INSIGHT WOMEN IN VISUAL EFFECTS

Practical inspiration for the 3D community

www.creativebloq.com
131

RizomUV
UNWRAPPING
CREATE FILMIC
ANIMATIONS
Master your texturing workflow Learn to set up cinematic medical shots

FREE
MODELS
INSIDE
PAGE 10

RN THE SECRETS OF

LINK
DISCOVER
RENDERING
WITH AN RTX
FTRACK PROJECT
MANAGER
TESTED
ANDREW
SINAGRA ON THE
Get behind the scenes on Laika’s VFX INDUSTRY
latest visual masterpiece
GAME ASSETS
Build your own game models ISSUE 131
 Link, the Bigfoot has
been described by
some as a hairy
avocado on legs
Chris Butler
Writer, Director and Head
of Story at Laika.

The
Missing
Link
Page 22

3

Subscribe
today!
Go to page 82 to
see the deals
A
s a 3D artist you
probably have a solid
core of interest that
informs the tools you choose to
learn as well as the techniques
that lend themselves to your
preferred area. That said, it’s
often valuable to spread your
wings, delve into different areas
and increase your knowledge and skill set.
We aim to inspire you to learn more and discover
new opportunities, so this issue we bring you a wide
range of different inspiration and tutorials. We start
off with our gallery of the latest and greatest art from
the community, along with some technique focus
Sign up, share your art and chat to other artists at www.creativebloq.com
Get in touch... 3dartist@futurenet.com
4
Create stunning cinematic
medical animation,
starting on page 52
pages to help you discover new directions where you
could head next.
We also talk to the team at Laika to get behind-the-
scenes info on The Missing Link and take a good,
hard look at current rendering tech to help you
understand the state of the industry.
Training is vital to help you put this inspiration to
good use, but rest assured we have you covered. This
issue we show you how to master cinematic medical
animations with Maya and Cinema 4D, create fabric
simulations using Houdini, use Rizom to UV unwrap
your models and even create a physically accurate fox
using Ziva!
Rob Redman, Acting Editor
@3DArtist Facebook.com/3DArtistMagazine
Future PLC Richmond House, 33 Richmond Hill,
Bournemouth, Dorset, BH2 6EZ
Editorial
Editor Rob Redman
rob.redman@futurenet.com
Art Editor Newton Ribeiro
Production Editor James Price
Staff Writer Brad Thorne
Acting Group Editor in Chief Claire Howlett
Senior Art Editor Will Shum
Contributors
Greg Barta, James Clarke, Jonatan Mercado, Kurtis Dawe,
Trevor Hogg, Pierrick Picault, Farid Ghanbari, Sebastian
Mundo, Quoc Anh Pham, Eric Cunha, Elizabeth Ku-Herrero,
Robert Smith, Rory Björkman, Rafael G. Moreno, Gustavo
Henrique, Chris Lambert, Gael Kuchenbaum, Jarl Midelfort,
Lasse Rasmussen, Cirstyn Bech-Yagher
Photography
James Sheppard
All copyrights and trademarks are recognised and respected
Advertising
Media packs are available on request
Commercial Director Clare Dove
clare.dove@futurenet.com
Senior Advertising Manager Mike Pyatt
michael.pyatt@futurenet.com
01225 687538
Account Director George Lucas
george.lucas@futurenet.com
01225 687311
International
3D Artist is available for licensing. Contact the Licensing team
to discuss partnership opportunities.
Head of Print Licensing Rachel Shaw
Licensing@futurenet.com
Subscriptions
Email enquiries contact@myfavouritemagazines.co.uk
UK orderline & enquiries 0344 848 2852
Overseas order line and enquiries +44 (0) 344 848 2852
Online orders & enquiries www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk
Group Marketing Director, Magazines & Memberships
Sharon Todd
Circulation
Head of Newstrade Tim Mathers
Production
Head of Production Mark Constance
Production Project Manager Clare Scott
Advertising Production Manager Joanne Crosby
Digital Editions Controller Jason Hudson
Production Manager Frances Twentyman
Management
Brand Director Matthew Pierce
!ǝǣƺǔ ȵƺȸƏɎǣȇǕ ǔˡƬƺȸ Aaron Asadi
Commercial Finance Director Dan Jotcham
Global Content Director Paul Newman
Head of Art & Design Greg Whitaker
Printed by William Gibbons & Sons Ltd, 26 Planetary Road,
Willenhall, West Midlands, WV13 3XB
Distributed by Marketforce, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf,
London, E14 5HU www.marketforce.co.uk Tel: 0203 787 9001
Distributed in Australia by Gordon & Gotch Australia Pty Ltd,
26 Rodborough Road, Frenchs Forest, New South Wales 2086
www.gordongotch.com.au Tel: + 61 2 9972 8800
ISSN 1759-9636
We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from
ȸƺɀȵȒȇɀǣƫǼɵȅƏȇƏǕƺƳًƬƺȸɎǣˡƺƳǔȒȸƺɀɎȸɵƏȇƳƬǝǼȒȸǣȇƺ‫ٮ‬ǔȸƺƺȅƏȇɖǔƏƬɎɖȸƺِ
The paper in this magazine was sourced and produced from sustainable
managed forests, conforming to strict environmental and socioeconomic
standards. The manufacturing paper mill holds full FSC (Forest Stewardship
!ȒɖȇƬǣǼ٣ƬƺȸɎǣˡƬƏɎǣȒȇƏȇƳƏƬƬȸƺƳǣɎƏɎǣȒȇ
All contents © 2019 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All
rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or
reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in
0ȇǕǼƏȇƳƏȇƳáƏǼƺɀِ«ƺǕǣɀɎƺȸƺƳȒǔˡƬƺ‫ي‬ªɖƏɵRȒɖɀƺًÁǝƺȅƫɖȸɵً ƏɎǝ ‫׏‬
1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and
is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot
accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You
are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard
to the price of products/services referred to in this publication. Apps and
websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are
not responsible for their contents or any other changes or updates to them.
ÁǝǣɀȅƏǕƏɿǣȇƺǣɀǔɖǼǼɵǣȇƳƺȵƺȇƳƺȇɎƏȇƳȇȒɎƏǔˡǼǣƏɎƺƳǣȇƏȇɵɯƏɵɯǣɎǝɎǝƺ
companies mentioned herein.
If you submit material to us, you warrant that you own the material and/
or have the necessary rights/permissions to supply the material and
you automatically grant Future and its licensees a licence to publish
your submission in whole or in part in any/all issues and/or editions of
publications, in any format published worldwide and on associated websites,
social media channels and associated products. Any material you submit
is sent at your own risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future
nor its employees, agents, subcontractors or licensees shall be liable for
loss or damage. We assume all unsolicited material is for publication unless
otherwise stated, and reserve the right to edit, amend, adapt all submissions.
Future plc is a public Chief Executive Zillah Byng-Thorne
company quoted on the Non-executive Chairman Richard Huntingford
London Stock Exchange !ǝǣƺǔIǣȇƏȇƬǣƏǼ ǔˡƬƺȸ Penny Ladkin-Brand
(symbol: FUTR)
www.futureplc.com Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244
 This isssue’s team of pro artists…
TREVOR HOGG
laika.com
A regular contributor to 3D Artist,
Trevor Hogg returns this issue to bring
you a look behind the scenes on Laika’s
latest project, Missing Link, which
combines stop-motion with CG.
Turn to page 22.
FARID GHANBARI
3fx.com
Farid is the art director at 3FX Inc. with
over 11 years’ experience in the CGI
industry. He’s always trying to learn
something new. Here he demonstrates
how to create medical animations.
Turn to page 52.
JONATON MERCADO
jonatanmercado.com
A self-taught CG artist born and raised in
Argentina, Jonatan is a Blender enthusiast
who is developing himself as a freelancer.
Here he shares his Blender secrets so you
can up your own render quality, using light
probes with EEVEE.
Turn to page 72.
6
GREG BARTA
scivfx.artstation.com
Veteran Houdini artist Greg Barta
returns to the pages of 3D Artist this
issue to delve deep into Houdini to help
you learn to create fabrics using various
simulation tools.
Turn to page 38.
CIRSTYN BECH-YAGHER
artstation.com/cirstyn
A regular reviewer and tutorial writer,
Cirstyn is an industry veteran who
wears many hats. In this issue she
explains how to get started unwrapping
your UVs in RixomUV.
Turn to page 58.
PIERRICK PICAUT
p2design.eu
Pierrick is a 3D freelancer and a Blender
Foundation-certified trainer, working
for the independent game studio
ATYPIQUE Studio. Here he shows you
how to build a game asset in Blender.
Turn to page 76.
GAEL KERCHENBAUM
weacceptyou.com
Gael was part of the team behind this
stunning fox animation, created using
Ziva. He and some of the other team
members show you their process to get
the very best results.
Turn to page 46.
KURTIS DAWE
kurtisdawe.artstation.com
In this tutorial Kurtis goes through
creating an original concept’s sculpt,
texture and lighting, with a particular
focus on techniques that will help to
speed up productivity.
Turn to page 66.
ANDREW SINAGRA
ntropic.com
Andrew Sinagra wears two hats of
sorts: creative director at Ntropic,
where he is focused on commercials
and music videos; and co-founder of
NIM Labs, helping studios stay on
track. Turn to page 94.
What’s in the magazine

News, reviews
& features
12 The Gallery
A collection of inspirational artwork
22 Travelling the world with Missing Link
We explore behind the scenes of Laika’s
latest CG-assisted stop-motion adventure
26 Framing the debate
We take a look at the current state of the
industry to see how progress is being
made for equality in the workplace
32 Rendering with GTX cards
Rainer Duda investigates rendering using
some of the latest rendering tech
34 Technique Focus:
A Home Up High
Chris Lambert shares his thoughts on
creating varied scenes with Unreal Engine 4
36 Technique Focus:
Dragon Head
Link has been
Shapiro Sergeyevich reveals his thoughts described by
on balancing detailing and sculpting
someone as a hairy
81 Technique Focus:
Alita avocado with legs
Gabriel Soares shows us the results of Chris Butler
post-production with Photoshop Writer, director and head
82 Subscribe today! of story at Laika, Page 22
Save money and never miss an issue 22

84 Review: ftrack Review

Discover this new project management tool
98 Technique Focus:
Treasure Shop
Gustavo Henrique considers how to treat
a project with great care to achieve results

Master your Blender renders Learn to use Ziva to

with light probes for EEVEE 72 46 create your rigs

SUBSCRIBETODAY! Get the Turn to

Andrew Sinagra Critter Collection from Creation page 82 2
discusses his
various projects 94
Effects and a free digital edition for det
8
 Simulate cloth with Houdini 38
We are on a better road now
towards, hopefully, achieving equality
Leanne Loughran,
Outpost Page 26
Sculpt fantastical creatures that
reference real-world animals
76 Build game assets using Blender
The Pipeline
38 Step By Step: Rig an umbrella
with Vellum
Greg Barta demonstrates how to
set up realistic umbrella models
46 Step By Step: Build dynamic
creatures with Ziva
Discover how to use Ziva to rig
stunningly realistic animals
52 Step By Step: Depict cancer cells
Farid Ghanbari reveals how to
create medical animations using
Maya and Cinema 4D
58 Step by Step: Faster
unwrapping with RizomUV
See how to unwrap models faster
and get the most from UVs
66 Step By Step: Create fantastical
hybrid creatures
Learn the techniques to develop an
original creature with Kurtis Dawe
72 Pipeline Techniques: Utilise light
probes in Blender 2.80’s EEVEE
Jonatan Mercado guides you
26 through EEVEE’s light probe options
76 Pipeline Techniques: Create a
ISSUE 132 stylised tree game asset
Pierrick Picault takes you through the
process of building a game asset
NEXT
The Hub
GET STARTED
S WITH TILTBRUSH 88 Community News
TO CREATE ART INSIDE VR, We concentrate on highlights from
W
WITH DAHLIA KHODUR our very own event; Vertex 2019
92 Industry News
ON SALE Chaos Group’s latest offering,
Outpost VFX’s new facility and Epic’s
huge grants
7 MAY 94 Industry Insider
Andrew Sinagra
Ntropic’s Andrew Sinagra talks
Visit the 3D Artist online shop at about the various roles he holds
myffavouritemagazines.co.uk
for baack issues, books and merchandise 96 Readers Gallery
66 Our readers’ best images this month
9
 SIGN UP
to our newsletter
to get the latest
news, stories and
training from
your favourite

FREE WITH 3D magazine

YOUR MAGAZINE
Instant access to these incredible free gifts…

Head to bit.ly/3DA-131 to download your files

Step-by-Step tutorial
Master cinematic medical animations with this in-depth training

Three CGAxis Textures from Tutorial files, video files

premium models 3DTotal.com and screenshots
Three models with a musical Download a selection of high- Learn the latest techniques and
instrument-based theme quality textures toolsfrom our industry experts
 *
Free
BIG SAVING
SAVINGS ON OUR BEST-SELLING MAGAZINES
SAVE SAVE SAVE
86% 83% 83%

SAVE SAVE SAVE

82% 83% 80%

For g reat savings on all of our maga z ines, see t he en tire range
online https://GrafixFather.com

Order Hotline 0344 848 2852

*TERMS AND CONDITIONS: The trial offer is for new UK print subscribers paying by Direct Debit only. Savings are compared to buying full priced print issues. You can write to us
or call us to cancel your subscription within 14 days of purchase. Payment is non-refundable after the 14 day cancellation period unless exceptional circumstances apply. Your
statutory rights are not affected. Prices correct at point of print and subject to change. Full details of the Direct Debit guarantee are available upon request. UK calls will cost the
ɀƏȅƺƏɀȒɎǝƺȸɀɎƏȇƳƏȸƳˡɴƺƳǼǣȇƺȇɖȅƫƺȸɀ٢ɀɎƏȸɎǣȇǕ‫׏׎‬Ȓȸ‫א׎‬٣ȒȸƏȸƺǣȇƬǼɖƳƺƳƏɀȵƏȸɎȒǔƏȇɵǣȇƬǼɖɀǣɮƺȒȸǔȸƺƺȅǣȇɖɎƺɀƏǼǼȒɯƏȇƬƺɀ٢ǣǔȒǔǔƺȸƺƳƫɵɵȒɖȸȵǝȒȇƺɎƏȸǣǔǔ٣ِIȒȸǔɖǼǼɎƺȸȅɀ
ƏȇƳƬȒȇƳǣɎǣȒȇɀȵǼƺƏɀƺɮǣɀǣɎ‫ي‬ƫǣɎِǼɵٖȅƏǕɎƏȇƳƬِ ǔǔƺȸƺȇƳɀ‫׏ב‬ɀɎxƏɵ‫ِח׏׎א‬
 Have an image you feel passionate about? Get your artwork featured in these pages
Create your gallery today at 3dartistonline.com

12
 The goal was to achieve a
realistic look without
appealing to excess damage;
to make it interesting not by
showing it deteriorated but
used. Therefore, any wearing
that the textures displayed Rafael G. Moheno
had to be subtle. As you can bit.ly/2VJNfei
see on the wings in this Rafael began his career in 2D
classical animation in Mexico
image, realism comes from City. He is now a modeller and

the soft variance of colour texture artist at Method Studios.

Software Maya, Mari, V-Ray,
tone. I find that subtleties Photoshop, Substance Painter

play a huge part in achieving Work in progress…

a convincing result
Rafael Garcia Moheno,
The Outlaw Scout, 2018

13
 My job now mainly
involves low-poly
modelling for games. I Quoc Anh Pham
love to challenge myself quocanh.artstation.com

and learn as much as Quoc Anh Pham graduated

from VTC Academy, working for
possible. After seeing a the likes of JOY Entertainment
and now for Danbee 360 Co. as
lot of great artwork, I a 3D character artist.

became interested in a Software ZBrush, XGen, V-Ray

Work in progress…
realistic style and decided
to dig into it. My focus
with this image was on
making detailed skin,
grooming in XGen and
then lighting in V-Ray
Quoc Anh Pham,
BarK, 2019
14
 Luna is a caricature of a
sweet, round cat who
belongs to our dear friends.
We made it together as a
Christmas gift
Eric Cunha and
Elizabeth Ku-Herrero,
Luna, 2019

Eric Cunha and

Elizabeth Ku-Herrero
ericcunha.com,
elizabethnku.com
Eric is a freelance CG lead, and
Elizabeth is a CG lead at
Aardman Nathan Love.
Software Maya, ZBrush,
Substance Painter, Photoshop,
Nuke, Yeti, Arnold
Work in progress…

15
 Rory Björkman
artstation.com/bjorkman
Rory works at Brown Bag Films
in Dublin as a lead texture artist
on Disney’s Vampirina. He also
loves sci-fi and fantasy movies.
Software Maya, Substance
Painter
Work in progress…

I’ve always been

fascinated by times past
and decided to do a
series of characters with
a medieval knight
aesthetic. The story is
set in an alternate
universe where humans
exist alongside AI
robots powered by
natural energy
Rory Björkman,
AURIK, 2019
16
 Robert Smith
artstation.com/robertsmith
Robert is a 3D character artist in
the video game industry. He’s a
big fan of studying anatomy.
Software ZBrush, Substance
Painter, Marvelous Designer,
Mari, Marmoset Toolbag, Maya
Work in progress…

The intention
behind this next-gen,
real-time game
character was
to push realism,
detail and quality
in video game
character art
Robert Smith,
Jonathan Ingram -
POLICENAUTS, 2018

17

Sebastian Mundo
artstation.com/smundo
He’s an environment artist at
Turn 10 Studios and alumnus of
Ringling College of Art & Design.
Software UE4, Maya, Zbrush,
Substance Designer, Substance
Painter, Agisoft PhotoScan,
World Machine, Photoshop
Work in progress…
18
In depth
This piece was initially
made as a personal refresher
to get back up to speed with
Unreal Engine 4. I treated it
like a loose sketch over an
existing environment. The
final image took a total of
about six to eight hours, as I
already had all of the assets
made and ready. My main
focus of the piece was to
create an atmospheric and
compelling composition
Sebastian Mundo,
Bladespire Canyon, 2019
19
 KITBASHED
Most of the sci-fi structures
in the images are actually a
kitbashed gun I had
modelled. It was scaled and
transformed drastically
throughout the background.

TILING SAND
I created a tiling sand material
using Substance Designer. I often
set up my Substance Designer
work for vertex painting in Unreal
Engine 4 for smoother
texture transitions.

20
 My first step when creating any piece is to
have a target atmosphere and mood by
blocking out lighting, fog and post-process
effects in Unreal Engine on an imported
World Machine terrain. After establishing
scale in the scene with a default human mesh
and some foliage, my workflow loosens as I
begin to place, scale and transform various
biome and architectural assets
Sebastian Mundo,
Bladespire Canyon, 2019

ROCK MATERIALS
I used a Substance Designer rock
material. This material was aligned
to world space in Unreal, enabling
it to conform to any model without
having to worry about the UVs on
the mesh, and it’s tessellated to
highlight material details and
height deformation. I applied this
to four or five different rocks
throughout the scene.

CAMERA POSITION
When creating a quick environment like this one, I usually work from a fixed camera angle and try to hide imperfections from kitbashing through fog and camera composition.
If the camera position in this type of scene is shifted or the atmospheric perspective removed, the illusion of the scene will begin to fall apart.

21
TRAVELLING THE WORLD WITH MISSING LINK

22
Travelling the world with
MISSING LINK
Trevor Hogg tags along as Laika embarks on its most epic
adventure with the global exploits of Mr. Link
W
ith each project, the
stop-motion animation
ambitions of Laika get
larger in scope, and its fifth
endeavour, Missing Link, is
no exception. Desiring to meet his long-lost
relatives, a huge creature known as Mr. Link
(Zach Galifianakis) recruits fearless Victorian
explorer Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) to
guide him as he leaves his Pacific Northwest
home for the fabled valley of Shangri-La.
“I remember saying at the start, I wanted this
to be as if David Lean made Around The World
In 80 Days starring Laurel and Hardy,”
chuckles Chris Butler, who serves as writer,
director and head of story at Laika.
“Traditionally, stop-motion can feel
small, because in the past you were
limited by the size of your sets and
puppets and where you could set
the camera. I wanted to try to get
away from that, and with the
digital innovations that are
available to us we can open
up the sets and push down
the walls.”
Missing Link marks the
second time Butler has
helmed a feature for Laika,
with his debut effort being the
zombie comedy ParaNorman.
“There was a lot of asymmetry in
ParaNorman so this became a lot
more symmetrical. The shapes became
a lot cleaner and graphic. I knew at the start
that it was going to be set in Victorian times,
which was a period where there was a lot of
dense patterning happening [in wallpaper and
textiles].” After dealing with different illustrators
and character designers, the filmmaker decided
to revisit his notebooks. “A long time ago I did a
simple sketch of Link, the Bigfoot character, that
has been described by someone as a hairy
avocado with legs! A lot of people commented
on how much they liked it. I began working with
character designer Juliaon Roels as well as
prolific illustrator and comic book artist Warwick
Johnson Cadwell. Between the three of us we
created a population for this whole world.”
Sir Lionel Frost has an uncanny resemblance
to Hugh Jackman, who provides the voice of the
squared-jawed, debonair explorer. “Hugh is
definitely in there,” admits Butler. “I had him in
my head every time I wrote one of Lionel’s lines
because he’s a leading man, charming and a bit
of an eccentric. It was a pleasure, treat and
privilege that we got Hugh to do the voice.”
An ancient map showing the way to
Shangri-La is in the possession of Adelina
Fortnight (Zoe Saldana). “All three characters
work off of each other. Lionel is sharp-featured
whereas Link is all curves. I wanted Adelina to be
somewhere in the middle because she gets
caught in between them; she has a history with
Lionel but sees how badly he treats Link at
times. A lot of her design was based on the Gift
Girl illustrations of the time with that hairstyle,
which is all elaborate, but she also has some of
the sharpness in her jaw and nose Lionel has.
“There are certain things about all of our
characters that are the same, and it makes the
whole world fit together,” explains Butler.
“There’s nothing worse for me when I watch an
animated movie that you can tell the background
characters are designed by someone different
All images © Laika Studios / Annapurna Pictures
than the foreground characters. That pushes me
out of the movie. I wanted there to be a stylistic
consistency, and that meant when it was time to
work with [visual effects supervisor] Steve
Emerson in populating these massive crowd
scenes we had a certain hook to hang on. There
are certain shapes of noses and widths of eyes. I
know I’m biased, but this is the best digital extra
work that we’ve ever done. It’s seamless
between puppets and CG characters, and
certainly the crowd scenes are incredibly
23
TRAVELLING THE WORLD WITH MISSING LINK
Sir Lionel Frost (left)
voiced by Hugh
Jackman and Mr.
Link (right) voiced
Zach Galifianak
A BRIDGE TOO FAR
A signature ice bridge had 64 individually
rigged and independently controlled ice
blocks for the sequence when it falls apart
“The ice bridge was unique because that is
truly a hybrid,” states Laika CG supervisor
Rick Sevy. “We built the ends, and the centre
section was practically constructed. The
temple was both miniature and parts of it
were full-scale. We had something physical
to go off and could look at the reflections
and refractions and make that in our
shaders. We had to interchange between
one shot on the practical centre part of the
bridge, to the next shot where it is being
destroyed, and we had to take it over. The
look had to be exact.”
A digital version of the bridge was made
prior to animation. “We did the effect
destruction pass on that in Houdini prior to
animation as well,” explains Laika VFX
supervisor Steve Emerson. “That gave the
animators an overlay that they could use out
on the stages that enabled them to line up
the puppets for the performances. One of
the most difficult things that we did on the
film was having the characters hanging on
for dear life to a giant icicle. The studio
wanted to get that in the camera. What we
ended up doing was we built a plastic resin
version of that icicle, which the animators
could animate upon, and then we built a
registration rig where, after the animation,
we would swap in a silicone slug version of
it that was cracked. We would then plate
that separately.
“To deal with reflections and refractions
for every one of those shots we would shoot
up to perhaps 30 exposures and then give it
to the compositors, who were superheroes
with that particular sequence.”
24
impressive. You don’t notice replication, which
was a big plus for me.”
Missing Link consists of 1,486 shots that
showcase 531 CG assets and 182 CG characters.
Over 1,000 rigs were painted out, while 465
shots had digital set extensions, 460 featured
CG special effects and 325 required CG
animation. “In terms of the number of digital
assets and characters that went into Missing
Link, it was more than double what we did for
Kubo And The Two Strings,” reveals Emerson,
who received an Oscar nomination for the latter.
“A major key in managing that additional scope
was that the director was also the character
designer. We were able to make a lot of changes
on the fly rather than having to go through layers
of approvals and processes.”
Digital cosmetic work was done on the
106,000 rapid-protype faces produced for the
facial animation, with 75 per cent of them
devoted to the trio of Mr. Link, Sir Lionel Frost film and had no idea that there was a simple
and Adelina Fortnight. “That’s cleaning up the shape language or patterning in those effects.”
split lines they use that runs across the centre of Another lessen they’d learnt was how to
the characters’ faces, to allow the animators to execute visuals with water, which informed
get a wider range of expressions as well as the Missing Link’s sequence when Lionel encounters
inconsistencies of the print,” explains Emerson. the Loch Ness monster. “Water is difficult in
Emerson was able to leverage the knowledge stop-motion because it’s not something you can
gained from Kubo And The Two Strings, such as pose and move around one frame at a time,”
portraying cold breaths. “Those effects were remarks Emerson. “A puppet was built for
coming out of Houdini. It was all about a simple Nessie but it had limitations. We ended up
shape language and explicit patterning. We animating with the puppet out on the stages, did
would end up with a cold breath that would have a digital duplicate and replaced Nessie in the
nine or ten ‘poofs’ and Chris asked us to simplify. film. For the most believable interaction we
Our effects team would go back and simplify decided to go CG with the water too. When
those shapes to knock it back to three or four. you’re looking at something like still water it’s
Then it was about trying to get some patterning. mostly sky reflection, so we had to get creative
It’s all subtle. My nine-year-old daughter saw the with what was happening off-frame to make

Some behind-the-
scenes action on
Missing Link
sure what was reflecting on the surface was the
patterning that Chris was looking for.”
Some of the action takes place underwater.
“The plankton was primarily done in 2.5D in
Nuke with a system that was set up by our
senior technical compositor Timur Khodzhaev.”
“We knew that visual effects were going to be
vital to make this story because we wouldn’t be
able to do it practically,” notes Butler. “I am not a
stop-motion purist. My point of view is to take
what’s great about stop-motion, which is real
light on real objects and the tactility. But we also
use whatever tools and innovations we can to
expand the canvas. Right at the start our DP
Chris Peterson, production designer Nelson
Lowry, Steve Emerson and I talked about what
we can achieve. It is integral to our process that
CG and physical,tactile
models were combined
to achieve the best
possible results
Steve and the visual effects department are part
of the movie from day one. They don’t come in
later to fix stuff. Because of that we can aim high
and have a good idea of who’s doing what.
“My hope is that we use whatever we can to
make the image on the screen the best it can
be,” says Butler. “In the past what has been
rewarding for me is when the audience doesn’t
quite know how you achieved something.”
The film that began as a concept 15 years ago
and took five years to make has proven well
worth the wait for its creator. “I just want people
to see Missing Link because in terms of pushing
the boundaries of this medium it is the best thing
we’ve ever done. I’m particularly proud of the
facial animation, we took it to another level. I
want people to fall in love with the characters.”
SOME HAIRY
SITUATIONS
The environmental impact on the fur of
Mr. Link and the long hair of the Elder
Yeti required some digital assistance
“One thing that we realised once Mr. Link
got out onset was that he was going to be in
a lot of windy environments, and the puppet
has hundreds of pieces of fur,” states Laika
VFX supervisor Steve Emerson. “What we
ended up doing was taking invisible UV
paint, and we painted it densely on the tips
of the fur. The fur gradually became more
transparent towards the base. We would hit
it with ultraviolet light and when you go to
the different colour channels you have a
solid white at the tip, more of a grey at the
base, and then we were able to use that to
drive distortion in a 2D package to get a
believable wiggle on the fur.
A particular character was a combination
of puppet and CG. “The Elder Yeti in the
wide shots was puppet upper body and
digital lower body,” reveals Laika CG
supervisor Rick Sevy. “We had to develop
the train of her skirt in CG, rig it and match
her upper body in those shots, and animated
her train in the wide.” The digital portion
provided more fluid and realistic dynamics
for the train. “We would take strands of hair
that were created by the puppet
department, and Rick and his team created
digital versions of those,” explains Emerson.
“Then we shot lots of animators and people
walking around in long gowns and used that
to start conversations about exactly what
that train would look like. We worked closely
with the animation team to try to get that
final performance. Ultimately, it’s all about
having everything feel believable, physical
and uniform.”
All images © Laika Studios / Annapurna Pictures
Finishing details are tweaked into place on
Adelina Fortnight’s Gift Girl-inspired hair
25
FRAMING THE DEBATE: WOMEN IN THE VISUAL EFFECTS AND ANIMATION INDUSTRY

FRAMING
WOMEN IN THE VISUAL EFFECTS
AND ANIMATION INDUSTRY
We speak to women within visual effects and animation in the UK to
find out where the industry is at and where it’s going

W
hen we ask animation
student Lacey Swinhoe,
studying at Birmingham
City University, what the
visual effects and
animation industry looks like to female students
in 2019, she says, “It seems quite hard to break
into, with the high level of skill and creativity put
into making great games but, at least for visual
effects, as long as there are games that need it
there should be places to fit into. A lot more
women are in the industry, which is promising
for someone following the same road.”
The lines between film and gaming, visual
effects and animation are increasingly fluid.
What might remain a little less so are the
opportunities and spaces for women to move
into in their careers. In a 2017 report by The
Work Foundation, commissioned by the BFI, the
point is made that, “The lack of workforce
diversity is viewed as the biggest challenge
facing the film and screen industries…”
Geography can play its part in opportunity,
too. Again, quoting from the Work Foundation

26
 A student working with
the Vicon motion capture
system at Birmingham
City University

27
FRAMING THE DEBATE: WOMEN IN THE VISUAL EFFECTS AND ANIMATION INDUSTRY
report of 2017, “56% of the animation workforce
is based in London.” With that statistic in mind,
it’s fitting to bring in Leanne Loughran, talent
manager of Bournemouth-based Outpost VFX,
who says the company’s ethos is that, “We pride
ourselves on balance and fair support
throughout an artist’s career. Being
understanding of circumstances is key to this, as
well as encouraging women to return to the
workplace after going on maternity leave. At
Outpost we keep doors open for progression for
all of our employees, no matter the stage in their
career. As a member of Access: VFX, we push
ourselves to be continuously improving on
inclusion in the industry. Technical VFX roles in
infrastructure, pipeline, engineering etc. tend to
attract more men, and to combat that there
needs to be more awareness of the
opportunities available so that people aren’t put
into boxes. That initial spark needs to be ignited
at a school level, before young girls and parents/
guardians even look into degrees,
apprenticeships, work experience, career
prospects. We want more women to become
RETURNING TO
THE INDUSTRY
Leanne Loughran of Outpost VFX lays
out their commitment to supporting
women returning to work
“It can be difficult for women who have left
the industry to have children to return to
work. Visual effects moves so quickly that
parents may feel that even taking one year
out for parental leave is already too long out
of the game. That’s why initiatives like Film
London’s Return To Work scheme are so
important. We recently had digital artist
Hong Dam join Outpost on the scheme after
taking some time away from her career to
raise her family. For Hong, it was a chance to
explore a new career path and a way to get
back into the industry, all with a paid
returnship, a mentor, training and hands-on
experience in our studio.
It’s also imperative to support new talent.
Schemes like Access: VFX support the next
generation of VFX artists with benefits such
as a mentoring initiative. Mentoring can
nurture emerging talent and help shape the
artist that you are yet to be.”
28
VFX supervisors and department heads in the
industry, and a core part of that is by supporting
training across all levels. The support of our staff
is an intrinsic part of Outpost’s DNA.”
In terms of turning that spark that Leanne
identifies into a creative flame, Lianne Forbes,
senior lecturer in Visual Effects at Birmingham
City University, says that, in terms of how BCU
addresses the need to nurture and encourage
women to pursue careers in visual effects and
animation, “I think that one way we try is
through example. We have two women teaching
some of the big visual effects and technical
modules [for instance Dynamics in Houdini and
Rigging in Maya]. The university itself is part of
Athena SWAN [Athena SWAN was established
in 2005 to encourage and recognise
commitment to advancing the careers of women
in science, technology, engineering, maths and
medicine (STEMM) employment in higher
education and research]. We also have several
funding and bursary options, along with a new
fund for female STEM students that Central
England Co-op has launched, which will
encourage women to study STEM-related
subjects such as IT, Engineering and Digital
Technology at Birmingham City University.”
Lianne goes on to explain some of the ways in
which the UK visual effects industry has
engaged with women who want to or are
working within it: “I do believe there is a lot still
to be done, but it is encouraging how many
more women you find now working in the field.
Back when I first started as a matchmove artist
[in 2003/2004], I was a rarity, as more females
entered into 2D roles than 3D roles. That now
has changed significantly, which is great to see. I
think more women are finding themselves
moving into management positions and are
better able to influence and be role models,
which hopefully is encouraging to women
looking to pursue these types of careers. It’s still
a challenge, and we’ve definitely got a long way
to go, but we are on a better road now towards,
hopefully, achieving equality.”
Glorija Apanaviciute, also a student at BCU,
says of the challenges and the opportunities for
women looking to work in the industry: “Female
animators and visual effects artists need as
much support as male students.”
Of this march towards equality, Sue Lyster,
executive in charge at ILM London, considers
the need to recruit and promote on merit but
with “evermore understanding that women face
different challenges to men at all stages: in
education, recruitment and growth. The issue is
complex, and it would be naive to think that it’s
anything but a long game to bring about a VFX
workforce that truly reflects society, but we’re
excited to get started.”
At ILM, a range of initiatives are in place to More talented women are
wanting to work in the
cultivate increasing awareness around industry: Janete
perceptions of and attitudes towards gender in Domingues completed
this project while studying
the visual effects community. Sue Lyster goes on Visual Effects at BCU
more and more talented women
are eager to join the visual
effects and animation industry:
this is a piece of work completed
by student shanna morris

a BcU
undergraduate
project by Beatriz
Jordao teixera

29
FRAMING THE DEBATE: WOMEN IN THE VISUAL EFFECTS AND ANIMATION INDUSTRY

BCU Visual Effects

student Janete
Domingues completed
this project

Lianne Forbes has emphasised A project by Beatriz Jordao Teixera,

the importance of female role studying as an undergraduate on the
models in the industry Visual Effects course at BCU

At Birmingham City University,

students in visual effects engage
with all aspects of visual effects
development and realisation

30
 to note how, “Firstly, through Disney, our crew
have participated in training around unconscious
bias. I personally found that enlightening and
eye-opening as to the prejudices that we all,
naturally, carry around and need to address. I’m
pushing to run the course again and make it
mandatory for everybody. Changing our
perspective and realising we are all, in a way,
part of the problem is the first step to success.
It’s important that we push our female staff
forward. It’s our job to ensure their gender
doesn’t in any way impede them. UK VFX is a
Sue Lyster is a key flourishing industry and therefore hungry for
member of ILM London’s new talent. The whole industry – separately and
leadership team in unison – are actively engaged with education
at all levels through school outreach,
apprenticeships, internships and graduate
intakes, to ensure a healthy pipeline of talent for
the future.“
Animator Cadi Catlow, now based in Belgium
but with a long career in the UK, reflects that,
“There’s certainly a bit of a ‘boys club’ among
some animators, which is tough to penetrate at
times. I have missed out on work in the past
because the client has assumed a woman won’t
want to animate explosions, car chases or crude
humour, and I have been on shoots where my
technical requirements and input have been
ignored until repeated by a male colleague. I also
used to have my own studio, and clients
sometimes preferred to address a male assistant
rather than myself when discussing projects. So
I think there are still assumptions flying around
that damage female work opportunities, though
Leanne Loughran, VFX things are improving.
Talent Manager at “I think it is hard to stand out from the crowd
Outpost VFX
now too because the industry is drowning in
newcomers, but female animators starting out
do seem to be supported and encouraged. There
are now more platforms for women to get their
work showcased and their views heard. One
thing I would like to say is that I find it sad that
‘new and emerging talent’ only usually refers to
young people aged 16-30. And that is especially
hard on women, because if they do decide to
have a family, they lose several years of the
narrow window of support. I would very much
like to see ‘new and emerging talent’ expanded
to include anyone wanting to start or retrain in
the industry, whether they are 16 or 65.”
In terms of advice and encouragement that
can be offered to women who are embarking on
their visual effects careers, Sue Lyster stresses
that it’s valuable to “know that the industry they
want to join is pushing hard at the glass ceiling
on their behalf. I would encourage them to follow
their dreams and passions. I would encourage
them to challenge prejudice when they
encounter it. “
Leanne Loughran emphasises the importance
of the long view, saying, “The junior artists today
are tomorrow’s directors and supervisors. The
Cadi Catlow at work on a sky’s the limit, and it shouldn’t matter whether
stop-motion project you are male or female, what should matter and
never be diluted is an individual’s talent driving
their career progression. We have some talented
women at Outpost creating high-end visual
effects across all disciplines, driven by passion
– all while pushing themselves to create even
better work for our clients. I also feel that the
women I work with have an overwhelming drive
for success, from making the decision to step
into a predominantly male-dominated industry
and daily overcoming such stereotypes. They are
determined to produce amazing VFX work set to
inspire the next generation.”
Sue Lyster brings the conversation to a fitting
conclusion, drawing together many of the ideas
and issues currently moving in and around the
visual effects and animation communities (and
across the broader screen media industries),
saying, “I think the stereotyping of women starts
much earlier than their first step into the
industry. We need to be working with
universities, colleges and schools (and parents)
to encourage them to support girls in their
ambitions. At ILM we are challenging our
education partners to disclose their gender bias
and challenging them to embrace the problem.
We will never resolve this issue if the pipeline of
talent coming into the industry is no better
gender-balanced than we are. “
REALITY CHECK
Sue Lyster breaks down the importance
of visual effects recruitment that
supports female entrants
Sue Lyster explains ILM London’s approach:
“We broadly focus our efforts in two
directions; recruitment and retention. We
just need more women to enter the industry
and then we need them to stay, develop and
take on senior roles. In the area of
recruitment we instigated a ‘blind’
recruitment process for our 2018 graduate
intake, which resulted in a 5% swing towards
greater female representation. Our runners
team (a key junior route into the industry) is
50/50 male and female, and we ensure that
our work experience slots are equally shared
between female and male applicants.
It’s important that young women see an
industry that looks like them, so we’re trying
to ensure that we have female
representatives at recruitment events, on
panels etc. We also hope to have more
women training women. All our training
materials are written and presented by
men. It’s important to step back and realise
that we present a very male face to the
world. Changing that is key. Generally,
females are over-represented in production
and support roles and grossly under-
represented in creative and technical roles.”
31
BOOST RENDER TIMES WITH RTX

RTX
BOOST
RENDER
TIMES
WITH
Get more than five times faster render performance with Nvidia’s
Titan RTX in combination with the newest Octane release

R
endering has always been a hot topic
in the 3D and VFX worlds – especially
the discussion about the hardware
and software combinations that give
artists a fast and flexible working
environment for interactive, real-time previews
and high-quality final frame rendering.
Regarding the hardware, Nvidia has made the
life of artists more pleasant by releasing graphics
cards with RTX hardware features nested in
large Turing chips – just like the Titan RTX,
nicknamed T-Rex, which was released in
December 2018 and leads the Titan family.
Since then the card has been discussed
controversially on the internet because of its
price tag, which is double the price of the 2080
RTX Titan. On the other hand the performance
gain was just 15 per cent better than the RTX
2080 Titan. In cases like this it is important to
understand GPU benchmarks and preferably to
perform a benchmark yourself. There are
benchmark tools that specifically test OpenCL
performance, such as LuxMark, while some test
only CUDA performance, like Arion Benchmark,
It is important to
understand GPU
benchmarks and
preferably to perform a
benchmark yourself
and others test graphics acceleration in 3D
viewports based on OpenGL, just like the
professional benchmark solution SPECperf.
RTX hardware requires different benchmark
solutions for a proper test case. One great
example comes from OTOY, the developer of
the GPU rendering solution Octane. OTOY
released a RTX-specific benchmark solution
called OctaneBench RTX, which tests RTX cards
with experimental features such as ray-tracing
hardware acceleration. The benchmark
performs in two modes: RTX activated and
deactivated. The results not only show detailed
insights of specific elements but also the
EASY
COMPOSITING
IN 8K
A large video memory can boost
workflow in the composition
department on 8K timelines
The project resolution in professional studios
is way higher than just 4K. Usually 8K is set
as a professional studio standard, and that
means workstations need extreme
processing power to let compositors work
on more than 30 million pixels per frame,
which is needed for accurate tracking and
keying. DaVinci Resolve 15 from Blackmagic
Design supports RTX features in
combination with REDCODE RAW footage,
which can be viewed and colour-graded
without lags by using T-Rex’s full Turing
TU102 implementation.

32

By performing OctaneBench, it
shows that with RTX on the
rendering performance with the
Titan RTX is five times faster
increased GPU rendering performance by using
RTX hardware features with the same card. By
using all the benchmark tools it is possible to get
an idea of how the graphics card performs. Tools
like Arion Benchmark or LuxMark also enable a
performance test with hybrid modes by using
the CPU and GPU for a broader system
measurement. Benchmark tools like Cinebench
R20, for example, do not test GPU performance,
focusing instead on just some CPU features that
are needed to run Cinema 4D.
Another important factor of GPU
benchmarking is the graphics card driver and the
actual settings. It is recommended to use the
latest driver with maximum performance
settings. Usually Nvidia drivers have some
presets to choose, but mainly for 3DMark.
But more importantly in the field of GPU
rendering performance is the choice of the
best-matching GPU renderer for your graphics
hardware. At GTC 2019 many developers
announced that their 2019 releases will include
RTX support. This means that development with
RTX features is just at the beginning and
meaningful performance gains by using all
features of the respective graphics card like the
Titan RTX will take a couple of months.
There is one renderer that is already equipped
with RTX support – Octane 2019.1, and the
performance gain with activated RTX features is
tremendous. By performing OctaneBench, it
shows that with RTX on the rendering
performance with the Titan RTX is five times
faster than without RTX. Besides Octane, on 20
March 2019 Autodesk released Arnold as an
open beta with GPU support. Arnold’s GPU
support is based on the OptiX framework, which
is part of the RTX platform and offers good
performance. If both renderers have polished
implementations of the RTX features it will be a
big jump forward for GPU rendering.
At GTC 2019 there was some more good
news. Clarisse iFX will support RTX with Clarisse
4.0 SP2, which will be released at the beginning
of the second quarter of 2019. If artists want to
combine the power of the Titan RTX with a
powerful CPU, the best decision would be to
take a closer look at Pixar and their RenderMan
XPU rendering features, which combines CPUs
and GPUs for hybrid rendering. The GPU
features will include RTX support in terms of
hardware ray-tracing acceleration as well.
As we can see, it is rather tough to judge a
RTX card in terms of its price/performance ratio
because RTX has just started, but what the
Arnold beta and Octane have delivered is a huge
performance gain through the 72 real-time
ray-tracing cores.
Nvidia’s golden
T-Rex is equipped
with 72 RT cores,
576 tensor cores,
4.608 CUDA cores
on a full TU102
implementation
besides being fast
as well, with a 24
GB GDDR6
video memory
FAST INTERACTIVE
PREVIEW
RENDERING
The Arnold beta with GPU support
provides fast, interactive preview
rendering capabilities at high resolutions
Arnold’s interactive preview rendering,
especially with the GPU rendering features
enabled, is most effective in terms of
interactivity when the rendered scene fits
entirely into the available GPU memory, to
avoid unwanted translation times by
shovelling data forth and back.
Usually at production-level rendering,
procedures such as object subdivision and
displacement techniques are used to
produce highly detailed assets as rendered
output. But often this scene data can
exceed the available GPU memory of
lower-level graphics cards, meaning there’s
the requirement for and use of professional
graphics cards with large frame buffers,
such as the Titan RTX with its large 24 GB
video memory.
33
 detaiLing

Chris Lambert
bit.ly/2Y9Fmko
Building a story through an
Incredible 3D artists take us behind their artwork environment is what artist
Chris loves to do.
detailing Software UE, Blender,
I wanted to take advantage of vertex painting in Unreal Engine. I knew I would have a lot of assets to create, so Substance Painter, Mixer,
cutting down on unique meshes but creating colour variations would help me limit repeating assets. In Substance World Machine, Photoshop
Painter I created a complete material for the doors, for example, then made three colour variations, set up a
three-way vertex blend in UE (blending the base colour), then painted each mesh with a single click. AHomeUpHigh,2019

34
35
 ScuLpting

ShapiroSergeyevich
artstation.com/b_e_l_i_a_l
Shapiro is a junior 3D
Incredible 3D artists take us behind their artwork artist at Sperasoft game
studio, located in Saint
Sculpting Petersburg, Russia.
This image was based on the work of concept artist Johan Grenier. When creating the high-poly model, I Software ZBrush, Maya,
was inspired by the works of my favourite artists, Ben Erdt and Jason Martin. Thanks to their creations, I Arnold, Photoshop
was able to find a balance in detailing and sculpting this model. Much of my attention was concentrated on
obtaining my desired result. DragonHead,2019

36
 ESSENTIAL ART
RESOURCES
Exclusive videos and
custom brushes are
available with your
digital editions!

iPad is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.

Try out a digital edition

for FREE today!
Just search for ‘ImagineFX’ on these selected platforms…
 Expert advice from industry professionals, taking you from concept to completion
All tutorial files can be downloaded from: filesilo.co.uk/3dartist

38
Rig an umbrella
with Vellum
Learn how to utilise Vellum tools
to create a versatile dynamic
umbrella asset rather than using a
traditional rig

F
or this tutorial we will learn the basic concepts
behind the Vellum tools that were introduced in
Houdini 17, and we will use these concepts to create
a sunshade umbrella asset. The more usual approach for
this kind of asset is to create a traditional rig without
simulation, or just have the fabric simulated. However, if
we use the Vellum tools as much as we can, the umbrella
will be more versatile and will behave more dynamically.
Additionally, it will be ready to be deployed in any kind of
scene, even if the purpose is a realistic set dressing or a
storm scene with blowing winds.

39
 RIG AN UMBRELLA WITH VELLUM
GREG BARTA
Vellumbrella, 2019
Bio
Greg is a VFX artist and
scientist with a passion for
cinematic scientific
visualisations. Details, along
with Houdini resources like
the UI mods in these
screenshots, are on his
ArtStation profile.
Software
Houdini Indie
Learn how to
• Set up a Vellum simulation
network in SOP
• Understand how these
nodes work
• Create an umbrella model
for simulation
• Set its simulation
parameters properly
• Be aware of the quirks
of Vellum
• Simulate and write cache
disks for later use
• Start the look dev and
layout phases
Concept
I was curious about whether
using Vellum for unusual
cloths like assets is a viable
option. My first attempt was
to create packaging for food
like the aluminium foil of a
chocolate bar. While the
plasticity behaviour of Vellum
is limited, I decided to create a
fully simulated beach
umbrella rig.
YOUR
FREE
DOWNLOADS
from bit.ly/3DA-131
• Tutorial screenshots
40
01
01 Test ride It’s helpful if we do some investigation at
the beginning and look under the bonnet to
understand how Vellum works. So let’s create a basic
scene with simple collision objects and a polygrid above
them. We should increase the row and column count –
around 100 is a good starting point. There are a few tools
on the Vellum Shelf tab, and in this case we just use the
Simple Cloth. This is the easiest one to set up; just follow
the onscreen instructions. Hitting the play button starts the
simulation, and we can see that this tool has created a new
Geo node, which contains all of the nodes for simulation.
02 The SOP way If you are a Houdini user but new to
version 17 you might think that the DOP network is
missing. Diving into the new Geo node, we can see that
there are unusual SOP nodes – some have three inputs and
outputs. These are Vellum SOP nodes, which contain
subnetworks for defining and processing the simulation
data. This shouldn’t be new for you if you’ve used the
grooming tools before. The first input is for the geometry
02
itself, the second is the simulation structure (they generally
call them constraints) and the third is for the collision
objects. The Vellum Constraints node is where we can find
all the dynamic properties of the cloth and observe the
constraints in Wireframe mode.
03 Vellum guts This SOP-based approach can feel
more straightforward compared to a DOP network,
as the nodes here simply represent a cause-and-effect
chain from top to the bottom and not the usual simulation
data ‘compositing’ tree, which is the way in DOPs.
However, if we dive into the Vellum Solver node, a ‘secret’
place appears where we can wire Dynamics nodes to the
output to enhance the simulation. Let’s try the POP Fluid
node, which is also new in Houdini 17. Playing the
simulation, we can see that the cloth gets wavy. So here in
this context we can attach POP forces, as Vellum is a
particle-based simulation system. This place is a dive
target, so jump one level up and we are now in the DOP
network of the Vellum simulation.
03
04
Firstly we should create
the frame. The best
approach for this is to do the
modelling procedurally

04 Disk cache The next node in the SOP network is

the Vellum I/O, where we can easily manage the
simulation disk cache. It will automatically write the cache
in the geo folder relative to the scene file. If you’d prefer to
use a specific place, you can modify the path in the
geometry file parameter with your variables too, then click
on the cog icon and select Save as Permanent Defaults.
The next time you create this node or use the Vellum tools
it will use your settings, and this function is available for
every node in Houdini. So when you are satisfied with the
simulation, just hit the Save to Disk button and it writes the
cache sequence out with all the simulation data. To read
back the cache, set the File Mode to Read Files instead of
ticking the Load from Disk, because the latter isn’t
05
optimised and can be slower.

05 After-sim polish The last node is the Vellum

Post-Process, which is quite a handy one. Here we
can repair some of the usual failures of a cloth simulation,
such as spikes. Firstly if the geometry resolution is too low,
use the subdivision with the proper depth value (Catmull-
Clark is for quads, Loop is for tris). If it doesn’t eliminate the
spikes, you can smooth the shape of the geometry with the
spatial blur. The detangle pushes away intersecting parts,
so if the cloth penetrates into the collision geometry this
will help. This is a must-have feature, especially if you use
blur and/or subdivision. This node can significantly slow
down Houdini, so it is best to just use it occasionally and
for final rendering.

06 Umbrella frame After playing with the cloth

properties and observing their effects, we can start
with a new scene for the umbrella. Firstly we should create
the frame. The best approach for this is to do the modelling
procedurally. In this case we can easily modify it to get
06 07
different variations. It’s worth getting familiar with real
umbrellas and how they are made – there are many videos
about it on YouTube. We can start the build with simple
tube geometries, one for the pole and just one stretcher
and one rib, which should be properly sized and aligned to
get the right shape during the simulation. Then, if we use
Copy and Transform node to create the rest, we can easily
change the section count of the canopy later on.

07 Softbody frame The runner hub is the next part,

which is also just a tube here, so it’s better to use
simple objects for the simulation. After we merge the ribs
and the stretchers, we can convert them in one step to
Vellum objects. The most efficient way is to use the Tab
menu and select Configure Softbody. It creates two
Constraints nodes – the first is the simulation structure of
the surface, and the second defines the inner structure and
avoids the collapse. I wired the pole and the runner into the
collision input of the first input node, but you can
experiment with these as soft bodies if you’d like to use it in
a windy environment and bend the pole in the simulation.

41
 RIG AN UMBRELLA WITH VELLUM

08

Vellum Drape
Instead of the Vellum Solver node, it’s better to use
Vellum Drape node for an asset that has draping steps
in its node network. It has additional dedicated
functions, as well as the ability to be independent to
the timeline and get only the draped geometry.

08 Constraints between parts The next thing is to

create all the connections between the pieces. We
should define the connecting points of the parts. Instead of
selecting them by hand, a more procedural approach is to
to use Group nodes with the ‘Keep in Bounding Regions’
option, so if we change our mind and change the resolution
of the frame pieces they will automatically pick the
connection points in the right places. We use the same
Vellum Constraints node as before, just with a different
constraint types. Many Vellum items in the Tab menu
create this node, just with different types: ‘Attach to
Geometry’ is for the connection between the stretchers
and the runner if the latter is a collision geometry; ‘Stitch
09 10
Points’ is the best to connect the ribs with the stretchers.

09 Solver’s sensitive parameters Now we can create a

Vellum Solver node and connect it to the outputs
of the last Constraints node. The two most important
parameters of the Solver are the constraint iterations and
substeps. The first defines how far any sort of energy
shockwave can go from its origin, as each iteration
conducts the energy to the next connecting constraint. I
recommend to raise this first – the edge count through the
widest part of the most detailed geometry in the simulation
is a good starting point. The substeps value is the same as
in other Solvers, similar to a time-subdiv, but as Vellum is
based on the XPBD model, basically these don’t alter the
physical behaviour of the objects, they just make the
simulation more precise and lessen the artefacts –
especially the substeps for fast-moving objects.

10 Still resolution dependent While the ribs should be

stiff but not too rigid for bending, we need to play
with the properties of those nodes to get the right
11
behaviour. XPBD is the iteration and timestep-independent
version of position-based dynamics, which was available
before Houdini 17 as Grains. While this is basically a
particle system, it depends on the resolution of the
geometries – each geometry point is a particle. Thus the
mass defines the weight of each, and if we raise the
resolution of the geo we should lower this value accordingly
to get roughly the same overall weight. This is true for other
parameters too, such as the stiffness values.

11 Procedural canopy Now let’s start modelling the

canopy. One approach is to create panels, as they do
in real life, but there is an easier and more versatile way.
Use a sphere, and its columns can define the canopy
section count. After deleting roughly two-thirds of the
bottom part with a Blast node, flatten it with a Transform
node to get a better umbrella-like curvature. It is important
to not use simple triangle panels if we want to achieve
curved ribs, as the triangles would have too much width at
the outer sides. A curved side panel might be the best, but
procedurally the sphere is a much more convenient way.

42
12

With Vellum, we need

to use crazy numbers for
the physical parameters
of the objects. For
example, the default
value of Stretch Stiffness
is 10 billion, which is still
a bit stretchy
12 Canopy details PolyExtrude is our friend when
dealing with the loose endings of the panels.
However, it was fragile at the time of writing, so it’s best to
save the scene before tweaking this node. After we set the
‘Divide Into’ to ‘Individual Elements’, the output side is all
we need from the outputs. The Curved setting at the Spline
13
Shape enables us to define the shape on the Spline Control
tab with the Thickness Ramp. Finally, use the Remesh node
to create an evenly distributed triangle mesh, which is the
best for Vellum. We can also use Attribute Noise for the P
parameter to add some wrinkles to the rest shape.

13 All together It’s now time for the marriage of the

frame and the canopy. Sadly, there isn’t a dedicated
Vellum node for this yet, but we can use two Merge nodes
for the geometry and the magenta constraint wires. We
can stitch together those at the end of the ribs, but first we
should create point groups in the upstream branches and
use Vellum Stitch Points from the Tab menu, as we did in
step 8. This newly created node is now the input of our
Solver node, and we can connect the collision geometries
directly to the third input of the solver. Now try out how
this dynamic rig works with the actual settings and let
them snap together by hitting the play button.

14
14 Crazy parameter ranges It’s likely that the result isn’t
too good. With Vellum, we need to use crazy
numbers for the physical parameters of the objects. For
example, the default value of stretch stiffness is 10 billion,
which is still a bit stretchy. On the other hand, the bend
stiffness with the 0.1 default value is still too much – I used
0.0002 for this umbrella, otherwise it was too rigid. When
we are satisfied with the physical behaviour of the fabric
and the frame, we can easily write out different simulation
caches with the Vellum I/O node, such as an open-close
cycle – just animate the hub up and down. Another
interesting option is to use the wind parameter on the
Forces tab in the Solver node.

Visualise with Post-Process

There is a second tab on the Vellum Post-Process
node where we can enable the display of each kind of
constraint and check the thickness of the cloth. At the
bottom, it is possible to choose which simulation data
we want to visualise as a heat map, which is good for
diagnostic purposes.

43
 RIG AN UMBRELLA WITH VELLUM

15

15 Look dev setup For look dev use a beach scene

environment from HDRI Haven (hdrihaven.com)
because they are unclipped, so the intensity of the Sun
creates a proper contrast between the sunlit and
shadowed areas. After creating the Environment Light
node and setting the path to the HDR texture file in it, we
can start the IPR rendering. With the Denoise and Preview
buttons switched on, the look dev is more convenient, but
in the Mantra ROP on the Images/Output tab we should
set the pixel filter to the NVIDIA OptiX Denoiser preset for
proper denoising. I also highly recommend using an
advanced colour management system, such as ACES.

16 Fabric shading Firstly we should add a Vellum

Post-Process node to the outputs of the Solver,
because the original fabric surface has just one side. We
can use the ‘Extrude by Thickness’ function for the others,
as described in step 5. We need this for more realistic
edges and for subsurface scattering. We can use the
16
Principled Shader for the fabric, and it’s better if we use
subsurface scattering because many real sunshades only
partially stop the sunlight. The SSS mode is more realistic if
we use Single-Scattering mode as it has a phase parameter
available. Around 0.85 can reveal nice backlighting effects
in the direction of the Sun.

17 Scatter To populate the beach, use the Copy to

Points node – its second input is a bunch of points
generated by a Scatter node. Switching the Vellum I/O
node to Read, we can use one of the caches to vary the
instances of the umbrella. The Time Shift node enables us
to make the cache independent to the timeline. Its frame
parameter is the relative playhead, and we can vary this for
every instance if we properly use the For-Each Point node
pair with an expression here. If you didn’t use such
methods before, don’t worry, just check out my ArtStation
site for additional information and resources, which may
include updates for Houdini 17.5.
17

44 All tutorial files can be downloaded from: bit.ly/3DA-131

 BUILD DYNAMIC CREATURES WITH ZIVA

GAEL
KERCHENBAUM,
JARL MIDELFORT
AND LASSE
RASMUSSEN
One Of Us - Fox, 2018
Bio

Build dynamic
Gael is a creature artist
specialised in modelling,
texturing and look
development. Jarl is an
animator with years of
experience in rigging,

creatures with Ziva

while Lasse is a rigger and
Ziva artist.
Software
Ziva, ZBrush
Learn how to These experts reveal the workflow and techniques
• Creature modelling for VFX
• Understanding anatomy needed to build amazing animated creatures with Ziva
for modelling
• Animation inspired by

simulating real life-muscles
• Rig building for creatures
• Introduction to Ziva
Dynamics
Concept
Gael, Jarl and Lasse explain
the workflow they used to
make a creature at One Of
Us, using a modern
production pipeline
environment. In this step by
step, you’ll learn how to
model a creature from the
inside out and how to rig and
animate for Ziva Dynamics.
T
his tutorial is an overview of the different topics
covered by technical animation for production. In
this tutorial, we will review some of the key
specialities that are needed to build a creature in a modern
production environment. Keep in mind that this is not a
one-person job. In professional VFX studios, the work
covered by this step-by-step tutorial is often, if not always,
done by several artists. One has to be in charge of the
modelling, working hand in hand with the rigger or
character FX artist, who will be in charge of the muscle
system. We also need animators to put our creature in
motion. The whole workflow takes time, but it can give you
amazing results, on par with techniques used by some of
the most highly respected VFX companies in the world.
undocumented species, find one that is very close. Keep in
mind that almost all mammals share roughly the same
anatomy – only the proportions are different.
02 Skeletal system creation in ZBrush Start by
building the skeletal system of your animal. You
want to build it bone by bone. Do not focus on the topology
yet. What matters is to get an accurate anatomy.
Depending on the time you can spend on this aspect, you’ll
want to add some details on the bones. Focus mainly on
the areas where you’ll need to connect the muscles later
on. It is important to be able to locate their origins and
insertions, as it will also be a technical requirement for the
setup of Ziva. Keep a clear naming convention to prepare
the work for the rig.

01 Understanding creature anatomy for production

Usually in production most of the artists start by
modelling the skin, before doing the interior of the body.
However, one of the workflows we recommend is to model
your animal from the inside out instead. Use the books
from Wilhelm Ellenberger and Eliot Goldfinger. They will
provide you with in-depth drawings for each bone and
muscle that you’ll have to model. Add references from
dissections as well. If you have to work on an
01
03 Modelling accurate muscle anatomy You may have
heard those words quite a few times if you have
already studied anatomy in an art school. These are what
you need to focus on during this exercise. As you did for
the bones, model each muscle individually in ZBrush. They
will need to be separate geometries to work with Ziva. In
your SubTool list, add a sphere. Using the Move brush,
push it from the bony origin of the muscle to its insertion.
02

YOUR
FREE
DOWNLOADS
from bit.ly/3DA-131
• Tutorial screenshots

46
Make sure that the volumes of muscles are accurate by
using dissection pictures. You don’t need to add details.
04 Making a model Ziva-ready We need to have a
clean topology for each bone and muscle, and
Ziva also needs geometry to have UVs. There is no need to
do a manual retopology for each mesh. In ZBrush, select
your SubTool, go into Geometry and Zremesher. reduce
03
the initial value from 5 to something between 0.1 and 0.5.
You don’t want to end up with too many polygons, but it is
important to maintain the shape of your object. Then, use
ZBrush’s UV Master to generate an automatic unfold of
the UVs. Do the same for every bone and muscle. You can
also use Zrepeat to ease the work and do that
automatically for you. All bones and muscles can be
exported at once using ZBrush’s FBX Exporter.
04
47
 BUIlD DYnAMIc crEATUrES WITH ZIVA

05
05
Model the outer skin This step is really the one
where your model starts to take shape. First of all,
merge all of the bones and muscles into one SubTool.
convert that one into DynaMesh to generate a continuous
mesh. Add a bit of thickness with your preferred brushes;
you’ll need to make it look as close as possible to your hero
reference. Keep in mind that there are some areas where
you’ll need to add fat, so you’ll not end up with too much
muscle definition. Once satisfied with your creature, export
it and do a manual retopology following the usual needs of
topology for animation.

06 Establish the different rigs The best way to

approach any rigging task is to break down what
the rig is supposed to do. rigging for a realistic character
06
requires a face rig, body rig and puppet rig. This is a classic
way to rig characters in VFX, enabling you to split what
would be a very complex job into smaller tasks that can be
built up simultaneously. For the puppet rig, aim to supply
the animator with a rig that will run in real time. Design it in
a way where it can drive the body anatomically, since we’ll
be using the output of the puppet rig to drive the body rig,
face rig and the skeleton geometry of Ziva.

07 Detail the rigs catalogue which facial expressions

you want. Use the guide Facial Action coding
System to break them up into ‘action units’. They will be
sculpted and added to a blendshape-driven facial rig. For
07
the body rig, we’ll have a ‘Ziva’d’ and ‘traditional’ rig, so
make sure the two outputs you’re creating will work with
each other. let Ziva handle everything except the tail, paws
and head. For the tail and paws, using a pose space
deformation-based workflow enables you to get quick
results, while designing joint-driven systems enables you to
easily scale up for multiple characters. consider what your
situation calls for and choose accordingly.

08 Before starting with Ziva Make sure you go

through the model you’ve received and checked for
things like intersections, holes and anatomical precision.
The muscle geometry really needs to match well with the
skin geometry. If everything is correct, you’ll get a great
result. Make sure the geometry is split left and right to
speed up your workflow. Use the inbuilt Ziva tools to
double-check you don’t have any self-intersections or
08
intersections between muscles and bones. We
recommend using the zBuilder package that Ziva made
available as an open-source project. It contains commands
that enable you to store all your Ziva nodes as data, which
can then be edited and rebuilt, so you can build one side of
your character, store the data and then mirror the
properties to the other side.

Make models breakdown-ready

You’ll see here that you need to perform an automatic
retopology and UVs, then you’ll be able to prepare a
clean UV layout in your 3D package to texture them
for a possible breakdown. We suggest placing UVs in
separate UDIMs per area, such as neck, forearm etc.,
then import them back into ZBrush. You’ll be able to
add another pass of sculpt and to texture them later.
Just keep the same layout as the one for Ziva.

48
09

optimisation of the fat and fascia

Since Ziva 1.4, there are now two viable options for
simulating fascia; you can make it its own pass, or do a
coupled simulation together with the fat and skin
simulation. While the coupled approach is
recommended for stability, to get the result seen in the
fox breakdown, you’ll need to run the fascia pass as its
own pass.

09 Build the muscle setup The first thing to add is

attachments. We’ll be using zBuilder to handle
mirroring for us, so focus on one side of the mesh. Only
attach a small selection of vertices and then let the
soft-tissue simulation do its work. For areas like the legs,
you can create sliding attachments to make the muscles
10
stick a little closer to the bones, but be careful not to
overdo this and keep these fairly loose.

10 Build fascia, fat and skin Make a simulation mesh by

creating a lower-poly version of the skin mesh,
excluding the areas that will not be simulated. combine the
muscle and skeleton caches into a singular output using the
zPolycombine tool. Use the pressure attribute of the Ziva
cloth to project the sim mesh onto the zPolycombine
output. When doing this, create a fixed attachment
between the zPolycombine output and the fascia around
any edges where you’ve cut the sim mesh. For the fat
volume, you’ll want to create a mesh that fills the void
between the skin and the fascia. This can be done using a
similar method to how we created the fascia, but make
sure the volume is watertight.

11
11
Plan the animation When starting to animate creature
locomotion, you first need to choose which type of
locomotion you are animating, for example a walk, trot or
gallop. Once you’ve decided on the type of locomotion, you
can then determine the amount of time it takes to complete
a single cycle. This will dictate the number of frames from
one ‘contact’ pose of a given paw to the next matching
contact pose of the same paw. For an introduction to cycle
animation in general, have a look at richard Williams’s
12
Animator’s Survival Kit, and for more practical workflows
for quadruped animation in Autodesk Maya, check out
Daniel Fotheringham’s Quad Blog, which also contains lots
of useful reference analysis for quadruped locomotion:
danielfotheringham.com/quad-blog-beta

12 References for animation A huge part of successful

realistic locomotion is in the details. Select some
hero references that you can loop and compare all aspects
of your animation to. While technically not the same as
natural locomotion, footage of animals on treadmills can
still provide valuable information. Alternatively, a camera
‘tilt’ shot (where the camera stays at a fixed point on a
tripod and looks to the left or right) can also be a good
source of information. Try to identify key traits of
locomotion that make your animal unique and
demonstrates that this is a specific type of animal when
compared to other creatures. For example, with the fox it
was things like the ‘head bow’, where they lower their head
at times, which makes them appear as though they are
being very sneaky.

49
 BUIlD DYnAMIc crEATUrES WITH ZIVA

13

Getting the most out of a camera

tilt reference shot
If done well and taken from a far enough distance, a
camera tilt shot can provide both a similar result to a
‘dolly’ shot (a camera running alongside the creature)
and a ‘locked off’ (camera not moving) shot. It can be
fairly straightforward to negate the camera movement
of this type of shot, leaving us with the option to
analyse the locomotion without camera motion. A
tracking/matchmove department should have little
trouble with this, but even a very crude 2D track by
hand (where you just counter-animate the x/y 2D
translation on an image plan) can be an effective way
to analyse creature movement more easily.

13
14
Create a base ‘vanilla’ cycle Start the actual
animation with a simple, single ‘vanilla’ cycle. Each
foot will come into contact with the ground once, with the
first and last frame having an exactly matching pose. With
an in-place cycle (where global/body/torso controls are
not translating forward/backwards at all), the key thing is
that the amount of forward/backward translation for all
paws is consistent and matching exactly. This means the
amount that each paw travels backwards across each
frame should be exactly the same as all the other paws.
Additionally the backwards translation for each paw as it
contacts and slides on the ground will be a linear animation
curve (no ease in/out). Make sure you get things like foot
splay in at this vanilla stage, as this will save you a lot of
time later on.

14 Extend your cycle for variation Start extending your

vanilla cycle by moving to the last frame and copying
all the keyframes to this point, which should give you
15

double the frames. reapply this process as many times as

is necessary according to how long you want the shot to
be. now adjust the timing of random sections to have one
or two more (or fewer) frames relative to the default length
of time for your vanilla cycle. Add some variation in posing
at certain points as well. If you have offset controls, try
adding some head direction changes to have the creature
looking at something during the cycle. If you do not have
offset controls, you can also just use animation layers to
achieve this.

15 Ziva considerations To help the Ziva simulation, you

should animate some pre-roll at the start of your
shot. Typically this means you will need to blend from the
neutral/default rig pose into the first pose of your
locomotion animation for approximately 10-30 frames.
check things like knees and elbows for intersections both
during the pre-roll blend and during all of your cycle
animation. This will help to avoid any undesirable
simulation results. Animate and double-check the
behaviour of any tertiary anatomy, such as the shoulder
blades. normally the shoulder blades go up abruptly when
the front legs first come into contact with the ground, and
then move down towards the second half of the ground
contact (and throughout the passing movement where the
paws are off of the ground). This will really help the Ziva
simulation to produce more believable results with your
creature’s animation.

50
 16
16
Simming the muscles Once you’re done with the
animation, you’ll need to simulate the muscles and all
the geometry made for Ziva. Make sure to run a few
frames of simulation every now and then to double-check
that things are working. Try to script as many repetitive
tasks as possible, such as naming new nodes and attaching
zlineOfAction nodes to the bone geometry. You can find
examples of how to do this on the Ziva community forum
(community.zivadynamics.com). For the muscle settings,
we recommend lowering the default values a bit on the
muscles around the belly and chest area, and upping the
values on the areas around the legs.

17
17 Simming the fascia This part should be simulated as
Ziva cloth. Make a fixed attachment to attach areas
where the skin will stick closer to the underlying anatomy,
and a sliding attachment in areas where you want to see
skin sliding. To create the attachments, you can get a
selection using the proximity selection tools available in
Ziva. To help improve stability, you should turn off gravity
when fixing the fascia. With this method of creating the
fascia, there might be areas where you see a lot of tearing.
Try painting on a bit of deltaMush to relieve this.

18 The fat and skin You should simulate the fat and skin
pass on a higher amount of substeps in order to
increase the amount of high-frequency details. Since the
default settings for the soft tissue in Ziva are meant for
muscles, lower the Young’s modulus and mass density to
make it feel more natural (bit.ly/2HutVxA). When
18
connecting the fascia and the fat or skin, you’ll want to
have the fat following the fascia quite tightly. Have the skin
riding on top of the fat, using a combination of fixed
attachments in areas where there’s bony landmarks, and
sliding attachments in others where you want to see the
skin sliding around and wrinkling. Upping the default tensile
and shear stiffness a bit should get you some nice wrinkling
in the skin when it compresses, as well as sliding over the
fat in areas where you’ve painted sliding attachments when
it gets pulled, adding to the realism of the character.

19 Combining all the caches Once you’re done with all

the Ziva simulations, you’ll be able to combine the
different caches and mix them with the animation cache.
19
Import all of your caches into one scene – the Ziva skin,
body rig and your face rig. Select all of your moving
geometries, then select your initial model and create a
blendshape. From this stage, you’ll be able to paint the
influence of each cache on the area that you want. The
body will receive influence from Ziva, the face from your
face rig and the paws and tail from your body rig.

one of us studio
This project was made for One Of Us. We are thankful
to the company, who gave us the permission to share
our production workflow. This project is thanks to all
the team of artists involved. We’d like to say a
particular thank you to ceylan Shevket Jawara, who
was our supervisor, to Andrea Umberto Origlia who
took care of the groom, Justin long and Boyan Baynov
for the look dev, rachel Ward and cédric de la Forest
Divonne for their work on the animation of the shots.

All tutorial files can be downloaded from: bit.ly/3DA-131 51

 DEPICT CANCER CELLS

52
Depict cancer cells
Learn how to make high-resolution medical images that recreate the
look of cells under a scanning electron microscope
T
his is a medical illustration from 3FX Inc. for the
2019 American medical journal that we will cover,
step by step, to show the science focusing on the
cancer cell and how to make it visually interesting with CGI.
We will also look at using simple techniques to create
quick environment volume effects and some floating
objects to represent the inside of the human body.
We will use several tools, mostly in Maya and Redshift,
to create all the details with an organic look and feel. Some
details can be provided by geometry and some by material,
displacement, bump and Fresnel effects. Here we will
focus on all the aspects of one medical illustration and run
the process in the fastest way by combining all the various
abilities in Maya and Redshift.
Maya Paint Effects has significantly more abilities than
many people think. It is not just about flowers and trees.
You can create lot of different customised shapes with
different settings. We will create the cancer cell tentacles
and spikes just by applying and tweaking Maya’s Paint
Effects, which is completely procedural and controllable
and can even be animated.
Besides the final image, we will discover how to make
the cancer cell appaear landed on a surface, exactly like
SEM images, by using the collision option in Paint Effects.
We will use Cinema 4D to create the base shape of the
division with a nice displacement, since Cinema 4D’s
Displacer Deformer is one of the best and fastest. We will
also use it to create the middle division effect, as the new
Cinema 4D Volume Builder makes this straightforward.
To achieve this medical look and feel we fill focus on the
material and texture to get the best subsurface scattering
effect, mixing it with an SEM (scanning electron
microscope) effect. We will learn how to play with lights
and illumination colour to illustrate the material in a
different way, instead of making a Vertex map. We will also
learn the best way to set up the lights to show as much
detail on our model as we can.
At the end we will learn how to use the Redshift render
engine, which is GPU-based, to very quickly export the
final image in high resolution. We will mix different native
Redshift nodes, like RS Fresnel and RS Bump, to achieve
the medical rendering result quickly.
53
 DEPICT CANCER CELLS

01

01 Shape the base cell Cancer cells have different

shapes and sizes, based on their type and the stage
of the disease. You can search online for SEM images to
find thousands of references. The one we are going to
depict in this tutorial is in the division stage. Since this is
supposed to be a CGI artwork, it’s fine to go a little beyond
the reality. To start, we can create a sphere and add a C4D
Taper Deformer on one side to get a half.
FARID GHANBARI
Cancer Cells,
2019 02 Divide the cell with Cinema 4D Volume Builder
Once we’ve created the half we can put that into a
Symmetry object. Just by repositioning the main half
Bio
Farid is the art director at 3FX geometry we can get different levels of the division. Now
Inc. with more than 11 years’ we just need to put this new model into a C4D Volume
experience in CGI industry.
He is always trying to learn Builder and Volume Mesher. To get the desired resolution
something new. and form, play with the voxel size and add one or two
Software smooth layers into the Volume Builder. We can also define
Maya, Cinema4D, Redshift, the smoothness based on C4D fields.
Photoshop 02

Learn how to
• Build a cell in Cinema 4D
• Add details using Maya
03 Secondary details in C4D Displacement Deformer
Cinema 4D Displacer Deformer is really handy and
fast. The fact we are able to see the result in Viewport is
Paint Effects
great. To achieve nice bumpy details on the base geometry,
• Render with Redshift
assign the model Displacer Deformer with three different
Concept noise scales. We can also have different types of noise,
Learn how to create images of
cells in the body that appear
depending on individual artistic decisions. At this moment,
as though they are being we need to play with noise types and scales to get the
viewed through a scanning desired details.
electron microscope.

04 Add spikes using Maya Paint Effects These details

are probably the most prominent details we will
see in this image, so it is necessary to spend time and
create the best result we can. Maya Paint Effects provides
us with some great procedural tools and a lot of control
over parameters like thickness, tips, base, curliness, bend,
03
forces or even collisions. Bring the base shape we made in
C4D into Maya, select it and make it paintable from the
Maya Generate menu. Grab Root stroke from Maya’s Visor
window and start painting. Feel free to play with forces in
the Behaviour tab to get the desired form.

UV map
It is important to have a UV when you create textures.
For example, the SEM effect won’t work well if you
don’t have UV on your object. Thankfully the Maya
UV editor is one of the most powerful, with a unique
toolkit. Since we are not assigning any bitmap images,
we just need a simple UV that we can use to create
that base on-camera, by selecting the object and
going to the UV menu, then selecting Camera-Based.

04

YOUR
FREE
DOWNLOADS
from bit.ly/3DA-131
• Tutorial screenshots

54 54
05
The camera angle and
image ratio is more about
individual artistic
decisions, but usually a
high focal length gives you
a better perspective

Maya Paint Effects collision

One of the great features in Maya Paint Effects is the
ability to collide with other objects. You can easily
select the collider object and the stroke and apply this
in the Generate menu. From now on if you go to
Forces tab of your stroke you can control parameters
like surface attract, momentum, length flex and so on.
These parameters will give you different results in the
collision behaviour.
06 07

05 Add secondary details using Maya MASH To get

all those spheres around the cell we can use Maya
MASH, which enables us to tweak the randomness on
size, number, rotation and scales very quickly. Just make a
simple sphere and make a Mash network out of it. Now
you just need to add these spheres around the cell by
changing the distribution type to mesh and assign the cell
to the Input Mesh section. We can easily add a MASH_
Random node to make all the variety you need.

06 Set up the camera and key lights Once we are

happy with the cell modelling, we need to to set up
the camera. This should happen right before we spend
time on the final details, since it will help us to know which
parts or angles of the model will never show in the final
render. The camera angle and image ratio is more about
individual artistic decisions, but usually a high focal length
gives you a better perspective in these types of rendering
and will give out less distortion as well. For the key light we
08
can start with a physical Redshift light on top. This will be
tweaked later in the process.

07 Create the material and get the SSS effect This is a

live organic creature, and a subsurface scattering
effect is the most important thing to replicate these
features. We can start with a Redshift material and play
with subsurface parameters to get the desired result. Make
sure you use Redshift Bump node to add more refined
details. To emphasise SSS effects, we should also add two
more Redshift rectangular physical lights at 90 degrees to
the right and left to shine up Paint Effects spikes.

08 Create an SEM look & feel A Fresnel effect is the

key to replicate an SEM look. Redshift has a superb
Fresnel node with its built-in Bump map that gives us
exactly what we are looking for. To make this, assign the
Fresnel node to the diffuse channel with an orange colour
in the facing colour parameter and white in the
perpendicular colour. Then, assign a native Maya Fractal
2D node to the Bump map slot from the IOR menu.

55
 DEPICT CANCER CELLS

09

09 Adding point lights As well as the key light, we can

use a couple of point lights around the cell with
different hue and brightness settings to get more details
out of the SSS material. Feel free to play with light colour
and intensity. Here we will use one really intense point light
in the centre of the cell, with a yellow tone to emphasise
the division. This makes the whole render more dramatic
and cinematic as well.

10 Set up the environment We have finished with the

cancer cell modelling, texturing and lighting. Now to
illustrate it to look like it’s in a human body we need a
volume scattering effect, which we make with Redshift
Volume Scattering, as well as some floating and vague
objects out of focus to add depth to the final image. Make
sure you add these environment objects in different depths
from the camera to get a nice DOF.

11 Render setting Redshift is one of the best and fastest

render engines, and enables us to get a clean render
with just a few settings. Set up the final image to
10000x4680 pixels. Change the minimum samples to 64
10 11
and maximum to 512 In the Output menu. Make sure you
have enough samples in your lights and materials. For the
GI we use Brute Force for both primary and secondary
engines. We will consider the AOVs in the boxout.

12 Post production Once we render out a separate

mask for different parts of the cancer cell we can
tweak the colour in Photoshop. We can also add a
blue-green tint with Overlay mode on top of the image to
add a more cinematic effect. Copy the whole image and
add a Gaussian blur effect to it and change the mode to
soft light. This gives the image a dreamy glow effect, which
can be controlled by opacity. At the end, add a vignette
effect to draw the eye more towards the centre.

We will use one really

intense point light in the
centre of the cell, with a
yellow tone to emphasise 12

the division. This makes the

whole render more dramatic
and cinematic as well

Render passes
One of the best ways to save time when you are
rendering is to create render passes. Imagine that you
have already rendered out your image or your
animation sequences and then you realise you need to
tweak the colour on some parts of your images. You
probably need to re-render whole image. But with
render passes you can mask the adjustment layer in
composition software and change it in just a few
minutes. Redshift’s AOV manager is great to create
whatever passes you need.

56 All tutorial files can be downloaded from: bit.ly/3DA-131

 FASTER UV MAPPING WITH RIZOMUV
CIRSTYN BECH-
YAGHER
Sportster, 2019
Bio
A Norway-based freelancer
for many years who uses 3ds
Max, ZBrush,
Substance, Quixel, Corona
workflow and has done
everything from providing
content to DAZ 3D to ads for
AMD. Longtime writer and
gamer. Currently working
at Rizom-Lab
Software
RizomUV, 3ds Max,
Substance painter
Learn how to
• Perform fast unwrapping
• Use keyboard shortcuts
• Quickly cut edges
• Use the UV tools to help
with messy geometry
• Use the magic UV wand
• Stack, pack and export
Concept
Most of us know UV mapping
basics by now, but we don’t
always know how to speed up
our workflow so we can get
back to being creative.
YOUR
FREE
DOWNLOADS
from bit.ly/3DA-131
• Tutorial screenshots
58
Faster UV mapping
with RizomUV
The demand for realism never stops. This means that our textures
need a solid foundation in the form of UV maps
I 01
f you Google UV mapping, it will tell you it’s one of the
least popular tasks in 3D. But with the new tools that
have come out in recent years, UV mapping is far from
the tedious process it used to be, which is good news for
your bakes and textures. In this walkthrough, we’ll see how
to use RizomUV’s UV mapping tools to take even more of
the pain out of unwrapping. We’ll use a hard-edged model
– a motorbike – as our example; It’s partly CAD generated,
with all the cloned and fiddly parts you’d find in a model
like this, including topology issues.
As a UV mapping workflow is pretty much select, cut,
unwrap, optimise, stack, pack and export, we’ll focus on
how to let RizomUV do the heavy UV-lifting. We’ll start by
setting up preferences and look at RizomUV’s utility
functions, before showing you which tools to use for
speeding up your unwrapping workflow. We’ll cover how
to select and cut multiple islands at once, use edge loops
on triangulated meshes, use automatic unwrapping
settings, as well as using a magic polygon selection wand,
before we take a quick look at stacking and packing.
01
02
UI basics Let’s get to know the UI first: from left to
right on top are the settings for seams, unwrapping,
island layout, packing properties, island groups, texture
multiplier and projections. On the default left is the Edit
toolbar, and on the right are tools dependent on your
selection mode, as well as tool tips. At the default bottom
of the screen is the stats window, the colour bar for
showing stretch, topo, material ID or texel density. On the
bottom right are the transform, grid, UV tile and multi-tile
settings. The UI is currently not dockable or detachable.
02 Keyboard shortcuts Working in RizomUV is
significantly faster if you know some of its most
common shortcuts: F1 is vertex , F2 is edge, F3 is polygon
and F4 is Island Select mode. F focuses the view to your
selection. E sets the active viewport to fullscreen. Select
shells manually or by hovering over them. I isolates your
selection, while H hides part of the mesh. Press Y to bring
the rest of the model back up in both cases. Use U for
unwrapping, C to cut, W to weld, O to optimise, G to group
and P to pack.
03 Setting your working preferences You can
customise your setup via the Edit menu. The
Keyboard/Mouse Customizer lets you set your keyboard
and mouse preferences like your modeller’s, or you can
customise your mouse and keyboard behaviour from
scratch. Use the Preferences menu to define anything from
anti-aliasing to background colour: you can see the UI
background has changed colour in the following
screenshots. You also adjust your clipping settings here,
should you experience issues, by defining your near and far
plane settings. In addition, this is also where you can pick
or define your FBX compatibility version, undo history size
and UI settings.
03
59
 FASTER UV MAPPING WITH RIZOMUV

04

Handy workflow tools

RizomUV is based on a custom algorithm, so it doesn’t
normally use projections. This means what you focus
on is cuts, seams, unwraps and distortions. To polish
your UVs, use the brushes – UV, Optimise, Spread and
Pinch. You can define radius, strength and algorithm in
the Brush panel on the left. You’ll also find straightening,
aligning and flipping tools in the Align panel on the left.
Use these with the transform tools at the bottom of the
UI to hone placements and alignments. Press Tab for a
universal gizmo, and remember the panels and views
windows are not dockable.

04 Loading your model In the File menu, select Load

(Cmd/Crtl+O) or Load UV (Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+O).
Load will load your model with no UVs, and Load UV will
load the model with the UVs defined in the
modeller. RizomUV can handle several formats, like OBJ,
FBX, Alembic (experimental) and DAE. If you get an error
05
message about topology errors on load, it means you may
have ngons or rat’s nests in your geometry. Press OK – it
won’t affect your unwrapping. Next, if you don’t want to
use RizomUV’s native checker or grid maps and prefer to
use your own, load it via File>Load Texture Map.

05 Setting unwrap and optimisation strength You can

define the strength of the unfolding and optimising
algorithms after unwrapping. What this means is that it
may take a little longer for the unwrap or optimise to finish,
but you’ll get an even better result. Try setting them to 50
for a middle-ground in the Unwrap panel. Next, click the T
Flips box to avoid triangle flips during unwrapping or
optimising, and click the Overlap box to avoid boundaries
intersecting with each other. For models with windows,
eyes or a mouth, press Fill to avoid the gaps collapsing
during unwrap.

06 Superfast first unwrap Let’s start unwrapping by

trying the fastest unwrap first. It’s good for
topology checks or unwrapping simple models – complex
models need packing tweaks. Define your UDIMs if
06
needed in the MultiTile panel. Press F2 – Edge Select
mode. Go to the AutoSeams panel on the right, click
AutoSelect Sharp Edges and Advanced Settings. Click
Stretch Control and Reweld. Stretch Control ensures there
will be no flips or overlaps. Reweld will handle edges that
can be welded without overlap, minimising island count.
Press the Packing icon on the far right bottom of the
panel. RizomUV will now cut, unwrap and pack your shells.

Stretch Control ensures

that there will be no flips
or overlaps. Reweld will
handle edges that can
be welded without
overlap, minimising
island count
60
07
RizomUV’s groups are a
utility option that will not
save into other applications.
You use them for layout,
grouping items for easier
unwrapping or texturing, or
working with already existing
groups on your tile
07 Use grouping Some models need more than a fast
unwrap, so let’s look at groups before moving on to
edges. RizomUV’s groups are a utility option that will not
save into other applications. You use them for layout,
grouping items for easier unwrapping or texturing, or
working with already existing groups on your tile(s) via the
Select>Select Model Groups dialog. In Island mode (F4)
press G after selecting islands to group them, Cmd/Ctrl+G
08
to ungroup them, and double-clicking an island in a group
will select all items in that group. We’ll use this in the
coming unwraps.

08 Start to cut and select We’ll focus on cutting and

selecting tools next. Press F4 to enter Island mode.
If you have mesh groups, go to Select>Select Model
Information. Select a group. Press I to isolate the selection.
Press Cmd/Ctrl+A to select all, and G to group. Most of
the islands in the example do not need anything but a U to
unwrap, and an individual hover here and there to optimise
(O), except the fuel tank: press F2 for Edge Select mode
here. We’ll cut it to avoid distortion, as shown in the next
step, keeping it in one island for tidiness.

09 Loop selecting In RizomUV, a loop is selected by

double-clicking on a single edge. This will create a
selection along all the horizontal or vertical edges it
connects to. In the example, you can see an almost full
loop selection. To keep the tank in one piece, two edges
were unselected using the left mouse button+Shit+Cmd/
09
Ctrl while hovering over the edge. You can also cut a full
loop and then use W to weld after the cut. Press C to cut, U
to unwrap, O to optimise. In the Align panel, press Align
Island Vertically to straighten it. Press P for a preliminary
pack and Y to bring the hidden shells back.

Clean up your models

A big time-sink for commercial artists is bad models.
They may look awesome but can be an absolute
nightmare to work with due to their topology. This
goes for commercial models in particular. The time
you think a purchased model can save can be eaten
up by spending hours cleaning up double polys, loose
objects and stripping unneeded faces from the
model to make a retexture look good. So if you’re a
merchant, take texturing and UVs into consideration
from the get-go by cleaning up as you model, naming
your parts properly and clearly and creating groups
that make sense.

61
 Faster UV Mapping with rizoMUV

10

one of the biggest

hassles with
triangulated or complex
geometry is manually
selecting and cutting
edges. Using autoseam
speeds this up
10 You don’t always need symmetry Many
applications use symmetry to speed up their
unwrap process. this can get tricky on a CaD/sub-D
hybrid mesh, as they’re not always perfectly
symmetrical. rizomUV has an additional solution for this,
by letting you select multiple edges instead. press F2 to
enter edge selection mode. select an edge loop on a shell
and double-click. press alt+C. rizomUV will now search
11 12
for and clone the edge selection to similar, uncut shells.
press C and it will cut all selected edges. remember to
keep caps on cylinders attached by unselecting an edge or
two on the top and bottom.

11 Edgeloop cuts on triangulated meshes we’ll look at

triangulated geometry like the brake disc next.
especially when dealing with CaD-generated models, you
won’t always get nice, orderly quads, which in turn means
you won’t always get nice, orderly edge selections.
in rizomUV, you can force these via the edge Loop
parameters panel on the right side of the screen. in edge
selection mode, click geometric. this will follow the
geometry of a triangulated model as straight as it can. it
also lets you define path iterations and angles, but for now
‘only’ geometric suffices. all you need to do now is press C
to cut.

12 Working with intersecting edges one of the biggest

hassles with triangulated or complex geometry is
manually selecting and cutting edges. Using autoseam
13
speeds this up. in edge mode, go to the autoseams panel.
it has several options, but for geometry like this, going for
autoselect sharp edges at its default of 70 is fine. press
the arrow tool underneath. it shows you where it will make
cuts. Check for any unselected edges or tweak the slider to
increase or decrease cuts, and hit the U icon next to the
arrow to cut and unwrap, or the pack icon to cut, unwrap
and pack.

13 AutoSeams on messy geometry we can also

use autoseams to unwrap complex, messy
geometry, using advanced options: the model was stL
checked and welded in 3ds Max to reduce open edges,
then reloaded into rizomUV. the wheel was isolated and,
with autoselect sharp edges active, sharp edge angle was
set from 70 to 25.5 to reduce cuts. advanced options
were set as follows: Cut handles was disabled and stretch
Control enabled at 0.5 to reduce the amount of cuts.
reweld was enabled at 0.07 to weld back edges to reduce
the initial huge shell count, before doing a few manual
welds where needed.

62
14

Dealing with garbage polys

When working on a mesh like the motorbike, with lots
of capped cylinders and other superfluous polygons,
you can either grit your teeth and keep unwrapping
them, or you can put them in a group on the side,
outside of the 0.1 UV space or your UDIMs as you go.
To remove items from a group, press Cmd/Ctrl+G
then move them to the group, select all polys in the
pile and regroup by pressing G. You can then go to
your modeller, select the polygons via your UV
function and delete them. Remember to check before
you delete, though.

14 Introducing the Magic Wand When working with

complex geometry, a magic wand can come in
handy. Available in Polygon Select mode, the Magic Wand
panel on the left has several settings to make poly-
selection much easier, as you can set it to select polygons
based on edge angles, curves and noise, as well as isolated
groups. Hover your mouse over the area you want to select
15
– the polys will be white. Once you’ve hovered over the
polys you want to select (it pays to have them
symmetrical), then click. The polys will now be blue, and
you can press C to cut them.

15 Using the Magic Wand on polygon selections When

cutting engine blocks or other types of mechanical
geometry, you normally don’t need to do more than define
the Max Deviation Normal angle. However, where it really
speeds up your workflow is on perforated or patterned
geometry, like in the screenshot. If you set the Magic
Wand to 25-30 in Max Deviation Normal, which is aimed
at planar shapes, and set Select Isolated Groups, which
selects based on a defined polycount somewhere between
50 and 60, the chances are you can make a planar cut in
one go, ready to unwrap and optimise without the need for
advanced cutting options.

16 Stacking Let’s look at stacking before packing:

stacking means that several UV maps will be
stacked on top of each other, thereby in effect forcing them
16
to have the same texture. This is a common way to save
and use UV space on models in anything from games to
movies, as well as stand-alone art. The saving and
optimising does have some drawbacks, though, ranging
from baking and normal issues, as well as too many stacks
making your model look overly uniform. You can define
how you want your stacking to work by using the settings
in the Island Groups panel.

Several UV maps will be

stacked on top of each other,
thereby in effect forcing
them to have the same
texture. This is a common
way to save and use UV
space on models
63
 FASTER UV MAPPING WITH RIZOMUV

17

17 Stacking nuts and bolts Depending on your mesh

group, you can define whether you want to stack
normal and inverted normals together, stack similar shells
only, or inverted normals only. To stack the nuts and bolts
that are not going to be in direct view, the workflow would
be this: F2 to select edges to cut, press Alt+C to cut on all
similar islands, F4 to enable pressing Cmd/Ctrl+M to
select all islands, G to group and Alt+G to stack similar
shells, or Shift+Alt+G for overlapping ones. Lock the stack
from packing rotation or skews by pressing lock in the
Packing Properties.

18 Remember your gutters when packing Once you are

done with the unwrapping, it’s time to set the UVs
up for export, and it’s worth noting a few things before you
proceed with this. If you want to export for a game engine,
you will need to take the texture bleed into consideration
when packing. It’s known as edge padding for many, and
the norm is to have, for example, 4 pixels for a 512 x 512
image, 8 for 1024 and 16 for 2048, and so on. You can set
this in the Layout panel by using the Spacing Spinner. The
margin for your map’s outer edges is set in the same place,
18 19
under Margins.

19 Packing for export In addition to defining your

margins, you can further fine-tune the packing by
using the options in the Layout and Packing Properties
panels. In the Layout panel, pick your packing layout – you
can choose from plain packing to fit, squarify and rescaling.
Use the quality and mutations options in the Packaging
panel to define your packing quality – a higher setting will
take longer, but the algorithm controlling this will ensure
that the higher the amount of iterations you set, the better
it will use the space and margins.

20 Exporting for Substance Painter If you

use mulitlayers and groups, you can use
both OBJ and FBX formats to export. However, if you have
a lot of materials or tiles, it’s often faster to use UDIMs
rather than setting up by hand. While OBJ doesn’t support
UDIMs, it does work with them, but it’s usually best to play
it safe and use FBX instead. When setting up your unwraps,
groups or tiles in RizomUV, make sure you don’t have
20
overlaps in your tiles, as that will give you issues later, for
example in Substance Painter. Also, remember to press
Redistribute in the MultiTile panel when setting them to
distribute active islands across the tiles.

Setting texel density

When people talk about resolution, they often
use texel and pixel density interchangeably. As you
probably know, texels make up the smallest parts of a
Texture map and pixels make up the smallest part of
your screen. When exporting for Painter, for example,
remember to define your map resolution. In the
Layout panel, define your horizontal map resolution.
Next, disable AutoFit in the Packing panel and set the
initial scaling mode to Specified T:D – which forces the
defined texel density when working with your map. If
you hit P for pack next, the islands will be packed and
will reflect the defined texel density.

64 All tutorial files can be downloaded from: bit.ly/3DA-131

 CREATE FANTASTICAL HYBRID CREATURES

66

KURTIS DAWE
Chicken Dragon,
2019
Bio
Kurtis is a character artist at
EA Vancouver, who thrives on
overcoming challenges and
seeking new adventures.
Software
ZBrush, KeyShot, Mari,
Photoshop
Learn how to
• Create an original sculpt
• Form emotive eyes
• Apply realistic textures
Concept
Discover how to create an
original creature with a basis
on real animals and creatures,
texturing and lighting it to
appear like a living creature
very quickly.
YOUR
FREE
DOWNLOADS
from bit.ly/3DA-131
• Tutorial screenshots
Create fantastical
hybrid creatures
Learn how to develop an original concept for a creature inspired by
real life using these sculpting, texturing and lighting techniques
02
I
n this tutorial we will go through steps focused on
creating an original concept’s sculpt, texture and lighting.
We will focus on techniques that will speed up
productivity and procedures that I have used in the visual
effects industry working as a character artist.
01 Reference Gathering lots of references might be the
most important step. I like to focus on anatomy
traits that I find interesting. In this case I’ve chosen the frill
and eyes from a chicken, the jaw and some facial features
of a crocodile, the beak of a cassowary mixed with hawks
and eagles. For the skin texture I chose a mix of crocodile,
cassowary, frog and chicken. It is very important to gather
solid references and to base the sculpt on reality as much
as possible, although in some cases you’ll obviously have to
veer from a reference and make creative choices.
02 Starting the sculpt Crack open ZBrush and get
started. I like to block out all my major shapes first
using a combination of DynaMesh and ZRemesher. This
blockout should be quick and something to help you get
the feel of your character. You can start making changes to
the silhouette and getting ideas of other things to add to
your model. In my case I thought it would be cool to give
him a chicken wattle under his chin.
03
03 Sculpting the eyes It is a good idea to get the eyes
in as soon as possible and to actually build out a
proper eye. Having nice-looking eyes in your sculpt brings
a lot to the model and encourages you to like it a bit more.
It helps me get the feeling of the character, and I can start
making other decisions based on how the sculpt looks with
the eyes in. I start out by making two eye holes for the eyes
to slot into. Create spheres (eventually you will build out a
proper eye for rendering purposes) and place these in a
spot that makes sense based on the skull shape. Throw
some polypaint and a Toy Plastic Material shader on it to
give it some life. My shader settings are displayed in the
image. I like to add some wrinkle detail to the eyelids and
add all the skin folds and tear ducts.
It is a good idea to get the
eyes in as soon as possible
and to actually build out a
proper eye. Having nice-
looking eyes in your sculpt
brings a lot to the model
67
 CREATE FANTASTICAL HYBRID CREATURES

04

04 Adding large details After the main block is done

and you are feeling good about the sculpt, you can
start adding some large details. I started with the beak. I
used HPolish to flatten out and give the beak a hard look. I
added in some wrinkling to the neck and the horn using
clay tubes at an intensity of 5. I prefer to use a low intensity
and slowly build up forms. For the gravity-driven skin and
wrinkles on the neck I really like to make it feel like they are
heavy. I do this by sculpting the base wrinkles and mask
underneath them, blur the mask, then, using the move tool,
move the wrinkle down bit by bit. Be careful not to overdo
it. After all the wrinkles are in place, finish up by using the
Inflate brush at a very low intensity to give them a heavy
look. I used this same technique of masking and moving
down on the wattle too.

05 Finishing the base sculpt At this point, you should

have all the major forms in and every large wrinkle
represented. I also added in quills, as I thought the back
was lacking detail and that it would help with the balance.
The eye quills also help to draw attention to the eyes,
which I usually consider the focal point. After everything is
05 06
set in place you can duplicate the mesh, ZRemesh the
original (make sure symmetry is turned on), and subdivide
to 2-15 million polygons (based on the detail level). Then
you can project the original mesh back onto the new mesh
to make sure all the detail is transferred. The next step is to
UV the model. Pack it all into one UV space for simplicity,
as KeyShot doesn’t support UDIMs. I usually just UV in
Maya because it is cleaner and easier to control. A very
important trick is to cut the model in half, UV half of the
model, then merge it back together. Slide one UV shell in
the next UDIM. This is why it is important to make sure
your mesh stays symmetrical at the beginning. Having the
UV the same on both sides means you only have to paint
one side of the mesh, saving you half the work.

06 Displacement skin painting After the UVs are done

and the high-resolution sculpt is applied to the new
mesh, you can start painting the Displacement map for the
skin detail in Mari. Painting the skin detail in Mari gives you
a very clean result and also provides you with an amazing
starting point for texturing. The Displacement map you
07 08
paint will be brought into ZBrush and applied to the sculpt.
I used Surface Mimic and Texturing.XYZ for my
displacement textures.

07 Displacement painting Bring your UV’d model into

Mari and start off by putting a tiled texture on the
whole model. This will give you a nice even base and save
you some time texturing. Next, start using the other
Displacement maps to break it up if necessary. Focus on
actual animals and see where their skin would change. Try
to follow the flow of the model, and pay attention to where
wrinkles would form and create a crease. You can use the
Warp tool before you bake the painted texture to the
model. Remember, as your UVs are symmetrical, you only
have to paint displacement on one side of the model.

08 Bring the Displacement map to ZBrush Export

your completed Displacement map from Mari,
import it into ZBrush and apply it to the mesh. Import the
Displacement map from the alpha window. You will need
to flip the alpha vertically for it to apply correctly.

68
09 10
The eye quills also help to
draw attention to the eyes,
which I usually consider the
focal point

09 Applying the Displacement map Once the alpha is

imported into ZBrush you can load it into the
Displacement tab on the right side of the window. Before
you click the Apply button, you should store a morph
target and create a new layer. This will help you to paint
problem areas out if they don’t turn out as expected.

10 Finalise the sculpting detail After applying the

Displacement map, I like to use the Inflate brush at a
low intensity to tighten the scales and bumps. It is also a
good idea to do all of this detail work on a layer. After that, I
go in with the Dam_Standard brush and start making
creases and wrinkles. You can also use the Standard brush
with a DragRect wrinkle alpha to achieve interesting
11
wrinkle details too.

11 Texturing Now that the sculpt is looking good, you

can start focusing on texturing. Bring the model with
symmetrical UVs into Mari. You should use the same
scene you’ve already used for painting the initial
Displacement map. I did a very simple colour paint while
overlaying the displacement on top to give it ranging
values. Then I went in and painted scales and photo-
projected other spots for more interest. Once your texture
feels like it is in a good place, export it. You will break
texture symmetry in ZBrush in the next step.

12 Texturing in ZBrush You can now bring the textures

back into ZBrush for finishing. Import the textures
into ZBrush under the Texture tab. You’ll need to flip it in Y
as well. Now, go over to the Texture tab on the right side
and select the texture. Once the textures are loaded onto
the mesh you will need to apply them as polypaint. Make
sure the mesh is at the highest subdivision level, then go to
the Polypaint tab and click ‘Polypaint From Texture’. Make
12
sure RGB is turned on in your brush settings. Once that is
applied you will need to repack the UVs into one UDIM.
This is because KeyShot doesn’t support multiple UDIMs
in one mesh. I went to Maya and placed the two UV shells
into one UDIM and re-exported back to ZBrush. Import the
newly UV’d low-poly mesh back into ZBrush and your
polypaint should get applied. Now, you can polypaint in
ZBrush and break symmetry if you need to. Once you’re
done texturing, you can export the texture by going to the
Texture tab on the right side and click ‘New From
Polypaint’. Then click Clone Texture (this shoots it over to
the left side in the texture box). Click Export. You’ll need to
flip it in Y again.

13 Posing In ZBrush you can pose your mesh very easily

using Transpose Master in the ZPlugin tab. Make
sure all your wanted Ztools are visible and click
TPoseMesh. Using masking and the Move, Translate and
Rotate tools, pose your model into whatever looks good to
you. After you’re done posing, click TPose>SubT, and this
will apply it back to your high-poly SubTools.

69
 CREATE FANTASTICAL HYBRID CREATURES

14 Exporting to KeyShot Export your high-resolution meshes from ZBrush. You can
usually get away with exporting a mesh that is around 15 million polys – anything
more than that will start causing crashes. Export all the components and import them all
into KeyShot. I generally use a HDRI globe and a couple of pin lights to mimic a 3-point
lighting setup. I used a SSS material and played with the subsurface translucency until it
looked right. Then you can start loading the textures in. You can easily create a Kurtis Dawe
Reflectance and Bump map in Photoshop using a Displacement map from ZBrush or a https://www.artstation.com/kurtisdawe
Diffuse map If you need them. For the eye, I broke it into two objects – the inside of the eye Kuretis is currently working as a character artist at
and the outside of the eye. I like to model the pupil in and delete the black part out. I give EA Vancouver
the inside of the eye a Regular Plastic shader with a roughness of 1.3, and I give the outside
a Basic Glass shader with refraction. This really helps to bring the model to life.
14

Viper Dragon
This model, created using Zbrush was made to be
3D printed and then cast as a resin model for
collectors.

15

Robot Chicken
This robot chicken model was created for the Robot
Chicken The Movie project in Zbrush.

15 Rendering It’s going to take a lot of trial and error in KeyShot. I encourage you to try
many different lighting setups and HDRIs to get the best result. Once you are happy
with everything, you can export your render by clicking the Render button at the bottom
Dumbo
While working at MPC London, Kurtis had the
chance to work on Dumbo.
of the screen. Select any render layers you would like and click Render.

70 All tutorial files can be downloaded from: bit.ly/3DA-131

 Special offer for readers in North America

Subscribe to
today
Celebrate 10 years of 3D Artist
with this exclusive subscription offer
Receive an additional
10% off a print or bundle
subscription and a download
RIWKHÀUVWHYHULVVXH

Save
37%

See how far

3D Artist
has come!

Use code
Order hotline +44 (0) 344 848 2852 and quote 3DAOS 3DAOS
Online at myfavouritemagazine
myfavouritemagazine.co.uk/3DAOS
co uk/3DAOS at checkout
Terms and conditions *Savings based on USA newsstand price of $14.99 for 13 issues compared with $136 for a subscription. You will receive 13 issues in a year. You can
for an extra
write to us or call us to cancel your subscription within 14 days of purchase. Payment is non-refundable after the 14-day cancellation period unless exceptional circumstances
apply. Your statutory rights are not affected. Prices correct at point of print and subject to change. Full details of the Direct Debit guarantee are available upon request. UK calls
ZLOOFRVWWKHVDPHDVRWKHUVWDQGDUGÀ[HGOLQHQXPEHUV VWDUWLQJRU LQFOXGHGDVSDUWRIDQ\LQFOXVLYH RU IUHH PLQXWHV DOORZDQFHV LI RIIHUHG E\ \RXU SKRQH WDULII  )RU IXOO
terms and conditions please visit: bit.ly/magtandc.2IIHUHQGV0D\
10%
saving

JONATAN
MERCADO
jonatanmercado.com
Bio
A self-taught CG artist born
and raised in Argentina,
Jonatan is a Blender
enthusiast who is developing
himself as a freelancer.
YOUR
FREE
DOWNLOADS
from bit.ly/3DA-131
• Tutorial screenshots
72
Expert advice from industry professionals, taking you from concept to completion
All tutorial files can be downloaded from: http://bit.ly/3DA-131
BLENDER
Utilise light probes in
Blender 2.80’s EEVEE
I
remember when the Cycles render engine changed
everything for me. Suddenly I was able to render with
global illumination. I appreciated how powerful it was
– the only downside was that you had to cheat a lot if you
wanted something smooth to deliver as a production shot.
When Cycles was released, Blender became my main
software, and it remains so today. The Blender Foundation
is doing a great job of making some impressive changes,
and from time to time it launches fundamental updates to
the software. We are on the verge of one of those
fundamental updates with the imminent release of the
Blender 2.80.
You can immediately see how better things are when
you download the beta version and play with it. Blender
warns us not to use this version for production, but I found
the Blender 2.80 beta to be solid enough for production
already, as I experienced almost no crashes when creating
and completing a project.
There are lots of improvements – the user interface, the
experience along the 3D viewport, the wireframe modes,
better and more intuitive gizmos and the impressive new
collections that replace those obsolete patterns from the
2.79 versions, which now seem completely restrictive in
terms of organisation and workflow. We can also find a
major improvement on the Grease Pencil.
However, the topic that we will consider in more depth
here is the game-changing render engine called EEVEE. As
we are going to discover, EEVEE is a ‘real-time’ engine,
where you will be able to view your PBR shaded models in
real time and can navigate through the 3D viewport
smoothly without any render times, and calculate samples
with almost no quality loss.
You will need to fake some things, such as the soft
shadows, because of the way in which the shadows are
projected over the surfaces as textures and not as real
shadows that are generated by geometry occlusion.
I recommend having the Screen Space Reflection box
checked under render tab before you start playing with
EEVEE, because this engine is not a ray-tracing engine and
cannot do ray triangle intersection. EEVEE instead uses the
depth buffer as an approximated scene representation.
This Screen Space Reflection works together with the
Reflection Plane probe, and will act as a container support
where the reflection plane fails.
 sUBsCrIBE ToDay! Turn to page 82 to learn more

01 02

01
03
EEVEE Introduction EEVEE is Blender’s real-time
render engine built within Blender using OpenGL. It is
focused on speed and interactivity while achieving the goal
of previewing PBR materials. It’s designed to be a viewport
engine but also offers high-quality output for the final render.
In order to achieve those high-quality final renders, we need
to understand how to fake the diffuse lighting and the
specular lighting, which is achievable using light probes.
We’re going to inpsect the three probes Blender has.

02 Light probes Probe objects are used by EEVEE as

support objects. They record lighting information
locally in order to light the scene using indirect lighting.
There are three different probe types; one for diffuse
lighting, which is the Irradiance Volume probe, and two for
specular lighting, which are the Reflection Cubemap probe
and the Reflection Plane probe. These types of objects are
only useful for EEVEE. They are meant to guide the engine to
compute better lighting faster. But as well as this speed
optimisation, these probes also significantly improve the
final quality of the render.
04

03 Irradiance Volume probes All lighting that is

not coming straight out from a lamp object is
considered indirect lighting in EEVEE. In EEVEE, indirect
lighting is separated into two components: diffuse and
specular. For efficiency, the indirect lighting data is
precomputed on demand into a static lighting cache. The
diffuse indirect lighting is stored in volumetric arrays. These
arrays are defined by using Irradiance Volume probes. So
basically, the Irradiance Volume probe captures the indirect
light in their samples, considering the occluding geometry,
and then scatters this captured indirect light over the scene.

04 Reflection Cubemap probes Specular indirect

lighting is stored in an array of cubemaps. These
are defined by the Reflection Cubemap probes. They specify
where to sample the scene’s lighting and where to apply it.
Screen Space Reflection is much more precise than
Reflection Cubemaps. If enabled, they can be primarily
applied, and we would only use cubemaps as a fallback
option if a ray misses.

73
 TECHnIquES

05
05
Reflection Plane probes The Reflection Plane
probe essentially captures the whole scene with a
flipped camera. using reflection planes is really tough on the
render time because the scene needs to be rendered as
many times as there are reflection planes in the view. unless
Screen Space Reflection is enabled, Reflection Plane probes
only work on specular surfaces that have their roughness
around 0. In order to see the effect of the probe and the
surface on the floor texture, you should uncheck the ‘show
data’ box.

06 Probe settings: distance The settings are more

or less the same for all the light probes in EEVEE.
The influence zone is defined by the distance parameter and
object scaling. For Irradiance Volume probes, the influence
inside the volume is always 100%. The influence decays
only outside of the volume. For Reflection Cubemaps the
influence volume can either be a box or a sphere centred on
the probe’s origin. For Reflection Plane probes the influence
distance is the distance from the plane. Only surfaces whose
normals are aligned with the Reflection Plane probe will
receive the captured reflection.
06 07

07 Probe settings: falloff The falloff is the

percentage of the distance in which the influence of
a probe fades linearly. With the Reflection Cubemap, it is
noticeable how the falloff affects the specular light. If you try
to place a Reflection Cubemap probe over a plane and
include the plane in this probe, try to set the falloff to zero,
and you will see that the blending between the reflective and
non-reflective area of the plane is harsh. But if you use a
higher value for the falloff, the reflective area will blend
smoothly with the non-reflective area you left out of the
probe’s influence.

08 Probe settings: intensity The intensity slider

affects the recorded lighting. Making this
parameter anything other than 1.0 is not physically correct. I
consider this slider, like the falloff, as a percentage of the
recorded lighting, when 1 is 100%. So in the real world, you
would want 100% of the light being recorded.
08

74
09

09
10 11
Probe settings: resolution The specular light
probes don’t have this resolution option because
they do not work based on samples per grid. Spatial
resolution for irradiance volumes is determined per probe.
The local volume is divided into a regular grid of the
specified dimensions. One irradiance sample will be
computed for each cell in this grid. You can think of this
option in the same way as the samples in Cycles, where
more samples will record the light in a more accurate way
because there will be less distance between each sample. In
the screenshot you can see 5 x 5 x 5 resolution.

10 Probe settings: clipping For the Reflection

Cubemap and Irradiance Volume probes, this value
defines the near and far clip distances when capturing the
scene. The clipping distances are applied at the samples
positions and not at the grid origin. For the Reflection Plane
probe, this value defines how much below the plane the near
clip is when capturing the scene. Increasing this can fix
reflection contact problems. You can see in the 3D viewport
12
a representation of this parameter as yellow arrows coming
out from the centre of each probe. To see this parameter in
the 3D viewport, you have to check the box under the
viewport display inside the probe settings.

11 Solidify to avoid leaking In order to avoid leaked

lights, there is currently one workaround. I confirmed
this option with the render engine developer. The
workaround is to add thickness to the container geometry. In
Blender you have an easy fix to do this – you must use the
solidify modifier. In my example, I used just 20 centimetres,
which should be more than enough to avoid any undesired
light results.

12 Visibility collection Sometimes it is useful to limit

which objects appear in a light probe’s captured
lighting. For instance, an object that is too close to a capture
point might be better off being excluded. This is what the
visibility collection does. Only objects that are in this
collection will be visible when these probes capture the
scene. There is also an option to invert this behaviour and
effectively hide the objects inside this collection.

All tutorial files can be downloaded from: bit.ly/3DA-131 75

 TECHNIQUES

BLENDER, ZBRUSH, SUBSTANCE PAINTER

Create a stylised
PIERRICK PICAUT
p2design.eu
Bio
Pierrick is a 3D freelancer and
tree game asset
a Blender Foundation-
certified trainer, working for
the independent game studio
ATYPIQUE Studio W
hen it comes to creating assets for games,
there are tons of things to consider and
different ways to proceed, whether you’re
01 Sculpting the tree My software of choice for
sculpting is ZBrush, but I used to use Blender a lot
before and it would also work perfectly well. The first step is
making realistic assets, stylised ones or hybrid pieces. to create a basemesh. I used ZSphere for this project. This
To make assets for Noara: The Conspiracy, we at enables you to generate a tree shape very rapidly by
ATYPIQUE Studio tended to work on a very stylised basis extruding different portions of the tree and moving them to
using a PBR workflow. The PBR behaviour enabled us to get a torturous yet appealing silhouette. You could use
YOUR get very good results without having to handpaint as much Blender Skin Modifier the same way if you want to sculpt in

FREE as we would for purely diffuse assets, like in WOW for

DOWNLOADS
from bit.ly/3DA-131
• Tutorial screenshots
example. In this tutorial we will see how to create a tree to
be used in game engines like Unity, using a specular
workflow. We’ll go over sculpting, retopology, UVs, texture
baking, texture painting and previewing in Blender EEVEE.
Blender. Once you have a strong silhouette for your mesh,
you can generate an adaptative skin and start sculpting it
using DynaMesh. The important thing is to make sure you
get three readable levels of detail. The first would be the
general shape, then you’ll have the main veins and finally

76
 suBsCriBe today! turn to page 82 to learn more

01

02

small scratches and thin wood wrinkles. Don’t forget to view

the model from afar to make sure it will be readable in the
game. set the fine details only on some areas of the tree (B)
and keep others cleaner so that you get a nice rhythm on
your tree surface (A).

02 Sculpting tools and tips The style can be

heavily influenced by the tools you are using, as
with traditional art, so don’t hesitate to experiment with
different brush combinations. To sculpt the tree bark, i made
the large details using the clay Buildup brush with a smooth
hardness level. i tried to make three thickness levels of
wrinkles with this brush. After that, i smoothened the whole
surface of the tree. i then used the Trim Dynamic and the
Orb Flatten edge brush to flatten wrinkles and sections of
the tree’s surface.

The style can be heavily

influenced by the tools you are
using, as with traditional art, so
don’t hesitate to experiment with
different brush combinations
77
 Techniques

03
03
Retopology and UVs As this game asset won’t
be deforming, we don’t need to have the best
topology ever with the most accurate polyflow. in this regard
we can first use the Decimation Master to reduce our
polycount to an affordable level for your baking software,
then duplicate this decimated subTool and run a ZRemesher
with a very low resolution. My target is around 1,000
polygons for this model. Once ZRemeshed, export both the
decimated and remeshed model. Feel free to edit the mesh
and get rid of some edge loops in Blender by using the
Dissolve edgeloop function. We now need to create our
uVs, separating the roots and main branches from the trunk.
Add a material to your low-poly tree and add a texture to it. i
used the checker texture to see if i had any distortion on the
texture. i then arranged my uV island in a square or
rectangular shape so that it would be easy to organise on a
multiple tree texture atlas.

04 Texture baking The best way to bake your

textures with accurate results is to use a cage. With
simple shapes, it’s generally not necessary and you can
directly use mesh dilatation to get to the right result, but as
soon as you have a big-surface angle modification it can
generate bugs. A cage must have exactly the same number
and distribution of polygons as the low-poly mesh, so the
best way is to duplicate the low-poly mesh and then inflate
the cage using vertex editing, a displacement modifier,
sculpting or whatever other technique fits and will make sure
you don’t have any crossing faces. The high-poly model that
will be baked must be bound to this cage because, when
baking textures, rays are cast inward, and as soon as they hit
the high-poly surface the pixel information will be written
04
into your texture. in this case we’ll bake the AO, Tangent
normal map and the Object normals. We can generate a
curvature and curvature smooth map From the Tangent
normal using Danyl Bekhoucha’s texture converter.

The best way to bake your

textures with accurate results is to
use a cage. With simple shapes,
it’s generally not necessary and
you can directly use mesh
dilatation to get to the right result,
but as soon as you have a big-
surface angle modification it can
generate bugs

what’s the point of view

Beyond the style and technical properties of the assets
you’re working on, ask yourself what will be the point
of view, in which conditions will your asset be seen,
what level of detail is needed and where will you put
them? This applies to assets but also animation, FX
and everything else that is in your game scene or in
your video sequence. You should check your work in
these condition as often as possible, otherwise you
may experience disappointing results later on – even
with a good-looking asset.

78
05

05
06
Texture painting Once all your textures are
generated, export your low-poly mesh as an OBJ
and create a new document in substance Painter using the
shader profile specular PBR. Load all your textures in the
texture set list. To create the base colour, set three fill layers
with three levels of brown and add a black mask to each of
them. Add a colour selection filter to each mask using the
object normals texture. set the hardness to zero and pick a
colour for the surface of your tree. As the OBJ normals give
you a face orientation, this will naturally shade your base
colour as if there was directional lighting. Then add the
curvature texture to another fill layer set to overlay, and the
AO set to multiply, which will bring contrast. using other fill
layers and painting masks, you’ll be able to add colour
variations. Finally, paint some thin highlights using the same
technique on the detailed part of your model, while for
sculpting, check your model from afar to see if these details
will be seen in the game view.

06 Testing in EEVEE You can now test your model

in Blender 2.80 eeVee. i created a simple material
mixing a glossy material coloured with the specular map,
using the inverted Glossiness map as a roughness input. You
can add an emissive shader if you’re using any emission
texture on your model. i then assembled this tree trunk with
some branches i made using the same method, and some
canopy meshes made with very basic umbrella-shaped
meshes and hand-painted leaf textures. This is basically a
way to preview my model and variations i would make in
unity using prefabs. i can then set a few lamps and hDRi
and make a render with eeVee to sell the mould to the rest
of the team.

All tutorial files can be downloaded from: bit.ly/3DA-131 79

9
 LEARN FROM
THE PROS

SIGN UP TO THE
SD RY
AY
NE VE
ED E
W OUT

Get news, tips & inspiration weekly

Behind-the-scenes insight In-depth tutorials Inspirational artwork

SIGN UP NOW!
bit.ly/3DANewsletter
 POST-PRODUCTION

Gabriel Soares
artstation.com/gabrielsoaresz
Gabriel Soares is a professor of
Incredible 3D artists take us behind their artwork online and face-to-face digital
painting, with experience in
POST-PRODUCTION I put the render in Photoshop and applied some traditional clay sculptures.
digital painting tricks on textures, skin, clothes and hair. Doing post- Software ZBrush, Maya,
production in Photoshop helps me finalise my concepts faster – it would V-Ray, Photoshop
take weeks with different software. This way I can produce more
concepts in less time. Alita, 2019

81
 Subscribe to
today
Celebrate 10 years of 3D Artist – with every
H[FOXVLYHSULQWVXEVFULSWLRQ\RX·OOUHFHLYHD
GRZQORDG RI WKH ÀUVW HYHU LVVXH

see where
3D Artist
started!

Subscribe from just £10 for 3 months!

82
WITH EVERY
68%6&5,37,21<28·//«

‡Save money off the

cover price
‡Receive 13 issues in
a year
‡Have access to free
resources
‡Stay up to date with
the industry by never
PLVVLQJDQLVVXH

Print
Special offer to
celebrate the
10th anniversary
of 3D Artist
Take out a print
subscription for
just £10 for 3
PRQWKV
2UGHUVHFXUHO\RQOLQHWRUHFHLYH\RXUJLIWDW
myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/3DA10
2UFDOO0344 848 2852DQGTXRWH3DA10
Terms and conditions: 7KLV RIIHU HQWLWOHV 8. VXEVFULEHUV WR SD\ MXVW  IRU WKH ÀUVW  PRQWKV VWHSSLQJ XS WR  IRU  PRQWKV DIWHUZDUGV 3OHDVH SURYLGH D YDOLG HPDLO
DGGUHVV GXULQJ WKH VXEVFULSWLRQ SURFHVV WR EH VHQW D GRZQORDG RI WKH ÀUVW HYHU LVVXH 3ULFHV DQG VDYLQJV TXRWHG DUH FRPSDUHG WR EX\LQJ IXOOSULFHG SULQW LVVXHV <RX ZLOO
UHFHLYH  LVVXHV LQ D \HDU <RXU VXEVFULSWLRQ LV IRU WKH PLQLPXP WHUP VSHFLÀHG DQG ZLOO H[SLUH DW WKH HQG RI WKH FXUUHQW WHUP <RX FDQ ZULWH WR XV RU FDOO XV WR FDQFHO \RXU
VXEVFULSWLRQ ZLWKLQ  GD\V RI SXUFKDVH 3D\PHQW LV QRQUHIXQGDEOH DIWHU WKH GD\ FDQFHOODWLRQ SHULRG XQOHVV H[FHSWLRQDO FLUFXPVWDQFHV DSSO\ <RXU VWDWXWRU\ ULJKWV DUH
QRW DIIHFWHG 3ULFHV FRUUHFW DW SRLQW RI SULQW DQG VXEMHFW WR FKDQJH 8. FDOOV ZLOO FRVW WKH VDPH DV RWKHU VWDQGDUG À[HG OLQH QXPEHUV VWDUWLQJ  RU  RU DUH LQFOXGHG DV SDUW
RI DQ\ LQFOXVLYH RU IUHH PLQXWHV DOORZDQFHV LI RIIHUHG E\ \RXU SKRQH WDULII  )RU IXOO WHUPV DQG FRQGLWLRQV SOHDVH YLVLW ZZZELWO\PDJWHUPV 2IIHU HQGV 0D\ 

83
 Industry experts put the latest workstations,
software & 3D printers through their paces
ftrack Review
ftrack enters the online ‘lite’ review market with this newsystem
E
very CG artist knows the pain of trying to
keep track of design changes that are
buried deep within email chains with a
subject line like “Client Meeting 12 Dec”. Large
VFX and CGI studios have appreciated that
this is a problem for a while and have switched
to using tools such as ftrack as a result, which
keeps a record of project management and
asset development, as well as handling all
internal and external review systems.
While undoubtedly powerful, ftrack’s
previous range of options could be a daunting
proposition for smaller studios or standalone
freelancers who want to keep track of their
work only, without all of the other project
management tools (and expense) that
software like ftrack offers. To meet this
demand, ftrack has now released a ‘lite’
version – ftrack Review.
It is a standalone online review system that
gives artists the ability to create online
repositories of work, such as shots and stills,
and share these with other artists working on
the project. This software also enables clients
to collaborate and approve or reject shots
through an easy-to-use player and online
notation system.
It has two distinct areas. The ‘library’
enables users to collate assets into projects,
and then when the ftrack review system has
encoded them to play back easily online, the
assets can be added to a ‘review’. A review
enables users to comment and notate using
shapes, comments and online doodles directly
onto the player, as well as supply multi-page
PDFs when required.
These changes are tied to the timeline,
enabling the user to start inline conversations
around the comments, and due to the clean
ftrack Review interface and the helpful
methodology of adding distinct colours to
users as they are added, it is easy to see who
has added what comment and when.
84
This ease of use is extended to those who
need to approve shots. Called ‘collaborators’,
their interface is subtly different and only
enables access to the elements that need to
be approved, which can be easily done via the
large ‘Reject’ or ‘Approve’ icons in the middle
of the player.
There are a number of online tools similar
to ftrack Review currently appearing on the
market, but ftrack Review stands its ground,
which is impressive for an initial release. It is
helped by its easy-to-use and stable interface,
as well as the fact the ‘less is more’ paradigm,
prevalent throughout ftrack Review, is
underpinned by the fact the full version of
ftrack Studio (which will bundle ftrack Review)
is there if and when a project scales up.
Even if ftrack Studio is not needed, the team
at ftrack have ensured that ftrack Review feels
like an application that will easily collate and
clarify feedback on a CG artist’s work, and will
banish the pain of change control to the past.
It is certainly worth a look for projects of any
size. (Please note: this review was performed on
a beta version of ftrack Review – features and UI
elements in the final release may be slightly
different to those reviewed.)
Mike Griggs
Less is more
When first loaded, the ftrack Review UI
can seem to be lacking in tools. That is
because ftrack Review works best when
filled with content. The UI is simple to
learn and well thought out. Having the +
button in the same place, whether it is for
a new user or project, makes working in
ftrack Review seamless. With excellent
and consistent browser support (we
tested in Safari, Firefox and Chrome)
ftrack Review just works!
 E SS E N T I A L

MAIN ftrack Review is a new, online review and

collaboration tool that streamlines the process for
projects of any scale

BOTTOM LEFT ftrack Review works just as well with

stills as it does with animated files

BOTTOM MIDDLE This system enables artists to

collaborate and review work for projects of any size. It is
a less daunting proposition than ftrack Studio

BOTTOM RIGHT This system enables artists to

collaborate via easy-to-use comments and notations that
are seen by everyone in a review session

BELOW Artists and collaborators can draw and doodle

directly onto the player, speeding up the review process

It is helped
by its easy-to-
use and stable
interface
Essential info
Price from £7.50 per month
Website ftrack.com
Graphics card any
Memory any
OS any
Processor any

Summary
Features
Performance
Design
Value for money

Verdict
An excellent entry. Easy to use and reliable, with a great
playback and approval system and fair pricing.

85
 MASTER ARCHVIZ
WITH 3D WORLD
We uncover the latest trends and key techniques

SUBSCRIBE
to receive KitSound Harlem
Wireless Headphones!

VI O RAINING
WI H HIS ISSU

www.bit.ly/3dworld-app
NEWSSTAND FOR IOS
PRINT www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/3dwsubs

Issue 246 on sale now

 The inside guide to industry news,
VFX studios, expert opinions
and the 3D community

I really just
wanted to ride the
roller-coaster!
Adam Wutke,
Visual effects supervisor. ILM

088 Community News

Vertex 2019
We look at the highlights of Vertex
2019, which was a roaring success.

092 Industry News

Discover the latest from Chaos
Group, Quixel, Epic and more.

094 Insider
Ntropic’s Andrew Sinagra discusses
88 the state of the industry.
To advertise in The Hub please contact George Lucas on 01225 687311 or george.lucas@futurenet.com 87
 Community news

Adam Dewhirst of DNEG

delivering his 3D
workshop on rapidly
visualising concepts

Vertex returns for a

spectacular second year
The ultimate event for 2D and 3D artists returned to the Olympia in London, with
industry-leading talks, hands-on advice and the CG Awards 2019

V
ertex 2019 took over the olympia, London on 8 workshop to showcase how his team achieved digital
march for a day of industry expertise from across face replacements for netflix’s teen drama the
the world of 2D and 3D art. our second year saw innocents. Christian manz, Framestore’s joint overall
a mix of inspiring keynote talks and encouraging portfolio supervisor of Fantastic Beasts: the Crimes of
review sessions from the world’s best creatives. the expo Grindelwald, shared his experience working on the
floor enabled visitors to get hands-on with the likes of creative VFX for the film. milk’s CG supervisor James
maxon, oculus and wacom, as well as chewing the fat Reid and head of pipeline Benoit Leveau, meanwhile,
with studios like Framestore and sumo Digital. explained their water simulation work on Adrift.
iLm visual effects supervisor Alex wuttke kicked off Closing out the main stage, scott eaton reflected on
proceedings with a talk on designing dinosaurs for ten years of projects in art, design and VFX, dishing out
Jurassic world: Fallen Kingdom, before Rare’s art director advice for staying creative as an artist. Between his funny
Ryan stevenson took attendees anecdotes, scott covered his process
behind the scenes of sea of
thieves in the Project Room. next,
Our second year for idea generation, concept
development and, critically, execution.
Glen southern of southernGFX saw a mix of inspiring He also shared behind-the-scenes
took attendees through the history
of VR creation tools before keynote talks and sketches, wiPs and amusing stories
from some of his most interesting
donning a headset and
demonstrating their effectiveness
encouraging portfolio projects through the years.
our dedicated archviz area saw top
when building high-quality review sessions agencies and artists reveal how they
creatures and environments.
Jellyfish Pictures’ head of 3D
from the world’s create the best architecture in the
business. Jeff mottle of CGarchitect
Dave Cook took to the 3D best creatives gave attendees some food for thought

88
 Our Ask an Artist area once again
proved popular, with attendees
troubleshooting their artistic woes
with leading creatives

The team from

Allegorithmic picking
up Substance
Designer’s award for
3D artist and Best Software
character designer
Glen Southern
demonstrating the
capabilities of
Oculus Medium

by asking where the growing prominence of Ai will leave

artists, and examining what the industry might look like in
ten years. Kilograph’s Keely Colcleugh discussed how
artists can use AR and VR to stray from the common
path, before James elderton and Joseph thomas of
wonder Vision discussed the values and philosophy they
work to and the process they undertake to create
engaging imagery. they also provided a breakdown of
olson Cabin, a project that was shown for the first time at
Vertex 2019.
the CG Awards took over the main stage for an hour to
celebrate the best work from across the computer
graphics industry from september 2017 to september
2018. nine awards were presented, recognising everyone Christian Manz, joint overall
supervisor of Fantastic Beasts:
from the lone student artist to the biggest soho studios The Crimes Of Grindelwald,
and anyone in between. this year voting was opened to discussing his experience
working on VFX for the film
the public, with the top two nominations per category
given to an expert team of judges, who decided on and
selected the ultimate winner.
the award for Best VFX movie/sequence was handed
out to Avengers: infinity war, while the award for Best
VFX tV show/sequence went to stranger things season
2. the Best shortform category featured a range of
nominations across advertising and cinematic shorts but
was ultimately awarded to the trailer for Beyond Good
And evil 2.
Assassin’s Creed: origins emerged victorious in the
Best Game category, while Best Community Artist was
given to 3D portrait mastermind ian spriggs. Best
Hardware was awarded to the wacom Cintiq Pro, with
Allegorithmic’s material authoring tool substance
Designer taking away the award for Best software. Finally,
Chaos Group Labs took home a well-deserved award for
Best innovation.

89
 Community news

A brand new 2D room saw mPC discuss matte

painting techniques, Pixoloid studios deliver a talk on
creating keyframe concepts for video games and director
Kan muftic consider how he created the world of netflix’s
Kiss me First from scratch. Later in the afternoon
Atomhawk founder and director Ron Ashtiani delivered
an in-depth guide to surviving and succeeding as an artist
in the games industry. to round off the 2D festivities the
iLm concept art department came to discuss how they
got into the industry, their career paths and what it’s like
working in an in-house art department for a world-
renowned studio.
the sponsor Room presented attendees with a wealth
of technical knowledge, beginning with a guide to making
ray-traced images quicker than before, courtesy of Robert
Jamieson of AmD. Bob walmsley of insydium then
demonstrated the latest versions of their Cinema 4D
plugins; X-Particles and Cycles 4D. Vertex
Anyone lucky enough to be in the sponsor Room from attendees study
11.30-12.00 was treated to a sneak preview of modo 13 figure and form
at our life
and its vast array of new features. After lunch Gunter drawing class
nikodim of maxon demonstrated the workflow of
rendering a fully rigged character using ProRender in
Cinema 4D, before Atomhawk’s marco Gorlei presented The Sponsor Room
a live painting session. saw talks from the
likes of AMD,
while people flocked to see their chosen talks, many of Insydium, Modo,
the attendees were able to boost their skills and improve Maxon and more
their recruitability with our Ask An Artist and Portfolio
Review sessions. AAA talent from studios such as Rare,
iLm and a host of freelance creatives were on hand to
share their wisdom.
on the main expo floor attendees were busy following
a life drawing class complete with a model, lights and
setting. in between sessions people sketched and
scribbled to their heart’s content on our dedicated doodle
wall. they collaborated with friends, met new people and
created their own stunning doodles.
As the sun went down AAA pass holders and
exhibitors headed off to enjoy complimentary beer, wine
and soft drinks at the Pergola Bar in Kensington. our
second event was an unequivocal success and we had so
much fun. thanks to everyone who came and made it
such a special occasion, we hope to see you all in 2020!

Each winner The CG Awards

was awarded a judging panel included
special 3D artist Gleb Alexandrov,
printed model game developer Jodie
of the Vertex Azhar, director Izzy
2019 logo Burton and many more
leading creatives

90
 Alex Wuttke of
ILM discusses
his work on the
design of
Jurassic World:
Fallen Kingdom

Vertex 2019
combined the
authority of 3D
Artist with
CreativeBloq.
com and fellow
magazines 3D
World and
ImagineFX

Attendees immerse
themselves in
Oculus Medium’s
creative tools at the
Oculus booth

Get in touch… 3dartistonline.com @3DArtist Facebook.com/3DArtistMagazine

91
 industry news
Chaos Group’s cloud
rendering service
The new service provides unlimited rendering
power for artists and designers
Chaos Group has launched Chaos Cloud, an
intuitive new cloud rendering service designed to
help artists and designers visualise anything,
from anywhere. with one click, users can now
render immediately, enabling them to work and
hit deadlines faster than ever before.
“Artists love the idea of throwing hundreds of
computers at a job but dislike the hidden costs
and challenges that come with traditional cloud
rendering services,” says Boris simandoff, Chaos
Cloud director of engineering at Chaos Group.
Behind the scenes
Several smart features are hard at work in
Chaos Cloud, removing the complexity of
cloud rendering. SmartSync technology
ensures that data only needs to be
uploaded once. Then only the parts of a
scene that change will need resyncing,
ensuring quick iterations as you work. All
data uploaded through Chaos Cloud is
stored in its secure SmartVault database.
Have you Heard? Unity Technologies has released a PDF guide to capturing objects and materials using photogrammetry
92
Chaos Group has compiled a
gallery of samples to help you see
how render times and credit costs
vary by scene. Find out more at
chaosgroup.com/cloud/scenes
“Chaos Cloud simplifies this process, reducing it to
a single button inside the world’s most popular
renderer. with so many artists and designers
already using V-ray, the benefits of the cloud can
now be accessed by the widest group possible.”
Chaos Cloud is the result of five years of
research and development and an extensive beta
program that saw users render 6 million frames
and over 500,000 jobs over six months. thanks
to these tests, artists can now easily render an
entire animation in the time it would usually take
to render a single frame, without having to track
assets, manage licenses or set up virtual
machines. the service also removes the need to
pack scenes – a laborious process that required
artists to manually assemble bitmaps, scripts and
plugins every time they rendered to the cloud.
Chaos Cloud is available now and accessible
via a button within V-ray for 3ds Max, Maya,
rhino, Cinema 4d, revit, Modo, Houdini (beta)
and sketchup (next and 3.6 editions). Pricing for
Chaos Cloud is all-inclusive, customers purchase
packages of Chaos Cloud credits. More
information can be found at chaosgroup.com.
Outpost VFX
launches
new facility
The studio’s first
international location will
service clients in the film,
TV and creative sectors
Outpost VFX, currently headquartered
in Bournemouth, UK, has announced the
launch of its first international studio in
Montréal, Canada. “In response to the
ongoing boom in highly creative HETV
and film projects, the time felt absolutely
right to open another facility to continue
to provide exceptional service to our
clients” explains Duncan McWilliam,
founder and CEO of Outpost VFX. “With
its generous film tax relief system,
supportive government and incredible
visual effects talent base, Montréal leapt
out at us as the most exciting location for
our first overseas studio. After more
than 12 months of careful planning it’s
fantastic to finally realise our goal of
opening a facility in Canada.”
The expansion means that the team
will be better positioned to service
clients across multiple time zones, and
they intend to use this opportunity to
open avenues for talent-sharing between
the UK and Canada.
VFX producer Becca Scott has joined
Outpost VFX as head of production for
North America and is heading up the
new studio in Montréal. Joining Scott is
VFX supervisor James Rustad, a
seasoned creative lead with extensive
experience of creature work.
Outpost VFX will operate from a 555
square-metre facility and is hiring for a
number of positions across art and tech.
The new venture follows sustained growth that’s
seen its Bournemouth base grow to 150 employees
Panel considers
gender equality
In honour of International Women’s
Day 2019, the panel asks how we can
positively impact gender balance
Animated Women UK, ACCESS:VFX and Animation
UK hosted a panel focusing on the recent diversity
statistics from UK Screen and Animation UK, which
reveal that the VFX industry is just 27 per cent female
and the animation industry 40 per cent female. Taking
place at The Mill, discussions aimed to formulate an
achievable framework for reaching a gender balance.
Discussions revealed that the industry has
improved its gender parity, but panelists agreed that
the industry needs a variety of perspectives,
experiences and vantage points and must strive for Details of ACCESS:VFX’s
greater inclusion regardless of age, sexual orientation mentorship programme can
or gender. For more on Animated Women UK head be found at accessvfx.org/
blog/mentors
to animatedwomenuk.com.

Shotgun super- Epic Games awards $500,000 grants

charges pipelines
The developer announces game
development integrations for Jira
and After Effects
Shotgun has announced two new integrations
for the game development community: Jira
Bridge and Adobe After Effects. The new Jira
Bridge furthers Shotgun’s mission to connect
game development art and engineering
workflows, while the After Effects integration
joins a suite of supported tools. These updates
follow the recent announcements of Unreal
Engine and Unity integrations. After Effects
integration is available and Jira Bridge
integration is in public beta. To find out more
head to shotgunsoftware.com.
Developers in games, film, TV,
AR and VR receive assistance in
the programme’s final round
Epic Games announced the final recipients of
the Unreal Dev Grants fund for developers
working with UE4. The last round spans over
a dozen projects, totalling $500,000 in
no-strings-attached financial assistance.
“We’ve reached our $5 million goal for the
Unreal Dev Grants programme. As we look
back at the list of those we’ve been able to
support throughout the years, we can’t help
but feel deeply honoured to have played a
part in the stories of hundreds of projects,”
says Chance Ivey, partnership manager at
Epic Games. Recipients include independent
games such as Aeon Must Die! by Limestone To
o celebrate the work helped
p byy the programme
p g over the p
past
Games and BioStories by Bio-Bridge Initiative. four years, Epic has released highlights on its YouTube channel

Software shorts
Arnold 5.3
Autodesk has unveiled Arnold 5.3
with Arnold GPU in a public beta.
The highly anticipated release
provides artists with a taste of GPU rendering for a
set number of features and the flexibility to choose
between rendering on the CPU or GPU. Arnold 5.3
is available as a standalone subscription or as part
of the Autodesk Media & Entertainment Collection.
Visit arnoldrenderer.com/news/arnold-5-3-gpu.
Bringing you the lowdown on product updates and launches
Quixel Mixer 2019
This is the biggest ever update for
Mixer, and it introduces the Mask
Stack, which enables a slew of
material-authoring workflows, procedural
material creation, stylised textures, scan-based
PBR materials from photos, terrain creation and
much more, all in a simplistic package. If you
want more information on Quixel Mixer then
head over to quixel.com.
Houdini 17.5
This update introduces Procedural
Density Graph (PDG), which is
designed to enhance the
software’s procedural architecture. There have
also been a number of enhancements to key
features, such as FLIP Fluids, volumes,
destruction tools and several more. For further
details and all the available pricing options visit
sidefx.com.

DID YOU KNOW? Allegorithmic demoed a new version of Substance Painter at Game Developers Conference 2019

93
 INDuSTRy INSIDER
Job title Creative director at
Ntropic and co-founder of
NIM Labs
Location Los Angeles, USA
Website
Ntropic.com
nim-labs.com
Biography Andrew Sinagra is
creative director at Ntropic,
where he has worked for over
15 years and is focused on
commercials, music videos
and direct-to-client work. He
is also co-founder at NIM
Labs, the world’s first studio
management platform.
Portfolio highlights
• Agents Of SHIELD trailer
(2013)
• Ryse: Son Of Rome E3
premiere (2013)
• Scandal promo (2012)
• Lincoln MKZ advert (2012)
• Live Free Or Die Hard (2007)
• Justin Timberlake – What
Goes Around… Comes
Around (2007)
• Underworld: Evolution
(2006)
• My Chemical Romance – The
Black Parade (2006)
94
Andrew
Sinagra
Ntropic’s creative director
discusses his diverse career
A
ndrew Sinagra wears two hats of sorts: creative
director at Ntropic, where he is focused on
commercials and music videos; and co-founder of
NIM Labs, where he’s helping studios to stay on track and
be profitable through NIM, the world’s first studio
management platform.
What’s your job and how did you break into the industry?
I broke into the industry through the 3D forums. I used to
spend a lot of time there talking to people in the industry.
One day, someone put up a rendering request for a
chess-style video game and I offered to help. It became a
considerable amount of work, so I enlisted one of my
classmates. We ended up starting a business called Digital
Art & Motion, focusing on commercials, concert graphics
and video game renderings. But since my heart was set on 01
feature films, I enrolled at the Vancouver Film School. Then
I worked on a CGI feature Robots From Mars. It was never
released, but it taught me a lot about film production.
What’s the most enjoyable part of your job?
I love telling stories and being able to bring them to life. I’m
always looking for meaning in each action. Seeing a project
go from words on a page to images on a screen is probably
the most satisfying part of the job.
Tell us about a few projects you’ve been involved in.
I worked on the Xbox E3 premiere of Ryse: Son Of Rome. It
was a single-shot spot, which are always tricky, and this
one had multiple layers mixed together, along with
dynamics that interacted throughout the piece. Any time
we touched one part, it had a huge ripple effect. It was a
constant juggling act towards the end – what could be
adjusted, cheated and tweaked to get it to the finish line.
I’m very proud of it for the balance of creative expression 03
and technical achievement we struck.
06
I also directed a Lincoln MKZ ad from start to finish,
which included a stand-in vehicle shoot at the City of Arts
and Sciences in Valencia, Spain. We were also one of the
first productions to use Arri’s metadata system, which built
focal length per frame information directly into the footage.
We were able to feed this into our tracking software. It was
exciting to have this freedom on set and see the
improvement in the final footage.
Have there been any projects that have been particularly
challenging? How did you overcome any issues?
Every job is unique, so the challenges are too. Working with
clients to find a common creative narrative can be difficult.
A client may ask for a particular direction because they
think it will achieve a goal or a lasting memory, but
sometimes what they ask for isn’t what should be executed
(for a variety of reasons). It’s my job to interpret their
intentions and ensure their impression is communicated in
the most effective and elegant way possible.
 Seeing a
project go from
words on a page
to images on a
screen is probably
the most
satisfying part of
the job
02

04 05

07 08 01 Andrew worked as VFX

supervisor on this advert for
ABC’s Rising Star

 he 2014 Rising Star ad aired

02 T
during the NBA finals and was
aimed specifically at
basketball fans

03 Andrew worked on this ad for

Plants Vs Zombies, showing
off its ‘Chum Gun’

04 Andrew was creative director

on Ryse: Son Of Rome’s E3
premiere in 2013

06 Another Plants Vs Zombies

trailer was among Andrew’s
projects with Ntropic

 his Marvel Agents of

07 T
SHIELD trailer was
co-directed by Andrew

08 W
 ith Ntrpoic, Andrew has
worked with huge clients,
such as EA and Xbox

95
 Images of the month

Here are some

of our favourite
3D projects
submitted on
3DArtistOnline.com
in the last month

01 Lady Eden
House
by Sérgio Merêces
3DA username
smereces
Sérgio Merêces says: “This was a
personal 3D render image that I
made between my daily work for
clients, to have a break from the
regular work pipeline and do
something that I enjoy a lot – which
is to produce a 3D render without
having boundaries in my creativity.”
We say: There’s a lovely ethereal
quality to this piece, which gives it
the feeling of a traditional painting.
The colours and light help sell this
magical mood.

02 Gateway To
Paradise
by Yones Bana
3DA username
Yones
Yones Bana says: “This scene is part
of a ZBrush educational package that
I produced last year. First, I made the
low-poly model in 3ds Max, then
added details in ZBrush and finally
rendered in V-Ray.
We say: We really like the
combination of well-observed
real-world elements and an overall
feeling of something more obscure
and abstract. The mood and 01
modelling combine very well, and
the contrast between the two make
this a great image.

03 Spiderman
by Limkuk
3DA username
Limkuk Art

Limkuk says: “I created this piece

based on the Marvel Zombies
project. It was made with several
tools, including Maya, ZBrush,
Substance Painter and Arnold 5.”
We say: A fantastic take and
Editor’s
instantly recognisable, this render
shows incredible skill, great mood
and lovely post-processing work.
choice
04 The
Implosion
by Chris John Debski
3DA username
Chris John
Chris John Debski says: “This is my
submission for the RenderMan Art
Challenge. It was my first time
using RenderMan as a renderer, so I
wanted to showcase all 3D aspects
like FX, displacements, volumetrics
and hair in one scene.”
We say: This piece is full of
movement and detail. It’s a busy
image with a huge amount going
on, but it tells a story clearly and
with bags of style.

03

96
02

04

97
 detaiLing

Gustavo Henrique
behance.net/guutv
Gustavo is as an art
Incredible 3D artists take us behind their artwork director and motion
designer on 2D and 3D
detailing advertising projects.
I added many details while being careful not to pollute the scene with too many elements. I had a lot of Software, Photoshop,
control over which elements were highlighted through the colours I used. I used a large area light on the left Octane Render, Cinema 4D
and a studio background, nothing more. The beauty of the design is all in the colours and lighting, it was all
done very carefully. The biggest secret to achieving a good result in any project is to treat it with care. TreasureShop,2019

98
9000 9