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CGArena

VOLUME 5, ISSUE 2, APR - MAY 10

Get Attention in the Computer Graphics Community

Interview

Chris Nichols

ZBrush

Reichskrone

Photoshop

Be My Valentine Public Transportation

3ds Max Waiting

Gallery

Latest 3D inspiring art

VOL

5

Get Attention in the Computer Graphics Community Issue Contents

Volume 5, Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

05

Interview

Chris Nichols

16

Photoshop

Making of Be My Valentine

26

3ds Max

Making of Waiting

34

Photoshop

Project Overview: Public Transportation

38

ZBrush

Making of Reichskrone

54

Gallery

Showcase of latest 3D art

Magazine Edited: Ashish Rastogi, India Magazine Cover Image: Henning Kleist, Germany Magazine Design: Yousef Ikhreis, Jordan www.cgarena.com

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Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

Industry News

CGArena

Prime Focus accomplishes the first 2D-3D conversion for Warner Bros Pictures and Legendary Pictures in a record breaking time of 8 weeks. “Clash of the Titans,” marks the first complete feature film project that has used Prime Focus’ revolutionary View-D™ process, which allows filmmakers to efficiently create stereoscopic 3D movies from source material shot on virtually any medium.

Designer/ director/ illustrator Ed Dye, and director/editor Ken Soons - awarding winning-talents in their own right - have partnered up with business savvy CEO Michael Zarrillo to launch Artistic Image, a new hybrid design-driven live-action production, CGI, animation, character development, finishing house - and go-to creative resource for out-of-the-box ideas and concept development.

Warner Bros. and Director Louis Letterier partnered with Prime Focus in mid-January to embark on an aggressive 8-week conversion schedule that would enable simultaneous theatrical release on standard and stereo 3D screens. Based on the stereoscopic nature of the work, the conversion process was equivalent to completing 2,000 visual effects shots in that timeframe.

With Soons’ recent creation of a live-action productions arm, and the completion of a stunning studio complex in Atlanta’s trendy King’s Plow Center - the former print effects company has redefined itself, creating the Southeast’s first world-class concept through completion studio offering a level of artistry that previously could only be found at premiere east and west coast facilities.

Book

Southeast’s First Hybrid LiveAction, FX, Animation House

Mastering mental ray: Rendering Techniques for 3D and CAD Professionals - It distills the highly technical nature of rendering into easyto-follow steps and tutorials that you can apply immediately to your own projects. The book uses 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design to show the integration with mental ray, but users of any 3D or CAD software can learn valuable techniques for incorporating mental ray into their pipelines. Focuses on only the most pertinent tools and techniques for busy professionals who need to quickly apply them on the job. ISBN - 978-0-47056385-4

Training

Prime Focus achieves the first 2D-3D conversion

CmiVFX Autodesk Composite 2011 - cmiVFX launches its training video in the cmiDirect series, Autodesk Composite 2011. Autodesk Composite, formerly known as Toxik, is now available as a packaged application with Maya and soon to be 3D Max. Create compositions, work with footage, create masks, color correct and introduce vector paint techniques with the latest tools on the market. This training will guide the project through a clearly defined process. Immediately learn crucial information on specific topics without slowing down your productions and wasting unnecessary time.

www.cgarena.com

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Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

CGArena

Chris Nichols Q. Hello Chris, can you give our readers a short introduction regarding your age, location, education, employment etc?

Stop making Hulks, Orcs and Wolverine’s unless they are really interesting versions

Hello, I am 27, living and working in Vancouver B.C Canada. I’m currently working at CIS Vancouver on a film as a modeler/texture artist. I finished Graphic Design back in Perth, West Australia and after working on a couple of short films I moved to Vancouver back in 2007. Since then I have worked at Bardel Entertainment, Spin VFX and CIS Vancouver off and on.

Q. What is the reason of choosing CG as career, you started it just as a hobby or did you see the potential for your career?

One of my cousins is a film producer and showed me some samples that an artist at Weta had sent him of work he had done on the Fellowship of the ring. At this point I felt really driven to give it everything I had and study like crazy to get into creating 3d for feature films. I got involved in some short films with friends which is really where I learned the bulk of my skills and then took a year off and moved home with my parents and taught myself how to model and texture characters and creatures.

After I felt I had enough work to show around I moved to Vancouver and started looking for work.

www.cgarena.com

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Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

CGArena

Chris Nichols Q. How was the experience while working on the movie “Invictus” as a texture artist. What is your main nature of work? Please also give us some useful insight about the shots you worked on.

Sure. I was hired on as a texture artist to work on creating textures for the background people that populate the rugby stadiums in the film. It mainly involved projecting photographs of extras onto models parts in ZBrush. A lot of clothing and prop textures were required as well. As modelers left the studio I got do some modeling on the characters and towards the end of production I stepped in to help the environment department with some modeling and texturing of the UN assembly environment and props.

www.cgarena.com

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Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

CGArena

Chris Nichols Q. You are Australian and completed education in Australia so how you got a chance to work in Canada?

I was born in Saskatchewan Canada but moved to Australia when I was 2 years old. When I wanted to move back here I just applied for a Canadian passport and relocated to Vancouver. I really appreciate this fortunate circumstance as it’s quite difficult to get into Canada to work and then permanent residency is another matter. Being able to bypass this is a huge blessing.

Q. Please tell something about your work “Cthulhu”, from where you get the inspiration and idea to create this character? Please tell us in detail about the process involved in creating such character (please explain with the help of WIP’s and other informative screenshots).

I was asked by Pixologic to present at the ZBrush user event back last November. Fortunately I had just come off Invictus and had some free time to dedicate to it. I was asked to use the latest beta of ZBrush to create something from start to finish so dug up an old concept I had done. Cthulhu is a creature described by the sci-fi writer, H.P Lovecraft in his book Call of Cthulhu and describes him as being an ancient alien that lies beneath the ocean and will one day rise to destroy the earth. Cthulhu is described as big as a mountain with a bloated body and squid like face and was the embodiment of terror itself. So I flipped that idea on its head and made him tiny and cute.

First I cut up a simple base mesh, remodeled parts of it and made the head separate from the body. I took these polygon objects into ZBrush and started sculpting out all the forms, not focusing too much on the details but really just blocking out the shapes and getting the anatomy how I wanted it.

I took it back into Maya and retopologised it with Nex, then took that back into ZBrush to project all the details back onto. Bit more sculpting work getting the wrinkles, surface www.cgarena.com

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Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

Interview with

CGArena

Chris Nichols details and such into the model then started to pose it using Transpose.

I used Polypaint in ZBrush to block out the textures and refined them using Photoshop using photographs of fruit and vegetables skins and then refined it even further back in ZBrush using screen captures to Zapplink to Photoshop. This was mainly used for getting fine details into dense areas of the mesh like the head bumps and shoulders.

Finally I made a base for him in ZBrush using alphas and the Flakes brush to create a rocky surface with lots of barnacles and shells. I lit it back in Maya and rendered with mental ray using various passes. Photoshop was used for compositing and post effects. www.cgarena.com

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Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

Interview with

CGArena

Chris Nichols Q. In five years of experience, you worked with various companies on different roles, so which role you enjoyed the most and where would you like to work again?

I really enjoyed working at CIS on Invictus. I found the studio to have a relaxed attitude and working conditions were great. I keep going back there for short stints when they need me and like being able to jump around on a bunch of different areas of film work instead of just working in one area.

Q. Have you also felt the heat of recession, according to you what’s the current status?

Yeah it definitely affected the studios here. Money got tighter and work was pretty lean. I thought I had moved here at the worst possible time and really felt lucky when I got hired at the studios I worked at. Now work seems to be coming in and a lot more studios are opening up here again. The biggest problem for me at least is that it’s also attracted a lot higher caliber of artists with way more film credits so it just got even more competitive for work here.

Q. What are your hobbies and please describe your free time, if you have any or are you the kind of person who lives for the work all the time?

To be honest I think 3d is my hobby as well as my job. I’m pretty aware of where I am and where I want to be and constantly feel there isn’t time for much outside CG. I really enjoy working on models and love the time I have, away from work to create my own creatures and characters without time constraints or under the direction of someone else. I feel really fortunate to be able to do this and try to dedicate about 8 hours a day to working on personal stuff when I’m not at a studio.

Q. On which projects you are working these days, if you like to share?

I finished up doing a short contract on ‘The Last Airbender’ and working back at CIS on a project which is remake of Red Dawn. At home I’m working on a Dragon Slayer model which I’m considering changing to an Ogre Slayer. :-) www.cgarena.com

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Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

Interview with

CGArena

Chris Nichols Q. Your website name is interesting (www.porkpiesamurai.com), what’s the story behind choosing this name?

He..he! When I was living back in Perth, Australia, one of my housemates gave me the nickname The Porkpie Samurai and he was known as the Ginger Ninja because of his red hair. I can’t remember how that stuck as a moniker but the credit belongs to him. I really like how visual it is.

Q. What is the one piece of advice you would give to any artist looking to work or want to make a career in this field?

Man it’s hard to narrow it down to just one piece of advice. Probably to show you’re diverse in all areas, Environments and props, creatures and characters and vehicles. If you’re competent in those areas you will have more chance of getting hired and from there you can start to focus on a more specialized area.

Q. Anything you like to add? It is your chance now to state your opinion about anything!

Ha..ha! ummm.... anything?

OK since I have the platform, I really wish people would stop making Hulks, Orcs and Wolverine’s unless they are really interesting versions. There’s just so many clogging the forums and galleries and its way more interesting to see original creatures and characters than the same old thing. Being in a creative industry I think most people have enough imagination to come up with something other than those overdone characters.

Thanks a lot Chris for taking out sometime for us from your busy schedule.

Sure no problem :-)

Web: www.porkpiesamurai.com Email: porkpiesamurai@gmail.com

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Omar Díaz, Spain CGArena Software:

Making of Be My Valentine

Painter, Photoshop

2D

INTRODUCTION Hello, my name is Omar Díaz and I´m a Spanish Graphic Designer and Digital Painter. I´m currently studying the concept of art for the movies and videogames, working at the same time with freelance.

In this tutorial I will explain how I have done one of my latest work, ”Be my Valentine” , I really hope you find it easy to follow even though this is not a strict step by step walkthrough, because I usually work on all elements of the image at a time, and then increasing the quality and detail gradually.

I rather prefer to work this way, and I never lose sight of the work as a unit, in this way, I ensure that there is no major difference in quality or detail between elements, and allows me much more freedom to improvise in the early stages, experiment or fixing problems without redoing a lot of work.

I will focus on the technical side, sharing some tricks and resources, as well as in theory, because most of the success of an image depends on finding the right solution in every situation.

PREPARING THE IMAGE As a personal work with entire freedom, I didn´t need planning as much as in a commissioned work, but I recommend to spend some time preparing the image, you ´ll save many headaches later.

When a subject is chosen, gather references is a must, do not be ashamed to use them, but, don’t only limit yourself to copy or tracing images, use them for inspiration to create something totally new.

For this work I had it quite clear: I wanted one of my dollie-like girls in a Valentine’s Day aesthetic, very simple concept.

The preparation of this image focused on the choice of pose, color palette and gathered symbolism or history.

The main colors will be a deep red for the girl and a desaturated blue for the background, to increase the contrast, the main light will be a very cold bluecyan and shadows will be very warm reddish-brown. One of my references used was a speed painting that I wanted to rework from some time ago.

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Omar Díaz, Spain CGArena

Making of Be My Valentine GETTING STARTED I always start my work with a very simple sketch, with blobs of colors instead a line art sketch or something like that, in this case I used Corel Painter and a circular brush with both size and opacity set to pressure (you can create it starting from the basic round on Tinting category).Of course, you can also start with a hard brush in Photoshop with the same features, it´s a matter of personal choice, I find Painter more pleasant than Photoshop in these early steps, with greater pressure sensitive and nicer blending.

I worked with a huge brush size, at first is difficult to handle, but practicing and applying a very low pressure, you´ll get very good results, being able to work on large and small details without changing the size of the brush every second.

I worked on basic shapes, with full opacity, no worrying about the detail or the anatomy at the moment. The key now is to put all in place, get a more or less defined pose, a nice composition and an attractive color scheme.

I wanted a beautiful and innocent face with features similar to those of a porcelain doll.

This unrealistic stylization allows me be free of references, while I keep my own distinct style.

The expression should be very delicate, so I avoid her to look directly at the viewer; it gives a thoughtful look, perhaps thinking of her lover…

I decided the placement of the light too, the main source will come from the top right. Later I will add more subtle sources of light.

In this early step be sure to flip the image horizontally from time to time to prevent any disproportions or anatomy mistakes and be free to use liquify or/and the transform tool.

DETAILS When the main features are in good shape it´s time to move into Photoshop and start detailing. Here I used these brushes: www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Omar Díaz, Spain CGArena

Making of Be My Valentine - Airbrush. Used at low flow for adding bold lights and smoothest areas. opacity & flow settled to pressure.

- Hard edged brush. Used for 80% of the process at high opacity (80-40%), opacity & flow settled to pressure, shape dynamics at 60% - Detail brush. Same as the hard edged brush, with shape dynamics at 0% minimum diameter for detailing the piece, used at very high opacity (80-90%), opacity & flow settled to pressure.

- Texture brush. My favorite brush ever! Used for skin and for blending at medium flow (50-60%) (For blending around 20% opacity).Mix of a textured chalk with softer edges, opacity & flow settled to pressure.

- Hair brush. Used with moderation for painting hair strands. A sparkled brush with 10% spacing, opacity & flow settled at pressure, shape dynamics settled to pressure too at 50% diameter.

My way of work on Photoshop is a little different. Here I used a glazing method that mainly involves working on transparent brushstrokes and building low opacity layers on top of each other. I merged the layers from time to time, and kept the same way on new layers. Even so the various elements of the image (background, character, hair…) are kept separated in their own layer.

From here, the methodology is maintained until the end, so I will focus on the most important or tricky parts.

SKIN 1 - Firstly, I created a rich skin palette instead of using only a mid-tone, a shadow tone and a light tone. I used the HSB indicators to made variations of each, and a couple of warmth tones for brush over the transitions that gives contrast and a SSS (sub surface skin) effect. On pale skin the transition from the midtone and light should be extra smooth, being the shadows rougher in the transition (in dark skin vice versa).

2 - I started defining key features of the face basing on the convexity, directional light or bolder lights will came later. If you had any problems to find the most convex and concaves parts of the face it could be easier www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Omar Díaz, Spain CGArena

Making of Be My Valentine creating a base mesh or wireframe in another new layer.

3. Blending is tricky, I usually blend with a textured brush combined with a soft brush for extra smooth zones, picking up surrounding colors with the eye dropper tool and then being applied with very low opacity & flow strokes.

For a natural result first I blended the transitions and then smoothed overall following the structure of face, rounded parts like cheeks, chin etc would benefit of circular brushstrokes.

HAIR The hair is one of my favorite parts, but the truth is it can be a really tedious task. It´s a common mistake to start adding single strands and texture too early. It´s especially important in curly hair to firstly shaping the structure of hair, from back to front planes, taking care of the values and colors. If the structure is correct, I will begin to add texture, single hairs, and one layer on top of each other. Here more than ever I used the glazing technique, with semi-transparent layers, with more and more individual hair without losing the original structure below. In order to not cover the texture work I used less destructive layers like luminance, color and soft light. A good trick is duplicating layers and flipping them for adding more texture in soft light mode at very low opacity. It’s a matter of patience and test new things.

Once I was happy with the result, I merged the layers and made some adjustment of levels and color balance, then created a new layer and with a 1-3px brush start to paint more individual hairs. For the rear light effect, I painted more single hairs in a saturated cyan, and then stump them with the blur tool.

EYES The eyes are always one of the parts that need extra details, especially on portraits, focus a lot of attention and are responsible of the expressiveness and emotion of the character. The most important thing here is to remember eyes are spheres and eye sockets must fit them.

First I detailed the eyelids and the shadow www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Omar Díaz, Spain CGArena

Making of Be My Valentine cast of eyebrows bones ,working in the eyes as a unit and complex piece, I used grayish tones and some desaturated blue sampled from the background and reds for the corners(avoid yourself of using white).Then I detailed the iris and made the eyelashes. Don’t use pure black at eyelashes and don’t make then too furry, keep them long but separated. Remember that eyelashes and top eyelid already cast a shadow.

Finally I added the spot light (the lighter part of the iris is the opposite of the spotlight and vice versa) and others tiny lights of almost pure white on the most convex areas and on the lachrymal to make them wet.

At this point the character is almost finished.

I created some adjustment layers like color balance and levels, and increased the saturation of the reds. I blurred the parts of the hair that are more far away and dyed it so lightly with the background color.

PENDANT It’s time to add more ornaments and symbolism into the image. I created the pendant on a new document at high-res to work easy on details. I brought it later to my image in a new layer, then resized it, adjusted the levels again and searched the best position.

The chains were made with a custom brush with a medium gray tone, then used warp tool until I was happy with the result. Marking the box of “preserve transparency”, I added shadows and lights and played a bit with the Dodge tool. Finally I blurred it for a more natural touch and added a little red glow. At the end I made the shadow cast on a new layer below.

DRESS Before detailing the dress I retouched the torso and her left arm, which was deformed. www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Omar Díaz, Spain CGArena

Making of Be My Valentine

I overlaid a fabric texture to the dress for under painting.

Although my first idea was closer to the velvet; I decided it would work better a semitransparent organza fabric.

The key is creating transparent layers on top of each other’s, creating more opaque folds when overlapping.

I painted with an airbrush a thin highlighted stroke to simulate the edges of the fabric. Where the dress is closer to the skin I applied some sampled skin tone.

I also changed the flower hair for a more symbolic red rose.

BACKGROUND AND FINAL ADJUSTMENTS As attention remains on the character, the background should be very simple, so I only added different textures on three different layers using overlay and soft light modes and an opacity between 10-30%.

Also in order to make the reading of the image easier, I used some heart brushes from (http://torpedo-design.deviantart.com) and (http://mcbadshoes. www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Omar Díaz, Spain CGArena

Making of Be My Valentine deviantart.com) to guide the viewer to the different focal points and also get a sense of connection and depth.

In last minute I decided to change her eyes for a more saturated blue to pop up, also I detailed the iris a lot more and giving them a more wet look.

For final adjustments, I flattened the image, and added several adjustments layers: color balance, levels, curves…

I duplicated the final image and settled it to soft light mode, made a Gaussian blur and downed the opacity of the layer at 10% to add more contrast, I repeated the process this time to add linear light mode.

Finally I scanned a piece of paper and overlaid on top at 6% opacity, for a more traditional look. Time to put my signature and it’s finished!!!!

Thanks so much for reading, I really hope this walkthrough could be of some help to you, if you have any questions about it, please be free to send me a mail.

Blog: http://omarportfolio.blogspot.com Portfolio: dark-adon.deviantart.com Email: omarenovatio@gmail.com

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Guillaume Vialaneix, France CGArena Software:

Making of Waiting

3ds Max, Mental Ray

3D

INTRODUCTION Hi everyone! Quick presentation of the project before starting. The idea behind this was to create a render that looked like a still image from a film noir movie. With that in mind I pictured a woman, standing, waiting for something, someone?, in the rain. I took this project as a way to learn and experiment new techniques (I had never really done a woman in 3D, textured the way I did for this etc.).

Few specifications; everything was done in 3dsmax and Photoshop and was rendered with Mental Ray. No real limit poly wise as this was done only for a still image. The textures were done in 8k and 16bit color depth and the final image was rendered at a 5475 x 3600 resolution (I really, really love HD...).

MODELING First stop, modeling. For this project I didn’t do anything fancy with the modeling and everything is pretty straight forward. I used the good old poly by poly technique. For the head, I know a lot of people start with the eyes but for some reason I prefer starting with the nose. I just layed out a couple of polys to get a very rough nose shape and moved on to the eye socket, mouth, etc. It started a bit generic looking but with lots of tweaks using smooth selections I started defining a bit more the aspects I wanted the face to have.

I didn’t have anyone’s face in mind so I experimented with different versions by using morph targets until I found something I liked. This took quite a while but was also quite fun!

The same technique was used for the rest of the modeling process, always starting with a simple quad.

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Guillaume Vialaneix, France CGArena

Making of Waiting TEXTURE AND SHADING For the texturing process I used a collection of head photos I bought on 3d.sk a few years ago. To create the head texture I decided to test a projection technique. Let me first say that there is probably an easier way to do this using projections but, I don’t know it (feel free to contact me if you do!) so I kind of worked myself into this not really knowing how it would work out. My technique consisted of unwraping the UVs like a normal UV layout but also unwraping them from a front, side, back, under and top view. On each UV layout I assembled bits and pieces of the photos I had, in Photoshop, until I had a full head for each view. I then switched back to 3dsmax and baked each view on to the final UVed head.

All I had to do then was assemble the baked results in Photoshop to make the final texture. It might seem a bit of a pain to do all of this but it’s the easiest way I found to prevent stretching on textures.

I used this map as a base to do the bump and spec map.

The shirt texture was done using a simple fabric texture I found on the internet and painted the details. The coat and hat textures were done procedurally with the same fabric texture used for the shirt as a base.

For the shading, I used the Mental Ray skin shader for the head and hand and the Arch&Design for the clothing. Not much to say expect that it’s really important to take some time to test the different options of the shaders to really get what you want.

When starting work on a new shader I always deactivate everything and put every parameter back on zero www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Guillaume Vialaneix, France CGArena

Making of Waiting and play with them one at a time, even on shaders I know and have already used. This way I can really test out everything again and make sure I know what I’m doing. I remember when I first started 3D, it was a real pain for me to do shader work but now, I really enjoy it.

LIGHTING, RENDERING AND POST Lighting wise, I just used spotlights and a tad of final gather to erase some nasty black shadows near the eye and nose. I knew I wanted a night shot with a nice rim light so I just went and did what I had in mind without really testing other lighting scenarios (probably not the smartest move, I have to admit it).

For the rendering part of the project I decided to explore the power of compositing with as many passes as possible. To do that I broke down the render into the following passes for each object: Diffuse (for all the lights), Specular (for all the lights), Reflections, SSS, Color, Ambient Occlusion and Fresnel.

The renders where done using the default settings in Mental Ray. I didn’t use the Render Elements tab as it wasn’t giving me what I wanted so I created individual materials for each render pass.

I then assembled everything in Photoshop using the transfer modes (diffuse, specular, reflections etc. are added, color is multiplied etc.).

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Guillaume Vialaneix, France CGArena

Making of Waiting With so many layers I had full control over the image lighting and shaders inside Photoshop and was able to tweak things very easily without having to re-render. The only downside of this was the huge file size and very long saving times for the Photoshop file.

I used this process for every object and after that, I started painting the hair. I started with a really rough pass, using only a big brush to define the mass of the hair on where it was going to go. I then started refining with a smaller brush (still big compared to the final hair size) more strands and clumps of hair and continued refining using smaller and smaller brushes until it got to the point where I was painting each individual hair.

To finish, I added some loose hair here and there and reinforced a few shadows to make it less flat.

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Guillaume Vialaneix, France CGArena

Making of Waiting The character was finally done and I moved on to painting the background using standard brushes in Photoshop and some photos for the rain and very blurry pictures to add variations here and there.

For the final touches, I rendered a Zdepth pass and used it in Photoshop to add a bit of depth of field. I also added some grain to the whole image to simulate a bit of the grainy look in movies and finally added a photo filter to unify things a bit more color wise. I continued tweaking things here and there until I had the result I was looking for.

To conclude, I’ll simply say that this was a really fun project to work on even though it took quite a while from start to finish. I hope you guys can find some things here and there useful in this brief overview and please, do not hesitate to contact me if something is unclear or if you want more information!

Guillaume Vialaneix Website: www.guillaume-vialaneix.com Email: g.vialaneix@gmail.com

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Renan Motta Lima, Brazil CGArena Software:

Photoshop Project Overview Public Transportation

2D

Well I started this image with the drawing of the trucker sitting on a seat. Then decided what he was looking at in the bus of death and the rest of the image just came naturally. When the layout was loosely finished I started the coloring in Photoshop.

First I dropped the base color (leaving the layout in multiply mode in the first layer). In this first stage I chose a neutral dark color, since I know it will be a night time scene. Then I done the general lighting for the scene with the light and shadow in layer above the base color in overlay mode. I try to ignore other lighting sources that are a bit more directional and start focusing on the more diffuse ambient type of lightning. Although since I know what the primary source of light will be, the door of the bus, I take that in consideration in setting the interest area.

After that I start doing the specific lighting. I started with bright light in the bus. The way light changes the tentacles and the suited guy in problem. I used a bright orange in an overlay layer above the last one. Then created a dark blue shadow, in the same way for contrast.

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Renan Motta Lima, Brazil CGArena

Public Transportation Now the image is shaping up and I can start the over-painting. I flatten the image and start painting in a new layer on the top. Fixed some minor bugs in the right side, add detailing in the tentacles, the man being hold by them and the bus. Change the bus destination just for fun.

Leave the left side a little bit unfinished, with the original layout traces still present. Punch up the contrast while painting. After everything is finished painting-wise, I start the post production.

I used a curves adjustment layer for illumination and color. Then finally, I used a paper texture in overlay mode over the final image and that’s it! It’s done. Hope you guys like this small overview!

Blog mottalima.blogspot.com Email renanmottalima@gmail.com

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Henning Kleist, Germany CGArena Software:

Making of Reichskrone

ZBrush, 3ds Max

3D

Hi everyone, I’ve been given the opportunity to show you how I made my latest 3D project: the medieval, German imperial crown (“Reichskrone” in German).

As I wanted it to resemble the original crown (today in Vienna, Austria) as good as possible I had to do a lot of research. I started with looking for many reference pictures, mainly detailed photos since they wouldn’t lend the crown to me, I guess. I gathered information on its dimensions and studied all the details of how it’s built which was pretty hard with only blurry references.

TEXTURE AND SHADING Modeling was very basic at the beginning. I had to find the correct octagonal shape for the body at first which wasn’t regular as I soon discovered. I made some dummy objects just to find out what the crown will look like later before I go into real modeling.

Then I started with a regular hinged object for the plates and subdivided it in 3ds Max using smoothing groups to export it to ZBrush.

MATCHING AND RETOPOLOGY One tool I used all the way was ZBrush’s ZAppLink plug-in.

I took a “screenshot” of the modeling out of ZBrush via ZAppLink and in Photoshop laid a matching photo reference on it to see how far my model resembles the original. This way, I could easily change the outer shape of the model in ZBrush www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Henning Kleist, Germany CGArena

Making of Reichskrone until it matched the reference.

Then I masked out what would later be the holes for the stones and pearls to be lit from behind. I exported a lower subdivided mesh back to Max and retopologized the whole plate to have real mesh holes I can work with.

I basically modeled everything in 3ds Max and put it into ZBrush for further subdivision, sculpting and fitting at the right place.

The furrowed pattern of the small wire parts had all been hand-sculpted in ZBrush since there were all kinds of sizes and shapes which needed my personal attention in order to keep it the way I wanted it to look like.

www.cgarena.com

Page 40

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2010

by Henning Kleist, Germany CGArena

Making of Reichskrone SCULPTING / DOING THE SURFACES I wanted the final crown to have a huge amount of details and thus I made all the filigree surface details like ornaments at every spot at the plate and a proper worn out look.

For the ornaments I created an alpha map and started drawing the thin lines with lazymouse (Z Intensity at 70; Zadd on; “Use Tablet” off).

Later, I brushed the surrounding bumps with a standard brush and smooth brush. The scratches were done with slash1 and slash2 brush.

www.cgarena.com

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