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Fausto De Martini shares his mech insights!
July 2016
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digital filmmaking From CG artist to Hollywood director, start your film career today! • Directors’ advice • Finance your film • Get the kit • CG on a budget
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artist
showcase The best digital art from the CG community
SB-87 Artist Santiago Betancur Software ZBrush, KeyShot, Photoshop This 3D illustration took Colombian artist Santiago two days to create using kitbashing techniques. He used assets downloaded from the Badking library (www.badking.com.au): “My work is focused on concept art and using these tools I can go through the process more quickly and produce great results,” he says. The SB-87 project was created for an online course in which Santiago shares his concept modelling process. With this project, he wanted to explore the happy accidents that can happen; “the kind of stuff that get more life and details to my projects,” Santiago says. The majority of the work is done in ZBrush; Santiago explains that he dives straight into the software after making some thumbnail sketches. Speed is important in concept modelling, so Santiago uses kitbashing techniques to add most of the detail or makes his own libraries. “I don’t take care about topology, UVs or stuff like that because all my work is focusing on concept art and illustration,” he says. “I prefer to make my textures in Photoshop and then digitally paint.” Watch a teaser for Santiago’s course at FYI www.bit.ly/santiago-teaser
get published Email your CG ART to ian.dean@futurenet.com
Visit the online Vault to download extra process art for these projects: www.3dworldmag.com/vault/3dw209
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3d world view “Concept modelling done well is great to pour over and be inspired by, and Santiago’s mech concept is one of the best!” ian dean
Editor
I don’t take care about topology, UVs or stuff like that because all my work is focusing on concept art and illustration 3D World July 2016
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Communit y Industry interview A team of senior artists, led by MPC’s VFX supervisor Adam Valdez and VFX producer Philip Greenlow, travelled from London to Los Angeles to help visualise and plan the script and storyboard development, and guide the filming on set
industry interview
live-action Jungle Book comes to the big screen From photoreal animals to dense jungle, Ian Dean explores The Jungle Book’s CG environments 3D World July 2016
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ot since Avatar have we been thrust into the kind of densely populated CG world seen in Disney’s The Jungle Book. Every modern technology was harnessed to bring the story of Mowgli to the screen, including virtual cameras, simulations and digital characters. More than 800 CG artists worked for over a year animating over 54 species of animal (224 unique animals), crafting full CG environments, and simulating earth, fire and water to bring the dense Jungle to life… on a backlot in LA.
Elliot Newman MPC’s head of CG has a great film list, which includes Guardians of the Galaxy, Maleficent and Godzilla. www.moving-picture.com
MPC’s Bangalore studio took over 100,000 photographs of real locations in the Indian jungle to create a massive reference library. A complex previz process ensured all the environments related to the story. MPC’s head of CG Elliot Newman says, “Our job was to turn these conceptual worlds into CG worlds using known photographic reference, but with a very strict art direction and integration with the surfaces Mowgli interacted with on stage.”
Sets were a complex mix. Some were practical, some were practical but painted blue and some were all just chroma keys. “We had 3D scans of each set which formed the basis of our CG extensions, or in the case of blue sets we would follow that geometry but effectively paint back in the details,” Elliot explains. Plants, trees, vines and rocks were modelled so that each scene could be handcrafted plant by plant. “In some scenes Mowgli would brush past the branch of a tree so we dotted some
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extra branches around to look like they all sat together in the same shot without any visible seams.” MPC accrued a staggering 30 million render hours (3,400 years through a single machine) to create the detailed CG of The Jungle Book. And when you consider the environment shots contribute to 80 per cent of the frame, 100 per cent of the time, the lush jungle itself is the single biggest creation in the movie. Turn to page 90 to see how VR was FYI used for Disney’s The Jungle Book.
Feature Start your filmmaking career
Director Hasraf Dulull says communicating your ideas visually is key: he draws ‘HaZ-Grams‘ (below) for his crew, as well as creating previz, mood boards and diagrams
how to behave Hasraf Dulull shares some advice for getting the best from your crew “I found being a ‘hands-on‘ director gained the respect of people who went out of their way to help me, because they know they are not dealing with a director who thinks directing is about sitting on a chair behind a monitor and screaming action,” explains Hasraf. “It’s about being in the trenches with your crew to help drive the project to reach that goal and vision.” Knocking up basic visuals is just as important: “I find as a filmmaker, I am able to get what I desire for the shot from my crew because of the simple way of communicating using previz, mood boards, images and diagrams,” explains Hasraf. For VFX-heavy projects Hasraf recommends ftrack. It manages notes, versions of comps and the shooting schedule, and is particularly useful if you have a global team. “Also when providing notes to your VFX team, make sure they are clear and succinct. I personally find it easier to annotate on a frame and give minimal written notes so that way it‘s clear universally, especially when working with remote artists and English may not be their first language. You can do this using the Windows Snippet tool or on a Mac use [Cmd]+[Shift]+[4] and then annotate in Preview… or you can use the Review tool in ftrack if you are using ftrack… or alternatively use a tool like Wipster.”
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ou‘ve mastered Modo, Maya and Max but want to test your skills further. You look in the mirror and ask yourself, where next? For many artists the answer is to get behind the camera, any camera, and start filming. “I have always played with cameras since a young age – playing with my Dad’s VHS camcorder and then later on in university shooting stuff with my DV cam (yes tapes!). But it really kicked off for me as a filmmaker when making my short films and releasing them online,” says VFX supervisor turned director Hasraf Dulull, whose VFX-heavy shorts include Fubar Redux, Project Kronos, I.R.I.S and Sync. Hasraf is currently filming two feature films, both based on his proof of concept shorts, Project Kronos and Origin Unknown – which is currently casting and is about a mysterious cube which appears on Mars.
Make it happen
“It‘s all about the pitch and making something that fits the trend,” says Hasraf when asked how to take the step up from bedroom filmmaker creating movies on a shoestring to Hollywood
debut. “I know some filmmakers would disagree with me there,” he continues, “but if you want to raise funds, support and sponsors, you need to pitch in a way that makes everyone relate to the project. So, for example, with Sync, it was about robots combating the everyday threat of cyberterrorism in a very near future.” Backing your pitch with a quantity of quality visuals will also stand you in good stead, and tapping into your CG art skills will help: “A good script alone is not necessarily going to get people to back you in support or finance. So you need to convey the vision as clearly as possible through visuals, mock-ups, and rip-o-matic trailers.” Hasraf also recommends going out and doing a test shoot. Good cameras don't cost the earth, and in all likelihood you have one in your pocket, so there are no excuses. “Not only will this convince your sponsors that you are going to achieve it, it will also give you the confidence to know you can pull this off,” he says. Hasraf can‘t emphasise enough how vital it is to plan everything. "Firstly it makes you sleep better at night, but also it instils confidence in your team that you are on it and they can trust your leadership as a director,” he says.
Using review tools, such as ftrack, can help to manage your project, especially if you have an international team of artists
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event on the horizon?
and take your shots Always log s as you shoot note
on set advice
Hasraf Dulull reveals the eight tips to getting through a shoot 1. Be nice The first advice I tell everyone is to be nice to your crew; don’t go all Christian Bale on them, because remember, they are here to help you make the film. The other advice I would give is to always come prepped but also be open for suggestion.
4. Collect data Use the clapperboard to record data such as takes, lens data, and so forth, as that will help immensely in the edit/post later. If you forget the clapper board then don’t worry, you can still use a notebook and clap for sound sync like we did.
2. Stay calm Do not engage in a debate about shot creative decisions in front of the whole crew, just take your DP or producer to the side and discuss in a civilised way. Same with actors, be more one-on-one rather than shouting from the digital village or behind the camera.
5. Capture multiple angles Always shoot coverage; it’s so important to do this and don’t get hung up about having lots of cameras. This is important for the editor but also, if you only have a day to shoot the scenes, then you want to have more than one camera capturing the scene at various angles.
3. Shooting schedule Shoot the scenes that require extras first, as you don’t want extras waiting around all day, especially since they are helping you out as a favour. Keep small scenes until last, as they require limited setups and smaller crew.
6. Stay organised Keep your file structure on the drives containing the footage clean and organised, otherwise your editor will be very angry and waste a lot of time trying to figure out what the footage is.
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Hasraf finds people to work with at festivals and trade shows, and social media has become a must for finding like-minded people, often willing to work pro bono and help on the project. “The tools I use are things like Google Docs/Drive to ensure everyone is accessing the same information in terms of shoot details, schedule and so forth.” Hasraf Dulull, The Void
7. Spend on audio Don’t go cheap or shortcut on audio, this part is just as important or equally as important as the visuals. Remember, audiences are more forgiving with a not-too-perfect focused shot than a bad audio. So make sure you hire a dedicated sound recording operator who has the right kit (boom, mics, and so forth), and also ensure someone is logging all the takes with each track recorded. 8. Unit photography Have a person on set taking unit photography and shoot some DSLR behind the scenes footage. This material is gold for marketing your film and promoting it in magazines and websites as audiences always like to see how the film was made. But also you can use this for PR before releasing the film.
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feature Making Pixar's cutest short
pixar hatches a plan
Barbara Robertson visits Pixar to discover the future of animated fur and feathers 3D World July 2016
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B Alan Barillaro Alan’s first film at Pixar was as an animator on A Bug’s Life. He was a directing animator on Finding Nemo, and became a supervising animator for The Incredibles, WALL-E, and Brave. www.bit.ly/209-alan
illed as the opening act to Pixar’s 2016 film Finding Dory, animator turned director Alan Barillaro’s charming short animated film Piper could outshine the headliner, with the story of a fledgling sandpiper having all the humour and heart of the best Pixar films – long or short. But what will excite animators and 3D artists is the way in which Alan, with the help of Pixar’s tools department, chose to create the story. The look is photoreal in the same vein as Pixar’s short Blue Umbrella; believably real, yet stylised. The ocean, the sandpiper’s nest in the tall grass, and especially the birds themselves, have the softness of an early morning on the coast. The waves break on a sandy beach, come in with the tide, and then retreat leaving foamy edges dissolving into the sand. As the film starts, fluffy little Piper opens his beak expecting his elegant, long-legged mother to feed him. But she doesn’t. It’s time for the young bird to fend for himself. Sandpipers find food in the sand between the water’s edge and the grass, picking and pecking at crustaceans, small clams, insects, worms, and other creatures. Mum shows Piper what to do, but the adorable little bird is clueless. We watch Piper’s frustration as he tries to pry open a clamshell. His feathers spring out in all directions. And then the tide swamps him. He shakes off the water and shivers. The clam disappears into the sand. Piper’s head feathers pop up in amazement. “I didn’t want his reaction in eyebrows,” Alan explains. “I wanted his reactions in his feathers. All of his character comes from his feathers.” Making that possible was one reason this film came into being.
Tool makers
“I had some ideas for tools I wanted to try out – more intuitive tools for artists. To work with the software engineers, I needed to have something to test. I had this idea of animating a sandpiper, 3D World July 2016
so I storyboarded out a little short. I wanted to make the tools in Presto more visual,” Alan says, referring to the studio’s animation system. “To give animators visual shaping tools, and to remove walls between departments.” One of the tools Alan wanted, and that the Presto engineers created, was a sculpting tool for the animators. Alan shows an example in which Piper has turned his head and it looks more square than as round as it should. “The animator used the new sculpting tools to change it specifically for the view from the camera,” he continues. “We took the idea of sculpting further than we had before. Animators can change a model shape to create a more graphic feel. If a change comes up a lot, we’d give that sculpt to the riggers.” Animators on Piper also sculpted the sets and the props, and shaped entire flocks of
Feather guides for animation can be seen above, with the head, scapular, wings and tail regions visible and posed in Presto. On the left, shows Piper posed without feathers
We wanted the animators to have tools to see shapes in the moment. That's where we started. Then we realised we didn't need the physics at all birds. Alan even used the sculpting tools to shape the tides and place rocks in the sand. The new tool gave animators unprecedented and important artistic control. For example, a shot, when storyboarded, might show Piper simply walking on the beach. But, an animator might know the performance would be more interesting if Piper ran up a hill and looked over or tripped over something, and change the beach accordingly. The animator could make that change without involving the sets departments. “Normally, animators would never touch the ground that sets creates, but on this film, animators could shape the beach to impact the acting,” Alan enthuses “For animators to have that ability is compelling and powerful.” The idea of giving animators the flexibility to make visual choices even extended into effects simulation.
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feature Captain America: Civil War VFX
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Captain America: Civil War, Industrial Light & Magic © 2016 Marvel. All Rights Reserved
M .to/1 imdb
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We had all the characters in their toy form that we would put on the table and track a fight Dan DeLeeuw, VFX supervisor, Marvel
Stark Contrast
Lola VFX supervisor Trent Claus was responsible for de-aging Robert Downey Jr. 30 years, which posed challenges. “The shot was nearly 4,000 frames long, with transitions from wide, to mid, to close-up, multiple 180-degree turns, physical interactions with characters, and a variety of emotions and expressions that needed to be maintained – all without any cuts,” Trent says, adding that teamwork proved essential.
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Tutorials Learn V-Ray for Blender
V-ray for Blender
get started with v-ray Julian Santiago shows you how to get to grips with V-Ray for Blender
B Artist profile Julian Santiago Julian is a freelance 3D artist. He has worked on TV commercials, visual effects, and visuals for special events. bit.ly/209-santiago
ack in 2015 I entered the Trojan Horse was a Unicorn Golden Ticket Challenge and won third place. One of the prizes was a one-year V-Ray licence. I had heard of a Blender implementation of V-Ray and thought that this would be a great opportunity to test it. I decided to learn V-Ray for Blender using my usual method: to dive in head first and create a project with it. The end result is the image you see here, as well as a short animation. 3D World July 2016
V-Ray for Blender is interesting to me because it is a productiontested, primarily biased renderer. While it is capable of creating realistic images on par with its unbiased competitors, there is always the option of trading physical accuracy in the lighting and materials for much faster render times. It is worth noting that working with V-Ray is a little different to working with Cycles. In Cycles, the various shader components, 72
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such as diffuse, reflection and refraction, are contained in separate BSDFs that have to be mixed together using nodes to create the desired materials. V-Ray uses nodes, but instead of having multiple BSDFs that are mixed together, the nodes are used to texture the attributes of a single BSDF. While layering BSDFs is still possible, it is usually reserved for more complex material effects. For all the assets you need go to creativebloq.com/vault/3dw209
working with v-ray Follow the basic workflows here to create a stunning render like Julian’s, The Perils of Modern Vampire Hunting
Expert tip
Search for a node If you know the name of a node, you can use the search function in the [Shift]+[A] menu to find it.
1 Interface Basics
Orientate yourself with V-Ray’s menus: the various settings can be found in the Render Context tab in the Properties window. The Render tab itself has five additional tabs that contain the settings for the render output: Globals, GI, the DMC sampler and System Settings. Customising materials, lights and other aspects of the scene is done through the Node editor. There are five V-Ray-specific node tree types: World, Lights, Materials, Objects and Scene.
2 Working with Nodes
To create a node, press [Shift]+[A] in the Node Editor. Nodes have various input and output types, and you have to connect these in a specific way. The attributes are colour coded: for materials, the most common types are Float Values (grey), Vector Values (yellow), BRDF (green), Materials (orange), and Mapping (blue). Sometimes connecting different-coloured attributes is OK. Orange outputs, for instance, can be connected to the green inputs of the ‘layered’ BRDF node.
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Topics covered Working with nodes Using materials Editing textures Rendering fog
Tutorials Create a VFX fire flower
Houdini | Mamba FX
create a VFX fire flower for film Learn the skills to make feature film level effects that can be directed, with Varomix
C Artist profile Varomix Varomix has been working in the CG industry since 1998, first in 3ds Max and Cinema 4D before moving to Maya. Houdini is now his main tool, which he uses in his role as a VFX supervisor and DOP assistant. www.varomix.net
reating visual effects for feature films and advertising is always a challenge. Aside from the difficulty and technical ability required to create the actual CG effect in Houdini, you are creating something that is someone else’s vision, and that is far more challenging. That said, you have to be able to have control over the simulated effect so that it does what you want. Supervisors and directors will never accept something that’s different from the project’s vision, simply because a piece of software or the VFX artist lacks the ability to create the most accurate rendition of the concept art and/or idea required.
Of the course of this tutorial we’re going to make a fire flower – and the flower literally has to be made of burning fire, so we have a few aspects to consider. The main thing is the shape. As you know, fire doesn’t have a specific shape; it’s chaotic, wild and the movement is unpredictable. For this effect to be successful we need to keep these aspects as much as possible while also depicting the flower shape. One of the key skills any FX artist needs is patience. Why? Well simulations take time to calculate (even more so at the level of a feature film), so be patient and make lots of notes – notes about changes you’re making or notes
1 Study your references Topics covered Using references Simulation Rendering Colour correction Compositing
The first thing I do is ask for reference material if nothing has been provided. This will ensure you’re heading in the right direction. Most of the time there are always material available. If the reference for the effect is concept art, you need to ask as many questions as you can to really understand what the effect should look like, how should it behave, how fast should it move, the lighting, and so forth. 3D World July 2016
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from your supervisor or director. That way you’ll always know what you changed and what version corresponds to specific changes. It’s not unusual for a supervisor to ask you to go back to a previous version, so always make sure you’re prepared for this. This tutorial works through my process for creating a fire effect for film production, and you can download a detailed video of each step from the online Vault, as well as the files to complete the project. By the end of this tutorial you will have a understanding of how to create feature film, production quality effects. For all the assets you need go to creativebloq.com/vault/3dw209
2 Prepare your assets
I already had the geometry of the rose. In most cases it will be provided by the modelling department. This model will help but we need to prepare it to give us the best shape when it’s used as an emitter for the fire simulation. I deleted unnecessary petals, as having too many makes the fire too crowded and it loses its shape. I used the Polywire tool for the petals and leaves to accentuate the fire shape, then subdivided and added high density noise to break up the shape.
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keep it realistic It’s important to keep the fire chaotic and wild with unpredictable movement 3D World July 2016
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