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3dworld.creativebloq.com October 2015 #199

MATT E PAINTING MATTE STAR WARS Pro training to recreate an Episode VII scene

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5GB OF RESOURCES Vide o walkt Video wal kthroughs hroughs Textures and meshes Models and setup files

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N G I N M O D E L L ’ S M S U U N I T C O N N E I N M E MA R T I M

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THE RISE OF

HOW TV’S GREA GREATEST TEST VFX ARE CREATED… •

GAME OF THRONES

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THE FLASH

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CONSTANTINE

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WALKING DEAD

F R E E !

V I D E O T A u N r n D t o A p a S S g e E 6 T S

EDITOR S ’

WE WELCOME Discover how small-screen VFX is making a big impression

SUBSCRI SAVE UP T Subscribe to 3D and get both the and digital e Page 28 for UK UK . and Canada,

This issue we gather some of the top talent working in TV VFX; from The Flash to Game of Thrones, discover why small-screen CG is on the rise. Plus, on page 36, 36, Artifex Studios’ Adam Stern reveals how he created this issue’s cover – the Time Marine from hit sci-fi show Continuum. The TV VFX theme flows into this issue’s tutorials too, with training for matte painting ( page page 54 ), the creation of a man made of fire ( page page 60 ) and advice to simulate a famous VFX shot from Game of Thrones ( page page 64 ). Looking Looking further further ahead, in this issue’s Develop ( page page 87 ) we we step into the world of VR and discover what this new technology has in store for CG artists, and maybe the future of VFX.

ZBRUSH MODELLING

How to quickly model a character and more advice in Artist Q&A, turn to page 30

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3D WORLD

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ISSUE 199

CONTENTS Our complete line-up for this month’s 3D World

DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS Get the latest magazine for free in our current current offer or download a back issue on iPad and iPhone today! www.bit.ly/3dworld-app

6 FREE DOWNLOADS Get your hands on 5GB of assets via our Vault download system

8 ARTIST SHOWCASE Discover the best new digital art and more from the CG world

17 COMMUNITY 18 SIGGRAPH 18 SIGGRAPH ANIMATION

Is the best work getting seen? 22 STUDIO 22 STUDIO PROFILE

We visit new CG studio AxisVFX

10 ARTIST SHOWCASE

22 STUDIO PROFILE: PROFILE: AXISVFX AXISVF X

24 TOMORROW’S WORLD

The best new art from the CG community

Creating movie-quality FX on a TV schedule

Inside Rodeo FX’s VFX for Tomorrowland

26 SHORT CUTS

The making of Taking The Plunge

30 ARTIST 30 ARTIST Q&A All your software queries solved by our panel of professional artists

FEATURE 36 THE CG OF CONTINUUM 36 THE 40 THE 40 THE RISE OF TV VFX

53 TUTORIALS 53 TUTORIALS Improve your CG art skills

80 3D 80 3D MAKER Explore 3D print art and trends

87 DEVELOP 87 DEVELOP Theory, research and reviews

REGULARS 7 NEXT MONTH 28 EUROPEAN 28 EUROPEAN SUBS CRIPTIONS 79 US 79 US SUBSCRIPTIONS 98 DIGITAL 98 DIGITAL BACK ISSUES

36 MAKING CONTINUUM’S TIME MARINE

40 THE 40 THE RISE OF TV VFX

Artifex discusses its VFX for the sci-fi show, plus Adam Stern shares his process

How TV’s greatest VFX shows are created

3D WORLD

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TUTORIALS 54 STAR WARS MATTE PAINTING

Discover how to create a stunning Episode VII-inspired image 60 MASTER THE ART OF FIRE

How to create a man made of fire in 3ds Max and FumeFX 64 CREATE AN EPIC VFX SHOT

54 CREATE A STAR WARS MATTE M ATTE PAINTING

60 MASTER 60 MASTER THE ART OF FIRE

Recreate a still in the style of Game of Thrones’ Battle of Blackwater

Double Negative’s Saby Menyhei walks you through this Star Wars VII-inspired image

Expert advice for 3ds Max and FumeFX

70 GET STARTED IN HOUDINI 70 GET

Bemused by the procedural tool? These beginner tips should help 74 DETAIL A CHARACTER

Prepare an armoured knight for cinematic production

64 RECREATE 64 RECREATE AN EPIC GAME OF THRONES VFX SHOT

74 DETAIL A CHARACTER

Simulate the massive explosion from the Battle of Blackwater

Prepare a model for cinematic production

F R RE E E E ! ! M O OD E D EL L 3D MAKER 80 GROWTH INDUSTRY

Michael Winstone’s organic artworks 82 3D PRINT A PROSTHETIC HAND

Put your printing skills to medical use

80GROWTH 80 GROWTH INDUSTRY

82DISCOVER 82 DISCOVER HOW 3D PRINTING IS LENDING A HAND

3D printing’s artistic success story

Download a complete prosthetic hand model this issue

DEVELOP 88 NUKE TECHNIQUES

Discover how to use performance timers to speed up your scripts 90 BUILDIN BUILDING G A VIRTUAL V IRTUAL REALITY

How Nurulize is creating a new breed of virtual environments

REVIEWS 96 REVIEW: RENDA PW-E7F

96 REVIEW: RENDA PW-E7F

Overclockers enters the workstation market

Overclockers’ entry to the workstation market is a robust machine 97 REVIEW: 97 REVIEW: UNFOLD3D 9

The UV mapping tool gets a strong update with some great new tools 97 REVIEW: PHOTOSCAN 1.1.6

Agisoft’s photogrammetry package proves a useful workflow tool 100 MY INSPIRATION

Saizen Media’s Davice Bianca

90 BUILDING A NEW VIRTUAL REALITY

97 REVIEW: UNFOLD3D 9

Discover how Nurulize is creating a new type of virtual environment

The UV mapping tool gets a strong update

3D WORLD

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Resources for 3ds Max and FumeFX

VIDEO+SETUP FILES VFX

VIDEO HOUDINI TECHNIQUES

VIDEO+TEXTURES FIGURE

Video and setup files for 3ds Max

Video tips to get started in Houdini

Resources to model a ZBrush character

Video Follow Josh Parks’ second Nuke tutorial with his video training Files Download Files Download the training for this issue’s Artist Q&A tutorials Artwork Download Artwork Download the extra tutorial images to accompany Showcase Model Download Model Download the 3D print-ready hand model and tutorial files

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ARTIST

SHOWCASE The best digital art from

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DREAMCATCHERS’ TRIBE ARTIST

HAIR RAISING

The most difficult part of the piece was creating the feathers. David used Hair Farm to distribute them

David Ferreira

SOFTWARE ZBrush, 3ds Max,

V-Ray, Marvelous Designer, Nuke, After Effects, Photoshop

“I really like the idea of a dimension bet ween awake and asleep where these creatures exist, capturing dreams as if they were living entities themselves,” says David Ferreira of his image ‘Dreamcatchers’ Tribe’. Tribe’. “Seeing that idea gain form through the characters was great. I didn’t take it all the w ay, but I managed to come up with some interesting concepts, like the idea that there are good dreamcatchers, who capture nightmares, and bad dreamcatchers, who capture sweet dreams that make them fat.” David worked on the image over a 30-day period, taking close to 140 hours in total, while continuing his professional work as a freelance CG generalist and instruc tor. “The clothing of the big blue character was done with Marvelous Designer, Designer,” ” he says. “After sculpting the charac ter in the T-pose, I did a quick rig in 3ds Max and animated him moving into pose so I could simulate his clothes. The most complex detail was the feathers on one of the characters, which were created using planes with feather alphas. I distributed them with [3ds Max plug-in] Hair Farm, using several grey maps for size and densit y control.” control.” You can see more of David’s work at FYII FY www.cgmonkeyking.com

3D WORLD VIEW

“I love the way the look of each character seems to reflect its personality. They’re a winning mix of cute and scary.” FELICITY BARR

Production editor

3D WORLD

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SHOWCASE

WORKING OUT

Berto says that taking part in art workshops helps to improve his workflow and creativity creativity.. He also likes to spend a few hours in ZBrush sketching out ideas before embarking on a new project

MASCHINEN PROJECT ARTIST

Berto Souza SOFTWARE ZBrush, 3ds Max, Mudbox, Marvelous Designer

Berto Souza began experimenting with 3D five years ago, taking part in courses and workshops. He now works at T V Globo in Rio de Janeiro as a character artist, but continues to attend group sessions: work on the Maschinen Project began during one of artist Bruno Câmara’s workshops. After the workshop ended, Bruno continued working on the project for a further three months. “It was really awesome to create this cyberpunk girl and all her accessories. They look really heavy for her to carr y, y,” ” he says. “I think the strong points of the work are the metals and the modelling of the face – I felt I achieved good results with both aspect s. s.” ” Using ZBrush and 3ds Max for most of the work, Bruno took to Mudbox for the textures and Marvelous Designer for the clothes, before doing the final composition of the image in Photoshop. Citing other artists as one of his sources of inspiration, Bruno says that it’s important to stay in touch with people in the indust ry. “These relationships [provide you with] knowledge which means better work ,” he says. “I’m always doing workshops to improve my workflow and exchange ex periences.” You can see more of Berto’s work at FYII FY www.bertosouza.blogspot.com.br 3D WORLD

I think the strong points of the work are the metals and the modelling of the face

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SHOWCASE

Far Far Away is the first part in a three-part ‘Imagination’ series

NEW TOOLS

FAR FAR AWAY

Peter used Fusion 360, Autodesk’s cloud-based modelling platform, for the first time during the creation of ‘Far Far Away’. “I know people use it for professional services, but it allowed me to create a few extra details,” he says

ARTIST

Peter Nowacki SOFTWARE 3ds Max, V-Ray, Marvelous Designer

“It’s astonishing that the image took two years to finish,” says Warsaw-based Warsaw-based ar tist Peter Nowacki, who produced ‘Far Far Away,' Away,' as a celebration of children’s imaginations. “It’s the first part of a three-part project. Children are now focusing on video games instead of playing outside and I wanted to showcase a time when their imaginations were all they had.” had.” Although he used 3ds Max and V-Ray for the work, Peter also dabbled with other engines, including OctaneRender and Corona Renderer. “I personally have more experience in V-Ray, but they were great,” he says. For cloth simulations, Peter used Marvelous Designer. “It’s “It’s just perfec t: user-friendly and fast!” he says. “For extra det ails, I created V-Ray hair and emitted a few particle systems.” Peter also used Fusion 360, Autodesk’s cloudbased CAD tool, for the first time during this project. “I know that people are using it for professional services, but with my skills it allowed me to create a few ex tra details.” Peter says it’s the final touches to a project that he relishes the most . “I love adding details, tweaking final renders, merging render passes and publishing the image. Feedback is the most powerful motivator!” You can see more of Peter’s work at FYII FY www.pnowacki.com

3D WORLD

3D WORLD VIEW

“This certainly isn’t a setting in which you normally expect to see a lightsaber. Peter uses it to symbolise the ‘antique’ imagination that our kids are losing.” IAN DEAN

Editor

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ROCKET AND GROOT ARTIST

Antone Magdy SOFTWARE ZBrush, 3ds Max, DDO, Photoshop

Like many other artists, Antone Magdy embarked on this piece to improve his professional skills. “I think the key to pers onal growth is to have some sor t of plan when practising and creating personal art,” he says. One of the challenges Antone set himself was learning a new piece of software : DDO, Quixel’s texturing tool. “I was eager to learn about DDO and then take it all the way to be a real-time model,” he says. Having previously modelled characters for animated TV series, Antone currently works as a 3D character artist at Snappers in Egypt, where he focuses on facial blendshapes for in-game and cinematic models on a range of AAA titles. ‘Rocket and Groot’ is based on the art work of Javier Burgos – Magdy says that he’s always been a f an of Rovio’s lead artist – and proved a lot of fun to sculpt. “I’m inspired by seeing the huge amount of work that artis ts around the world create,” Antone enthuses. It’s always a big part of my day to scroll through art forums. It always gives me that push to be bet ter – to challenge myself to tr y a lot of new t hings. hings.” ” You can see more of Antone’s work at FYII FY www.antone_m.artstation.com

I think the key to personal growth is to have some sort of plan when practising and creating personal art

3D WORLD VIEW

“Antone takes Javier Burgos’s cartoony style, and perfectly translates it into 3D. Rocket and Groot never looked cuter.” DARREN PHILLIPS

Art editor

CONTENTS

COMMUNITY News and views from around the international CG community

20 THE 20 THE BEAR ESSENTIALS Behind the scenes on Ted 2’s animation

18 ARE THE BEST ANIMATED SHORTS GETTING AWARDED?

22 STUDIO 22 STUDIO PROFILE: PROFILE: AXISVFX A XISVFX

This year’s Siggraph nominees and past winners share their thoughts

Creating movie-quality VFX for Doctor Who


[email protected]

Visit the online Vault to download extra process art for these projects: www.creativebloq.com/vault/3dw199

24 DISCOVER THE VFX BEHIND TOMORROWLAND TOMORROWLAND

26 SHORT CUTS

Rodeo FX reveals the secrets of its rocket-propelled VFX for Brad Bird’s sci-fi movie

The making of student short Taking Taking The Plunge

3D WORLD

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COMMUNITY

The big issue

THE BIG ISSUE

DO FESTIVALS REWARD THE RIGHT WORK? As Siggraph’ Siggraph’s Compu Computer ter Animation Festival Festival hits Los Angeles, Angeles, Tom May asks industry insiders their views on the festival selection process very August the industry’s great and good get together for Siggraph, the annual gathering of global CG and VFX artist s. And all eyes are on the work being showcased in the Computer Animation Festival, from students and veter ans alike. But who gets selected for such events – and is the right kind of work being rewarded? We spoke with some of those whose work is being screened at Siggraph to find out more. “I think the majority of the work chosen for animation festivals are projects that make anyone in this industry go ‘wow’,” says Rick Thiele of Red Knuckles. That was clearly the case with his studio’s CG short Dark Noir, Noir, with a storyline crowd-sourced by Facebook fans worldwide. But other, less headline-grabbing work can get missed. “Personally, I wish more student films would be chosen; the

E

underdogs who don’t have a massive studio and infrastructure behind them, but still manage to produce very st rong and influential animations,” he adds. Siggraph makes a point of honouring student work of course, such as Jinxy Jenkins and Lucky Lou, made at Ringling College of Art and Design, which won Best Computer Animated Short. Michael Bidinger, who codirected the film with Michelle Kwon and is now interning at Pixar Studios, was obviously pleased. “For the industr y, awards are a big influence in what gets watched and what gets taught,” he says. “They can shape the future of what ’s created.” created.” But he feels it’s important they’re selected for the right reasons. “It’s not a good thing if the judging criteria for Best in Show awards become ‘Most Obvious Three-Act Structure’ or ‘Most Conventions Broken’.” ctober 3D WORLD O ct

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Michael also feels some festivals put too much emphasis on the technical side. “The work I like to see rewarded are those films that take chances with honest intent,” he says. “There’s a lot of work out there meant to push limits – but not in the technical aspects.

It’ss not a good thing if the judging criteria It’ becomes ‘Most Obvious Three-Act Structure’ or ‘Most Conventions Conv entions Broken’ Broken’ Michael Bidinger, Bidinger, animation intern, Pixar Animation Studios

3dworld creativebloq com

There’s so much experimental animation that goes unrecognised because it’s not ‘industr y standard’, or up to par with feature animation aesthetics. But I think everyone responds well to stories and films with heart, no mat ter what th ey look like.” like.”

INDUSTRY INSIDERS Thoughts & opinions from the experts

(Left) Jinxy Jenkins & Lucky Lou, winner of Siggraph 2015’s Best Computer Animated Short. Dark Noir (right) features a crowdsourced narrative

Not all festivals have the same selection criteria either, and there’s certainly no foolproof formula for getting shown. “Despite winning Best in Show at Siggraph, my film ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ didn’t even get invited to a lot of other festivals,” points out German animator Felix Deimann. “In my opinion there’s always a little luck involved.” involved.” It’s also worth doing some research to find out what kind of work a particular festival favours. “Certain creative categories don’t appreciate the kind of work we do, while others, more technical and visual-oriented ones, love it,” reveals Alex Sándor Rabb, MD of Digic Pictures, which created the Assassin’s Creed Unity trailer, winner of the Best Game award. “We know that our work is usually not about a great creative idea but about how we visualise and tell a story,” Alex adds. “Our intention is to attach viewers to the characters, and get an emotional re sponse.” sponse.” If entering festivals sounds like a lottery, it can pay huge dividends. “For me personally, festivals and awards have been a huge help,” says Felix. “I’ve had the opportunity to travel to great places and meet a lot of great people. For young professionals like me it’s a good way to get connected with people from the industr y.” y.”

There’s nothing like the buzz of getting your film screened at an event of your peers, let alone winning a prestigious award. “Awards “Awards represent t he audience,” audience,” says Pierre Jury, one of four directors of L 3.0, a charming film about a lonely robot made at animation school ISART Digital. The short won the team Best Student Project at Siggraph. “Winning one means a lot to us because it shows that people liked the film,” says Pierre, before adding: “This is probably the best award in the world!” While awards can be a nice ‘icing on the cake’, though, they shouldn’t be mistaken for the cake itself. “It’s always nice to have the work recognised in a formal scheme,” says Pablo Grillo, Framestore’s animation supervisor on Paddington, which won Best Live Effects for a Live-Action Feature Film at Siggraph. “But while awards can be seductive they’re to be taken with a pinch of salt. “So many pieces of work in ‘competition’ deserve merit for different reasons and there’s often such a diversity of great wor k that it’s hard to single any one piece out. For me the real reward comes from the experience of doing the work and sharing that experience with t he crew.” For For mor moree deta details ils of the the Siggra Siggraph ph FYII FY Anima Animatio tion n Fest Festiv ival, al, visit visitbit.ly/1Di5Dek bit.ly/1Di5Dek O ctober 3D WORLD Oc

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RICK THIELE

MICHAEL BIDINGER

ALEX SÁNDOR RABB

Creative director, Red Knuckles www.redknuckles.co.uk

Animation intern, Pixar Animation Studios michaelbidinger.com

Managing director and producer, Digic Pictures www.digicpictures.com

“The key to a successful festival entry is planning your time well and meeting initial approval dea dlines, although this sometimes requires a loud voice and thick skin. S tory-wise, telling, showing or explaining everything you can of the plot and characters in detail seems right on paper. But once it starts being translated to the screen, you often find it’s better to hint and suggest instead, leaving a lot of the story up to the viewer’s imagination and assumptions.”

“By no means did we know that our film would end up the way it is. It was a pretty crazy ride and by the end of it, we had no objective sense of what condition the film was in. It’s a miracle that what we landed on has had such a warm reception with aud iences. So our advice to anyone trying to do something similar is to ‘let go of the cart’ sometimes and let things play out how they will. There were a lot of ‘lucky accidents’ while making this film. The recognition is immensely comforting and reassuring.”

“Winning an award means that we’re gratified that all the efforts we’ve put into a project are recognised. Of course, it also serves to attract new clients and helps broaden our existing relationships. There could be a danger that getting an award makes you think you don’t have to improve and learn new things. However, you have to constantly push creative boundaries; in this fast-changing industry, you’re only as good as your last work. It doesn’t matter that you’ve won an award in the past if you drop the ball and don’t deliver in the present.”

L3.0 is a genuinely heart-rending short made by students at ISART Digital, the video game and 3D animation school in Paris

3dworld creativebloq com

To get the other bears to match Ted, their muzzles and eyebrows were replaced using 2D projection in Nuke

COMMUNITY

VFX interview

VFX INTERVIEW

A RUDE AWAKENING DOWN UNDER Alic Alice e Patti Pattill llo o finds out how the crude talking teddy bear was brought

to life by Australian studio Iloura in the comedy sequel, Ted 2 ith a larger than life personality, it’s quite the challenge to match Seth MacFarlane’s MacFarlane’s charismatic voice to a relatively unexpressive bear’s face, but Australian VFX and animation studio, Iloura managed to hit the nail on the head with Ted’s second coming. Fortunately, the studio also worked on the original movie, so knew what to expect in terms of animation and pipeline. For initial motion capture (Seth MacFarlane not only voices, but acts Ted’s movements) a system called Moven was used on set – essentially a jacket that provided reference for Seth’s upper body, giving no facial feedback or legs. This meant the team used captured video reference as well, using this as the main point of comparison as it contained a lot of subtle detail that sometimes the mocap didn’t pick up.

W

GLENN MELENHORST

Glenn is VFX Supervisor at Iloura, an animation and visual effects studio located in Australia. www.iloura.com.au

“I feel Ted is more of a keyframe show than a mocap show,” show,” says VFX Supervisor, Glenn Melenhorst, “the mocap provided our team with fantastic reference, and our animators were able to add the detail.” With three years between the first instalment and it’s sequel, huge

We completely reworked our cloth pipeline, using Marvelous Designer to build as well as simulate our clothing Ted required multiple lighting passes to ensure his grubby fur looked realistic

software and hardware improvements had been made. “In Ted 1 we used a hybrid pipeline of ray tr acing in V-Ray and Reyes Reyes in 3Delight,” 3Delight,” reveals Glenn. “This time round we s till opted for a hybrid approach but pushed

more emphasis on 3Delight. We also completely reworked our cloth pipeline, using Marvelous Designer to build as well as simulate our clothing. This gave a very robust and realistic result.” Early on in Ted the team established ‘the golden rules’ for Ted’s acting. These combat Ted’s limited range of facial expressions, “we had to develop our own ‘language’ in terms of how Seth’s performance applied to Ted’s face. For example, subtle shifts in the brows and cheek area were often critical to giving Ted a ‘real life talking teddy bear‘ feel without making his face overly animated.” animated.” This time around, Ted required a lot more complex animation. “Ted wears more clothes in this movie and interacts more with his environment, items and food. So we needed to work a lot more on simulations and FX, natural interactions and so on.” Glenn admits the shots whe re Ted fights the goose was probably the most challenging. “It’s a long shot, we had a tight turn-around on it and Seth wa s actively blocking out ideas through to the last we ek. To achieve it in time, we divided it up between animators and spliced the acting together, which helped but it had ramifications on the pipeline; we had to re-render as new animation came down the pipe – new composites. So I’m proud of our team, they pulled it off on time!” FYII FY

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For more more about about Iloura Iloura and to see their showreel visit www.iloura.com.au

COMMUNITY

Studio profile

STUDIO PROFILE

AXISVFX: FAST, FURIOUS AND DESIGN-LED The boutique UK VFX studio tells Tom May how it meets the challenging demands of high-end TV work work hen you think of Doctor Who’s special effects you think of Milk – whom we chat to this issue as part of our big feature on television VFX (page 40). 40 ). But while Milk may be the lead vendor on the sci-fi show, others get brought in for the odd episode too. And when axisVFX got the call, it was for their dream job: a whole new ty pe of monster, one that had never been seen on the series before. The episode, ‘Flatline’, contains 66 VFX shots from the company – which has offices across Bristol and Glasgow – including a new multi-dimensional villain called The Boneless. The axisVFX crew not only created the visual effects for the shots but also conceived, designed and developed the look and performance of this new ‘impossible creature’. creature’. “Designing creatures from another dimension was a real creative high point for us,” says FX lead Joe Thornley Heard excitedly. “It’s not often that such a unique- looking, effects-driven character design comes up, and bringing it to fruition was very rewarding.” rewarding.” Although the studio is just two years old, the team that formed axisVFX has

W

JOE THORNLEY HEARD

FX lead at axisVFX, Joe previously worked at Double Negative, Framestore and Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. www.axis-vfx.com

3D WORLD

It’s fast and furious doing TV work, but the team here are great to work with and very open to ideas

October 2015

RICHARD SCOTT

As managing director of axisVFX, Richard is responsible for the direction and strategy of the business, development of new business and relationships, growth, and building the best possible team. www.axis-vfx.com

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Launched as an offshoot of Axis Animation, axisVFX takes a design-led approach to its TV and film work

worked on many other British TV shows including Misfits, Call the Midwife, Survivors and Wizards vs Aliens, as well as feature films such as Shaun the Sheep Movie. The studio was originally launched in July 2013, when Axis A nimation (whom we profiled back in issue 185) teamed up with VFX supervisors Grant Hewlett and Howard Jones to launch a new boutique, high-end visual effects facility. The ethos behind axisVFX was (and remains) a focus on creativit y, says its managing director, Richard Scott. “Everyone at axisVFX takes a very design-led approach, borrowing from our animation heritage where references, design and concept work are imperative part s of the process,” he explains. “You always get to speak with the creative and technical people who are hands-on doing the work.” As an artist, Joe Thornley Heard appreciates the approach. “Working at Axis is great,” he says. “Coming from a film background it’s definitely fast and furious doing TV work, but I’m enjoying having more variety in what I do and having more input on the creative side. The team here are great to work with and very open to ideas.”

STUDIO PORTFOLIO

OFFICE BRIEFING Producing high-end CGI and visual effects for film and TV, axisVFX is owned and run by craftspeople, whose goal is to provide greater flexibility, accessibility and creative control to filmmakers. It believes in demystifying the process for producers and directors, creating visual effects that support the story, whilst adding drama and scale to productions. The axisVFX ethos is one of “creative intelligence, solving VFX production challenges through clever design that utilises available budget for maximum effect”. Between them, the axisVFX supervisors, artists and production staff have decades of experience and have worked on a wide range of productions including The Chronicles of Narnia: Caspian, Fred Claus, Hellboy, Doctor Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, of the Titans and the Harry Potter series

STUDIO STATISTICS

LOCATION

Bristol and Glasgow TEAM SIZE

120 KNOWN FOR

Visual effects, CGI, live action, compositing MANAGING DIRECTOR

Richard Scott

GRANT HEWLETT

VFX supervisor at axisVFX, Grant has previously worked at Aardman Animations, The Senate VFX, MPC and Cinesite, among others. www.axis-vfx.com

DOCTOR WHO

Douglas Mackinnon, director of the Doctor Who episode ‘Flatline’, asked axisVFX to create a two-dimensional alien race called The Boneless. After an intensive design and concept exploration stage, the studio used everything from motion capture, 3D scanning, 3D printing, particle simulation and complex image processing to bring the terrifyingly weird creatures to life.

The studio works on a Nuke and Houdini pipeline, predominantly on Linux. “I render in [Houdini’s] Mantra renderer,” says Joe. “Any compositing is done in Nuke. Hardware-wise, I’m running Linux on a 12-core workstati with 64GB of R AM and a Nvidia GeForce [GPU] .” For asset management, and to distribute jobs to it s sm renderfarm, the studio uses a range of off-the-shelf tools “We’re “We’re transitioning from Shotgun to ftrack c urrently an we use Deadline for all of our farm jobs,” explains Joe. “Pretty much everything is glued together with Python in one form or another.” The artists’ workflows vary according to the job in han “When developing a new look for something, it ’s like sketching,” sketching,” says Joe. “I’m trying new ideas and discardin them but generally working in a linear fashion towards a particular visual goal. When I’m in shot production mode, it’s all about multitasking and efficiency.” The company is always looking for talented and committed artists, says Grant Hewlett – currently, Nuke compositors, Houdini FX artists and pipeline developers in particular. But it’s not just about software knowledge per se. “While technical ability and experien are very important, we value a dedicated and passionate approach as highly,” he says. If that sounds like you, Grant urges you to consi applying. “The people I work with are the thing that makes it for me,” he says. “We have really talented people on our teams that amaze me on an almost daily ba and our clients are great people too. I love the collaborati and striving to produce t he best wor k possible.” possible.” To learn more about axisVFX and see a range of its work, FYI visit www.axis-vfx.com 3D WORLD

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WIZARDS VS ALIENS

axisVFX has worked on all three seasons of this children’s fantasy series. For season 3, FX Lead Joe Thornley Heard created a range of new Houdini tools that could be used quickly and effectively by the FX team in Bristol and Glasgow to manipulate the particle and fluid simulations for complex magical effects.

EVE

Eve is a BBC sci-fi drama that follows Eve, a teenage girl who is the result of an advanced robotics experiment. Among other effects, axisVFX finalised Eve’s external control system and how she would be able to remove some of her limbs. The team also designed and animated a robotic spider character.


COMMUNITY

Industry inter view

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espite a disappointing performance at the box office, Tomorrowland undeniably undeniably boasts some stellar visual effects. Working in collaboration with lead effects vendor Industrial Light & Magic, Rodeo FX produced over 50 VFX shots for Brad Bird’s Bird’s science-fiction adventure, including the shot shown at the top of the page, in which young inventor Frank Walker – played in adult form in t he movie by George Clooney – learns to fly with a homemade jetpack. “Tomorrowland “Tomorrowland was another great collaboration with ILM for Rodeo FX,” says VFX supervisor Ara Khanikian. “It allowed us to tap into the depth and breadth of talent at our studio. For example, it’s neat that we can still build a model, film a practical explosion in our studio, and then pass the footage on to another department to integrate i t into the digital sequence.” sequence.” In the sequence in question, the central characters narrowly escape their farmhouse before it explodes on a rocket-propelled bathtub. “We were given live plates showing the escape pod landing in the lake and bobbing

D ARA KHANIKIAN

Ara is VFX supervisor and head of 2D at Rodeo FX. He has worked on over 50 feature films during the course of his career, including such highprofile projects as Now You See Me and 300. www.rodeofx.com

The live footage of the pod landing, before the scene is extended and CG added

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up to the surface. We had to extend the camera in CG at the head of the shots to create an environment that didn’t exist. We started with a 2D concept, elevating the camera and adding a farmhouse and land around it,” reveals Ara. The team used Photoshop for the environments, Houdini for simulation, Softimage for 3D elements, Flame and Nuke for compositing, and SpeedTree to create trees, blending the digital effects with practical footage.

It’s neat that we can still film a practical explosion in our studio to integrate into the digital effects “To “To capture t he house explosion we built a maquette five feet wide and four feet tall, then loaded it with gunpowder and naphthalene to create a realistic explosion,” explosion,” says Ara. Two cameras recorded the explosion against a greenscreen. The biggest challenge, reveals Ara, “was getting the proper scale and realism [for] the miniature and making the explosion look realistic. We’re We’re really happy with t he way it turned out .” Tomorrowland is out now. Visit FYII FY Rodeo FX at www.rodeofx.com www.rodeofx.com


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COMMUNITY Short Cuts Short Cuts

SHORT CUTS

SVA STUDENTS TAKE THE PLUNGE INTO PIXAR TERRITORY

GET PUBLISHED EMAIL YOUR SHORT TO [email protected]

Taking the Plunge offers a sentimental splash of Disney with both its heartfelt Elizabeth eth Ku-Herr Ku-Herrero ero delves into it’s depths… narrative and quirky aanimation. nimation. Elizab ELIZABETH KU-HERRERO

From a bi-racial background of Spanish and Chinese, Elizabeth was heavily influenced by older brothers who introduced her to Star Wars, Newgrounds, and South Park. She worked as co-creator, look development and the creative director on Taking the Plunge. www.elizabethnku.com

VITAL STATISTICS

For their final year project, this team of four students at the School of Visual Arts, New York City – Thaddaeus Andreades, Marie Raoult, Nicholas Manfredi and Elizabeth Ku-Herrero – appealed to audiences’ softer sides; creating an animation that is as heartwarming as it is visually impressive. Taking a wide range of inspiration, from Pedro Conti and Victor Hugo to Danny Williams, the team created a world where Tangled meets How to Train Your Dragon, complete with vibrant, lovable sea creatures and a good measure of Disney-style terror. “Story-wise, we found ourself pulling from a lot of things we grew up with as kids, such as The Lion King, Lord of the Rings and The Great Mouse Detective, says creative director, Elizabeth KuHerrero. “This was especially true for our chase scenes and to figure out how to explore a vast environment while still keeping our audiences engaged with our characters.” characters.”

What did you find was the most challenging job during production? We hit some roadblocks. We needed to incorporate entire aspects that we had absolutely no experience with. This included creating an ocean and bubbles that didn’t just look good, but could be rendered quickly so as to not bog down the school’s render farm since we were already dealing with a nearly sevenminute long film.

TEAM

Thaddaeus Andreades, Nicholas Manfredi, Marie Raoult, Elizabeth Ku-Herrero COUNTRY

US SOFTWARE

Maya, ZBrush, Nuke, Photoshop, Mudbox, Arnold, ProTools and Premier PRODUCTION TIME

10 months

What 3D software did you use? We used predominantly Maya and ZBrush for the 3D work. Most of the texturing and painting work was done

We made a ‘fishnado ‘fishnado’’ (fish tornado) using a particle system that world gene generate rate the fish along a chosen path… We had over 500 fish! 3D WORLD

1

in Photoshop and Mudbox. Rendering was done in Arnold and compositing in Nuke. The sound was mixed in ProTools, and we put the edit together in Premier.

What was the most impressive technical aspect of the project? We made a ‘fishnado’ (fish tornado) using a particle system t hat would generate the fish along a chosen path. At the same time the fish had animation on them that was carried on and copied from one single fish! We went through a lot of different methods to figure out what would give us the most control and be easy to do across multiple shots. We had over 500 fish! Did anything go wrong in production, and what did you learn? It was extremely dif ficult to be prepared for the size of our project. During the course of our entire School of Visual Arts career we had been accustomed to producing 30-60 second shorts. Most of time when things get hectic

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and pile up it’s easier to slip into quick hacks. We had growing pains in the beginning, but it soon became obvious we needed to work smart in order to complete the animation. For example, underwater layout changes needed to be made within our master layout scene. We had plenty of shots with specific hero rocks, but by having them all located within our layout scene we could then unhide them for specific shots, which made changes consistent throughout shots. We constantly had to remind ourselves to be extremely strict with correct naming conventions and to reference scenes properly, and so on. Of course, this meant a lot of work had to be redone, but it was all worth getting right in the beginning. Otherwise, had we gotten caught up in reassigning shaders across 70 shots multiple times, our film wouldn’t have been possible. Watch Watch the f ull animation now FYII FY www.vimeo.com/128840555

1 The ocean geometry was created using Maya’s ocean shader, this was then alembic cached. We We had to keep the ocean opaque due to render times.

2 Land was created using matte paintings placed in 3D space in Nuke. The ocean was lightened and discolored using masks in their UVs.

3 The bubbles were comprised of stock footage as well as our own rendered geometry to interact with the regulator and environment.

4 Arnold’s skin shader was used on all our characters and eyeballs. It kept our shadows full of colour and our characters alive.

5 The fish needed to be animated separately and we used alembic caches so that they could populate a path using a particle system.

5

6

UNDERWATER LOVE From a technical standpoint, a big unknown was the underwater setting and how to make our characters look like they were in a believable space. We studied a ton of underwater footage. The key aspects we needed to push were depth and atmosphere, the way the light pushes through the water and is cast on rocks, and an abundance of floating particles. We ended up using a lot of spot lights with volumetrics to build up depth. We made a looping caustic texture as a gobo filter on a few lights to project caustics on the rocks and moving volumetric rays. Depth of field was done in Nuke using a depth pass rendered out of Arnold.

The sky was done within 3D nuke by importing our camera and a sphere .obj; we then painted one matte painting for noon and sunset. 6

7

7 The tear was made using a combination of rendered geo for the drip and controlling a UV render pass to grade the streak in Nuke.

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EXPERT PANEL

ARTIST

Q &A

Anita Brown Anita provides a 3D visualisation service to the interior design and event design industries. She’s also a Maxwell Render certified expert trainer. anitabrowndesignstudio.com

Your Your software queries solved by our CG experts

Pietro Chiovaro Chiovaro Pietro is an experienced Italian 3D artist who is currently working in 3D image creation and re-creation, modelling realistic environments. www.bit.ly/199-Pietro

Kieran McKay McKay Kieran works in the games industry as a professional 3D character artist. He’s currently based in the UK working with Sony/Guerrilla Games. www.kieranmckay.co.uk

Rob Redman Rob runs a 3D animation and VFX studio, working for clients ranging from governments to rock stars. He’s also an industry commentator and trainer. www.pariahstudios.co.uk

Francis-Xavier Francis-Xavier Martins Francis-Xavier is a freelance character artist and CG generalist based in Brighton. He has worked in video games, media and TV for over a decade. www.polyjunky.com

GET IN TOUCH EMAIL YOUR QUESTIONS TO

Learn a time-saving approach to create a detailed character

[email protected]

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STEP-BY-STEP CHARACTER CREATION ONE CREATE THE FACE AND BODY

The body and face are created from separate ZSpheres with symmetry. Once you are happy with them both, DynaMesh them together to make one seamless body sculpt. The tools I use for the body are mostly Move, ClayTubes, Clay, Dam Standard and Pinch. These These are used to flesh out the shapes, add creases in tight areas and correct the anatomy. TWO MAKE THE HAIR

To make the Hair, start with individual ZSpheres, and use the Snakehook and Move tool to position them. When satisfied with the look, use Dam Standard and TrimDynamic brushes to sculpt each piece individually.. I also find it han dy to use th e individually polish feature under the Deformation tab and also ClayPolish to give a nice balance between smooth and crisp edges. THREE ADDING WEAPONRY

Next, make the chainsaws. Model them as straight as possible making use of symmetry and object-cloning for speed. Then group the mechanically functioning parts together so you can pose it easily. I end up with four groups that I can individually move around. Spend time cleaning these and subdividing the objects in 3ds Max and detailing in ZBrush. FOUR PIECING IT ALL TOGETHER

I use the Boolean function in ZBrush a lot which helps me speed things up further. The backpack is made in the same way as the chainsaws. The The bull’s head is made in 3ds Max as a low-poly object and brought into ZBrush for polishing and sharpening of the edges. I put the backpack on the girl and positioned the chainsaws easily at the very end.

ZBRUSH | KEYSHOT

How can I create a detailed character in ZBrush? Daniel Barrett, UK Kieran replies ZBrush is the perfect tool for making character sculpts and is widely used in the film and game industry. With an adapted work flow you can use some speedy techniques to quickly make a polished piece of artwork. In this training, I will give you some structured advice and show you methods I use to create my latest character. Before you start work ing on a character similar to this, the first thing you should do is plan how you will tackle the creation process. I want to break this characte r up into two parts; first the character itself and next the mechanical parts/chainsaws. I make them in separate scenes to prevent them from get ting too big. I start by sculpting the character in a regular T-pose. The anatomy is a really important par t of the model overall, so I start sculpting using Symmetry until I am happy with the proportions. I us e the ‘mask and transpose’ method in ZBrush to get her in the perfect position. You just mask the area you need to move and then shift it into position with the Transpose tools. This means you don’t need to rig the character to pose it. 3D WORLD

Once I am happy with her pose I add the final parts, such as the hair and clothes. I use t he Mask brush to mask off areas for the clothes and clone them into a separate tool. It’s useful to use the inflate modifier next to push it out wards ready for sculpting. This is a really quick way to start wor king with a shape that already fits around the charac ter’s body. Next I make the chainsaw part s and the backpack in 3ds Max and detail them in ZBrush. The Boolean function in ZBrush enables you to punch crazy shapes and holes into your mesh really quickly, and this is how I make most of the tricky parts. I also use the Polish, ClayPolish ClayPolish and TrimDynamic features to smooth everything out in the end. With this characte r in particular I end up with millions and millions of polys in each of the two scenes that I set up (the character sculpt and the mechanical parts/ chainsaws). When it comes to merging these two together into one scene I use the Decimation Master in ZBrush. I am finally able to get every thing together and match things up for a final composition. To finish off, I export the ent ire model to KeyShot for rendering.

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EXPERT TIP Use good reference When Sculpting and creating characters in ZBrush, the most important thing is to constantly look at reference. Surround yourself with images related to your work and research things like anatomy, form and composition.

EXPERT TIP

ARTIST Q&A

It’s all in the axis When you first try this you might find that your object is intersecting the surface it’s stuck to but that’s to be expected. If you don’t want to use the constraint’s distance setting you can hold [L] with the model selected and use the Move tool to change the axis point to the bottom.

Fixing details to a mesh is easy with constraints

CINEMA 4D

STEP-BY STEP USING CONSTRAINTS

How can I make one object stick to another?

ONE COLLECT YOUR GEOMETRY

Rowena Boater Boater,, Australia Australia Rob replies Like so many tasks in Cinema 4D (and 3D in general) there are many way s to accomplish this and each has its own pros and cons. A quick and easy method would be to make clones of the object you want to be placed on to a surface using a mograph cloner. You You could use the Transform settings to get the distance right and then use a random effec tor to add variation, if needed. This would work well for scenes where you don’t need ultimate control, as it’s fast to set up, but if you need perfect placement there are better ways. To show the power of this set u p let’s take a look at a scene where the surface we are sticking things to isn’t flat. This works for anything, but to see it in action we could choose rocks on a sea bed, trees on a hill or mechanical details. For many mechanical models you need details, such as nails, bolts, or rivets. From a distance a bump map might suffice, but if the camera gets close you will need to use geometr y and it can be a painful, laborious task to place them all by hand, often needing to manipulate your viewport considerably to see what you’re doing. This is where one of the character tags comes in very useful. In the step- by-step example I’ll show you how to add and set up the character cons traint tag to allow you to move objects across the sur face of another, in this case, bolts across the body of a droid. The tool is a versatile one and can be adapted to cater for most models, but you need to be aware of one thing: once you’ve placed your geometry, select the duplicates and delete the tag, otherwise when you reopen the saved scene they will have lost their positions. 3D WORLD

First things first, you need both the model(s) you want to stick and the object you wish to stick them to. I’ve made a simple scene to get you started if you need it, so open Constraint_start.c4d and you will find the main body and three small detail pieces you can use to start adding to it. The The axis of each is at the bottom. TWO CHARACTER MENU

Let’s start with Bolt A. Right-click it in the Object Manager and go to Character tags/ Constraint. In its attributes you will see a number of option s. When activating them a new tab will appear, with its individual settings. Choose Clamp and move to the Clamp tab, if it doesn’t take you there automatically. THREE CLAMP SETTINGS

Now you need to tell it what you want it to do, so drag the Body into the Target field and change the To To setting to Surface. Seeing as our body object is spherical and we want our bolts to face outwards change the As setting to Normal, followed by changing the Distance slider to 0cm. The Bolt should now be stuck to the surface of the b ody. FOUR COPY AND POSITION

Now you have the tag set up you can copy it to the other detail objects and start positioning. You You can use both X and Z axis handles to position in any view and the bolts will stick to the body. This This is far easier than trying to align them by hand. If you want lots of bolts [Ctrl]-click and drag to make duplicates. The The Tag will copy over too.

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You can control and improve the quality of the reflections in the Node editor

BLENDER

How do I create realistic reflections? Suzy Hamilton, US Pietro replies When I start a new project, the first tas k to which I devote myself is modelling. After this, I begin to study the elements that constitute it, in order to create the materials. At this stage, I observe real objects with the same characteristics, in order to understand how to recreate the material whilst remaining faithful to the original. It’s precisely at this time that we begin to work with the reflexes. Looking at the render above, you’ll notice that not all the surfaces have the same reflective capacity; the rims of the car, as you can see, are more reflective than the paint or compared to the glass. This derives from the fact that each material has a different setting. In Blender there are three shaders in particular that help us to add reflectivity to a material, these are Glossy, Anisotropic and Glass. These three shaders when combined with other shaders such as Diffuse or Transparent, allow us to add a cert ain level of reflection to each material we are creating – whether that’s for a wall, a table, a cup, an egg and so on. Putting it into practice, if we want to create the paintwork of the car, we have to open the Node Editor panel, and add two shaders: Diffuse and Glossy.

EXPERT TIP

These three shaders when combined with other shaders such as Diffuse or Transparent, allow us to add a reflection to each material we are creating After that, we have to connect them – to do this, simply add the Mix Shader and subsequently connect them to the Material Output node. Now we can begin to set the node, changing the values of roughness and the colour of the Diffuse and Glossy shader s. It’s important to note that in the Glossy shader, the lower the value of Roughness the greater the reflective capacity of

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References References for everything When you’re starting to create a material, make sure you have references, such as photos taken from multiple angles or video of this material. This will help you a lot in the creation of the material and to understand its reflective properties.

the material will be (for example, the recommended value for a mirror is 0.005). Obviously this is a node basis; in fact we can combine many shaders and connect the textu re to give a more realistic effect to the material. In the end we can highlight the reflective capacities of the materials, adding a Glare node in the Node Editor panel for compositing.


ARTIST Q&A

EXPERT TIP

ZBRUSH

How can I make a stylised bust in ZBrush? Justin Cumberlatch, UK Francis-Xavier replies The bust in question is of Daenarys Targaryan from the TV show Game of Thrones. I saw a sketch online by Jeff Stahl and I had to try to recreate it. Now, because I am making a stylised version of a well-known character

I use the ClayBuildup brush to build up volume and the Smooth brush to get rid of any irregularities in the mesh and I am doing it f rom a single sketch and not a turnaround, it is important that I get as much reference as possible. After grabbing as many images of ‘Khaleesi’ as I can online,

I jump into ZBrush. I start with a DynaMesh sphere and block in the forms and landmarks of the head with the Move brush, making sure that I work in as low a resolution as possible before subdividing. The good thing about working with DynaMesh is that you don’t have to worry about topology. As soon as you get a bit of stretching [Ctrl]+drag anywhere on the document and your model will re-mesh with even topology. Once I’ve got the major forms, I use the ClayBuildup brush to build up volume and the Smooth brush to get rid of any irregularities in the mesh. I use ZRemesher to automatically retopologise my model and I’m ready to get into details. Subdivide the model and use the Dam Standard brush to cut in areas like the nasal labial fold and

Avoid a flat look Eyes are always tricky to create in any sculpt so it helps to insert a couple of spheres into the mesh early on. This way you’ll be able to sculpt around them and avoid the ‘flat’ look found sometimes in digital sculpts. Look at the sculpt from all angles to make sure it looks good.

eyelid areas. I use the Inflate brush on a low setting to get areas to overlap and smooth them down if too severe. The hair is created by drawing a mask on the head and extracting, then I use the Move brush with DynaMesh turned on to get the desired shape. I use Claytubes with Lazy Mouse on to draw the hair strands. I us e Dam Standard to cut into the hair and use Claypolish to sharpen the cuts. For the braids I use an Insert brush, there are loads on ZBrush central but you have to make sure your model has no subdivisions, so duplicate, delete higher and lower and you’re good to go. Once you’ve drawn your braids on, you can delete the duplicated mesh and use the Move brush to position the braids and sculpt the underlying hair mesh to conform properly.

It is best to use a sphere as reference to model the eyes otherwise they can look unnatural

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An interior styled to resemble a glossy cover shoot

EXPERT TIP Add height! Position objects in an interior at varying heights and add quirky items (in this instance the single chair). This will help to keep the image visually stimulating; it will assist in guiding the viewer to areas of interest and will prevent the interior from looking too one dimensional.

ANY | MAXWELL RENDER | PHOTOSHOP

How How can I create an interior scene that resembles a glossy magazine cover shoot? Michael Watcher Watcher,, UK Anita replies Technical skill is paramount when creating a photo-real interior, but utilising your creativity, understanding what makes a visually captivating scene and having knowledge of photography techniques is also equally important. This contemporary, industrial inspired interior is achieved by using a clear colour palette of inky blue, with orange accents. The injections of copper provides a rich contrast with the dark backdrop and visually lifts the overall design. Texture is incorporated via the old wooden floor, the upcycled

coffee table and the fur throw, thereby adding visual interest. When styling an interior it is useful to break it down into segments and style each little area in its own right. There are three distinc t ‘zones’ in this interior: the coffee table, sofa and the accessories placed below the art on the wall. Whilst they all add pockets of visual appeal, they don’t compete for attention or distract from the overall composition of the image. Placement of furniture is centred around a tried and tested photography method that is adopted by many interiors publications: the camera

is aligned to the back wall and is lower than eye level. All vertical and horizontal lines in the scene have also been aligned to the camera. By setting up the scene in this way, the overall image is much more harmonious to the eye, the back wall acts as a canvas and allows the objects in the scene to take centre stage. What’s more, it also

By setting the scene like this, the back wall acts as a canvas and allows the objects in the scene to take centre stage provides more options for cropping the image at a later date, if de sired. Careful consideration has been given to lighting. Generally, natural lighting is the preference for professional interior photoshoots, however, I want to soften the overall look of this interior and showcase the vintage Edison bulbs. Therefore, all the emitter values in Maxwell Render are set quite low so as not to visually compete with the strong environment lighting. There are also hidden emitters in the ceiling area, near the vintage bulbs and dotted throughout the space to help balance the lighting in the scene. Some finishing post-processing is undertaken in Photoshop to enhance the sunlight coming from the window for added drama.

Maxwell Render does a good job at keeping the lighting in the scene looking natural

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CONTINUUM

How Vancouver-based Vancouver-based Artifex Art ifex Studios creates movie VFX on a TV schedule

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MORE THAN MARINES

Artifex’s work on Continuum includes creating a 2077 set Vancouver

VITAL STATISTICS

Artifex Studios

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

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urning present day Vancouver into a thriving, believable future of gleaming skyscrapers and rain-soaked Blade Runner vistas is all in a day’s work for Artifex Studios. The Canadian VFX facility has grown with the success of Continuum, the SyFy series that regularly plays with time travel, ensuring every episode is awash with glorious visions of the future. Founded in 1997, and now with 25 full-time staff, Artifex is a key player in developing quality VFX shots for some well-known TV series, and whose credits include Falling Skies and Almost Human.

FUTURE VISTAS

This incredible scene was created to a tight budget at Artifex

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www.artifexstudios.com

ADAM STERN

Adam has worked in film and visual effects since the late 1980s, with credits that include Pan’s Labyrinth, The Mist, The Possession and The Maze Runner. www.bit.ly/adam-stern

But it’s Continuum that holds a special place for the team at Art ifex, which was brought in at the very start of the show’s conception and given free reign to put its own stylistic spin on many effects. Artifex worked closely with showrunner Simon Barry to develop the futuristic setting, from envisioning urban streets to creating sleek sci-fi vehicles that flit between the skyscrapers of an imagined Vancouver skyline. “It “It was an absolute blast,” says VFX supervisor Adam Stern with a smile as he remembers the early days. In fact, as tes tified by many of the VFX vendors interviewed in this issue, working in TV ensures studios a certain ownership of the creative output of a series that working in film doesn’t provide. Continuum stars Rachel Nichols as Kiera Cameron, a City Protective Services agent from 2077 who is accidentally sent back in 3D WORLD

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time while pursuing freedom fighters. Stuck in the comparatively quaint 2012, she helps the Vancouver Police Department track down escaped foes using her advanced technology and knowledge – all while attempting to get back home to her family. As the series has grown in scale, so too has the show’s complexity, introducing new elements and enemies that Artifex has been tasked with bringing to life for the small screen. At the end of season three, the show featured futuristic Time Marines, rendered entirely in CG by Artifex. ( You can see how the studio created them over the page.) Other than creating the new Time Marines, recurring VFX work throughout the series has included creating impressive

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FEATURE Continuum VFX

The biggest challenge with Continuum is the schedule … Keeping things organised is always a benefit

PROCESS: Adam Stern shares the

process for creating Continuum’s Continuum’s time-travelling troops

W Adam is Continuum’s VFX Supervisor and the owner of Artifex Studios. Adam started as a self-taught artist, and is now branching out from VFX into writing and directing, with is short film The Adept. www.theadeptfilm.com

MAKING THE FUTURE

Continuum is part of a growing trend for film quality VFX on TV

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ith its fourth and final season now in post production, Continuum has been a tremendous project for everyone here at Artifex. Continuum tells the story of Kiera Cameron – a cop from th e year 2077, who along with a group of freed om fighters is transported b ack in time to 2012. A stranger in a strange land, Kiera must make allies, track down her enemies, and fight to get b ack to her family and the future she lef t. Artifex handles all the visual effects fo r the series, which encompass everything from future cityscapes, tech and vehicles, to Kiera’s ‘supersuit’, ‘supersuit’, HUD, and various gadget s and weaponr y. We have been involved from the beginning, helping d esign and create the world of the show. An episode of Continuum can include over 100 VFX shots, making it a challenging, but ver y rewarding project. The Time Marines were introduced at the end of season three. These fully-armored warriors are only seen briefly in the last episode, but play a big role in the upcoming season. When seen in full armor the Time Marines are full CG characters. Artifex has t aken these characters from concept throug h completion, and we’re looking forward to their season four debut. Our VFX pipeline is fairly straightforward : Maya and V-Ray, ZBrush, Mudbox, Mari, Photoshop, Nu ke, ftrack for shot tracking and management, plus a number of to ols and plugins. Here’s a glimpse into our workflow and construction of these formidable soldiers.


ONE CONCEPT ONE CONCEPT

TWO BASE TWO BASE MODEL

THREE SET THREE SET UP UVS

Everything starts with a concept. After reading the scripts and discussing the chara cters with production, we get to work. The first step is to produce a number of q uick concepts in Photoshop, which help us zero in on the desired look. The Time Marines come from th e future, but we wanted an almost tribal feel to them – as if they were from differe nt castes and/or locations.

Artifex uses Maya as our primary 3D tool. This is where the base model was created. Of course we always aim to keep geometry as clean as possible. In the case of the Time Marines, they are humans, but encased within a rigid, powered suit. When rigged and weighted t hey’ll need to feel like people, not robots… but with rigid/constrained movement. Some interesting challenges, not immediately apparent.

To allow for as high-res text ures as possible, we lay out in multiple grids. Once we see fully rendered versions of t he character, we’ll likely need to make changes to various aspects, an d we want to be able to zero in on only the specific areas required. This UV workflow allows for up-resing textures as ne eded, while still being able to keep our shader networks clean and accessible for iterating.

FOUR DETAILING FOUR DETAILING IN ZBRUSH

FIVE MARI FIVE MARI

SIX DETAILS SIX DETAILS

Although most modelling work on this asset was done in Maya, ZBrush enables us to create a number of additional high resolution displacement passes – bumps, dents, and scratches to name a few. ZBrush was also used during initial look development, as a fast previewing tool for high subdivision work.

All texture look development was done in Mari. Mari is a fantastic tool that enables our artists to add and mix multiple layers to get desired results, including working with previously mentioned scratch/dent/bump layers. We can dial in spec, dirt maps, and so on, all with a high degree of interactivity.

Detail work continues in Mari, with Photoshop entering the picture as well. Here we have created several variations of the Time Marine – different wear maps, as well as decals, battle damage and colourations.

SEVEN MAYA/V-RAY SEVEN MAYA/V-RAY

EIGHT COMP EIGHT COMP

V-Ray for Maya is a great tool for photorealistic rendering. We can get everything we need out of it, including a huge amount of flexibility for compositors (see Step 8). We find it especially good fo r hard surface work. Artifex made th e initial switch to V-Ray while exploring the best rendering options for CG cityscapes on the fir st season of Continuum, and we’ve used it ever since.

The Time Marines are rendered using V-Ray 3.0. We supply a large number of AOVs in loaded EXRs, giving our compositors a high degree of flexibility when putting together final shots. On TV deadlines, the more that can be done in comp the better… sending shots back for re-rendering isn’t always an option. Our comp team can dial in lighting, change the amount of surface det ail, and refine colours on a shot-by-shot b asis.

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FEATURE

The rise of TV VFX

AUTHOR PROFILE Tom May Having worked in magazine journalism for 22 years, Tom is currently the content manager for 3D World and our website CreativeBloq. twitter.com/tom_may

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VFX With movie talent increasingly flocking to TV land, Tom May examines what effect this seismic shift is having on the VFX industry

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hen was the last time you went to the cinema? And when was the last time you stayed in and bingewatched a TV drama? If the latter was more recent, you’re not alone… More and more of us are shifting our downtime from the multiplex to the front room, thanks to a combination of larger, better quality TV sets, and the accessibility of content. Where the demand goes, the supply is following: top Hollywood actors, directors and producers are all flocking from the movies to television, and the financiers have followed in their wake, investing big money in blockbuster shows. Will Cohen of visual effects studio Milk, the main vendor on Doctor Who and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, believes there’s a good reason for all this. “The movies find it very difficult in 2015 to tell sophisticated stories,” he argues. “They have to appeal globally in order to

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make their money back. Ergo, there is a dumbing down of the sophistication level, or the characterisation. “So I think what’s attracted actors, directors and producers to television is the ability to tell the kind of stories movie studios like United Artists were making in the late 1970s. If you want to make stuff like that now, the format is television.” Nigel Hunt of Glowfrog, a Londonbased studio creating high-end effects for clients including BBC, Channel 4 and HBO, agrees. “The driving factor is probably the attractiveness of TV for high end feature directors wanting a little more control and f reedom,” he suggests. “The U.S. cable networks such as Showtime and HBO have traditionally been the powerhouses of high-end T V, attracting film talent. Now, with the storm surge of online networks, Netflix and Amazon have emerged as major content producers attracting even more film talents, and larger produc tion budgets.”


FEATURE

The rise of T

DIGITAL DOUBLES Fully CG characters – like Grodd here – were once unheard of in mainstream TV shows. Now they’re cropping up everywhere…

THE FL FL ASH

So how do 3D artists and visual effects studios get a slice of this action – and should they even want to? In this article, we assess how television is transforming the 3D industry before our very eyes…

Encore VFX’s Armen VFX’s Armen V. Kevorkian shares insights into bringi ng DC comic’s fa stest ma n alive to t he small sc reen

Rising expectations The first, and perhaps biggest change to take place in recent years when it comes to visual effects lies in audience expectations. Essentially, in 2015, 2015, viewers want their TV shows to look as good as their movies. “As VFX in film advances, it stands to reason that it w ill follow in TV,” TV,” says Tanvir Hanif, visual effects supervisor and 3D animator at 3sixty media, a production company serving IT V, BBC BBC and independent clients throughout the UK. “The audience is so much more savvy and critical now, so in TV we have to work harder to match their expectations. A s shows like Game of Thrones, Vikings and Battlestar Galactica have met that challenge, viewers have come to expect the same on other shows, further increasing the pressure to raise standards.” There’s just one drawback: film-like effects need to be achieved without film-like budgets. Sam Nicholson, CEO of Stargate Studios – the VFX facility behind The Walking Walking Dead – puts it bluntly: “The only difference between TV and film these days is time and money.” So more needs to be done by fewer people in less time. Improvements in technology help, but it still leaves a lot of pressure on artists. “Working in television is quite different from working on feature films,” continues Sam. “To survive in TV you must be very good but also very fast. Particularly in series television, you’re generally prepping two shows, shooting one and posting two.” The actual business of creating 3D effects doesn’t really change. As Sam puts it: “The

five or more episodes at any given time,” says Armen. “New villains are introduced weekly so there’s also a high volume of complex shots being done constantly. Grodd was a special one; he’s one of the most well-known nemeses in The Flash universe. Time is always a challenge in TV and, fortunately, we had a pretty substantial heads-up that Grodd would be making an appearance this season so we were able to prepare accordingly.” Encore VFX use 3ds Max for 3D work and Nuke for 2D work, as well as ZBrush. Scans for the digital doubles were done at Light Stage and Gentle Giant Studios. All were essential to create the sense of super speed seen in every episode. “Super speed is iconic to the character and focal to the show, so we spent a lot of time ahead of the pilot researching what would look best. The comic books provided a good base, and from there we played around with movements that were grounded in reality,” says Armen, “then we had to cheat it a little bit to make it look cool. Once we nailed the right balance, there was definitely a sweet ‘eureka moment’.” When conversation turns to the wider growth in VFX in TV, Armen reflects: “As both artists and an audience, we’ve set the bar high in what we’ve come to expect from TV VFX. The work being created for television televisi on (and beyond) is incredible and quality shows are held to new standards.” See Encore VFX’s scene breakdown FYII FY here: www.bit.ly/ www.bit.ly/the-flash-vfx the-flash-vfx

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VIDEO SCOPE The rise of affordable CG technology means the scale of TV VFX has grown dramatically

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CHANGING PLACES The man in the green leotard is none other than Jonathan Strange, played by Bertie Carvel

JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL Bringing statues to life in fa ntasy series Jonathan Strange & M r Norrell wasn’t as easy as you’d think, reveals Will Cohen of Cohen of Milk

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artists are the same. The software and the computers are the same.” The gap, then, is being met by innovative approaches to organisation, time management and productivity. “So now on our big shows like Heroes Reborn and The Ten Commandments, there are multiple simultaneous first units, multiple directors and s plit location,” explains Sam. “We have specifically engineered Stargate Studios to excel in this challenging production and post production environment

To survive in TV you must be very good but also very ver y fast. You’re You’re prepping two shows, shooting one and posting two Sam Nicholson, CEO and founder, founder, Stargate Studios

by networking and synchronising our ten international facilities. Today, amazing visual effects are possible in a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost of previous years, which truly closes the gap.” gap.” It’s a similar story across the industry. “In television, studios have tighter schedules, due to the episodic nature, and budgets that don’t quite stretch to reiterating a shot for the 40th or 50th time,” explains ftrack’s Ben Minall. “These constraints lead to approaches that have to be ingenious, as the production doesn’t have the grunt power or luxury of time behind it.” Project management tool ftrack aims to help stressed-out VFX studios meet these required levels of ingenuity, he says. “ftr ack does away with the need for huge Excel spreadsheets that need to constantly be shared and reams of emails cluttering up your inbox. It gives everyone on the team one centralised location 3D WORLD

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FEATURE

The rise of TV VFX

WORLDS APART The sheer scale of Marco Polo’s epic environments posed a huge technical challenge for Pixomondo

MARCO POLO

where they can see w hat needs to be done that day, how it needs to be done, and when it needs to be done by.” Other tools are available, such as Shotgun. But whatever productivity software studios use, it’s this kind of s treamlined approach to production that’s crucial in the world of TV VFX, as tough schedules mean there’s scant room for mistakes or multiple iterations.

Bringing Marco Polo to the screen was an epic challenge, Pixomondo’s Christian Hermann explains Hermann explains

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Variety and diversity But if this all sounds like no fun at all, then here’s the good news: there are some definite upsides to working on TV shows too. First of all, there’s a much greater level of variety. For instance, working at Milk, says Will Cohen, “you’ll find yourself animating a snake in Hercules one minute, for a month, for a

Since budgets are restricted, the atmosphere becomes more inviting for collaboration and creative solutions Niklas Jacobson, VFX supervisor, ILP

handful of shots. And then you’ll be on Doctor Who animating 20 shots in a handful of weeks. I think it’s fun for art ists to mix it up and have that diversity. And to be able to move on to another project very quickly, or to spend time on really applying t he final detail and polish.” polish.” Just as importantly, working on TV shows can also involve much higher levels of creative collaboration between directors and the artists themselves. “The ambitions on a TV show may be very high,” high,” says Nicklas Jacobson of Swedish VFX house ILP, ILP, which has worked on hit shows Crossbones and Constantine. “But since budgets are still 3D WORLD

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SNAKES ALIVE The CG snakes were sculpted in ZBrush in great detail, with modelling and rigging in Maya

CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO

www.bit.ly/199-marco-polo

It’s been reported that Marco Polo cost $9 million per episode – was there a bigger budget for this than normal at your end? A lot of money was spent on the practical sets. For Pixomondo the budget was comparable with other TV shows we’ve worked on. What was the biggest technical challenge you faced? Scale and population of the environments proved to be the biggest challenge on this show. As with any production of this scale, the logistics of handling hundreds of assets and terabytes of texture data required the development of custom Maya tools to provide artist-friendly layouts that would produce predictable and compositor-friendly render passes. Models and textures were optimised to reduce render times and special tools were utilised to populate the city layouts with vegetation and low-resolution objects to add visual clutter. We used a crowd simulation plugin for Maya called Miarmy (www.basefount.com) (www.basefount.com) which was employed in the creation of CG extras and armies within the cities, and which enabled quick swapping of walk/ run cycles and accessories to breathe life into wide establishing shots with slow camera moves. Using Nuke’s 3D capabilities the matte painting department was able to set up a 360-degree landscape template, which which enabled quick swaps of the sky-dome elements depending on the shot’s needs, as well as ensuring consistency in the layout of the background landscape features across sequences. For more more on Pixomondo, visit its FYII FY site at www.pixomondo.com 3D WORLD

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restricted and everyone is aware that it’s not a feature film budget, the atmosphere becomes more inviting for collaboration and open for creative solutions. That makes you feel more like a part of the production where you all work towards the s ame goals.” Milk’s Nicolas Hernandez, CG supervisor on the BBC historical fantasy series Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, has had similar experiences. “On Jonathan Strange, and on TV generally in fact, you have direct access to the director,” he says. “And usually you need to have a proper partnership with the production company to make it work, because of the challenge of time and money.” His boss, Will Cohen, concurs. “On Jonathan Strange we had great collaboration – a creative partnership with the producer, the director and two editors – and that makes it all ver y economic. The lines of communication are very small.” If working on TV productions is good for artist s, it’s equally good for studios too. For some it’s a good way to fill their downtime between movie projects, while others have chosen to specialise in T V completely. All

PAST GLORIES Pixomondo conducted detailed historical research to ensure Marco Polo’s environments were accurate


FEATURE

The rise of TV VFX

HIT AND MYTH Although a fanta sy sy,, Games of Thrones’ look and feel is grounded in reality

GAME GA ME OF THRONES

those we spoke to are expecting the demand for TV VFX to grow in the future. But while it’s the huge explosions and epic set-pieces of shows that get the at tention, that’s only the icing on the cake as far as VF X work goes. Most of the work available is in providing ‘invisible effects’ – things that the viewer would never guess were done digitally and not actually real. “Invisible effects are essential to our business model at Stargate,” Stargate,” says Sam Nicholson. “They’re generally overlooked by the viewing audience, but producers and

Lead vendors discuss the challenges of bringing George RR Mar tin’s fantasy classic to life

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Our work is to support the narrative in an invisible way. If you haven’t spotted what we’re doing, we’ve done our job! Tanvir Hanif, VFX supervisor, 3sixtymedia

directors absolutely realise the essential nature of these non-spectacular effects to their s hows.” hows.” A good example of this is St argate Studios’ work on Grey's Anatomy. “For the past nine years using our Virt ual Backlot process, Grey's Anatomy has not had to travel to Seattle – the supposed location of tthe he show,” Nicholson reveals. “In fact, they’ve been able to stay in Los Angeles and we’ve brought Seattle to Los Angeles for them. This greatly enhances the creative possibilities for the writers of t he show while containing the cost for the producers.”

Can’t see the join? It’s a similar scenario for Tanvir Hanif at 3sixtymedia, where invisible effects form a large chunk of day-to-day work. “Our work is often to support the narrative in a more invisible way,” way,” he say s. “If you haven't spot ted 3D WORLD

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GROWTH SPURT The dragons have got bigger and more detailed with each new series

what we’re doing then we've done our job!” Tanvir’s Tanvir’s role is to go on s et to advise and supervise on how to shoot a particular scene where an additional enhancement in post production might be needed. It could be to repair or paint out somet hing that’s not needed, or a larger scale alteration to help realise a key story moment in a programme. “These bigger scenarios are often undertaken with a lot of pre-planning with resources put in place to help realise the effect, but somet imes you have very little to play with and have to create most of the final image yourself.” yourself.” One of their biggest recent productions, for example, was IT V Studio’s Cilla, following singer Cilla Black‘s rise to fame in the 1960s. “One noteworthy sequence was the first scene of the first episode,” episode,” says Tanvir. Tanvir. “This introduces Cilla, who is queuing outside the Cavern Club with supposedly hundreds of people behind her. We used crowd replication effects to seamlessly give the impression of hundreds of extras rather than just the 70 we had on the day. We devised various in-camera effects that we would later use in

ANIMAL MAGIC The interactions between Daenerys and her dragon have been particularly tricky

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FEATURE

The rise of TV VFX

TAKEOVER BID This breathtaking pull-up shot reveals the scale of the zombie infestation

THE WALKING DEAD

post production to create the final effec t.” This emphasis on not making the CG elements obvious is even the case on a show like Game of Thrones, says Jörn Großhans, Großhans, VFX supervisor at Mackevision. “Our main goal is always to create invisible effects. The imagination of the audience should be triggered, but every thing should be reliable in the respective story world. Visual effects are great as long as they support t he story.”

More and more digital effects are being used on hit zombie shot shot The Walking Dead, reveals Sam Nicholson of Nicholson of Stargate Studios

Which shot(s) stand out in your mind as the best example of your work? Over the years, the shots which still stick out in my mind are the ones we created on the pilot with Gale Anne Hurd and Frank Darabont. Specifically, ‘torso girl’ and the final pull up shot which reveals the amazing scope of the zombie infestation. Of course the iconic shot of Rick riding down the deserted highway which became the poster for Walking Dead is a classic. These shots were beautifully designed and executed which resulted in the best possible result – they became icons for the show.

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So where are we now? For some industry veterans, working in television VFX feels like coming full circle. “Go back to 1999, 2000,” says Will Cohen. “I think there’s 40 animated shots in Jurassic Park, the first movie. 90 digital shots in Gladiator… and that was a big number. “Now movies are coming out with 1,500, 2,000, 3,000 shots. Maleficent had 3,000 shots; every frame is a digital effects shot. So these big VFX companies have evolved to have a big machine and a big hierarchy. Decisions are made, and they’re passed down through that hierarchy. They’ve created these large machines capable of the f ull pipeline solution. And that works for them… but TV is very, very

What kind of pipeline do you use? Much of our soft ware is off-the-shelf but with lots of custom modifications, transcoding and automation. After Effects, Nuke, Maya and Premiere. We’ve developed a proprietary data management system we call our Virtual Operating System (VOS). VOS enables us to seamlessly distribute, process, render and deliver shots throughout our international network of VFX studios. What’s the best thing about working on The Walking Dead? The overall body of work is amazing. Maintaining the quality of the original, inspired production year after year is a real challenge, so we’re always looking for new ways to keep it fresh. For more more on Stargate Stargate Studios visit FYII FY www.stargatestudios.net

LONG WALK AHEAD This iconic shot became synonymous with AMC show The Walking Dead

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SKY TV Even TV comedy now has moviestyle CG, like this space station scene for Last Man on Earth

LAST MAN ON EARTH

different. In fac t, it’s a bit like it was ten to fifteen years ago when you were making 90 digital shots in Gladiator.” Having said that, even the lines between television VFX and film VFX are now blurring. Will gives an example: “During the making of the Battle of Waterloo shots for Jonathan Strange, we asked the producer permission to show Lionsgate, who were talking to us about

Oliver Taylor explains Taylor explains how Ingenuity Studios recreated the ISS for a space comedy

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Now movies are coming out with w ith 1,500, 2,000, 3,000 shots. Maleficent had 3,000; every frame is a digital effects shot Will Cohen, CEO & executive producer, Milk

some crowd work in Insurgent. And Lionsgate didn’t realise it was TV not a film – they asked ‘What movie was that from? ’. You won’t be surprised to hear they then hired us to do the work on Insurgent.” To the ordinary consumer, that fine line is even more invisible. “We talk about film, we talk about TV,” adds Will, “but for most people nowadays, it’s just visual media. Whether it’s

REAL DEAL Ingenuity Studios rejected a matte painted Earth in favour of the real thing

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FEATURE

The rise of TV VFX

WET AND WILD Shoot-outs with cannons involved a lot of complex fluid simulation work

CROSSBONES Swedish studio ILP explain how it created some astonishing naval battles for hit pirate adventure Crossbones

mportant Looking Pirates (ILP) is a visual effects and digital animation studio located in central Stockholm. And with a name like that it’s not surprising that it got to work on a show like Crossbones, the hit US adventure series about the life of pirate Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach. “Our main area was creating digital ships and water,” explains CEO/VFX supervisor Niklas Jacobson. “There were two real ships on set during principal photography, but the show required a multitude of variations of ships as well as scenes of fleets of ships. There were also shots of a stormy ocean, burning ships and other complex scenes that required extensive visual effects in order to be realised.” One of the biggest challenges was to efficiently tackle the workflow of handling complex scenes containing high numbers of different ships, full of digital crews, cloth-simulated sails, banners, and water

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on your mobile phone, in your living room or at the cinema, people don’t really differentiate over the quality. People don’t think: ‘I’ll forgive that, because it’s only a TV show from the BBC.’ BBC.’ It’s got to st and up to be success ful. “So as the world get s quicker, faster, in terms of data, in terms of size, you’re working on the same camera, on the sam e resolution – we’re recording shots on Doctor Who in 6K sometimes – the techniques you learn on both TV and movies you try and apply where possible.” possible.” And here’s something else that’s changing: just as the last few years have have seen TV become more like film, movies are now becoming more like television. “If you look at Avengers, it’s just big TV in content term s,” argues Will. “It’s basically a giant TV series; you just have to wait a year in between episodes. A nd for movies, just like TV, schedules are shortening. Since the last big financial crisis the challenge of the entire world – whether it’s visual effects or any business – has been to deliver more for less. That’s what everyone wants in every business in every industry, and the creative industries are no dif ferent.” Consequently, in the future even VFX studios specialising in TV will need to up

SHIP HAPPENS The show required the creation of multiple CG vessels

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simulations. “The pipeline and workflow simulations. for keeping track of all these different assets – and how to quickly assemble shots and cost-effectively turn over lit and rendered versions – required some creative thinking, planning and pipeline work,” recalls Niklas. A tricky shot he’s particularly proud of is the scene where The Reaver (pirate ship) sails along side of The Petrel (British ship) and they have a shoot out with cannons. “We made a full CG shot with boats filled with a digital crew that needed to cut seamlessly between two live action shots. The challenge was capturing the look of the scene but also acting of the crew on board without pulling the audience out of the story. “This is not an ‘effects shot’ but rather a great example of virtual cinematography,” he stresses. “It could very well have been shot on set, but it was during editing that production discovered that a shot like this would really tie the sequence nicely together.” Other challenging shots were those with heavy simulation work like water, fire and smoke. “They are tricky in a more technical way, with complex simulation simulati on setups and plenty of elements to tie together nicely. Those shots are more resource-demanding in terms of computing power and time. They also add another layer of complexity in artistry to get it looking right.” To see more of ILP’s work visit its FYII FY site at ilpvfx.com

A BUG’S LIFE ILP needed to create swarms of bugs in a short period CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO

www.bit.ly/199-constantine

CONSTANTINE ILP explains how it created a swarm of bugs for hit horror show Constantine

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specifics as well, but I loved the creative freedom he trusted us with. I see him as much as a director as a VFX supervisor. He made us feel like an important part of the production. “One particular challenge that comes to mind was for the episode A Feast of Fiends. Our mission was to create swarms of bugs for approximately 40 shots in a very short time period. We needed a workflow that was swift and flexible and allowed great creative control, yet did not require our FX /simulation artists to layout the shots. Hence we created a custom Maya particle rig that allowed our Lighting TDs to easily control shape, path, speed and noise of the particles. We would playblast little coloured spheres for Kevin, which he would give feedback on. Once the animation was blocked and approved we switched the particles to V-Ray proxies containing high-res animation cycles.” To see more of ILP’s work visit its FYII FY site at ilpvfx.com

INFEST WISELY ILP created a custom Maya particle rig to control shape and speed

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their game. Despite 15 years in the business, Sam Nicholson recognises that applies to him as much as anyone else. “To stay competitive in the ever-morecrowded field of global VFX, we’ve continually re-invented Stargate Studios, opened new markets and challenged our previous assumptions of what’s possible,” he stresses. “We bring the latest technologies, creative innovation, cost savings and real-world problem-solving to all our projects, large or small. Visual effects applied in this way should save a production money, not cost more.” Some people working in the industr y won’t want to hear any of this, of course. “There’s still an enormous amount of snobbery from people who only work in film to the idea of TV,” says Milk’s Will Cohen. “I think it’s a generational thing. But look around you; look at shows like Game of Thrones, what they’ve done in terms of production values. It’s just about being economic with your story telling. Realising how to make your budget and what’s being asked of you work is the future of our industry. And you shouldn’t resist it, you should be excited about it!” For more more VFX case studies and interviews FYII FY visit www.creativebl www.creativebloq.com oq.com


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VOTE VOT E NOW! NOW! We invite you to join us for the CG Awards 2015, a celebration of the most amazing art and technology that has been created over the past year in the world of animation, computer hardware and VFX

THE CATEGORIES The 3D World CG Awards 2015 will feature the following:

CREATIVE AWARDS •

Best VFX feature film scene

TECHNOLOGY AWARDS •

New application of the year

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Software update of the year

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Plug-in of the year

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Software innovation of the year

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Hardware innovation of the year

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3D print innovation of the year (new)

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VFX short film of the year

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sponsored by •

CG animated feature of the year

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CONTENTS

TUTORIALS Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills

54 CREATE 54 CREATE A STAR WARS MATTE PAINTING

60 MASTER 60 MASTER THE ART OF FIRE

Double Negative’s Saby Menyhei walks you through this Star Wars VII-inspired image

Expert advice for 3ds Max and FumeFX

FOR MORE ON YOUR FREE DOWNLOADS & VIDEO TRAINING TURN TO PAGE 6

GET YOUR RESOURCES You’re three steps away from this issue’s video training and files…

64 HOW 64 HOW TO CREATE AN EPIC VFX SHOT Recreate a frame from Game of Thrones’ Battle of Blackwater with our six-page guide

1. GO TO THE WEBSITE Type this into your browser’s address bar: www.creativebloq.com/vault/3dw199 2. FIND THE FILES YOU WANT Search the list of free resources to find the video and files you want. 3. DOWNLOAD WHAT YOU NEED Click the Download buttons and your files will save to your PC or Mac.

70 GET STARTED IN HOUDINI

74 DETAIL A CHARACTER

Bemused by this powerful procedural tool? Read Digital-Tutors’ John Moncrief’s starter tips Prepare this knight for cinematic production

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www youtube com/3dworld

TUTORIALS

Star Wars matte painting

WATCH THE FINAL SCENE If you see the Play icon, use the link

ARTIST PROFILE

Saby Menyhei Saby graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. He taught fine arts/art history and worked as a freelance concept artist. He now works in the film industry as an environment/concept artist at Double Negative. His credits include Ant-Man, Exodus and Godzilla. www.menyhei.com

TOPICS COVERED

Composition Lighting Texture detail Photo manipulation Camera projection

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THE FORCE AWAKENS This iconic image of the Star Destroyer is a combination of 3D work and 2D matte painting

MAYA | MENTAL RAY | PHOTOSHOP | NUKE

CREATE A STAR WARS MATTE PAINTING Saby Menyhei shares his process for creating a powerful 3D matte painting, inspired by Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens n this tutorial we will try and recreate that iconic image of the derelict Star Destroyer from the Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens trailer, seen from another point of view. It’s a simple, yet powerf ul, establishing shot and in this tutorial I will show you how digital matte painting can be used to improve your 3D renders. The final image will be a combination of 3D work and 2D matte painting. Matte painting is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and is still used to this day. While they used traditional matte paintings until the 1990s, nowadays digital matte paintings are created using photos, 3D renders and

I

hand painted elements. The work will be digital painting and technique is still around as it’s very photo manipulation in Photoshop. efficient; you can create a large You will need to use different environment that doesn’t exist or skills, but most importantly, would be too expensive to build you will have to use your eyes – quickly. And it doesn’t have to be sometimes that is more important a still image, if planned carefully, than any shortcuts or tricks. you can take the painted image Unless you want to model your back to the 3D space. own ship, I recommend using the Sometimes, depending on insanely detailed Imperial Star the actual shot, matte painting Destroyer 3D model by Ansel can replace texturing/look Hsiao (www.fractalsponge.net ( www.fractalsponge.net ), development/lighting and it can who featured in issu e 194 of 3D also improve your render in a very World. I’ve included my set up significant way. files in this is sue’s online Vault, We will start this tutorial with including my .fbx and .obj files for setting up the scene in 3 D and Nuke and reference photos. For all the assets you need need go to rendering out a few very simple creativebloq.com /vault/3 /vault/3dw199 dw199 passes in Maya. The rest of the

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CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO www.bit.ly/199-star-wars

TUTORIALS


Once you are happy with the result, create a new render camera and try to find another interesting view

1

SETTING THE SCENE

2 EMBELLISHING THE SCENE

The scene is ver y simple; we need a ground plane and the model of the Destroyer. For the layout, even a low resolution mesh will do. To To match the position of the ship from the trailer, load a snapshot into the viewport (View>Image Plane/>Import Image). Once you are happy with the result, create a new render camera and tr y to find another interesting view. The other side of the Destroyer is just as iconic as what we’ve seen in the t railer.

You can add another wreck, for example a TIE Fighter in the foreground corresponds to the X-wing from the original shot. You can create some simple sand dunes using the Sculpt Geometry tool (don’t forget to uncheck the Show Wireframe option under the Display options). Keep in mind that the landscape eventually will be matte painted so it doesn’t need to be super detailed at this stage.

3 SETTING THE LAYOUT

4 PLAN YOUR LIGHTING

EXPERT TIP Reference library Taking your own reference photos is great. So do so whenever you can – building your own texture and a matte painting library is a good idea!

Look through your render camera. It might take a few tries to find the preferred angle but once you have found the best composition you can lock the position of the camera to ensure it doesn’t move. At this stage you can still tweak the position of your assets and when you think it’s done, it’s good to lock the layout as well. While the landscape is more of a placeholder, make sure that it gives you enough information about bigger shapes, distance and so forth.

Because of the nature of this scene, instead of using an IBL, you can get away with using mental ray’s Physical Sun and Sky (you can find these under the Indirect Lighting tab). Just click the Create button, and rotate the arrows that represe nt light direction. Feel free to scale them up, the size of the arrows doesn’t change the intensit y. Also, by changing the Max Sample levels (under Quality ) you will get a nicer result.

5 CREATE YOUR UVS

6 CREATE RENDER PASSES (1)

RENDER RESOLUTION

The resolution of your matte painting should be at least twice as big as the final comp osite. Render your passes at 4k or higher

Most of the textural det ail will be matte painted, but we might need UVs for one of the passes before we start rendering. We will generate some random noise that will be used as dirt, but we won’t need perfect UVs for this. So if you don’t have UVs yet, the simplest thing is to use the Create UVs>Automatic UVs function. It’s going to be far from perfect, but might be just enough for what we need. You can always use a UV checker map to test the result. 3D WORLD

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We need at least four very simple pass es for the matte painting: Beaut y, ID, Z-Depth Z-Depth and Dirt . For the Beauty render, basic shaders will do (default Maya/mental ray ones). The Destroyer is quite rusty and dirty so don’t make it too reflective. An ID pass creates quick selections. Here, create a Surf ace Shader with basic colours (red, green or blue), so you can turn them to masks in Photoshop quickly.


7 CREATE RENDER PASSES (2)

A Z-Depth pass is also handy to set t he ship’s scale. You’ll You’ll need a new Surface Shader; set the Out Colour Colour to White and go to Create/Volume Primitives Cube (your scene should be inside). Select Cube Fog Shader and set Volume Fog Attributes to Black. Render u sing Maya. Finally, a simple Dirt pass will be mixed with other textures (use 2D Textures/Noise as Colour). Play with contrast and frequency of the patterns. Render out useful passes, pas ses, like occlusion, for painting later.

8 GATHER REFERENCE IMAGES

In a studio there would be hundreds of high-res images to work from – here we’re making our own. You You can find photos photos on the internet, but get the best possible (high-res and no compression artefact). For this matte painting we will need photos of sand dunes and rocky grounds. For the Destroyer, you will have to be creative and photos of collapsed buildings may offer ideas. At this stage it’s ok to prepare some of your elements: grading, keying and so forth.

USING MASKS

TURN ID PASSES INTO MASKS

ONE SELECT ONE SELECT CHANNELS

9 CREATE SKY AND SCENERY

We will start matte painting by working on the sky and far background. Create a new Photoshop document, set the resolution (4k or higher) and I would suggest painting in 16 bit (even though most reference photos are 8 bit). In this example I boosted the contrast so you see more clearly what is there, but in the original shot the sky is quite milky and blown out. We don’t want to draw too much attention to the sky but keep the focus on the sand dunes and the ship.

10 DETAIL THE SKY

A few subtle clouds over the gradient might give us enough detail, and while we don’t know too much about planet Jakku, maybe we can add a few planets in the background – much like the binary suns of Tatooine. Tatooine. The sand dunes are partially coming from the reference photos and but some part s are hand painted. We don’t have to worry about the middle part because it w ill be covered by the ship.

Using masks will help you to work faster. If you want to separate some parts of the ship, open your ID render in Photoshop. Go to Channels and select one of the channels (Red, Green or Blue).

TWO APPLYING TWO APPLYING SELECTION

Now, click the Load Channel As Selection button. You can go back to your layers now and apply the selection to either a layer or a layer group by hitting the Add Layer Mask button.

11 COLOUR CORRECT LAYERS

There are many ways to colour correct your layer s. The easiest is to use the Brightness/Contrast-Color Balance-Hue/Saturation tools. However, I would suggest using the Curves tool. Curves is very powerful; you have full control over the tones and you can colour correct at the same time by selecting the Red, Green or Blue channels. Each layer can have its own modification layer without using traditional masks. 3D WORLD

12 MERGING LAYERS

Select your modification layer (Curves for example) and hit [Alt]+[Ctrl]+[G]. It will be attached to the layer beneath it (clipping mask). Don’t merge your layers until you’re 100 per cent sure it’s done (nondestructive editing). If you want to paint the highlights or the shadows separately create a new layer on top of your main layer, create a clipping mask and go to Blending Options>Underlying Layer. Adjust the slider to apply this layer to either light or darker values. October 2015

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THREE COPY THREE COPY SELECTIONS

You can also copy selections from one document to another in Photoshop by using Select>Load Selection. Choose the right source document and the Selection/Channel.

TUTORIALS


EXPERT TIP Check levels Check your matte painting under different exposure settings. Increasing and decreasing gamma might give you more information. Alternatively, you can save out an .exr and open it in Nuke. You may get more information on your values, especially if working in 16bit.

13 CREATE THE BASE TEXTURE

Now we can start breathing life into the greyscale render. The Destroyer has been there for 30 years after the events of Return of the Jedi, when it crashed into the deser t after a big battle. You have to tell the story by painting the textures. Blend the rendered dirt pass with other metal/rust textures. The generic dirt texture can be revealed through a mask.

15 DESTROYING THE SHIP

We will need to go heavier on t he damage. We already started breaking up the edges, so let’s break them up even more! Applying a base textu re was only the start. It’s a huge ship and it was severely damaged during the battle. Some parts of the Destroyer exploded – you can paint craters from scratch but you can also use photos of destroyed buildings. You You have to convey the idea t hat we can see inside the Destroyer.

CREATE ATMO

It might appear that you are losing detail when you’re reducing the contrast, however it will improve your matte painting

14 USING REFERENCE PHOTOS

You can now start using your reference photo photo library. Apply textures as if you were texturing a 3D asset; try using dif ferent blending modes such as Overlay, Multiply and so forth or extract detail from other images (use Select >Color Range and then copy and paste). Be careful with the scale of the texture, as it’s easy to make your model look tiny if the details are too big. You can also create a group mask to break up the edges.

16 ADDING MORE DAMAGE

Be creative and find the right places where you think it needs to be damaged. Don’t be afraid to change the model! When you combine photos and digital painting, pay attention to black values and t he level of detail. The new elements and the res t of the ship have to blend seamlessly. Working up the underside of the ship might be easier because it’s more diffuse, while on the top you have to be careful with light direction.

17 ADD DEPTH TO THE SCENE

The Destroyer almost fills the frame but it’s actually pretty far from the camera. To sell the idea that it’s a distant object we have to add some aerial perspective. It means you have to lift the blacks (Curves is perfect for this) and make sure colours colours shift towards blue. You can use your Z-Depth Pass here. You can also turn this into a group mask – all the colour correction layers should be within this group. Tweak your values until you match the original shot. 3D WORLD

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18 MATTE PAINT SAND DUNES

19 ADD THE TIE FIGHTER

I would suggest star ting with a quick collage using photo references. Since you don’t have to paint from scratch, you can try out different options. Once you have found the right elements, you have to meld them. After some colour correc tion and digital painting it will be unnoticeable that you have u sed bits from different sources. Don’t forget that the layout is more of a guide, so you don’t have to stick to it 100 per cent. Pay attention to light direction.

The TIE fighter in the foreground has to be matte painted in a similar way as t he crashed Dest royer. The 3D model is quite basic and has no textures. Use your TIE fighter reference photos to add detail. You also have to destruc t the ship and make it rusty/ dirty. The foreground around the ship needs to be worked up too (to show the impact make a crater and add debris around the ship). Blend it with w ith the rest of landscape as much as possible.

20 APPLYING THE FILM LOOK

21 ADDING MORE NOISE

There are a few little t ricks that will help you to achieve a more photorealistic look. CG tends to be a little too shar p and clean, so once you’re done texturing, a little light wrap will soften the sharp edges. Unfortunately, there is no automatic light wrap function in Photoshop, so just create a copy of the background layers, then merge and blur them. Manually apply it slightly around the edges. You can also blur your layers from the midground a tiny bit.

22 CREATING A PROJECTION

To see your matte painting rendered through a moving camera, use Nuke. Export your geometry as .obj files and the camera you rendered your passes from as .fbx. You‘ll need to save out the main layers of your matte painting (sky, sand dunes, Destroyer, foreground, TIE) as .exr or .tif files with an alpha channel. To create an alpha in Photoshop [Ctrl]+click the icon of the layer, to create a selection. Hit Save Selection As Channel under the Channels tab. 3D WORLD

Go to Filter>Distort>Lens Correc tion. You can add lens distortion by setting the Remove Distortion to negative values. Play with the Chromatic aberration values too – this is where there is a failure of a lens to focus all colours to the same convergence point (Filter>Distort>Lens Correction). You might also want to add a little film grain ( Filter/Noise/Add Noise). If you plan 3D projection, skip this step – you will have to recreate these effec ts in Nuke.

23 LOAD INTO NUKE

Load the images using the Read node in Nuke, premult them and then add a Project3D node. Now plug in the .fbx camera (your old render camera will become projection camera in Nuke). The Project3D node goe s into your .obj. Create a Scene node and then a Scanline Render (your new moving camera will go into this). You can render your shot using a Write node.

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NG SCALE

To add life to the image and set the scale, place a character, for example a stormtrooper, close to the wreck

QUICK PROJECTION

Precomp your layers Alternatively you can set up a separate projection for each layer and you can precomp them before you create the final shot. The advantage is that the final render will be quicker and you can tweak your layers further in N uke. Please note that I didn’t plan to add a moving camera when I started to work on the matte painting, therefore the camera movement was quite limited. For more freedom you might need to extend your digital matte painting in Photoshop. Taking projections from Nuke to Mari might be another option.

TUTORIALS

Fire and smoke effec ts

FOLLOW THE VIDEO If you see the Play icon, use the link

3DS MAX | FUMEFX

MASTER THE ART OF FIRE AND SMOKE Vikrant J Dalal reveals how to create a man of fire using 3ds Max and the t he FumeFX plugplug-in in n this tutorial we are going to create a human character who appears to be made of fire – a Fire-Man, as seen in super-hero films, supernatural films and game cinematics. There are a number of plugins in 3ds Max that can create awesome fire and smoke effects: such as FumeFX, Afterburn, Phoenix FD, to name just a few. Many leading VFX and animation studios use FumeFX software in their pipeline, as this software gives good output, is trustworthy and user friendly. In this training, I’ll show you how to create this Fire-Man effect using 3ds Max and the FumeFX plug-in. In the space provided

I ARTIST PROFILE

Vikrant J Dalal Vikrant has eight years’ experience in the VFX industry and has started his own VFX studio called Project01 Design Studio, which provides VFX, graphic design and tutorial services.

project01studio. blogspot.in

here I can’t teach you each and every parameter of this software and plug-in, as this is very vast and would need a lot of time to go through; but after completing this tutorial, you will learn all you need to know to be able to produce a realistic Fire-Man character. There are different techniques to make this effect in FumeFX, for example you could use Object Source or Particle Source: we are going to use Object Source. Before you start working on this kind of effect, you should have a good knowledge of real-world scale. Also you must know what kind of fire and smoke effect you want to create for your character. Also, consider whether you want

only fire. You should prepare for the work by asking yourself the following questions: How big will the fire be? What colour will the fire be? Will fire emit from the whole body or from only certain parts of the body? Once you have your character description you can then start working on your shot. Another extremely important thing to do prior to starting working on your shot is to watch some references so you can better understand the properties of fire and smoke; their look and behaviour. Don’t be afraid to use your creativity and tools; you will soon find very good effects. For all the assets you need need go to creativebloq.com/vault/3dw199

EXPERT Change the fir smoke c Play with th setting and curve e will definitely i the look of Fir and make t more d CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO www.bit.ly/199-fire-tutorial

1

TOPICS COVERED

FumeFX Object Source FumeFX Container Setting FumeFX parameters Creating Noise Maps

SCENE SETUP

To create Fire-Man, we need to choose a character: while you could use a static character, an animated character will certainly improve the shot as the fire and smoke will be subjected to dy namic motion, and we will be able to see the interaction bet ween the fire, smoke and the character. I would suggest that you make this character walk, at the very least. Please refer to my video that is available to download via this issue’s online Vault. 3D WORLD

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2 CREATE THE OBJECT SOURCE

To create create Fire-Man, we will need two things : FumeFX Object Source and FumeFX Container. With the help of FumeFX Object Source, we will generate and control the fire and smoke. To create FFX Object Source, go to Create Panel>Helpers and t hen click on the drop-down menu and select FumeFX. Click on the Object Src button and generate it in the viewport by left-clicking.


STARTER

NOISE MAPS

Export a Noise Map as an Image

CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO www.bit.ly/199-fire-intro

Make sure you unwrap the character before applying the noise map, doing this mean that you can export the noise map as an image, and then this map will stick on to the character – otherwise the map will stay in the same position and the character will move ahead, resulting in a weird fire and smoke simulation. To export the noise map as an image, create the noise map, then right-click on it and select Render Map. Now set the Dimension and Output path, and hit the Render button. Doing this changes the noise map into an image that you can add to the FumeFX Object Source.

USING NOISE MAPS

3 CREATE A NOISE MAP

As we want to generate fire and smoke from certain areas, we need to create a noise map. Select FumeFX Object Source and go to the Modify panel, then select the Fuel option and click on the Disable button, and then select Source from Intensity, now you can see the None button is highlighted. Next, drag the noise map onto this button. Use the same procedure to control the Temperature, but don’t do this with Smoke, as we want it to emit from the whole body. 3D WORLD

4 CREATE THE CONTAINER

Go to Create Panel>Geometry tab, click the dropdown menu and select FumeFX. Generate the container in the viewport by left-clicking and dragging. Modify its parameter. In General Parameters, set Size 100x230x1 100x230 x125, 25, Spacing 0.275. Set output and playback range from 0 to 100. Go to Output Out put Path and make a New Folder on your storage drive. Save your c ache file. If happy with the general parameters, go to Obj/Src adding FFX Object Source into the Object tab. October 2015

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As I want to generate fire from a certain part of the body, and smoke from the whole body, I have created a Noise M ap. This This means th e fire will emit from the white colour areas only; not from the black ones

5 SIMULATION PARAMETERS

6 RENDERING PARAMETERS

7 PLACING THE LIGHTS

8 FUMEFX ILLUMINATION

9 RENDERING

10 POST PROCESS

In the Simulation section of the FumeFX UI, set In the Fire tab, create a gradient colour in Color. (To Quality to 10 and Iteration to 150. In the System match my gradient colour, please refer to the ‘color section, change Gravity to 0.5, Vorticity to 0.8, Velocity gradient code’ in my 3ds Max file, downloaded via the Damping to 0.01, and Turbulence to 0.05. In t he Vault). Then go to Smoke Smoke Color Color and set the Ambient Turbulence Noise section, set Scale to 7.5, Frame to R:0 G:0 B:0. In Smoke Color create a gradient to 2.5 and Details to 5.0. X, Y should be set to none colour: make the left-side colour R:45 G:45 B:45 and in Blocking Sides, but set Z to -Z. Now go to Fuel the right-side colour R:122 G:122 B:122. The Opacity Parameters. Make the Ignition Temperature 50.0, Burn should be set to 0.75, and both Cast Shadows and Rate 10.0, increase Expansion to 1.2. Press Simulation. Receive Shadows boxes should be checked.

USE REAL FOOTAGE

Experiment with footage We’ve created our Fire-Man character on a solid background, but you can enhance the scene by shooting a live scene using a handy cam, for example, and then try to use your animated character in that footage. Better still, you could shoot footage of a real actor, then model and animate to apply the effects to this model. If you do this, you will get a better idea of real lighting, compositing and what’s more, you will have accomplished a complete VFX shot: that shows your skills of shooting, camera tracking, FX and compositing. Also remember to add extra elements to merge the fire and smoke into the real footage.

Next, we need to place some lights. We are going to use Target Spot Light. For Target Spot, set the Light position to X:-285, Y:-300 and Z:40 0; and the Target position to X:0, Y: -20 and Z:60. Turn on the Shadows and go to the Shadow Parameters tab to turn on t he Atmosphere Shadows, with Multiplier set to 1.0 and Color set to White. Keep everything else default.

For the final rendering of fire and smoke, use the Default Scanline Renderer. To render the fire and smoke elements separately, press [F10] and go to Render Element Section, and then add FumeFX Fire and FumeFX Smoke elements into this tab. Then set the Frame Range and Output Resolution as per your requirement. Now save the Render Output Path and hit the Render button; after some time, you’ll see your fire and smoke element. 3D WORLD

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After setting up the lights, select the FumeFX Container and go to the Illumination tab. Add your lights into the Lights tab by clicking on the Pick Lights button. Then make the following changes in Multiple Scattering, because we want s ome fire illumination on the smoke. Turn on the Multiple Scattering, then increase the Maximum depth to 7, 7, keep the fire and smoke Strength default and increase the Falloff to 11.0.

We can now composite our fire and smoke element. So open After Effects and load these layers into the Timeline and assign some effects to it. Add some Color Balance, some Sharpen and Glow effects to the fire until you’re happy with the result. Now select the smoke layer and add some effect s on it, like Brightness and Contrast, some Sharpen and so on, until you’re happy that your Fire-Man effect looks just right.


TUTORIALS Recreate a battle scene

ARTIST PROFILE

Alex Farrell Farrell Alex is a 3D artist at The Neighbourhood, working predominantly in architectural visualisation. He also produces many of the scripts the studio uses, and is heavily involved in R&D. www.thinkinimages.co.uk www. thinkinimages.co.uk

3DS MAX | PARTICLE FLOW | FUMEFX | PHOTOSHOP

HOW TO CREATE AN EP EPIC VFX VFX SHO SHOT Alex Farre Farrell ll demonstrates how to recreate one of the


most memorable battles from Game of Thrones here’s no shortage of inspiring VFX shots in Game of Thrones, and one of the most iconic is the enormous wildfire explosion at the Battle of Blackwater. Recreating it might seem a little ambitious, but we’re going to employ a workflow that breaks down the original explosion to individual elements, and tackle each one separately. We will be using Particle Flow (PFlow) and FumeFX to create our pyrotechnic elements. The main advantage of PFlow is that we can use it to quickly create realistic, organic shapes for our explosions. We can also get realtime feedback

T

TOPICS COVERED

Previz Simulation Pipeline Post-production

3D WORLD

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on the influence of various forces before performing any simulations. As well as walking you through the creation of the main ‘body’ of the explosion, I will also show you how to produce the flying debris thrown into the air. I will cover how to effectively manage the array of cache files this shot will produce, and how a limited number of simulations can provide a huge variety of assets. FumeFX can be overwhelming for new users; changing certain parameters can often have large (and unexpected) effects on our simulations. We’ll cover the key areas, namely resolution, 64


turbulence, and the shaders used for the fire and smoke. Remember that directors and VFX studios use ‘smoke and mirrors’ to progress the evolution of an explosion – the camera will change position and focus mid-effect. During the Battle of Blackwater, there’s an establishing shot to show the scale of the explosion, but the camera cuts to show the reactions of the characters and close-ups of the destruction. We’ll recreate the explosion as it continues to grow and sets the fleet of ships at the harbour ablaze. For all the assets you need need go to creativebloq.com/vault/3dw199

NO SHOT TOO BIG

Large-scale VFX shots don’t need to be intimidating, especially when approached in a modular, efficient way

ERT TIP y add resolution resolution progressing immediately ow-res drafts to high-res mulations – the result can mmensely. Instead, olution gradually, ng major controls Turbulence he way. CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO www.bit.ly/199-gameofthrones

1

SCENE DECONSTRUCT DECONSTRUCTION ION

If we analyse the famous wildfire explosion in Game Of Thrones, then we se e it can be broken down into several key elements. There is a centr al plume which rises highest of all. Several smaller explosions sit below this plume, destroying the fleet. An arr ay of ablaze debris scatters from the centre of the explosion, leaving a smoke trail behind. Various ships are being destroyed, both by natural fire and green wildfire. 3D WORLD

2 EXPLOSIVE REFERENCE

Both YouTube and Vimeo are excellent resources for controlled explosions, with some videos specifically being labelled as a resource for FX artists. Getty Images also has a huge array of explosions filmed in studio environments on high frame rate cameras. Even though our explosion lives solely on the realm of fantasy, it is important to refer to how explosions evolve in real-life, as it will give our final effect that element of believability. October 2015

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3 VISUALISING SCALE

POST PRODUCTION

FUMEFX MASKING MAKE EFFECTIVE MASKS

4

Following on from the deconstruction in step one, we should create bounding volumes using simple primitives to block out our explosion. Apply the SeeThrough mode by pressing [Alt]+[X], so it is clear that we are using these for scale. It may be hard to visualise the actual size of the reference footage, so import or create height markers. A Cylinder wit h a height of 1.7m 1.7m and radius of 0.2m can be used as a quick reference guide for the human scale.

SET UP UNITS

Go to Customize>Units Step>System Units Setup, and set the System Unit Scale to Metres. Modelling small details can be easier in centimetres, but that’s not appropriate here. Most measurements within FumeFX will remain the same across the different unit setups, but bear in mind certain values such as Turbulence Noise for your simulation and Radius values for your PFlow systems will differ. Throughout this tutorial my Display Unit Scale will be set to Metres.

ONE SET ONE SET ALPHA CONTRIBUTION

Right-click the object that sits behind the FumeFX grid and select VRay Properties. In the Matte properties set the Alpha Contribution value to -1.

5 PARTICLE SOURCE GEOMETRY 6 PARTICLE FLOW CREATION

T WO ADD MULTI MATTE ELEMENT

Create a Circle with a radius of 100m and add both an Edit Poly and UV W Map Modifier. Add a Noise Map to the Diffuse slot of a standard material, and set Source to Explicit Map Channel. Set the Size to 0.05, and the High and Low T hresholds to 0.7 and 0.3 respectively. Add a Gradient Ramp to the Color #2 slot and set the Gradient Ramp to Radial. Apply this material to the Circle.

Go to Graph Editors>Particle Flow. Right-click in the Graph area and select New>Particle System>Empty Flow. Right-click the graph again and select New>Birth Event>Birth and connect these nodes together. Set the Birth Star t and Stop values to 1, and Amount to 2500. Right-click Event 001 and Append a Position Object, Speed By Surf ace, and Delete Operator. Set the Delete type to Particle Age, Life Span: 10, Variation: 5.

7 SET THE PFLOW PARTICLES

8 SET PARTICLE LIFESPANS

Add a MultiMatteEleme MultiMatteElement nt to your Render Passes and check isMATID. On the material of the object we excluded from the alpha, set the Material ID Channel to 1.

THREE USE THREE USE MASKS IN POST

Once rendered, the alpha will provide a quick way to isolate our FumeFX object in postproduction. And we still have a mask for the object we excluded.

In the Position Object Operator add the Circle we created earlier to the list of Emitter Objects, then do the same for the Speed by Sur face Operator. Also in the Speed by Surface Operator check the Speed by Material option, set Speed to 45m and Variation to 5m. Particles will emit from the full surface of the circle, but par ticles spawning from the centre will move slightly quicker, quicker, making our explosion more spherical. 3D WORLD

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Copy and paste ‘Event 0 01’ and hook it up to the PF Source node. Set its Birth Star t and End to 40. In the Speed by Surface Operator reduce t he Speed to 35m, and raise the Life Span in the Delete Oper ator to 15. This will create an additional quantity of fuel that ensures the fire continues to rage once t he initial shape has been defined.


ERT TIP FX grids are ly versatile; they e moved, rotated caled. Even after ating, you can alter re colour to change ok and feel of plosion.

9 SETTING UP FUMEFX

Create a FumeFX grid that covers the bounding volume defined in Step 3. Set the Width and Length to 250m, the Height to 100m, and the Spacing to 0.6m. In the Obj/Src tab, create a Par ticle Source from the Create From List but ton, then inside the Parameters for this Par ticle Source add our PFlow set-up using the Pick Object button. Set the Radius value to 2.5m.

11 SIMULATION SETTINGS

In the Simulation tab set Gravity to 0.65 and the Turbulence to 0.02m. In the Turbulence Noise settings set t he Scale to 75m and Detail to 5. In the Fuel settings set Burn Rate to 1, Expansion to 1.4, check Fire Creates Smoke, and set the Smoke Density to 1. The lower the value of the Burn Rate, the longer it will take for the fire to extinguish. Set the Ex tra Detail Mode to Wavelet Turbulence.

10 CACHE PARAMETERS

In Max’s Time Configuration settings set the End Time to 150. Echo this update in the General tab in FumeFX; both under the Out put and Playback settings. In the FumeFX Preferences check the Auto Synchronize Paths setting. Back in the General tab set the Default Path to a director y where you have at least 120Gb of hard drive space. If you don’t have this much space available ignore the Wavelet Turbulence setting in the next step.

12 FIRE GRADIENT

In the Fire settings of the Render tab, set Color to 0.6 and Opacity to 0.4. Click the colour swatch to alter the gradient of the shader. If it is set to a solid colour mode, right-click the swatch and select Key Mode. Create a gradient with a sharp drop-off from bright green to black. The Gradient file I used in my scene can be found in the downloadable content that accompanies this tutorial.

OPTIMISING THE SIMULATION

Saving time and memory

13 RENDERING THE SMOKE

In the Smoke Render settings, click the colour swatch for the Ambient Color and set the RGB values to 11,11,11. Use the same values for the colour swatch and set the Opacity to 2.0. Check both the Cast Shadows and Receive Shadows checkboxes at the bottom of the panel. The Fire shader in part icular can greatly alter the look of the explosion, however we will be rendering additional passes so that it can be altered easily in post-production. 3D WORLD

14 FUMEFX AND LIGHTING

Create a Target Spot light that points to the centre of your explosion and alter the Hotshot/Beam value to ensure that it is being fully illuminated. Position the light so that it is pointing side-on to the explosion from the camera’s view. In the General Parameters rollout, set Shadows to VRayShadow, and under Shadow Parameters turn Atmosphere Shadows on. In the Illumination tab of FumeFX use the Pick Light function to add the light to the list. October 2015

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Keep track of how much memory 3ds Max is using by right-clicking the taskbar and clicking Start Task Manager. The memory used will be listed beside 3dsmax.exe in the Processes tab. When rendering with V-Ray it may look like your render has stalled after loading all the objects and caches. This is due to the dialog box showing the progress of the Illumination Map calculation not always being shown – a step that can take several minutes. Save this time between renders by checking Read/Write to Desk under the Illumination tab in FumeFX. Also save RAM and disk space when exporting the post-process post-processed ed cache by excluding unnecessary channels. Check Minimize Grid in the Wavelet Turbulence Post (WTP) tab in FumeFX to optimise your export and reduce the file size.


15 SIMULATING AND SAVING

THREE-POINT L

16 FLYING DEBRIS

Click Start Default Simulation at the top of the FumeFX dialogue to begin processing the explosion, which can take several hours. If you feel it is taking too long you can raise the Spacing value to reduce the resolution of the grid. Once complete go to Preview>Make Preview to render a quick preview from your chosen viewport . If you had Wavelet Turbulence turned on, select Sim. Mode>Wavelet and repeat the process.

In a new scene, create a Circle in the Front viewport and set the radius to 100m, set the Z transform to 0, or level with your ground plane. In the Top viewport create a Plane and position it at the right-most side of the Circle. Back in the Front viewport, rotate the Plane -20 degrees in the Y axis. Add a Gravit y Force and a Wind Force. Create a FumeFX grid that covers the top half of the circle.

17 DEBRIS PFLOW SET UP

18 SETTING UP SPAWN NODES

Create a fak Being particle based, FumeF doesn’t contribute to the Nor pass in V-Ray, but we can se our own. Add three Spot Lig like those created in Step 15; change the colours of these t red, green and blue. Arrange them around the explosion; r from left, green from behind, blue from the top. Render thi addition to your regular s pass and bring it into Photos As with a regular Normals p this can be used to re-light our explosion.

Create a new Empty Flow and Birth Event in PFlow, hooking the two together. Set the Birth Start, End, and Emit values to 1. Right-click and append a Position Object, Speed by Surface, and Force node. On the Position Object, add the Plane to the list of Emitters. Do the same with the Speed by Surface node and set the speed to 125m. In the Forces node, add both of the Forces.

Append a Spawn node from the Test menu, set Spawn Rate to By Travel Distance, and the Step Size to 1m. Set Spawnable to 50, and Variation to 25. Set Inherited, Variation, and Divergence to 50. Create a new Spawn Test Event and Append a Delete node, set Life Span to 1 and Variation to 2. In the new Spawn node set Of fspring to 3, Variation to 15, and Divergence Divergence to 80. Then connect the Spawn nodes together.

19 SMOKE TRAILS SET UP

20 CREATE BLACKWATER BAY

EXPER A Pyrotechnic VFX el are usually shot a black backgr To remove this Blending Mode o elements to S

Adjust the Strength values of the Wind and Gravity Forces until the particles follow the Circle. I used a Gravity Strength of 0.03 and a Wind strength of 0.01. As with the explosion, add the PFlow system to the list of Sources within FumeFX. In the Simulation tab set the Gravity to 0.1, the Turbulence to 0.01, and the Turbulence Noise scale to 0.5. Increase the Smoke Opacity to 10 to make the smoke appear t hicker. 3D WORLD

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Create a Plane that will represent the ocean in your scene. Create a new VRayMaterial with a black Diffuse colour, and set the Reflec t colour to RGB 144,144,144 with a Reflection Glossiness value of .95. Add a Noise map to the Bump slot and change the Y T iling to 0.4. In the Noise Parameters set the Size to 3.5, and the High and Low values to .945 and .07 respectively. Apply this material to the ocean Plane.


PHOTOSHOP TIPS

ILLUMINATE THE SMOKE TRAILS

21 RENDERING FUMEFX

Merge the FumeFX grid into your scene and use the Output Preview window as a v isual guide when moving and rotating your explosion into position. Having a long sequence of cache files means we have lots of options and variations when it comes to rendering multiple explosions. Open the Render Setup window by pressing [F10] and uncheck Enable GI. Set the desired render size and hide every thing except the FumeFX grid, Spot Light and Ocean.

22 RENDER PASSES

Navigate to the Elements tab and add VRayWireColor, FumeFX Fire, FumeFX Smoke, Smoke, and FusionWorks Z Depth to the list of Render Elements. The latter works in the same way as the VRayZDepth pass does; simply use a Tape Helper to measure the closest and furthest points of the FumeFX grid. Also add the VRayRawReflection element to boost the strength of t he explosion’s reflection in the water. Click Render once all passes have been added.

ONE MASK ONE MASK THE DEBRIS

Move the render into a new group, use the alpha channel to mask both the group and the render. Right-click the mask for the render and select Apply Layer Mask.

TWO INCREASE TWO INCREASE BRIGHTNESS

23 FOREGROUND ELEMENTS

To frame the shot I constructed a simple cas tle wall, complete with torches and a wooden walkway. The characters were made with Fuse by Mixamo. As the wall uses a high-resolution displacement texture, I rendered the entire foreground separately to the rest of the scene. A VRay Plane light is used to create green highlights on the wall and the character s – this helps convey the size and intensity of the explosion.

24 ASSEMBLE THE BACKPLATE Create a new Photoshop document, adding the foreground, ocean, and explosion elements. When comping in scenery from photography add a Black and White Adjustment to the top of the layer stack. Add a Levels Adjustment as a clipping mask (press [Alt]+left-click) to the photography, and adjust the values until the greyscale levels match. When the Black and White layer is switched off the brightness levels of the photography closer match your render.

Create a solid black layer beneath the group to improve visibility. Add a Levels Adjustment to the group, and move the midpoint to the left.

THREE ADD THREE ADD THE GRADIENT

Select the Gradient tool by hitting [G]. Select the mask of the Levels and click-drag from the end point of the smoke trail to the start.

ERT TIP

25 FINALISING THE COMP

Create a new layer, fill it with black (press [D]+[Alt] +backspace) and set it as a clipping mask to the photography. Change the Blending Mode from Normal to Color Dodge and select the Brush tool by pressing [B]. Set opacity to 10 per cent by pressing [1] on the number pad. Sample the colours from the brightest areas of the explosion ([Alt]+left-click) and paint coloured highlights into the photography. Use the [ and ] keys to alter the brush size on the fly. 3D WORLD

26 THE FINAL GRADE

Create a Curves adjustment layer then hit [Ctrl]+[I] to invert the mask. Replicate the pictured curve profile to raise the mid-tones and the Brush to paint a blownout effect into the central areas of the explosion. Copy Merge by pressing [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[C], and Paste ([Ctrl]+[V] ), and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Blur. Set Radius to 5.0, click OK, and set the Blending Mode to Screen. Create a layer mask, invert by pressing [Ctrl]+[I] and paint a glowing effect into your scene. October 2015

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spectives e a flattened copy of your y pressing [Ctrl]+[A], [Shift]+[C], [Ctrl+[V], ect Edit>Transform> rizontal. A change of ctive can highlight reviously unseen.

TUTORIALS Master Houdini

ARTIST PROFILE John Moncrief John is the resident Houdini and dynamics tutor at Digital-Tutors. Digital-Tutors. His deep passion for putting beautiful, explosive effects on screen is only matched by his strong desire to share his skills. www.bit.ly/198-john

HOUDINI 14

GETTING STARTED IN HOUDINI John Moncrief explains explains how to overcome the pitfalls of starting out in a new software package earning a new 3D package can be a daunting task. There always seems to be a never-ending black hole of sliders, checkboxes, and rollouts. Plus, each company wants you to call their geometry something different (is it cube or box, sphere or ball, grid or plane?)… But try to remember the goal is the same; to design a visually interesting image or develop a tool that helps another artist to do so. The best way to learn Houdini is to tinker about with it. Remember you can save your work at any time and delete the file later if you want to, so get exploring and break things. When they break try and figure out what has happened. Almost every node, pane, and parameter in Houdini has an accessible help file. Look for the ‘?’ icon in the top right corner of

L

CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO

www.bit.ly/199-houdini-1 CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO

www.bit.ly/199-houdini-2

TOPICS COVERED Getting started Houdini desktop Contexts Orbolt

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panes, and while hovering over the name of a parameter press F1 to get specific help relating to that parameter. When you’re tinkering, adjust values aggressively. Set the parameter’s values high and low

Almost every node, pane and parameter in Houdini has an easily accessible help file to see what it ’s capable of doing, what it controls, and what it can be used for artis tically. However, it’s important when exploring like this to always bring a parameter’s value back to something reasonable before 70



moving on to see what the next parameter does. That way you are isolating the results of your changes to just the parameter you’re currently adjusting. Once you get a good grip on what each parameter does, then you can start blending them together to get really creative. A folder containing .hip files to be opened in Houdini is included in this issue’s online Vault. Use these to follow along along in the interface of Houdini. These files contain several more tips and tricks that are clearly noted within the interface of Houdini using the built in Sticky Notes tool. There are several folders which are empty, but are required for Houdini to work properly. For all the assets you need go to creativebloq.com/vault/3dw199

LET’S BREAK SOMETHING! ONE SET UP GEOMETRY Create a sphere by holding [Ctrl] and clicking the sphere icon on the left shelf. In the Parameters pane set the Y translation of the sphere to 5. Next, click the Rigid Bodies tab on the right shelf and click on RBD Object. Select the sphere in the viewport and press Enter.

SET UP YOUR PROJECT Houdini 14 now uses a projectbased system that automatically constructs a set of folders for every project you work on. To set up a new project, go to File>New Project, choose a directory to house your project folders and click Accept. If you’re working on multiple projects, go to File>Set Project to pick an existing project folder. It’s a good idea to have a default project you can use just for tinkering, then use a separate project for actual production work.

TWO MAKE TWO MAKE BREAKABLE Still in the Rigid Bodies tab, click Make Breakable. Select the sphere from the viewport and press Enter. Click on the Ground Plane icon, which will give the sphere something to collide with. Hold down the spacebar and press [A] to frame all the objects in the viewport.

THREE SIMULATE THREE SIMULATE Set the timeline to playback in real time by clicking the second button from the end of the timeline called Real Time Toggle. Click Play on the timeline and watch your first Houdini simulation! Remember to dig around inside the nodes that were created by the shelf tools to learn more.

USING SHELF TOOLS Houdini’s shelf tools are very robust. With a few clicks you can have a strong base for most types of simulations. You might feel like everything you do needs to be built from scratch, and while there’s probably not too many final shots created with the click of one shelf button, it’s worth noting that even in large studios many scene setups begin with the shelf tools.

USE THE RIGHT DESKTOP Spheres, fluids, dynamics and particles are data. Each area of the interface (pane) visualises or manipulates this data. One pane might be the network view, one the Material Palette. The pane arrangement is a Houdini Desktop. If working in dynamics use Technical desktop; for general tasks Build desktop. Customise the Houdini UI and save as desktops.

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TUTORIALS Master Houdini

THE TAB KEY IS YOUR FRIEND When searching for tools in Houdini you only need a part of the tool’s name. Instead of having to go to Tool Menu>Nurbs>Refine, all you have to do is hit Tab then press [R] and you’ll see all the nodes starting with R that are relevant to the context you are currently in. So no matter where the tool is located in any menu, you can easily find it with just a couple of quick keystrokes.

UNDERSTANDING CONTEXTS Houdini has different ‘contexts’ that handle different operations and each one has custom tools. The SHOP context for example handles Shading Operations; the DOP context handles Dynamic Operations. The tools within these contexts are called nodes. Houdini is very context sensitive, which means that you only get access to the nodes you can use in that context. This is great because it prevents you from creating a node in the wrong context. LEARN FROM ORBOLT Example files are a great way to learn. Use the Asset Browser pane to find a link to the Orbolt online resource (www.orbolt.com). Assets are available including character rigs, dynamic effects, shaders, and models. Once you choose an asset it’s automatically added to the Asset Browser in Houdini’s Houdini’s interface. FIND TRAINING AND HELP ONLINE ONE START HERE…

TWO TRAINING

THREE OD[FORCE]

Go to the Start Here link in the Help menu (www.bit.ly/198starthere). starthere ). The videos bring you up to speed on everything from viewport basics to building a digital asset.

Visit Digital-Tutors www.digitaltutors. com/software/ Houdini-tutorials-all to watch a variety of video-based training for all levels of Houdini software users.

www.forums. odforce.net built a family of artists and technicians. Users share insights and tips with newbies and veterans. There are also example files available.

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EXPLORE THE PREFERENCES Go to Edit>Preferences and start exploring. Here are a few things to adjust when you’re first getting started: in General User Interface, enable Color Pane Headers and Show Images for Image Files. Under Network Editor Editor,, Nodes and Trees, Trees, enable Show Full Input and Output Names on VOP Nodes. In Save Options change the Auto Save interval to 10 minutes or greater. It can be quite annoying if the file is trying to save while you’re simulating. TURN ON AUTO SAVE By default, the auto save feature in Houdini is turned on. But don’t be fooled: this setting is session-dependent, so you’ll have to do it manually at the beginning of each Houdini session. The option is found under Edit>Auto Save. It’s a good idea to have this on while you’re building a scene, but before you get ready to run a big render or a complicated simulation, turning this feature off can save some system resources and help speed up your workflow.

3D WORLD

DRAG EQUALS CONTROL When setting up particle or fluid simulations, always add a Drag Force node to your simulations. Drag mimics the loss of energy over time by applying force and torque to objects, helping them resist their current direction of motion. Drag will help you to control your simulations while maintaining a natural looking motion.

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TUTORIALS

Create a knight character


MAYA | ARNOLD | PHOTOSHOP | NDO | MUDBOX | ZBRUSH

DETAIL A CHARACTER FOR CINEMATIC PRODUCTION demonstrates different techniques to Carlos Cruz demonstrates achieve a realistic knight character n this tutorial, I will show you the process of making a character for a cinematic production. The first thing to do is to get all the reference that we might need for the character ready. For this character, I’ve chosen to take concept art from a Korean artist named Gpzang (Young june Choi) and turn it into a highly detailed CG character. You can see his original artwork here: www.gpzang.deviantart.com. I start by blocking out my character in Maya: it is really important here to use basic shapes in order to achieve the proportion in the fastest and cleanest way possible.

I ARTIST PROFILE

Carlos Cruz Carlos started as a 3D generalist and compositor in the advertising industry in Chile, then he moved to Finland and is now working as a freelance 3D character artist. calicg.artstation.com

In the second stage, I create a kitbash: so I start making a library of smaller details and pieces that will be used in the model many times. In the third stage, I create ornaments in the armour using Alphas and the plug-in Projection Master, and create the skin details with Maps from the Surface Mimic website www.surfacemimic.com inside ZBrush. Then I move to the UV mapping. It is really important here to have a good display in theUV layout to get the major information of pixels in the UV tile. For the texture stage, I use nDo2 that helps me to get the Ambient Occlusion from the

Normal Maps, and with Mudbox I start painting the texture to finalise in Photoshop. Then using Arnold for Maya, I set up the Shaders. Next I move to ZBrush, again to make the pose with the Transpose Master and create the hair with FiberMesh. At this stage I visualise the final composition of the piece. I finish off by setting up the render in AOV passes in Arnold. I then export as .exr files and import into Photoshop for the final composition. To help, I’ve included my textures and meshes to download from the Vault. For all the assets you need need go to creativebloq.com/vault/3dw199

EXPERT Check the ov char From time to time break to check the model. Bring a scre of the model into Pho and start to chang roughly to see wha improved. Then tak to model furthe 3D p

CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO www.bit.ly/199-knight

1

TOPICS COVERED

Modelling Texturing Shading Hair Post-production

BLOCKING THE MODEL

Inside Maya, use a base female model to set the basic proportion and then model each part of the armour with basic shapes; this enables you to change the proportion in an efficient way. It’s important to use basic shapes becaus e you will need to make many corrections at this stage to adjust the model so that it matches the concept art chosen. You also have to think about how all the parts will fit together. 3D WORLD

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2 REFINING THE MODEL

Refine the primary shapes to complete the model. Take Take your time here and pay attention to the details. At this stage I often c reate a kitbash. So in the same scene, next to the character, I star t building basic shapes that I will use often like belts, bolt s, and other parts of t he armour that will be duplicated many times. It is important to achieve a clean hard surface model using the orthographic views; use symmetry to help you.


A KNIGHT IN ARMOUR

Carlos manages to create a 3D character with great colours, lighting, texture, armour design and dramatic pose

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TUTORIALS


EXPERT Sav Time is very imp especially when yo production. By usi meshes, texture certain techniq can save y hours o

ORGANISATION

Working with names & la It is important to be very organised when character modelling as there are so man parts to think about and you h to jump from Maya to ZBrush then to Mudbox and Photosho You will end up with gigas of files, that include ZProject, Ma scenes, .obj files and so on. So you need to organise each file with a proper name and add a letter or a number to define the version. Sometimes things happen that mean your .obj files have an incorrect vertex order, but if you are organised, you will easily detect the error and will be able search for a solution. For texturing, working with layers and adjustment layers in Photoshop is really important for the shader development, because textures tend not to work the first time; I usually tweak a texture until version eight or 10 to achieve the shader that I want. Working in this way means that if you want to make a change in the texture, you can just go to the specific layer and edit only the adjustment layer, or add a mask to make th e changes, while the main image remains untouched.

3 MODEL THE ORNAMENTS

Now search for the alphas to make the ornaments. First, bring the alpha into Photoshop to eliminate the pixelation; you can do this by adding a blur effect in a very low value. Then bring the alpha into ZBrush where you can use the Morph Target to store the geometry, and then use the Projec tion Master to place the Alpha in the correct position and scale to project it. You can control how deep t he details will be projected using the Mor ph Target.

4 DETAILING THE FACE

To model the details of the face you’ll need to bring in a female skin displacement scan. I used one from www.surfacemimic.com.. Project the scans onto the www.surfacemimic.com model (I used Mudbox) as a greyscale file (t he face must be with its UV map), then export the greyscale file from Mudbox as .tga or .tiff .tiff and then im port this into ZBrush. In the Displacement tab, use the Morph Target Target to store the geometr y and then apply the displacement into the model.

5 UV MAPPING

To make the UV maps I mainly use Maya or in some cases U VLayout. In Maya 2015, the Unfold3D plug-in was added to the core soft ware and now it’s cleaner, easier and more accurate to make UV maps in Maya. I only use UVLayout when I have to replicate a model many times, so I can trans fer UVs very easily, and also if I modelled a belt with the UV layout, I would have an option to expand t he UV map in a perfect square. 3D WORLD

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TIPS FOR PHOTOSHOP

6 TEXTURING ARMOUR

HOW TO CONTROL THE DIFFERENT MAPS

For the armour, use the Normal maps extracted from ZBrush, then inside nDo2 convert to generate an Ambient Occlusion. Now you have a base map you can import into Photoshop to start texturing. The Ambient Occlusion map is a great guide as you have all the ornaments in the 2D space. Paint the Base diffuse map with textures from www.cgtextures.com, www.cgtextures.com, for instance. Keep everything in layers as we’re going to create the different maps by tweaking these.

ONE SET ONE SET UP THE CANVAS

In Photoshop, I import the Ambient Occlusion that was made in nDo2. I tend to work in 4K for the maps. I bring in basic textures to make the diffuse map.

7 TEXTURING THE LACE

To make make the lace effect in some parts of t he model use alpha images. I search the Internet for different images of lace and take them into Photoshop to build the alpha – luckily most of the lace images are photographed on a black background, so all I have to do is use the Cur ve tool in Photoshop to give the images greater contrast. Then make a tile of the image in the UV map section of the lace model.

8 SETTING THE SHADERS

I tend to do the shading and texturing tasks in parallel, because sometimes you have to go back to modifying the texture to achieve the s hading that you want. The most important thing to start shading is setting up the render. In Arnold I work using a linear workflow, so first we set the Display drive gamma to 1.0 and in Color Manager, in the Image Color Profile, change it to Linear sRGB. So now the render will look physically correct.

9 CREATE DIFFERENT MAPS

Little by little, I start adding layers of dirt, scratches and all the textures that are needed to achieve the diffuse map. The diffuse map doesn’t have any specular or shadow information.

THREE CREATE THREE CREATE OTHER MAPS

Back in Photoshop, take each texture map and create Glossiness, Specular and Bump maps. The reason why I keep everything in layers is because with the diff use map, I make a group in Photoshop and then duplicate it; I call this new group Specular Map, for example. Then I always use Adjustment layers to make changes in a non-destructive way in the layer, so if I need to go back to a previous stage it will be easy to do so. 3D WORLD

TWO ADDING TWO ADDING LAYERS

Creating the specular map depends on the material you’re using; think where the highlights are going to be and put in a whiter colour in those areas.

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TUTORIALS


EXPERT TIP Lighting is key A good lighting set-up can change the mood of your artwork, so try to have some reference of illumination and always pay attention to how shadows and reflection work on the model.

THE CONCEPT IS KE

Learn how to become a great storyteller In every 3D picture we end u telling a story, whether it’s a character or an environment; for that reason we need to be able to bring more realism t 3D image and always have to be mindful of the concept. Fo this project, I’ve tried to creat a knight that has the eleganc and grace of a beautiful wom and for that reason I put a lot of attention into the pose and her attitude, hoping to convey that idea. Making realistic me armour, or rendering a fabric a technical process – one whe we have to use good referenc and study reality – but to achi an appealing character, we ne to think how the character will interact in the scene that we a creating. What is beauty and w is grace are important questio that I ask myself whenever I tr make this type of character.

10 POSING THE CHARACTER

11 COMBING THE HAIR

12 LIGHTING AND RENDER

13 PHOTOSHOP AND COMP

For posing, bring all the parts of the model into ZBrush, then use the Transpose Master plug-in to make the whole model one subtool. In order to create a believable pose it is really important to have references. Before you start modifying the topology, try to move each part separately, and roughly pose the character, then move the pieces until you’re happy with the overall shape, after that you can start to bend and model the geometry to adjust the proportion.

For the final image, use t he IPR option in Arnold. This enables you to create a real-time render of the model so you can see how the light works. I set up Ai Skydome shader to illuminate the scene with a HDR. At the beginning, use low sampling so that you can see the result faster, and then start rotating and moving the HDR until you feel that the charac ter has a good composition. At this stage, I often use many HDRs to try different lighting setups.

For the hair use FiberMesh. Create a scalp by duplicating the geometry of the f ace model, then the hair can then be created on top of this. In this instance, I created the hair after the pose because I want to model and comb it according to the pose. In the scalp model, make a couple of polygroups. Then create the FiberMesh and star t combing by isolating the polygroups, this gives you a lot of control to achieve the haircut you want.

Once happy with the render preview, set up a high sampling, high-res image for the final output. For more control in post, set up t he AOV layers in Arnold; this will enable you to have each different pass in a different image, like diffuse, specular and so on. When the render is done, take it into Photoshop. To start compositing, import all passes and layers you have on Screen mode, then start adding adjustment layers to fine tune the final image.

14 POS POST T-PRODUCTIO -PRODUCTION N

Sometimes weird objects may appear to cut t hrough the different surfaces: if it is only a small detail consisting of a few pixels, don’t be afr aid to make corrections using a clone stamp. To break up the clean look of the 3D, I often add filters to improve the quality of the image, such as sharpen or a small achromatic aberration (to distort the image slightly), and lastly I add a little noise to break any banding that may occur. 3D WORLD

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3D PRINTING

3D MAKER Exploring the best 3D print art, technology and trends


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I can still remember seeing my first 3D print. I just stood there in awe


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Each of Michael’s sculptures is based on a specific tree, and named after the GPS coordinates of the place where it grew

INTERVIEW

GROWTH INDUSTRY Currently on display at 3D Printshow, Mi Michael chael Winstone Winstone’s organic forms, based on real trees, t rees, are a wonder wonder to behold behold o many artists, 3D printing is a relatively new medium. But not to Michael Winstone: he’s been using it to create art for an astonishing two decades. “It was the mid-1990s MICHAEL when I started to produce my first 3D print s,” WINSTONE he recalls. “I can still Michael Winstone’s work embraces a wide remember seeing my first print on range of digital media, a home-made kit. I just stood there including, 2D, 3D, 4D, in awe. It was very basic compared time-based installation to today’s standards, but it was a and interactive video revelation to me.” After that, Michael began to animation. He has used various 3D volume use Z Corporation machines, then rendering programs later on, Stratasys systems. “When for mathematical I starte d, I mainly used LightWave visualisation of fractal [for 3D modelling], as at the time forms which can both software and hardware were be translated into extremely expensive,” he adds. volumetric art. “When prices fell, my palette of expanded.” www.michaelwinstone.com software expanded.” Today Today Michael is f amed for his sculptures, which examine our own bodies within the context of the human family structure and its relationship with nature: in particular, trees, and their own external anatomy.

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Each sculpture is based on a specific tree, with the title being the GPS coordinates of the place where that tree grew or is growing. Michael uses images of the tree’s bark to texture and displace the surface of the 3D model, so older models preserve the striations and growth forms of trees that no longer exist, as well as current trees that may be lost in the future. “The elements within the work grow in the same way human, animal, and plant tissues regenerate: as substrates that are informed and infused with environmental forces which then grow to form their various functions within the natural world,” he explains. “They are transformed into complex intertwined sculptural structures.” Describing the process by which he created his eight-metre-high sculpture for Spain’s Expo Zaragoza, shown at the top right of the page, Michael comments: “First I recorded bark data from a white willow tree growing by the river Ebro in Zaragoza to form the foundation of the sculpture. With this work, my

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aim, apart from [the final ste p of creating a] bronze casting was to achieve a complete digital process. “I modelled the sculpture in LightWave, textured and displaced it using ZBrush, then exported it as an .stl file. The sculpture was milled in Styrofoam with a 5-axis CNC machine, then cast in bronze. Finally it was placed at the site using AutoCAD [to plan the ins tallation].” “As with other for ms of art, there is something pure and profound when the process is the same from conception to completion,” he adds. “I try to keep my work completely digital wherever possible.” possible.” Currently exhibiting his work at 3D Printshow California, Michael is also looking forward to 3D Printshow Dubai this November. “I have not exhibited in the Middle East before so the work will be seen by a new audience,” audience,” he explains. “Hopefully architects and planners will be able to see first-hand the potential for 3D printing sculpture in exterior urban landscapes.” Find more of the 3D Print Show, FYII FY visit www.3dprintshow.com


3D MAKER

Making a prosthetic hand

DOWNLOAD THE MODEL www.creativebloq.com/vault/3dw199

This issue, we have a 3D model of a hand to download, so that you can have a go at making your very own 3D prosthetic hand

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I F s s u e N A O L L E 2 0 X I M T N O W 0 , o T A ’ n U S s a T O l e 9 R I S e A p t L e m b e r

3D PRINT COLUMN

3D PRINT A PROSTHETIC HAND Aiman Aiman Akhtar Akhtar explains how you can use 3D printing

to help those in need of a prosthetic limb he news is full of stories about 3D printed prosthesis helping people regain their independence. So this month I decided to take a departure from being the 3D print designer, and instead be part of a 3D print support crew for a good cause. I knew I wanted to help but was honestly terrified. Being an entertainment artist and having no engineering background, I had no idea where to begin articulating something as complex as a human hand. It ’s also a big responsibility to take on; what if I did something wrong and the hand didn’t work. Far worse than my embarrassment is to give someone else false hope. Passionate volunteers have come together to help each other in this cause all around the world, such e-NABLE, a Google Plus community which grew to become the largest open source collection of 3D printed prosthetics online. I answered a call for assistance on 3D Hubs forum for printing a prosthetic hand and met up with Michael Repajic, a surgical attendant who is building a non-profit, Humanus, Hands United Inc, to supply 3D printed prosthetic hands to the homeless population of Los Angeles. He learned about 3D printing for prosthesis while taking classes at University of Southern

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California where the on campus 3D printing club was helping print hands for children in Haiti and Central America. Having volunteered at a homeless shelter in Los Angeles and seeing a need, Michael decided to bring the project home to his local community. Michael met with his first candidate and chose the Cyborg Beast prosthetic arm, one of the most popular designs available on www.enablingthefuture.org.. Jorge Zuniga www.enablingthefuture.org

Having no engineering background, I had no idea where to begin articulating something as complex as a human hand and the team at Creighton University released the Cyborg Beast model open source to the world, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license and have improved it steadily over the past two years with feedback from the e-NABLE community. Michael worked with a local 3D printing service provider, Lyle Thompson, owner of www.lylelabs.net, who volunteered to set up the proper configuration/scale for the hand and printed out all the parts. Michael then

ARTIST PROFILE Aiman Akhtar

Character artist Aiman enjoys creating personal, digital artworks and continues to work on various freelance projects. He’s also a beta tester for Adobe’s 3D print tools and continues to experiment with the technology. www.aiman3d.com

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED Improve and customise the designs and then upload them for everyone to share

Many of us early adopters of 3D printing technology are entertainment artists, yet if we own a 3D printer, that’s a good enough reason to get involved. Here are a couple of online communities to check out making real strides with 3D printed prosthesis. ENABLING THE FUTURE www.enablingthefuture.org Jon Schull is a Research Scientist at the Rochester Institute of Technology and founding member of the e-NABLE community. He helped setup the Enable Community Foundation, a non-profit which supports the global community of volunteers using emerging technologies to develop innovative solutions for underserved populations. The e-NABLE community is community is pioneering this

movement by designing, fabricating and distributing open-source 3D-printed prosthetics for people who need them, and giving them away for free online. Jon describes the volunteers as a diverse bunch, made up of tinkerers, engineers, 3D print enthusiasts, occupational therapists, university professors, designers, parents, families, artists, students, teachers and people who just want to make make a difference. difference. An interesting trend he has noticed in 3D printed prosthetics is that US children love Superhero Hands, girls like pink and purple, while in the developing world, more organic-looking hands are desirable. Visit the website and explore their forums to get involved and matched with someone in need of a hand near you.

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LIMBITLESS SOLUTIONS www.limbitless-solutions.org/ Founded by Alberto Manero, Limbitless Solutions is a company based out of Orlando, Florida that uses 3D printing to create personalised bionic limbs for children with disabilities. They partner with local companies, communities and corporations to sponsor each prosthetic, believing that no family should have to pay for their child to receive an arm. What distinguishes Limbitless is their push for bionic prosthesis of myoelectric design which can be controlled through muscle sensors, servos and an Arduino microchip. Evan Kuester, lead modeller/designer and Jackson DiMaria of the research and development team have worked

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on the production of several of the Limbitless prosthetic arms and are now in development on bionic legs. In fact, the majority of the team is made up of University of Central Florida students and recent graduates. As they grow, Limbitless is actively recruiting at other universities across the US and welcomes volunteers, support and ar tist submissions for prosthesis and sleeve designs on their website. Several more prosthetic hands are available online at model sharing sites such as Thingiverse and the NIH 3D Print exchange and many individuals have even crowd funded their own prosthesis such as in the case of the Cyborg Beast, www.cyborgbeast.org and the Open Hand Project, at www.openhandproject.org

3D MAKER

Making a prosthetic hand

The 3D printed hand was tested: a small crowd gathered to experience this little marvel of engineering and technology

cleaned up the print and added the strings and straps to prepare for a fitting. The Midnight Mission homeless shelter board of directors and staff generously lent us a conference room to test fit the 3D printed hand and analyse its effectiveness. A small crowd gathered to experience this little marvel of engineering and technology. The point of using 3D printing for prosthesis was obvious to everyone. Traditional prosthetics can cost several thousand dollars while mechanical 3D printed hands, such as the Cyborg Beast, start around $50. It’s hard to put a price on restoring people’s independence yet lowering the cost increases the accessibility for far more people. The first fitting went surprisingly well, and Michael left with several ideas on how to improve the design for the recipient’s individual needs.

Quicker iterations iterations allow for better customisation to each individual’s needs and improved functionality Cost is usually the big selling point fo r using 3D printing technology for prosthesis, yet through my first-hand experience, the biggest advantage is that it allows regular people such as ourselves to get more involved in our local communities. Quicker iterations also allow for better customisation to each individual’s needs and therefore improved functionality. The technology is also self-sustainable as seen in the example of project Daniel by Not Impossible Labs, where the team was able to set up a 3D printing lab in war-torn Sudan and within a month, the locals were able to print a hand per week! Whether making a difference in far off lands or in our own communities, the ultimate goal of technology is to bring us closer together and what’s better than figuratively and literally lending a hand? FYII FY

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For assets and 3D 3D print-ready print-ready models go to www.creativebloq.com/vault/ www.creativebloq.com/vault/3dw199 3dw199


DESIGN PROJEC T: CREATE A 3D PRINTED PROSTHETIC HAND The model files can be downloaded f rom www.creativebloq.com/vault/3dw www.creativebloq.com/vault/3dw199 199

ONE FIND ONE FIND A CANDIDATE

TWO PRINT THE HAND

THREE ADD THREE ADD FUNCTIONALITY

We met our candidate at the Midnight Mission homeless shelter in LA where Michael Repajic volunteered frequently. Finding a candidate is not hard as many people are eager to try, however you must assess his/her individual needs. This is not a one size fits all project as people’s injuries and limbs come in all shapes and sizes. The The Cyborg Beast is customisable to fit people who have lost their fingers or most of their hand but still retain some wrist movement. Our candidate had a remaining wrist range of about 1.5inches. Measure the knuckle area and scale all .stl files to fit accord ingly.

Before you begin to print, remember to carefully choose the correct arm assembly; the right or left hand models vary and are both included in the assembly file. Print the scaled .stl files on a quality printer with choice of filament (ABS, Flex series, etc). Our hand was printed by Lyle on a Makerbot as the cost is far cheaper with a FDM type printer and the generated plastic parts are more durable than nylon or resin. Once printed, sand down any sharp points and drill into the holes to clear the parts of any burr and make sure everything connects smoothly.

Attach all screws/bolts on the fingers and connect the various parts. Detailed instructions on this step are available on the Enabling the Future website and the accompanying pdf in the Cyborg Beast zip file. After parts are articulated it is time to add functionality by inserting flexible string and creating knots in order to hold the flaccid fingers in an upright position; these strings act similarly to h uman tendons. Dip the fingers in plasti-dip or dip ‘n’ grip material to increase gripp ing ability of fingers. There’s no sense in having perfectly smooth fingers as they will be put to daily use for all sorts of tasks.

FOUR PREP FOUR PREP FOR FITTING

FIVE ADJUST FIVE ADJUST TENSION

SIX FIT SIX FIT THE HAND TO THE RECIPIENT

Attach medical grade foam to the printed palm and gaunt let using super glue. The foam prevents irritation from rubbing and chafing of the skin and provides support and comfort. The Cyborg Beast has built in connectors on the side, through which Velcro straps can be looped in order to make the hand secure and wearable. The .pdf recommends using mu ltiple Velcro Velcro straps on each side of the print, but we found that looping a single, longer Velcro Velcro strap through both connectors enables the user to put it on without help and strap it tightly to the arm with ease.

The printed hand needs to be wrapped tightly to the candidate’s arm for it to function at maximum efficiency. Even so, the default tension of the tendon strings may not be enough to fully contract the fingers. The Cyborg Beast has a tensioner bricks which can be tightened by rotating the screw causing the string to become tighter and allowing for less movement to create a smooth and firm finger contraction/ grip. In addition, our candidate had not used the necessary wrist muscles in over 30 years so additional physical therapy was required to master the device.

The first fitting went surprisingly well as the recipient tested out his range of motion and took charge in describing what was working and where he was having trouble. There’s There’s not always an ‘Aha’ ‘Aha’ moment and our hand req uired additional customisation to fit the needs of our candidate. Fitting a 3D printed hand is relatively quick, yet optimising it for efficient daily use requires testing and iterating. The The most exciting aspect of this technology is that new prosthetic hand designs and innovations are being made every day and shared amongst the worldwide community and we can all join in.

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AN

EVOLUTION IS

COMING

T H H E E N E E W W � � L O O O K K

S F F X X

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ON SALE 19 AUGUST 2015 20 15 bit.ly/buySFXmag

CONTENTS

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OUR AW A WARDS

Theory, research and reviews plus industry insights from today’s experts BEST IN CLASS

Awarded to products that excel in their class.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Awarded to great products that achieve a high standard.

88 NUKE TECHNIQUES

90 BUILDING A NEW VIRTUAL REALITY

Speed up scripts with performance timers

VR isn’t just for gamers. Meet Nurulize, creators of a new breed of virtual environments

97 REVIEW: PHOTOSCAN A robust, affordable photogrammetry tool


[email protected]


96 REVIEW: RENDA PW-E7F

97 REVIEW: UNFOLD3D 9

100 MY INSPIRATION

Overclockers enters the workstation market

The UV mapping tool gets a strong update

This issue: Saizen Media’s Davide Bianca

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DEVELOP

Nuke techniques

NUKE TECHNIQUES

Performance timers in Nuke In the second of his guides to core Nuke techniques, Josh Parks Parks explains how to create a custom node to find bottlenecks bot tlenecks in your scripts

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AUTHOR PROFILE Josh Parks Josh is a compositor at MPC, as well as a part-time lecturer at the University Of Hertfordshire www.joshparks.co.uk

ast month, we went over some simple tricks for optimising your workflow in Nuke. This month, we’re going to be covering a more advanced technique, so because of this, I’m dedicating a whole tutorial to the subject. As your sc ripts become more complex, you will sometimes find that they start to run more slowly. By using the knowledge you gai ned in the last tutor ial and by search ing th rough post ings on technical forums, you can generally guess what’s making them lag, but you still won’t have proof. Often the only solution is to go through your script line by line disabling nodes until it becomes more responsive. The solution is to use Nuke’s performance timers. When active, these turn the most intensive nodes in the g raph red, and state

under each node the time it took to calculate. This information is incredibly incredibly useful when run ning large scripts as it enables you to intelligently intelligently turn off nodes that take longer to cache, then turn them back on before you render,

Performance timers enable you to intelligently turn off nodes that take longer to cache meaning that you a ren’t slowed slowed down when hardware resources are limited. This mode can be activated by calling a Pyt hon fun ction. However, I’m going to show you how to turn the command into a button with in a node. Th is will enable you to turn the mode on and off in a more efficient way.

An a lternative wou ld be to add it to your toolbar, but this would mean editing Nuke’s menu.py or init.py file, which companies can sometimes get funny about. For that reason, I’ve found a button within a node the most useful way to implement performance timers. You can simply store the code in a Google Doc, allowing you to access it at any time, then copy and paste t he node into the script you want to evaluate, and delete it when done. It also gives you the option to set it as a tool for easier use. In the walkthrough on the right, I’m going to show you how to create your own node with the button in place. I ’ve only tes ted the script in Nuke 7 and 8, so I can’t guarantee it works in older versions of the soft ware. For all the assets you need need go to FYII FY creativebloq.com/vault/3dw199

WARNING COLOURS Make custom nodes colourful!

I personally go for a bright colour when creating a custom node so that it’s obvious if I’ve left the node in a script. It’s important to cover yourself in case someone else has to jump into the script and work out what is going on. Making the node a bright colour will make it immediately noticeable, avoiding an artist stumbling across a node that isn’t connected to anything else.

Nuke’s performance timers show the nodes that take longest to calculate in red

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I F s s J O O u e N L L S U 2 0 K H O ’ E W 0 , o T S N n U E s a T O X T l e 9 R I S e A L p t e m b e r

STEP-BY-STEP

PROCESS: IMPLEMENT PROCESS: IMPLEMENT PERFORMANCE TIMERS Create a custom node with a button to analyse your script

ONE MAKE ONE MAKE A NoOp NODE AND NAME IT

TWO ADD TWO ADD A PYTHON BUTTON

The first thing to do is create a NoOp node. This is going to be our starting point for creating the button. A NoOp node is exactly what its name suggests: a node that performs no o perations, providing a blank canvas on which to create your own custom node. To bring a NoOp into your script, hit [Shift] and type NoOp, then hit [Enter]. Enter a name and colour for the node.

To create a button that will run a custom Py thon script, bring up the NoOp’s properties by doubleclicking it. Right-click anywhere in the Properties panel (not in the Label panel) and select Manage User Knobs. This panel allows you to add predefi ned types of knobs to your node. Select Add Knob, then Python Script Button.

Sc riript :

CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO

www.bit.ly/199-nuke

I mp mp or or t n uk uke ##Defining our definition def performance performanceTimers(): Timers(): ## If nuke is using performance timers then stop them if nuke.usingPerformanceTimers(): nuke.stopPerformanceTimers() ## if nuke is not running performanc e timers turn them on else: nuke.startPerformanceTimers() return ## now run our function performanceTimers()

THREE PASTE THREE PASTE IN THE PYTHON SCRIPT Here’s the Python script you need to copy into the Python Script Button. It can be found in the downloada ble content for this tutorial on the online Vault. First, label the button: in the Label field, type Activate/Deactivate Performance Timers. Timers. In the Name field, type timersButton. timersButton. This is the name that is called when referring to the but ton in a TCL expression. Type the Python script into th e Script field. Finally, enter the tooltip text you want to appear when you hover the cur sor over the button in t he Tooltip field.


FOUR TOOLSET FOUR TOOLSET THE NODE

FIVE PUSH FIVE PUSH THINGS FURTHER

In order to quickly bring your new no de back into Nuke, you can use Nu ke’s toolsets. This will enable you to search for it when you hit [Tab] , which will save you from having to create the node from scratch every time. To do this, select the node and click the spanner icon on the left-hand toolbar, then select Create.

If you want to push this idea one step fur ther, you can add the node into your own toolbar within Nuke. The Foundry has a great tutorial on its YouTube YouTube Channel (www.bit.ly/nuke-menu-items www.bit.ly/nuke-menu-items). ). This covers everything on you need to know to make your own toolbar. Creating your own toolbar is a more efficient way of integrating your own tools within Nuke.

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DEVELOP

Industry interview

INDUSTRY INTERVIEW

Building a new virttual reali vir realitty VR is isn n’t ju just st fo forr ga game mers rs.. Kerrie Hughes meets meets Nurulize, creators creat ors of a new breed of virtual environments

AUTHOR PROFILE

Kerrie Hughes Hughes Kerrie is content manager at 3D World’s leading industry website Creative Bloq. She is a former staff writer for 3D World and writes regularly for ImagineFX magazine.

creativebloq.com

A concept illustration for Desert Home, Nurulize’s VR environment. The rendered version is fully photorealistic, as you can see overleaf

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V

irtual reality is not a new concept. The idea of creating immersive computer-generated environments for users to explore and, in many cases, interact with, first came to the public’s attention in the late 1980s. However, at the time, the expectation far exceeded the experience. Despite the huge popular interest, the technology of the time wa s unable to deliver,

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and for all but a select few, VR remained the stuff of dreams. Now, more than a quarter of a century on, things are changing. With the arrival of a new wave of high-quality, low-cost virtual reality devices like the Oculus Rift, it seems that the promise of VR will final ly be realised. The potential for this new technology to transform gaming – the market for which the Rift was

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originally developed – is obvious. But how will virtual reality affect other parts of the CG industry? To find out, we spoke to two people with a keen awareness of VR’s capabilities: Scott Metzger and Philip Lunn, the industry veterans behind new software developer Nurulize, which aims to bring virtual reality to fields as diverse as product visualisation and visual effects.


DEVELOP

Industry inter view

The NuReality Desert Home: a VR environment Nurulize describes as a virtual ‘vacation space’

SCOTT METZGER

Scott is a VFX industry veteran, with a CV that includes both Digital Domain and Method Studios. He is now Nurulize’s CCO. www.nurulize.com

One way in which virtual reality differs from traditional forms of CG is the ability of the viewer to interact fully with the image. “When they have the ability to look anywhere, people tend to look very closely at things,” says Scott Metzger. “They also want to look behind things. They want to look in areas that, in a video game, they never get the opportunity to see.” Unfortunately, the things that interest the viewer in a VR scene may not be the ones that its creators expect. “You may be building this beautif ully animated character, but when you put someone in virtual reality, they [may] choose to look at something else in the corner,” says Scott. This means that artists working in VR need to invest the same amount of effort in every part of a scene, not just the key areas.

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“It’s a completely different way of thinking about 3D space,” says Scott. “You almost have to create [a VR environment] in a way that you build real spaces. If you build a room, you’re not going to leave a portion of it unfinished, because you know someone someone is going to want to put something there. Because the user has the freedom to explore any element up close, you have to finish every detail. When you start losing the resolution, or losing the detail, you lose the immersive effect”

Points, not polygons

“Phil and I decided that the best way to do environment capture more quickly is to th row out the time-consuming parts of the process,” Scott explains. “The current pipeline is immense – you have to take all the scan data and convert it to polygons, then resurface it and line up the

VR is a new way w ay of thinking about 3D. 3D. You almost have to work in the same way that you build real spaces

To enable artists to create the detail necessary for VR environments, Nurulize has begun developing new tools to help automate the process. One of these is Atom View, a new real-time engine for visualisi ng point cloud data from 3D scans of real environments.

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cameras, and it’s just a big hassle. We thought, ‘Why don’t we just deal directly with scan data as points?’” As Scott points out, working in this way does not just save time: it also preserves the detail of the original scan data. “There’s so much beauty to a raw point cloud scan that gets lost when

Nurulize plans to allow users to customise the Desert Home by installing their own downloadable content

INSIDE THE NUREALITY DESERT HOME How Nurulize’s photorealistic environment points to the fut ure of produc t visualisation

converting to polygons,” he says. “Polygons destroy small details.” Of course, the reason that artists traditionally convert point data to polygons is that the raw data looks noisy when rendered: an issue that Scott is well aware of. “What makes Atom View so different from any other point cloud software is that it’s going to look really, really good – to the point where you don’t have to go and do the whole [manual cleanup] workflow,” he says. “We’ve also been working with Chaos Group to get V-Ray renders into Atom View. If you want to quickly get content into VR [by reusing] assets, you can bake out your renders as object space points and integrate them very quickly.”

Real-time realism Atom View is not not the only project that Nurulize has been working on. Drawing on Scott’s production

When Nurulize founders Philip Lunn and Scott Metzger started working on their NuReality Desert Home project, they set out to d eliver the future of virtual reality, handcrafting a living space that would redefine the way people work, play and connect with others. A photorealistic recreation of nearly six acres of the real world, Desert Home was reconstructed using lidar scan data and HDR imagery captured using 36.3 megapixel Nikon D810 cameras. “I think the Desert Home is a great contribution to the thinking surrounding VR, in [terms of] the amount of detail and craftsmanship

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that has gone into the house,” says Scott Metzger “The beauty of this capture [process] is that every photograph has five exposures, so it’s 30 stops of light information. All that information is really important for realism, particularly reflections.” Designed as a zen-like space that users can personalise with downloadable content, Nurulize plans to allow manufacturers to use Desert Home to preview new products. “One big [market] we can use this technology for is product visualisation,” says Scott. “We want to create something that you can visualise products from. Say you want to check out a new laptop: the


one thing you can’t get from looking at a 2D image is proper depth, right? That’s one of the big advantages of the house: it gives you that sense of depth. You have this sandbox for experiences in a comfortable [setting] that isn’t just an empty space without any soul.” Scott believes that this is a key advantage of VR over augmented reality, in which viewers are shown 3D representations of objects within the real world. “When showing commercial projects inside VR, you get to control the environment,” he points out. “We get to dictate what you see, [so] with VR, it’s complete immersion.”

DEVELOP

Industry inter view

OPENING THE MARKET

How Oculus kickstarted the VR revolution

Until recently, VR was a technology that only a select few were able to use. That changed in 2013, when Oculus VR began shipping the first dev kits for the Rift, its pioneering low-cost, gamer-friendly VR headset. “Oculus did something amazing in the beginning, which [was to allow] anyone to acquire a d evelopment kit and start experimenting, experimenting,” ” says Scott Metzger. “Most technology is held onto in secret for a ver y a long time, allowing only select developers have access. Oculus was pretty much handing out gold to anyone with enough faith in VR.” The schematics for the original device have since been made open source, and a consumer version is due early in 2016. The success of the Rift has also prompted electronics giants like Sony, Samsung and HTC to begin d eveloping their own hardware. “VR isn’t new,” points out Scott. “But with great design and amazing passion, Oculus inspired multiple industries to get excited over computer graphics again and to start dreaming of different possibilities.”

Nurulize believes that VR is poised to transform the way we experience the world, from movies to product marketing

experience, the duo have also been developing NuReality NuReality Des ert Home: a VR experience that replicates a real, mid-century modern home in the desert with an unprecedented level of real-time realism. PHILIP LUNN “The plan with the house is Philip founded really to make a piece of software rendering software that we enjoy and use ourselves developer Bunkspeed, every day,” Scott says . “We were acquired by Dassault talking about successful VR apps and how we consider it a success Systemes in 2013. He if you can stay inside the app for a is now Nurulize’s CEO. www.nurulize.com long period of time. That isn’t as simple as it might sound. The experience of doing something in virtual reality that doesn’t correspond to the real world – for example, running through a room in VR while remaining sat down in reality – sends mixed messages to the viewer’s brain that can rapidly induce nausea. “Being able to get through that and properly spend time in VR is a

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really important thing,” says Scott. go to [stereoscopic] 3D movies “You need to create something and get excited any more,” he compelling enough that [the says. “When you compare 3D to viewers] viewers] want to stay stay inside inside it.” it.” VR, the dif ference in immersion With Desert Home, Nurulize is laughable. If you want my believes that it has done just that. ticket money, it won’t come f rom “Ultimately, it’s a [showing] 3D movies on a 2D vacation home where where screen in a t heater.” you can go and hang Other growth sectors out,” says Philip Lunn. may include teaching and “It’s a nice place to get away [to] telecommunications. Scott and spend time socialising, and believes that VR will usher in making music, and playing.” “a new era of entertainment, But as well as making Desert communication and e ducation”. Home a place to play, Nurulize Going mainstream aims to make it a place to work. Phillip also believes we are set You You can read about how the duo plans to use the space as a platform to spend much more of our lives inside VR. “A good percentage of for product visualisation in the people who do creative work on a boxout on on the previous page. computer will put on their headset The next big thing? and then just be in there eight Aside from product marketing, hours a day,” he says. what does the future hold for For that to happen, the virt ual realit y? Scott believes experience of working in virtual that mainstream entertainment reality will have to be a pleasant is a key target market. “I can’t one. Hardware like Oculus’s new

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Details matter in VR. Unlike a game or movie, viewers are free to go anywhere, inspecting models up close

Rift headset has a key role to play here. “It’s very lightweight, it’s high-resolution, and it feels very comfortable on your head,” says Phillip. “You could have it on for quite a while. When you come out into the real world you may find that you actually liked it better in VR and want to go back in.”

things on their head,” Phillip says. “I went out on a camping trip with five other guys recently, and none of them had really heard about VR. They sort of knew that Facebook bought something in that area [Facebook [Facebook acquired R ift developer Oculus VR i n 2014] but had no idea what VR was. So I pulled out

Portable devices like Google Cardboard are what’s what’s going to spread VR. They’re going going to be the gateway drug into fullfull-imme immersion rsion virtual reality Another important thi ng about the next version of the Rift is that it will be a proper commercial product: not just an early-access development development kit availa ble to a small number of hardcore fans. “Unfortunately, most of the world still hasn’t experienced VR – there are very, very few people who have actually put one of these

this little portable headset and they tried it, and I watched their reactions. Everyone was blown away. And that’s it – you have to experience it to understand it.”

Mobile: the gateway drug Devices like the Rift, or its upcoming competitors like Sony’s as-yet-unnamed Project

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October 2015

Morpheus, will bring virtual reality to gamers worldwide. But for Phillip, the technology that will finally bring VR to the masses is the mobile phone. Rather than producing headsets with built-in screens, companies like Google and Samsung are developing low-cost mounts into which you can slot your existing smartphone and use it as a virt ual reality viewing device. “I think the portable versions, whether it’s Google Cardboard, or the Samsung Gear VR, or the Zeiss VR One, are what’s going to spread virtual reality,” says Phillip. “They’re going to get people saying, ‘OK, this is what VR is. Now I want the real experience.’ Then they’ll try it on a PC and actually [be able to] look at things up close. I look at the port able versions as the gateway drug into full-immersion virtual reality.” For more more on Nurulize’s Nurulize’s work, FYII FY go to www.nurulize.com

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VR AT THE CINEMA The next big thing for m ovies?

Virtual reality holds exciting possibilities for the world of film. “This is just the infancy of VR,” says Scott Metzger. “I think in the next few years you’re going to see really great things.” One possibility is that VR will become a standard part of the cinema experience, in the same way that stereoscopic 3D is now. “To get a really amazing experience with a movie, [you’re] going to need huge amounts of data,” says Scott, pointing out that this will be easier to deliver directly than via the internet. “In future, I think theaters will have huge servers to stream that data locally. You just bring your headset and plug it in. That would be prett y phenomenal.”

DEVELOP

Hardware review review

HARDWARE REVIEW

RENDA PW-E7F PRICE

O AUTHOR PROFI

James Morris

James Morris has been writing about technology for two decades, focusing on content creation hardware and software. He was the editor of PC Pro magazine for five years. www.tzero.co.uk

£3,384.11 plus VAT |

verclockers verclockers is a PC manufacturing brand with a solid reputation in high-end gaming systems. The company is now transferring its skills to t he professional market and launched a new workstation range called RENDA. We’ve looked at the PWE7F, and it shows potential. The main component choices won’t raise eyebrows. The CPU is an Intel Core i7, which as we have come to expect has been ‘frequency enhanced’. The Core i7-5960X is rated at a nominal 3GHz, but Overclockers have permanently set it to 4.2GHz, kept under control by a meaty water-based cooling system, although the CPU will still drop down when not in heavy use. It’s an Extreme processor, with eight physical cores, doubled to 16 virtual

COMPANY

Overclockers |

WEBSITE www.overclockers.co.uk/LP/renda.php

cores by Intel I ntel Hyper-Threading. Hyper-Threading. The Core i7 is partnered with 32GB of 2,133MHz DDR4 DDR4 memory arranged as four modules, so full advantage is taken of the processor’s quad-channel architecture, leaving four slots for upgrade. Overclockers has taken the unusual decision to equip the PWE7F with AMD FirePro graphics, despite Nvidia’s Quadros having around 80 per cent of the market. This is relatively wise because the W8100 is the pick of AMD’s bunch. It’s a little more expensive expensive than a Quadro K4200, but comes with twice the GDDR5 frame buffer – 8GB instead instead of 4GB – and a healthy 2,560 Stream Processors, with around twice the bandwidth at 320GB/sec thanks to a 512-bit interface. It also offers a quartet

of 4K-supporting DisplayPort connections, should you want a huge video panel array. Storage is predictably solid state disk and regular hard disk. The former is a 256GB Samsung 850 Pro and the latter a 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 – a reasonable configuration. However, the RENDA doesn’t include an optical drive or multi-format memory card reader. You You wouldn’t use t hese every day, but it’s useful to have them. We also might have expected a PCI Express-based M.2 solid state disk, since the Asus X99-E WS motherboard supports this.

Strong all-rounder The PW-E7F PW-E7F proved a capable allrounder. The Maxon Cinebench R15 rendering result of 1,717 is very commendable, and the OpenGL result of 183.21 is excellent. The SPECviewperf 12.02 tests were very good too. too. The The result result of 70.84 in Maya-04 shows it’ll be a great system for modelling with Maya, and the sw-03 s core of 87.7 implies good capabilities with SolidWorks. Other highlights are 3.7 in energy-01, 55.83 in showcase-01, 27.28 27.28 in medical-01 a nd 79.12 in

Overclockers has taken the unusual decision to equip the PW-E7F with AMD FirePro graphics RENDA is the new professional workstation brand from Overclockers, and it shows promise with very good rendering and modelling performance WATCHING WA TCHING THE CLOCK

Overclocking may seem shady but with appropriate cooling and settings they’re easily able to run for extended periods above official ratings, with with no concerns over stability. stability. Hence manufacturers are willing to provide at least three years of warranty for their frequency enhanced settings.

snx-02. Overall, the W8100 provides abilities about equal or better than a Nvidia Quadro K4200, so great for any kind of modelling or design. With very good rendering and modelling performance, the RENDA PW-E7F PW-E7F is strong in every area. It’s not particularly cheap but an impressive debut. We can’t say yet how good Overcl Overclockers ockers will be at at supporting supporting the professi professional onal 3D content creation market, but the hardware shows promise and exemplary build quality. VERDIC T

MAIN FEATURES

3GHz Intel Core i75960X at 4.2GHz 32GB 2,133MHz DDR4 SDRAM AMD FirePro W8100 with 8GB GDDR5 memory 256GB Samsung 850 Pro solid state disk 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 SATA 7,200rpm hard disk Warranty: 5 years, 3 years’ collect and return, 2 years’ labour

SOFTWARE REVIEW

Unfold3D Generation 9 PRICE

MAIN FEATURES

Can select by group, material or smoothing group Engine overhaul – it unwraps faster New brush tools New island tools Overhauled, easier UI

299 (Freelance licence) |

COMPANY

Polygonal Design |

WEBSITE www.polygonal-design.fr

T

hings have been quiet on the UV mapping front lately. Hopefully, other developers are doing what Polygonal Design has been doing: rethinking their entire UV mapping applications. In Unfold3D 9, that rethink shows. Even though commands and workflow remain the same, bar some key remaps, the new UI is significantly easier to work with, down to touches like redesigning most of the lower program bar so you can customise your UV mapping parameters even more, and adding new tools, like the option to prevent overlaps. However, the new version’s main strengths are its speed and changes that improve workflow, like the updated unwrapping tools. Unfold3D has done away with the Relax function, and has replaced it with Pinch, Drag or Spread, along

Generation 9 is a significant update to Unfold3D THOR PROFILE

styn ch-Yagher artist and educator, s ,

.com

with accompanying, customisable brushes. Island select ion has also been made easier, as you can now finally select assets by group, material or smoothing group. Support for Lua scripting has been added, and the previously strict mesh import regime relaxed.

Overall, Unfold3D 9 is a very good overhaul, and worth looking into if you need something that unwraps fast, with no muss or fuss – especially if you’re a student, as you get a 50 per cent discount. VERDIC T

SOFTWARE REVIEW

PhotoScan 1.1.6 PRICE

MAIN FEATURES

Advanced photogrammetry toolset Creates meshes and textures in standard formats Most processes automated Professional version available

$179 (Standard: version reviewed) $3,499 (Professional) (Professional) |

B

uilding stuff in 3D can be laborious, even if you have good reference material to work from. PhotoScan, Agisoft’s photogrammetry software, has been designed to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, using a set of reference photos of an object to generate a working textured mesh that you can take into your 3D application of choice choice to retopologise.

COMPANY

Agisoft |

WEBSITE

www.agisoft.com

PhotoScan quickly creates usable meshes and textures from photographs

THOR PROFILE

ike Griggs e Griggs has been He has worked in from VFX for film and TV. .creativebloke.com

Automated workflow The workflow is relatively straightforward. You take photos of the object you want to model f rom various angles, import them into PhotoScan, align the images, and let the software create the mesh. Most of the process is automated, although masking the photos manually can help, but in practice we found that PhotoScan

3D WORLD

needs a lot of steady, sharp photographs to get a really good model, and that the mask tools are fairly basic. You will also need a computer with a decent GPU – the software is OpenCL-accelerated – otherwise mesh creation can take some time.

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PhotoScan does give you a good way of getting accurate models into your computer, computer, but but it shouldn’t shouldn’t be regarded as a quick fix: it takes time to get the images right in order to achieve decent results. VERDIC T

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40 years of ILM, plus discover the /VFX of Avengers: Age of Ultron Model Star Wars inspired spaceships Master the new modelling tools of Maya 2016 Create an epic sci-fi environment in Modo Downloads Vi Downloads Vide deo o tu tuto tori rial als, s, project files, resources and more!

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Issue 190 January 2015 Create ZBrush Robot Art Unleash your modelling skills to create a killer sci-fi predator Learn to use 3ds Max to create your own film 25 Maya tips for making game environments The ultimate guide to the 3D printing phenomenon Downloads Vi Downloads Vide deo o tu tuto tori rial als, s, project files, resources and more

CG AWARDS SPECIAL! Featuring the winners, with 16 pages of extra content!

Issue 189 Christmas 2014 Create Photoreal Vehicles

Issue 188 December 2014 Master Pixar’s RenderMan

Give your car V-Ray renders an artistic angle Learn to blend photography and ZBrush models How to model a complex Modo environment The VFX of Star Wars: Discover new photos and interviews Downloads Vi Downloads Vide deo o tu tuto tori rial als, s, project files, resources and more

Issue 187 November 2014 Expert renders

Get started in RenderMan 19 with this official Pixar tutorial Learn to use Bifrost and nParticles in Maya 2015 for realistic rain Model a lifelike cityscape using CityEngine Discover the character VFX behind Guardians of the Galaxy Downloads Vi Downloads Vide deo o tu tuto tori rial als, s, project files, resources and more

Master an advanced setup in V-Rayy for V-Ra for per perfec fectt rend renders ers ZBrush 4R7: discover new tools that will reshape your art The making of The Lord Inquisitor using Crytek’s Cinebox Develop your LightWave modelling skills Downloads Vi Downloads Vide deo o tu tuto tori rial als, s, project files, resources and more

Issue 186 October 2014 Create award-winning animation Model a perfect cartoon figure for use in animation Learn how to design dynamic heros and villains Sculpt DC Comic’s supervillain Catwoman in ZBrush Ed Hooks on how to make every performance matter Downloads Vi Downloads Vide deo o tu tuto tori rial als, s, project files, resources and more

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DEVELOP

My inspiration

MY INSPIRATION

Davide Bianca The CEO of Saizen Media explains how a love of stories and comics developed into a successful global CG art studio

M

ARTIST PROFILE

Davide Bianca

Davide is founder, CEO and executive director of Saizen Media, an awardwinning full service digital creative agency with offices in Los Angeles and Milan. www.saizenmedia.com

y love for visu al storytelling dates back as fa r as I can remember. My first encounter with a pencil was love at first sight, and ever since then that love has only grown. Doodling became drawing , drawin g become wr iting stor ies and inking comic book pages, and illustrating became animating. Meanwhile, my passion for robots led me to wonder what it is that makes a computer work. Once I understood the in herent potential lying within the marriage between creativity and technology, I was hooked. Computer science gave me a solid understanding of software, the nuts and bolts that make things work under the hood,

3D WORLD

but I was always to o much of an artist to be satisfied with creating something without a proper visua l output. By this time, the internet was evolving, and browser games and web experiences started appearing, but everything was very dull, basic and ster ile. I set out to start Saizen Media, a storytelling-centric storytelling-centric web agency determined to blur the line between web, g amin g and film by focusing on experience a nd relying on the same techniques used by the film and game industries: heavy use of CG, digital matte painting, immersive sound design, and so on. Over a decade later, our websites have evolved into apps or VR experiences, and we

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now provide VFX, key art and concept concept art serv ices to the very same gaming and film st udios that inspired us while growing up, but the mission remains unaltered: telling great stories through powerful visuals. With

Cover art for 3D World issue 183: part of Saizen Media’s Slavers CG comic

Once I understood the potential lying within the marriage between creativity and technology, I was hooked the availability and accessibility of great software and technology today there is not a single reason that justifies not doing what you truly love for a living. See more of Saizen Media’s Media’s FYII FY work at www.saizenmedia.com


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