Adobe Reveals Major Update to Creative Cloud

SAN JOSE, CA — Adobe has announced a major update to Adobe Creative Cloud, the company’s flagship offering for creatives, is now available.

Source: News from CGW.com | 18 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

Lots of CG Fish in the Sea

Framestore has character designed, animated and directed a boys and girls advertisement for Three Ireland's new "all you can eat everything" plan, completing the full-CG 30-second spot on a remarkably swift three-and-a-half-week schedule.

Source: News from CGW.com | 18 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

LightWave tutorial: replicate an object over the surface of another object

Rob Redman demonstrates how to get into the replication game with LightWave 11.5’s Place Mesh command

When you first think about this type of process, you might think it sounds easy: just model your parts and move them into position. However, this can quickly become laborious. Imagine having to place multiple trees on a landscape, ensuring that each one was the right distance into the ground. Likewise, adding scales or horns to a creature: if it was just one or two, it would be a pretty simple task – but if you have to add more, finding a good, efficient way to do it becomes a necessity.

Luckily for us, LightWave 11.5 has a tool that enables us to do this and more easily. The Place Mesh command works similarly to other tools in LightWave. You model the geometry that you’d like to duplicate, and place it in a visible background layer. Then, in a foreground layer, you build the mesh that you want to duplicate onto. Once this is done, run the Place Mesh command, and you’ll see the cursor change to an orange circle with a line coming from it perpendicularly. This shows you the draw point and direction for the mesh being placed. On a flat surface, such as a floor or a cube, this is less useful because it’s easy to see where you’re painting the mesh; but on a more complex model, such as an undulating landscape, it’s very useful, and can prevent mishaps and the need for undos.

A simple click will add a copy of the background mesh to the draw point. Where the true power of the tool lies, however, is if you keep the mouse button pressed. Dragging upwards or to the right will either rotate the placed mesh clockwise or scale it up. (The two actions can be done together.) Likewise, clicking and dragging left or down will rotate the mesh anti-clockwise or scale it down.

Taking the example of trees on a landscape, you can easily understand the benefits of this. Nature is all about organised chaos, with no two objects the same – the Place Mesh tool enables you to replicate this in a particularly intuitive way. Admittedly, you don’t get variations in the actual geometry, but the size and rotation helps to disguise that.

This technique could be extended fairly easily to take into account some changes in geometry as well. All you would need to do is to create a number of meshes to duplicate, with each on its own background layer. Then just switch which background layer is visible to choose which geometry you’re placing. It wouldn’t take many variations, combined with the scaling and rotation features, to build a complex scene where any similarities are unnoticeable.

 

Populate a forest in minutes

Create an undulating landscape

In this example, you’re going to make a stylised landscape. Start off by building the mesh you want to place other meshes on: a simple 50×50 square, with nine divisions in both axes. Press [Shift]+[J] then [Enter] to run a Jitter command. I used a magnet to raise the middle for a hill.

 

Model a cartoon tree

You’re going to place assorted trees over the landscape, so with the hill layer visible (to roughly size the tree by), add a cube in a new layer. A couple of quick bevels later, you’ve formed a cartoon tree, ready to populate your hill with multiple copies.

 

Populate the landscape

Now all you need to do is make the hill your foreground layer, the tree a visible background layer, and you’re ready. Run the Place Mesh command and start painting. You can also just click Populate in the numerical window to automatically place random trees over the hill.

3D World technical editor and 3D artist Rob Redman has been working in the field of VFX and motion graphics for over a decade

What should be in the shortlist for the Software Update of the Year in the 3D World CG Awards 2013?

Tell us now on Facebook or Twitter #3dwawards!

 

Discover 25 inspiring examples of landscape design at Creative Bloq.

Source: 3D World | 17 Jun 2013, 9:51 am

Daytime Emmy Winners Revealed

LOS ANGELES — Amid glitz and glamour, the stars of daytime television came out to honor their own at the 40th Annual Daytime Entertainment Emmy Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles.

Source: News from CGW.com | 17 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

From our 3D World gallery: character creation in ZBrush

Which character in this piece do you like the most? They all have character and finesse but we think the guy with the blond comb-over is the bee’s knees

Artist: Filip Novy
Title: My Crew
Software: 3ds Max, V-Ray, Photobrush, ZBrush, Hair Farm

“What I enjoy most about my work in ZBrush is that you start off with a very rough base and then, when you look at your progress after a few hours, almost out of nowhere a character has appeared. I love that. This image had a challenging aspect to it, as it was the first time I used V-Ray, but I am a great believer in constantly improving my skills, so it was a challenge I relished.

“All the work and conceptualisation for the image was my own work, but I did use some textures from www.cgtextures.com. It took me several months to finish this project as I worked on it in my spare time. I’m a 3D and particle artist in the game industry and I enjoy completing scenes in my spare time, as I think it helps to keep my skills fresh and up-to-date. As an artist, I am inspired by many things, but I love the work done by Katsuya Terada and comic artists like Travis Charest and Simon Bisley.”

Get published

If you would like to see your work featured in 3D World, email us, attaching a low-res version of the image

Source: 3D World | 14 Jun 2013, 10:00 am

Amazing CG art: Creation (Megaplex)

Check out the third part of video artist Marco Brambilla’s trilogy that makes art from film

Exhibited at the Nicole Klagsburn gallery in New York, Creation (Megaplex) was inspired by the disposability of film and images, featuring a swirling helix of hundreds of movie clips, some familiar.

To bring it to life, Brambilla enlisted creative agency Ntropic. “I was introduced to Marco when we opened our New York office,” says Ntropic creative director Nate Robinson. “We discussed the possibility of working together, and hit it off after a couple of meetings.”

The Ntropic team gathered all the materials, rotoscoping the characters before using Flame and Maya to pre-viz, design, animate and composite the film.

“The stereo capabilities of Flame were instrumental in planning and execution,” says Robinson. “Flame enabled us to work in a 3D design space by incorporating 2D tools with 3D technology. Flame and Maya’s interoperability allowed us to move cameras and geometry seamlessly between them.”

What should be in the shortlist for the 3D World Hall of Fame Award in the 3D World CG Awards 2013?

Tell us now on Facebook or Twitter #3dwawards!

 

Discover 15 inspiring examples of 3D art at our sister site, Creative Bloq.

Source: 3D World | 14 Jun 2013, 9:00 am

New animated short: Shave It

The dynamic animation and vivid colours in Shave It make this hyper-stylised short a true visual treat. Kulsoom Middleton talks to co-director Jorge Tereso about motivation, Max and monkeys…

The visually stunning short Shave It kicks off with a colourful jungle scene, as a cheeky monkey unzips a tent to find a bag in which he discovers a shaver.

As he switches the shaver on and with the buzz of the device, the action cuts to a bulldozer destroying trees in the forest. Then, the monkey shaves himself and disguised as a human sets off to experience city life. There he climbs through the ranks and achieves position and wealth, but there’s more to the story than meets the eye, as the monkey ultimately takes its revenge on humans and their habitat.

Watch Shave It

The monkey is reminiscent of the stylised characters from DreamWorks’ Madagascar. In this instance, the directors have really pushed the stylisation with the monkey’s crazy shock of green-blue hair, angular jaw, ping-pong ball eyes and floating ears.

Directors Jorge Tereso and Fernando Maldonado had envisaged the monkey character from the beginning and knew they had to work in a certain way to achieve the stylised look. They called on the experience of rigger Vincent Souza to help. “We needed an extremely flexible rig, with a deep level of control,” explains Tereso. “Vincent Souza’s scripts and rigs for the monkey allowed us to have up to 15 controls for simple things like his upper arm.” In total, the monkey’s rig has about 150 controls.

An any-software attitude

The main software used on the animation was 3ds Max, but Tereso points out that they could have produced the short with any of the leading programs. “None of them limits you if you’re trying to create something like Shave It.”

They also wrote scripts for handling certain tasks like rig controls and the jungle plant generation. In order to create the highly saturated colours and add more detail, the team turned to After Effects.

“Every shot was rendered in separate layers and later retouched, edited and composed,” explains Tereso. “We used lots of masks during colour correction – every shot was fine-tuned. We tweaked all the colours to take the saturation to its limit.

We also got to a point when we were animating in 2D over everything. Adding a lot details, not just aesthetic, but also conceptual details such as shadows and things that reinforced what each shot had to say.” Drawing in 2D over the final animation gave such good results they ended up doing it on top of almost every shot.

Check out the behind the scenes video

It’s light on technical details, but the smiling faces makes up for that!

Find out more about the software used in Shave It and discover a new technique to achieve a cartoon-like motion blur on the short.

Shave It features in the Shortcuts section of the next issue of 3D World, on sale 18th June 2013.

Source: 3D World | 14 Jun 2013, 7:13 am

Engine Room and Hollywood Center Studios Forge Production Alliance

HOLLYWOOD — Hollywood Center Studios has forged a new alliance with shooting and visual effects company Engine Room. The strategic relationship provides Engine Room live-action clients with exclusive rates for stage andproduction office rentals, as well as grip and lighting services provided by HCS.

Source: News from CGW.com | 14 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

PipelineFX Releases Qube 6.5

LOS ANGELES — PipelineFX, creator of renderfarm management software for digital media creation, has announced the release of Qube 6.5.

Source: News from CGW.com | 14 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

COLLIDER Conference Town Hall Focuses on VFX

NEW YORK, NY — The just-concluded COLLIDER Digital Production Conference proved to be an energetic and, at times, impassioned forum for the exchange of viewpoints and attitudes about ongoing trends in the visual effects, animation and digital production arenas.

Source: News from CGW.com | 14 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

Perforce Software Introduces Perforce Swarm Code Collaboration Platform

ALAMEDA, CA — Perforce Software has announced Perforce Swarm, a code collaboration and peer review platform that enables development teams to work together better and faster, improving both the quality of their software and the speed of their delivery.

Source: News from CGW.com | 14 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

AMD Reveals First-Ever 5 GHz Processor

LOS ANGELES — AMD has unveiled its most powerful member of the AMD FX family of CPUs, the world’s first commercially available 5 GHz CPU processor, the AMD FX-9590.

Source: News from CGW.com | 14 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

CG Awards 2013: CG Videogames Promotion Award

In our CG Awards, we are offering you the chance to suggest nominations in each category via our social media channels. If you know your onions with videogames, let us know who you think should be in the Videogames Promotion Award shortlist. CLOSING DATE FOR NOMINATIONS IS FRIDAY!

Along with Cyperpunk 2077, we reckon The Elder Scrolls Online, God of War: Ascension, Grand Theft Auto V and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag are dead certs for the nomination list in this category. But there are loads more to add to the list and it’s YOUR JOB to tell us which!

Tell us your favourites now on Facebook or Twitter #3dwawards!

The 3D World CG Awards recognises the work of the entire CG entertainment industry: from software and hardware developers who give us the tools and engines to drive creativity, to the artists and technicians involved in pushing the boundaries of CG illustration, animation, visual effects and arch-viz. And in a special award, you can also welcome the artist who you feel has made an outstanding contribution to CG into our Hall of Fame. Find out more here.

Source: 3D World | 13 Jun 2013, 11:00 am

15 tips for better product rendering

Jason Harding’s pro tips for 3ds Max and V-Ray will help you improve your visualisation work

When rendering products, there’s a lot that needs to be taken into consideration to achieve believable results – getting your modelling and lighting correct is just the beginning. Here I’ll share some of the tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the years to improve product renders using 3ds Max and V-Ray.

With each of these tips, I aim to give you an insight into how I tackle product renders. There are many other approaches you can take, but this is my preferred workflow. As a 3D artist, I work on a variety of different projects – be it design visuals, advertisements or animations for TV – but I find myself using many of these techniques on a daily basis.

The main focus of this tutorial is product renders, but the same principles apply to many other areas of 3D, so hopefully everyone will be able to learn a thing or two from them, no matter what field they work in.

01 Start the project with good reference material

If you’re modelling a product that already exists, start by gathering as much reference material as possible, making sure you have views from the front, top and side so that when you’re modelling you can be sure that it looks correct from every angle. This might sound obvious, but if you get your proportions wrong then your render won’t look photorealistic no matter how good your lighting and texturing is.

To view your reference material in your Max scene, model three flat planes in the same proportions as your reference images, and position each one facing flat in the top, front and left viewports. For each reference plane, apply a standard Max material with the image applied to the diffuse slot and select Show Shaded Material In Viewport in the material editor.

02 Work to real-world scale

It’s important to make sure that your scene units are set up correctly and that you model to real-world scale. This will ensure that the lighting in your scene behaves as it would in real life.

Imagine lighting a huge mountain with just a small torch. If you model your product to be much larger than it would be in real life you’ll end up with a similar situation, and the lights won’t behave correctly. You’ll have to dial up the intensity of your lights so much that the results would become unnatural. Working to a real-world scale also future-proofs your scene should you want to introduce any dynamics at a later date, such as liquid or cloth, which rely on your units to be set up correctly.

03 Keep your mesh clean

It’s good practice to keep your mesh clean and relatively low-poly, applying a TurboSmooth modifier to anything that needs extra detail afterwards. This keeps your scene size down, making complex models easier to work with. It also means your model is suitable for any situation, be it a print-resolution visual or a low-poly game model. I prefer to use a TurboSmooth modifier over a MeshSmooth because 3ds Max handles them faster, and converting your mesh to an editable poly rather than an editable mesh gives you more modelling tools to work with.

It is better to model in quads rather than triangles or ngons, because your mesh will deform without pinching or creasing when you apply a TurboSmooth modifier, thereby keeping your renders clean. This is particularly important on refractive materials such as glass, anything with a shiny surface, or anything that will require rigging.

04 Soften hard edges

Real-world objects rarely have sharp edges, so to add realism to your renders it helps to chamfer hard edges. Not only does this make your models look more realistic, but when you light your scene these edges will pick up nice highlights.

Selecting your edges and chamfering them or adding extra edge loops manually are two ways of achieving this, but it could become a tedious process if you are working have complex models.

Another way to achieve this effect is to apply a VrayEdgesTex to the bump channel of your material and then adjust the size setting accordingly. This method will quickly and easily soften the edges of any object that has this material applied to it when you render your scene.

If you combine the VrayEdgesTex material with a noise map using a VrayCompTex, you can add rough chamfered edges to your models should you need to.

05 Avoid Booleans where possible

When modelling non-organic shapes, it’s tempting to put Boolean holes into your mesh to avoid the sometimes tricky process of modelling holes by hand. This can be fine for low-res renders, but if you plan to render at a high resolution, Booleans normally create unpredictable results and an untidy mesh that won’t reflect and refract lights correctly.

To model holes in a flat surface, convert your mesh to an editable poly, go to Vertex Selection and chamfer a single vertex. This will give you a diamond shape within a square. Select the Cut tool and cut between the corners of the square, then select the four vertices on the side of the diamond and scale them up to form a circular shape. Finally, delete the faces of the circle, extrude your mesh, and add a TurboSmooth. You’ll be left with a perfectly round hole.

06 Pay attention to small details

Small details can go a long way when it comes to rendering product shots. It’s often tempting to take short cuts and avoid the small details of a model that won’t be seen very clearly – but it’s a false economy, as it’s often these small details that trick the eye into believing your render is real.

I like to leave the modelling of all these finer details right until the end of the process, after I’ve modelled, lit and rendered my shot. Then I compare my final render to the reference material and try to find any areas where I can add subtle details to enhance the image. This can include extra details, material tweaks, additional bump or displacement maps, dirt materials or additional small lights that only affect certain objects. Adding details and real-world wear and tear reduces that ‘too perfect’ CG look.

07 Use a linear workflow

To get the most realistic results from your renders I recommend using a 32-bit linear workflow. When you save 8-bit images such as .jpg, .bmp or .tga files, they are gamma-encoded (sRGB) to look correct on your monitor, but in fact what you see is a misrepresentation.

These images are actually a lot darker than displayed, so you have to compensate when you light your scene by adding more lights and increasing their intensity, which will increase your render time.

When using a linear workflow, however, you can light your scene using real-world settings, so you don’t have to apply any lighting tricks to make your renders look realistic.

The result is that you won’t have blown-out highlights and contrasted renders, and your lighting and colour reproduction will be more natural. Read about this in Paul Hatton’s linear workflow guide.

08 Three-point lighting

I like to use a three-point lighting set-up, with a key light, a fill light and a back light. The key light shines directly onto the product and serves as its principle illuminator, having the strongest influence over how the shot looks. The fill light is placed on the opposite side, with a lower intensity. This brightens the shadows created by the key, while the back light is placed behind the subject to give subtle highlights and separate the product from the background. This won’t always be the best lighting set-up for every product model, but it’s a good starting point to build on.

09 Typical V-Ray settings

The V-Ray render settings panel can be a bit of a minefield for new users, so in the first instance I would recommend heading over to the Spot3D website where you can find simple explanations and examples of how each option works. To give you a head start, these are the settings I would use for a typical studio scene. There are no right or wrong settings, of course – it depends on the scene you’re rendering and what you want it to look like – but the settings below should get you started.

10 Use a VRayLight to control shadows

Rather than using directional lights or a VRaySun to generate sharp shadows, I prefer to use a standard VRayLight. I scale it down so it’s small and give it a really high intensity.

Applying shadows this way means you have full control over how sharp or soft your shadows are. A small light with a high intensity will give sharp shadows, while a larger light with a low intensity gives a softer shadow.

If you disable Affect Specular and Affect Reflections in the VRayLight settings, the light will only affect the diffuse channel. Add one of these lights, along with a three-point lighting set-up, and the result will be a nice, evenly lit product with sharp shadows in one direction.

11 Use V-Ray’s physical camera

The V-Ray physical camera has many advantages over 3ds Max’s standard camera, allowing you to change your exposure, aperture and white balance as you would with an SLR in real life.

Rather than increasing your light’s intensity or adding more lights, you can change the camera’s exposure for a similar result. I often apply a slight vignette to my camera, or use the camera settings to apply a precise depth of field – an accurate but render-intensive method.

Also, keep your camera’s safe frame turned on at all times by setting your viewport to be your camera’s view and pressing [Ctrl]+[F]. This will ensure that your composition will be the same when you render your image.

12 Use override materials when necessary

When rendering a product in a studio environment, the colour of the backdrop can often overpower the image, affecting the reflection, refraction, GI and shadow colours. If your backdrop is green, for example, this will reflect green onto your product and bounce the colour around your scene if GI is turned on. This might be fine, but it doesn’t always look natural. Using a VrayOverrideMtl lets you control the colour of the reflections, refractions and GI given off by the backdrop, while keeping the base colour the same. You can dial down the intensity of the colours or change it completely, depending on your scene requirements.

To do this, select Get Material from your material editor, double-click VrayOverrideMtl and copy your original material to the Base Material slot. Apply different materials to the other slots to get the effect you want.

13 Experiment with HDRIs and environments

I almost always add an HDRI to my scene to get realistic-looking reflections. To do this, go into your render panel and, under Vray/Vray Environment, switch on Reflection/Refraction Environment Override and click None to add a VrayHDRI material. Drag this into your material editor and apply your HDRI.

Product shots are often rendered in white environments to look clean and professional, but this can also become quite boring because it’s been done a million times before. As well as changing your HDRI, try experimenting with different background colours. Contrasting colours can make your render stand out more and add more interest to your shot. Or you could try adding a simple environment around your product, which will give it more purpose and a real environment to reflect from.

14 Quick preview renders

For a quick preview render to see how your lights and materials are behaving, the only two settings I lower are the Min/Max Subdivs under Adaptive DMC Image Sampler and the Noise Threshold under Settings/DMC Sampler. For final renders I set the Min and Max Subdivs to 1 and 8, and the Noise Threshold to 0.01 – but for a quick preview, just change all the settings to 1. These two settings alone can double your render speeds while maintaining enough detail to see what the lights and materials in your scene look like.

Another good way to get quick previews of your scene is by setting your viewport’s active shader to V-Ray RT, V-Ray’s real-time render engine. This is great way to preview if your lights and materials are working without having to render your scene each time you make a change.

15 Render in passes

This is often overlooked, but in the long run rendering in passes can save time and really improve your renders. It can take time to set up in your 3ds Max scene, but if you’re rendering high-res images or animations, different passes can be rendered at the same time and won’t affect your render times too much.

These passes give you control over individual diffuse, reflection and specular channels, depth of field and much more without having to render any frames again. Choose what you want to render in the Render Setup dialog under Render Elements – I always render specular, reflection, Z-depth and material ID passes at a minimum.

Jason Harding is a freelance 3D artist based in south London with over eight years of advertising, design and TV experience

What should be in the shortlist for the 3D World Hall of Fame Award in the 3D World CG Awards 2013?

Tell us now on Facebook or Twitter #3dwawards!

 

Free 3D software! Discover seven top tools to download today, at Creative Bloq.

Source: 3D World | 13 Jun 2013, 10:13 am

3D art: Steampunk meets the Orient

Inspired by comics and culture, the artist here experimented with various finishes before he was happy with the final look

Artist: Onur Cayli
Title: The Army of East
Software: V-Ray, ZBrush, 3D-Coat, Mari, Photoshop

“I work as a 3D character artist by trade. In the past, I have worked for major companies in the 3D industry, such as DreamWorks, Sony Pictures and Massive Black. I spent roughly two months working on this particular project. One of the things I especially enjoyed about this piece of work was creating an artwork that was similar in style to oriental paintings with a hint of steampunk style. The combinations of those two unique influences have, I feel, given this scene a special atmosphere.

“I like to sketch out the scene to achieve better lighting and a sense of atmosphere before fully rendering in V-Ray. I also got some screenshots at different angles from Maya, painted black and white in Photoshop to get a good silhouette. Then, I added colour to check if the balance and contrast was good enough for the final image.

“When I was finalising the finished version, I approached it more as a painting than as just a render and tried several finishes before I was happy with the way it looked. I feel that sometimes you can be very limited if you try to finish everything using only render engines. I enjoy flexibility in my work and often go back and forth between rendering and conceptualising. As an artist, I am inspired by comics and culture.”

Get published

If you would like to see your work featured in 3D World, email us, attaching a low-res version of the image

Source: 3D World | 13 Jun 2013, 10:00 am

Columbia Pictures names Andrew Z. Davis President, Production Administrator

CULVER CITY, CA — Andrew Z. Davis has been named President of Production Administration for Columbia Pictures, it was announced by Doug Belgrad, President of Columbia Pictures.

Source: News from CGW.com | 13 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

CG Awards 2013: Plug-in of the Year

In our CG Awards, we are offering you the chance to suggest nominations in each category via our social media channels. We’ve put our heads together and have a few plug-ins in mind that we’d put on the shortlist but what do you love? Let us know! Don’t delay as the CLOSING DATE FOR NOMINATIONS IS 14 JUNE!

A plug-in… What difference a plug-in can make.. Some of the ones we’ve heard the most buzz about are X Particles for Cinema 4D, Maxwell 2.7, E-on Carbon scatter and Newton physics for AE, but you tell us what you think.

Tell us your favourites now on Facebook or Twitter #3dwawards!

The 3D World CG Awards recognises the work of the entire CG entertainment industry: from software and hardware developers who give us the tools and engines to drive creativity, to the artists and technicians involved in pushing the boundaries of CG illustration, animation, visual effects and arch-viz. And in a special award, you can also welcome the artist who you feel has made an outstanding contribution to CG into our Hall of Fame. Find out more here.

Source: 3D World | 12 Jun 2013, 11:03 am

CG Awards 2013: CG Videogames In-Game Award

In our CG Awards, we are offering you the chance to suggest nominations in each category via our social media channels. We’ve put our heads together and have a few ideas for the Videogames In-Game shortlist but what do you love? Let us know! Don’t delay as the CLOSING DATE FOR NOMINATIONS IS FRIDAY!

Here are a few videogame names from the past year to nudge your memory banks or whet your appetite. But are there others you would suggest for nominations in this category?

Unchartered 3
Sleeping Dogs
Killzone 3
Borderlands 2
Battlefield 3
Crysis 3

Tell us your favourites now on Facebook or Twitter #3dwawards!

The 3D World CG Awards recognises the work of the entire CG entertainment industry: from software and hardware developers who give us the tools and engines to drive creativity, to the artists and technicians involved in pushing the boundaries of CG illustration, animation, visual effects and arch-viz. And in a special award, you can also welcome the artist who you feel has made an outstanding contribution to CG into our Hall of Fame. Find out more here.

Source: 3D World | 12 Jun 2013, 10:20 am

Roaring bear: experimenting with poses

The artist of Roaring Bear loves to experiment with character poses – using inspiration from nature to spur him on

Artist: Bogi Piroth
Title: Roaring Bear
Software: Maya, ZBrush

I’ve been working as a character artist for eight years now, mostly working in cinematics and games. It is hard to pick a career highlight, but I really liked working on the Assassin’s Creed series. If I had to pick one, then probably that is what I enjoyed the most.

I use Maya to make a very low-polygon base mesh. I then take it into ZBrush, and try to work in symmetry as much as possible. After setting the posing, I have to resculpt most of the forms because of the muscle deformations. After final detailing in ZBrush, I take a decimated version back into Maya for rendering – nothing fancy, just a simple lit-clay render.

On average I spend about one to two weeks working on a sculpture. I tend to experiment a lot with the pose, often changing or redoing whole parts. If I’m not careful, I really could spend an eternity on them.

There are no tricks or shortcuts. Doing a lot of research and drawing, when possible from nature, can come in very handy when making poses but also studying the underlying anatomy in depth is essential.

Get published

If you would like to see your work featured in 3D World, email us, attaching a low-res version of the image

Source: 3D World | 12 Jun 2013, 10:00 am

Nathan Love Steps into the Ring for Battroborgs

Battroborgs, TOMY’s motion-controlled battling robot toys, leap to vivid life in a CG spot thanks to the animation pros at Nathan Love.

Source: News from CGW.com | 12 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

Now You See This

MONTREAL — Visual effects production studio Rodeo FX has “magically” delivered 350 complex VFX shots for “Now You See Me,” serving as the film’s main visual effects vendor. The film was released by Summit Entertainment May 31.

Source: News from CGW.com | 12 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

Zombie Motion for N3V Games’ 'Dead On Arrival 2' Captured with iPi Motion Capture

MOSCOW — The next wave of zombie action is about to be unleashed in Dead On Arrival 2 – the latest installment in the popular mobile video game created by the Queensland, Australia-based N3V Games.

Source: News from CGW.com | 12 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

3D Systems to Acquire Phenix Systems

ROCK HILL, SC — 3D Systems has signed agreements to acquire approximately 80 percent of Phenix Systems, a global provider of Direct Metal Selective Laser Sintering 3D Printers based in Riom, France.

Source: News from CGW.com | 12 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

Academy Announces Medal Placements For 2013 Student Academy Awards

BEVERLY HILLS, CA — Sixteen students from colleges and universities around the world were honored recently as winners at the 40th Student Academy Awards ceremony at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The medal placements were announced at the ceremony hosted by writer-director and 1978 Student Academy Award winner Bob Saget. Writer-director Kimberly Peirce and actors Clark Gregg, Jason Schwartzman and Quvenzhané Wallis presented the awards.

Source: News from CGW.com | 10 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

Red Giant Ships PluralEyes 3.2 for Windows

Portland, OR — Red Giant has released PluralEyes 3.2 for Windows, a new update to its audio/video syncing software.

Source: News from CGW.com | 7 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

MPC Produces Epic Battle

Artists take viewers on a VFX journey in a stunning commercial across time and space.

Source: News from CGW.com | 6 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

Intel to License SoftKinetic Technology for Perceptual Computing SDK

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — SoftKinetic, a leading 3D gesture recognition software and solution provider, has entered into an agreement with Intel to license iisu, SoftKinetic's industry-leading middleware for close-range gesture tracking - to be included in the Intel Perceptual Computing Software Development Kit (SDK).

Source: News from CGW.com | 6 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

Adobe Looks to the Cloud for New Product Innovation Delivery

LOS ANGELES — At Adobe MAX, The Creativity Conference, Adobe accelerated its shift to the cloud with a major update to Adobe Creative Cloud, the company’s flagship offering for creatives.

Source: News from CGW.com | 6 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

In the Game

Logan and Conscious Minds bring Calvin Johnson, Alex Morgan, Neymar Jr. and Allyson Felix into animated games for Nike+.

Source: News from CGW.com | 6 Jun 2013, 3:00 am

Pixologic Unveils SIGGRAPH Schedule

SIGGRAPH is fast approaching, and Pixologic, maker of its flagship ZBrush digital sculpting and painting program and Sculptris, easy-to-use sculpting software, has already set up a full schedule at its booth (529 in Exhibit Hall C) from July 23 through July 25.

Source: News from CGW.com | 6 Jun 2013, 3:00 am