’ve had a lot of creative meetings and
3D Artist: Was doing something like Doctor talked about what’s possible. Obviously, we
Who a completely new experience for you? have a new team now so things are going to
Will Cohen: Yes, as none of us had ever done change. We’re really redefining the show in this
anything quite like that. We had 13 episodes to new era now that we have a new writer.
make for the time and money that was on offer,
and we wanted to help raise the benchmark for 3DA: What is the biggest difference between
what was possible for a British TV program. So doing CG for TV rather than film?
we were very careful about how we set the job WC: The biggest difference is the timescale for
up to emulate a feature film as closely as turning things around and getting things right.
possible. We were also careful to get people Equally, you tend to be guiding clients through
who didn’t just want to be told what to do. We the processes involved because in TV the heavy
wanted to have a lot of creative input because use of CG is generally new to people. You have
we knew there wasn’t enough time to go back » The Next Doctor a different level of experience and knowledge
and forth. We had one shot to get things right. The Cyber King when dealing with film.
marching over Victorian
London. This was a full
CG shot integrating
3DA: Why did the BBC decide to bring Doctor Maya, FumeFX and 3DA: Can you name a few of your personal
CINEMA 4D
Who back after all these years? favourite episodes?
WC: A few people had been championing it WC: I like episodes that are light on visual
over the years. We felt a lot of pressure when effects and heavy on plot and really good
we made that first series. We knew a lot of acting, such as ‘Blink’, ‘Midnight’ and ‘The
people would watch it and we wanted it to be Family of Blood.’
good. Honestly, though, we thought we were
going to work on it once and there would be one
series and that would be that. Nobody expected
it to be as successful as it has been. It took us all If you don’t fall in love with the Doctor and
a little bit by surprise.
the companion, it doesn’t matter how good the
3DA: What was it like to work with Russell T.
Davies?
effects are
WC: There was always a hotline to Russell. He » Journey’s End
Most of the detail for the
worked 20 hours a day for five years on the Crucible, the flagship of the alien
story. He gave us a big lead time to think about mutants known as the Daleks,
was modelled in Maya rather
things and he would always ask about new stuff than displaced
we could do.
3DA: What would you say the biggest

difference is between old and new Doctor Who?
WC: Russell put together a very successful
formula. I think the whole idea to root the show
in the relationships has been great. If you don’t
fall in love with the Doctor and the companion,
it doesn’t matter how good the effects are. It’s
the stories that people are most interested in. I
really think the most clever thing Russell did
was that he took a show that was known for
034-39_3DA_09 dr who.indd 39 22/10/09 11:37:14

Pass our knowledge
off as your own
iPad Kindle
TM
Know more with world-leading features and tutorials on everything

from Mac OS X to War Of The Worlds
Also in this series
Bookazines HIGH
eBooks • Apps ST.
BUY IN STORE

A ”A still frame from our television advert for
Watching out for creativity ● Interview
Sony PSP, which was a recent winner of the
Motion Broadcast category at the Digital
Artist Awards”
Watching
out for
Duncan Evans talks to Ben Davies, MD of The Neighbourhood, about cutting across
traditional boundaries, covering everything from games products to architecture
I
t was while working as creative development, but as the company grew
director of Manchester-based each director took on a more specific job
Smoothe, a company dedicated to the role. While the remit of the company was to
Company The Neighbourhood
Founded 4 July 2006
property industry, that Ben Davies be creative across a wide range of
Company website decided to branch out, both in terms of disciplines, underpinning it was the fact
www.the-neighbourhood.com setting up a new company and for having that all the directors have some sort of
Country UK a much wider remit. Together with Jon background in architecture, whether
Expertise A creative production
studio specialising in directing and Humphreys (creative director), Jon Hey (art practising it, studying it at university or
producing intelligent and director) and Tim Woods (technical working within an architectural
memorable promotion across Ben Davies, director), Davies left to set up their new visualisation studio.
architecture, design, broadcast
and advertising MD of The company, The Neighbourhood. It’s that background that gives a lot of the
Client list Sony PlayStation, CBBC, Neighbourhood Davies and the other directors focus on workforce at The Neighbourhood a three-
Channel Five, Renault, TBWA,
Make Architects, Heston leading the company and projects dimensional approach to all the subjects
Blumenthal, Manchester United creatively, technically and artistically. they cover, whether they are faithful
Football Club, Visa, New York
Bagel Company, Urban Splash, When they founded the company, they all representations and visualisations or
Derwent London, LOVE worked on every aspect of the projects and surreal and conceptual.
041-045_3DA_09 The Neighbourhood41 41 22/10/09 11:49:27

Interview ● The Neighbourhood
3D Artist: What was the philosophy 3DA: Whereabouts are you based and
behind the new company? what was the reason for that?
Ben Davies: We wanted to create BD: We are based in Manchester’s Northern
something much more than just another Quarter. The reason for that is because
creative services company; we truly believe Manchester is our collective home and a
in working with rather than for our clients – great creative environment.
there’s a really big difference there. We try
not to limit ourselves to one particular 3DA: Is there a particular style or ethos
sector or approach. that you bring to your projects?
In terms of our artistic approach, we BD: We will usually start with an obvious
always start with the project and the client question by asking ‘what’s the story?’ and
and then have a good think about what we look for a hook or a vibe. We consider many
are trying to communicate. What are the things to form a melting pot of different
main messages we want to get across, to ideas, from information about the product
whom and what challenges are we facing? and the client, the market, the competition,
Like with communicating or marketing the budget level – they all go into the mix
any product, there are a whole range of with things we have seen lately that we
creative options available to communicate love, new tools, new ideas, things we have
the messages, and we try not to restrict been talking about for a while, things we
ourselves to a particular approach. wish we had done on other projects, ideas
Sometimes we may conclude that the best from the worlds of advertising, broadcast
way to get messages across is through and visual design, and the occasional wild
photorealistic CGI, but just because this is card or hunch! Sometimes something will
possible, it doesn’t mean that we should do jump out very quickly, whereas sometimes
it on every project. It’s all about the ideas – it will take longer. Sometimes it’s something
then we like to build worlds and tell stories that one person will passionately believe in
about those ideas! Create your own and develop, and sometimes it’s more of a B
opportunities. Take risks. Have fun! team brainstorm.
Neighbourhood Play is a really important On a related topic, as a studio it was a

fundamental part of our business plan to try
aspect, which is all about dedicating time and to provide the right structure and
budgets to develop the creative ideas that mechanisms in the studio to develop skills,
experiment with ideas and work together
people have in the studio well as a team. We call these initiatives
Neighbourhood Learn, Neighbourhood
Watch and Neighbourhood Play (there’s
C more about those on www.the-
neighbourhood.com). These initiatives are
all about looking at everything within our
studio and culture in terms of beyond that
of the financial payoff, and all about us and
our team.
Of course, we need to have a sound
commercial business that is robust and
profitable and all of those things, but as part
of that we place a great deal of importance
in investing in our people and our ideas,
and hopefully we have created an
environment where people want to be.
Neighbourhood Play is a really important
aspect of our studio, which is all about
dedicating time and budgets to develop the
creative ideas that people have in the
studio. We believe strongly in the value that
self-generated work can bring to a creative
b ”Still frames from our c ”Lakeshore – apartment

‘Stories from The project with Urban
Neighbourhood’ Splash”
animation – a
Neighbourhood Play
project and winner of
several awards”
42 ● 3DArtist

ensure that the company had the skill base
to meet the requirements for working in
those fields?
BD: Ultimately, most of our projects are
about communicating a message in the
most engaging, compelling and inspiring d The Angel Building, London
way. Our experience in architecture enables
us to bring ideas to life in this very
specialised field, but for us it is all about the
ideas, and we don’t see any need to limit The Angel Building
these ideas to one particular industry. In a We were approached to direct and produce a film to
world where all sectors are continually promote our client’s proposed redevelopment of the
huge Angel Building in Islington, London, for use in their
cross-fertilising and influencing each other, marketing suite and potentially online.
we’re also particularly interested and Angel Building is the reinvention of an early Eighties
involved in the crossovers between these commercial building on a prominent but scarcely used
site on the corner of St John Street and Pentonville Road,
disciplines and the new ideas that can Islington. The building currently lies empty, but over 50
happen in these margins. It’s an exciting per cent of it will be recycled in a carefully designed
place. A lot of the skills required in each of scheme by architect AHMM.
We often find ourselves uninspired by a lot of
these areas actually overlap – I think it’s
architectural animation, as they can often rely on a dry
often more of a mental attitude when people single-camera move approach – the walkthrough or
or studios stick to one particular sector or flythrough. Or, more recently, we have seen a lot of films
client base. that rely on overly complex visual effects which, while
being visually engaging, often don’t effectively
Another reason for the wide client base is communicate the key messages about the product, ie
to lessen the theoretical risk on a business the building.
level by a drop-off in any one particular Our approach was to conceive the film as a
symphony, which would build and crescendo as the
sector. This has stood us in good stead
sleeping giant of the Angel Building awakens as part of
during the current economic climate. In the City of London itself waking from sleep. We filmed
terms of a skill base, we’ve always believed shots within the city in the dead of night on RED before
in a can-do attitude. It’s a bit of a cliché but the music builds, taking the viewer on a dramatic journey
through the local context and ultimately through the
studio culture and also in attracting we really do approach every project with a Angel Building itself.
commercial work, and have won several completely blank page as we pull in The journey of light focuses on small details then is
awards for projects that we have conceived influences from across the creative and ramped up in scale and pace as the film builds to a
dramatic crescendo, as the full scale of the building is
and generated ourselves. media spectrum. We have a full-time team revealed through a play of light and space. This
with quite broad skills in direction, culminates in a view from the top floor with a dramatic
3DA: You say that The Neighbourhood production and management, and we view across the City of London.
Filmed elements were shot on RED, with additional
works with clients across the advertising, supplement these with specialist talented
time-lapse sequences on a Canon EOS 5D. All CGI
design, broadcast and architecture fields. freelancers on a project-by-project basis to scenes were modelled, animated and rendered in 3ds
That’s pretty wide ranging. Why do you go achieve the direction we aspire to and set Max, with V-Ray as our main rendering engine.
for such a wide variety and how did you for the project. Additional compositing and grading was done in Adobe
After Effects. Final output was full HD 1080p.
e The Angel Building, London


Interview ● The Neighbourhood
f PSP Resistance.
Sony PSP: Resistance

Created as a series of broadcast
adverts to promote the release of the
new PSP-3000, we worked on a series
of broadcast adverts to promote
individual game titles, with characters
from the games themselves becoming
the players of the console. So with
Resistance, our task involved bringing
the Chimera’s hands to life.
The agency for the campaign
provided us with a loose storyboard,
which we were able to push along
different routes as the project
progressed. We started off by
modelling the new PSP-3000 in 3ds
Max from supplied reference imagery,
then tweaked the model once we had a
prototype available. We then received
game models for the various
characters, although these proved too
low resolution to use, as the final
outputs were to be at full HD 1080p –
so the level of detail in everything had
to be top-notch. We eventually turned
to Mudbox to sculpt the hands, which
were then custom rigged and shaded
with subsurface scattering to give the
final result using mental ray.
The advert also featured a tricky
transformation from human hands to
alien hands. This was done in 3ds Max
using morphs, along with fluid and
particle effects. Finally, the whole
advert was pieced together in Adobe
After Effects, where we added two-
dimensional rocket trails, backgrounds
and other finishing touches.
3DA: Who are, or have been, some of your developed for the print campaign and an became a container
main clients? outline idea for a television advert, and for its projects.
h
BD: Sony PlayStation, CBBC, Channel Five, developed these into a treatment and We’ve also
Renault, TBWA, Make Architects, Heston ultimately a finished television advert with collaborated on a
Blumenthal, Manchester United Football the agency (LOVE Creative). It was very easy couple of recent projects with the respected
Club, Visa, New York Bagel Company, Urban to work with such a global brand, as we had design and branding consultancy
Splash, Derwent London and LOVE Creative. a direct route to the key decision makers, Elmwood, to bring aspects of its
who enjoyed and valued our ideas. communication to life in illustrated and
3DA: You have worked with Sony Europe animated form in order to extend its
and on the PlayStation brand. What did 3DA: What agencies have you worked with campaigns. We’ve also worked on several
that involve and how easy was it to work and what were those projects about? projects with LOVE Creative, our close
with such a global brand? Was it BD: We’ve worked with quite a few now. For neighbours and all-round good eggs.
restrictive creatively? example, we recently completed a new suite
BD: We’ve completed a number of different of showreel material for the Manchester 3DA: Can you give us some idea of what
projects with Sony now, often in office of global advertising giant TBWA to type of work you do in the television and
collaboration with other design or help it create a distinctive offer for its own broadcast fields, specifically with CBBC
advertising agencies. In the case of our promotional material, which avoided the and Five?
recent television advertisement for Sony usual showreel clichés. It was quite a BD: For CBBC we completed four idents that
PSP, we took the new strapline – Your Whole responsibility to be given to help it the BBC commissioned as part of the
World In Your Hands – initial assets communicate its own offer to the world, rebrand of the channel. This presented us
since we designed a branded space that with the unique challenge of animating four
scenes each in a two-second time frame –
our shortest running time to date!
g
For Channel Five, having worked as part
of the team helping to develop the channel’s
recently launched new identity, we were
g ”The Be Collective. g ”Still frame from our

Frames from brand animation for the Sony
movie” PlayStation Network”
44 ● 3DArtist

Watching out for creativity ● Interview
We are looking to
create a vibrant
studio that encourages
rather than stifles
creativity
success of the project. It is vital to keep an
open mind, to look at the bigger picture, to
test and challenge the brief (no matter how
well developed it may appear to be) and to
ensure that what we propose has the
highest chance of success.
3DA: What are your plans and ambitions

for the company in the future?
BD: One of our most exciting plans is to
move premises early in 2010 to a Grade II
listed building in Manchester’s Northern
Quarter. The building was damaged by a
large fire in an adjacent building back in
2007, and since then the building has been
lying empty.
We will be moving our team and then
carefully selecting other companies and
individuals to join our neighbourhood and
live with us in our new studio, from
established agencies to up-and-coming
talent. We are designing the space ourselves
and are incredibly excited by exploring how
a physical environment can promote and
asked to create a special Valentine’s Day will usually be quite small – between three encourage creativity. Many design
ident to run for one day only (14 February, and five people. companies have impressive studios, but a
obviously). This was commissioned lot have been designed to impress clients
through DixonBaxi, the highly respected 3DA: Can you give us some idea of the rather than to function as a great studio – we
independent creative agency. actual production pipeline that The are looking to create a truly vibrant home
Neighbourhood uses for producing an and studio for our neighbourhood that
3DA: What software tools do you regularly image or set of images for a client? encourages rather than stifles creativity.
employ and why? BD: We’re probably not too different from While we’re doing this, we are continuing to
BD: The main ranges from Autodesk and most other companies in our actual develop our team and our client base across
Adobe are our primary tools – the 3D pipeline. We have four key stages in every all our current sectors. We’re in it because
software that’s used the most is 3ds Max. project: the big idea; preproduction; we are passionate about what we do. I guess
production; and postproduction. it depends on whether you are in it just to
3DA: How many people typically work on One thing that we passionately believe in make some money or whether you are in it
a project, either in-house or externally? is that we have to give enough time and for the love.
BD: It depends on the size of the project. nourishment to the first two
We are a permanent team of 11 and when stages there, the big idea in i
necessary we draw on the expertise from a particular. With all our l
team of trusted freelancers we call the projects, from architectural
extended Neighbourhood. At any one time still images to television
we may have up to another ten people idents to brand movies, the
working for us in this way in our studio first stage and our approach
with us. Typically, though, a project team here will set the tone for the
i ”Still frame j ”The j

from our Neighbourhood
launch studio”
animation for
the Sony
PlayStation 3”


The studio ● Create realistic wet and dry fur
Create realistic
wet and
Polar Bear
dry fur 2009
B
It is good to have your best reference images

open during the project so that you can compare
your work to a real polar bear all the time
Marcos de Moraes Sampaio is a 3D artist working in the advertising industry
T
his tutorial is all about modo, because that’s the only to a real polar bear all the time and know if you are moving in
modelling, texturing and rendering software used to the right direction. Remember that your work will only be as
create this image. Photoshop was only used in good as your references A.
postproduction. This tutorial aims to go through all the steps
taken to create Polar Bear, focusing on the creation of the fur. 02 modo’s sculpting tools
3D artists explain the Its purpose is to give the readers a full insight into how an Before you start it’s a good idea to get familiar with modo’s
techniques behind image like this is created, which tools are used the most and sculpting tools, so open a new modo file, create any
their amazing artwork
also give nice tips about how to solve some of the most geometric form, subdivide it a few times by pressing Shift+D
frequent problems that occur while creating a piece like this. and play a little with them. You can find the sculpting tools
Artist info
I hope this also shows that there are no big secrets in by pressing F3. The sculpting tools used the most for this
creating complex images. It only takes a lot of observation, project are Push, Smooth and Move. To get the sculpting
patience and care about details, and a piece of software with tools to work on a mesh, you have to select the desired tool,
good tools that gives the freedom to create. select a brush shape and then change the Paint mode to
Mesh. Remember that you can also control the brush size
01 Know your challenge and offset the amount using the mouse/tablet buttons B.
Marcos Sampaio The first thing to keep in mind in any 3D project is that you
need the best references you can get. Google makes this 03 Create a low-poly base
www.msampaio.com step really easy, since you can get lots of references of polar Starting from a cube, use the Extrude tool (select a polygon,
Country Brazil bears in high resolutions there. point or edge and press X) and the transformation tools
and
Software used Photoshop It is also good to have your best reference images open (press W for Move, E for Rotate and R for Scale) to model a
modo
Expertise Marcos focuses
on during the whole project so that you can compare your work rough low-poly shape of a polar bear in a standard pose. In
print media, bringing to life
from
anything his clients want, A
istic
cartoon characters to real se is
erti
landscapes. His real exp le
being versatile and fast, whi s
still
he work exclusively with
Concept
I wanted to create a scene
that was half-underwater.
When I decided it was going
to be a swimming polar
bear, the blueish, cold mood
really felt perfect for it.
A Some of the references I

used for this artwork
B A plane used to test the

most important sculpting tools
for this project
46 ● 3DArtist
046_51_3DA_09PolarBear.indd 46 20/10/09 13:16:29

The studio
Behind the scenes: Marcos Sampaio ●
Modelling,
Texturing,
Rendering
Software used in this piece
Photoshop modo


C F
this step you don’t have to worry about creating edge loops
or adding detail C.
04 Increase detail and poly count

To add detail to your low-poly base mesh, hit Shift+D and
choose the Smooth subdivision method. Now just start great UV tools; here, use the Unwrap tool to open the UV
adding detail using the Push, Smooth and Move tools map. This tool is great to create UV maps for organic shapes
mentioned in Step 2. When you are done, press Shift+D and like this one G.
choose Smooth mode again and add more detail D.
08 Pose the fur
05 Retopology tools First of all, pose the model in a way that you can set the fur
At this point it’s time to adjust the topology, creating the to a nice direction and size for the final shot. You will also
correct edge loops. Create a new layer (pressing N), go to the need the model to be posed so that you can create
Snapping menu and check the options Geometry and underwater fur, knowing how it will be affected by water. The
Constrain to: Background. Select the Pen tool and using the Flex tool is perfect for posing models. You can find this in the
polygon type and checking the Merge and Make quads Deform tab with modo’s modelling tools. It’s important to
options, start to rebuild the mesh, creating edge loops that find a pose that looks natural for this animal and that will
go around the eyes and nose, leaving the mouth open E. look nice for the final shot, so it’s also a nice time to find a
good camera angle H.
06 Detail the loops
Once you have the edge loops in all the body, you can get a 09 Generate the fur
lot more detail in the mesh. It’s now time for a last sculpting Now select all your mesh and hit M to define a material for it.
phase using the same tools in from Step 4. Feel free to add Choose a name for it and hit OK. In the Shader Tree tab, go
new loops during this process F. to the Add Layer option and add a Fur Material. At this point
you can see the fur in the viewport and it is applied in a
07 Open the UV map Lighting and uniform way to the whole model. Select the Fur Material, and
Before you pose your model you have to open the UV map.
In modo, you can change the fur’s settings like length and
rendering in the Fur Shape tab, drop the Flex and Root Bend amount to
0. It’s also good to lower all the Jitter values (10% is a good
direction based on image maps, so it’s very important to There are a few tricks that value). This way it will be easier to brush the fur and see the
open the UV before you start creating the fur. modo has help a lot when rendering effect of it I.
fur. First, it takes a lot
D memory so when you
have lots of fur together
10 Define fur and skin
it’s nice to render the Now check the Remove Base Surface option in the Fur
model in separate parts if Material properties. This way, this particular mesh won’t be
you can. On this one I visible in the render and modo will only render the fur on top
rendered the head of it. Now copy the mesh to a new layer and apply a new
separately from the body.
Separating these two material to it. This new mesh and material will represent the
parts also makes it more skin underneath the fur. It’s also good to lower the value of
simple to make subtle the Fur Length (in the Fur Material properties tab – 10mm is
different light adjustments a good value) to help with the next step J.
to the head and to the
body without worrying
E about complex light
linking. Also keep in mind
that light can generate
weird shadow areas in the
fur due to the complex
shape of it. Choose a light
setting that won’t only
make the fur look soft, but
that also generates
shadows where you want
them to be. G
C This image shows three d This image shows all three E Image showing the creation F The polar bear before and G The model and the UV map
steps of the base mesh creation subdivision levels and their of the edge loops for the eyes after this last refinement with used to paint the textures
detail amount the right topology
48 ● 3DArtist

Behind the scenes: Marcos Sampaio ● The studio
H The Flex tool being used to I Image of the model with the J The two mesh layers and the K The fur being set in the right L Image of the Fur Length
pose the model uniform fur around it two material layers direction with the Move tool being set
Problems and 12 Set the Fur Length

solutions Setting the hair length is almost the same process as setting
the directions, only this time you need to add a Fur Length
The model for this project isn’t
too complicated, especially Texture and use the Stretch tool to edit the fur. Now, instead
because the fur will cover of using a low value to the Fur Length (in the Fur Material
most of it, so it won’t require properties tab), change it to a higher value L. This because
much detail. On the other
hand, the main shape of the
the Stretch tool will only let you reduce the Fur Length rather
fur will be defined by the than make it longer.
sculpted mesh, so make sure
you get the shape of the polar L
bear right.
modo’s sculpting tools work
directly on the mesh and also
in image-based displacement
H maps. This project will only
require mesh sculpting. It’s
11 Set the right directions always good to avoid using
displacement, since it requires
Hit F3 to open the Sculpt Tools tab. There you will find the far too much memory to
Hair Tools and also a button to add a Fur Direction Texture to render, and especially now,
your Fur Material. Now select the Move tool (also in the Hair when we will be already using
fur, which is hard to render on
Tools tab), select a brush shape and check the Edit Fur Map
its own.
option. With this tool you can brush the hair and set the
direction of it so that it goes in the same direction as the fur
goes on a real polar bear K.
I M Image of renders before and
after this step
K

Showcase
Think about 13 Set the colour and the clumps
Artist the animal
swimming,
how the water
Go to your shader tree and add two new image map layers to
your Fur Material. Set the first one as diffuse colour in the
Effect column in the shader tree. Now press F3 and open the
Sculpt tools. You will find the Paint tools there, too. Select the
Marcos de Moraes Sampaio would drag the Airbrush, brush shape and your diffuse colour texture in the
I started learning 3D at college and have since fur and how its shader tree. Now you can paint the colour of the fur just like
graduated as an architect. Before my graduation I
working in the advertisement industry in Brazil for
shape would be you created the fur shape. The second image will be set as
Fur Clumps and use the Hair Tools again to create clumps
6B Estudio, one of the leading 3D and illustration affected by it wherever you find necessary M.
studios. I’ve been lucky enough to learn from the
best professionals in the market. 14 Refine the fur using generic settings
The settings for the direction, length and clumps were
mapped and image based, but the other settings should be
set in the Fur Material properties tab. This way they will be
applied to all the fur in a uniform way. The most important
thing here is to set a low value to the Max Segments option
to render it more easily. As for the other settings, just keep
making render previews and try to match your references N.
N
Havaianas Goo Photoshop and modo (2008)

This image was created to advertise Havaianas sandals
for the agency AlmapBBDO. I created four images of
this series for this campaign. Art direction was by
Danilo Boer, while Rodrigo Gelmi modelled and
textured the sandals
Naíra Photoshop and

modo (2009)
This image was created as
N The image above shows
some of the settings used for
15 Flow through the water
a personal project, studying the polar bear Setting the underwater look of the fur is just a matter of
the human body using looking for good references and trying to edit the fur
modo’s sculpting tools. It
took me about one and a directions so that they will match them. Think about the
half months to do it, animal swimming, how the water would drag the fur and
working in my spare time how its shape would be affected by it. Try to make it as
natural as you can O.
The Pirate Photoshop and modo (2008)

This was created to advertise Stella Artois for the
agency Borghierh/Lowe. The pirate is a photo, while
everything else is 3D. Art direction by Daniel Massih O This image shows the
direction of the fur when
underwater
50 ● 3DArtist

Behind the scenes: Marcos Sampaio ●The studio
P Rendering
An important trick is
rendering the fur in at least
three rendering passes. This
will make your fur a lot
smoother. You can change the
number of render passes by
selecting the Render icon in
your shader tree and going to
the Channels tab. The number
of frame passes is the last
option on this tab. You can also
smooth the fur by adding
subsurface to its material. Just
make sure your Scattering
Distance is set to 0. Finally,
keep in mind that rendering
fur usually requires high anti-
aliasing settings in order to get
rid of noise.
By setting up the lighting Q

wisely you can improve the
quality of your work a lot, so try
lots of different light settings
16 Create the caustics

Caustics are very important to set the underwater mood.
Since this model will be very hard to render because of the
10
amount of fur, the best way to create the caustics is by
adding a black-and-white image with the shape of the
caustics to the light material. You can do that just by hours
selecting the desired image in your computer folder, dragging
to modo and dropping it in your light material P.
Render time
Resolution:
17 Set the lighting 3,821 x 2,281
Lighting is a tricky subject because if you do it wrong it can
ruin even the best models. On the other hand, by setting up
the lighting wisely you can improve the quality of your work a R This image shows the render
lot, so take your time and try lots of different light settings. of the head and body separated
before postproduction
For this project, I used basically two main lights coming from
both sides of the back of the bear. This created a bit of a
dramatic mood, and also brought out the shape of the body
and the shape of the fur Q.
18 Last considerations
The head was rendered separately from the body. This
avoids issues with a lack of memory and also allows us to
turn off the image that generates the caustics when
rendering the head. You should also keep in mind that some
things are easier done in postproduction, like colour
adjustments, underwater volumetric lights and correcting
some minor imperfections to the fur, so you don’t have to
spend too much time tweaking these effects in modo R.
P This image shows the image Q This is the top view of the
that I used to generate the model, which shows the lights
caustics that I used

Save yourself some modelling
time by using the model and
maps created here
Low_Poly.obj
Diffuse_Map.tga
Normal_Map.tga
Specular_Map.tga
3ds Max Photoshop 3D-Coat V3 ZBrush 3.1

2010
52 ● 3DArtist
052-55_3DA_09-STREET.indd 52 20/10/09 18:54:01

Step by step: Nicolas Garilhe ● The studio
Step by step: Create a

street urchin sidekick Modelling,
Texturing
Street Urchin Robin 2009

Easy-to-follow guides The main idea of this project was to
take you from concept
to the final render pick a superhero and imagine what he
would look like if he came from a
Artist info
different time period

Nicolas Garilhe is a character modeller for next-gen games
T
his tutorial will explain the workflow I used to model
and texture Robin the street urchin, step by step. This is
Nicolas Garilhe for people who want to learn how to make low-poly
characters for next-generation videogames. This model was
http://wix.com/guedin/ done for an internet competition in which I was asked to create
portfolio/ a character with a maximum of 10,000 triangles and with the
Country France
use of real-time shaders.
Software used 3ds Max 2010,
ZBrush 3.1, 3D-Coat V3, I used 3ds Max 2010 for the modelling, sculpted the high
Photoshop polygons with ZBrush and the textures were done with
Expertise Nicolas is a character
modeller for videogames Photoshop and 3D-Coat V3. The topic was to pick a superhero
from a comic book and imagine him in a different time period. I
took Robin because I thought a young character would stand
out from the pack of muscular superhero archetypes, ie The
Incredible Hulk and half-naked girls in tight suits. I hope this
tutorial will teach you something or show you some tricks that
you’ll find useful.
Design concepts
Inspiration behind the figure
01 When I start a project, I always have a

vague concept (here, it was of a little boy who
wants to play the tough guy). The inspiration came
02 I try to quickly structure my ideas by
thinking of what I want to extract from my
reference pictures and then bring to my character. For 03 2D skills are really valuable to draw
concepts, but are not absolutely essential
from spending time browsing the internet and looking this particular project, I wanted to pick Batman’s (which is lucky for me!). Even if you are not good at
for pictures. Cooliris is a free plug-in for Firefox that I sidekick, the character of Robin, bring him to the Oliver drawing, try to draw a concept anyway. We don’t need
use to browse and it makes my image research much Twist era and then add the design style of the to create a masterpiece in the concept stage, but we are
more pleasant. videogame Fable II. looking to see if the ideas work well together.
052-55_3DA_09-STREET.indd 53 20/10/09 18:54:16

The studio ● Create a street urchin sidekick
Modelling the urchin

Artist
Showcase
Nicolas Garilhe
I started to learn 3D through self-education and by
Constructing the figure
looking at professional work posted on web forums.

I recently graduated from the Ubisoft Campus in
04 When I start
Montreal, where I participated in the creation of an a
amateur videogame. Now I’m looking for my first character I always
professional job in the videogame industry. create a base mesh of the basic
body, even if he will eventually
have clothing. Building the
clothes over the form of the
Sélène 3ds Max body is easier than starting
2009, ZBrush 3, them from scratch. The head,
3D-Coat V3, gloves and shoes will be
Photoshop CS3 exported in different subtools.
2009
With this model I
wanted a character
with an original
concept. I was inspired
by medieval knights
and samurai, and I
tried to stay away from
heroic fantasy clichés.
Looking at the final
image, the viewer can’t
really decide if the
character is from the
past or the future
05 In this step I’m working on the

character’s proportions in ZBrush. Will
he be skinny or chubby? Do the legs have to be
06 I used a lot of references in order to
sculpt the character’s face. Children
generally have a round face, their cheeks tend to
Skater 3ds Max shorter? This step is important because be puffed out and their nose is shorter than an
2009, ZBrush 3, 3D- proportions bring a lot to the character. The adult’s. Be careful not to overaccentuate the
Coat V3, Photoshop details of the skin or the muscles don’t matter muscles or wrinkles in the face, though, which is
CS3 2009 easy to do when having fun and getting carried
too much right now because they will be covered
I did this character for
by clothes. away in ZBrush.
my portfolio. I really like
the urban style, and I
wanted to have fun with
the model without
spending too much
07Thanks to the body
underneath the clothes,
sculpting folds is easy. Where the
time working on an fabric is in contact with the body,
original concept. I tried there’s tension in the cloth that won’t
to make a skater boy allow folds to form. However, when
but I didn’t want to use there are folds, they often converge to
the cliché of skater the point of the tension.
clothes (large clothes,
sloppy style, etc)
Naïve Rebellion 3ds
Max 2009, ZBrush 3,
Photoshop CS3
2009
This illustration was
made for a school
course. I wanted to
poke fun at people who
go against popular
culture with their only
goal being to gather
attention onto
themselves. The girl
tagging on the wall is
making a comment
08 The retopology was done in 3ds
Max 2010. In order to save time, I export
the first subdivision level of ZBrush, which I rework.
against consumerism The most important thing to preserve is the
but her clothes give her silhouette, as the Normal map will take care of the
away as a hypocrite rest. Apply a material with black self-illuminated
diffuse to check if the silhouette works well.
54 ● 3DArtist
052-55_3DA_09-STREET.indd 54 20/10/09 18:54:31

Step by step: Nicolas Garilhe ● The studio
Lighting and rendering ren

2 hour
der tim
Resolution: e
Bringing the figure to life 3000 x 4171
09 For the texturing

part I used 3D-Coat
V3, which is fantastic. It lets me
paint Diffuse, Specular and even
Normal maps directly onto the
model. The integration of
Keep in mind it is low poly
Photoshop in this software is When you have to make real-time characters for next-
nearly perfect thanks to its gen videogames, you need to keep in mind your
projection tools as well as its resource constraints. The polygon budget must be
seamless compatibility with considered even when you are still in the concept stage.
layers and brushes. Regardless of if your concept is in 2D or 3D, you have to
pay special attention to conserving the desired
10 Inside 3D-Coat V3 I make
good use of the projection tools,
which can be founded in the Edit menu.
silhouette. You can add as many details as you want to
your model, and as long as it doesn’t affect the overall
silhouette of the mesh, the Normal map will be able to
There are two projections options: the handle it. Unfortunately, overly complex concepts are
first one allows you to take a screenshot difficult to convert to low-poly models, and keeping
that you can use to paint on in your polygon budget in mind right from the start of the
Photoshop. The other one lets me bring project will save you many headaches as you progress.
the texture sheet directly into Photoshop.
11 The first thing to do is to fill the texture sheet with all your base colours on a single layer. Doing so
will allow you to easily select these areas with your Magic Wand tool. Next, do a lot of tests on the
chosen colours using the Hue/Saturation tool with the aim of making them all work together.
13 For the
rendering
stage, I used mental ray.
The lighting is just a
simple three-point light
setup. I did a separate
render for each light and
overlaid them in
Photoshop. I used
separate layers for each
12 The details are added from photos. I just spent

some time on the internet looking for grunge or dirty
textures, which I used as an overlay layer. For the finishing
light with the Screen
blending mode. This way
I could adjust each light
touches, I like to use custom brushes in Photoshop, which can in real-time and save on
also be easily found on the internet. rendering time.
052-55_3DA_09-STREET.indd 55 20/10/09 18:55:02

Márk Mészáros
Artist info
Username BlackSheepInc
tart.com
www.blacksheepinc.devian
Incredible 3D artists take

Cou ntry Hun gary
2010,
Software used 3ds Max
k
ay
us behind their artwor

Lightroom, Photoshop, V-R
El Chorro
2009
of the cars
I have always been an admirer
of cou rse, the Mad Max
in Fallout and,
I had bee n plan ning to mak e my
trilogy.
Den ko’s
own for ages, but I saw Marek
on I
buggy and it gave me the inspirati
e one . Wh y a ‘69 Dod ge
needed to mak
Day tona ? It is one of my favo urite
Charger
cars and I like old muscle cars !
The clouds, depth of field and sky replacement were
done in Photoshop from real pictures taken in my
garden. Colour correction and the light chromatic
aberration was done in Lightroom. Only 28 layers
were used.
I used V-Ray’s default Sky and Sun system with a

Target light that replaced the sun position. I made all the
textures by myself in Photoshop. Every material has
Diffuse, Bump and Specular maps
56 ● 3DArtist
056-057_3DA_09 IMT1.indd 56 20/10/09 10:45:17

I made this… Márk Mészáros ● The studio
I modelled the whole scene using poly modelling.

I used the Scatter tool to spread the rocks about,
of which there are around 5,000 pieces. The
Charger and the jet were made from reference
pictures because I couldn’t find any blueprints.
I’ve collected tons of reference pictures, from
deserts to turbines.
I used V-Ray’s rendering engine. It took me Software used in this piece

a long time to understand how it worked. I
used Light Cache, Adaptive DMC for AA and Lightroom V-Ray Photoshop
Mitchell-Netravali
056-057_3DA_09 IMT1.indd 57 20/10/09 10:45:32

The studio ● American muscle car
Step by step: Create an

American
Chevrolet Camaro
muscle car 2009
This month we’re building a 2009 Chevrolet Camaro, a
muscle car with a retro styling that’s reminiscent of the classic
cars of the Sixties. Our goal is to create not only a photorealistic
look, but also a highly detailed and accurate model. And before
it’s over, we may add a few touches of our own
Lance Hitchings, graphics designer
58 ● 3DArtist
058-66_3DA_09 American muscle_1.58 58 21/10/09 18:05:11

Step by step: Lance Hitchings ● The studio
Part one o
Part tsw
sue
next i
Easy-to-follow guides
to the final render
Artist info
Maya
T
here’s any number of tutorials for modelling cars available on the internet, for purchase
on CDs and DVDs and in books and magazines. There are also many technical Lance Hitchings
approaches to car modelling: box modelling, poly-by-poly modelling, subdivision
modelling, etc. In this tutorial, we’re going to try an approach that doesn’t see a lot of use:
Username lhitch
NURBS modelling.
One of the things that makes a car so beautiful to look at – and such a challenge to model – is www.hitchingsdesign.com
the long sweeping curves used in their design. When using more common techniques like box Country USA
or poly-by-poly modelling, the placement by hand of every single vertex makes it very difficult Software used Maya
to achieve these curves without ripples, bumps and other distortions. Expertise Lance excels at
photorealistic images,
By building a template of the car in either CV or EP curves and then constructing NURBS particularly of hard-surface
patches from those curves, we can achieve beautiful curves. We’ll use a bevelling technique to objects. Most of his projects
are product illustrations
hold all of the seams, creases and corners of the model when we do the final smoothing.


Getting started
Prepping the files
01 As with any
modelling project, the
first step is always to collect
sufficient imagery. Attempting
to find images from every angle
and of every detail will make
your work a lot easier later on.
02 You’ll also need a good set of ‘blueprints’. I use

the term loosely, because most of the blueprints
available on sites such as www.the-blueprints.com or www.
smcars.net are created by hobbyists, not from the
manufacturers. These are usually drawn from three-
dimensional models that they have already built. Therefore,
the quality and accuracy will only be as good as the skills,
research and accuracy of the hobbyist. This is why photos
are so important. When the blueprints and the photos
disagree (and they will), trust the photos.
03 In order to bring the blueprints into your 3D app as templates, you

must break them down into separate orthogonal views. Use a square
image; I usually go for either 1,000 or 2,000 (1,024 x 1,024 or 2,048 x 2,048).
In Photoshop, place each view on a separate layer and line them up. The front
view should be centred side to side, the side view centred end to end and the
04 Open a new document with all of the viewports at their default view (the
default bookmark). Import each orthogonal view into the appropriate viewport
as an image plane. In the Attribute Editor, reposition each image plane so that they are out
top view centred side to side and end to end. Place the bottom of the tyres in of the way and not bisecting your model. I usually offset the image planes by about 12
the front and side views at the vertical centre. This will place your model in world units. So the side image plane would be -12 units in X, the front -12 in Z and the top
your viewport at the centre (0,0 co-ordinates) on the X and Z axes, and sitting -12 in Y. In the Attribute Editor I also usually set the Display attribute to Looking through
on top of the 0 co-ordinate in Y. camera so that the image planes don’t show up in the perspective view.
60 ● 3DArtist

Laying the groundwork

Building a template of curves
05 The first step of the construction

process is to build the framework,
which is curves. There’s no getting around it –
this process is long and tedious. But your
model will only be as good as your curves, so
take the time to do this part right. It’s much
easier and less time-consuming to tweak a
curve than it is to have to go back and tweak a
few hundred vertices because you got your
original curves wrong.
Let’s start with the curve that runs along the
beltline of the car. In the below-left figure,
we’ve built that curve in the top view, but as
you can see in the inset figure the curve is flat
in the Y axis and sitting at the bottom of the
model. So we need to reposition each CV of
the curve in the Y axis so that it aligns with the
side view’s image plane.
06 I’ve gone ahead and built the rest of the curves. These are preliminary ones.
The curves that will be used to build the NURBS patches will be built from these
ones. Building the final curves will require many of the preliminary ones to be used several
07 Now we begin
times, and many of them will be cut into smaller curves. building the final curves. To demonstrate this
process I’ll work on the bonnet, since it’s a pretty simple shape and
only uses four NURBS patches. This is the exact same process we’ll be using to
build the curves, and then the NURBS patches for every mesh object in the
bodywork of the car. In this first image, we see the preliminary curves that we’ll
be using.
08 In order to build the types of curves we’ll be using, you’ll need to be able to
perform basic curve operations: attaching and detaching curves, reversing curve
directions and rebuilding curves. The first step is to build curves with precise shapes. Using
our preliminary curves, we’ll begin cutting them apart so that we have all the curves we
need. Here, we’re cutting the curve at the front of the bonnet. With your cursor over the
curve, click the RMB to bring up the contextual menu and select Curve Point. Now click
and drag on the curve to place the point where you want to cut the curve. Hold down the
Shift key to place more than one point.
09 Once all the points are placed, choose Edit Curves>Detach Curve
to break the curve into separate pieces. Here are the ten curves I’ll
need to build the bonnet after they’ve been cut apart and the excess discarded.

The world of NURBS

Using them to construct the surfaces
Each set of curves contains
four curves representing the
four sides of the NURBS surface
or contains two parallel curves
to be lofted in a straight line
A note on NURBS
All NURBS surfaces have one thing in common. They all have four sides:
a top, a bottom and a left and right side. Even NURBS spheres are made
up of four sides. The top and the bottom are compressed into a single
point and the left and right side meet along one of the longitudinal lines.
NURBS cubes are made up of six separate four-sided patches.
For this walkthrough, we will be building NURBS patches from curves
using primarily the Loft and the Boundary tools. The Boundary tool, as
well as the Birail tool, works best when the connecting curves have
common end points, meaning that the end points for each curve have
10 Now we need to close up the curves prior to building the NURBS surfaces.
We’ll be using the Boundary tool on the bonnet, so the curves need to have
common end points. Here, I’m preparing to move the end point on the long curve to the
the same co-ordinates. same co-ordinates as the end point of the far left curve at the front of the bonnet.
11 Using the Move tool, you should be able to hold down the C key to snap the point to the
curve, and then simply drag it to the end of the curve. However, in my experience this only works
12 Here’s the result of closing up the end points on all the
curves. At this point, I usually select all the curves and in
either the Attribute Editor or the Display menu I turn on Show CVs.
about once in 15 or 20 attempts. So I find that it’s quicker just to manually move the point in all three As you can see in the figure, the curves have different numbers of
axes, using huge magnification. The point is correct in the in the Y and Z axes, but still needs to be spans and run in different directions. Before using the Loft or
moved slightly in the X axis. You can tell when the magnification is big enough because the tool handle Boundary tools, you must ensure that parallel curves have an equal
gets huge. number of spans and run in the same direction.
13 To rebuild the curves, choose the Edit Curves>Rebuild Curves option box. Rebuild type is
uniform; Parameter range is 0 to #Spans; Keep Ends; and set the Number of spans to whatever
14 Working with the preliminary curves, I’ve built the rest
of the final curves for the entire car. I’ve colour-coded the
curves so each colour represents what will eventually be a single
is appropriate for the curve that you’re rebuilding. Just make sure that the curve parallel to it is rebuilt to mesh. Remember that each set of curves either contains four
the same number of spans. Use Edit Curves>Reverse Curve Direction to make sure that all parallel curves representing the four sides of the NURBS surface or else
curves run in the same direction. The screenshot shows the curves after they’ve been cleaned up. contains two parallel curves that will be lofted in a straight line.
60 ●
62 ● 3DArtist
3DArtist

Filling it in
Building the NURBS surfaces
Expert tip
Use bevels to hold your
edges and corners when
smoothing. These low-res
meshes that we’re creating
are designed to be
converted into smooth,
high-res meshes using the
Smooth function. One of
the issues with this
method is that it rounds
off corners, even corners
15 Now we start building the NURBS surfaces. The bonnet you wish to keep. We’ll
itself is made from three NURBS patches, and then there’s a overcome this by running
little skirt that sits between the bonnet and the windscreen made a bevel along every edge
16 It’s important to
from a single surface. All of these surfaces were built using the leave the history connected to all of
and corner we wish to
hold. This works just as
Boundary tool. For the first patch, I selected curves 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the NURBS surfaces. In this step, curve 7 is used to build
well if you’re using the
that order. Choose Surfaces>Boundary with the default settings. the NURBS surface for both the front window (along with 1, 2 and Sub-D method to smooth.
The other surfaces are built from curves 3, 7, 6 and 5; from curves 6) and the rear window (along with 3, 4 and 5). As you can see, this
You can also do this by
6, 8, 9 and 10; and from curves 13, 12, 11 and 14. curve should be straight instead of curved.
using the Insert Edge Loop
tool to place a couple of
edge loops right next to
the desired edge, but this
is an imprecise method.
The Bevel tool allows you
to make every bevel the
exact same size on your
entire model, giving you
uniformity and
consistency throughout,
which is the sign of a
‘model’ professional.
17 The curve has been straightened out here, and because
the history for both windows was still connected, the shape
of both windows was corrected by straightening a single curve. As 18 Here, I’ve gone ahead and built the rest of the NURBS
surfaces that will make up the car body. Again, I have
you build the entire car body out of NURBS surfaces, you will find colour-coded each group of NURBS patches to represent the single
many surfaces that need to be corrected by tweaking the curves mesh object that they will eventually form. Now we’re starting to
and many of these will share a common curve. see a car!
Creating polygon elements

Converting the NURBS to polys
19 Select each NURBS surface and choose the Modify>

Convert>NURBS to Polygons option box. The Type should
be Quads and the Tessellation method should be General. Set both
20 Where two body panels meet, there is a seam
between them. You want this seam to be visible in your
model to help with the realism. Start by selecting all the border
the U type and the V type to Per span # of isoparms. For a flat edges of your polygon mesh and extruding that edge inward
surface like the bonnet, set both numbers to 1; for a very curvy perpendicular to the body surface. For body panels that need to
surface like the front bumper, use more resolution. This gives us be mirrored across the X axis, like the bonnet, the front and rear
three separate polygon meshes for the bonnet. These now need to bumpers and the roof, you’ll need to exclude the edges that run
be combined into a single mesh, and the vertices along the shared along the centre line from your selection and extrusion. I’ve
edges need to be merged. exaggerated the extrusion here to make it more obvious.

21 Next, select the

same edges you
selected for the extrusion, the
former border edges. If your
mesh has any sharp corners
that you want to stay sharp,
select the edge running along
that as well. Choose the Edit
Mesh>Bevel option box. Offset
type should be Absolute so you
can select a value that is the
same on every edge on your
model. Width depends on how
large your model is and what
type of world units you’re using.
My model is small enough to fit
inside the grid in the
perspective viewport, and I’m
using millimetres as my world
units so I used a value of 0.01.
Segment should be two – this is
the number of new faces that
are created per edge. One will
22 This is crucial! Every time you run a bevel that extends
to the border edges, you will get an extra triangular-
shaped face at the end of the bevel. You need to select and delete
not be enough to hold your this face. If you don’t, meshes that need to be mirrored across the
corner, while three or more just X axis will never do this correctly. If you get a weird mirror or your
creates needless resolution vertices along the centre line don’t merge properly, check to see if
when smoothing. this is your culprit.
23 Finally, you need to select and bevel all the edges in your mesh
that will be creases in the body panel. I generally set the width for
24 One of the benefits of using NURBS patches to build your meshes is that you
wind up with great topology. This helps when bevelling because the Bevel tool
hates poles (vertices with five or more intersecting edges) and intersecting edges that are
these bevels to a value twice as large as the bevels that run along the seams, as at acute angles. But no matter how well you plan out your curves and the resulting NURBS
I want the creases softer and the seams sharper. surfaces, sometimes you’re going to end up with bevels that have really wonky results.
25 The previous step’s screenshot is an example so bad that I had to

use the X-Ray shading mode to display all the vertices, because some
were buried behind others. In those cases, you’ll have to go in and reposition
26 In examining the photo of the Camaro, I noticed that the roof and the rear
wing were one solid piece and that parts of the current front and rear wing should
be included in the rocker panel. So I cut the meshes apart and reassembled them in a new
the vertices by hand. The screenshot here shows the rebuilt result. order. The screenshot shows the three reconfigured meshes, including seams and creases.
64 ● 3DArtist

27 Here I’ve gone ahead and converted the rest of the NURBS surfaces to polygon
meshes, combined the meshes into single objects, extruded the seams and
bevelled the seams and creases. This shows the topology from the front. At this point, I like
to assign an orange-coloured blinn material to all of the meshes. Because the blinn displays
in the viewport with a glossy sheen, this technique really helps me to spot any ripples,
distortions or blemishes in my meshes.
Because the
blinn displays in the
viewport with a
glossy sheen, this
helps to spot any
ripples, distortions
or blemishes
28 The screenshot shows the topology

of the polygon meshes from the rear
without the wireframe. The body panels are not as
smooth as we would like yet, but that will happen
during the final smoothing process.
29 The last step in preparing the low-res

polygon meshes for the smoothing process
is to mirror the bonnet, the roof, the front and rear
bumpers, the front and rear windscreens and the
hatchback across the X axis, combine the meshes
and merge the centre line vertices. Objects such as
the wings, rocker panels and doors will also be
mirrored but not combined. If you mirror objects
such as doors and wings by duplicating the mesh
and then set the scale transform to -1 across the X
axis, you need to go one step further. When you
freeze the transforms to zero out the Scale X, you
will get the following message: Warning: Freeze
transform with negative scale will set the ‘opposite’
attribute for these nodes. What this does is to set
your normals to the wrong direction. To fix this, you
need to open the Attribute Editor, open the Render
Stats tab and uncheck Double Sided. This will
expose the Opposite attribute, which you will
uncheck. Now recheck the Double-Sided attribute.
Finally, you will need to choose Normals>Reverse to
complete this step.

Finishing up
Smoothing the poly meshes
30 Here is where all of the hard work will pay off. As I said, these low-res polygon meshes
were designed to be smoothed into the final high-res meshes. We’ll use the front bumper
31 With the mesh selected, choose the Mesh>Smooth
option box. I used two levels of divisions to really smooth it
out, and I turned off Preserve: Geometry Border to ensure all the
here so that we can really see the effect of the final smoothing. Notice the bevels that we’ll use to hold borders are smoothed as well. The result is shown with the
the seams, creases and corners. This step shows the mesh. wireframe turned off.
NEXT
MONTH
Now that we have got the
body panels finished, the
hardest part is out of the
way. Next month we will
model the rest of the
32 And here’s the result. The polygon count jumped from

2,458 for the low-res version to 39,378 for the high-res
33 After smoothing all of the low-res meshes and
mirroring the necessary objects, we now have all the
bodywork for the Camaro completed. Thanks to the NURBS
Camaro, which will include
the grill, the head and rear
lights, all of the trim, the
version. In the non-wireframe image, you can really see how surfaces we formed from those curves that were so tedious to wheels and tyres, as well
flawless the surfaces are. No ripples, no distortions, no blemishes. build, we now have body panels that are perfectly smooth. Thanks as the interior of the car.
Notice how well the bevels held all of the seams, creases and to our use of bevels, all of the seams are of consistent size and the We will create textures
corners. You can also tell here how well the orange blinn material creases maintain a consistent size as they run down the length of and shading networks for
helps to really show whether the surface is smooth or blemished. the car across several body panels. all of the materials. We will
UV-map the objects that
require it. Additionally, we
will set up a studio lighting
rig to bring out the best in
our work.
34 Here are a couple shots showing the rear view of the

Camaro, with and without the wireframe.
66 ● 3DArtist

Learn in style
iPad Kindle
The TM
Series
Discover more with the Book series’ expert, accessible tutorials for
iPad, iPhone, Mac, Android, Photoshop, Windows and more
Bookazines HIGH
eBooks • Apps ST.
BUY IN STORE

Artist info
Artur Gruszka
Username: grooshka
Incredible 3D artists take

Country Poland
ZBrush,
Software used LightWave,
k
us behind their artwor
Photoshop
The render was done in LightWave. I rendered three layers of

the image separately: the characters and the background of the
old bookshelf. I used a brand-new Fiber plug-in from LightWave
9.5 to create the fur on the doctor’s dressing gown. The entire
rendering took about 20 hours at A4 (300dpi). The deadline
for the contest was approaching fast, so I had to overpaint
details in Photoshop.
68 l 3DArtist
68-69_3DA_09 IMT2 secret agent.i68 68 21/10/09 17:48:27

I made this… Artur Gruszka ● The studio
We’re always trying to get renders to look like

the shots we get from DSLRs, so the same
rules apply. However, in this particular image,
the foreground and background had to be
without depth of field because of the details I
wanted to preserve. I decided to reduce this
unnatural look using lighting, so the cold
foreground makes a distinct cutoff from the
warm background. The lighting fitted well to
show the personalities of the characters.
Famous
attempt on
Doc Hilary’s
life 2009
The image was made for CGS
ociety’s
Secret Agent CGChallenge. Brie
f research
on the topic brought me to som
e cliched
images with beautiful agents,
extremely
tough-looking bosses as assassin
ation
targets and guns, guns, guns and
lots of
guns. I knew I had to make my
image look
different. So I came to this idea
of a fat
agent and a rather innocent-loo
king
gentleman as the target of his
sick effort.
The picture tries to depict the
secret agent
in his mad attempt on Doctor
Hilary’s life.
He finds the doctor sitting in his
armchair,
reading a book and drinking win
e. It’s the
right moment for the agent to
activate his
robot friend who could easily
slip into the
room unnoticed and drop few
drops of
poison to his drink. He’s controll
ing the bot
from a safe distance.
All modelling was done in LightWave’s

Modeler. Only the character objects were also
sculpted in ZBrush. The modelling of the Software used in this piece
doctor character took me twice the time I LightWave ZBrush Photoshop
needed to finish the agent character

68-69_3DA_09 IMT2 secret agent.i69 69 21/10/09 17:48:47

The studio ● Create a female tomb raider
Step by step:
Create a
female tomb raider
Dungeon Warrior 2009
Create an atmospheric, subterranean image
with a slender female warrior
Paul Francis is currently working as a lead artist
I
’m a classically trained artist, but over time and this image is entirely made up of
I found that when it came to CG I had begun commercially bought elements. It’s not
to forget the basic rules and my work was everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s a quick and
getting weaker. This was an attempt to reverse effective way to produce a lot of work. The trick
that trend. I wanted to produce an image that is to make it look different to all of the other
demonstrated the importance of tonal value badly lit out-of-the-box Poser stuff out there.
and to use chiaroscuro to enhance the effect of The Firefly render engine within Poser is a
3D volume. I used to be a real-world modeller in revelation to me now that I have learnt to use it
special effects at Shepperton Studios, but properly, as I really like the soft, illustration-like
despite that I find modelling anything but the images it can produce but, as ever, the correct
simplest of things on a PC just gives me a lighting is absolutely crucial to getting an
headache, so I started using Poser a while back acceptable final image.
Design concepts
Rough ideas for designing the model
01 I began with good old Victoria with some

custom morphs applied (the excellent Yaara by
Aery Soul Studios). In my mind I had a picture of a
02 Initially, I wanted to have the figure
emerging from a doorway at the top of a
Mayan-style pyramid temple at sunset. As Poser
03 I realised that my original concept wasn’t
really going to work; if the figure was lit for the
outdoors, the background details and light spill from the
female figure in a resolute, powerful pose. Using the doesn’t have any modelling tools at all, I used bits and sky would destroy the chiaroscuro effect I was going for.
figure with minimal props speeds up this stage pieces from various models I already had, in much the So I used the model elements I had to construct a
immensely while you get the composition, pose, same way as you would use scraps from physical closed set, and a test render showed that it worked
camera angle and lighting right. model kits. much better.
70 ● 3DArtist
070-73_3DA_09-dungeon warrior.in70 70 22/10/09 10:53:45

Step by step: Paul Francis ●The studio
Composition,
Lighting,
Rendering
Poser Photoshop
Easy-to-follow guides
to the final render
Artist info
Paul Francis
Username StormdrainGFX
http://paul-francis.cgsociety.
org/gallery/
Country England
Software used
Poser, Photoshop
Expertise Figure work,
landscapes, visualisation
Using the figure with

minimal props speeds up this
stage immensely while you get
the composition, pose, camera
angle and lighting right


The studio ● Create a female tomb raider
Character construction
How the elements were put together
05 Next, I had to get the camera angle right. I used to be a

photographer and tend to apply what I learnt in that field
04 The next step was to give some foreground interest or the main figure would just be
staring vacantly into space, which is a common mistake that is often made with Poser. I had
this creepy doll model that I just had to use, which renders really well.
to 3D. Although this screenshot shows a strong relationship
between the foreground and the main figure, I wanted a longer
focal length to add solidity to the main figure.
08 My favourite bit –
greebles and nurnies! The
floor in the foreground is far too bare, so
it needs some detailing in there to break
up the surface and add visual interest.
Fortunately, I have some broken-up bits
06 This
the
is
camera angle and
final
of rubble and stuff that I keep for just
this purpose, so I’ve scattered a few
instances of it around.
composition, with
quite a long focal
length on the camera.
This has the effect of
making the main
figure more massive
in relation to the
foreground figure,
07 The next stages are to add
in the detail on the character. If
I was a modeller, this would take me
which otherwise weeks, but thanks to the range of
might dominate the commercially available models it can be
picture; a simple but much quicker, and is a godsend if you
effective device – ask get a rush commission. I’ve loaded up a
Steven Spielberg! load of fantasy clothing and hair here.
Artist
Showcase
Stigmata Eterna Poser, Bryce,
Photoshop (2008)
The first picture where I bit the bullet
and got to work on a basic 3D render
with Photoshop. I had previously
been a die-hard ‘it has to be rendered
Paul Francis Barbarian in one go’ fundamentalist; all I can
Poser, Photoshop, say is that I’m now selling work
I have a degree in Fine Art Vue (2009)
as a landscape painter. whereas I wasn’t previously!
This was used as the
I’ve been making CG box art for a new trading
imagery since about 1998. card game called Time This One’s Still Alive
I used to be an SFX model Wars. Being able to Poser, Photoshop (2009)
maker (Red Dwarf, etc) as isolate the Poser figures This shows what can happen if Photoshop
well as a photographer. It from the Vue brushes take over your life… this had
has all given me a pretty background meant it multiple masks to isolate the figures from
could be die-cut to each other as well as the background;
solid grounding in what
stand up as part of the there’s about seven FX layers, apart from
makes a good computer- point-of-sale packaging, the different treatment of the figures within
generated picture. so it’s now real 3D! each layer. Part of the Time Wars TCG set
72 ● 3DArtist

Step by step: Paul Francis ● The studio
Lighting and rendering

Put the final touches in place
4hours
render tim
e
Resolution:
2642 x 3000
10 The final render from

Poser. This is as it comes out of
the Firefly render engine, and it’s not
09 The hardest part of all with Poser – getting the lighting right. In this
case, I’ve used four lights: an image-based light to provide overall
illumination, a Rim light to help define the character against the background, a
looking too bad. The shaded areas
really help to make the lit areas stand
out and give the whole composition
Specular light to pick out texture detail and a warm Spot light. some depth, which is what I was after.
Making a
mask in Poser
Producing a mask in Poser… the
only way I am aware of is to
cheat! I deleted all the lights then
produced a low-quality render.
This is then exported as a PNG
to Photoshop where the whole
image is darkened and the
contrast boosted, both to the
maximum. As the background is
transparent it isn’t affected, and
a new white layer can then be
dropped in behind. The whole
thing is then merged and
converted to a negative image. A
bit long winded but it works, and
a mask is essential for
11 I then produced a mask in Poser (see the boxout
for how to achieve this). The mask is then used in
Photoshop to isolate the foreground elements of the Poser
postproduction effects work or render from the background, which means I can paint
compositing Poser renders. separate effects behind and in front of the figures, taking
control of individual elements.
13 In the final stages, I decided to darken down the

background around the edges. To give it more depth
12 Here, I added smoke behind the figure as well as in front, and will add the light rays next.
These were painted by hand as well as using some FX brushes I’ve built up over the years. The
transparency had a bit of tweaking done to make it more subtle, too.
and to make it less distracting, use the Burn brush. The final
step is to merge all the layers and make a slight adjustment
to the colour balance to warm it up.

The studio ● Creating a rainy and windswept service station
Concept
A The concept behind the picture is to show
loneliness and a set of obstacles that are hindering
the driver’s way. To bring this idea to life, I used all
possible means to define the objects, style and mood.
74 ● 3DArtist
074-079_3DA_09 Studio_Lonely Dri74 74 21/10/09 19:02:34

Behind the scenes: Andrei Kashkin ● The studio
Create a rainy
and windswept
service station
Lonely Driver 2008
In this work I wanted to obtain the
3D artists explain the maximum realism and dramatic nature
techniques behind
their amazing artwork to show emptiness around the driver
Andrei Kashkin is a freelance 3D artist
Artist info
T
he idea of creating a highly detailed image of a car on a road had been in my mind
for a long time. So when I had some free time, I started to work at once. First of all,
in any artwork the aim is to portray the idea and mood. Just the mood creation by
Modelling, making atmospheric effects was the work’s most interesting and most difficult part at the
Lighting same time. Lonely Driver is the result of my experiment. The main task of the project was to
Andrei Kashkin use many programs, plug-ins and styles of work to improve my skills. One requirement that
Texturing I put to myself was to make a scene that’s possible to animate. I used 3ds Max and
http://xmyth.cgsociety.org/ Photoshop as the main software for creating the work, as well as Vue xStream, the
Country Ukraine AfterBurn and Onyx Storm plug-ins and V-Ray. I have tried to pay attention to each creative
Software used in this piece Software used 3ds Max, part of the piece and will tell you about some of the difficulties that I faced and decisions
Photoshop, Vue
Expertise Andrei specialises in that were made along the way, as well as mentioning any special features during the
Photoshop 3ds Max Vue
the conceptual design of project. Hopefully, you will draw something interesting from this article for yourself!
environment modelling, lighting
and texturing
c 01 Inspiration 02 Image style and composition

I was inspired by watching a The environment represents a desert with unpredictable
film in which the main weather and bleak surroundings. As many details as
character was rushing down possible helped to underline this, such as dry grass, road
the motorway in heavy rain. signs indicating the long distances to nearby cities, an old
It was a beautiful feeling of Eighties cafe, while the road stretches into the distance. I
loneliness at the time, and I was guided by classical rules of photography during the
understood at that moment creation of the composition and camera setup.
that I wanted to create the
same feeling in my own 03 Details and references
artwork. The next step is to In my mind, I had already imagined the picture,
define the style of the image. composition and mood, but attention still needed to be
paid to the details. In my artwork, I always use
references from the internet or other useful sources. It is
b Eighties cafe with
petrol station very easy to spoil a picture with unnecessary details and
textures. Therefore, very careful work is a necessity at
C Some image details.
The objects were the last this stage.
to be added

Model the scene

e
Modelling with a rough model
d 04 Start modelling
I start to model the main objects from primitives, such as
boxes, planes, cylinders, etc. Then they were converted to
editable polys and edited using Edit Geometry commands
like Slice Plane, Cut, Weld, Chamfer, Connect and others. To
achieve a natural look for the man-made objects, I applied
chamfers along their corners and either altered the vertices
manually or using the Noise modifier.
G
05 Model the cafe

The cafe is a simple model, so only basic attention was given
to its form. The screenshot shows the entrance door, some
windows and the garage door from a side angle. The cafe’s
roof covers the petrol station, too. A Noise modifier was
applied for the whole model. Within the cafe are low-poly
tables and sofas.
06 Model the car

The car is a very basic object in the scene that’s made in high
detail. I started from a plane and gradually added new
polygons, checking its position in the 3D space. It is
practically impossible to make out the quality of miniature
elements from such a distance, so it’s only important to
include the basic details; here. I worked quickly without
attempting to get the perfect car shape.
07 Model the pylons

It was difficult to choose an example of a pylon in the desert,
as there were lots of references. As you can see, most of the
details on pylons are very simple. They were modelled from
primitives, while the wires were made by splines. For realism,
each pylon is inclined and has unique details, such as the
lantern and dowels on the sides.
d Wooden pole and signs with f Complete model of the car

manually altered vertices
G The inclined pylons F
e Complete cafe model along the road
Create a desert environment

For me, modelling is the most boring part of the work as
there’s very little in terms of creativity going on. A heavy
scene needs to have an economical polygon count as long
as it’s not to the detriment of the image’s quality.
I began work without any sketches, adhering to the rule
of modelling the main objects in low quality to begin with,
and gradually adding details to make them look nice. As the
car is at the centre of the composition, it was modelled in
high detail.
Almost all of the objects in the scene were made from
primitives that were converted to editable polygons and
then edited. Hot keys are useful in speeding up the
modelling process.
The most interesting part of the modelling in this work is
the creation of vegetation. Two programs – Vue and the
Tree Storm plug-in – were used for this. Exported paths of
grass from Vue were multiplied in the distance with the Adv
Painter script.
76 ● 3DArtist

Texturing and
postproduction
Add scene details h
Most of the objects were
mapped using the UVW Map
modifier with box, plane or
Bring a bit of interest to the scene cylinder mapping. More
difficult meshes, such as the
car or the main objects in the
cafe, were mapped with
08 Make the vegetation H Different types
of vegetation (Vue
Unwrap UVW.
In order to create some vegetation in the distance, patches of patches on the left, Texturing in the scene
grass were exported from Vue. For the grass arrangement I and Tree Storm/ started with the cafe (followed
hand-modelled by the asphalt), as it occupies a
used the Adv Painter script, using different options for big area on the picture. Always
vegetation on the
Rotate, Inclination and Scale. Other types of dry grass near right) start texturing the objects that
the wooden pole were made from planes with grass texture j occupy the most space. If you
(alpha). A third type of grass were models from Onyx’s Tree I Bushes near don’t have enough time, it is
the road possible to apply similar
Storm plug-in. textures and materials that you
made earlier to small objects. It
09 Make bushes will also save on your
The bushes were created using Onyx’s Tree Storm again. computer’s resources and
This plug-in creates an even animation of plants under the accelerate the rendering. It is
recommended to do textures
influence of wind. I made different types of bushes, changing with a resolution of 256px,
the parameters of the standard presets. Instead of creating a 512px, 1,024px, etc, on height
diffuse bitmap texture for this, I chose a Noise material with and width.
different shades of green. The final step during the
creation of a still image is the
i 10 Make grass sprout from cracks postproduction work. Before
this, I have three images from
On the right-hand side of the road, you can see grass blades render: the main scene, fog and
sprouting from cracks. This grass was modelled manually rain passes, saved in 48-bit
from primitives (three to four different types of blades). I PNG files with alpha channels. I
chose Adobe Photoshop to
drew splines on the displacement structure and multiplied
finish off the artwork.
the blades using the Scatter function (this can be found in Brightness/Contrast, Color
the Compound object menu). Balance and Hue/Saturation
were changed for each layer
11 Model the petrol pump separately. I then merged
layers with different opacities
The MeshSmooth modifier, which was applied to the mesh and blending parameters.
of the petrol pump, only has one smooth iteration. It has
essentially reduced the amount of polygons needed, but it
requires accurate positioning of the vertices’ positions. Some k
other objects in the scene were modelled in the same way,
for instance the hose is a renderable spline.
J Manually modelled grass

arranged on the splines by
Scatter
K The old petrol pump only

has one smooth iteration

Add the textures

Artist
Showcase
Andrei Kashkin
I was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine in 1988, where I
Make textures from gallery photos
l
currently live. I have been a student for about five

years now, teaching myself 3ds Max. My style in 3D
art aims to express feelings by the means of
everyday objects surrounding us, as well as to show
the problems that get mankind worked up.
Textures
there
Bitmaps were made for almost all of the objects –
90 in the scene (including Alpha, Bump and
were over
s in
Specular maps). All textures were made from photo
om,
m Photoshop (some textures were from CGTextures.c
et).
while others came from pictures found on the intern
l Final diffuse texture

of cafe wall
Venice 3ds Max, Photoshop, V-Ray (2007)
The idea to create the artwork came about when I looked m Different type of
through some photos of Italy. This one shows a Venice morning textures for one material
of the garage door
12 Texture the cafe wall

The basis of the wall texture was taken from the photo. I
added some new layers of cracks and plaster above from
other photos. It is important that the colour balance is
identical in different layers, otherwise colour correction or
Hue/Saturation has to be applied for correction. The Burn
n Preview of asphalt tool was used on corners and some other places to create
materials from Material
Editor window dirt. The Clone Stamp tool is very useful to eliminate
o Nodes of procedural unnecessary details on the canvas and sharp transitions
Water Force 3ds Max, Photoshop, V-Ray (2008)
In this picture, you can see the corridor of a submarine that is asphalt between different layers. Sometimes I mix layers in the
collapsing. Water will fill it in a matter of seconds… Multiply or Overlay mode for leaks and dirt.
n
13 Texture the garage door
The diffuse texture is only one part of the materials. Most of
the materials were made as VRayMtl shaders with Diffuse,
Bump and Reflection maps. A Specular bitmap of garage
door was created from the diffuse bitmap. All the layers were
desaturated and mixed with different options. For some
Bump maps, I used Noise or Smoke Procedural maps or a
combination in a Mixed map.
5th sector 3ds Max, 3ds Max, Photoshop, V-Ray (2008)

This is a post-apocalypse situation with a real stadium, which is
situated in my native city. The group of people, located in sector
five, resist with misfortune
14 Asphalt materials
It’s necessary to give special attention to the wet asphalt, as
there were two types used in the scene. As a basis I took
materials from www.vraymaterials.de, but they did need to
be altered in order to achieve nice results in the conditions of
the given illumination. Cracks on the road were made by
displacing the texture with cracks.
78 ● 3DArtist

p
15 Light the scene

The main source of illumination is an HDR sky that was p A part of rendered
HDR texture for lighting
made in Vue. Two V-Ray light sources were also used for
illuminating the scene. These were V-Ray’s Plane light inside q Vue viewport
the building and V-Ray’s Dome light for the whole scene. I with the sky
left their colours white because the basic tone was set by the r Rain with forces
colour of the HDR texture and colour correction could be and UOmniFlect
done in postproduction. deflector q
16 HDR sky R
To create an HDR sky, an atmosphere was loaded in Vue
from a standard collection. I wanted the sun to be behind the
clouds and close to horizon line so that the scene was
illuminated with soft shadows. All the necessary parameters
were set in the Atmosphere editor. When I achieved some
nice results, I exported the sky in an HDR file.
S The fog is
17 Rain creation
concentrated near The rain was made using 3ds Max’s Particle Flow. A drip
the ground system was bound with gravitation and wind force. All
2
parameters of the forces were set experimentally. For the
t Pure render splash deflector, I used the UOmniFlect deflector containing
without fog,
hours rain and the objects in the scene in low quality without small details
Render time postprocessing (to decrease the count of polygons in the deflector). The rain
consisted of 5,000-7,000 droplets,
Resolution: which were rendered as spheres
Rendering 3,388 x 1,542 with motion blur in a separate pass.
The scene was rendered

in some passes (main, fog
18 Fog creation
Fog was needed as an atmospheric
and rain) using V-Ray
render by ChaosGroup effect in the scene. Like the rain, it
without Global was made using Particle Flow with
Illumination in order to wind force. For visualisation, the
reduce the render time AfterBurn plug-in was needed. It
and the computer’s
resources. Standard could then be animated and non-
options were used; I only uniform, which is much better if we
changed the anti-aliasing simply use ZBuffer! The AfterBurn
filter on Catmul-Rom, effect was appointed to the Particle
while in the adaptive System in the Environment and
subdivision window image
sampler I changed the Effects window with parameters
value of Clr.thresh to 0,0. t from the dusty scene (AfterBurn
tutorial scenes).

oeusrtions Need help fast? Join the
Yu
q nswered
a
? Maya: General Maya: Games
The Advisors
Lance Hitchings John Haynes
www.hitchingsdesign.com [email protected]
Lance is our Maya John works on
use?
t the software you an
master and in this issue characters for games at
Have a question abou

he tackles the problem Sega in California. In this
k? Contact us d
of getting shadows to issue he tackles the
Thw arted by creative bl oc render properly subject of hints and tips
your 3D groove through transparent for hard-surface
we’ll help you get back in

materials. Get your modelling when applied
rendering hats on to low-poly game models
Chasing shadows
How do I create
transparent shadows
and other effects using
ray tracing for
shadows?
In the pursuit of photorealistic materials. This produces unrealistic as well as a directional light. The glass pig
images, everything seems to results; where shadows disappear when and the left sphere are mia_materials
come down to light and shadow. seen through refractive surfaces, using a couple of different glass presets.
The use of Global Illumination reflections disappear if they are in shadow, The middle and right spheres are blinns
and image-based lighting can produce and transparent shadows just look wrong. that use a Sampler Info node to control
realistic renders, but this effect can fall These are ray tracing issues, corrected reflectivity and transparency. The tabletop
apart if your scene contains direct lighting by adjusting the Raytrace values within the is a mia_material using the thin glass
A combined with reflective and refractive Render Settings and the Attribute Editor preset and the table legs are mia_
for the shadow-casting lights. materials using the chrome preset.
To get transparent shadows, we’ll need We’ll start with ray tracing turned on in
to be using a transparent material and a the Render Settings with the default
shadow-casting direct light with Use Ray values. The tops of the chrome table legs
Trace Shadows turned on under the look okay and we can see some
Shadows>Raytrace Shadow Attributes tab transparent shadows, but none of the
in the Attribute Editor. glass objects seem transparent A.
01 Default Raytrace settings 02 Crank it up

We’ll start with a simple scene containing The first step is pretty obvious. Increase
several reflective and refractive materials, the Reflections, Refractions and Max
80 ● 3DArtist
080_81_3DA_09 Q&A.indd 80 21/10/09 13:50:01

The studio Your questions answered ●
growing community at www.3dartistonline.com

3ds Max CINEMA4D Vue Poser Send us all of your 3D problems
and we’ll get them sorted. There
Ryan Knope Daniel Lovas Dominic Davison Paul Francis are two methods to get in touch
[email protected] http://lovas.cgsociety.org/gallery/ www.3dartistonline.com/show_ www.renderosity.com/homepage.
php?userid=4147
with our team of expert advisors…
Ryan is our Daniel is our resident profile.php?userid=382
architecture and 3ds CINEMA 4D and sci-fi Dom is one of the top The latest member of the
Max expert. In this specialist. In this issue he people creating Q&A panel is Paul who is a
Email the team directly with your problem
issue he’s creating an tackles the subject of realistic landscapes. In former modeller for programs
interior swimming animation if you don’t this issue he explains like Red Dwarf, and also a [email protected]
pool complete with own the Mograph how to create wet photographer. He brings Or post it on the Q&A section on our forum
lighting. Check out the module. Files for this are looking stones using those two perspectives to the www.3dartistonline.com/forum
caustics. on the disc the material properties Poser world
C
D
Trace Depth values in the Render Settings Shadow settings. This needs to be done in shadow cast by the glass pig in particular
under the Raytrace tab. Make sure you use two places. seems pale and washed out C.
enough rays to pass through all sides of all First, again in the Render Settings under
objects, including multiple objects that are the Raytrace tab, we need to increase the 04 The final fix
stacked up in front of one another. Shadows value enough to ensure that the The problem is caused by using the Simple
Now all the glass objects are transparent shadow rays are passing through enough Shadow Method under the Shadows tab in
and refracting properly, but there are still surfaces and bouncing off enough the Render Settings. Simple shadows are
some problems. The shadows disappear surfaces to capture all of this detail. quick and work great with ordinary opaque
when seen through the glass table, and Second of all, in the Attribute Editor shadows, but not so great with
there are no reflections on the chrome under the Shadows>Raytrace Shadow transparent shadows. Change the Shadow
table legs when seen through the table Attributes tab of the shadow-casting light, Method type to Segments, which works
glass or where they fall into the shadow increase the Ray Depth Limit to the same much better with transparent shadows. If
cast by the table glass B. value as Shadows in the Render Settings. you decide to render your scene using
Both of these adjustments are required in image-based lighting, make sure that the
03 Turn up the shadow rays order to get the shadows and reflections Reflections, Refractions and Max Trace
These problems are fixed, not by adjusting to render correctly. Depth values under the Final Gather
the Reflective or Refractive settings as you However, even though they are now Options tab match those under the
might think, but rather by adjusting the visible, they don’t look very realistic. The Raytrace tab in the Render Settings D.
080_81_3DA_09 Q&A.indd 81 22/10/09 14:04:46

oeusrtions
Yu
q nswered
a
?
use?
Have a question abveout the software yousu and
ck? Co ntact
Thwarted by creati ckbloin your 3D groove
we’ll help you get ba
The Sub-D surface

is smooth yet has
clean detail,
provided by good
use of edges
Learning about
modelling
Can you give me some hints
and tips on hard-surface
modelling techniques?
When modelling hard
surfaces, it is important that
01 Create the object’s

the surface has certain volume and form without worrying about details that
elements that help to define it do not significantly affect the silhouette. Work with the object centred and
as a rigid form. Additionally, hard-surface straight along one axis to help maintain a smooth surface. Plus many of the transform
elements might have more or less tools tend to work better. When complete, evenly subdivide the surface by using a
emphasis depending upon the type of Slice or Edge Duplicate tool. Pay attention to adding edges to areas that will help form
object. A basic static object generally has even quad polygons and smooth edge loops. Avoid triangles, as they tend to form
valence points of the surface.
forms that are flat and tend to not flow
into each other, so it is easier to get a hard-
surface feel. However, objects like a robot
or body armour may have forms that have
an organic flow, so the other elements of
hard edges, smooth surface and geometric
detail become more important in order to
maintain a hard-surface look.
Hard-surface objects are best created in
several stages or passes with polygons
converted to Sub-Ds to get a smooth
surface. Starting with the whole volume
and silhouette, this is often referred to as
box modelling, which is then refined with
the major geometric detail, usually by
using Booleans so the added shapes
remain even. More edges are added to
create an even quad polygon distribution,
plus surfaces that are attached to Boolean
objects are cleaned up, with the vertices 03 Add additional bevels on any
outer volume edges to maintain the
volume when the object is converted to Sub-D.
connected to form quad polygons where
possible. Finally, add smaller details by
creating separate shapes that are not
02 Add and refine some of the form details using similar basic
primitives, as they usually have even curves and arcs that rigid
surfaces tend to have as well. By using a Boolean operation, replace any
The bevel will help to define the edge, as most
object edges aren’t sharp. Raw polygon edges
are infinitely sharp and are best only used for
welded to the base form so the parts of the object’s surface with Boolean shapes while trying to edges of blades. Separate objects such as
smoothness of the surface is maintained. maintain the even arcs and curves the shapes might have. small panels and rivets are also added here.
82 ● 3DArtist
082_87_3DA_09 Q&A.indd 82 22/10/09 10:56:40

Join the community at www.3dartistonline.com

A swimming time
My project is to model a house with an interior swimming pool. What’s
the best way of creating this and what do I need to look out for, as it is inside
a room with glass window panels?
Here, I will cover two aspects of The Sun System is set to 4.0 with MR Photographic interior design cases. The caustic effect will show up
pool creation with both interior Exposure control set to Exterior Daylight. where there is sun, although in shadow it will not.
and exterior shots considered.
The first involves setting up your Tricky little water Afterwards
environment and windowpanes in a Pool water tends to be tricky. The packaged Arch & My advice would be to download and test the
configuration that easily works with you Design Material water preset tends to only really work material. Dissect it, figure out how it works and how
rather than against you. The latter, pool well with ocean water, for example, where you cannot you could make it better suited for your projects.
water materials, I can only touch on briefly, see the bottom or into the water past the reflections. If you have control over your shot, pick the easiest
as it will cover much more space than is In recent months, I have been using a pool water way to achieve a great result and don’t be afraid to
allotted in this column. material set from www.mrmaterials.com. It has been fake things. In the end it is about the final image
Keeping both aspects in mind and quick and easy, allowing me to focus more on the looking great, not whether it is physically accurate by
consciously using them to your advantage modelling and composition rather than how the water numbers or algorithms.
will definitely aid in your pool renderings, appears. This material set works in a one-two punch. You can find the Arch & Design Material (created
whether it is an interior or exterior shot. The water material has the water surface covered in a by Jeff Patton – www.jeffpatton.net) that I used at
basic manner. The pool tile material has the bottom http://mrmaterials.com/resource-central.html?func
Build the environment and sides covered, and has an added benefit – fake =fileinfo&id=975/. You have to create a login, but it
When building the environment, I tend to caustics that pass the test in most architectural and will prove worth the minute or two.
fake some aspects to achieve easier and
better lighting. For example, with back-
facing windows I tend not to put in a pane
of glass. This will help light penetrate into
the interior room as well as help light up
the water with the materials I will go over
in the next step.
In the bottom screenshot, you can see
interior and exterior shots with different
glass panes included. The red lines show
the glass pane configuration. Depending
on where your shot is coming from, this
can help to significantly reduce the effort
with lighting your scene. See how the
interior shot is much less affected, and Below left: A render
how the exterior shot with four sides of from mrmaterials.com
panes has darkened the back windows. I Below: A render
showing both pool
used the Arch & Design Solid Glass preset. materials in scene
Using windowpanes in smart locations around the room can help greatly in
lighting and composition
082_87_3DA_09 Q&A.indd 83 22/10/09 16:44:51

oeusrtions
Yu
q nswered
a use?
?
Have a question abveout the software yousu and
ck? Co ntact
Thwarted by creati ckbloin your 3D groove
we’ll help you get ba
Falling dominoes
I do not own the latest MoGraph module, so how do I
animate a circle of falling dominoes using the Dynamics
module in CINEMA 4D?
First of all, I’d strongly suggest to be grouped as their children and will follow them. simulation we also need to add some dynamics
anyone interested in creating dynamic That will provide for a cleaner and faster quasi-objects to the scene, like the Gravity object
interactions of the kind to upgrade to dynamics calculation and will also let us adjust and the Solver object. Last but not least, all the
the latest release of the program (11.5) the simulation easily if the need arises. For invisible object doubles and the ground object
and get MoGraph, as it offers some new and example, it will come in handy if the fallen need the Rigid Body Dynamic tag added to them.
much more elegant tools for the purpose. If it is dominoes do not lie exactly on the ground object
not possible, follow this short tutorial. It is but levitate slightly over it. Instead of fiddling with Initial unstable position
intended not only for the users who own the various dynamics parameters and thus risking
Dynamics module and do not own the MoGraph losing control over the simulation, we will simply The first domino should be initialised in an
unstable position in order to start falling as
module, but also for all the numerous ones that resolve the problem by lowering a bit of the soon as the simulation starts. It will become
are still using a version of CINEMA 4D older than invisible double of the ground object, while unstable once it is rotated around its lower
the latest release, regardless of whether they own keeping the visible ground in place. edge for such an angle that the gravity vector
MoGraph or not. We will set up a simple scene, Next, we need to create additional dominoes. through its mass centre hits the ground outside
containing a set of upward-standing dominoes If you do not own the MoGraph module, you can the footprint of the domino. In this particular
case, 20 degrees should be enough.
arranged in a circle on a ground surface and with use the Duplicate function for that. For a correct
If all the dominoes are unstable even before
the first one in an unstable starting position. dynamics simulation, you need to set the initial they were hit, check that they are initially
We’ll start by creating a ground object, a position of the dominoes exactly on the surface positioned exactly on the ground’s surface. You
domino object and invisible doubles for both of of the ground object, with only the first one in an can also run a simulation with all of them
them. Why do we need the doubles? The actual unstable position. That position will then be set vertical and slightly above the ground; once
they fall steady on the ground, set their position
dynamics simulation will take into account only as the start-up position for the main simulation. as initial.
the invisible doubles while the visible objects will And, of course, before we start any dynamics
01 Prepare the ground 02 Prepare the domino objects

Set the visibility dots so that the
In Project Settings, set the Frame Rate
to 25fps, Minimum to 0 and Maximum to 99
frames. Add a cube primitive to the scene,
Ground_dummy object is invisible in render
and that the Ground object is force-visible in
render. Create another cube primitive and
03 Duplicate the dominoes
Snap its local axis to the position of the Domino object’s axis,
make it invisible in render and make the Domino object its child. Once
rename it ‘Ground’ and set its size to 2000, rename it ‘Domino’, size it to 20, 200,120, fillet in Object mode, drag the Domino_dummy object so that it lies exactly
30, 2000. Make it editable then transfer the its edges to five units, make it editable, transfer on the Ground object. Using Duplicate with Instancing off, create 25
local axis five units up. Duplicate the object its local axis to 10, -100, 0 and make it force- copies of the Domino_dummy along a horizontal arc with the diameter
and rename it ‘Ground_dummy’. In the Point visible in render. Add yet another cube of 430 units and distance between them of 100 units. Select all the
mode, select all four of its upper vertices and primitive, rename it ‘Domino_dummy’, size it dominoes plus the Ground_dummy and add a Rigid Body Dynamic tag
set their Y co-ordinate to 0. to 14,194,114 and make it editable. to them.
84 ● 3DArtist
082_87_3DA_09 Q&A.indd 84 22/10/09 10:57:27

04 Set dynamic parameters for

the ground 05 Set dynamic parameters for
the dominoes
Select the first domino and set it in an unstable
position. Hit the Rigid Body Dynamic tag of the
Ground_dummy object. In the Mass tab, first
Select all the Rigid Body Dynamic tags of the
dominoes. In the Mass tab, set Total Mass to
10 units, Rotational Mass to 20% and click the
06 Finalise the dynamics setup
Add the Solver and the Gravity objects. Turn the Solver off and
make all the other objects its children. In its settings, set the Start to 0
click on the Calc. Mass Centre button then set Calc. Mass Centre button. The Mass Centre and the End to 99 in the Main tab, set the Integration Method to
the Total Mass to 0 units and set the co-ordinates will be blanked but it is expected, Midpoint, Oversampling to 32 and Energy Loss to 5%. In the Details tab,
Rotational Mass to 100%. In the Collision tab, as more than a single object is selected. In the set the Collision Eps to 10, turn on the Use Rest Speed and set it to 100
set Collision Detection to Full, Elasticity to Collision tab, set Collision Detection to Full, units. In the Gravity Settings, set the Field Strength to 10. Now select
100% and both static and dynamic friction Elasticity to 10% and both static and dynamic Dynamics – Initialize All Objects and finally turn the Solver object on. Hit
coefficients to 50%. friction coefficients to 50%. the play button to check the simulation.
082_87_3DA_09 Q&A.indd 85 22/10/09 10:57:47

oeusrtions
Yu
q nswered
a
?
out the software you ct
Have a question abcre
use? Thwa rte d by ative block? Conta
us and we’ll help you ge t back in your 3D
01 General setup
Open a new scene and choose any
atmosphere. Now increase the light balance in
the Atmosphere settings towards sunlight to
get the full reflection of the wetness. Load a
new rock, edit the object (Cmd/Ctrl+E) and
check Dynamic subdivision. Use a quality
boost of 1 to make it look smoother and reduce
the bump settings in the Material Editor. Also
darken the colour of the stone because wet
stones look darker.
02 Create the wet look

To get a stone material looking wet,
Wet stones
you have several ways to achieve this. You
could add the Wet Mud material layer to the
original stone’s layer. The easier way is to
adjust the lighting of the stone’s material.
Choose the Highlights tab in the Material
I want to create a scene with lots of stones Editor and increase the Highlight global
intensity to 100% and the Global size to (in
in the foreground, which looks like it’s been this case) 23%. This last setting determines
how shiny you want the stone.
raining because it’s going with a stormy sky.
How do I get wet stones?
Creating wet-looking rocks or stones in Vue Piles collection from Cornucopia3d.com. Even with a
can be achieved in a number of ways. Before more detailed-looking stone, this is still only part of
you begin you need to choose the right what we really want to achieve. To make the stone
atmosphere, as this will affect the look wet, we can combine or mix the materials with
appearance of the rocks just as much as the rock another object. We can also add material layers such
material itself. Lighting is obviously important, as Wet Stones to our original object layer, which can
because you will need to get the reflection of the give interesting results. If you want to create a stone
wetness. So increasing the sunlight levels in the with only half of its surface appearing wet, adjust the
Atmosphere editor is important, or adding extra
spotlights on the stones is also worth considering.
Influence of altitude slider, which is accessible by
clicking the Influence of environment tab.
03 Create lots of wet rocks
When you have your finished stone,
you can now use this model as part of an
Basically, anything to highlight the shininess of the I have found the easiest and quickest way of ecosystem. Right-click the object and choose
stone is favourable here. achieving wet-looking objects is to simply adjust the Save Object. Now you can use this object as
Ideally, you will need to change the material of the highlights and shine of the stones themselves. This is part of a rock ecosystem. Remember in an
default rock provided in Vue. Go for a material with a a method usually applied to water surface properties, ecosystem that objects generally all have their
default material. You cannot edit ecosystem
smoother appearance. There are a number already but can be just as effective on other materials. From
components individually, but you can access
preloaded in Vue. For this tutorial the rocks/stones your own experiments you will find your own personal their material via the material browser.
are fairly close to the main camera, so I required more preferences, as there is usually more than one way of Experiment with different rock materials to get
photorealistic textures and materials. I chose the Rock doing things in Vue. interesting results.
86 ● 3DArtist
082_87_3DA_09 Q&A.indd 86 22/10/09 10:58:08


If the face fits
In the Face Room, there’s
an option to load your own
face models. How do I use this
and are there issues I should
be aware of?
The Face Room is a dark place

where a lot of Poser users are
afraid to enter; I certainly
was until I pushed open the
door and had a look inside, and was
pleasantly surprised with the result. The
Face Room can indeed be used to make
your own custom heads, and the results
can be surprisingly good, but there are
limitations, as with any software. The first
surprise to me was that the Face Room
only works on a select number of figures,
in this instance the G2 range of figures
such as Simon, Koji, Sydney, etc. As far as I
know, it won’t work with the DAZ Studio
range of characters.
I found that it helps to set a goal to work
towards, rather than just going in and Importing the front and
doodling around. In this instance I decided side views from your
own photos onto the
I would start off trying to make a self- standard Simon G2
portrait to see just how good a Poser head
render can actually be, and how effective
this modelling tool is.
The first stage is to get yourself your
head shots – you need one from the front
and one from the side. The photos are
best taken against a plain background,
with even lighting.
Importing your photos

In the Face Room, at the top left is the the edge of your photos, such as Pan, Zoom, Rotate,
option to load the first photo, the front etc; and the control dials over on the right. Getting
view. Once you have located the file, Poser the photo to line up is important if you want to
asks you to identify two points, the outer create custom textures as well as 3D geometry
corner of the eye and the corner of the from your photos. In the end, I decided to only go
mouth, and there is a similar process for Poser has used the photos to produce a 3D sculpture, which is with the geometry and use textures I already had.
then fine-tuned using the morph dials and control points
the side view, with the tip of the ear and
the point of the chin. Once loaded, Poser Shaping the face
applies your photos as textures to the There are a wealth of adjustment dials down the
head model, and offers you a 3D preview right-hand side of the screen that help you to fine-
on the right, which can be zoomed and tune the 3D model. Poser does a good job of the
rotated using the standard Poser controls. initial sculpt from the photo, but needs a little help
to get it right. You can see in the screenshot the
Lining up your photos difference between the standard Simon G2
Once the photos are loaded, you need to character and the custom model produced from a
begin to align the physical features in the photo of me with a bit of sculpting.
photos with their counterparts on the 3D The final 3D model can be applied to your figure
head model. There are three methods of as is, with or without a texture, or Poser can
doing this: the green interactive control generate a morph target from your custom model
points you can see superimposed over for use as you wish. I used the model created in the
your photos; the photo line-up tools down Face Room for this self-portrait in Poser Pro.
082_87_3DA_09 Q&A.indd 87 22/10/09 10:58:25

iTUNES SEARCH: 3D ARTIST iTUNES SEARCH: RETRO GAMER iTUNESSEARCH:DIGITALARTISTMAGAZINE iTUNES SEARCH: GAMES TM
Requirements: Apple iPhone 3G, 3Gs, iPod Touch or iPad >> iPhone 3.1.2 or higher >> an Internet connection
iTUNES SEARCH: ICREATE ITUNES SEARCH: PHOTO FOR BEGINNERS
Everything
you love about
mags but now
in digital form
& yours iTUNES SEARCH: X360 iTUNES SEARCH: 360 MAGAZINE
forever!
iTUNES SEARCH: PHOTOSHOP CREATIVE iTUNES SEARCH: SCIFINOW

iTUNESSEARCH:ADVANCEDPHOTOSHOP iTUNES SEARCH: WEB DESIGNER iTUNES SEARCH: HOW IT WORKS iTUNES SEARCH: LINUXUSER
iTUNES SEARCH: TOTAL 911 iTUNES SEARCH: PHOTOGRAPHER iTUNES SEARCH: PLAY MAGAZINE iTUNESSEARCH:SMARTPHONEESSENTIALS
New: The latest video

game cheats and tips Whether you want
For Xbox 360 guides: to run to lose
weight, get fit or
XBOX 360 Cheats & Tips meet personal
iTUNES SEARCH: CHEATS & TIPS
goals, this app has
For Playstation 3 guides: everything you
PS3 Cheats & Tips need to know
iTUNES SEARCH: GO RUN
iTUNES SEARCH: CHEATS & TIPS
Guides for all consoles:

PowerStation
New: Digital-only magazine for
iTUNES SEARCH: POWERSTATION runners of all abilities
Your favourite magazines

now on iPad & iPhone
D
ownload direct to your
iPhone or iPad
P
ages are flickable,
zoomable and viewed Download
O
nce downloaded, you
do not need an Internet
in either widescreen or
portrait format now from
connection to enjoy
S
P
urchase individual issues
S
the iTunes
App Store
ubscribe for 6 or 12 hare it with your friends
months
Review ● ZBrush 3.5
Combining ZBrush
modelling with the rendering
tools of a traditional 3D
application is the most
common workflow for most
users, with normal mapping
used to retain ZBrush’s
detail without its crippling
polygon count
ZBrush 3.5 $595 There’s more new brushes in version 3.5 along with a whole new way of starting your
ZBrush creations
S
ince its introduction, ZBrush has disappointments have been the shapes before you start sculpting their
been an instant hit with almost compromises modellers have had to make details. They allow you to draw rough
everyone who used it. Its organic, when taking their work from ZBrush into shapes with spheres connected by bones,
intuitive tools completely revolutionised more traditional 3D applications for and then, by manipulating the bones, refine
organic 3D modelling, and the ease with rendering and animation. your object before you convert it to polygons
which it handled models with millions of In version 3.5, ZBrush’s interface has for sculpting.
polygons converted seasoned professionals become marginally less cluttered. It’s still ZSpheres II takes this a stage further,
and newcomers alike. packed with tiny icons, buttons and menus, allowing you to sketch additional detail on
Since then, updates have been slow to but there’s now a quick button that allows top of the spheres without losing their
appear but generally massive. The program’s you to switch instantly between layouts for editing functionality. In other words, you can
architecture has allowed enthusiasts to write sketching, modelling and painting, making draw the arms and legs of a creature with
add-ons to push the program on between the most common tools a little more easily ZSpheres, then sketch in muscles and shape
updates, and the program’s only real available. There’s also a handy lightbox at with the new tools. As you work, you can
the top of the screen that allows for quick then return to the underlying ZSpheres and
Version 3.5 is not short on new access to recent models. move them, changing the pose, altering the
features. The most instantly Version 3.5 is a free upgrade for current scale or adding new limbs. The detail you’ve
users, but it’s not short on new features. The created will then adapt to the changes. The
impressive of these is the most instantly impressive of these is the new toolset is a great addition, allowing you
upgraded ZSphere tool upgraded ZSphere tool. ZSpheres are to work on your initial shapes much more
ZBrush’s primary tools for sketching out freely than before.
90 ● 3DArtist
090-91_3DA_9 ZBrush.indd 90 20/10/09 13:23:12

ZBrush 3.5 ● Review
The good & the bad

✓ Best organic modelling ✘ Interface and menus are
tools available complicated
✓ Strong texture-painting
toolset ✘ Documentation is poor
✓ Work with multimillion poly
models easily
www.pixologic.com
Essential info
● $595 US
OPERATING SYSTEMS
● Windows 2000/XP SP2 / Vista
● Mac OS X 10.5 or later
OPTIMAL SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MAC)

● PowerPC
● 2GB RAM
OPTIMAL SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (PC)

The new ● Pentium D or later
ZSpheres ● 2GB RAM
tools mean you
can rough out
your model
very quickly
Noise Planar Interface

The Surface Noise tool lets you add complex detail The new Planar brushes allow you to sculpt flat edges The new interface is slightly easier to work with and
without affecting your sculpting and geometric shapes into your objects offers a set of instantly interchangeable layouts
Features................................9/10
Our verdict
You can also paint onto ZSpheres, which surface textures) to your models in a very
lets you start to colour your object before
you even finalise its shape.
adaptable way. Noise can be fine-tuned
using a graph, and you can even colour the
Ease of use.......................... 8/10
Several new brushes have been added, bumps or dents you create with the Noise Quality of results .............9/10
and the most significant of these are the
Planar brushes. Basically, these flatten areas
tool automatically. Crucially, the noise isn’t
actually applied to your geometry until you
Value for money.............. 8/10
to a given angle, allowing you to sculpt sharp want it to be, so you can build, for example, a
edges for the first time and build hard- rough skin texture but still sculpt and smooth A package that’s
edged objects in the same way you build the geometry to remodel the figure changed the game for
organic shapes. underneath without damaging the noise
This tool is useful but it’s not perfect. It texture. Once you’re happy with the look, organic modellers. 3.5
takes a little getting used to, and unless your you can bake the noise onto your mesh continues to stretch
models have a very high level of subdivision ready for export.
you don’t get crisp edges. However, the Overall, ZBrush 3.5 adds some powerful what’s possible
9
improvements in the LazyMouse tools do let functions and the program remains an
you create brushstrokes with more evenness almost essential part of the toolbox of any Final
Score
and precision than before, so sculpting man- serious artist. It hasn’t quite cracked hard-
/10
made objects has become easier. edged modelling with the Planar brush but
The new Noise tools are very effective. it’s on its way, and the noise and ZSpheres
They let you add controllable noise (rough tools are superb additions.
090-91_3DA_9 ZBrush.indd 91 20/10/09 13:23:37

Review roundup l Autodesk SketchBook Mobile
Tapping the small circle at the bottom of the screen There’s a choice of Pencil, Paintbrush, Airbrush and There is a layer system – either three or six layers –
brings up the menu system, offering a choice of Fill Flood can, plus predesigned brush types that but how they work is about as basic as it could
tools, layers and colours can be edited possibly be
Autodesk SketchBook Mobile £1.79

Why sit inside sketching models when you can do it on a bus
with your iPhone or iPod Touch?
I SketchBook is a
t might seem a strange departure for are no blending modes for the layers; the
Autodesk to be making iPod Touch/ content from one overlays the next. That’s a
iPhone apps, but with the popularity of
the devices and the eminent suitability for
missed trick. The layer manipulation is also
basic and the program isn’t that responsive.
portable sketchbook
porting the original SketchBook application As far as operating SketchBook goes, it’s for drawing and
over, maybe it’s not such a surprise after
all. There’s certainly a big price difference
been well thought out, presenting a
fullscreen view with just a tiny circle near the
painting
when you go mobile, down from the $100 bottom. Tapping this brings up the operation
asking price for the desktop program to menu with access to the colour wheel, tools www.autodesk.com
$2.99 or £1.79 for the Mobile version. and functions. What you can’t see are the iPhone 3G or 3GS, iPod Touch
SketchBook is, as the name suggests, a short cuts where tapping in corners of the
Features of site................. 6/10
Our verdict
handy, portable sketchbook for drawing and screen can operate an Undo/Redo
painting. The four main drawing tools are the command, fit to screen and clear the current Ease of use.......................... 8/10
Pencil, Airbrush, Paintbrush and Fill Flood layer. Now, it’s hard work to accurately draw
can. There’s also an Eraser to complement anything at 100% on the screen with your Quality of results............. 6/10
the Undo/Redo function and the Layer finger, so thankfully the double-finger spread Value for money. ............. 8/10
Delete option. On top of this, there are basic or contract operates the zoom. It also
brush effects to mimic oily textures, chalky facilitates moving the screen around once
effects, sponges and crayons. Brushes can you have zoomed in as well. This is quick Slick but not
also be edited inside the app. Don’t get too
excited and think that this is mobile Corel
and easy to use.
Images can be saved and exported and
particularly
Painter, though, because it isn’t. The effect is even loaded into the desktop version of comprehensive
still basic: there’s no impasto and the colours SketchBook. There’s two versions of the sketching and
don’t have wet or dry characteristics or Mobile app – one is a free, cutdown app,
merge to form secondary colours. It’s still while the other is the full-featured one for a painting package at
painting how it was done on computers 20 paltry £1.79 ($2.99). As with all sketching a low-cost price
years ago. and painting programs, a lot depends on
7
One of the clever aspects of the program your innate ability and here it’s compounded
is that it supports layers and also photos can by the fact that you have to use your finger Final
Score
be imported from the library straight onto to do it. While the painting effects are still
/10
any of them. There are three layers as nothing special, consider this a sketchbook
standard, or six if you have the 3GS iPhone. with colour and fill facilities and the minimal
What’s let this down somewhat is that there asking price will seem very fair indeed.
92 l 3DArtist
092_093_3DA_09Review Roundup.ind92 92 21/10/09 18:41:35

Stoney Creek Sprucevale, Scooby-Doo! ● Review roundup
Stoney Creek There’s some room for

elevating the camera
from the initial ground
Sprucevale $16.95
level setting
Take a hike into the mountains
D
esigned by Howie Farkes, Sprucevale is a
standalone extension of the location he
www.daz3d.com
began with Stoney Creek. This is where The creek looks
nice, but it doesn’t
the creek rises, deep in the Harpwood Mountains,
Features................................ 7/10
Our verdict
extend any
so it’s a lot more wild as a setting. Essentially, further than the
there’s the creek running down the centre of the trees where the
water is first
Ease of use.......................... 6/10
scene, with boulders to the left, a footpath to the
right and pine-covered mountains in the distance.
visible
Quality of results ............ 8/10
This is a DAZ 3D Carrara scene file with three because here’s the main problem. There are Value for money...............9/10
different flavours for your use. There’s a standard masses of trees and leaves and stones, which make
scene setting with a neutral atmosphere, a sunset it look fantastic, but the price is a very high
version with weak and pale light coming through overhead. On one PC test the regular and sunset Masses of detail
the trees on the horizon, as well as a foggy version. scenes were very slow to navigate, while the foggy
It comes in PC and Mac versions. version was completely unresponsive. You’ll need a require a computer
The key to any scene like this is how flexible, beefy graphics card to handle this. Equally, 2.75GB with decent specs to
how much detail and how much depth there is in it. of RAM wasn’t enough to render beyond a modest
Well, there’s room to place figures in the creek, on 1,000px-tall resolution. You’ll need a system with
get the best results
the boulders and, thankfully, along the path. You more RAM than that to get a high-res render.
8
can elevate the camera and move into the scene a If you want to be picky then you could argue that
little way. However, there’s no heading off into the the atmospherics aren’t visually striking, with the Final
Score
woods because the stream finishes just about sunset being pretty weak, but what you do get
/10
where you can see it, and the mountains here is a photoreal location with masses of detail
themselves don’t extend to the floor. This is to keep that can be explored to a reasonable, if not
the detail and rendering down to reasonable limits extensive, degree.
Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins £15.99

CGI puppy in live-action origin story
W
hile the first two Scooby-Doo live
Features................................5/10
Our verdict
action films had a relatively big-name

cast – Sarah Michelle Geller, for
example – not to mention budget, this latest
Quality of graphics ......... 7/10
melding of CGI and human actors is basically a Quality of animation......5/10
straight-to-DVD release. That means a smaller
budget, no stars and a story set in and around their
Value for money...............5/10
high school of Coolsville. Here, the gang of four meet
up, form Mystery, Inc. and befriend the CGI puppy.
The fact that this a joint venture with Cartoon Slapstick
Network becomes immediately apparent – it has humour and a short
that made-for-TV feel, and while CGI Scooby looks
fine and furry as a cartoon dog brought to 3D life, running time, along
some of the compositing and animation is weak. The design of Scooby is fine if not any advanced on anything with no better than
There are also ghosts on the prowl and here they are you’ve already seen. In this scene, he’s getting a shock
relatively simple but effective. There’s also some adequate CGI mark
particle effects with motion tracking that work well. this as a TV movie
Of the human characters you’ll recognise Shaggy
and Velma, but Fred and Daphne are largely
standard effort
anonymous. There’s some interaction between
5
Scooby and the human characters, but not a huge
amount or to any sophisticated degree. The humour Final
Score
has a diluted feel also, relying on simple slapstick,
/10
and with an actual running time of just 76 minutes
the mystery is over as soon as it’s begun. One for the The rest of the CGI effects are nothing earthshaking, but they
kids rather than general family entertainment. tend to work well within the parameters of the setting
092_093_3DA_09Review Roundup.ind93 93 21/10/09 18:41:59

Review roundup l Book reviews
It’s all about Vue

This book provides a
complete beginner’s guide to
creating different kinds of
environments using Vue 7
Vue 7: From The Ground Up £24.99

See what they did there?
D
on’t be fooled by the back- theme. From starting simple with that any novices who pick it up won’t
cover blurb. Husband and snowmen, to moving into luscious be novices when they’ve finished.
wife team Vladimir and Ami lakes and futuristic spaceports, it’s all The book is very well presented –
Chopine may come across, possibly about location, location, location. A you won’t go more than a page or two
somewhat inaccurately, from this simple look around the Vue interface without encountering a large, full-colour
cheerily brief write-up as dyed in the leads on to chapters covering terrains, image of either what you’re supposed
(organic) wool AD&D role players, water, objects and much more. The to be doing in Vue or the object or
hardcore cat lovers and post-Cold language is fairly simple and informal, effect your actions will produce. In
War hippies, but they know a good making it easy to follow, and the logical addition, there are some truly lovely
amount about Vue, even if they do organisation of chapters and the effects renderings from a collection of artists
come up with subheadings like ‘The they cover creates a progression that show exactly what’s possible with
Laws of Digital Nature’. through more advanced skills. environmental design in the program.
In actual fact, most of this book And while this book pitches itself at This, combined with the lively, clear
deals with exactly that, so together novice and intermediate users and writing style, ensures that Vue 7: From
AUTHORs
l Ami Chopine and
with the book’s From The Ground Up even boasts glibly at one point that The Ground Up is an instructional,
Vladimir Chopine title, it almost forms a comedy pun of “Luckily, you won’t have to be worrying inspirational title with plenty of useful
PRICE truly geeky proportions. Vue is most too much about the math”, its ending info presented in a transparent,
info
l £24.99
commonly used for creating 3D chapters deal with such niceties as encouraging way. This is an ideal
PUBLISHER
l Focal Press environments, and throughout the running Python scripts to add in starting point for those interested in 3D
ISBN number book a lot of the tutorials and artwork objects for you, so the book’s reach is environmental design, and a must-have
l 978-0-240-81226-7 by invited modellers runs along this quite broad and will certainly ensure for intermediate Vue users as well.
Real results Start simple The importance of research Inspirational artwork

Working to the clear and logical The first tutorial in Vue 7: From The Both the authors are clearly passionate A range of 3D artists have contributed
instructions and using the materials Ground Up is a slightly more amusing about their subject, and the mini some truly stunning environmental renders,
provided in the web-based tutorial version of the classic ‘create a sphere’ geography lesson that kicks off the and these masterpieces provide some
pack, you will be able to create real starting point that’s common to most 3D Terrains section is a great example of inspirational introductions to each section
Vue scenes tutorial guides their enthusiasm of the book
94 l 3DArtist
094-95_3DA_09 Book Reviews.indd 94 20/10/09 13:27:57

Book reviews ● Review roundup
Fantasy Art Now Volume 2 £20

Ilex’s second collection of the best in fantasy art
F
or digital artists and 3D
modellers, the fantasy genre
provides a great deal of bread-
FANTASY SUBJECTS
and-butter work. From mythical Fairytale fantasy
beasts to romantic maidens and describes the
majority of the
heroic warriors, film and videogames artwork, but a
have a never-ending need to be few other genres
do make a brief
supplied with pointy-eared denizens. appearance
Keeping an eye on what’s current
helps you pick up the latest trends or
prevent your concept art and renderings
from becoming stereotypical. This
collection from Ilex is packed with
inspirational material, some previously
published, some from the artists’
personal portfolios. Mainly a blend of
traditional and digital paintings, it also
showcases a decent amount of concept
AUTHORS
● Aly Fell and Duddlebug art from games like World of Warcraft.
PRICE The subject matter is mainly drawn
info
● £20
from Tolkien-esque fairytale fantasy. ELF MAIDENS ACTION SCENES
PUBLISHER There’s nothing here to expressly help What kind of fantasy art book would The book includes a chapter on action
● Ilex Press
this be without a chapter dedicated to scenes that showcases some fantastic
ISBN NUMBER
create fantasy-based 3D models, but the obligatory elven princesses and battlefields in a range of styles and
● 978-1-905814-52-7 the eye candy will keep you entertained. warrior queens? fantasy sub-genres
OpenGL Programming Guide $59.99US

Learn how 3D apps work and how to program in their underlying language
L
et’s talk about programming
environments and middleware
pipelines, shall we?
For hobbyist 3D users, this is perhaps
the most terrifying part of the whole
PIXELS AND
business, while for experts it can be a POLYGONS
matter of professional life or death. Learn how OpenGL
starts off with
Understanding the way 3D programs simple pixel and
are built enables you to understand polygon-based
models using anti-
how they can be bolted together and aliasing and basic
produce the effects you want. depth effects
OpenGL is the powerhouse behind
many 3D apps, and it manages how
they interact with hardware and each
other. It’s made up of over 250 basic
commands, but within this seemingly
small set of programming rules there
can be almost infinite variations
depending on what information you
build into the code. Learning how this
AUTHOR
● Dave Shreiner underlying code works will enable you
PRICE to do this more effectively.
info
● $59.99 US
While certainly not necessary for the COLOUR MAPPING
PUBLISHER enthusiast, this is an in-depth and
● Addison-Wesley
Discover how to work with objects, Learn how texture and environment
extensive guide for those that really do materials and lighting in order to mapping combine with underlying
ISBN NUMBER create effective colour shading in the wireframes to create smoother, more
● 978-0-321-55262-4 need to know how OpenGL works. OpenGL environment realistic renderings
094-95_3DA_09 Book Reviews.indd 95 22/10/09 14:55:45

We don’t keep
secrets
iPad Kindle
TM
Learn the truth about iPhone, iPad, Android, Photoshop and

more with the Tips & Tricks series’ expert advice and tutorials
Bookazines HIGH
eBooks • Apps ST.
BUY IN STORE

I N D U S T RY ● E D U C AT I O N ● R EC R U I T M E N T ● C A R E E R S
Inside guide to industry news, studios, expert opinion and education

There is no easy way, no simpler Daniel Moreno,
character animator at
way than getting your hands dirty. Laruccia Animation
Studios, on what it takes
You have to practise a lot until you to make the grade.
Page 104
have breakthroughs in animation
104 Insider interview
Daniel Moreno to a graduate of the

This time, we’re talking o has worked on TV
Gnomon studio in LA wh a character animator
as
and animated CGI film
098 News
Industry news
The Berlin Express
arrives in Paris
Len Krenzler
d,
g the industry are covere Personal portfolio site
The hot topics concernin ming CGI work and the www.actionart.ca
including a rep ort on boo alls
with a Chance of Meatb
visual effects in Cloudy
100 Studio Access

Hydrophobia set in a flooded environ
ment,
When there’s a game omes a real challenge. We
realistic water flow bec meeting that challenge
ide
look at the studio that’s

ins
106 Uni Focus Portsmouth

University
We take an in-depth look at
the BSc (Hons) Computer
Games Technology course
on the south coast at
Portsmouth University
To advertise in workspace please contact

Cassie Gilbert on 01202 586421 or [email protected]
097_3DA_09 Workspace.indd 97 21/10/09 18:44:39

Inside guide to industry news, studios, expert opinion & education News
Boost in demand
for creative CGI work
London agency reports an upsurge
despite economic conditions
a b c
O
ver the last year, animation, visual effects director of Happy Finish, explains why this is the a Happy Finish works closely
with photographers to create a
and CGI budgets have taken a hammering case: “CGI can achieve high standards of photorealistic finish
thanks to the global economic recession, photorealistic quality within a reduced budget.
b The use of CGI in advertising
with the knock-on effect being a lower volume of Another benefit is CGI’s multichannel uses, allowing cuts down production costs, as
work for specialist agencies around the world. for one project to be used for print, web, moving locations and sets are not
needed
However, this appears to be a taking a positive images and interactive material. These multichannel
C Happy Finish is a collective of
turn if reports from one of London’s most possibilities are especially useful for companies who artists and the best person for
established retouching and CGI collectives is are increasingly looking for returns on investment each job is selected individually
anything to go by. Happy Finish (www.happyfinish. focusing on the web.”
net) has seen a recent surge in its creative CGI work, Waplington is also keen to assert that the rise in
which – hopefully – indicates a boost in the global advertisers turning to CGI production will not affect
economic recovery. the photographic industry, as the agency works to re-
The collective, which has been in existence since create the visual style of the original photography in
2003, only launched its CGI unit, Happy Finish CGI, in its CGI enhancements. CGI is increasingly becoming
October 2008, but it has since recruited a number of a standard part of the workflow, especially when it
high-profile clients to add to its impressive portfolio comes to cutting production costs.
of commercial photography and retouching. Happy Finish works as a collective agency with
Despite a necessary cut to advertising budgets award-winning retouchers and 3D artists who can be
during the credit crunch, Happy Finish has seen a selected by the client to suit their needs. More
dramatic rise in interest, as advertisers want to information on the agency can be found on its
benefit from new technology to create more website, which includes samples of work as well as
impactive results. Stuart Waplington, managing progress shots.
98 ● 3DArtist
098-99_3DA_09 News.indd 98 21/10/09 18:46:51

N E W S ● W O R K S PA C E

3D
Cassie Gilbert on 01202 586421 or

[email protected]
StudioGPU ships
Spaghetti tornado
e
MachStudio Pro 1.2 uses NVIDA

Improved real-time workflow and rendering technology
Pictures Imageworks creates stunning
visual effects for latest film release
The latest animated release from Sony, Cloudy with
a Chance of Meatballs, features groundbreaking
computer animation sequences and visual effects.
These helped to propel the film to a number one spot
at the US box office as well as an impressive revenue
take of over $60 million.
The visual effects have been created using the
latest NVIDIA Quadro processors to accelerate
production, most notably in one scene that features a
spaghetti tornado. Elements for the scene were
e created in SPLAT, Sony Pictures Imageworks’
proprietary volumetric rendering tool that runs on the
NVIDIA Quadro GPU, which has the capability to
create dust clouds, fire, sparks and even tomato sauce.
As well as postproduction efficiency, NVIDIA Quadro
graphics helped with the animation in Autodesk Maya
with designers achieving 24fps, real-time previews on
d
their work.
S The workflow is
oftware developer StudioGPU For more information, see www.nvidia.com.
has announced the release of
MachStudio Pro 1.2, a real-time similar to a virtual f
3D workflow and rendering package,
which aims to help speed up the
real-time 3D studio
workflow of 3D artists. The package environment
uses the power of off-the-shelf GPUs to
enable real-time performance on home rendering for a realistic finish and
desktop systems, bringing professional custom configurable anti-aliasing for
results to everyone. high-quality results.
Test your 3D designs

The latest version of the software is The workflow in MachStudio Pro is
packed with new and improved features, similar to a virtual real-time 3D studio
powered by the AMD ATI FirePro V8750 environment, so 3D artists can control
graphics accelerator, which comes with the lighting, camera views and A new service transforms CAD models
the software. One of these is perspective, as well as manage the into an interactive environment
displacement mapping using hardware lighting, shaders, materials, colour Archi-Me (www.archi-me.com) is a new service
tessellation to generate 3D details, better grading and ambient occlusion. that enables 3D designers to fully test designs
efficiency and improved control over The website has a complete list of before any construction starts.
surface geometry. It can also harness the enhancements and additions to Aimed at designers, architects, planners and
GPU’s power to increase the polygon MachStudio Pro 1.2, which is aimed to stakeholders, the new service is the brainchild of Nick
count exponentially without any support everything from CAD to Palfrey, one of the Times Online Essence of the
significant drop in render speed. animation projects. It is available for Entrepreneur winners this year through his UK
More new features include the Windows XP Professional and Windows company MOOFU.
stereoscopic camera support for Vista, priced at $4,999, which includes a The service hopes to save time and money by
anaglyphic effects, a custom cartoon year of technical support and updates. identifying problems early on in the design process
shader for colour fills and outline Visit www.studiogpu.com for more. without having to rebuild 3D designs from scratch to
make them fully interactive. Archi-Me can take any
d The workflow in MachStudio e A spaghetti twister in e The Archi-Me service will help
CAD model and create a fully interactive 3D
Pro 1.2 gives the artist Columbia Pictures’ animated 3D designers to save money, environment that can be explored much like a 3D
control over all aspects of film Cloudy with a Chance of especially when working on game using avatars that can interact. See the website
creation just like a real-time Meatballs architectural visualisations
studio environment for more information.
098-99_3DA_09 News.indd 99 21/10/09 18:47:02

Inside guide to industry news, studios, expert opinion & education Feature
a
Hydrophobia
In a dark corner of industrial Manchester,
Jon Denton speaks to the water-obsessed
creators of Hydrophobia
I
n the rapidly evolving world of videogame art,
studios battle it out to achieve greatness in very
specific areas. Epic’s latest iteration of Unreal 3 is
Dark Energy is an offshoot of
Blade Interactive, which made
its name on a successful series
leading the way in its lighting tech, for example, It almost seems
of snooker sims and is now
ready to create a fully fledged
while Avalanche’s proprietary engine allows its
forthcoming Just Cause 2 to feature the largest open-
otherworldly, as if
www.darkenergydigital.com
adventure scale environments ever imagined on a games
console. Just under the radar, though, there’s a small
something so
Project: Hydrophobia
Description An episodically British outlet tucked away in an inconspicuous part consistent with our
delivered action game for the Xbox
360 set on a sinking ship. Players
of Manchester, determined to show up the rest of the
world by grabbing hold of one of gaming’s last Holy
own reality
shouldn’t be possible
must negotiate not only a terrorist
uprising, but also the incredibly Grails – water.
detailed and dangerous water that
fills every inch of the
environments, which is setting the
Yes, the team at Dark Energy have been hard at
work on the near-future, aquatic thriller, within the digital
standard for H2O in videogames
Country UK
Publisher Dark Energy
Hydrophobia, for some time. It only takes a few
seconds inside the watery world to see just how
walls of a videogame
Software used 3ds Max, ZBrush, much work has gone into creating
Photoshop
genuinely believable H2O. The way b
the water interacts with the
Key people
environment seems almost

otherworldly, as if something so
consistent with our own reality
shouldn’t be possible within the
digital walls of a videogame. But
Gary Switzer
Lead artist even with such unusual tech on
display, it shouldn’t come as a great
surprise that Hydrophobia’s genesis
was very similar to almost anything
else you could care to mention, as
Gary Switzer, lead artist at Dark
Energy, is happy to explain.
Huw Lloyd “Our staple tools are 3ds Max,
R&D director Photoshop and ZBrush” Switzer tells
us. “We start by concept modelling
everything in 3ds Max, so we can get
a rough idea of size, scale and look,
the type of items that will populate a
room and so on. These are then
exported and dropped into our
John Ogden bespoke InfiniteWorlds editor,
Lead tech programmer where we will build a basic room
2009 WSC Real 2009:

World Championship
Snooker, Xbox 360
2005 The Hustle: Detroit
Streets PSP
A summary of games 2004 World Championship
developed by Blade Pool 2004, Xbox
Interactive in recent years
100 ● 3DArtist
100-103_3DA_08_Hydrophobia.indd 100 22/10/09 12:04:57

W O R K S PA C E ● F E A T U R E

3D

[email protected]
within a few days – sometimes less.”

Even though the prospect of rapid design
turnaround will be appealing to many, it’s not the
real reason to invest in InfiniteWorlds, either as an
artist or a gamer. It’s no coincidence that Dark
Energy’s first game is entirely constructed around
this central conceit. When asked about the
c techniques used to render such incredibly lifelike
water, R&D director Huw Lloyd is only too happy to
fill us in.
outline and fill it with the assets.” “The real key to this is getting the water moving
It’s this bespoke editor that has the sharper right, from the bulk flow down to the ripples on the
corners of the development community talking, as surface. It’s all done with physical simulation. We
Dark Energy’s InfiniteWorlds will be available as don’t use animating textures for the ripples, for
middleware for anyone willing to license it. The example, so you don’t see any looping.
speed with which artists can build finished Doing the fluid dynamics calculations on a
environments Dark Energy hopes will prove very videogames console is the big thing that we have
attractive to other studios. cracked – as well as getting it fast enough, the real
“InfiniteWorlds is directly connected to a central problem to overcome is getting it stable. Anyone who
data server that outputs everybody’s changes has tried to write any fluid simulation code will know
instantly to the [Xbox] 360 dev kits on our desks,” exactly how difficult this is. There are a number of
Switzer goes on to explain. “In a short space of time key innovations that enable us to do this, but
we can populate a room, light it, put the effects in obviously we aren’t able to say too much about what
and have something the player can fully play around they are.
in and interact with. After the design guys finalise The end result is a simulation that looks, feels and
positions and so on, we’ll go back and produce behaves like water. It flows from one area to another,
finished models of the white box assets. The system objects get carried with the flow and it dynamically
allows us to have completed levels from scratch generates spray, splashes and ripples from the
a You can see how the concept art has translated to b You’ll find innovative c The game’s enemies aren’t d It’s an unfortunate fear E The action takes place
water that not only moves correctly, but is lit in a ways of negotiating the particularly inspiring to look to have on board a on a city-sized ship
convincing fashion. Getting the reflection and terrain and getting the at, but show suitable floating city targeted called The Queen of
refraction of light proved one of the toughest better of your enemies volumes of menace by terrorists, really… the World
challenges for the team


Looking into every dimension of making money from your hard work Feature
Lighting setups and
soft shadowing systems
are almost as important
as the environments
themselves g
fundamental physics calculations.” and more sophisticated lighting.

All well and good, but how do these calculations Lights can have a varying set of abilities. h
and simulations actually translate into the game They can be made to calculate per-pixel diffuse
world? With modern, mainstream gaming, lighting contribution, per-pixel specular contribution, a
setups and soft shadowing systems are almost as simple bounce approximation, shadowing, act as a
important as the environments themselves. With caustic source and act as a source of underwater God
something as unpredictable as physically calculated rays. Shadowing is based on Variance Shadow maps,
water, then, it should be no surprise that John Ogden, a fairly new technique for achieving soft and robust
lead tech programmer on the project, has a shadowing. All shadows are omnidirectional, but
considerable amount to say on the matter. this is not achieved by using Cube maps, but rather
“The game uses a two-step deferred shading the more unusual Dual Paraboloid maps.
process,” he begins. “First of all, certain properties All this lighting can be applied to the real star of
(surface normal, surface albedo, specular strength, the game – the water. Rendering the water is a multi-
specular power, etc) from each visible model in the stage process. First of all, Reflection and Refraction
scene are rendered to a set of textures. These maps are rendered, once more using deferred
textures are collectively called the G-Buffer. Second shading. These are used along with the output from
of all, models representing each light (eg, spheres for the various levels of the fluid simulations to render
an Omni/Point light) are rendered into the scene. For the water surface using a Fresnel model for reflection
each pixel that is rendered, the pixel shader pulls the and refraction. This information is written to the
corresponding surface properties from the G-Buffer radiance channel of the G-Buffer ready to be
textures and uses them in calculating the light combined with the main lighting later. Once the G-
contribution from that light. Buffer has the scene and the water rendered into it,
The primary advantage of using deferred shading each light is applied in turn and accumulated into
is that the illumination from a light is only calculated the lit scene’s buffer. This means that the water is
for those scene pixels that the light actually affects. being treated just like any other scene object and
This, when compared to a traditional forward gets the full benefit of the sophisticated per-pixel
shading engine, means the GPU cost of each light is real-time lighting.”
considerably less. Cheaper lights mean more lights No expense spared then. So, with water very much
f The blue reflections add g This perfectly sums up the

an ominous ambience to game’s ethos – placing the
proceedings water as the key focal point,
even more so than the lead
character, whose face is
completely obscured
102 ● 3DArtist

W O R K S PA C E ● F E A T U R E

3D

[email protected]
in place and a level builder that can turn around been put in.”
environments in days rather than months, this has It almost sounds like BioShock in reverse.
freed up Dark Energy to concentrate on creating a Certainly the idea of a richly detailed submerged city
look and style to its game to try and separate it from has echoes of Rapture and its gloriously detailed
the pack. Easier said than done, of course, as Switzer underwater civilisation, and that’s by no means a
agrees: “Initially, the toughest task was trying to bad comparison. Still, Switzer is keen to reinforce
convey to the player that while they were on a ship, the originality of his team. “From the outset, we
they were also part of a giant floating city. In episode made a conscious effort not to be influenced by other
one, we’re mainly in the lower decks of the Queen of games, as we wanted to create a unique look that the
the World with no connection to the sea outside, so it player hadn’t seen before in a game. Our main
was important that the player had subtle reminders influences have been taken from real life – we’ve
of where they were, while maintaining the balance looked at hundreds of photos of ship interiors, for
between ship and city. example – so we’ve picked up on details such as how
“With Hydrophobia being set in the near future, we the ceilings are constructed, where the wiring
were also very careful to balance the tech level of the shows and doesn’t show, what materials are used on
environments – so while we’ve included gadgets the floors and walls, and so on.”
such as flexible digital display screens, we’ve been Nevertheless, it’s not the wiring on the walls or
very careful not to take things too far. It’s very the cracks in the ceiling that will attract players’
important to keep the player grounded in reality, so eyes when knee-deep in Hydrophobia’s murky
each environment will have something that makes depths. Seeing and feeling the force of the water as it
the player think, ‘yeah I recognise where that’s come creates chaos throughout the game world feels
from,’ and then we give it a little twist to update it a revolutionary for anyone who has seen 3D gaming
little. And because the Queen of the World has been grow up in the last decade. In an industry where
in service for ten years by the time we join the action, faceless corporations dominate the shop shelves and
we also had to balance the feel that you were in an technological advancements themselves, it’s
environment that has been lived and worked in for a heartening to see a small British team doing such
decade, without taking it too far and looking like the great work, powered by technical skill and ambition.
whole place was in a state of decay. The texture detail And if InfiniteWorlds doesn’t make it into most major
level in many areas is really quite detailed, and the game releases after Hydrophobia, we’ll eat our
end result really shows the time and effort that has sodden, water-soaked hats.
h The concept work for i Kate Wilson is an j It’s not all doom and gloom. Although
the protagonist Kate engineer on the ship, who most of the game is set in the bowels of
has made it into the has to tackle her demons, the Queen of the World ship, there are
final product pretty her surroundings as well outdoor environments that allow the
much intact as her enemies artists to flex their more colourful muscles


Inside guide to industry news, studios, expert opinion & education Interview
Daniel Moreno 3D character animator
Each issue, 3D Artist finds out how people in the 3D

industry got their jobs and what you need to know to
get a foot in the door
D
3D Artist: What kind of course did you do at
About aniel de Albuquerque Moreno was born in
Rio de Janeiro and developed an interest in university, or training did you do?
the insider animation from an early age. He used to play Daniel Moreno: I graduated in Design in 2004 at PUC-
Job 3D character animator/ a lot of games and watch a lot of cartoons and Rio (Bachelor’s degree) but before that I took about
effects animator
animated films. Between 1999 and 2000 he went to ten courses at Gnomon School of Visual Effects (2000).
Education Bachelor degree in
Design at PUC-Rio. Courses at Los Angeles, CA to study at the Gnomon School of Along with those, I read several books on the matter
the Gnomon School of Visual Visual Effects. He took several classes there, and studied and practised constantly.
Effects
Company website
including Character Animation, Character
www.laruccia.com.br Construction and so on. Back in Rio de Janeiro, he 3DA: For today’s generation of students, what is the
Personal website worked at Parafernália/Artefato Digital for two years, kind of educational grounding they should be
www.danmoreno.com creating TV commercials and the opening credits to looking to undertake to get a first job as a character
Biography Born in Rio de
Janeiro, character animator O Caminho das Nuvens. In 2004 he joined the team at animator, or is the entry level a less specific role?
Daniel Moreno graduated in Black Maria Films and moved to Sao Paulo to work on DM: I think courses are a great start, and you should
Design and studied at Gnomon
in LA. He worked at many
TV commercials and music videos. After that it was take one if you have difficulty walking your own way.
production houses doing TV time to get his hands dirty in the world of feature film Courses are really a great short cut. I can’t really tell
commercials, feature films and animation. This was a new Brazilian 3D film called O you a lot about university training, as the only one I
music videos
Grilo Feliz e os Insetos Gigantes, or The Happy Cricket had was in Design (not Animation). Anyway, most of
and the Giant Insects. The movie premiered in the learning is done by you alone. There is no easy
January 2009. After the feature film work ended, way, no simpler way than getting your hands dirty.
Moreno joined the team at Laruccia Animation You have to practise a lot until you have
Studios, where he creates character animation, breakthroughs in animation.
effects and scripts for television commercials, music
videos and TV series. 3DA: What is your current or most recent role and
how did you get it?
a DM: Right now I am a character animator at Laruccia
Animation Studios, but I also like the effects and
scripting part so I help on these areas, too. The way I
got in Laruccia was the same way as everybody else’s
– I sent in my reel and got an interview.
3DA: Is there much of a culture or professional

working practice difference between working on
something like a full 3D animation film and on
television commercials?
DM: There sure is a lot of difference between 3D
animation film and TV commercials. In TV
commercials there is never enough time to finish the
job the way you want it. Things are much faster and
the processes must be done very quickly. Feature
film work has a much nicer atmosphere, there’s
2009 The Happy Cricket and the Giant A Courtesy of Start B Courtesy of Start C Courtesy of Start
Insects, 3D animation feature film Desenhos Animados Desenhos Animados Desenhos Animados
2004 Macuna, music video
2002 O Caminho das Nuvens
These are some of the

projects that Moreno has
lent his 3D skills to
b
104 ● 3DArtist
104-105_3DA_09 Insider.indd 104 20/10/09 13:29:16

W O R K S PA C E ● I N T E R V I E W

3D

[email protected]
c D E
much more time to do each process, therefore it has a and movement constantly. The trajectory of the
F
higher quality of animation. There is the animatic, hands, the formed arcs, acceleration, deceleration…
which gets broken down in pieces for scene planning. it’s a long list. And every day you animate based on
Then the animation begins, and then it is reviewed observations and references. There is also a lot of
for approval. The acting of characters is carefully physics, balance and weight (action and reaction).
watched by the directors. They usually go through You must have a good understanding in several areas.
your animation frame by frame (so you should look at
your animation this way, too). 3DA: If there was one feature missing from current
software apps that you’d like to see implemented to
3DA: What software packages and tools have you help the animator, what would it be?
mainly used for feature animation and general DM: Well, I would like to see interactive hands and
character animation? foot collision with the ground and obstacles.
DM: For character animation, I use Autodesk Maya Something difficult to do is interaction with both
for both feature film and TV commercials. I find it other characters and objects. It would be much faster
very flexible and customisable. The tools it provides if the geometry could detect and fit accordingly.
G are all that is needed for animation.
3DA: Do you have a personal philosophy or
3DA: Do you think there is a shortage of skilled approach to life and try to bring that to your work?
digital artists doing animation and did you find it DM: I believe you should not rush things. Everything
difficult getting into the industry? comes at its time. Both knowledge and quality of
DM: There is a shortage of skilled digital artists, work improves taking a good deal of time in each
especially in animation. In Brazil there’s even less animation. So do not rush. Take your time and
people doing it! It is probably easier to get into the experiment with it.
animation industry here than it must be in Europe,
for example. Also, people usually take a six-month 3DA: Professionally, what’s the most satisfying
course and want to get their first job really soon. It project you’ve worked on and why?
does not happen this way. You have to mature your DM: I believe it was The Happy Cricket 2 movie. I
knowledge and practise a lot before you land a job in spent a lot of time animating it and improved my
a studio. And when you are mature enough to deal animation a lot by experimenting and seeing what
with production issues, works best. There is nothing better than practice. It
H
it is probably the time was a really great school for me. We were on schedule
to apply. every month and it was really fun to do.
3DA: What are the key 3DA: What would be your dream project to work on?
skills needed by a DM: My dream project would be working on a bigger
E character animator? feature film. The bigger studios are doing excellent
DM: I believe every jobs technically and artistically, so it makes me want
animator must be a to be part of their great movies. They are really
good observer. You getting the quality sky-high. And it would be great to
need to study shapes have your name on these great productions.
D Courtesy of Start
Desenhos Animados
E Courtesy of
Lightbox Studios You have to mature your
F Courtesy of Black
Maria Films (Brazil)
G Courtesy of Start
Desenhos Animados
knowledge and practise a
H Courtesy of I Courtesy of Start lot before you land a job in
I
Laruccia Animation
Studios
Desenhos Animados
a studio
104-105_3DA_09 Insider.indd 105 20/10/09 13:29:30

Inside guide to industry news, studios, expert opinion & education
The best course and freshest talent from universities around the globe…
Uni focus
Portsmouth University
BSc (Hons) Computer Games Technology
P
ortsmouth University is one of
the top university destinations,
situated on the south coast of
England. With close links to
Southampton and Bournemouth, this
is a perfect place to study – particularly
if you are a fan of the seaside!
Based in Hampshire, this old naval
port is full of history and home to
Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory. There
are plenty of bars and restaurants to
keep the social student occupied, while
Portsmouth Football Club will appeal
to the sports fans.
Portsmouth University has a great
reputation for up-to-date industry-led
courses and the BSc (Hons) Computer
Games Technology course is no
exception. The syllabus includes
training on game design, three-
dimensional graphics, animation,
game programming, virtual reality and required in the industry as well as
project planning. console development.
The course is also designed to give On top of their specialism, students
students options to specialise in a also undergo training in game design
specific area. The first specialist area is and project management – the latter a
game graphics, in which students skill that the industry is particularly
discover how to use the industry- crying out for. Portsmouth University
standard software tools and develop prides itself for its fantastic
their character building and animation relationships within the games
skills. The second area of specialism is industry, which means the course
game programming, where students remains relevant and up to date. These
learn the programming languages links also mean there are lots of
opportunities for students to gain
experience within the videogames
industry, too. and students can enjoy a wealth of
The BSc (Hons) Computer Games facilities, including the University
Technology course is a big draw for Library, which received an £11 million
both UK-based and international extension three years ago.
students and offers exciting There are plenty of sports clubs,
opportunities for students all over the music events and recreational groups
world. The university has been listed to keep the most active student
as the fifth most popular destination amused, making Portsmouth a great
for EU students and tenth most popular place to both study and live.
for non-EU students. For more information on the course
The university is split into two and Portsmouth University, head to
campuses (Guildhall and Langstone) www.port.ac.uk.
Course details
Tel +44 (0)1642 342639
Web www.port.ac.uk The course enables you to develop skills
that are sought-after in the games industry,
Duration Three to four years
Fees From £3,070 a year
ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
240 points to include two A-levels or one Double
Award A-level or equivalent. A-level Computing
making this a really valuable course
is preferred Rory Butchart 2009
106 ● 3DArtist
106-109_3DA_09.indd 106 20/10/09 13:31:07

W O R K S PA C E ● U N I F O C U S
B C
A Industrial Warehouse B Matlok the Merciless C Xen

» Rory Butchart » Sam Merrick » Sam Merrick
Time taken: Six hours approximately Time taken: Ten days Time taken: 12 days
3ds Max 3ds Max 2009, ZBrush 3, Photoshop CS2 3ds Max 2009, ZBrush 3, Photoshop CS2
“This is one of my first projects, and it “The figure was developed alongside the Xen “This character model was developed to take account of the
certainly won’t be my last!“ character, based on human characteristics, anatomical rules associated with the human form and to
but modified to reflect more realistic ogre experiment with different clothing textures. The model is
proportions. The model is capable of fully animated and capable of supporting interactive game
supporting interactive game technologies.” technologies and 3D video features.”
106-109_3DA_09.indd 107 20/10/09 13:31:24

Inside guide to industry news, studios, expert opinion & education Uni focus
F G
d Dirty Bathroom e Los Hornillos Palace Entrance Hall f BackAlley g The Aggressor
» Josh Short » Josh Short » Jack Marshall » Nicholas Tenhue
Time taken: About one day Time taken: About two weeks for the whole level Time taken: Six hours (whole level) Time taken: Five days
3ds Max and Photoshop 3ds Max, Photoshop and Gavin Wade’s GET EditWorld, 3ds Max, Photoshop 3ds Max 2009, Photoshop CS3 and
“This image was created as “This is an in-game screenshot of part of a larger level “A multiplayer level called ZBrush 3.1
part of the third year’s created to test a game engine for my major project.” BackAlley for the game “Creating this real-time character in
Imaginary Worlds and Quake Wars: Enemy Territory made such a short amount of time was a
Architecture unit.“ in EditWorld.” real test of endurance!”
108 ● 3DArtist
106-109_3DA_09.indd 108 20/10/09 13:31:41

W O R K S PA C E ● U N I F O C U S
H I
You get to specialise in either game graphics or game

programming, which means you can really focus on the stuff
you enjoy and push your skills to the limit
Tina Matthews 2009
H Prison Level I Game level mock-up inspired by Half-Life 2 J Artega GT

» Tina Matthews » Neil Dansey » Nicholas Tenhue
Time taken: 36 hours (over several weeks) Time taken: Approximately 20 hours (including rough work Time taken: Two weeks
3ds Max, Adobe Photoshop and rendering) 3ds Max 2009 and V-Ray 1.5
“This is a rendered image of a level created for a 3ds Max 7 “Personal project to create a realistic studio render of a
fictitious game based in a prison.” “Concept art coursework for Imaginary Architecture unit.” car exterior.”

106-109_3DA_09.indd 109 20/10/09 13:31:56

3D Artist Magazine - Create Realistic Wet & Dry Fur (Issue No. 9)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

3D Artist Magazine - Create Realistic Wet & Dry Fur (Issue No. 9)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

WIN!

10 COPIES OF iCLONE4 PRO UP FOR GRABS – PRIZES WORTH £1,399

09 Practical inspiration for the 3D community Vue How to use materials to

• Step-by-step Maya tutorial

• Your questions answered

Three great outﬁts for V4

Scooby-Do o! The Mys tery Beg

• Studio Access 4 HOURS OF

© Imagine Publishing Ltd

001_3DA_09-coverfinala.indd 1 20/10/09 15:35:42

www.imaginebookshop.co.uk High street Kindle Store ImagineShop.co.uk App Store

Everyone’s talking about the

© Imagine Publishing Ltd

003_3DA_09 Wireframe.indd 3 20/10/09 17:34:50

to the magazine and 116 pages of amazing 3D Magazine team

If you spent part of your childhood ☎ 01202 586282

Every issue hiding behind the sofa when the

you can Cybermen arrived or marvelled at

5 Tips for studying

your art in the mag! come alive. an Evans,

Editor 3D Artist is available for licensing. Contact the International

This issue’s team of expert artists…

Sign up, share your art and chat to other artists at

004_008_3DA_09 Front.indd 4 22/10/09 10:44:15

Learn the truth about iPhone, iPad, Android, Photoshop and

www.imaginebookshop.co.uk High street Kindle Store ImagineShop.co.uk App Store

004_008_3DA_09 Front.indd 6 22/10/09 10:44:48

58 Main tutorial: American

84 Poser: Characters Continued overleaf

004_008_3DA_09 Front.indd 7 22/10/09 16:42:22

28 Interview: Prime Focus VFX

80 Questions and answers

93 Review: Stoney Creek

110 Subscribe today! 104 The Insider: Daniel Moreno

112 On the disc 106 Uni Focus: Portsmouth

004_008_3DA_09 Front.indd 8 22/10/09 10:45:58

www.imaginebookshop.co.uk High street Kindle Store ImagineShop.co.uk App Store

Directory range single Ad 230 x 297.indd 1 01/08/2011 15:55

A clear, comprehensive series for people who want to start learning

www.imaginebookshop.co.uk High street Kindle Store ImagineShop.co.uk App Store

For Beginners range single Ad 230 x 297.indd 1 01/08/2011 15:57

picture like this somewhere, and I Giorgia Baldissera

Get your artwork featured in these pages

community, but if you’d rather submit your

3D art… 2. Upload your images

011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 11 20/10/09 13:50:47

Before setting up the scene, I ﬁrst created the

I like the messiness in the room

011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 12 20/10/09 13:51:18

Not only is this full of great detail, but

© Imagine Publishing Ltd 3DArtist ● 13

011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 13 20/10/09 13:51:36

Scary and ghastly, yet also freakishly good. The

a good range of surfaces that I could experiment

011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 14 20/10/09 13:51:53

A sinister stare and well-

This model was made for a

© Imagine Publishing Ltd 3DArtist ● 15

011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 15 22/10/09 12:16:42

I’ve been building models and drawing since I was a

Wonderful detail, from the hint of the

011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 16 20/10/09 13:52:42

© Imagine Publishing Ltd 3DArtist ● 17

011-19_3DA_09 Gallery.indd 17 20/10/09 13:53:04