dec-

CGArena

VOLUME 4, ISSUE 6, DEC - JAN 10

Get Attention in the Computer Graphics Community

Interview with Oleg Koreyba

ZBrush

Making of Red Hulk

Photoshop

Making of in the Blue Foil Making of Grenat

3ds Max

Making of Cohen the Barbarian

Gallery

Latest 3D inspiring art

VOL

4

Get Attention in the Computer Graphics Community Issue Contents

Volume 4, Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

05

Interview

Oleg Koreyba

18

Photoshop

Making of Grenat

28

3ds Max

Making of Cohen the Barbarian

36

ZBrush

Making of Red Hulk

46

Photoshop

Making of in the Blue Foil

52

Gallery

Showcase of latest 3D art

Magazine Edited: Ashish Rastogi, India Magazine Cover Image: Eoin Cannon, Australia Magazine Design: Yousef Ikhreis, Jordan www.cgarena.com

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Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

Industry News

CGArena Fox says ‘Avatar’ is costliest film it’s ever made

Unknown filmmaker gets $30m for robot movie

Hundreds of millions of dollars is a lot to spend on a film featuring a bunch of blue aliens -- but that’s exactly what Fox Features has done with new 3D sci-fi “Avatar,” which the movie studio says is the most expensive production it has ever made.

Would-be director Federico Alvarez, who runs a postproduction visual effects house in Uruguay, filmed ‘Panic Attack’ with a budget of just $500 in his free time.

In an interview with CNN, James Gianopulos, cochairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment, wouldn’t divulge the figure spent on the sci-fi blockbuster.

Guessing the multi-million dollar sum of the latest film from director James Cameron has been a popular game for industry watchers for some months: a recent article in the Wall Street Journal speculated the film’s final tally could exceed $300 million.

The five minute clip - which he then uploaded to YouTube - shows an invasion of Montevideo by giant robots and had special effects which could rival many big budget movies.

The 30-year-old was whisked to LA where he was offered a $1 million directors fee and up to £30 million to make the film, by Mandate Pictures. The plans for the movie are said to have a “compelling original story” beyond big robots blowing stuff up.

Book

Professional Digital Compositing: Essential Tools and Techniques - After filming is done, digital compositors move in to manipulate color, retouch, and perform other behind-the-scenes tricks that are necessary to improve or finalize movies, games, and commercials. Now you can learn their secrets with this one-of-a-kind guide to digital compositing.

Professional animator and author Lee Lanier not only draws upon his own experience, he has also combed some of Hollywood’s most active post-production houses in search of the best solutions. ISBN - 978-0470-45261-5

Training

Source: www.cnn.com

Pflow Toolbox Office: Volume 1 - Beginner / Intermediate Guide to Particle Flow Tools: Box 1 & Box 3 Pro - This highly anticipated training kit from freelance particle and destruction effects guru Anselm v. Seherr-Thoss (also CGArena moderator) focuses on many of the advanced subjects for getting the most of the popular Particle Flow plug-in technologies: Box 1 (now included as part of 3ds Max 2010) and Box 3 Pro. This training course will give new users and intermediate professionals alike the ability to assemble complex Particle Flow systems using these advanced plug-in technologies.

www.cgarena.com

Source: www.newslite.tv

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Interview with

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

CGArena

Oleg Koreyba Q. Hello Oleg, could you tell us a bit about yourself?

Today’s technologies are very close to what user can’t differentiate from reality

Hello everyone, I’m 3D artist. Live and work in Kiev (Ukraine). My main specialization and preferences are 3D characters. I’m lucky because I like my job!

Q. What inspires you to take the CG as a career?

I graduated Ukrainian Art and Architecture Academy in Kiev. Surely I’m artist by education but CG as a career started due to one occasion. Once, in far 1998, I went to my brother Dmitry. That time he used to be a developer and had PC with Internet. Those years I could not even imagine that my future being will be tight connected with CG and with PCs at all. That evening we found a vacancy that became decisive for me. Not long after I started to work for Boston Animation Company. It was one of the few companies in Kiev that made computer games. They were interested in people with art education and taught them rare knowledge of computer graphics. I was interested in something new.

At first I just draw textures and sketches in Photoshop. A year later I tried 3D modeling.

So thus in 1999 I started my CG career.

Nowadays character modeling is my main direction. I like creating their shapes, forms and images. Each has its own state, temper, nature and motive. I always try to breathe as much as possible life into my every model.

Q. Please tell us which tools you use from your arsenal to create the characters?

8 years ago I started to model in 3ds Max. But Maya is my love from the first check; even today I use Maya very often. Digital sculpting and high-polygonal models I always made in ZBrush, rarely in Mudbox, textures and digital art always in Photoshop. www.cgarena.com

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Interview with

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

CGArena

Oleg Koreyba Q. Please tell us about KoreybaArts and share the pipeline you follow in the studio?

An idea to work in a team arose in 2005. We were 5 people called “ArtistBand”. Some orders appeared with work scope bigger than I could do alone. I began to share the tasks with friends and colleagues but Customers expected my professional level in everything so I had to check, correct and finalize job personally.

Now, mostly I prefer to share the knowledge and to delegate the job, to explain what has to be corrected and where but characters’ faces I complete by myself the same as earlier. The character’s identity and likeness with planned concept art are extremely important for me.

In this way, me and employees are sharing the knowledge, skills and teaching each other. This helps our team to grow professionally. This year we launched a new website portfolio and named KoreybaArts.

Q. How many artists you have in the studio and from which background?

Four in the studio and ten specialists’ works as freelancers. We engage as many people as needed based on complexity of every particular project.

These are people from Kiev, Odessa, St. Petersburg and Chisinau. Some of them worked with me for GSC Game World, Boston Animation, Vogster Entertainment, Monter Cristo Games, etc.

Q. During recruitment, what does a KoreybaArts look for and currently you have any job openings?

Expanding our contact data base we may maneuver as with project pricing as well with project completion terms. Now we open for remote cooperation. Freelancers are always welcome. For those who so desire – E-mail us or view here. www.cgarena.com

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Interview with

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

CGArena

Oleg Koreyba Q. Besides character modeling, which other services you offer in the studio?

Thank you. Good question!

Basically there are characters examples on our site. At the same time we work with really experienced guys who create “solid surface” like defense technology, 3D weapons, architecture and environment, rigging and animation. For some reasons examples of these works can’t be shown on the website so far. We’ll improve this very soon.

KoreybaArts does whole character production for Game and Cinema industries beginning from drawing of B&W sketches for shape seeking and completing with color concept art, illustrations, high- and low polygonal modeling, mapping, texturing, shaders’ creating and tailoring, lightening, rendering, rigging and animation.

Recently I found 2 new interesting industries for me – these are Holograms and 3D print. Some examples of such sets grouped on services you can find in gallery on the following page: Services Q. Do you do any preliminary drawings before you model, or do you just start and see what happens and how long on average would you spend on a character?

Commonly for characters production customers provide a good concept art and/or text description with photoreferences. This lets us to significantly reduce project terms. Using this stuff we and customer clear understand our deliverables. In case where customer doesn’t have the concept art and references – we offer our services for that.

Depending on complexity we spend 9-20 men days for creating the characters for AAA games or movies. Distributing tasks within a team, we deliver a model faster; compare to process where everything does one person. For example in our team hands and head creates one guy, clothes and shoes another one etc.

www.cgarena.com

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Interview with

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

CGArena

Oleg Koreyba Q. Please tell us what required modeling a realistic character and which things anyone can keep in mind while creating realistic characters?

Great question again. Sure you know about toolset and which software you should be familiar with. To model realistic characters for AAA games you need the skill set for ZBrush or Mudbox and finally select one from Maya, Softimage, 3ds Max, Lightwave, etc.

In case you are going to model human you should pay attention to human anatomy.

I’ve studied anatomy through drawing skeletons from nature and muscle mockups; pictured a lot of naked sitters. Painting people from the nature in different positions, artist accumulates his own knowledge database, like filling it with files which he may use any time without human nature. Art education stands me in good stead on working with any CG aspect. Such education forms sense taste, harmony and color.

To work with high-polygonal characters which later would be rendered for movie or hologram, first of all you should be patient. As opposed to games’ characters here you have to make a lot of specific settings and test rendering…it takes plenty of time.

Q. What do you like the most: Modeling, Texturing, Lighting or Rendering? :-) During more than 10 years in CG I drew the concepts, made textures, modeled, lightened, tuned shaders in game editors, etc… and every aspect taught me something unique. In concept art I like creative spirit, in modeling endless 3D graphics features and capabilities. ZBrush appearance made real revolution in modeling. Work on surfaces became much easier and much more interesting. This tool fits as for digital artist as for sculptor. Good

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Page 9

Interview with

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

CGArena

Oleg Koreyba textures dress the models. I began CG exactly from textures. So, modeling some character I look on it in different lighting variants, this became a habit. Preparation and tuning the scenes for rendering is an exhausting process. Rendering in fact is a mostly technical process rather than creative and I get it as necessary part of whole model creation process. With a pleasure I have to admit that it’s great to see a good picture after a long, long waiting of final calculation under maximum texture sizes and quality settings.

Q. Please tell us in detail about your project Sheikh Zayed, why and for whom this was done?

I have a lot of colleagues and friends in Kiev. One day my friend Vladimir (very talented animator that works for “4a Games”) mentioned that his friends seek for specialist to create realistic 3D portrait for using as hologram later. I haven’t any ideas at that time on which hologram he was speaking. After some queries on Internet I found a video.

I was really impressed by these products, especially “Small invader” by Fred Bastide and “The Hide” by Timur “Taron” Baysal. It was a great challenge for me to make something for this new kind of Art like hologram and I agreed. Customer was based in Dubai named “4DstudioR” with holograms as key company business. The task was to create 3D portrait of Sheikh Zayed who was president of United Arab Emirates for 30 years. Very famous person! There was too small amount of Sheikh’s photos and such I had where with very low quality at the same time I got a task to create portrait with maximum congeniality. I focused on face and skin identity to make the realistic skin shader.

Portrait was modeled in Maya, sculpting I made in ZBrush and a rendering - in Maya with Mental Ray. Because of heavy SSS shader and 2854 х 613 resolution final rendering for 1280 frames took more than 3 days on fully charged 3 computers. The background for Shaikh portrait customer wanted to see the flag of the UAE, but before printing, we decided to replace it on the mosque, built after the death of Sheik Zayed and named in his honor. You can see the renders on and printed hologram video on the links... printed hologram video

rendering video

Onу interesting story related to this project. I have a metal canopy on my balcony. Sometimes birds walk on it with ticking sound. On a day when I finalized a portrait, sound from birds’ foot changed and I came to balcony intrigued with that sound from big bird foots. The step of the new came bird was wide, slow and well measured. On a canopy I saw one bird of prey with long foots. It was really similar to the bird that often presented on photos with Sheikh. It didn’t hurry to fly away and I ran to take camera. I got one picture before it left. Such a story … understand it like you want ;)

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Interview with

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

CGArena

Oleg Koreyba Here are the few steps and settings used in creation of the portrait...

I created a low-polygonal head in Maya and did the mapping. After that I imported the mesh in ZBrush.

I sculpt all divides, and on 7 divide I added the pores of the skin.

I created cloth simulation using Maya Cloth Then I sculpt and add the details in cloth using ZBrush. Also added the eyes and modeled remaning bits and pieces of clothing in ZBrush.

www.cgarena.com

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Interview with

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

CGArena

Oleg Koreyba

For rendering used the eyes made in Maya, several spheres and tears made on the lower eyelid.

For the inner hemisphere, I used the blin material and textures.

www.cgarena.com

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Interview with

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

CGArena

Oleg Koreyba For the cover sphere I’ve used the blin material, completely transparent with specularity, and reflection.

In Maya I add a reference obj which exported from ZBrush with middle divide. For detail using the normal map created in ZBrush. Also in ZBrush I generating cavity map for diffuse map.

For beard, eyelashes, and eyebrows, I used the Maya fur. And apply the SSS material on the skin.

www.cgarena.com

Page 14

The following maps used for the SSS. Some maps with 2048 x 2048 pixels, and some have small size.

To set the scene I used a file from rabbitholes. Set it in 3ds Max and export to Maya. Rendered with Maya and Mental Rey.

Interview with

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

CGArena

Oleg Koreyba Q. In movies, these days CG characters replacing the real characters or using mocap, when real character can do the justice with the help of make-up like in the past. So, what’s your thought on this trend?

Yes. Sure. Characters, Monsters, mechanisms especially gigantic and miniature sizes are used in CG and will be used in future. Technologies are very close to what user can’t differentiate from reality and what he sees on the screen. So to make complicated and risky trick in the movie, now it is much easier and safer to change an actor to 3D personage.

It seems to me everybody selects to depict or create something clearer and close to his understanding. I like an approach used by Weta Digital company. This company successfully combines all methods.

My warm regards to my friends and colleagues from Kiev that for a long time work for Weta Digital in New Zealand.

Q. On which projects you are working these days?

Currently I work on an interesting project. Unfortunately I can’t disclose its name and customer.

Please be patient. You’ll see it later on KoreybaArts site and on CGArena.

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

Thank you. I’d like to refer to readership. If you make a movie or AAA game – feel free to write me. My team will work with you on an interesting and challengeable project with a pleasure. Take a look our portfolio at www.koreybaarts.com Another topic that I’m going to continue, painting in more traditional way - on paper and canvas. All interested in oil painting on canvas or 3D portrait, please feel free to contact me.

I’m very grateful to my parents and my wife that during many years supports me and inspire.

Good luck for everybody in creative work, business and love.

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

by Karin Y. Schmitt, Brazil CGArena Software:

Making of Grenat

Photoshop

2D

Precious Stones have since ancient times proved wonderfully fascinating to men, kindled a passion for possession and inspired ardent search; they are part of human being and, through them, tell its history, beliefs and, most important, its essence. The result is a series of 12 stones mixing, in each work, horoscope’s content, Greek and/or Roman mythology, history and popular myths about those “sparkling blossoms of the rock”. For Grenat (garnet), the first stone and piece of this series, here’s a short text I “wrote” for inspiration, after searches through various websites: The name grenat derives from granatum or pomegranate, a symbol of the womb since antiquity. Being associated with the feminine life force, people believed it should only be used by women and, when placed near the forehead, would help to give information from past lives.

At the same time, this stone is one of the representatives of Aries, sign associated with Mars, the Roman god of bloody war. Its color is red – from blood and not from love, as is translated in popular culture – and the animal is the red eagle, the symbol of dominion and power.

The first time I started to draw Grenat was in the beginning of this year and I tried to finish it on several occasions but, no matter what I did, the picture just didn’t work. Here is the first attempt: I finally chosen to abandon it and, in August, I decided to start the one I’m presenting to you, working in on-off style.

The concept, however, basically remained in both works: dark atmosphere with bold references to war and militarism.

SOME TECHNICAL INFO This picture was done with a Wacom Tablet and Photoshop CS3, in a total of about 150 or 200 hours. The original file size and resolution is, respectively, 4500 x 4000 pixels and 300dpi.

For painting, I used a hard round edge brush with Pen Pressure option checked all the time to do almost the entire image, varying its opacity during the process: for sketch - a high opacity; for colors blending - low opacity. Few custom brushes were used to do hair, feathers and to give textures to some specific areas, like the boots. Soft round edge brush www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

by Karin Y. Schmitt, Brazil CGArena

Making of Grenat was also used, but very occasionally and mostly in the end of process to give a smooth touch and finish the picture.

PRIMARY IDEAS AND SKETCH When I start a drawing I generally do previous outlines but, this time, I decided to not. Instead of this, I doodled a lot, picking different colors, changing character’s pose and picture’s atmosphere. That helped to decide quicker what palette should I use and what mood and look should I opt for (another proceeding that will aid even more is to sketch with black & white colors – that allows you to choice your palette only when you’re sure about the lead features in your picture).

As the color theme of Grenat is the red, I went for, mostly, warm hues, but I also decided to pick green for some other elements, as the feathers on her shoulder: This would avoid monochromatisms and make the scene composition more harmonious and interesting.

STARTING POINT Once I was sure about what way would I take, I started to, faintly, define the character expression and other elements in the drawing – in this case, the hair and the

eagle. I didn’t pay attention on the details yet: I just did shape limitations and little anatomical corrections, everything with a high opacity (setting to about 75-80%) hard round edge brush.

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

by Karin Y. Schmitt, Brazil CGArena

Making of Grenat APPLY EARLY DETAILS Once the basic and solid shapes are drawn, I feel more secure to put additional information’s. In this step, I began to define her face, hands, hair and eagle’s feathers, taking care about lightning’s and shadows, which are crucial to give the volume shape. I also start sketching other secondary subjects, e.g. her brooch as well as jacket’s and jewels’ design.

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

by Karin Y. Schmitt, Brazil CGArena

Making of Grenat About face and hands, I usually paint them with a hard round edge brush and, to blend colors better, I set its opacity to 10-20% and its spacing to 25%, always using the drop tool and the original palette to avoid problems with color’s homogeneity.

As for hair and feathers, the process is almost the same in both of the cases: they can be done with a dotted custom brush, setting its spacing to 1% besides checking Shape Dynamics and Pen Pressure options.

ARRANGING THE LOOK At this point, the final result became clearer to me and I thought some repairs were necessary before proceeding. First step, her anatomy: I reduced the woman’s head to about 90% of the original size and brought it more to the right; the same was done with the hands and her thigh, which were, respectively, wrongly big and small according to the right body proportions.

Second step, the eagle: I decided to not change its size then I only took it closer to the woman.

www.cgarena.com

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Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

Tutorial

by Karin Y. Schmitt, Brazil CGArena

Making of Grenat A SHADOWY THOUGHT AND A FOCUS CHANGE Taking a look at the picture I have done so far, I starting realize it wasn’t checking with the theme I was trying to propose: it supposed to be something drifting to darkness and uncanniness, as the idea of “bloody war” is, and the current portrait I had in my hands wasn’t, unfortunately, transmitting that. The solution I saw for this was to change the source of lighting, putting a shadow on the eagle’s and woman’s right side and, to complete the mood, a red eye and some veins in her face besides a sword being held by her hand.

At this step, elements like feathers and hair were being more and more defined so I decided it was time to start working the other parts as well: Accessories, Clothing and Environment (ACE). Think about – and paint – these three words is one of my greatest difficulties. Isn’t rare to find myself spending more time than I have to decide what style and design should I opt for. Therefore, in my case, some references – found through Google – are very important and necessary to do it the rightist way I can: I had to try making the elements work with themselves so, once again, I doodled here and there but, this turn, I also attempted to do clear and precise strokes to help me with the offing renderization, saving some minutes in this process.

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

by Karin Y. Schmitt, Brazil CGArena

Making of Grenat

At the same time, the hangover areas in the picture – hands, eagle, feathers and hair – were approaching to final steps, with only few outstanding things to finish, like smoothing and application of additional details.

MOVING TO THE END After being happy with the ACE concepts, it was time to clean their messy strokes and orientate the picture to a closely finalized aspect. To start doing this, I used a hard round edge brush all the time to paint and finalize the jewels, taking care about the gemstone’s shine and color; the same brush also painted the entire clothing, the sword and the couch, but it was basically used only to define their shapes and volumes in a right way, giving me an almost completely done – although untextured – elements.

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Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

by Karin Y. Schmitt, Brazil CGArena

Making of Grenat TEXTURES, FINAL DETAILS AND BACKGROUND A) The first brush I created to do couch’s, jacket’s and background’s adornments. It’s made of various slim and thick lines, which form, in the end, the entire adornments’ design.

The brush itself is much bigger, but here’s a part of it.

I applied the brush directly on the jacket, making some colors’ variances between red and pale orange. As for the couch and the background, I painted the texture in an another layer, picking the Vivid Light mode and setting its opacity to about 50-60%; that gave, in the end, a shiny look to the brush.

B) The second one was made to do boots texture and its format takes after a honeycomb shape. In fact, I used references from snakes’ sloughs to create it: The application of this brush was easier than the first: in a separated Normal layer, I painted all over the boots’ shape, taking care about the lighted and shading parts and doing some hues variations.

C) As for the third and last custom brush, it was created to do the blood on her hand and leg. The shape of this brush is the simplest of the tree and, in the end; I just had to apply it in the red color: SOME RESULTS

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Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

by Karin Y. Schmitt, Brazil CGArena

Making of Grenat After the use of textures and custom brushes, the image is basically finished but, to increment some last things and consider it truly and completely done, I also decided to do few colors’ changes, erase some little parts and give a smooth look to the piece with an air brush. As is something I did in the very end and only to give a final workmanship, this was a quick step, which took me not more than 20-30 minutes.

And it’s finished! As yet, I consider this the most labored work I’ve done. The attention to colors and application of different brushes and textures were something I’ve never tried to take seriously before, so I spent more time than I expected in this picture but, at the same time, I also learned a lot!

In the end, I really hope you enjoyed this making and it was useful to you in some way. :) If you have some question, please feel free to send me an e-mail! Thank you very much for reading ! :D

www.cgarena.com

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About the Artist - My name is Karin Y. Schmitt and I live in Brazil, in a city near to São Paulo, called Guarulhos – same place I was born. I’ve been interested in drawing since my childhood but, in spite of it, I always wanted to do Medicine when I grew up. Then, few years ago, I discovered digital painting – firstly in Photoshop – and it changed, totally, my perception and opinion of what should I really do. Today I want to be an illustrator, and I always try to grow up in the area doing works and paying attention to the critiques I receive.

Website: www.karin.br.ms Portfolio: niraky.deviantart.com Email: karinyschmitt@gmail.com

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

Tutorial

by Eoin Cannon, Australia CGArena Software:

3ds Max, ZBrush Making of Cohen the Barbarian

3D

INTRODUCTION Hi, my name is Eoin Cannon, I’m from Australia and this is a brief overview of how I created my image “Cohen the Barbarian” using 3ds Max, ZBrush, Photoshop and Fusion. My motivation for the piece was just to get some practice modeling and to have some fun in the process by recreating a character from Terry Practhett’s Discworld novel series. My goal is, one day do a 3D modeling professionally so I was also trying to achieve something at least a bit technically challenging and visually pleasing for my portfolio. My inspiration for the look and pose was taken totally from Paul Kidby’s magnificent illustrations in the Discworld novella “The Last Hero” by Terry Practhett. I’ve skimmed over a few parts in the process, particularly texturing, because I didn’t really do much out of the ordinary and didn’t do it particularly well in this case.

MODELING I approached the modeling in a few ways. For the anatomy I started with a basemesh from Max and sculpted in ZBrush, then created displacement maps. For some costume elements I sculpted the basic shape in ZBrush and then retopologised in Max and discarded the sculpt. For a few hard surface objects I modeled completely in Max. To model Cohen’s body I started with a human base mesh that I had created for another character. It doesn’t matter too much that the body type is completely different; it’s easy to change everything in ZBrush.

After moving everything around and trying to get a more stylised look I have this. It will be refined as I sculpt at higher levels but the proportions are more like what I’m looking for.

Using the transpose tools in ZBrush, it is easy to bend a model into the pose you are looking for. I’ve started to try and make Cohen look older and saggier, but also wiry and tough. The pose is pretty much taken straight from Paul Kidby’s illustration. It will be tweaked as the costume is added.

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

by Eoin Cannon, Australia CGArena

Making of Cohen the Barbarian After getting the pose fairly close to what I am looking, I exported the base level of the model from ZBrush as an .obj and did my UVW mapping in Max. I used standard techniques for this, cylinder mapping and then tweaking for the most part. Some use of pelt mapping. I actually created three copies of the model, each with different mapping, one for the head, legs and torso.

I exported the meshes to ZBrush and by deleting the parts that weren’t mapped I ended up with three separate meshes of the head, torso and legs.

Having separate meshes enabled me to subdivide each one quite a lot without running out of memory. I then sculpted more of the fine detail one each piece, keeping in mind which parts would be covered with costume.

For modeling some of the soft costume elements I started with a simple mesh in Max, a box or a plane or something, then exported to ZBrush and subdivided and sculpted to get the basic shape right. I exported back to Max and then used the graphite modelling tools available in Max 2010 to retopologise the mesh with a proper edge flow. The main method I used was to create a single poly and use the extend tool to trace around the contours of the sculpt. To create straps, I traced strips of polys, added a shell modifier and then added supporting edges in an edit poly modifier to ensure proper smoothing. www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

by Eoin Cannon, Australia CGArena

Making of Cohen the Barbarian

The sword was completely modeled in Max www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

by Eoin Cannon, Australia CGArena

Making of Cohen the Barbarian This is a ZBrush screengrab of the final pose with the costume elements in their blockout stage before being retopologised. The beard was sculpted just to get an idea of what shape would work with the rest of the model. The intention was to create it using hair in Max. TEXTURING I won’t go into the texturing too much, as there is a lot of information online covering the use of the FastSSS material for mental ray. This project was my first try at using it for a whole character and I haven’t really got the hang of it yet. I used a lot of photographic reference taken from www.3d.sk and used ZBrush’s projection master to help with projecting the photographs. The costume elements are pretty much all mental ray a&d materials with the usual diffuse, bump and spec maps. Much of the costume was covered in hair so I didn’t go into much detail with the textures. I exported displacement maps from ZBrush and used them to displace the body elements; looking back I didn’t actually set this up properly so the result is not perfect.

LIGHTING My idea for lighting the character was to use the qualities of the mrSkyPortal lights for mental ray. They give soft shadows and a good falloff of light and I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn how to use them properly.

I also used some spotlights linked to specific objects like the sword and the eyes and face to highlight those areas a bit more. I didn’t use any GI or final gather as I wanted to control the light a bit more with fill and bounce lights to create a dramatic lighting effect. I used a lot of rim lighting just because I liked the theatrical effect that it gave. www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

by Eoin Cannon, Australia CGArena

Making of Cohen the Barbarian

HAIR Hair and fur was a big part of this character primarily because of his long beard and the fact that some of his clothes are made of animal furs. This part of the process took a lot of time, experimentation and it has to be said, frustration. I used the hair & fur modifier that comes with Max, with the hair rendering set to mrPrim for rendering in Mental Ray. The basic idea for how I approached the hair came from Master Zap’s excellent mental ray blog, in which he discusses the use of the fast rasterizer setting and lights with mental ray shadow maps with transparent shadows. This method can render hair relatively quickly and well although it has some drawbacks.

I made copies of all the geometry that I wanted to grow hair from, then deleted faces and used density maps to control the hair growth. Much of the hair I was able to control using the styling tools as it was fairly short, some splines were used in areas where I needed a specific shape. I ran into a problem on the beard where there seemed to be a limit on the amount of segments a hair could have so I couldn’t have long unbroken beard hairs that were also frizzy. I had to create a tapered tail-like geometry coming out of his chin and comb the hair along it. The result is obviously not perfect.

MrSkyPortal lights cannot use mental ray shadow maps with transparent shadows so I had to use spotlights www.cgarena.com

Page 33

Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2010

by Eoin Cannon, Australia CGArena

Making of Cohen the Barbarian to light the hair and line them up with my existing lights. I had all the hair objects on a separate layer with the model geometry matting them out and the idea was to comp them over the the bald model in Fusion. I ran into another problem in the fact that the mental ray matte/shadow material seems to crash Max when using the fast rasterizer option. I had to get around this by rendering a layer with all the geometry as a solid black colour and all the hair with a self illuminated white a&d shader to create an alpha pass for the hair. Here are the final passes I used for compositing; the base render, ambient occlusion, hair and hair alpha.

COMPOSITING I composited all the passes in Eyeon Fusion. I didn’t do anything complicated, just really merging one pass over another and replacing the hair pass alpha with the one I rendered out using a channel boolean. I colour corrected each pass to get the lighting looking how I wanted. The background was made using noise and gradients and there was a bit of glow added to the image. The final image was cropped and a gradient was used to make a slight vignette effect. Thanks for reading this overview. If you have any questions feel free to email me.

Web: www.eoinjcannon.com Blog: eoincannon.blogspot.com Email: eoincannon@gmail.com www.cgarena.com

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Everything starts with a dream!

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Five professional animator teams will be taking part in the first ADA Championship!

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Interesting models or sketches of the characters invented by you!

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Become rich with ADA! Become famous with ADA! Animation Dance Association Team www.adasport.com

Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec- Jan 2010

by Fabio Bautista, Colombia CGArena Software:

Making of Red Hulk

ZBrush

3D

Since childhood, I’ve been a big fan of the comic books and have always tried to include some of this style in my work. I recently had the opportunity to participate in the Comicon Challenge 2009. The challenge consisted of creating a representation of one favorite action character of comic books, no matter if it was hero, heroine or villain. As this is a competition specifically related to character creation for games, had some restrictions like not being able to use more than 10k triangles in the final model and to create 2048x2048 texture maps.

IDEA One of the comic book and movie characters and that I have consistently followed is the Incredible Hulk. I always wanted to make one that looks as real as the movies, but comic’s likeness. But there are so many versions created by different artists and an equal number of representations in 3D, I thought about doing an unusual one.

Thus was the idea of making Red Hulk, a character not well known in movies or games, but even so in comic books? This character is an evil version of Hulk, created by Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuiness (one of my favorite comic artists) and according to them, he is more aggressive and intelligent, besides having all the abilities of Hulk. The main difference with the original Hulk is that it does not become stronger with anger, but rather radiates increasing levels of gamma radiation. In some editions also called Rulk to distinguish him from the original Hulk character, but personally I prefer the original name.

Keeping all this in mind, I began searching and collecting images that I could use as a reference for creating my own version of this strong character.

HIGH-POLY MODELING The first thing I do with this kind of characters for games, is to create a high-poly model, which later on I can use to transfer all the geometry detail to the texture maps.

Starting from a box and by using the polygon editing tools, I began creating a base mesh in Max and exported it to an .obj file. Once inside ZBrush, I imported this basic form and began to move vertices with the Move brush, looking for a more defined shape.

When I am satisfied with the overall proportions, I retopologized it, always trying to keep a balanced number of quad polygons in the entire www.cgarena.com

Page 37

Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec- Jan 2010

by Fabio Bautista, Colombia CGArena

Making of Red Hulk model’s surface. From this model I created other parts such as the pants and hair, making a selection by using the <CTRL> key and drawing a mask selection with the Standard brush. Once I made the selection (shaded in the model) I used the Extract function to create the new object, which is added automatically to the SubTools panel.

When I had all the elements organized, I started working on the overall anatomy. First I enabled the symmetry button in X axis, began to move vertices and looking for a good balance in the proportions. Then I added a new subdivision level to the model and began to shape muscles by using the Standard brush. To achieve a better definition, I again subdivided the mesh and kept using the Standard brush in conjunction with the alpha 39 to accentuate the separations.

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Page 38

Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec- Jan 2010

by Fabio Bautista, Colombia CGArena

Making of Red Hulk Once the overall anatomy was defined, I started working on each specific body part, starting with the head. From the beginning I was looking for an extreme anger expression and to get this I had to work hard on his face. By using brushes as Standard and Inflate, I started to give volume to the eyebrows area, eyelids and cheeks and by using the Slash1 brush I added and defined the expression lines of the forehead, nose and mouth contour. To define the lips I used the Pinch brush.

To sculpt the hair, I added 3 subdivision levels and used the SnakeHook brush to pull softly the vertices from the surface. Then a further subdivision was necessary to define the hair style. With the pants I made a similar process, first I used the Move brush to give shape to the rips, then added a new subdivision and used again the SnakeHook brush to pull the mesh and finally added some folds making use of the Standard brush with the alpha 39.

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Page 39

Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec- Jan 2010

by Fabio Bautista, Colombia CGArena

Making of Red Hulk There is still to work on final details of the body, I subdivided once again and made use of the LazyMouse mode to create veins, arteries and to define more the anatomy. Finalizing this session, I added some details such as blemishes and wrinkles on the skin, by using different alphas, some of these custom alphas.

To create the pedestal, which was a section of damaged road, I used a similar procedure, I began creating a basic form in Max, then exported it to ZBrush to sculpt and add final details through alphas.

LOW POLY MODELING AND NORMAL MAPPING After, it was the turn of the low poly model. First, I placed the high poly model and went down to a medium subdivision level trying to keep the overall detail.

Then it was exported to an .obj file to open it in Max and once there overlapped it to the initial base model. From this model I made a mesh with a new topology by using Polyboost and Max’s polygon editing tools.

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Page 40

Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec- Jan 2010

by Fabio Bautista, Colombia CGArena

Making of Red Hulk Once this model was ready, I started the UV mapping.

Although usually I use the unwrapping tools of Max, especially the pelt tool, I also sometimes use Unfold3D, a quick and effective tool when performing these tasks.

What I did was mark cut lines on key places such as the neck, trunk, back and on the inside of the limbs, trying to make the fewest number of divisions, to keep recognizable these areas when painting and creating the textures.

When I finished this task, the model was exported back to open it in ZBrush and create the normal maps. The importance of these maps is that they transfer all the detail created in the high poly modeling stage to the low poly model, making it appear to have more detail in geometry than it really have. It’s just a visual effect, which is effective from any point of view. This allows adding high detail to low poly models, and that’s the reason for its continuous use in games industry today.

To start, I placed the high poly model without mapping and went down to the first subdivision level. Then I used the ZMapper plugin included with ZBrush. There, I used the Mesh Current Capture function that is under the Projection tab. Normally, this is done in order to capture all the high poly detail information through the polygon normal directions. Then I imported the low poly unwrapped model and turned on the ZMapper again to project the normal map on this mesh. To do this, first I check the Tangent Space map type and used the Create Projected NormalMap function. This procedure was repeated with each one of the model parts to get the final normal map. As you can see this map show all the detail of the high poly model.

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Page 41

Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec- Jan 2010

by Fabio Bautista, Colombia CGArena

Making of Red Hulk With the pedestal I did a similar process, however in this case I used the same model to create the normal map. After creating this normal map, I exported the low resolution mesh again in Max and then it was divided into pieces by using the ProCutter tool included in the Max2009. This tool helps us to create several sections of an object from cutting lines by drawing Splines over the model. Finally, I moved the pieces and added the tubes I created in a previous process.

Next, I went back to ZBrush and started to work on the pose of the model. I used the useful Transpose tool which allows us to move, rotate and scale parts of the model only by making a selection through masks. Although there is a more advanced technique to create

skeletons and rigs using ZSpheres, this is a quick way to try different positions and in this case was appropriate to pose the Red Hulk model.

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Page 42

Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec- Jan 2010

by Fabio Bautista, Colombia CGArena

Making of Red Hulk TEXTURING The texturing process was straightforward, I just opened the model in Max and assigned a Multi/SubObject material . Then I assigned colors according to each part to differentiate them on the map. Next, I used the Render To Texture feature to create the base diffuse map.

The map generated was opened in Photoshop to paint the details and to mix with other textures. Initially, I opened the normal map and modified the levels, curves and saturation and then it was blended in Soft Light mode.

Taking a copy of this map and then tweaking it again, helped me to apply details, highlights and shadows to the texture, then I touched up by using the Photoshop paint tools.

I added more detail to the map making use of some brushes and mixing it with some other textures. I also worked with a color palette with similar tones to the initial colors to create a uniform graduation, especially for the skin tones.

To complete this process, I added some details of stains and imperfections on the skin and finished working with the AO (Ambient Occlusion) map. To get this map, I went to Max and used the Render to Texture dialog again, but this time I used the high-poly model for the projection. Finally it was applied as a layer in Photoshop in Multiply mode.

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Page 43

Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec- Jan 2010

by Fabio Bautista, Colombia CGArena

Making of Red Hulk REAL TIME RENDERING AND COMPOSITING New toys always make me happy, and one of the things I enjoy a lot about this project was the fact to try something new.

For first time, Toolbag a simple tool that uses the Marmoset game engine and include a real time model viewer. In my professional experience had the opportunity to work with some advanced game engines such as Unreal and Unity, and although these are very powerful tools for game development, are not so intuitive and easy to use. With Toolbag I was able to quickly test different camera angles of the model so that I could decide which was more suited for the final presentation.

I started placing the model on the pedestal in Max and making small adjustments such as the position of the feet and the location of the pieces of the road. Then these were exported to an .obj file so later that it can open in Toolbag.

Once inside of Toolbag I went to the Material Editor and imported the model, then I applied a Phong material and added the textures created in the previous stage. With the shader set up and render options by default, all I did was taking some screen shots.

From there, everything was very easy and quick, I just changed some things like the viewpoint of the model and direction of light and instantly, I got the real time render. That was how I could get the final images after adding some post effects and adjustments included in the application.

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Page 44

Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec- Jan 2010

by Fabio Bautista, Colombia CGArena

Making of Red Hulk The final post work was done with Photoshop. In this image I wanted to capture a moment of the rage of Red Hulk but with the look of comic books. To get this, first I created and touched up a bit the background. Then I placed the rendered image on top and tweaked a bit levels, saturation and color balance. At the end, I added some shadows and glowing effects.

Well, this was whole process I done to meet the challenge to create the Red Hulk. This involved approximately 70 hours of hard work, which eventually were well rewarded with the great reception it got. Thanks and I hope you have enjoyed this making of.

Blog: maxterwip.blogspot.com Email: fabiobautista@hotmail.com

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Page 45

Issue 6 Dec- Jan 2010

Tutorial

by Nagy Gergo, Hungary CGArena Software:

Making of in the Blue Foil

Photoshop

2D

This is my latest work. Its original resolution is 5906 x 4134 px / 70 x 100cm 150 dpi, and it was made using Wacom and Photoshop CS4.

I had several reference photos to the subject. At first I wanted a portrait but the photos had a very composed and direct effect. In the end, I chose this composition because it is spontaneous and life-like.

Here you can find a few details of the photo:

First I draw the silhouettes of the main subjects - the relevant lines that help a lot in case of a high-resolution photo.

After this I painted the main patches of the picture using only base colours on layers, separate from the back-

ground.

It is important using a 100% opacity hard rounded brush so that the colours underneath do not show through. By this time I had roughly set the composition. After having the main shapes, I perfected the silhouettes. www.cgarena.com

Page 47

Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec- Jan 2010

by Nagy Gergo, Hungary CGArena

Making of in the Blue Foil My general technique that I use for the most part of the picture: In most cases I paint the tones and colours that indicate the lights and shades right on the layers that include principal colours.

At first, only roughly then I refine it more and more. I find it important in my style that no touch of brush can be seen, for this I use a smudge tool. Then as it starts to reach the final state, I work using brushes with lower and lower opacity. This way I do not develop the picture simultaneously although it is not practical but I am just impatient. :)

Another important method that I use is the masking.

I try to work with a small number of layers to avoid having a big chaos among them. The disadvantage of this is that there are several subjects on one layer.

Masking helps a lot in painting the details. I used this method for example when painting the hands and the stripes of the T-shirt. It also helps a lot in creating backlights.

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Page 48

Tutorial

Issue 6 Dec- Jan 2010

by Nagy Gergo, Hungary CGArena

Making of in the Blue Foil First I painted the T-shirt without stripes, and then came the stripes, the mask and finally the lights and the shades on the stripes. First I painted the T-shirt without stripes, and then came the stripes, the mask and finally the lights and the shades on the stripes.

After finishing the main subjects, I concentrated on the background and the components that improve the composition. At this point it becomes important that the figures are on a layer separate from the background.

The final phase is the contrast and the correction of colours. I darkened the colours, sharpened the contrast and added some more red to it. Here I used adjustment layer – over the layers. I hope that I managed to give you some useful pieces of advice from my making. Don’t hesitate to email me your suggestions and queries.

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Page 49

Web: ng.cgsociety.org/gallery Email: ampex2@gmail.com

Mohammad Safioddine, Lebanon msfd110@hotmail.com 3ds Max, ZBrush

Alejandro Albarracin, Colombia laas3d@gmail.com 3ds Max, Mental Ray

Antonio Peres Vieira Filho, Brazil juniorperes2004@ig.com.br 3ds Max, ZBrush, Photoshop

Alexander Neskoromyuk, Ukraine a.neskoromyuk@gmail.com 3ds Max, Maya, Photoshop, Vray

Pascal Raimbault, New Zealand raimbaultpa@gmail.com Maya, Bodypaint, ZBrush, Mudbox

Iker Cortázar, Spain iker.cortazar@gmail.com Maya, Mental Ray, Mudbox, Photoshop

Teh Gene Erh, Malaysia geneerh@yahoo.com Maya, ZBrush

Nikita Veprikov, Ukraine wdboar@rambler.ru 3ds Max, ZBrush

David Vercher, Spain info@davidvercher.es Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop

Vladimir, Ukraine kodg.pvv@mail.ru Rhino, Photoshop

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