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GALLERY INTERVIEW
Showcase of latest 3d inspiring art Justin Lassen
PHOTOSHOP 3DSMAX
3d Models in CS3 Sticky Fluids
AFTER EFFECTS 3D Challenge
Animating Spirograph Vehicle of the Future
05 Interview
Justin Lassen
18 3d Challenge
Vehicle of the Future
22 Photoshop
3d Models in CS3
27 After Effects
Animating Spirograph
32 3ds Max
Sticky Fluids
41 Gallery
Showcase of latest 3d art
David Crawford, one of the world’s finest visual graphic Blizzard has finally announced
talents, is joining Pix- the sequel to Starcraft. Not
ion, a post-production Starcraft Ghost. Not World of
arm of CCL.. The move Starcraft. Starcraft 2, the game
would give Pixion a you put on your “Do not die
strong strategic advantage as the world’s finest in this until you have played...” list.
field are now choosing India as their professional desti-
nation, said CCL director Anand Tewari. ‘This will en- Designed to be the ultimate
sure better production values and would prove a boon to competitive real-time strategy
the growth of the industry,’ he added. game, StarCraft II features
the return of the Protoss, Ter-
Crawford, who has Hollywood biggies like Titatic, Spi- ran, and Zerg races, overhauled and re-imagined with
derman, Mission Impossible 2, XXX and Vanilla Sky Blizzard’s signature approach to game balance. Each race
to his credit, has over a decade of experience in Hol- will be further distinguished from the others, with sev-
lywood, advertising and post-production. His work has eral new units and new gameplay mechanics, as well as
won many prestigious awards including the Oscar, MTV new abilities for some of the classic StarCraft units that
Music Awards. will be making a reappearance in the game. StarCraft II
also featurse a custom 3D-graphics engine with realis-
Pixion is working on about 40 films under various ban- tic physics and the ability to render several large, highly
ners to be released in the next six months. About 80 films detailed units and massive armies on-screen simultane-
are in the pipeline for the year ending 2008. ously.
Today, go motion is rarely used, as it is more complicated and expensive than computer generated effects. But the tech-
nique still has potential in real stop motion movies if a scene is supposed to contain slow motion effects. By filming
each small movement of the object with a high speed camera, the go motion animated character or object will appear
to move in slow motion when played in normal speed. This would be very hard to do using conventional stop motion, as
the animator would have to move the puppet maybe less than a millimeter for each frame to achieve the same effect.
AN INTERVIEW WITH
Justin Lassen
Q. Hello Justin, could you introduce yourself to our readers and how you got started in 3D... Oops… music?
Hi. I’m Justin. I am a composer, independent producer and art director/graphic artist and I’m 25 years old. I’m self-
taught. I think it was during the early years in school. Since I was a child, the music and drama classes in school were
always my favorites, so I worked hard to get myself into the top music classes whenever possible. I hadn’t really thought
about it being a professional career until around 1996. That’s when I noticed my interest and focus started increasing
drastically.
I don’t think I’ve had my “big break” yet, but my first break was perhaps the Robert Miles remix with the London Ses-
sion Orchestra tracks, which was an incredibly fun (if terrifying) glimpse into what “high production values” means.
Q. So, you are creating music for still 3D-2D images, please tell us what the main basic idea/technique behind this
is?
The basic idea is to bring the scene to life through music and audible texture, by whatever means
necessary. This could mean melody, themes, mo- tifs, counterpoint, minimalism or other things.
It really depends on what the scene calls for.
The technique is definitely more emotional than scientific, but if I had to boil it down to
some rules, I’d say Gaussian blur calls for reverb, brighter colors call for louder sounds,
objects and shapes in the scene and overall composition determines the dura-
tion of the recording, and perceived camera move-
ment and action
points
painted into the scene deter-
mine pacing. The mood and texture in the recording
is determined by the color palette and tone in the painting.
Feel free to bust me on those if you notice they’re not consistent with
what you’ve seen and heard in the Sy- naesthesia pieces. I’m not entirely
aware of what I’m doing. It just seems to bubble up from the subcon-
scious. I just know what it needs, but I don’t know exactly why. I’d love
to be able to describe it more cluefully, but I suspect I’m more of an artist
AN INTERVIEW WITH
Justin Lassen
than a scientist. Deeper, geekier analysis is welcome, btw.
As with all art, I suspect these are not strict rules or laws. Some of the more obscure and perhaps abstract methods be-
hind this style are the emotion in the faces of the characters, or the emotion of the environment or circumstance. Their
skin tone, how they are feeling, wondering what they are feeling, or if they are feeling at all. Not every painting works
this way for me, but I am most inspired by truly finished pieces that tell stories without words. The eye in the character
(if there is one) really must know what is going on.
AN INTERVIEW WITH
Justin Lassen
Q. What’s the meaning of Synaesthesia?
I’ve done a few dozen short films over the years. My fa-
vorite score type project was getting the chance to do two
remix/revision scores for Mark Osborne, inspired by his
short film project ‘More’, which if you haven’t seen, you
surely should. It was nominated for an Oscar, but it’s
amazing how few people have seen it.
AN INTERVIEW WITH
Justin Lassen
money it takes to do it right, easily a couple hundred thousand, and that’s if you’re going with a really cost-effective
orchestra like the Prague Orchestra or other Eastern European Orchestras. Even if they are willing, you’re back to that
fabulous catch-22 of “have you done it before?” I’m sure you know how this tune goes.
In the studio film market where the money supposedly flows like water, there’s that Danny Elfman chap, who I must
confess is really brilliant, and the bastard has a corner on the market of gothic symphonic film scores. Perhaps your dear
readers could collectively pray to the Dark Faeries to impart their withering kisses to each of his talented little digits
and steal them away to the Nether World from whence they came?
Q. If you have to create music for a still image which has no environment, background (may be you can see), dra-
matic lighting, props but great modeled character then will be possible to do? If yes, then please try to create an
exclusive music for this wonderful still 3d image of Korean Actress – Song Hye Kyo by Max Edwin Wahyudi from
Indonesia?
She looks almost too perfect to me, like a beautiful android from Blade Runner. She also looks a little like she’s dressed
for an informal networking party where she is expected to smile, even though she’d rather not.
AN INTERVIEW WITH
Justin Lassen
Q. Which software’s and hardware you use for your work and how often you update them?
I’m going to get a little geeky here, because I know some of your readers out there are pretty serious musicians.
I have a number of hardware synthesizers and workstations that I draw from. Some of them are Korg Triton, Yamaha
MOTIF8, Roland XP30, Korg N5, Korg Electribe, Roland DR-770, KC-500’s, several Altec Lansing systems and
loads of rack units, compressors, gates, EQ’s, etc. I have loads of Behringer gear (a 6.1 Truth Surround System, several
mixers and desks, Controllers, amps, fx units, etc.). I have tons of pedals, BOSS stomp boxes, guitars, basses, my trusty
violin, and everything in between.
The main audio conversion interface in the studio is my Presonus FirePod, which so far has not failed me and keeps the
music flowing. The centerpiece of my software studio is Cakewalk Sonar 6.2 Producer Edition, and I primarily use the
Sonitus:FX Suite of plugins. I’m currently using a beta of Sonar 7, that seems to be shaping up nicely. I use Project5
2.5 to get my ideas written down. Later, I can manipulate that data in Sonar and fine tune the composition, arrange-
ments and sounds. By the way, if you get P5, it comes with a demo track I created called ‘The Dark Beats of Morbidia’
that uses a lot of the cool new features in the 2.5 update.
I also used Sony Acid Pro 6.0 and Sony Sound Forge 9.0 with the IzoTope plugins on several
of the new Synaesthesia pieces. I really liked how they turned out. I’m a big fan of
Native Instruments, EastWest, Garritan and other libraries. I’m also a heavy
sampler, creating tons of my own patches and audible odd con- trap-
tions for use on a number of projects. Though, that really
isn’t the magical part.
AN INTERVIEW WITH
Justin Lassen
Q. Have you ever tried doing 3D and how much you are successful?
Thankfully, music really took over and displaced those fantasies. I still enjoy typography, graphic design, layout and
other forms of digital art. Though, my favorite thing is watching all of you amazing artists, and staying inspired.
Q. If you were not a musician then what you would do to earn the
living and currently how you are promoting yourself?
So I don’t know what I would be. How can you make a career out of
that? Maybe a producer or manager?
AN INTERVIEW WITH
Justin Lassen
Q. What are your hobbies and what you like to do in your free time (if any)?
Food and friends are my number one hobby; I like going to fine restaurants, hole in the wall restaurants, coffee shops
(even though I don’t drink coffee), interesting diners, etc. with my friends. I love getting addicted to well-thought-out
and sometimes not-so-well-thought-out TV series. Some of my favorites lately have been Battlestar Galactica, LOST,
Veronica Mars, Supernatural and a few others. I also like hanging out in hotel lobbies when I’m traveling places and
randomly meeting new people, usually around the grand piano.
Though, I am also one of those who can admit that my hobby is also my passion. This isn’t just a career or some resume-
building stunt. This creative multimedia that I involve myself with is my life. I only get one and I’m doing what I want
to do with it. So I work on music and composition whenever I get a chance (or my free time). Especially if given a
chance to try something new.
AN INTERVIEW WITH
Justin Lassen
Q. From where you get all your inspiration?
I also love travelling and scenery. By train, car, airplane, boat and even foot; I like
to walk with headphones and an mp3 player, sometimes for miles. This helps me
clear my mind, organize my thoughts, defrag my internal hard drive and decide
on my next move in life as a person and as an artist. It is very cleansing to just do
that every so often.
Q. Your cinematic style brings which CG Artists paintings, scenes to life and
how you benefitted with this?
I know this sounds cliché, but the Synaesthesia series has changed my life. Don’t
even get me started on the benefits. They’re numerous and glorious.
Over the last couple of years on the three sets of Synaesthesia compositions; I
have had the distinct and undeserved pleasure of working with (in no particular
order): Philip Straub, Linda Bergkvist, Laurent Ménabé, John Wallin, Alexan-
der Casteels, Olga Antonenko, Björn Börkur Eiríksson, Kirsi Salonen, Steven
Staulberg, Specimen, Blaz Porenta, Nykolai Aleksander, Paul Gerrard, Erlend
Mørk, David Ho, Benita Winckler, Lance Larson, Kornél Ravadits and Vitaly S.
Alexius.
Though the art is the thing, it takes a lot more than that to create a phenomenon.
Hold on to your hat size, but frankly, it requires journalists at respected magazines
to act as talent scouts and spot a cool project and popularize it. I think all of us
who dig Synaesthesia owe a lot to you guys. So this list includes Paul Hellard
who helped me kick start the promotion (CGSociety), Ben Barnes (3DCreative
Alex Casteels - bionic7.deviantart.com
AN INTERVIEW WITH
Justin Lassen
Magazine), Nelson Medina (RevolutionArt Magazine), Patrice Leymarie (ITS ART Magazine) and of course Ashish
Rastogi from CGArena.
Q. Till now on which commercial projects you worked? And on which projects you are working these days?
A few other commercial achievements I’m happy to have been a part of are doing epic remixes for several different
artists like Madonna, Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park, Garbage and ton of others. That taught me a lot about music and
technology and combining the both of them into new creative works of art. It also taught me about crazy fans.
These days I am working on a few different projects doing various tasks, not all are musical. Some of those, which I
can’t say too much about are game mod projects (Out of Hell with Long Nguyen: we were just recently featured in The
Escapist Magazine together and Hexen: Edge of Chaos), a start-up business with a pal of mine, consulting and advise-
ment to a few up and coming developers and artists, tons of e-mailing and interviews as of lately and a whole basket
of unmentionable randomness. Oh yeah, I just released my 3rd set of Synaesthesia compositions ‘The Darker Side of
Synaesthesia’.
Q. What is one piece of advice you would give to any person looking to get into music field?
Have rich parents or find a wealthy fan. Barring that, my best advice would be to stay inspired, keep rocking, and never
relent- no matter what. This is a cutthroat industry, and musicians and ‘artists’ are over-saturated here. It’s getting
tougher for the majority of artists to stay afloat.
AN INTERVIEW WITH
Justin Lassen
I know this sounds gloomy, but there is some good news. There’s
a neat trick that not many musicians leverage that can give you
a huge edge and an ability to beat the odds: reading. I would
recommend to any young person wanting to get into music to
read as many books on the subject as possible. On the subject
of paying for your rent and food while being a musician, rec-
ommendations that come to mind are ‘I Don’t Need A Record
Deal!’ which has tons of good advice about making it as an in-
dependent artist, with anecdotes from several successful indie
musicians, Moses Avalon’s ‘Confession’s of a Record Producer’ is
also a great read and of course ‘Creating a Life Worth Living’by
Carol Lloyd, which has some fantastic interviews and ideas.
Those are good starting points.
I want to give some mad props and shout outs to all of the amaz-
ing digital artists who have painted me or manipulated photos
of me for posters, wallpapers and splash screens over the years.
I treasure their friendship and continued support, and my lust
for their approval is giant motivator for me. I don’t know where
I would be without them. Every time I see a new creation, I
am humbled. One that comes to recent mind is Danone Rolli,
whom has created tons of the most recent photo manipulation
pieces, from photos by Lance Larson and Hal Bergman.
Linda Bergkvist - www.furiae.com
Thanks a lot Justin for taking out sometime for us from your busy schedule and making this 3D-2D industry more
beautiful and expressive.
Your Mission
Create an image which justify the theme of Vehicle of the Future using Power Nurbs Pro. This Challenge is a Work-
In-Progress Challenge -- all contestants are required to post their work-in-progress images for community to critique/
comment in order to qualify. Last date to enter in this challenge is 20th July 2007 after this no registration for challenge
will be allowed.
5.) Entrants will not receive financial remuneration for their Work.
- A guideline is minimum 2800 pixels wide and/or 2048 high, JPG, 300 DPI.
- Send your final image in zip or rar format with your name, complete shipping address, email, telephone number in a
text file on email address futurevehicle@cgarena.com with subject “Vehicle of the Future”.
Power Nurbs Pro - Power NURBS unique hybrid approach fuses the next generation NURBS surface construction
technology with the industry’s leading Solids modeling technology bringing an unparalleled modeling experience to
the 3ds Max Platform. Power NURBS modeling environment is designed to provide artist intuitive access to complex
advanced modeling tools allowing you to expand your creative potential beyond the polygon world.
Power Solids - Until recently NURBS based-Solids modeling technology has been confined to high end non-artis-
tic engineering applications; however, nPower’s Power Solids for 3ds Max changes everything. Power Solids provides
designers and artists an exceptional intuitive modeling environment with unrestricted access to Solids geometry.
Or
Power Surfacer - Power Surfacing intergrates the world’s leading edge NURBS surface modeling technology into
the heart of Autodesks 3ds Max. The Combination of nPower NURBS Surface Modeling combined with 3ds studio’s
Mesh Deformation technology, UI, animation and rendering provide one of the world’s most sophisticated 3d Design
concept environments available.
Third Prize- $695 USD
Power Solids - Until recently NURBS based-Solids modeling technology has been confined to high end non-artistic
engineering applications; however, nPower’s Power Solids for 3ds Max changes everything. Power Solids provides de-
signers and artists an exceptional intuitive modeling environment with unrestricted access to Solids geometry.
Or
Power Surfacer - Power Surfacing intergrates the world’s leading edge NURBS surface modeling technology into
the heart of Autodesks 3ds Max. The Combination of nPower NURBS Surface Modeling combined with 3ds studio’s
Mesh Deformation technology, UI, animation and rendering provide one of the world’s most sophisticated 3d Design
concept environments available.
Sponsor
www.cgarena.com
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Plus, join in our interactive forums to showcase your work, and get
attention in the computer graphics community
photoshop
3d models in CS3
Many of you already tried hands on the Photoshop CS 3 extended version; if not then try now be-
cause Photoshop CS 3 added a support for 3d models. That means you can import 3d models, change
model position, lighting or rendering, edit model textures and easily composite models with 2d con-
tent. Currently CS 3 supports five formats of models (u3d, .3ds, .obj, .kmz, and Collada file formats).
Like to mention Extended version is $350 costly in comparison to standard version but Photoshop CS3 Extended
enables you to edit 3D and motion-based content and perform image analysis. So, before buying first decides will you
actually need these features...
In this tutorial we will add an airplane (.3ds) in the middle of airport road in just few minutes. And believe me no
authority will be able to detect who is the culprit. So, let’s start.
Step 1: Firstly open you picture and then open a 3ds format file like any other file. Yes, you are right in 3d software’s
we have to actually import the 3ds files but in CS3 just open it.
If you see the layers palette then 3d icon is available on the palette file icon and many other sub files also shown there,
which are textures.
Step 3: Drag the 3d file on the 2d image and then double click on the 3d file icon and you will see on top menu bar
many 3d tools are added for rotation, scaling, dragging, playing animation, rendering, lighting etc.
Step 4: Rotate and scale the plane as per scene requirement. Click on the icon “Lighting and Appearance setting” in
the menu bar and change lighting to “Day lights” or any other as you like, experiment is the key here. And press ok. If
you have noticed in the same option box you can also change the appearance of the 3d object to wireframe, solid wire-
frame, shaded illustration and many more.
That’s it for now; add shadow for the plane, so that looks on the ground.
Animating Spirograph
In this tutorial we will create spirograph style animation using any version of Illustrator and After Effects. A Spiro-
graph is a curve formed by rolling a circle inside or outside of another circle. The pen is placed at any point on the roll-
ing circle. Hope you have created lots of spirograph in the childhood.
Step 1: Create a new 1024 x 768 pixels size document inside illustrator and select an Ellipse Tool (L) to draw the circle
or any shape you like. Press Shift for creating a perfect circle. Just remember that line color is black and Fill color is
transparent.
Step 3: This will open a rotate popup dialog, choose 5 degree in-
side the angle, press Copy and then OK.
Step 8: Enable the 3d layer button and rotate the spirograph in Z axis.
Step 9: Apply Radial wipe transition (Effect > Transition> Radial Wipe) on the layer and set Transition Complete –
100% at 0s and 0% at 5s. Increase the feather value and also change the wipe center. Check the settings dialog box
image below.
Step 10: Apply the Glow effect (Effect > Stylize> Glow) on the layer and choose the following settings. Try increas-
ing the Color Loops value for more exciting and different shades of colors.
Step 11: Now select the layer and pre-compose. Layer Pre-compose…
Step 12: Now your effect is almost complete, just duplicate the layer two times and enable the 3d layer for those and
rotate the spirograph in all the axis to get the mirroring effect. Try changing the modes to ADD, SOFT LIGHT and
others too.
Step 14: After everything is complete our background is looking little empty, so create a solid layer in the bottom and
apply a ramp effect on this background layer.
Sticky Fluids
In this tutorial we will create a sticky fluids effect using glu3d and later explain the same thing with pflow. This is not a
step by step tutorial, little knowledge about the glu3d fluid system is necessary but we try to explain as much as we can.
So, let’s start by importing a 3ds model in max.
Step 1: Go into the Create > Glu3d pouring system > glu3d. After pressing the glu3d button - floor, glu3d particles
and glu3d icon will be created in the viewport.
Step 2: Now select the glu3d particles and rotate, move as per the requirement and change the paramaters as shown
in the below image. The main parameter in this is Thickness parameter. This is a kind of viscosity parameter for the
liquid. It makes particles keep together. It gives a certain resistance to flow to the liquid. Higher the value less particles
will spread out. And we are creating a fluid something like honey, so must be thick.
Step 3: Select the object and in the glu3d parameters change the value of Col-
lisonGap, Bounce to 0. Change the Friction to 100 and Adherence to 0.05. Adher-
ence controls the particles glueness to object surface when collision occurs. And
friction parameter controls the object friction with glu3D particles. Particles lose
their energy when are in contact with colliding objects. Higher the value particles
loss the energy soon.
Step 5: Now Press the go button and check “Show Particles” is checked, so you can
watch the simulated particles frames. You can stop the simulation at anytime and
without flushing full simulation you can only flush the simulation from frame you
don’t like by putting the frame number in “Keep until frame” in dynamic params
box.
Step 6: When particle simulation is complete and you are happy with the output
then press the “Build Surface” button for building the fluids surface.
Step 7: Light and texture the scene and render your fluids.
Now if you like to create a sticky particles through pflow then create a simple setup
like below.
Step 1: Create a sphere, pflow above the sphere, gravity, deflector on the ground, UDeflector in the scene.
Step 3: Press 6 to open the particle view and select “Birth” and change the “Emit Stop” value to 50 and amount to
2000
Step 4: Add a “Force” from the depot and add “Gravity” in the list.
Step 5: Add “Collision test” from depot and add both the deflectors in the list. Change the “Test True value of Col-
lides “speed” to Stop. You will notice that now particles are start sticking to the sphere and not even slide.
Step 6: Create a new “Speed by surface” event and link to collision test. Change
the speed to around 50 and in drop down select “Control Speed Continuously” and
change direction to “Parallel to surface”. Now you will see particles not only stick-
ing but also sliding on the sphere.
Step 7: Now the main problem is particles not leaving the sphere when reached
the end of the sphere and continue to slide from bottom to top. So, the solution is
simple, add an “Age test” event and enter the frame number in the test value.
Step 8: Now create another “Force event”, add gravity in the list and link to the
“Age Test” so particles start dropping on the defined frame. Check out the sceenshot
for whole scene particle view.
And if you like to add a power of glu3d with pflow then add a glu3dsource from depot and Converts the PFlow par-
ticles to a Glu3D source file format that you can use to run a fluid simulation. Once you have your setup click the play
button and the PFlow particles will be saved to a cache file sequence readable by Glu3D.
Third Prize
Harold Francisco, Philippines
hbdin@yahoo.com
2D Category Winner George Evangelista, Australia
george@vshengraphics.com
gallery
Barbarian Warrior
Silvia Fusetti, Italy
fiussly@libero.it
XSI, Photoshop, Poser
Shark
Kleber Darcio
kleber3ds@hotmail.com
3ds Max, Vray, Bodypaint
How to send
in your images...
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