Maya Inspire

Interview

2008-05-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

website :

bluefley.deviantart.com

3DTotal: Could you tell us something about your background and, how you became involved in digital painting?
Marc: First of all, I’m happy you have shown interest in my work! I’m currently working at a video game studio called Artificial Mind & Movement here in Montreal, Canada. I think my love for drawing started as soon as I was able to hold a pencil or anything I could draw with! I used to do really silly comics with my brother. We had two characters, Nic and Pic, and we made up crazy adventures together. I think the first time I tried digital painting was, when I tried colouring a drawing for one of my ex-girlfriends about 3 years ago, using my ball mouse. No need to say it was horrible, but I liked it a lot and ended up colouring all of my old drawings that way afterwards. Later I got into 3D animation classes, where I studied Maya for 2 years before I got hired. Practice and hard work got me to where I am now.

3DTotal: I take it from your answer that you also have an interest in 3D is this restricted purely to animation or are you keen on modelling and texturing too?
Marc: I find it very exciting indeed, to be able to take my characters and bring them alive in three

dimensions. Our teachers goal was not only to teach us 3D animation, but everything we have to know to be able to create a short film at the end of the program. So we learn texturing, modelling, rigging, rendering, particles and everything else. I would say my favourite part was the modelling since it’s the closest to drawing and it’s also the part I’m best at. Currently, at work, along with illustration and concept art, I also do modeling and texturing of my concepts. I find it to be a huge privilege as I'm the only one in the team doing as many different tasks in the production pipeline.

3DTotal: What would you say are the subjects that you enjoy painting the most?
Marc: Well let’s see, if one was too look at my gallery, he’d probably have to guess I like to draw pretty girls, since they are the subjects of most of my work so far. But it's not exactly what I like to draw the most. I find drawing girls to be quite hard, so I do it as much as I can to improve! What I’ve come to like painting the most, are environments. I have a huge respect for environment artists because I think it’s one of the hardest things to paint. You know, when you can pull off and create an interesting atmosphere, these are most impressive images.

3DTotal: Who or what would you describe as being the main influences upon your work ?
Marc: Honestly, I look up to a lot of CG artists, but I think the ones who influenced me the most, were guys like Dodowa (Kim Young Sang), Kim Hyung tae, Steven Stahlberg, Bengal, Craig Mullins, Ed Lee and Feng Zhu, just to name a few. I learned a lot from their art. On the other hand, the inspiration for my pieces comes from everything around me, I can walk down the street and see something interesting, like a weird looking man or an unusual object and from things like this, I can start and create a few ideas in my mind. I’ll get back home and start working on something I’ve seen that had inspired me, add a few sci-fi devices and a new image is born! I’m a sci-fi freak and find everything related to robots, space ships and futuristic cities very inspiring.

3DTotal: Sci-Fi seems to be a hugely popular subject amongst many great artists. Why do you think
this is and what is it that interests you particularly?
Marc: I think what makes it popular is the fact it doesn’t exist, that it’s all fictional. Pretty much like fantasy, every time we create a Sci-fi scene it lets us express all the creativity we can have, since there’s no restrictions whatsoever. When I have an idea for a piece, I like it to be able to create every aspect of it from scratch, from the building’s shape, to the crazy devices my characters can have. I also like to have a lot of contrasts in my images and combining hi-tech armour with pretty girls is one of many examples I enjoy working on

3DTotal: Could you talk a bit about your favourite pieces and why you prefer them to your other work?
Marc: Well I like all of my pieces; they’re my little babies, but indeed there are a few I cherish more.
Pieces like “Impossible Love “ on which I've been working for a long time or newer pieces like ”The Great Arch" or my new spirits series for example. Actually, I will tend to say I always prefer my latest piece,
since I look back at most of the old ones and think it's crap. What will really make me fall in love with a piece of mine is when I can acheive a very high level of details, that most people won't ever notice. I don’t know why, but I find it exciting to be the only one aware of these details; how weird is that?

3DTotal: Paintings such as “Impossible LOV3” seem to suggest a hidden narrative. Is this something you consider, when creating images?
Marc: Oh yes! Paintings that let you wonder about the story behind them, have always been more attractive in my opinion. I always try to imagine a small scenario before starting most of my pictures as it gives them flavour, more depth. It’s also a lot more interesting working on something you get attached to, so characters with a psychological background are always a load of fun to draw.

3DTotal: Do you have any ambitions to follow a specific career path or just to simply wait and see what unfolds?
Marc: I do have a very specific career path I’m following. Unlike most people I talk to, I know exactly where I want to be in a few years from now. I know it’s not exactly the best idea to set myself a very specific path, I might be disappointed - who knows what will happen in the future, but for now, it’s my motivation to move forward with what I do. Basically, I would like to spend a few more years working on both 3D and concept art in video games studios, as an art director eventually, then start my own studio concentrating on both concept art and 3D video game cinematic or the likes. Eventually becoming something as prestigious as Blur studios would be my dream!

3DTotal: Why computer games specifically?
Marc: Working on video games makes you learns the best way to get the most out of everything, since you're always so restrained by performance issues. That serves as the best base in my opinion for any kind of project related to 3D. So when I move on to prerendered cinematics, I'll have the best workflow possible. It's also an industry that moves a lot faster than the movie industry in this matter. I will never
find myself working several years on the same project as long as I work on games. I just enjoy variety
and video games are perfect when it comes to this.

3DTotal: If there are any projects you wish you could have worked on given the chance, what would they have been and why?
Marc: It you have been a dream come true to work on “The Matrix”. I think that movie really helped me figure out that I wanted to do more than 2d for a living. I really saw how far CG had gone and this drove
me to it. If I had to choose which one of the movies of the trilogy I would pick the third one straight away. That scene where the city is attacked by all the robots, and the humans have to defend themselves using giant mechas had me drooling all over the place! I’d be the happiest man in the World if I could someday work on something similar. But I would have it my way and put girls in the cockpit instead!

Texturing The Ship Deck - Image Breakdown

2008-05-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

'3D Studio Max'

'Texturing The Ship Deck - Image Breakdown'
by Richard Tilbury

Web: http://www.richardtilburyart.com

Email: ibex80@hotmail.com

The following example is a scene that has been textured using the Total Textures Colection as a resource.

Images from a cross section of the 16 DVD’s have been used and combined to describe the scene below and utilise colour, bump, specular maps and in some cases, normal maps.

Some general applications of these alongside common texturing techniques are explained visually in a way that aims to provide a concise and straight forward account of how the collection can be applied in a 3d scenario

The Kitchen

2008-05-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

'Project Overview'

'The Kitchen'
by Carlo Maura 'Boda'

Web: www.3dedintorni.com

Idea :

My intention with this image was to create a photorealistic place. The kitchen of this image is a Scavolini Mood kitchen that I found on a catalogue and the challenge was to give to the image an interesting lightning and a photographic shot.

Modeling :

The model is quite simple and created in box modelling. Toaster, tins and mixer are Archmodels objects that I put in the scene to add more particulars.

Materials :

Except the wood of the structure of the kitchen, all the other material are quite simple: metal and glass with variations on the reflection glossiness to differentiate them. Disturbs on the reflections are avoid using very high subdivision glossiness parameter both on metal and glass

Click Image to Enlarge

Lighting :

The lighting is certainly the most complicated part. The scene rendering is done using Vray for Cinema4D and the light sources are: on the left a distant light simulating the sun (reddish and low with long shadows), two area lights and four 70 watt spot-light. The GI setting profile is the Vray Medium quality.

Post-Production :

The post production was very important to increase the visual impact. The colours are very saturated and I added a vignetting to create a dramatic effect.

Finally I mixed different renders with different lightning and I created a new night scene.

Baking GI Shadows into a Single Texture

2008-05-09T00:23:00.000-07:00

'3D Studio MAX'

'Baking GI Shadows into a Single Texture'
by Lune Cheetah

Web: http://www.thekittenfactory.com

Email: lunecheetah@yahoo.com.mx

Hello and welcome to this exercise about how to bake Global Illumination into just one texture. This is used mainly to import models to real-time 3D engines where objects have to be rendered at least 60 times per second.

Shadows in videogame engines are a very expensive process; however, if we bake the Global Illumination of an object in a texture then we can help out the engine and we can show better quality graphics!

I will use a 3 segmented teapot as a model; it’s a low polygon model for videogames, so we'll stick to that rule for this tutorial (Fig.01).

Fig. 01

The way of working the scene first is the same as if we are about to start work on any new scene; I downloaded 2 images from cgtextures.com, which is an excellent site for finding textures. I applied a brick material to the plane and a metal material to the teapot (Fig. 02)

Fig. 02

This part of the tutorial depends on what result you're looking for, because this step is about giving illumination to the model. In my case I used V-Ray, and activated illumination global in the Renderer options, along with the GI environment option (skylight) (Fig.03).

Fig. 03

The next step was to put an Omni light with "Vray shadows", activating the "area Shadow" option.

Before baking the illumination into a texture we must make renders, because the final render appearance will be the same as it will be when baking the textures (Fig.04a – c).

Fig. 04a

Fig. 04b

Fig. 04c

Okay, so I am pleased with the result – now comes the hard part!

Before starting, 3ds Max uses channels at the time to make UV Maps; default textures are always set in Channel 1.

What we need to do now is to join both elements into a single object, without losing their materials. So, right-click on the teapot, Convert and Convert to edit poly (Fig.05).

Fig. 05

Click on Attach and select the plane to join both objects. Select the "Match Material IDs to Material" option and this will make our object have 2 different materials in a single mesh (Fig.06).

Fig. 06

Now, our object is only one, so the next thing to do is to apply a "UVW unwrap" modifier. Let's go to the Channels option and change the values to Channel 2. Then we click on Edit to open up the dialogue, Edit UVWs (Fig.07).

Fig. 07

Inside the UVWs dialogue, we click on the face selection mode to activate the option: "Mapping > Flatten Mapping"

Inside the dialogue we put the following values (it is very important to remember all settings used!) (Fig.08a).

Fig. 08a

We should now have this result (Fig.08b).

Fig. 08b

The next step is to open the Render to Texture window, found in Rendering; in the tab "Mapping Coordinates" we'll change the Object option to Use existing channel, and we'll select Channel 2 to make the texture rendering be distributed in the same way as our map. In Channel 2, where all faces have one part in the texture, we click the Add button and select CompleteMap. Last but not least, we choose the size of our texture, and in this case 512x512 is enough for us (Fig.09a – b).

Fig. 09a

Fig. 09b

This is the final result: remember to save the picture in a known place; the format can be .jpg, .tga or .png, depending on the engine you're using.

The next thing to do is to go back to the UVW unwrap options, change to Channel 1 and apply 'Flatten Mapping' again, with the same settings as for the first time. This way we'll have the same map but now on Channel 1, which is colour (Fig.09c).

Fig. 09c

Next we’ll create a material with a bitmap of the image we've just rendered, in diffuse color with a value of 100 in self illumination. Apply the material to our model and “Presto!” we have a texture with global illumination in it (Fig.10).

Fig. 10

I hope that this tutorial has been useful to you. I’m making a webpage where I will soon upload my best works, so if you liked the tutorial please visit my webpage, too: The Kitten Factory – http://www.thekittenfactory.com

Texturing The Ship Deck

2008-05-09T00:20:00.000-07:00

'3D Studio Max'

'Texturing The Ship Deck'
by Richard Tilbury

Web: http://www.richardtilburyart.com

Email: ibex80@hotmail.com

Adding weathering and grime to a scene:

This scene incorporates some of the geometry I modelled for a nautical theme set on a ship which was designed to be used in a series of lighting tutorials. I used one of the key components in the form of the steps and a simple support column and placed them on an exterior deck with a metal, panelled wall as a backdrop (Fig.01).

Fig. 01

There is a small amount of wear on the panels and the steps but it is quite minimal and the overall scene looks quite clean at the moment.

The areas marked in blue are the key places where dirt would gather and also where water would settle and cause corrosion and rust.

I usually start with the largest area first, in this case the back panels. In Fig.02 you can see the wireframe outline of the geometry and the layer structure so far in the PSD file. I use a base metal texture to represent the painted panels (labelled Paint) and a general rust coloured metal underneath this one (labelled Base Metal). I then apply a mask and by selecting the white areas can erase the paint layer to expose the texture underneath. The red arrow indicates the pattern evident in the mask above.

Fig. 02

Other areas that would be subjected to general wear and tear are highlightd in red in Fig.01. These are parts of the scene that may show worn and peeling paint due to human contact. The steps and handrails for obvious reasons but also the base of the steps and panelling where luggage and idle feet may have had an impact. In Fig.03 you can see two sections of the texture used for the column and steps. The red arrows indicate areas where masks have been used from V5 – Dirt and Graffiti (inset)

Fig. 03

This mask had the black areas deleted and then was set to Overlay with some contrast reduction. The arrows show the various areas that have received similar treatment :

Handrail
Baseplates
Steps
Stairway

When both these textures are applied you can see how now the scene suggests a vessel that has been at sea for some time and exposed to the elements and passengers alike (Fig.04).

Fig. 04

This is what I term as mid range weathering – it neither looks old nor new but rather somewhere in between. You will also notice that I have placed some staining around the baseplates that hold the column and steps in position as well as along the decking where it meets the panels. I am now going to add further wear to the scene and make everything look neglected.

The way to do this is first of all exaggerate what is already there ie. create more areas of worn paint and then add further enhancements which in this case will be grime and corrosion. In Fig.05 you can see that there are three textures on the left which have been used to create the final map. The dirt map has been used to add rust and grime around the base of the column and bolts. The map was inverted (Ctrl+I) and then set to Multiply with the Colour Balance adjusted towards yellow and red.

Fig. 05

The rust at the base of the column has been extracted from the upper most texture (V2 – Aged and Stressed). With some careful blending this was then to Soft Light. The third and final texture (V2) was used on the columns and staircase similarly and with the blue areas selected and deleted it was then applied with a Hard Light blending mode as indicated.

Regarding the panels : they also benefit from some rust in the corners as shown in Fig.06.

Another texture used in a subtle way to enhance the effect can be seen inset with the result to the right. I also added some worn paint along the panel “beams” by using the same process as before (mask set to Overlay with black areas deleted).

Fig. 06

The texture used on the floor also requires some treatment as this would show wear and tear as much as the paintwork. I added some staining along the panel edge using a dirt map but to enhance this I overlayed a texture of old boards with peeling paint to represent the deteriation of the varnish (Fig.07).

Fig. 07

The other key areas that I concentrated on were around the metal floor brackets and the wood directly beneath the bottom step. I modified the dirt map from Fig.02, then made some contrast and colour correction and applied it in a similar manner to create the stains around the fixings.

The last stage is to position a dirt map to suggest the worn varnish below the staircase.In Fig.08 you can see how I have used an edited map to show the effect of human contact. The map had the white areas deleted and then was brightened to a light grey. When set to Overlay it appears as seen on the left.

Fig. 08

One further aspect worth mentioning is the importnace of the specular maps. In Fig.09 you can see two corresponding versions of the maps used on the floor and steps/columns.

The key thing to remember is that where you place dirt and grime, the surface will generally be less reflective so use these layers from your colour maps to darken the same spots on the specular map by reducing their brightness and setting them to Mutiply. An example of this can be seen in the top right image in the form of the water stains.

Fig. 09

In the case of the staircase I have copied the exposed metal layer and lightened this so that it reflects more light than the paintwork (lower right). Note that if the metal were rusty then the exact opposite would apply and the layer would be made darker. I followed the same procedure to show some wear on the column which can be seen in the top of the lower right image.

The last point is that the clean maps show less contrast overall giving the textures a more consistent quality in keeping with a cleaner surface. By increasing this you essentially break up the way light bounces off the material and thus create a more natural appearance of ageing.

The final result can be seen in Fig.10.

Fig. 10

Making Of Environment Concep

2008-05-07T21:33:00.000-07:00

'Project Overview'

'Making Of Environment Concept'
by Adrian Baluta

I like fantasy styles a lot, so I decided to make another fantasy art work using matte painting techniques. Here are the steps of creation of this particular work.

First of all, I built the sky and the clouds…

I then made the environment, rocks, mountains and the valley.

I made the building in the foreground from a cathedral and a church, cutting and combining them to achieve this unique structure. The next step was to make one piece and set up the direction of light.

The next step was building up the flying ships; these were made from real textures which were pieced together to make a nice silhouette.

The main problem was integrating all of the pieces together and setting the atmosphere. To make a big difference between the light and the shadows, I firstly used the Color Balance option to get the basic tones of light and shade.

To exaggerate the contrast, I use the Dodge and Burn tools.

For the atmosphere, I created a 2d fog on a painted layer, sent to the Soft Light blending option.

Here are the images which show the difference between the scene with and without fog.

And the Final image can be seen here:

The Steam Master

2008-05-07T21:25:00.000-07:00

'Project Overview'

'The Steam Master'
by Sorin Lupu

Web: http://www.amc.ro/shares

This tutorial is intended for people with a prior understanding of the basic tools used for modelling and texturing. This is not a step-by-step walkthrough, but more of a project overview.

This tutorial will present the workflow used by character artists working at AMC Studio when creating a Next Gen character. There are alternatives to this, but prior production experience has led me to believe that this method gives the most satisfactory results.

The inspiration for the character comes from Asimov’s sci-fi novels, with a bit of Steam Punk, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's dystopian novel, etc.

Basically, there are 5 phases to be followed:

1. Concept
2. Prehigh modelling
3. High-res modelling and face textures
4. Low-res in-game mesh and UVs
5. Texturing

1. Concept:

Here’s a quick sketch I did. It doesn’t contain too much detail in it as I’ll probably change a couple of details during this tutorial. Working with technical restrictions usually causes this (Fig.01).

Fig.01 concept sketch

2. Prehigh Modeling:

You can use any 3d modelling package for this stage. I used Maya, but that shouldn’t be a problem for people using other programs as the descriptions are pretty general and can be easily applied to other 3d packages. This phase is very important as it defines the proportions of the characters, its silhouette and functionality.

Now is the time to decide which parts can be modelled separately. Most of the time, the accessories should be separate geometry which can be modelled fully in Maya. It’s also very important to keep the entire mesh built out of quads so that the work we’ll be doing later in ZBrush will be easier.

Here’s a breakdown of this model (Fig.02):

Fig.02

Each part has a different material to it (Fig.03):

1. Skin Face
2. Hood
3. Goggles
4. Glass

Fig.03
Tip: Having some generic meshes to start from helps a lot when doing characters!

I usually use a generic head made earlier. For now, I’m not interested in details and anatomical features; I’m more concerned about the general proportions of the head.

I won’t go too much into detail here, unfortunately, as it takes a lot of time to go through this stage step-by-step. I’ll therefore concentrate on the general aspects of getting the natural proportions of the head right. I use lots of anatomical references and photographs when working and so should you! Even if you have your own concept for a particular character, the subtle details require photographic reference.

On this particular model the ears are not visible so I won’t pay too much attention to them. The same goes for the neck area. This is good, because I can concentrate on the face and the shape of the head (Fig.04 and Fig.05).

Fig.04

Fig.05

I use a flat black shader (Surface Shader in Maya) to check the silhouette. After I’m happy with it, I move on to modelling the hood. As the hood is shaped by the head, I start the hood’s geometry by extracting a part of the head I modelled earlier. One very important thing is that the hood should retain the initial head’s topology so there won’t be any problems at the seams, especially since the part of the head that’s not visible will be deleted (Fig.06).

Fig.06

I’ll give the head a basic cylindrical UV and then use the Unfold command to improve it. Later I’ll texture it in ZBrush using the Image Plane and Projection Master (Fig.07).

Fig. 07

Tip: when doing UVs for ZBrush, leave some extra pixels on the sides towards the origin of the UV space or else you won’t be able to use Projection Master!

Next up are the glasses. I want them to look retro, so I’ll make them from simple materials like bronze and leather. I use a torus as the basic shape and continue from there, extruding my way to the final desired shape (Fig.08 and Fig.09).

Fig. 08

Fig. 09

I then add divisions where I want sharp edges, especially on the metal parts (Fig.10).

Fig. 10

To make ZBrush work easier, I’ll split the glasses based on materials: bronze, leather and rubber (Fig.11).

Fig. 11

3. High-res Modelling and Face Texture:

Before I export all the parts into ZBrush, I double check for polygons with more than 4 sides. These can cause nasty problems when sculpting so avoid them at any cost!

I import each mesh in ZBrush 3.1 as a subtool. I use this feature as it allows me to import a lot of geometry into the scene. It’s a lot easier to split a very high-polygon model into lower resolution parts and work on each of them individually, which means better performance in ZBrush (Fig.12).

Fig. 12

This is how the imported objects look in ZBrush. I import them one by one as subtool, starting with the head.

So, the head is first! I gathered a pretty large collection of pictures of old people, wrinkles and other details. Google is my best friend!

I won’t go straight into details yet; I’ll take the natural approach of doing the big shapes first. It’s very important to be aware of the skeleton and muscles that give the face its form. As the character is meant to be an in-game model, I’ll have to amplify some of the shapes.

Level 02 ZBrush (Fig.13):

Fig.13

Level 04 ZBrush (Fig.14):

Fig.14

Starting from the level 4 subdivision, I start adding the details. I’ll try to add some asymmetry to the face to give it a natural, realistic look. I’ll use this level to start texturing. The most important plugins here are Image Plane and Texture Library. Most of you are probably familiar with those so I won’t go into more detail here. You can use ZBrush’s website for more details on these plugins: http://www.zbrushcentral.com.

Level 05 Zbrush (Fig.15):

Fig.15

I won’t add further detail to the geometry until I’m satisfied with the texture. One big advantage to working both geometry and texture in ZBrush is that you can have the same level of details on both. Also, you’ll know when to stop adding details into the hi-res mesh!

For this head, I used a lot of alpha brushes to add different surface details. I used skin textures to create them. The target for the ZBrush generated textures is 2048x2048, but the final texture to be used in-game is 1024x1024. I won’t add any more details so I won’t have details that are finer than one pixel.

Level 06 Zbrush (Fig.16):

Fig.16

Next step is the hood. I’ll use the same workflow I used for the head. The neck area is a particularly hard area, as references are hard to find for this type of hood. This is where improvisation comes into play! Just remember to keep everything looking as realistic as possible.

Hood Level 2 (Fig.17a, Fig.17b and Fig.19):

Fig. 17a

Fig.17b

Fig.19
I won’t add the weave texture in ZBrush as it will probably be lost when I resize the textures from 2048 to 1024.

Last but not least are the goggles. The metal parts were pretty much done when I exported them from Maya, so I’ll concentrate on the leather. One important thing to remember is that the leather strap is tightly strapped to the head, so it should look accordingly (Fig.20 and Fig.21).

Fig. 20

Fig.21

4. Low-res Mesh and UV Layout:

This phase can be done in almost all of the well-known 3d packages. You can use ZBrush Topology or Maya Live to do it. I’ll use Topogun, a tool developed by Cristi Prefac, one of my colleagues. Topogun will allow me to redo the entire topology for the low-poly model and then bake the normal map, ambient occlusion and colour map from the high-res model to this low-res one. I decided to keep the polygon budget around 4500 triangles, so I’ll have plenty of geometry for the character’s facial features!

I’ll import the last level from ZBrush as reference into Topogun and use the second level as a starting point for my in-game mesh (Fig.22 and Fig.23).

Fig. 22

Fig. 23

After I redo the topology for all the parts, I go back to Maya to build the final in-game mesh. I take this chance to optimize what I can by reducing the poly-count and tweaking the UVs.

I do this by either using Maya’s Unfold command or Road Kill UV, a cool free UV tool.

Here you can see the way I’ve split the UVs into different layouts. Each will have its own texture (Fig.24).

Fig.24

5. Textures:

After making sure that the UVs are properly layered, I go back to Topogun to bake the normal map and ambient occlusion map. In the next image you can see the settings I used when doing this (Fig.25).

Fig. 25
The generated textures will be combined in Photoshop. I usually work directly on the normal and ambient maps in Photoshop to correct the errors produced by the baking. You could try re-baking the textures until you achieve a satisfactory result, but usually it’s faster and easier to just paint, clone stamp or smudge the errors (Fig.26).

Fig. 26

Tip: You can add details from the diffuse textures by transforming it into a normal map using Crazy Bump or NVIDIA’s NormalMapFilter. This resulted normal map can be overlaid on the baked one to achieve the surface detail needed (Fig.27).

Fig.27

Here’s a quick view of the character with normal maps applied.

The diffuse texture is baked in Topogun from the ZBrush high-res model created earlier (Fig.28).

Fig. 28

For the hood and glasses, I create the textures in Photoshop by using the normal map and ambient occlusion as a starting point. The surface detail was created using a weave pattern and a crumpled paper texture to give it that old, used look.

The glasses use different patterns to define the bronze, leather and broken glass. I also added some dirt textures to enhance their look.

Diffuse Maps (Fig.29):

Fig. 29

Flat shaded (diffuse only) model (Fig.30):

Fig. 30
The specular maps are built using the colour maps as base. I start by de-saturating the image to get a better view of the grey shades. For the shiny areas, I enhance the lightness, sometimes to near white. For some materials (metals for example) the specular looks best if its colour is complementary to that of the colour map. I know that having too much contrast on the specular map can make the character look unrealistic from up-close, but actually this effect is preferred because it enhances the look of the character when viewed from a medium distance as most game characters are meant to be viewed. To give the specular map variation I used “dirt” maps that, unlike the dirt maps used in the colour texture to add small details, add variation on a larger scale. Also, I try to vary the specular as often as possible; for example I defined the hood as being made from two different materials by giving it two distinct areas with different specular colour.

Here’s the final Maya scene viewed in High Quality Mode. Final poly-count: 4400 polygons (Fig.31a Fig.31b and Fig.31c).

Fig.31a

Tip: To achieve a realistic skin look, use the Noise filter from Photoshop on the specular map. You can also add specular noise to other surfaces like metal.

Fig. 31b

Fig. 31c

Making a realistic head requires a lot of anatomically-correct references. The best ones are pictures of normal, everyday people. The character’s expression has to be natural so a lot of attention has to go into detailing the face. As I mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial, a strong silhouette will also add to the quality of the final result.

As this head is intended for use in a game, the edge loops are very important, as correct and natural-looking deformations will give the animation a more natural, believable look.

At first the entire process might seem long and complicated, but by splitting the work into different phases everything is going to be much easier to follow. The last couple of years have brought a tremendous leap in what can be done with in-game characters by allowing the artist to use more polygons and textures to accomplish his work. This means we can do we could only dream of before Next Gen games.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this tutorial.

Thank you!

About the Author:

Sorin Lupu is Lead Character Artist at AMC Studio since 2001. He has a degree inPainting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, a part of the National University of Arts in Bucharest, Romania.

He and his team have done character work for such games as Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, Mercenaries 2, Saboteur and a couple of other yet-to-be-announced titles.

Link: http://www.amc.ro/shares

Total Texture Image Breakdown

2008-05-02T03:24:00.000-07:00

'3D Studio Max'

'Total Texture Image Breakdown'
by Richard Tilbury

Web: http://www.richardtilburyart.com

Email: ibex80@hotmail.com

Making of a Ford Mustang

2008-05-01T03:33:00.000-07:00

Making of a Ford Mustang

'Project Overview'

'Making of a Ford Mustang'
by Zdenek Urbánek

Email: URBIS.URBIS@seznam.cz

Introduction:

I’m Zdenek Urbánek, I was born in 1987 in the Czech Republic where I live and study. In this Making Of, I will show you something of the process I used to create this scene. For this scene I used 3DS Max 7, and Adobe Photoshop for creating the textures. Firstly, I found many reference images and blue-prints of the Mustang 1965, and used a few elements from other models as reference material. For the blue-prints I made 4 planes for 4 views, and I right-set it with the aid of a box.

Modelling:

I started by creating the wheel. On the tyre, I have done one part which I attach for the right duration.

For the wheel rim, I did this in the same way (Box Modelling). I then made the wheel brace and the Mustang logo which is in the middle wheel. Behind the wheel, I created a simple brake. I made a narrow cylinder in the correct proportion, and to the cylinder I added a lot of holes. This rim, for example, isn’t typical of a Ford Mustang, but I wanted it.

The image below is the show render wheel only. This image was done in a Final Render System, but the settings for V-ray were very similar. Regarding the material, I will talk about this later.

The image below is the final car model in a wire render and all is ready for meshsmooth. The basic form of the vehicle body was made according to prepared blue-prints (which I discussed at the beginning). Afterwards I added more details, which are very important for the final render.

I would like show you some details of the interior - steering wheel, seats, handles - but these parts are all almost invisible in the final render.

The details will follow next...

Texturing and shading:

I found most of the textures on the Internet and used Photoshop for corrections. For the tarmac texture I used a few textures from a few packs, made in Photoshop. One texture had 6000x4000, and from that I made a bump map and displacement map. For the car material I used a composite mat. The car shade has three parts: the first part is a basic shade which has two layers, both have VrayMtl where it has a reflect fall-off map; the second part is the dirt, which is just a bitmap as diffuses and an alpha map which controls opacity, all drawn in Photoshop and using a texture from the 3DTotal Textures collection; the third part of the composite mat is the speed stripes which is like the basic material but is white in colour and less reflective. Wheels have VrayMtl where it is a spectral noise map, and a bump map for the text on the side of the wheel.

Rendering and lighting:

The whole scene was rendered in V-ray .There is one target directional light and the same HDRI map. The final image was rendered with an “anti-aliasing” filter, set on Catumll-Rom. The render engine is an irradiance map set on the image. Because I don’t have a powerful computer, I had to reduce some of the set up. The scene was rendered on AMD Athlon 1800+, 1024Mb Ram and Ati Radeon 9600. The render time was about 9 hours.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The image below shows the environment. The puddles were created as a big plane, after we can see pools where there is tarmac (second plane) reduced by a displacement map.

In the final image, I used Photoshop post-production only for the brightness.

The final render of the scene can be seen below.

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'Making of Ready to Go'

2008-04-28T04:28:00.000-07:00

'Project Overview'

'Making of Ready to Go'
by Jaime Otegui

Web: www.jaimeotegui.es

Email: jaime@amidadesign.com

Introduction:

Hi, my name is Jaime Otegui and I work in the videogame industry. In this tutorial I will try to explain how I created this render (Fig.01), and I hope it will be useful for you. Before I start though, I would like to give you some advice – especially for the beginners out there: be patient. I know this sounds obvious, but I think this is one of the most important things when you want to make good renders. Many people start one project enthusiastically, and then a few days later get tired of it. Find something you really want to do and simply go for it!

Fig.01

Research & Concept:

I really like old bikes, so I decided to model a vintage Vespa. I have a huge reference folder on my hard drive (models, vehicles, locations, artist galleries, tutorials), so every time I can I search the web for inspiration, and the folder just keeps on getting bigger and bigger!

In this part of the process you don’t need to define every little detail of the scene, but you have to decide the main aspects of your render. In my case I wanted an old bike recently restored in an Old Italian repair shop ( Fig. 2).

Fig.02

Modelling:

For the scene setup, I couldn’t find a good blueprint of the bike, so I had to use this image of the Vespa instead ( Fig. 3). I created a standard plane the same size as the image, and then you projected the image with no distortion, so the model would be accurate in relation to the original reference. With this plane I could then do a uniform scale to a regular size (Fig. 3).

Fig.03

I used standard poly modelling for this piece. In almost every case, I started with a box (or a basic primitive like cylinders, spheres, etc.). You should move it to x 0, y 0, z 0; by doing this you can eliminate half of the box, knowing that you won’t have welding issues when applying the symmetry and turbo smooth modifiers! Try to model with the fewest polygons possible (and keep them quads!); you can create a nice curved form with just two or three polygons and the turbo smooth modifier turns one polygon into four ( Fig. 4).

Fig.04

I also used other modelling techniques. All the wires were splines, the Vespa logo was a text primitive with an extrude modifier, and the engine cap was made with a ProBoolean compound object (this is a great tool for complex objects!) ( Fig. 5 - Fig. 6).

Fig.05

Fig.06

Texturing & Materials :

I wanted to use Mental Ray renderer for this image; I really like the Arch & Design materials, the presets are great. You don’t need to change a lot of parameters in order to get a good result. Here you see a couple of examples of my material setup ( Fig. 7 - Fig.8).

Fig.07

Fig. 08

For the texture work I used Photoshop. As a part of my research I went to a repair shop near my house, the owner was very kind and let me take some photographs ( Fig. 9).

Fig.09

Here you can see some examples of the textures; the materials have diffuse, bump, and in some cases a specular map ( Fig. 10).

Fig.10

Lighting:

My first intention was to create a night shot, and the first tests for the final image were done with standard Omni lights ( Fig. 11).

Fig. 11

After lots of tests, I finally thought it would be better to do a daylight render. There are two Area lights in the scene: one is the main point of light and comes from the door of the repair shop; the other has less intensity and comes from the side of the bike ( Fig. 12).

Fig. 12

As I said before, the image was rendered with Mental Ray. I did some tests with Global Illumination, but in the end I did it with Final Gather. The presets usually work well, so I just made a couple of changes to the multiplier and diffuse bounces, because I needed some extra light in the scene ( Fig. 13).

Fig.13

Final Render :

I wanted to create a high resolution render (2000*1250), so I had to divide the render into two parts because my PC couldn’t manage the scene (I need a brand new machine!!).

The final image has three passes: Beauty, Ambient Occlusion and DOF ( Fig. 14, - Fig. 16 )

Fig.14

Fig.15

Fig.16

I mixed these passes in Photoshop; the Ambient Occlusion layer is above the Beauty one in Multiply mode. About depth of field (DOF), you can check out a great tutorial which explains the whole process, here: http://www.onnovanbraam.com/index.php?tutorials/depth_of_field/.

Finally, I added a brightness and contrast layer to reach the final version ( Fig. 17).

Fig.17

Conclusion:

I hope this tutorial may be of some use to you. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to email me at jaime@amidadesign.com

Thanks for reading!

Jaime Otegui

www.jaimeotegui.es (under construction)

Making of a Mazda CX-9

2008-04-26T05:12:00.000-07:00

'Project Overview'

'Making of a Mazda CX-9'
by Michael Seidl & Bernhard Rieder

Web: www.bernhardrieder.com
or www.michaelseidl.com
Email: office@michaelseidl.com

We both are very happy about our good teamwork and progress in the 3D industry, and it was a long journey to get our skills and experience and to know that we fit perfectly together. There are several reasons for this, like our passion for photo-real rendering, and the fun we have every time working for productions. We also know that we are reliable and ambitious and we take our job very seriously. After several years we created our own company and started our way in the 3D industry. One of our strong points is our passion for learning and understanding different render systems, and developing material and lighting setups for photo-real rendering. But the most important thing is, that we love to do 3D “stuff”, and this keeps you “alive” if something goes wrong in a project. You can see the car in action at: http://www.mazdausa.com, simply by clicking on the Mazda CX-9.

Getting started:

Welcome to the project overview about the Mazda CX-9. A good start is always to collect as many reference images as possible. It is very important to have many pictures of the car from different views, to make sure that the car is modelled as accurately as possible (Fig.01).

Fig.01

Setting up the blueprints:

The first step is setting up the blueprints, therefore we have to make sure that all blueprints align. You can check this easily in Photoshop, just drop the side and the front view in one sheet and follow the major car lines. Don’t panic if your blueprints are not 100 percent correct. Do the same comparison with the other views (top-side, back-side, and so on) (Fig.02). After that we align the different pictures to planes in 3DS Max. Make sure that their measurements are the same as their dimensions in Photoshop (Fig.03).

Fig.02

Fig.03

Modelling:

There are many different ways to model a car. A good way is to start modelling in front view. Make a plane and align the major lines with the hood of the car. After everything is correctly aligned, add a symmetry modifier on top of it. The next step is to chamfer the edges where a sharp seam is necessary. Last but not least, add a Turbo Smooth modifier to it (Fig.04-05). With this technique you can do the whole modelling process. Always start with a rough shape of the car, and then add more and more detail (Fig.06).

Fig.04

Fig.05

Fig.06

Materials:

When I start doing the materials, I always think about how they would act in real live. This makes the creation process much easier. For example, with the rim material (Fig.07), I used simply Vraymtl with a grey diffuse colour and a Reflection glossiness of 0,78 (Fig.08).

Fig.07

Fig.08

Tyre material: :

The tyre material has a fall off in the diffuse slot going from black to a dark grey value, to give the tyre material a little bit more depth (Fig.09). I always get asked about the headlight material, which was very easily done, simply take a look at the screenshot shown in Fig.10. In the bump map slot I put a gradient ramp, to give the reflection more variation (Fig.11).

Fig.09

Fig.10

Fig.11

Environment:

I always start by applying UVW to all parts in my scene, and with the help of the free Texporter plug-in I can export the wire to Photoshop. After that I browse through the 3DTotal Texture CDs and pick the textures that I would like to use and then save them in my local project folder. The great advantage of those textures are that they are perfectly seamless, and so the texture process is so much easier. To give the wall a more “random” feeling I used the stamp tool to add some more structure to it. In Fig.12 you can see the side wall. Now to add some dirt to the bottom of the image, so I use a few of the dirt images from 3DTotal’s V5 Dirt & Graffiti” CD. First of all I added a new texture (3DTotal Texture Aged & Stressed) (Fig.13). In the next step I added a layer mask to our previous created layer and put the dirt map in the alpha slot (Fig.14a-14b). So far, so good. In Fig.15 you can see the added dirt mask. With the alpha slot still selected you can then use your pen tool set to black to paint transparent areas. If you want to see more dirt in some areas set the pen tool to white, and draw some dirt on the wall. The same process works if you want to add some graffiti to the wall. Just load up your image and apply your alpha map and adjust your blending from both surfaces with the pen tool in the alpha slot (Fig.16). I used this same technique for all other parts in the scene.

Fig.12

Fig.13

Fig.14a

Fig.14b

Fig.15

Fig.16

Exterior Lighting Setup:

In this project I used HDRI for lighting. When you load your HDRI map, a window opens. I always move the White Points in that way, so that most of the main light source (in this case the sun) is purple. I paste this value into the RGB level output of the bitmap channel where the HDRI map is loaded (Fig17-18). As you can see, I put an HDRI in the skylight and in the reflection environment slot. As you might also have noticed, when I used HDRI I always use the bitmap map, not the Vrayhdri map. This is because I have much more control over the HDRI. For example, with the RGB offset I can easily chance the contrast of the HDRI (Fig.19). The next step is where I rotate the HDRI map so that the main light is coming from the front. The preview what you see in the material editor is that which is opposite your model (Fig.20).

Fig.17

Fig.18

Fig.19

Fig.20

Studio Lighting Setup:

For the studio lighting setup I always use “Lichtwannen” (Licht = light, Wannen = bowl) (Fig.21). This gives me a nice control over the reflection and the setup is pretty simple. As you can see, I only used a tube and a plan and applied a Vraymtl material to it. In the diffuse map I put an output map with an intensity of 1,5. In the output map I put a gradient ramp going from black to white and black again (Fig.22-23). Make sure that you turn off “Cast Shadow” in the object properties for both “Lichtwannen” (Fig.24). For the studio light I only used a skylight with the intensity set to 1. This gives me those soft, studio car shadows (Fig.25).

Fig.21

Fig.22

Fig.23

Fig.24

Fig.25

Rendering Setup:

If you are using GI for your light solution, make sure you turn off “Default Lights” (Fig.26). The reason why I used a secondary rays bias value greater than 0 here is that, I had some overlapping meshes and even some objects with a height of “0”, and VRay tends to make ugly artifacts when this happens. So I used 0,01 to get rid of those render errors. For the image sampler I used Catmul Rom, because this filter gives me a sharp render result (Fig.27). Indirect illumination settings can be seen in Fig.28, the Irradiance map settings can be seen in Fig.29, and finally my settings for the light cache are in Fig.30.

Fig.26

Fig.27

Fig.28

Fig.29

Fig.30

Colour Correction:

A very important part of creating CG images is the post work. With this image, I need to correct the colour range of the image in Photoshop. OK, so our images have come straight out of 3DS Max. As you may have noticed, the image has a very dominating blue tint, and in the next few steps we need to correct that (Fig.31). First of all we add a threshold modifier to the image (Fig.32). After that we move the slider to the left side. Now you can see that only the darkest parts of the image are remaining. Hold down the Shift key (the mouse icon changes into a cross) and select the darkest area (Fig.33). Now move the slider in the opposite direction and do the same. You should now see two crosses, marked with “1” and “2”. Hit the cancel button. OK, now we have set the range for the white and the black points. Now it’s time to select the midtones (grey). Add a layer on top of it and fill it with 50 percent grey and set the layer blending to “different”. After that add a threshold modifier again to the new layer. Now move the Slider to the left. The remaining colours you should see are grey. Hold down the Shift key and select them again. Finally press the cancel button again. You should now have 3 crosses, marked from “1” to “3” and you can now delete the new layer (Fig.34). Now it is time to add a Curve Modifier to the image. Under the button “Option” you see 3 icons for the eyedropper tools. The first is for the black points, second for grey, and the third for the white points. Select them in that order. To select them you have to hold down the Shift key or press Caps Lock on your keyboard (your cursor will change into a cross) (Fig.35). Now hit OK, and you will see the colour corrected image. (Fig.36)

Fig.31

Fig.32

Fig.33

Fig.34

Fig.35

Fig.36

I hope you have enjoyed reading through this brief project overview. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. You can see more images on my website and can also download the discussed shaders.

Making Of Scarecrow

2008-04-26T05:07:00.000-07:00

'Project Overview'

'Making Of Scarecrow'
by Darko Hanzic

Email: darkohanzic@hotmail.com

In this article, I will explain the process of making my Scarecrow image. I will cover all aspects of creation, such as the illustration, modelling and also the texturing which i have used the below textures from 3DTotal's Total Texture Collection:

Fantasy textures v14:R2
- Sky: 13
- Tiles: 15
- Clothing:05

Base and layers v3:R2
- Sky: 15, (2/14)

General textures: v1:R2
- Dirt masks:01
- Dirt masks:05
- Skies: 04
- Metals: 08
- Fabric: 06*04
- Fabric: 05 leather used in example

Concept:

Because the illustration was for a "Strange Behaviour" contest on CGTalk, I had to be very careful with the initial idea, the planning and the basic concept stage for what I wanted to do. The idea was simple: I wanted to tell the story about today’s problems and the huge impact of what is happening to the environment. I thought this could be a wonderful opportunity for an illustration.

So, the first thing that came to my mind was to select a character. I decided to make a scarecrow in a field. Once the character had been decided, I began working on the initial sketch. I always try to find as much reference material as possible as this helps me to define things quicker and also serves as some nice information as to how the textures should look.

The scarecrow had to look believable and I wanted to incorporate a classic look: huge hat, old trousers, ripped clothes, exposed parts filled with straw, old wooden sticks, huge boots and big eyes. The proportions needed to be human, although slightly exaggerated (Fig. 01)

Fig.01

The second stage was imagining the crows. The crows had to look like flying evil creatures who were trying to wreak their anger upon the scarecrow. In the end, I wanted to retain the same bird look with bigger heads, claws and evil red eyes. With 2 characters, the story was simple.

Because of the polluted water in the nearby area the crows had mutated. The environment has been filled with radiation which has caused the birds to become aggressive, and so they wreak their anger upon the nearby scarecrow that has frightened them in the past. The scarecrow tries to escape, but it is stuck in the mud…

The environment had to be depressive, dirty, polluted; it had to be filled with radiation, dust and smoke; it had to reflect that “moment”.

I drew a few quick sketches for the composition elements, to see how it would all work in the final image. Of course, at this stage, nothing was carved in stone!

Modelling:

Once the concept stage had been established, I began modelling the actual scene. At this stage, I was open for all the new ideas and changes to the actual concept of the main characters.

Scarecrow: I established the base body geometry from a box, and used the polygon modelling technique. Once the basic proportions had been established, I began working on the main silhouette. Once the silhouette has been defined, I began modelling details, like clothing wrinkles, pockets, small patches, buttons, rope and straw. For the buttons I used a cylinder, and the rope was a lofted surface with basic shape as a circle. For the belt, I used a subdivided plane and formed it into the correct shape, and then I made holes and extruded the faces. The belt buckle was made from a modified torus (Fig. 02 & 03)

Fig. 03

Fig. 04

The straw was made with paint effects in Maya, using the brush inside visor (grasses-straw). I created a few small strands of straw and put them on the scarecrow (Fig. 05).

Fig. 05
Crow: Here is the basic process for the crow. I used a box and shaped it into a desired form (Fig.06)

Fig. 06

The feathers were made from a simple plane and UV mapped. Then I simply duplicated it and formed them into a wing. I also used an opacity mask to form a feather, for faster rendering (Fig.07).

Fig. 07

For the wheat, I created a small seed then duplicated and rotated it until I got the whole husk. Then I modelled the stem from a cylinder and made it more uniform. To create leaves, I used a plane and properly formed it into the right shape.

Other objects, such as the barrel, wooden sticks, and power plants, were all made of cylinders. For the grass I used paint effects to create small strands of grass. I sowed the grass onto the field mesh by duplicating them (Fig. 08).

Fig. 08

Z Brush:

Once I was satisfied with the modelling stage I decided to make some parts more detailed, using normal maps for faster rendering. To create normal maps I imported the OBJ format of the scarecrow into ZBrush and began sculpting each piece of the scarecrow individually. Because I had to generate normal maps inside Maya, I kept the poly count at a maximum of 2 million polygons for each piece for easier baking. The idea was to use high polygon geometry on lower resolution geometry, without losing all the detail. I decided to use normal maps instead bump maps (Fig. 09).

Fig. 09

In ZBrush, I used a standard brush to define large wrinkles. I used the smooth tool to achieve a beautiful transition. After large wrinkles had been defined, I went into smaller detail using the lazy mouse feature to smooth curved lines. I usually use the lazy mouse at subdivision level 4, to avoid doted lines. Once the sculpting had been completed I exported the high poly mesh into Maya as an OBJ. (Fig.10)

Fig. 09

For the barrel, I had already created UV maps and colour texture. So what I did was to use the colour texture in Photoshop and desaturate it. Then I have played with Levels and adjusted the brightness/contrast on each layer to create a mask. When a mask had been created I used it in ZBrush for masking the intensity. This mask then served as a template for sculpting and it also helped me to fine-tune the details on the barrel (Fig. 11).

Fig. 11

Normal Maps:

To create normal maps I exported the high polygon geometry to OBJ format and used it in Maya. It’s important to have high polygon geometry on top of low polygon geometry so that the objects overlap. The low polygon model had to be mapped.

For the under lighting/shading I selected Transfer Maps.
In the Transfer Maps window, under the Target Meshes rollout, I added low poly and high poly under Source Meshes. In the Output rollout, I selected normal map and set the destination of where to export the texture. The Map space was set to Tangent.

In Maya’s common output rollout, the resolution for the width and height was set up to: "Sampling quality" to High, "Filter type" to Triangular and "Ignore Mirrored Faces" was ticked.

When all the high polygon parts had been baked onto a normal map, I combined them in Photoshop to create just one texture (Fig. 12).

Fig. 12

1 – For the fine details, the height map had been created for parts like the seams, material textures, stitches, etc. By using the Normal map filter plug-in in Photoshop, I created a normal map from the height map.
2 – A normal map baked from Maya.
3 – The normal map, made from height map, was overlaid on top of the generated normal map made in Maya. This gave me enough detail for rendering.

Texturing:

When the modelling stage was complete, I began working on the textures. But, first of all, I had to unwrap all of the models! For most parts I used planar mapping projection, except for the round parts where I used cylindrical mapping. Because the image was static, I put all UV seams on the back side. By doing this I avoided all the troubles with seams on the textures. Here is a simple explanation of texturing the jacket on the scarecrow…

Colour Map:

1. First I defined basic colours for every part of the scarecrow. For the jacket, I wanted a red colour so I painted all the jacket parts with red.

2. The second step was adding some shading to get basic shapes. For this step, I used the blue channel from the normal map and set it to Multiply. (I could also have used an ambient occlusion (AO) pass, baked from high resolution geometry to low polygon, but since I was creating a still image, I simply baked AO at the end for the whole image.)

3. The jacket was to be made from leather, so I used a leather texture found in the 3DTotal Textures DVD Collection (http://www.3dtotal.com/textures). Before using the texture though, I desaturated and adjusted the brightness/contrast to retain the base colour. I then overlaid the leather texture on top of the base colour (Fig. 13).

Fig. 13

4. The next step was to break up the base colours and add more of an aged look. I used a dirt texture and overlaid it on top of the leather texture, and then adjusted the opacity to about 50%.

5. To add more details and to define the material a bit more, I created seams for the fabric. Seams were painted by using a small brush with hard edges. I used an almost white colour because it was to be overlaid on top of the dirt layer. After painting seams, I made shadows around those seams to give an impression of depth. For a more irregular look I added small highlights using a white, small brush with the layer set to Screen mode.
6. I used a lighter red colour with a low opacity to paint highlights onto a new layer, where wrinkles were mostly evident (Fig. 14).

Fig. 14

7. With a dark red brush, new shadows were added onto a new layer and the mode was set to Soft light. Shadows usually help to define normal maps on small details, such as wrinkles and seams.

8. Here, I faked some of the shadows where the buttons meet the jacket (Fig.15).

Fig. 15

Opacity Maps:

For wear and tear on the clothing I made simple opacity maps. Black pixels are transparent, while white pixels are visible. I used the same technique for the birds’ feathers and wheat leaves. This was a quick and efficient way of adding more details to simple polygons (Fig. 16).

Fig. 16

Specular Maps:

Specular Maps define the material you are making, so it is very important how the specular behaves for certain materials. I used the colour texture as a base to create a Specular map. Because I had all the layers from the previous colour map, I was able to adjust each layer separately.

1.All layers were now greyscale. On a new layer, I painted some white highlights with different brushes. The layer was set to Screen mode and most of the highlights were painted where the material was to be shiny. These were edges, some wrinkles, lumps and where lighting would hit the surface first, such as the nose, bottom lip, cheeks, knees, pockets, front of shoes, seams, etc. Note: for the cotton and wool the specular is almost black, because these surfaces usually have minimal specularity. The wet parts, like the stains and stitches, have small highlights to distinguish themselves from other materials.

2. The second step was the actual material texture. I adjusted the brightness and contrast to get small details out of the leather texture, which was used from the colour map.

3. The dirt texture was used to break up the uniform highlights. I also emphasised the shadows between clothing wrinkles, seam and button shadows (Fig. 17).

Fig. 17

Round parts, such as the barrel and power plant, achieve much more realism if you highlight one side more than the other. This also helps in defining a round surface a lot more.

For metallic parts, I also highlighted edges between paint and rust, and darkened any leaking stains.

Lighting:

For lightning and rendering I used Max. First, I setup the scene and put all the elements together. The lighting was very simple: one yellow Spot light was positioned in the top left with casting shadows turned on. I used ray traced shadows and decay was set to inverse. A second blue Spot light was positioned on the right side. No shadows and decay was set to inverse. A dark blue Omni light, with low intensity, was positioned on the right side, behind character. Shadows and decay were set to inverse. The last light was a yellow Omni light which was positioned on the right side, below the character, with shadows turned on and with ray traced shadows and inverse decay (Fig. 18).

Fig. 18

Materials:

I used a simple blinn shader for every model – I filled the diffuse, specular level, opacity and bump slots. For each part I also played with the specular, colour and glossiness slider (Fig. 19).

For the barrel I used a falloff with fresnel reflection. A reflection mask was used under map 1 to get a slight falloff effect.

Fig. 19

Rendering:

For rendering I used Mental Ray. Here are the settings I used (Fig. 20) It was rendered at high resolution so I had to render in passes, and so I used diffuse, lighting, specular and shadow passes. At this stage, I also created ambient occlusion for all the models. For easier compositing and rendering, I rendered each model separately. In the end, when all models had been rendered, I composited them in Photoshop.

Fig. 20

Here is the simplified view on how the layers have been composited in Photoshop.

Blending modes in Photoshop:

Shadows: Multiply
Specular: Overlay reduced opacity
Ambient Occlusion: Overlay
Fog: Hard Light reduced opacity
Fog effect: Screen
Faked back light: Soft light

Conclusion:

I hope you learned some new things from this article. Thanks again to the 3DTotal team for this great opportunity! If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a line . Here is the final image (Fig. 21).

Fig. 21

Final Image

Making Of The Conductor

2008-04-26T05:04:00.000-07:00

'Project Overview'

'Making Of The Conductor'
by Gunaars Miezis

Web: http://miezis.cgsociety.org/gallery

Email: gmiezis@inbox.lv

Idea :

My work usually starts out as an idea - lots of things come into play when it develops, movies that I’ve seen, music I’m listening to, people that I’ve met and so on. And it usually takes some time to brew and flesh itself out. I don't start doing anything until I have a clear picture in my head. This time around I wanted to create something funny and cheerful with a twist of insanity. I was listening to a soundtrack of Donnie Darko and this idea sort of came along - a conductor that has been completely overwhelmed by his creation an emerged into the world of music that he can control by a movement of his hands. It started out as a messy sketch on a side of a paper and later on evolved in my head with the proportions and expression of the character.

Modeling :

I then jumped right into modeling this guy. Since it was meant only for one still image I didn't bother much about the topology or "the right way" how to do my modeling. You won't find any decent edge loops in him! I even used spheres to create his cheeks and a simply tapered sphere for his body. Nose was made out of a sphere that was subdivided and deformed into the shape that I was aiming for and then brutally extruded some faces to create nostrils. You can clearly see that in the picture that shows wire. Working this way it saves tons of time and lets you concentrate on the forms and rhythm of your creation. After all I knew that I was going to correct all of those modeling glitches in Photoshop. Since I was aiming for a cartoony/dreamy style I didn't bother going into too much of a detail

Colouring and basic setup :

After that was done I blocked in some colors in 3ds max and some basic material attributes, like the glossiness of the skin. No textures and no advanced rendering techniques or material setups were used here. Same with lightning - just a basic three point light setup- one to give him basic light and shadows, one to soften out the shadows and the third to give him a sort of rim lightning on the sides

After that, he was rendered out in a default scanline renderer. I also rendered an ambient occlusion pass with mental ray to give him some soft shadows, that I multiplied over in Photoshop

Working In Photoshop :

Now I was ready to do the fun part, as you can see in the picture "render" it came out of the oven looking far from finished. I started to do color correcting, painting over lazy parts and mistakes in Photoshop – added some wrinkles around his eyes and small details like moles, corrected the cheeks, added light bounces and subtle color changes to make his skin a bit more interesting. I used basic brush setups, mostly using a simple round brush. People say that 2 minutes in Photoshop can save you 2 hours of work in 3d. And I strongly agree with that, especially when it comes to making still images. Some people consider it to be cheating, but I think that the thing that matters is the result not the tools. The painting over was done in fairly high resolution so brush strokes weren't too obvious when I scaled the image down

After I was done with the character I added atmospheric effects around him like little bubbles of light and smoke particles around his stick. I was also thinking about making an audience behind him, but then I realized that this piece was about a man and his connection with music, so the backdrop idea died off naturally

As you can see there were A LOT of color correcting layers in my psd file

There were lots of tries and experiments on how different colors may play along with one another and balancing on the edge of not burning colors out. When I was happy with all that I merged down the layers and of course applied a sin of “sharpen” at the end! :)

Conclusion :

Overall I must say that such workflow is extremely efficient and fast. It took me 4 hours of pure work in both 3ds max and Photoshop to complete this guy. As long as you have a clear idea of what you want to do, the decisions in modeling and speed come naturally. Also I must point out that using long render times and fancy 3 rd party renderers aren’t necessary to create a cool looking image.

Making of Madness

2008-04-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

'Making of Madness'
by Marcin Solarz

Web: http://marcinek.cgsociety.org/gallery/
Email: marcin.solarz@neostrada.pl

Overview :

Several softwares were used to create the “Madness” image. The base mesh was prepared in 3D Studio Max 8. I tried to capture the facial expression that accompanies screaming - to catch the grimace at the sight of something really frightening; something, that changes one’s life forever. In order to show this fear, I decided to model not only a suitable facial expression, but also the peculiar defensive pose of the whole body. Arms were also arranged in a very specific way, with the right hand trying to protect the head, and the left unconsciously lifted up and pressed to the cheek (Fig.01).

Fig.01

Preparations in Max:

I set the figure in the ‘T’ position. This will allow us to prepare it for further rigging. Taking care of the smallest details, I worked on the upper part of the body, i.e. from the waist up, ignoring the legs altogether, as originally the frame I had in mind was to be a half-view. Finally, I chose the close frame, with virtually only the head visible in the picture. In addition, I modelled the eyes, tongue, gums and teeth. Then, after resetting the mesh (Reset XForm), I proceeded to attach the virtual skeleton to my figure. I used the biped animation system of Max, scaling the bones to give them the approximate shape of the figure. In a moment this would facilitate the bone wagging. The next phase was ascribing the skin modifier, which allows you to deform the mesh by means of the bones. We tick the skin modifier in the stack, and in its options we add the bones (‘add bones’). We select all the bones of the biped and proceed to the next phase, i.e. wagging. This is done with the help of the ‘edit envelope’ button. I use the method of painting the envelopes along the mesh. In the Painter Options I set the Max Strength at 0.15, and Max Size at 0.5. Painting along the mesh, I wag the appropriate bones. The blue areas mark the places of the smallest impact of the bones on the mesh (about 0.1), while the red colour shows the greatest (c. 1.0). All the intermediate colours, such as yellow or orange, proportionally indicate all the values from 0.1 to 1.0. Then I delete the lower part of the body. Wagged in this way, the figure is ready to be exported to ZBrush (Fig.02, Fig.03 and Fig.04).

Fig.02

Fig.03

Fig.04

Modelling in ZBrush :

ZBrush software is a very flexible tool for graphic artists, allowing you to model objects easily and quickly. It also has suitable implements to create displaces and bump maps; by means of the ‘projection’ option it is also possible to paint textures in Photoshop. So, I import the figure (‘import’) and proceed to model the details. I thicken the figure, adding more and more wrinkles, until the fourth level is reached (‘Tool>Geometry>Sdiv 4’). During this phase of mesh thickening, I start modelling the wrinkles, pores and other nuances of the facial skin, using the Projection Master, with only the ‘Deformation’ option activated. Deactivating the brush MRGB options, I tick only the ‘Zadd’ and ‘Zsub’ options, setting the Z intensity parameter to 11. Various alphas will now be used to paint the skin pores. I select the ‘Simple Brush’, load the alpha, and choose the ‘DragRect’ stroke. When the wrinkles are ready, I lift the figure from the canvas, thus exiting the Projection Master. I set the figure in a different view and repeat the whole process, painting the skin of the other profile. Now the mapping begins. First we create the texture for our figure, setting the width and height in the ‘Texture’ options at 4096, and click on ‘new’. Then, in the ‘Tool>Geometry> mark, we set the lowest possible subdivision level. Then we pass on to the ‘Tool>Texture’ mark and click on the ‘Adaptive UVTiles’ (‘AUVTiles’), creating automatic mapping for the object. In order to make sure that the mapping is correct, we can also click on ‘UV Check Overlapping’ option. Now we can make the displace map. In the ‘Tool’ mark we move on to the ‘Displacement’ and, with the ‘Adaptive’ and ‘Displace mode’ buttons highlighted, we click on ‘Create DispMap’. Now the ZBrush generates the map, depending on the speed of your computer. When this is done, the displace map is stored in the ‘Alpha’ mark. We export it and rotate vertically (‘Flip Vertical’), and then proceed to paint the texture. Here I used several samples, pre-prepared in Photoshop - these are parts of photos of several faces. The texture creation, just as the painting of the facial irregularities was done, is done with the help of the Projection Master. The difference now is that we tick the ‘Colour’ and ‘Fade’ options, deactivating all the others. I use the ‘directional brush’ with any alpha and ‘DragRect’. The parts of the photos are loaded to the ‘Textures’ slot. In the centre of the interface I deactivate the ‘add’ option and leave only the ‘RGB’ button highlighted, adapting its intensity to current needs. This is repeated several times, exiting the PM and rotating the object in order to obtain a different view. When the whole texture is ready we export it, obviously rotating it vertically (‘FlipVert’). I make several sample renderings, and then export the object from the lowest thickness level to the ‘.*.obj.’ format (Fig.05 to Fig.11).

Fig.05

Fig.06

Fig.07

Fig. 08

Fig. 09

Fig. 10

Fig. 11

Max:

Having imported the object, I set the figure in the desired pose, using the biped bones. The shirt of our figure remains to be modelled. It is created from the figure mesh, by copying appropriate polygons and modelling the collar. We map and set the shader. I copy the ‘skin’ modifier for the shirt, dragging it from the stack straight onto the object. In order to generate the hair, I copied several polygons from which the hair was to grow. In the ‘properties’ panel I switch off the ‘renderable’ option and the object becomes invisible during the rendering. Now only the lights and rendering remain to be set. I used three ‘vray’ lights and to gain better control over the picture, I split it into several elements while rendering (‘diffuse’, ‘specular’, ‘colour’, etc.). These layers will be used to create the composition in Photoshop (Fig.12-16).

Fig.12

Fig.13

Fig. 14

Fig. 15

Fig. 16

Photoshop:

The last phase of the work is composing the renderings in Photoshop. Where any errors appeared, I corrected them using the ‘stamp clone’ tools. I retouched some of the hair, using other photos as reference.

For the background, I chose a picture taken during a trip to Budapest. The focus depth was simulated by means of the ‘lens blur’ filter, and through creating a suitable mask. Finally, I applied the ‘photo’ filter to the whole picture, which made the colours seem colder (Fig.17, Fig.18).

Fig. 17

Fig.18

'Creating a Wilting Leaf'

2008-04-10T22:12:00.001-07:00

'Maya'

'Creating a Wilting Leaf'
by Helen Hyung Choi

Web: http://www.onionhead.tv/

Email: helenhyungchoi@gmail.com

Basic Concepts:

Two shaders (B) Fresh Leaf & (A) Wilted Leaf are plugging into a (C) layered texture (Then the final output to (D)a surface shader). Then an animatable transparency ramp map is connected to the (B) fresh leaf shader, therefore (D) the leaf shader transforms into wilt leaf. (Revealing colour & Bump information from the (A) wilted leaf shader.) (Fig. 01)

Fig.01

Fresh leaf shader (B):

Pretty standard shading network as you can see. Lets get into the concept of ($) and (*) down below. (Fig.02)

Fig.02

Fresh leaf shader:

Leaf_crack01 is a image file map (It is a painted map in Photoshop, the white areas are where it will wilt) connected to a ramp shader Wilt_Trans01.The black part in Wilt_Trans01 map is the part that has crumbled away. This map has to be plugged into both shaders (A),(B). (Fig.03)

Fig.03

Two files connected network:

Out colour R to U,V Co-ord. As long as they are black & white map you can use others such as Out colour G,B.
(Fig. 04)

Fig.04

By connecting the file texture to the ramp, you have a set up for animating values. If you want harsh edges between values, you can clamp the position of ramp like the Fig.05 images shows .

Fig.05

'Maya'

'Creating a Wilting Leaf'
by Helen Hyung Choi

Web: http://www.onionhead.tv/

Email: helenhyungchoi@gmail.com

Basic Concepts:

Fig.01

Fresh leaf shader (B):

Pretty standard shading network as you can see. Lets get into the concept of ($) and (*) down below. (Fig.02)

Fig.02

Fresh leaf shader:

Fig.03

Two files connected network:

Out colour R to U,V Co-ord. As long as they are black & white map you can use others such as Out colour G,B.
(Fig. 04)

Fig.04

By connecting the file texture to the ramp, you have a set up for animating values. If you want harsh edges between values, you can clamp the position of ramp like the Fig.05 images shows .

Fig.05

Closer look at (*):

Easy way of combining maps is by using layered texture. Wilt_Trans01 was made for the outline of the leaf geo.(so no need for extra detail modelling) Leaf_crack01 was a map painted for inside animatable transparency map
(Fig.06).

Fig. 06

Bottom Wilt_Trans01 is first file to be middle click drag and drop on the layered texture. Blend mode is multiply (Fig.07).

Fig.07

Taking a look at maps (Fig.08).

Fig.08

Wilted leaf shader:

Pretty self explanatory by looking at the Fig.09 image. yellow ($) concept is already explained on the above, so they are using same method and concept for spec, bump, transparency animation. Blue ($) is also same concept as yellow ($) except additional colour files I have connected to each ramp circles. (More detail below).

Fig.09

Closer look at blue($):

Fancy red star Anim_Ramp01 is the animation ramo that drives transparency, colour and bump animation. This way we do not have to animate everything all separately (Fig 10).

Rot_Color01 map is a colour map that is a key for wilted look of the leaf. Yellow halo and brown dried spot look is achieved with animating this map. After you connect Anim_Ramp01 to Rot_color01 like we discussed earlier, now you mid click drag and drop all three CL_01,02,03 into each ramp circles for the colours.

Fig.10

Reference Images:

Find reoccurring patterns throughout the images rather than trying to copy what looks like from these images (Fig.11).

Fig. 11

Maps:

This image is used for Anim_Ramp01 which I explained above. White areas are the parts that will turn brown and yellow. White dots were so we see yellow, brown speckles all over the leaf (Fig.12).

Fig 12

Transparency map for the leaf that rots and crackles away. White areas are where geo will become transparent for illusion of a leaf crumbling away (Fig.13).

Fig.13

Patterned colour map:

Had to repeat UV four times to get the desirable effec (Fig.14).

Fig.14

Like I explained in the beginning (A) and (B) two shaders gets combined by layered texture (C) which connects to Surface shader (D). Don't forget to plug in transparency map into the final surface shader (D). (Fig.15)

Fig.15

Invisible Stud หนังการ์ตูน เรื่องยาว

2008-03-22T04:10:00.000-07:00

Ep1
http://www.sendspace.com/file/jykeap
Ep2
http://www.sendspace.com/file/wetgz9

[H-MOVIE]เรื่อง..[จับคนมาฉีดน้ำเชื้อ]+ภาค2ตอนจบ

« เมื่อ: มีนาคม 06, 2008, 03:52:07 PM »

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เรื่องย่อ..ในโรงพยาบาลได้รับพยาบาลฝึกหัดมาเริ่มงานวันแรกในแผนกที่เต็มไปด้วยนางพยาบาลสุดสวยน่ารักที่ต่างต้องทำคะแนนสอบภาคปฏิบัติให้ผ่านเกณฑ์..ที่กำหนด ทุกคนต่างรอการตัดสินจากคุณหมอรูปหล่อ ที่จะมาทำการให้คะแนนและแนะนำเธอเหล่านี้ในทุกเรื่องภายนอกเค้าดูเรียบร้อยมาดเข้มทำให้เด็กฝึกงานบางคนแอบชอบคุณหมอคนนี้อยู่ในใจ แต่จะมีใครหารู้ไม่ว่ากำลังเล่นอยู่กับไฟ เมือมันสวมชุดหมดบังหน้าในตอนกลางวันตกกลางคนมันคือไอ้โรคจิตหื่นกาม..ที่จ้องจะขยี้กามเด็กสาวไร้เดียงสา หลายคนได้ถูกมันปล่อยน้ำเชื้อพวยพุ่งใส่มดลูกมานับไม่ถ้วนมันหาผลประโยชนจากนางพยาบาลที่อยากสอบบรรจุผ่านด้วยการข่มขู่ ว่าจะไม่ให้ผ่านจนต้องยอมพลีกาย โดนเข็มฉีดยาเล่มโตของมันยัดเข้ามากระแทกร่องสวาทอย่างแรง จนมันอัดเข็มเล่มโตยิกๆจนมิดด้ามสาวเข้าๆออกๆอย่างเมามัน แล้วปล่อยน้ำยาขาวข้นเหนียวไหลเข้าไปหมดหลอดจนมันยืนกร็งตัวโกง...แล้วถ่ายรูปข่มขู่ไว้บำเรอกาม แม้แต่วันที่นางพยาบาลผู้ตกหลุมรักมัน..มาสารภาพรัก เมื่อสอบโอกาสมันพามาสอยมอบนำรักจะเยิ้มกระเซ็นทั่วร่างแล้วส่งต่อให้สมุนชั่วมันมาขุ่มขืนเธอต่อ สารพันวิธีที่จะทำให้คนมาใช้บริการจากโรงพยาบาลของมัน คนไข้ห้องพิเศษจะได้รับบริการแบบถึงใจจากนางบาลพยาบาลฝึกหัดที่ถูมันบังคับมาให้ดูแลเป็นพิเศษ แลกกับการสอบผ่าน ด้วยิวธีการที่จะทำให้พวกคนไข้หื่นมันติดใจจนลืมไม่ลงเพราะเธอ จะต้องดูและตั้งแต่ซอกไข่จนถึงกระเจี้ยวแม้จะไม่เต็มใจก็จะโดนมันกดหัวให้ยืนปากมาอมดูดไอ้หัวบานของมัน..จนมันหลั่งน้ำเสียวออกมาไหลออกจากริมฝีปากของเธอ ก่อนจะถูกจับโก้งโค้งสอดไอ้หัวบานเข้ามาแล้วยืนกระแทกพั่บๆๆ จนเสร็จกิจพวกเธอเหล่านี้ต้องบำเรอกามความหื่นของคนชั่วใครจะปลอดปล่อยเธอจากงื้อมือคนชั่วเหล่านี้มาเอาใจช่วยพวกเธอด้วยกันคับ

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