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COVER ARTIST Amir Zand SOFTWARE Cinema 4D R23, Quixel Bridge, Arnold Renderer, Photoshop

WELCOME This issue’s cover is adorned with a wonderful cel-shaded science fiction render, which plays in the style of classic anime like Akira.

Not content to just show you the awesome art, we teamed up with the creator to bring you training to help you build your own celshaded masterpieces.

Elsewhere we turn to Hollywood, to see how the team behind Those Who Wish Me Dead went about their world-burning visual effects.

If you have been following along with our series on award-winning studio Blue Zoo, then you’ll be pleased to find the next instalment here, along with our regular Q&A panel answering your CG woes, industry insights, and more.

Plus, to help you make the right investment we have rounded up a selection of the very best ultrawide monitors for 3D artists, in our latest group test.

Rob Redman, Editor rob.redman@futurenet.com

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CONTENTS 3D WORLD ISSUE 278

ARTIST SHOWCASE

8 The Gallery

Discover the best digital art from the CG community

40 Tech Focus: Lighting

Wessel Huizenga on how he achieved the desired mood for his interior render

THE PIPELINE

42 Create striking stylised scenes with toon shading

The artist behind our striking scifi cover this month, Amir Zand, takes us step-by-step through his creative process, demonstrating how to achieve that incredible cel-shaded look

78 Tech Focus: Hair creation 52 Produce interactive with HairNet volumetric videos How Anna Schmelzer used the HairNet Blender add-on for this amazing portrait

Learn how to use HoloSuite, a collection of post-production tools developed by Arcturus Studios, with this quick guide

model by Andres Zambrano

Delve into the VR illustration tool Quill and create a beautiful, stylised environment

95 Tech Focus: Sculpting detailed scales in ZBrush 56 Paint a serene landscape Check out this awesome dragon in virtual reality

FEATURES

22 Blue Zoo – Part 4: Lighting, compositing and workflows

The team behind Blue Zoo’s children’s animated shows talk lighting and comp workflows in part 4 of our series

32 Those Who Wish Me Dead

62 Redshift material: top tips for your 3D toolbox Mike Griggs provides an expert guide to the Redshift render engine, sharing his top material tips for enhancing your imagery

66 Use Katana for lookdev and lighting

Get started with Foundry’s Katana Rodeo FX reveal the secrets and discover how you can utilise behind the amazing visual effects this powerful lighting tool in your of this action thriller film own projects

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ARTIST Q&A

70 Your CG problems solved Pro artists tackle your queries

THE HUB

80 Meet the Artist

We interview Ellie Lucas, commercial director at Saddington Baynes

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84 Day in the life

Jennifer McSpadden breaks down a typical day working in the field of virtual production at Goodbye Kansas Studios

86 Beast masters

Go behind the groundbreaking VFX of YT Industries’ Return Of The Goat II: New World Order

REVIEWS

88 Group test: Ultra-wide displays

84

We test, rate and review four ultra-wide desktop monitors to help you decide which is the best fit for your work environment

94 Vyper FDM 3D printer

Great-quality results and excellent value, this 3D printer should be on your shortlist

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3D WORLD 7

The best digital art from the CG community

I ALWAYS WANTED TO CREATE A GOTHIC ENVIRONMENT THAT ALLOWS THE OBSERVER TO SEE AND UNDERSTAND THE STORY 08 3D WORLD

CG art to inspire

GOTHIC MEDIEVAL ENVIRONMENT ARTIST Efe Kaan Güney SOFTWARE Blender, Substance Painter, Unreal Engine 5

3D environment artist Efe Kaan Güney spent ten days creating this atmospheric scene. “I always wanted to create a Gothic environment that allows the observer to see and understand the story,” he explains to 3D World, “and I enjoyed making the landscape and lighting.” Güney tried to make his own landscape material and terrain, so opted to use a texture atlas for the trees and modular pieces for the log houses, castle and bay.

Creating realistic foliage and vegetation presented a particularly tough challenge for Güney, as he knew that he would need to maintain that optimised and realistic look in all his 3D models. “I usually go looking for textures of leaves, branches

etc to use in my final packaged textures,” he recalls. “Always use packaged textures, that'll save you more memory from your project. If you find the right texture for you, in Substance Source or Quixel Megascans for example, you can just use them with a texture atlas.” When he can’t find the right texture Güney usually models his branches and leaves in Blender, before baking them onto a plane to create his own baked maps and create textures from scratch, merging a lot of things from his library. If working on a large environment Güney usually creates some trim sheets and atlases to use in a lot of meshes to maintain optimisation.

“What drives me is that, with art in general, nothing is impossible and there will always be room for improvement,” Güney reflects, “there is no limit for an artist to improve.” kaandima.artstation.com 3D WORLD 09

THOR’SILDEON

CG art to inspire

ARTIST Connor Sheehan SOFTWARE Blender, Cycles, Photoshop

Freelance concept artist Connor Sheehan spent roughly four hours creating this epic image, having modelled and conceived the characters separately. Sheehan particularly enjoyed creating a functional piece of fantasy armour for his character, which was inspired by modern-day military gear.

“The characters were created in Blender using something I like to refer to as a calamari rig,” Sheehan tells 3D World. “I model the character as if it was an asset and then parent the limbs to each other to form a faux rig. For example, fingers to hands, hands to forearms and so on.” In this way, he treats his characters like environment assets, using transform tools to position the limbs and create simple poses. “Doing this,

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I can create a character that I can reuse in the pipeline multiple times without spending time on rigging or animation,” he adds.

In his pursuit to find the most efficient way of working, Sheehan uses programs like AKVIS OilPaint and Topaz Studio 2 to quickly apply brush strokes and filters to a piece before rendering out several of them with varying styles and paint strokes.

“In Photoshop, I apply this one by one, painting them in with masks as to not overwhelm the piece,” he explains.

“The key is to ensure the foundations of the piece remain and you’re just adding the cherries on top. To make a piece believable you can either go hyperreal, which takes too long for me and is a bit of a bore, or you could take the piece towards a more painterly and expressive finish, which I find does the job perfectly. With a few personal tweaks and overpainting, I'm done!” connorsheehan.co.uk

CG art to inspire

I MODEL THE CHARACTER AS IF IT WAS AN ASSET AND THEN PARENT THE LIMBS TO EACH OTHER TO FORM A FAUX RIG

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CG art to inspire

A MONSTER CALLS

‘KILLER CROC’ ARTIST Marcus Whinney SOFTWARE ZBrush, Photoshop, KeyShot

Marcus Whinney is a senior character artist at Ndream Studio and has more than eight years of experience in 3D art. Exploring references and creating something that no other artist has made before was a highlight of Whinney’s process on this fan art of Batman’s fearsome foe Killer Croc.

When it comes to his personal concept work, Whinney tries to use as many default brushes as possible so that those who watch his videos and tutorials can follow along.

“My main block-out brushes inside of ZBrush are the Move, DamStandard, ClayBuildUp and Smooth. Once I get the overall shape and silhouette the way I like it I then move onto using more specific brushes to get the finer details,” he adds.

For this model, Whinney wanted to explore using alphas on the Standard brush and created his own alphas inside of ZBrush to mimic crocodile scales. “I created 25 alphas inside of ZBrush, which I then used as a stamp to create the base scale designs and patterns on my model,” he continues. “These would then be defined later using the Rake and Clay brush to add more details and clean up the alpha texture overlaps.”

When texturing, Whinney tends to use the Standard brush with the Stroke set to Color Spray, then in the Alpha tab, he uses ZBrush’s default Alpha07. “This creates a spray gun style of painting like you would have for real miniatures.” marcus_lw.artstation.com

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CG art to inspire

SUMMER AND LAKE ARTIST Irakli Kurashvili SOFTWARE Cinema 4D, Octane Render, After Effects

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CG artist and Metrograph Studio art director Irakli Kurashvili spent a day of his free time crafting this idyllic lake environment. Kurashvili drew on his 13 years of experience as well as his love of nature to bring the environment to life. “Nature inspires me most of all,” he tells 3D World, “chaos and order in the same place within it. I like to observe every little bit.” He also took inspiration from art: “I like the aesthetics of classic paintings and wanted to merge them together with modern CGI techniques.”

Since his inspiration arose from classic paintings, Kurashvili used the ACES workflow to make sure all the

colour information was present. “I found this workflow works best for achieving realistic and painterly results,” he adds.

The creative process begins with the main objects in Kurashvili’s scene, before he moves on to smaller ones. “After I have established the main composition, I go to the rendering phase,” he explains, “tweaking lights is the most timeconsuming phase for me. Sometimes I make drastic changes after looking at my renders. Since I view myself as a permanent student, I am not afraid to delete my whole scene and start over.” instagram.com/irakli.kurashvilii

MANDOLEGORIAN Lookdev, lighting and texture artist Kevin Durán created this adorable image during his first month at CineLight Academy, where he’s currently learning new techniques and perfecting old ones. The project took four weeks, with layout, texturing, lookdev/lighting and compositing taking about a week each.

“I enjoyed being able to train my eye to better capture and represent my reference in a 3D scene,” Durán explains.

“It was super entertaining to create the textures of these characters using the

LEGO format and putting the project together little by little, bringing them to life.” Few simulations were used to bring the image to life, Durán explains that he only simulated the cape using Marvelous Designer because he found that it was the best way to achieve an organic look for the characters.

The textures for the Mandalorian and Grogu were created inside of Substance Painter and imported back into Maya to be rendered in Arnold. Durán created a studio lighting rig to be able to work on

CG art to inspire

ARTIST Kevin Durán SOFTWARE Maya, Quixel Megascans, Arnold, Substance Painter, Nuke, After Effects the lookdev and fix the minor details.

“Because,” he adds, “as you all know, the devil is in the details.”

“One of the challenges that this project brought was that it was my first time using Foundry's Nuke to do my compositing,” he explains. “The team at CineLight Academy gave me all the tools and encouragement to feel comfortable while learning the new software. I am very grateful to them.” kevinduran.artstation.com

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CG art to inspire

SV-001 A RE-IMAGINED CLASSIC ARTIST Marcos Motta SOFTWARE Blender, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Photoshop, Marmoset Toolbag

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To create this charming ode to the classic arcade game Metal Slug, Brazil-based 3D artist Marcos Motta spent around two weeks using a modern workflow that consisted of bevel modelling through Blenderbased shaders. “The great advantage of this workflow is that I can bake it into a normal map, without actually modelling,” he explains, “and that I have perfect bevels without spending hours in hard-surface topology with crazy Booleans. I can simply bake the rest of the maps in Substance, using my normal map as high-poly mesh.”

Motta strove not just to translate the SV-001 design from 2D to 3D, but

to imagine how the design would look today, with flashy colours, stylised shapes and more.

“The workflow is really simple,” Motta recalls, “I start with the blockout, planning how the components will work, not worrying about topology or anything like that. Then I start my high-poly, based on my blockout, but now with the details. The key here is to make a topology similar to what will be in the low-poly. After baking, I go to textures in Substance; a tip for stylisation is to use a lot of gradients and baked light in base colour.” marcosmottaart.artstation.com

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KID AND THE HYENAS ARTIST David Kwahk SOFTWARE Maya, V-Ray, ZBrush, Mudbox, Mari, NukeX, Substance Painter, Marvelous Designer

Modelling, texturing, lookdev artist and 3D generalist David Kwahk recently graduated from Gnomon – School of Visual Effects, Games & Animation and is busy looking for his first job in the industry. Kwahk created this emotive piece for a demo reel class at Gnomon taught by Miguel Ortega. The piece is based on a concept by concept designer Xiaoyu Huang. “My favourite part was working on the kid’s expression and body language,” Kwahk recalls. “What really struck me when I saw Xiaoyu’s painting for the first time was how he portrayed a sense of normalcy in what would otherwise be a tense situation. The lighting is flat and muted, neither of the hyenas look theatrical and the kid isn’t shrivelling back in fear or being overly daring. I thought that added so much more impact.”

Kwahk’s characters are usually posed in ZBrush with Transpose Master, but with this project he took the model into Mixamo to generate a basic rig that could be used to pose the kid in Maya. “This made it really easy to block out the scene since I wouldn’t have to keep going between Maya and ZBrush,” he adds. “After posing I brought the model into Marvelous Designer as a morph target to have the shirt simulate and sit naturally. I try and keep texturing as procedural as possible – the vast majority of my Mari workflow is adjusting tileables with the colour lookup, hue, saturation, value, levels, and brightness lookup nodes. My masks are usually air brushed in with procedural overlays to give it natural breakup.” davidkwahk.artstation.com

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CG art to inspire

I BROUGHT THE MODEL INTO MARVELOUS DESIGNER AS A MORPH TARGET TO HAVE THE SHIRT SIMULATE AND SIT NATURALLY

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ORANGUTAN

SOFTWARE ZBrush, Mari, XGen, Maya, Arnold YEAR CREATED 2019 ARTIST Martin Usandizaga LOCATION France I am a student in 3D/VFX with two years of CG experience. I love modelling and texturing creatures and animals.

I created this orangutan to challenge myself by reproducing an animal that I particularly like.

My main goal was to make it as real as possible.

Anatomy was essential to study with a lot of references. I spent a lot of time doing research and getting inspired by other artists. I think that learning how things are working for other artists/ studios is great to help motivate you to keep pushing your work further. www.artstation.com/martinusandizaga

3D WORLD 21

In part four of our in-depth series on Blue Zoo, we take a look at the process of lighting and compositing for episodic 3D animations World’s in-depth series on leading UK animation company Blue Zoo has so far covered the studio’s journey and approach to producing joyfully compelling stories, its visual and story development processes, and its animation pipeline. In this fourth instalment we take a closer look at Blue Zoo’s lighting and comp workflows, the tools they use to create their stunning animated aesthetics, particularly challenging projects, integrating complex effects and, as ever, we get their top tips for aspiring artists that

3D

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want to add professional lighting and comp to their own projects. So, without further ado, let’s lift the lid on the art of lighting and comp for 3D animation.

THE POST PROCESS

Arthur Tibbett is a CG supervisor at Blue Zoo. His responsibilities include the design and implementation of new workflows covering both the technical and artistic aspects of an animation pipeline, as well as adopting strategies to tackle unique creative challenges, which he cites as one of the most enjoyable aspects of his role.

Blue Zoo: Lighting, compositing and workflows

Above: A still from Playmobil: Top Agents When working on a preschool TV series, the team are careful not to make the characters too dark or the lighting too contrasting

#4 LIGHTING, COMPOSITING AND WORKFLOWS

Blue Zoo: Lighting, compositing and workflows

“I work with artists and technical directors (TDs) to help solve problems,” he tells 3D World, “I’m often involved with projects we do in the short form team from the very start to the end, helping artists and giving feedback and quality control with directors and creative leads.”

Tibbett is no stranger to Blue Zoo’s lighting and comp departments and the work they do to create beautiful renders on a selection of children’s television shows, commercial campaigns and advertisements. “The lighting and comp artists are responsible for turning the animated 3D models and rigs into beautiful 2D rendered images, using a whole host of different software and techniques depending on the creative challenges of the project,” he adds.

Making a 3D animated show involves many different disciplines and extensive planning and preparation before it gets to the stage where it is ready for lighting and comp. Characters and environments have to be designed to fit the style that the creators

Above: Pip and Posy is a series for 3-5-year-olds based on the popular picture books by Axel Scheffler and Camilla Reid

“THE AMOUNT OF CONTROL AND ITERATION AN ARTIST CAN DO WITH A REAL-TIME RENDERER IS AMAZING” Arthur Tibbett, CG supervisor, Blue Zoo

and directors imagine, then 3D models are made, textured, shaded, and rigged so that they can be animated. “After a shot has been animated it is passed to the lighting and compositing department,” Tibbett explains. “It can take a year or two for the assets to get to a point where they are ready for this stage of the pipeline, depending on the complexity of the show.”

With animation complete, the lighting and compositing department uses a series of tools designed and implemented by Blue Zoo’s supervisors and pipeline 24 3D WORLD

team to create their shots and render the images. “Because of the complexity of modern shows, sophisticated tools are needed to manage files and track the status of assets, so the artists can focus on what they do best, making beautiful images,” says Tibbett. When the lighters have translated the 3D scenes into 2D images through rendering, they take it to compositing, where they tweak colours and make final enhancements to the images, sometimes adding depth of field and motion blur.

Blue Zoo: Lighting, compositing and workflows

“There are three main aspects of a lighting and comp pipeline that can be broken down into many more tiny steps,” Tibbett explains.

“Firstly we cache the 3D animated files into a less computing heavy format that will be quicker when using the scenes. We often use the alembic or .abc file format for this, although we do also use Redshift proxies a lot to manage high resolution and dense mesh assets.

“Secondly we bring the caches into Maya, make a shot file and use these with Redshift to render the 2D images that we’ll take into

Nuke for compositing. Finally, we bring the 2D renders from Maya and Redshift into Nuke, or quite often in the short form team we use After Effects as it offers great motion graphics libraries and solutions.” Blue Zoo also has many custom-written pipeline tools, including those that allow artists to create template shots to use as a base for creating many other shots that may share lighting conditions.

STRAIGHT OUTTA COMP

Blue Zoo’s lighting and comp workflows can vary from project

Above: Pip and Posy is a Magic Light show, and needed to follow some specific rules so that it could sit well next to their other productions like The Gruffalo and Stick Man

to project. The core pipeline can service most projects in one way or another, but custom tools and workflows are then made depending on the technical and creative challenges of the project.

“The amount of variation from the core pipeline can vary drastically, a lot of the projects we do in Maya and Nuke share similar workflows, however, we have done projects in Unreal Engine and Blender where completely new tools and workflow are needed,” explains Tibbett.

During production on its short film Ada, Blue Zoo used Maya to model, rig and animate the 3D characters, then opted to use Unreal Engine to light and render the shots using FBX caches from Maya. “Using Unreal Engine allowed us to adopt new creative workflows and the amount of control and iteration an artist could do with a real-time renderer was amazing compared to our usual offline rendering techniques,” says Tibbett.

More recently Blue Zoo worked on an ambitious advertising campaign for sports equipment producer ASICS. “The style was very 2D and graphic,” Tibbett recalls, “we came up with some interesting techniques to create the 2D feel with 3D animated characters. We used techniques 3D WORLD 25

Blue Zoo: Lighting, compositing and workflows

to create a lot of the lighting in 2D with a lot of different AOV passes and composited them in Nuke.”

Just like the animation that comes before it, lighting and comp is crucial for telling a story, helping to set the mood and atmosphere of a particular shot or sequence.

“It wouldn’t feel very dangerous if the characters were dangling above the fire of a volcano if you couldn’t see that it was clearly hot and giving off light,” says Tibbett by way of an example, “equally importantly, you can tell the time of day with lighting, it’s something that doesn’t need to be said by the actors but can be very important depending on the context.”

Francesca Pesce, senior light and compositing artist at Blue Zoo, is perfectly placed to discuss how lighting and comp help to tell a story. One way it does this is through depth of field. “If you have a moment where the character is the focus, then you will push the depth of field stronger,” she explains, “so the background will be more blurred. If you instead had to show a scenario then you will have a far lower depth of field, because you really want to show details.” This element of comp helps the audience to focus on what’s necessary to follow the story. “If the shot is just ten seconds and the audience doesn’t know where to look, they might miss something really important,” she continues, “realistically you might not have enough time to polish the lighting so it’s perfectly focusing on what you want them to follow. That’s where the comp can help you.”

Comp also allows artists to refine each shot, balancing light ‘hotspots’ with darker areas to create a distinct foreground, midground and background that replicates the visual language of live-action cinema and helps the audience to focus on what’s important to the overall story.

LIGHT IT UP

As has become increasingly clear throughout this series of features, story is the guiding force throughout production at Blue Zoo. Lighting and comp artists are required to consider story 26 3D WORLD

Above, top: Underwater scenes are enjoyable for lighters and compositors, presenting extra challenges like 2D effects, distortion, volumetric lights and bubbles Above, middle: A still from a challenging episode of Go Jetters taking place in Nepal. It featured several times of day and lots of snow

despite some of the more technical challenges of their craft. Pesce understands the necessity of this more than most: “When I was a younger artist, I had this moment where I lit a scene and I don’t think I really got what was going on. The animators came to me and said ‘look, the character’s face isn’t showing the expression, so we’re missing a joke’.” Pesce realised her lighting had in fact inadvertently made the joke unreadable, and she has emphasised the importance of understanding the story throughout post-production ever since.

This also becomes important when establishing the mood of a

scene. There is, for instance, more than one way to light a sunset.

Lighters have to consider whether the sun is setting over a romantic scene, a melancholic one and so on. They also need to consider whether the characters are backlit to create a strong silhouette, or lit from the front to accentuate facial expressions. Much of Blue Zoo’s work is for a preschool audience and even lighting artists need to keep this in mind when working on a scene. “There are some limitations in this sense,” Pesce admits, “because if the target audience is quite young then it’s really important to always keep the characters well lit and not go too

Blue Zoo: Lighting, compositing and workflows

THE KEYMASTER FRANCESCA PESCE TELLS 3D WORLD ABOUT THE

IMPORTANCE OF CRAFTING A GREAT MASTER SHOT FOR LIGHTING AND COMPOSITING

dark. It’s not an extreme limitation, it’s not that you can’t play with it, but you can’t go too extreme on one side or another.”

Serving the story also means that lighting artists are forced to balance real-world physics with the right atmosphere or emotion for a scene. “There’s always a bit of in-between,” Pesce adds, “if there are windows, you obviously want the light to come from their side.

Maybe that means the character will be backlit and you have to turn the light around and cheat so it’s not completely backlit. Or maybe you want to really cheat and have the character’s face visible, then you just pretend there are other windows in front of them. It’s really a lot of cheating.” Whilst the ability to replicate real-world lighting is a great asset for any artist’s skillset, being able to play with lighting

Above: For its Ada short, Blue Zoo used Unreal Engine to create a raw and emotive film in illustrated and characterful styles Each episode of Go Jetters takes place in a different location, with its own challenges in terms of lighting and 3D and 2D effects

Generally, the master shot is the key shot. The shot that's taken as a reference for all the others to come. It's a good visual reference for junior artists but also for anybody. If you work in a team, rather than just using pretty words, you want to actually show what you want to achieve. That’s the shot that everything else should be coming from.

When you work in production, with maybe 15 other people, just the visual reference won't be enough but you need to create it to build a solid structure that the team can copy over. When I build the lighting shot, for instance, before I even start putting lights in and giving creative input, I have to set it up technically. So render settings, AOV passes, render layers. There’s all these things you don't want to leave to chance or to a single individual, you want to set them up first.

There's still going to be creative freedom, but within reason. There are a lot of people that join Blue Zoo straight from school and aren’t necessarily experienced with render settings, I think it’s the most boring part of lighting so not everybody is into it and that's why it's important for me to set it up first. There might be adjustments from shot to shot but you have a setup that you know is not going to end up with lots of noise. It’s the same for compositing. You set up the structure, for instance, if you want to reveal the beauty you might want to create a base for it. Then you know that within your team, everybody has the same. It's really important, especially when you have a big team.

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Blue Zoo: Lighting, compositing and workflows

ENLIGHTEN ME CHECK OUT THESE LIGHTING

AND COMPOSITING TIPS FROM BLUE ZOO’S ARTHUR TIBBETT AND FRANCESCA PESCE

1.

FOCUS ON YOUR KEY SHOT

When I was a lighting and compositing artist I found my best results were when I spent time making a really nice key still image. It was much easier to render one frame and comp it, then get it approved by the leads and directors, than it was to render a load of sequences. Make your key shot as bulletproof as possible and use that as a template for the rest of your shots in the same sequence with the same lighting conditions. You'll find it a lot easier to adjust only lights based on the angle of the camera in the shot than setting up the same scenario over and over again.

2.

TRAIN YOUR EYE

There’s a lot you need to go through with lighting. It's not just the technical side, it’s the creative eye to understand a sunset, what kind of light bounces from the sky, which colour and why – there's a lot of knowledge that’s necessary.

There are a lot of resources online. If you want to be a lighting and comp artist you need to show that you can deal with at least an interior, an exterior, and maybe two or three different times of day. That's already telling me that you have the flexibility to approach different situations in different lighting setups.

3.

4.

GATHER REFERENCES

Get solid reference. Working to a solid reference and moodboard makes your life so much easier when trying to get a beautiful render.

HONE YOUR CRAFT

Try to do as much as you can, and try to do things on your own as well. Trying to see if you’re independent is really important. It's nice to have an understanding of the entire process of what you're doing when you learn any discipline, lighting and comp is the same. Rather than just being like a robot with that really specific knowledge that makes you just competent, try to have an understanding of colour theory, how the light works, how the 3D model works and how shading works. You don't necessarily need to go to animation or rigging, although a little bit does also help. A little bit of everything. I think that's really important.

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within those constraints and bolster the storytelling is what makes a project truly stand out.

Continuity is another key element of visual storytelling.

Essentially, continuity means that every shot has to work in sequence, maintaining consistent actions and details. Pesce adds that continuity even trumps creativity in some circumstances. “You have to start from continuity to make sure every shot works, rather than having one extremely beautiful shot that looks completely out of place,” she explains. “The first step someone needs to keep in mind is continuity, then you can put things on top to make it better and tweak the light. You can do all of these things as long as you don’t forget that it needs to feel like a whole.”

TRICKS OF THE LIGHT

One of the major challenges involved in lighting and compositing is the integration of 2D or 3D effects, namely elements like water, rain, fire, extreme weather and more. “Go Jetters was a project where we had lots of 3D effects,” Pesce recalls. “There’s a lot of problem-solving involved in integrating 3D effects. I was

literally sitting next to the effects department. There were fluids, volumes, lots of different kinds of 3D effects and we had to deal with it episode by episode. There was a lot of strong communication between departments because we needed to understand what they could provide us, what we could use and how to integrate it.”

Pesce and the team also need to manage 2D effects, something they usually turn to Adobe’s After Effects for. “It’s actually far easier than Nuke when it comes to magic effects that you see in preschool TV series. We use After Effects and then bring the 2D effects or motion graphics we’ve created back into Nuke. It’s about having an openminded approach to the process.

Sometimes you might just do lighting, sometimes you do lighting and compositing, 2D effects, 3D effects and so on. It’s nice and diverse,” Pesce explains.

Go Jetters is a show that sees its titular characters explore the world. This means every episode presents a fresh challenge for the lighting and compositing artists.

“Maybe you need volumetric light, maybe they’re underwater, maybe you need caustics, maybe it’s

Blue Zoo: Lighting, compositing and workflows

“YOU HAVE TO START FROM CONTINUITY TO MAKE SURE EVERY SHOT WORKS… IT NEEDS TO FEEL LIKE A WHOLE” Francesca Pesce, senior light and compositing artist, Blue Zoo

sunset or a rainy day. You have to think about the 2D effects, the 3D effects, there’s a lot of variables.”

Pesce spent time with Blue Zoo’s research and development department to figure out each new 3D effect.

“For instance, there was an episode with a hurricane. In the end, we did it a little bit as a volume, 3D effect, then partly as a texture and merged it together.

I used different layers just to put it together and make it work. It went from modelling to effects to us, just to build something that was believable and sat nicely in the shot,” Pesce recalls. This kind of diversity was incredibly rewarding for the lighting team. “Obviously what the lighter wants most is the challenge,” she continues.

“Sometimes shows have a lot of the same lighting setups. The show could be really brilliant but from a lighter perspective that could be boring. Go Jetters had all these changes. I remember another episode when the characters shrunk, then one with fireflies that

Above: Pesce found it extremely fun to play with a stronger depth of field, giving a macro look to this episode of Go Jetters in which the characters are shrunk to the size of an ant The grass blades in this episode had subsurface scattering, which felt like a treat for the lighting artists – subsurface scattering is usually avoided in this fastpaced production as it’s time consuming to render

lit the night scene. There’s a lot of diversity that I really like, the challenge is every episode you have to approach it in a different way.”

Lighting and comp artists also have to contend with the usual challenges of production, challenges that Pesce has been navigating for her entire career: “We have a schedule, we have planning, and there’s always a moment where something might go wrong, things are delayed, and because lighting and comp is the last bit of the production

sometimes we have to deal with it. We have to make the delivery.

It could be bits and bobs from any department that haven’t been finished. Sometimes we do layout, meaning we add things in the foreground and make the shot nicer. Sometimes we add shaders because maybe they weren’t ready.

I think that’s the biggest challenge for lighting and comp. We’re the last ones to get the materials and we have to make it work.” more info on Blue Zoo visit FYI For www.blue-zoo.co.uk

3D WORLD 29

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U 32 3D WORLD

EF RE Those Who Wish Me Dead

Trevor Hogg enters a burning forest with Rodeo FX to learn about their work on Those Who Wish Me Dead

. d e v r e s e R s t h g i R l l A . c n I t n e m n i a t r e t n E . s o r B r e n r a W 12 0 2 © s e g a m I

Aidan Gillen as Jack Photo credit: Emerson Miller

etting a forest on fire was not a viable option for filmmaker Taylor Sheridan (Wind River) when making Those Who Wish Me Dead, which revolves around two killers trying to eliminate a murder witness by setting the wilderness ablaze. Rodeo FX was given the responsibility of creating a highly detailed digital asset that could withstand closeups and aerial views. “It was mostly environmental work and effects went hand-in-hand with the burning forest,” notes Matthew Rouleau, environment supervisor, Rodeo FX when discussing the 283 VFX shots he and his colleagues were responsible for producing. “There were a few digital doubles.”

S

Those Who Wish Me Dead

“One thing that was unique about this project was the scope,” notes Nathan Arbuckle, FX supervisor, Rodeo FX. “It wasn’t like a 50/50 mix on these shots.

We had to create the forest from scratch and add the effects on top of that.” The methodology had to be efficient and flexible. “A bunch of plates were shot in an actual forest and we were asked to set that on fire in CG,” states Rouleau.

“How do you approach it? Do you roto out individual trees and put fire in front and behind it? That wouldn’t make any sense. What we set out to do was a B plate of what they shot in CG, so we redid the whole forest one for one in CG. Fires were built to burn out portions of it, and compositing could roto out what they needed to keep from the plate and add the CG where they wanted. It was a big puzzle in that sense. Where do you draw the line between where the CG begins and the plates end? It was difficult.”

34 3D WORLD

Right: Nicholas Hoult as Patrick

Below (left): The practical plate had to be digitally augmented to include reflections and interactions with all of the different fire elements Below (right): The entire forest was recreated in CG in order to art direct the destruction caused by the forest fire

“ONE THING UNIQUE ABOUT THIS PROJECT WAS THE SCOPE… WE HAD TO CREATE THE FOREST FROM SCRATCH” Nathan Arbuckle, FX supervisor, Rodeo FX

Those Who Wish Me Dead

FIRE CONTINUITY THE FIRE HAS ITS OWN NARRATIVE AS IT GETS PROGRESSIVELY INTENSE THROUGHOUT THE MOVIE

“We would block out where the fire was going to be and how fast it was moving throughout the whole sequence prior to running any simulation,” explains Arbuckle. “It was part of the system that we created but the layout department helped us with that. They would go through, especially in the all-CG shots where the majority of the frame was going to be our CG forest. We would have a version that told the story of the progression of the fire so that when it got to the effects department, we already had a guide of where it was supposed to be.”

Story timing was more important than realistic continuity. “We would get the blocking and layout of it approved to some degree, and would go ahead and show how it translated through the simulated version, and it was one to one,” states Arbuckle. “If you watched our layout version, it just had an area of it turning orange. Then if you looked at the fire version, it was close to where they were. There were a few requests on top of that where the client wanted to do specific things in one spot, but generally speaking it was all blocked out ahead of time.”

The main fire setup allowed for the timing and direction to be blocked out. “It would then create sections of that area and break them up into lots of smaller cluster areas to run the fire simulations off of,” explains Arbuckle. “For some shots that were large you might have 300 small fire simulations that could all run in parallel.

There was a lot that was done to try to be as efficient as we could per shot, to keep everything in camera as it needed to be. There was definitely a lot of requests that came from the art direction side for specific things that you put on top of whatever procedural system you’ve got. You have to make sure that whatever system you develop is agile enough to be able to accommodate those requests but at the same time doesn’t create a situation where you’re needing to build a new thing every shot.”

Houdini was utilised to create the effects. “It was all done in Houdini, rendered in Arnold and rendered out of Katana usually,” remarks Arbuckle. “We did build our own custom fire solver to 3D WORLD 35

Those Who Wish Me Dead

match the flames that we had to match. At the end of the day sometimes our results got mixed or enhanced with whatever compositing decided to do on top of that. By the time we were running shots it was streamlined apart from using a large amount of disk space, but there wasn’t a great way around that.” Storyboards and plate photography dictated the blocking for each shot. “They had an idea in their head already of how the fire should move in a shot.

In terms of how the fire looked, special effects set a baseline by setting some practical fires. We did our best to match the way those looked in regards to exposure, colour and movement. We worked to an internal grade. All of the fire that you see is generating smoke and there is a massive amount of ash and embers in the air in every shot. It was a lot about building that chaotic environment. A lot of the time, the ash and embers were what would be the precursor to the actual fire arriving. We did our best to match the practical ash that they had shot.”

A dramatic moment is when Montana Forest Service firefighter Hannah (Angelina Jolie) and the hunted Connor (Finn Little) seek refuge in a river to avoid the raging flames. “Angelina and Finn

36 3D WORLD

jump into a water tank,” remarks Arbuckle. “The shot from below was a mixture of shots from that tank while all of the fire was added digitally. We did a rudimentary water surface but we tried to use as much of the water from what they shot as much as possible. But we had to have something there in order to include the reflections and interactions with all of the different fire elements. That was an interesting shot. There was a lot of back and forth about how clearly you would see the fire through the water. It was one of the earliest concepts that we had, so it was very much a moment they knew that they wanted. It was a built-up shot. There wasn’t a single source where a majority of it came from.”

Over 100 individual assets were created consisting of different plants, pine needles and twigs. “It Below: A visual landmark is the fire tower, built and shot in New Mexico It was important to map out the forest with narrative in mind so the audience could understand where certain scenes unfold

Those Who Wish Me Dead

was funny because when we were creating the forest, I would spend months with my team building out small twigs and rocks,” reveals Rouleau. “People were thinking, ‘How is this going to amount to a forest at some point?’ But when you look at a forest it’s such a combination of a massive number of small pieces. You actually build the small pieces and build them up and up into this massive thing.

Then you plant the trees in there.

A visual landmark is the fire tower: “We had this central portion of the story where there is a fire tower on the top of a mountain and from that central area, we needed to get a 360 view of the mountain range,” states Rouleau. “From that angle I would turn around the cameras, sculpt a bit of the mountain, turn it around a bit, sculpt the rest of it and just go around 360 in that area to build up things. We needed to be

“I WOULD SPEND MONTHS WITH MY TEAM BUILDING OUT SMALL TWIGS AND ROCKS” Matthew Rouleau, environment supervisor, Rodeo FX

It all comes together.” A mountain range was digitally inserted. “We based it off of Google Data to get scale reference of what mountains would look like in that area.

There was a lot of hand sculpting of actual 3D geometry to get it looking right. The greenery is the same assets that we built out for the close-ups of the forest; we just scattered them millions of times on the mountainsides in the right kind of pattern.”

able to spot areas from the tower, like way down the valley where a particular sequence happens.

It was a lot of adjusting back and forth on versions to get signoff on it.” An actual fire tower was constructed in New Mexico. “We would replace the background and did use the live-action tower quite a bit; a CG double of it was used in some establishers.” The sky was an important part of the establishing shots. “There is a sequence

Top: Finn Little and Angelina Jolie jump into a water tank standing in for a river which is surrounded by CG fire Middle: A significant part of the believability comes from the forest undergrowth being highly detailed Right: Practical fire elements needed to be matched in CG

3D WORLD 37

Those Who Wish Me Dead

RETAINING LIVE-ACTION PLATES A SIGNIFICANT EFFORT WAS

MADE TO KEEP ELEMENTS FROM THE LIVE-ACTION PLATES

where people are dropping down with parachutes. The sky adds to the drama of the storytelling.

When you’re inside the forest, you have the light above but it creates its own light effect, so it’s not as important in those scenes.”

Assets were shared with another vendor. “We had to share a lot of our forest build,” remarks Rouleau. “There was a lot of data to be exchanged. It was difficult to make sure that all of the data went to the other vendor correctly.” Not surprisingly, creating a believable CG forest was a monumental task.

38 3D WORLD

“The challenge was trying to build out a forest that could be detailed enough to be able to put the camera a foot off of the ground and also do aerial shots. The assets needed to hold up at different distances. The sequence just before Angelina and the kid jump in the water was a big dramatic buildup where the fire in itself becomes a character. Just the way it’s thought out is dramatic and ended up being one of my favourite scenes in the film.” Arbuckle adds, “I hope that the fire conveys the right sense of urgency and danger that they were going for.”

Above: Angelina Jolie portrays a Montana Forest Service firefighter known as Hannah Below: There was a lot of hand sculpting of 3D geometry to get the mountains looking right.

The forest assets were also used to populate the surrounding areas with vegetation

“They would ask for different areas of the forest to be on fire depending on the shot,” remarks Rouleau. “It’s not like we could say, ‘We’ll just build this portion of the forest and we’ll be set.’ Every shot had a different request for where the fire needed to be. We had to build the whole thing in CG and in some instances, we would keep 95 per cent of the actual forest that they shot and only have a small portion of CG. Then in another shot it would be the opposite. We would have 80 to 85 per cent CG forest on fire and then we kept foreground elements and the actors, but everything else is a replacement. It was so shot by shot that we had to be ready to replace anything at any moment.”

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Lighting

Incredible 3D artists take us behind their artwork

Wessel Huizenga wessel.artstation.com Wessel Huizenga is a passionate and hard-working archviz artist with a background in creating game environments. He is able to create optimised archviz scenes using Unreal Engine.

LIGHTING For this project, I wanted to put the focus on setting the right mood. I aimed for a warm and comfortable look; to achieve this, I wanted to go in the direction of either a sunrise or sunset coming into the room. One of the most important things was to find and gather references, I can't recommend it enough. I found a design by BodesStudio that I stuck to. I made some reference images for the lighting by googling sunset and sunrise images and taking photos of my own room. I achieved the result by working iteratively on the lighting, keeping the reference in mind. I did this until I was happy with the results.

SUNRISE Software Blender,Unreal Engine4, Quixel MegaScans,Adobe Photoshop Year made 2021 40 3D WORLD

Lighting

3D WORLD 41

Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills CINEMA 4D R23 | QUIXEL BRIDGE | ARNOLD RENDERER | PHOTOSHOP

CREATE STRIKING STYLISED SCENES WITH TOON SHADING Amir Zand takes you through a simplified way to set up your scene and texture your geometries with toon materials

C

oming from a stylised illustration/painting background with an appreciation for retro sci-fi, manga and comic art, I am always looking for a way to achieve those aesthetics through 3D, breaking away from the realism that usually sets the bar for the way we use these software, with a fresh approach that can be in sync with my own personal taste and the way I actually used to paint and sketch.

There are many ways to create and develop toon shaders and a variety of different styles to explore, and sometimes it can appear complex, but in this quick step by step I will take you through a simplified process that I used to create my piece ‘Break Time’.

42 3D WORLD

I will cover setting up the scene, creating toon material and texturing geometries using the Arnold Renderer Toon shading system in order to create a stylised 3D scene. After creating the scene I use Photoshop for post-pro to push the image even further.

DOWNLOAD YOUR RESOURCES For all the assets you need go to https://bit.ly/3D-world-arcturus

AUTHOR

Amir Zand I am an illustrator and concept artist specialised in visual development and marketing illustration, currently working at Quantic Dream. amirzandartist.com

BREAK TIME

The latest in Amir Zand’s mysterious ‘Anomaly’ series

3D WORLD 43

Create striking stylised scenes with toon shading

02a

01

01START WITH A SKETCH

I usually try to begin with some quick thumbnails and sketches in my sketchbook to form some initial ideas and compositions; whether I’m working in 3D software or painting in 2D, it helps me to have a basic idea of what I am hoping to achieve.

02 SET UP THE SCENE

Next, I set up my scene with some 3D-scanned rock geometry using Quixel Bridge. It’s good to mention here that I don’t need the textures and am only using the geometries to mix and create a base for my landscape.

As you can see I used three different scans (A) and mixed them to have an early base for my scene (B).

Material projection

Finding the best roughness and texture when adding lines to your material is crucial, and it’s best to keep in mind that the way your material is projected on your model can also change the effect of how outlines appear.

02b

03

IT UP WITH ADDITIONAL DETAILS 03 BUILD

Since I’m aiming to create an illustration, early on I would try to find the most suitable angle and set up my camera (locked) and add the additional details and planes based on my composition. As you can see in the screenshot, I’ve duplicated some of my geometry to add some rocks in the distance, and also have a negative space for my focal point which is the monolith itself.

44 3D WORLD

04

Create striking stylised scenes with toon shading Also, I love to point out that the Adobe Mixamo library (mixamo. com) is a great resource featuring thousands of characters and fullbody animations, which you can use to pose the figures. Engineer model by sketchfab.com/dadndan0091.

04 TWEAK THE LIGHTING

This next step is all about setting up my light, using Arnold Distant light for global lighting, and Disk light for small spotlights by the monolith (although it requires some more adjustments on the material to adjust the impact, which I will explain in future steps). I was aiming to have a moonlight setup with a touch of warm light by the monolith to represent fire. Both these lights are accessible under Arnold>Arnold Light. Check out the screenshot to see the results of the global light.

05 CREATE TOON MATERIAL

05a

In this step I’ll create my early base toon material. Simply click Create in the C4D material section> Arnold>Surface>Toon and you have a toon material, double-click and it opens the Material Editor. At the top select Arnold Shader Network Editor to access nodes, from there I bring in a Ramp_rgb from the Texture category (A). Connect it to your Toon>Main>Base>Tonemap (B). This will allow you to set steps of colours to your material, from light to midtones to shadow. Change the Type from ‘Custom’ to ‘U’ in order to see the impact in the render

05b 3D WORLD 45

/CONSUMPTION_

Check out more from this incredible sci-fi series on Amir’s ArtStation: artstation.com/ amirzand

Create striking stylised scenes with toon shading

06a preview. You can also change the interpolation between each shader, for now I used ‘Step’ for a more hard-edge effect on my image (C).

I’ve applied my material to all the geometries available in my scene.

Next I would go to the Material Editor again and under the Sheen section, I would change it to 1 and play with the Roughness. As you can see in the screenshot, this will change the way light can impact on your material and how it absorbs light, so playing with it to find your desired light impact and reflection is necessary.

07

06b

FINAL DETAILS AND EXPORT

From here on I duplicate my main base material, change the colour and effects as I’ve explained for each geometry, and apply them to the scene.

I’ve added some grass to the environment using the Quixel Bridge library again, selecting the areas I want from my UV, Split and using Forester ‘Multicloner’ to scatter it in my scene.

Finally my scene is ready to export. One thing I do is render my scene multiple times to keep things separated. First I get a default render with the Blackman_Harris filter, and then another render using the Contour filter. Make sure to render in the Alpha channel, so saving as PNG while rendering with Contour will only save the outlines and edges instead of a flat image.

This will give you much more room to edit and refine lines.

Width of contour

Keep in mind that while rendering your scene, the width of your contour effect changes based on the size of your frame. If your frame aspect ratio is larger, your outlines become thinner – increase the width in the render settings if you want it bolder.

06 ADD AN OUTLINE EFFECT Go to the Render Settings> Arnold Renderer and change the default filter to Contour.

Now you’ll start to see some lines appear on your scene. To increase the effect or change how it outlines your geometry, you can tweak the Edge Detection, UV Threshold and Angle Threshold in the Material Editor (A).

Now to bring a bit more complexity to the shader I would simply drag and drop a roughness texture in my node editor and connect it to my Toon>Main> Edge>Edge Detection>Mask Color, tweaking the Multiply tone to change the way that it impacts my scene.

Following step B in the image, you can see that I applied this material only on the top-left rock, while other geometries have a simple outline effect.

07a

07b 3D WORLD 47

Create striking stylised scenes with toon shading

08 IMPORT TO PHOTOSHOP

As I explained in the last step, I render multiple times or in multiple passes, and one thing I always do is group my scene into classic foreground, mid-ground and background. Sometimes when it’s more complex I would render each individual geometry so I can actually mask each part easily in Photoshop, as this gives me freedom to edit colours, apply post visuals and have separated planes.

You can see on the right how they are fully masked and how a simple gradient effect can separate planes and give more depth to the image.

09 POST-PRO

For me it’s important to have my touch on the image. I refine, overpaint, redraw lines, correct lighting and add additional details to my scene, this is an important part for me which takes more time than creating the scene itself.

As you can see in the image example below, I have redrawn crack lines, overpainted the scene with more grass, smoke and lastly corrected the tone, depth and final visual touches to reach the finished illustration. •

09 48 3D WORLD

08

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3D WORLD 49

HoloSuite makes the process of creating and editing highquality volumetric videos much easier

HOLOSUITE | UNITY

PRODUCE INTERACTIVE VOLUMETRIC VIDEOS

Volumetric video can capture a performer in real time, and authentically reconstruct them in 3D with true-to-life details. Find out how with a step-by-step guide to HoloSuite from Arcturus

V

olumetric video captures reality as it really is, but instead of having a fixed point of view, you can examine a performance from any angle.

For users looking to record a performance in three dimensions, volumetric video offers realistic capture with 6DoF – if you have the right tools. You can record nuanced performances without needing to rely on artistic interpretation, or worrying about bumping up against the uncanny valley. With the right capture system, you can record the world 52 3D WORLD

with all the fidelity of film, and still take full advantage of both classic and cutting-edge 3D tools.

This tutorial will introduce the basics of working with volumetric video, and highlight how HoloSuite can make that process much easier, starting with editing the performance of a volumetric capture with automatically generated skeletons. Adding a skeleton to a clip paves the way to tracking the positions of an actor’s body or limbs, animating in props or adding VFX around the actor, and applying real-time

IK retargeting for their head or limbs. We will show you how an actor recorded on a capture stage (at Crescent Studio in Tokyo) looks when they become a moving target in a Unity scene.

WHAT IS ARCTURUS’ HOLOSUITE? HoloSuite is a collection of postproduction tools developed by DOWNLOAD YOUR RESOURCES For all the assets you need go to https://bit.ly/3D-world-arcturus

AUTHOR Arcturus Arcturus builds tools for next-generation content, authoring technology to build immersive experiences with live-action performances in 3D. arcturus.studio

Arcturus Studios, consisting of two pieces of software: HoloEdit and HoloStream. Together they make it possible to edit, compress and stream volumetric video. HoloSuite can be used as a standalone tool, or through plugins built to work with volumetric data in Maya, Mari, Unreal and Unity.

HoloEdit is designed for postproduction and compression of volumetric video. You can preserve the visual quality of the capture, while gaining the ability to dynamically manipulate it – a feature that could have previously only been done with a full motion capture setup. Using HoloEdit’s non-linear editing features, you can compress and edit volumetric video by taking advantage of the HoloCompute cloud computing services to process parallel jobs.

The other tool in the suite, HoloStream, delivers on-demand, adaptive streaming for volumetric video. Users can deliver content to desktop PCs, mobile devices or VR headsets like Oculus Quest, without a loss of quality due to an unstable broadband or wireless connection. These streaming APIs offer flexibility to integrate volumetric streaming experiences for web, in engine or for AR/VR.

WORK WITH VOLUMETRIC DATA

Traditionally in 3D animation, a single model is manipulated using one of three methods: directly by the artist, through motion capture information where poses are set, or they are interpreted over a range of frames through programming. Volumetric video, however, generally contains independent mesh information

Texture padding

Having good texture padding will give you more flexibility for resizing your texture resolutions. At least three pixels of padding will keep your materials looking great when downsizing your texture resolution.

and texture information for each frame, more like traditional film.

One of the most important things to be aware of when you are working with volumetric video is to know whether or not your volumetric data is stabilised.

Stabilised data, also known as filtered or tracked data, is volumetric data that contains consistent topology and UVs over ranges of frames in a clip.

Even though the topology and UVs might match over a range of frames that makes up a segment, each mesh is still its own unique element in each and every frame.

Working with stabilised data is an important element for achieving great compression with volumetric data. HoloSuite uses stabilisation to reduce the manual work required from an artist, by allowing edits to segments of data, rather than having to edit every frame in a clip. Many capture stages provide volumetric data that is already stabilised, but if you’re working on unstabilised data, we recommend you use the ‘Stabilize Mesh’ stage in HoloEdit to stabilise it.

Working with volumetrics can take up a lot of digital storage space. Being able to offer compact deliverables is the first step in making it accessible on the broad stage. Knowing your target for delivery and planning your projects with that in mind will also help you make the best decisions for texture resolution and mesh density.

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Produce interactive volumetric videos

STARTED IN 01GETHOLOEDIT

HoloEdit uses project structures called ‘Workspaces’. Your data will be stored here locally, and both mesh and texture files, as well as HoloEdit compositions, can be accessed within the active workspace while using HoloEdit.

Creating a clip in HoloEdit is as easy as dragging a folder containing volumetric data into your HoloEdit workspace, directly in the explorer window, and then pressing the Make Clip button.

That’s it. Now you are able to view your clip in the viewport and timeline when you drag it into the composition window.

HoloEdit’s stages allow for the non-linear editing of volumetric video. Each stage has a unique process that affects the mesh, texture and/or animation data from the stages above it. Stages can be added to your clip’s track in the composition window, and each processed stage will affect the subsequent stages that use the same data type.

01

02 GENERATE A SKELETON Using HoloEdit you can automatically generate a skeleton for any humanoid subject in a volumetric clip. Add a ‘Generate Skeleton’ stage using the Add

03 54 3D WORLD

02

Produce interactive volumetric videos

05

Stage button in the composition window. In the timeline you can then create an interval for the duration of the clip; just click and drag to select the relevant frame range, then right-click and select Create Interval.

The intervals work to establish what frames will be processed with interval-specific parameters, and they contain the data once processing has been completed.

Executing an interval will upload a job to the holographic processing servers (HPS) for quick, parallel processing. Once this is complete, the results will return the skeleton data for the clip. Frameto-frame jitter in the skeleton can be smoothed by using the ‘Stabilize Skeleton’ stage.

Next, we’ll compress the data, then generate the head retargeting skin weights.

OF 03 COMPRESSION SKIN WEIGHTS

After skeletonisation, the clip can be compressed using SSDR. To add compression, SSDR needs to run before the ‘Generate Skin

Pre-shoot preparation

A bit of extra planning on shoot day will go a long way to achieving the best results.

When shooting a clip that will have head retargeting, make sure the neck is not obstructed by the wardrobe and that hair is not sitting on or past the actor’s shoulders.

Delivery targets Keep your delivery targets in mind when exporting volumetric video. Be aware of platform limitations for texture resolution or performance limitations when planning your clips.

Weights for Head Retargeting’ stage. The SSDR stage encodes each stabilised segment as one animated mesh, and stores its poses as a skeletal animation that can then be efficiently decoded during playback.

You are storing a single mesh per segment in the output OMS (Open Mesh Sequence) file, so you’ll see significant compression.

The final compressed mesh stream is now ready for retargeting skin weights to be generated.

Using the ‘Generate Skin Weights for Head Retargeting’ stage, the weights can be automatically generated in HoloEdit. For non-head skin weights, or especially complex clips, you can export your clip data and use our Maya plugin to paint and automatically propagate the skin weights across the clip. Once that’s done, you’re ready for export.

04 EXPORT AN OMS

The composition can be exported as an OMS file containing the mesh and animation data, and an MP4 containing the texture

data. OMS supports fast and compressed playback of any volumetric capture. It also creates playback targets for web, streaming and popular game engines, all for local playback.

OMS maximises compression using temporal compression, mesh compression and sequence bytestream compression.

IN 05 PLAYBACK UNITY OR UNREAL

HoloSuite offers plugins to support playback for Unity and Unreal in-engine, as well as streaming support. To achieve dynamic retargeting, we’ll use either the Unreal or Unity OMS player plugin to support IK head retargeting.

With an OMS player, retargeting the head can be set to target an object or camera, and the rotation values clamped to deliver an interaction with the actor in the clip that feels natural and real.

With photoreal captures and real-time retargeting of volumetric video, the HoloSuite collection of tools powers not just immersive, but truly interactive, video. • 3D WORLD 55

Paint a serene landscape in VR

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Paint a serene landscape in VR

OCULUS QUILL

PAINT A SERENE LANDSCAPE IN VR Felix Stief details how to use the 3D painting app ‘Quill’ to create a stylised environment entirely in VR

AUTHOR

F

Felix Stief Felix Stief is a self-taught 3D artist. He is the lead environment artist at Studio Syro and has produced a wide variety of sets for their original series Tales From Soda Island. www.instagram.com/stieffelix

or this tutorial, lead environment artist Felix Stief will be demonstrating how he uses Quill to make an illustrative outdoor scene directly in VR without needing any other software. Quill is an intuitive, artist-friendly VR painting tool that allows the user’s unique style to come through and generate illustrative hand-made scenes without requiring any sort of 3D background. The software can only be used in VR and artists ‘paint’ by drawing geometric 3D strokes in the air around them.

Quill will come naturally to those with a 2D illustration background because it’s more

similar to Photoshop than it is Maya. The whole pipeline from drawing, to texturing, to animating is all done with a limited set of tools and artists who master them can produce great results extraordinarily quickly without needing to get too technical.

Working in Quill means working in an infinite canvas.

Without boundaries it can be easy to become overwhelmed by the possibilities. The goal of this tutorial is to explain the process when working in Quill to help you create an immersive scene without losing track of the rules of composition and staging. This

will guide you through various key steps including initial VR sketching, painting in details, basic Quill animation, and keeping everything optimised enough so that others can experience it in VR too.

The world of VR art is still relatively new and its pages in art history are still being written.

New techniques are discovered every week and the language for VR storytelling and VR art are rapidly evolving.

You can find a series of beginner Quill tutorials here if you’re new to the world of VR painting: youtube.com/c/ AnimbrushAcademy 3D WORLD 57

Paint a serene landscape in VR

QUILL 01THEWORKSPACE

You can begin by organising your Quill windows. Some like to keep the UI attached to their hand, while others prefer to separate the windows and create a stationary workspace.

To separate UI panels, use the grip button on either controller.

For this environment you’ll only really be using the Tools window, the Color window and the Layers/Timeline window.

In the Tools window you’ll want to familiarise yourself with the various brushes and practise using the grab tool.

02 PLANNING

For this initial stage it's very useful to create a quick sketch to plan out your scene. Create a simple frame to give yourself focus. Even if your final scene will be 360 VR, the frame helps to plan the forward-facing composition since that’s where the viewer will spend the most time looking. Using the paint tool, start drawing rough strokes and planning the scene out.

04 COLOUR SKETCH

03 COMPOSITION

While using only a few basic brushes and the grab tool, draw lines in a flat layered approach. Give your scene a shallow depth creating a clear foreground, midground and background while using the frame to keep everything contained. Think about your focal point and how elements of the scene might lead the eye to that area. If the composition isn't working at this stage, it probably won't work well once it’s fully detailed either. You may choose to thumbnail several different options before moving on.

While still keeping things flat and simple, create a new layer and use Quill's colour picker window to begin painting coloured strokes. Starting from the background with a sky and working your way forward will help set a mood and colour scheme for the entire scene. You can use the Quill blending modes to add dodge, burn, multiply, etc to the scene to help make certain areas pop.

Also use this time to figure out light direction, since all lighting will be painted by hand. You'll be able to colour pick from this like a palette later.

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05 SET THE STAGE

Now it’s time to construct the scene. The first step is to create a new layer and draw yourself a basic grid with the line tool. This will ground you in the infinite canvas. Next you want to create a Quill camera and place it relative to the grid where your viewer will be. Open the camera monitor tab to check the composition from the viewer position no matter where you are in the scene.

Paint a serene landscape in VR

06 SKETCH IN 3D

With the viewpoint set you can now start to draw in 3D using just simple line strokes. Keep your 2D sketch handy so you can compare the compositions. Adjust your lines as necessary with the Quill grab tool. You can paint the background trees or clouds smaller as they move away from the viewer, reducing the amount of detailing you'll need and keeping the scene optimal.

08 BRING IN THE COLOURS

07 CREATE THE GROUND

Using a large, flat, coloured brush on a new layer, start to paint a ground around the viewer. You can use the colour picker in Quill to reuse the colours that you already made in your coloured sketch. Keep it near so that you can continue to pick from it as you build the scene out. Use the grab tool to bend and manipulate strokes to fit with the sketch layer. Turning the wireframe on can help while placing new strokes. The ground can become more and more simple the further it moves from the viewer.

Once you’ve given yourself a foundation, make a copy of the rough colour thumbnail and begin selecting and moving different pieces over into your 3D sketch, laying the pieces over the foundation you painted and then using the grab tool to shape them so that they match the ground. The goal here is to create a rough coloured 3D guide for yourself. If elements like the sky and treeline are far enough away, the version from the rough sketch may even be polished enough to use in the final version.

09 POLISH THE SCENE

On a new layer, create a simple set of strokes that you can grab and stretch. Lower the opacity of the current ground layer and use the grab tool on your new strokes to build clean, rolling hills. Continue duplicating this set of strokes and grabbing until you fill the ground out. Once done, add colour variation by picking from the previous rough ground and using the Colorize tool.

10 ADD GRASS

Grass will be made by just painting a few lines on a new layer with the flat ribbon brush and giving each a subtle gradient. Duplicate the grass into small clusters and then duplicate those clusters over and over to fill the scene. Don't overdo it; think of it like a painter, add grass in the foreground and in the places you want people to look and put less detail further away from your viewer. Once you’ve filled the field with grass, now you can begin to recolour it using the dodge tool or by colour picking from your environment.

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Paint a serene landscape in VR

11BACKGROUND DETAILS Using the paint tool you can begin painting in trees, ground and other details. The further away the details will be, the less texture you'll need to add. For some areas you might be able to get away with keeping background elements from your rough 2D sketch with minimal polish needed. Areas like the sky and distant trees could be low detail and far enough away that they can stay almost completely flat. Save time by picking colours from your rough version as you paint more detail.

12 BUILD THE WINDMILL

Construct the windmill mostly from flat line brush strokes using Quill’s ‘snap to axis’ feature. Once the general shape is finished add in smaller strokes with slight colour variation to give it a wooden texture. Remember to think about light direction as you colour the different faces on the windmill. When adding in windows these can exist flatly on the surface with some highlights painted on the edge. The fan blades will all be identical, so create only one and then duplicate/rotate it from the tip three times to complete the fan.

14 THINKING SPATIALLY

Although you're creating a 360 environment, the focal area should still be front and centre. You can duplicate and reuse a lot of details in other areas of the scene, like behind you. Many VR users will look left and right, but not often backwards. Keep these areas simplified and use fewer strokes. By doing this viewers will give more attention to the most important areas.

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13 ANIMATE WITH TRANSFORM KEYS

First, separate the windmill fans to a new layer and put that layer in a group. Centre the pivot and add a key at the first position, scrub in the timeline and add another. On the second key rotate the fans 90 degrees and because they're all identical you will give the appearance of a full 360 rotation once looped. Make sure your transform is set to linear motion.

15 SHARE YOUR SCENE

You can share your Quill pieces in several ways. To share to VR you can use Quill's built-in ‘Share to Oculus Theater’ button. This will make it visible to everyone on the Oculus Quest, or other Quill users. If using this approach, just remember to check the optimisation panel because there are mobile limits.

Quill has some optimisation tools you can use to bring the polycount down with minor visual impact. For 2D output you can also render up to 8K video with the render cameras or export various formats such as FBX, OBJ or USD. •

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Redshift material: top tips for your 3D toolbox

REDSHIFT | CINEMA 4D

REDSHIFT MATERIAL: TOP TIPS FOR YOUR 3D TOOLBOX Enhance your image creation and achieve stunning results with this expert guide to the Redshift render engine

AUTHOR

R

Mike Griggs Mike Griggs is a veteran content creator who has a passion for explaining the process of digital content creation to new artists. www.creativebloke.com

edshift from Maxon is one of the most popular and versatile render engines available to artists today, with features such as super-quick render previews and reliable animation rendering. Redshift is a ‘biased’ render engine, allowing a great deal of artist flexibility to achieve the desired look, which may not always be ‘photoreal’.

Redshift is available for a wide range of host applications and

platforms, all accessed through a single Redshift licence. Redshift also offers pathways to share materials between applications through Redshift’s own file types. This makes it easy for an artist to get the most from their investment in money and time in Redshift and the host 3D content creation applications.

So how does an artist new to Redshift unlock its secrets? I have been using Redshift professionally as my primary render engine for my professional work since 2016. Most render engines can now make stunning images, but I stick with Redshift because the logical nodal and AOV system enables the creation of a wide range of render assets that are easy to manage and track. In the

following steps, I will share some of the top material tips that I use every day for animations and stills for clients worldwide that let me make compelling images with tight deadlines.

As mentioned earlier, Redshift works in multiple applications.

Thankfully the team at Maxon, who make both Redshift and Cinema 4D, ensure that the controls and features I demonstrate here should be transferable to any 3D application that hosts Redshift.

DOWNLOAD YOUR RESOURCES For all the assets you need go to https://bit.ly/3D-world-arcturus

AN AMBIENT 01MAKE OCCLUSION AOV

The technique to create an Ambient Occlusion Layer in Redshift is not immediately apparent. There is an AO AOV. The best way I have found is to create a Custom AOV and combine it with an AO material. Create a new Redshift material, add an AO node, delete the Material node from the new AO material, and connect the 'Out' of the AO node to the 'Surface' of the Output node. In the AOV manager, create a new Custom AOV, and drag the new AO material into the default material option in the Custom AOV properties. In the Render View, the new custom AO node should be visible.

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Redshift material: top tips for your 3D toolbox

MULTIPLE MATERIALS ON AN 02OBJECT,MANAGE PART 1

It's possible to create multiple materials/shaders in a single Redshift material and apply them to different parts of a model by UV tags. The trick is to ensure that UV maps have unique names as many objects can support more than one UV map. To make a UV mask, add a Color Layer tag in the Redshift node view and create two 'Color ABS' nodes, one white, one black.

Create a Texture node with an allblack texture of minimal size. Drag one of the UV Texture names into the UV channel of the Texture tag.

03 MANAGE MULTIPLE MATERIALS ON AN OBJECT, PART 2 04 TRY WITHOUT UV TAGS, PART 1 Now that we have our components for our mask, we can feed them into the Color Layer tag. Connect the output of the Color ABS white node into the 'Base Layer' of the Color Layer. Connect the output of the Color ABS black node into the Layer 1 'Color' input. Finally connect the black Texture node into the Layer 1 'Mask' node. This creates a black and white image which can then be fed into a Material Blender node as a Blend Color, allowing two materials (or more) to appear on a single object.

UV TAGS, 2 05 TRYPARTWITHOUT Now that the TriPlanar can be controlled on each axis, convert the colour for the Y and Z axis to black. Set the X to white. With a material setup similar to before, the TriPlanar node can be used as an input for the Material Blender node's Blend Layer. Make sure that the Mapping properties of the material on the object are set to an appropriate setting, such as 'cubic' or similar to make the tag wrap correctly. Remember that multiple TriPlanar tags can be used throughout a Redshift material, making them highly versatile.

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Redshift can also manage multiple materials for an object that has no UVs. Redshift’s TriPlanar node takes an object and applies a surface to its X, Y and Z axes.

For this cube, I want to create a band of metal on two sides with a plastic cap on each end. After I have added a TriPlaner node to my material, I switch off 'Save Image On Each Axis'.

Redshift material: top tips for your 3D toolbox

USE THE CURVATURE 06WEATHERING NODE AS A TOOL

The Curvature node is one of the most helpful creation nodes that comes with Redshift. I use it as a mask or blend colour to create wearing in nooks and crannies in a model, without worrying about painting or even creating UV maps. In the image, we can see the result of the Curvature with a subtle blend between the light and dark metal. This blend is created by the Curvature node, the direct impact of which can be seen in the red at the top of the pipe.

Save a default scene in C4D

07 MIX CURVATURE NODE WITH RAMP NODE 08 ADD A NOISE NODE TO FINALISE WEARING The Curvature node is even better when combined with a Ramp node to allow complete control over the effects. Use a Color Layer node to mix a Curvature node over a black and white Ramp node, with the Blend Mode in the Color Layer node's ‘Layer 1st' node set to 'Add'. Use the Color Layer as a Blend Layer for a Material Blender before adding the graded effect.

I added further wear to the dark material by using a Maxon Noise node to add some grubby marks on the top of the object. Add the node to the Color Layer and ensure the Blend Modes are set to additive options such as Lighten or Add. An additional Curvature node has been added with a larger radius to act as a mask for the Maxon Noise node, giving a natural falloff to the marks.

I have made the Custom Ambient Occlusion material part of my default scene.

To do this, create a file with the Ambient Occlusion material with a Custom Ambient Occlusion AOV, and save it to the desktop with the name 'New. c4d'. Copy this to the main install folder for Cinema 4D. Every time a new file is opened, the Ambient Occlusion setup is waiting for my next creation.

NOISE FOR A 09 MAXON QUICK PANEL SET

This mech arm was given a quick panelled look by creating three Maxon Noise nodes using the Cell noise, each set to a different scale and then mixed with a Color Layer node to add some variety. This is then connected to the Metalness node to adjust the appearance of the object.

To add more detail, a Bump Map node has been linked to the medium-scale Maxon Noise node to create additional relief.

The smallest Maxon Noise node has been connected to the Reflection Roughness. • 3D WORLD 65

Use Katana for lookdev and lighting Discover the core concepts of working with Katana and its powerful toolset

KATANA

USE KATANA FOR LOOKDEV AND LIGHTING A quick and easy guide to getting started in Foundry’s Katana, and how to utilise this powerful tool in your own projects

L

earning a new tool can often be challenging, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed trying to determine which features are the most important for your workflow. If you’ve worked in a studio environment before, you’ll be more accustomed to different software, tools and features, but even so, you may find yourself in a similar position as I was – struggling to build my own projects from scratch.

It all boils down to the basics.

No matter how experienced you are, these are easy to overlook, especially when you’re eager to get started quickly. While this 66 3D WORLD

may sound trivial to some, pulling yourself back to the start and building a better understanding of the basic features of a tool can pave the way for stronger workflow foundations later on – you never know when you’re going to need those skills.

Foundry’s lookdev and lighting tool Katana provides everything you need to get started on your learning journey. Its efficient toolset enables artists to maximise their creative freedom, so they’re not wasting time on menial tasks or technical glitches but building on their basic skills and putting them into practice.

So what do you need to get started in Katana? And how can you build your own projects from scratch? From organising your node graphs to optimising your workflow, this guide will go through some of the core concepts that can help you get started on your own learning journey with the flexible lighting toolset, Katana.

DOWNLOAD YOUR RESOURCES For all the assets you need go to https://bit.ly/3D-world-arcturus

AUTHOR Arielle Martin Arielle is an associate product manager for Katana Lighting at Foundry.

Her previous experience includes a set dressing and pipeline artist on animated films. foundry.com/ products/katana

YOUR PROJECTS 01BUILD EFFICIENTLY

Katana fits at the end of the 3D pipeline process – as a result, it is not only a look development and lighting tool, but also a scene management tool where we are assembling elements that came before (i.e. in modelling, layout, animation, FX, groom, and so on).

Being flexible at this stage is key because your projects are prone to many changes, including asset updates, optimisations; the list goes on. Katana is ideal for working with adapting projects as long as you build them with the assumption that certain elements will be subject to change.

Think about what main sections you want to keep constant and

what will need to be flexible as you work through your iterations.

Once you’ve identified these parts, you can build your Katana projects in such a way that gives you fast and easy access to make the necessary iterations throughout the production process.

OPERATIONS ARE 02 ALLREPRESENTED IN NODES Katana’s node-based interface provides a baseline for a very flexible and non-destructive workflow, whether you’re working on your own projects or in a team.

Being able to trace back your steps and understand exactly what is happening at all stages is extremely beneficial, and will help while working on your projects.

YOUR NODE 03 DIVIDE GRAPH INTO TASKS

Use Katana for lookdev and lighting

Keep your node graphs organised and clean – it’s important! This will help you navigate your projects, or help others do the same if you are working in a team. Using backdrops and naming your nodes will help you orient yourself in the node graph easily. Versioning different parts of your node graph separately from the rest of your Katana project can also help team members work in parallel.

In some cases you may need to share work between projects, so you’ll want to identify which parts are common across them. Using LiveGroups can help you reference your work across projects to then be updated from one place.

Keep refining

Make use of the content available and think about how to best organise your projects to fit your workflow. As you keep working with Katana, you’ll continue to further refine and adapt your process.

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Use Katana for lookdev and lighting

04

05 Focused lighting toolset

Katana’s powerful lighting tools enable incredible levels of precision and control, and are designed to save you and your team time by allowing the least amount of artists to manage the highest volume of high-quality shot production.

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06 Therefore, when the LiveGroup file changes, the modifications can be picked up in all projects that contain it.

YOUR WORK – 04 RECYCLE WHAT IS REUSABLE?

Creating your own tools is extremely useful to avoid repeating tasks and helps to save time. If there are certain operations you repeat often (maybe on a daily basis), then it’s worth seeing how you can automate the workflow.

Don’t worry if you’re not tech savvy.

Macros can be a good starting point for creating your first set of tools in Katana. At bit.ly/3BNYmJ2 you can find a set of videos to get started with Macros.

There are many other tools that can help automate your work, including OpScripts, using the Python tab to automate the Node Graph, and SuperTools. Setting up a template will also help boost your workflow and will ensure you never have to go through the process of setting up your scenes from scratch.

05 OPTIMISE YOUR WORK

Optimisation is often the last thing you want to be concerned with. An easy way to get faster feedback in your interactive sessions is through the use of InteractiveRenderFilters. This is a node that can be repurposed easily since it’s not connected to the rest of the node graph, and can be used

to overwrite or build on top of your existing projects.

LEARNING 06 FINDRESOURCES

When learning a new tool, it can often be difficult to know where to start. Knowing where you can find resources and guidelines is half the battle. The Foundry website contains a host of information ranging from articles, community forums, case studies and learning content. The tutorials page has a range of videos, some of which contains assets that can be downloaded so you can follow along or see an example of a final project. Find these here: learn.foundry.com/katana •

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Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills Cirstyn Bech-Yagher Cirstyn has moved from Radeon’s ProRender to the RizomUV team, where she does product management as well as modelling, UV mapping and tutorial writing. cirstyn.com Glen Southern Glen runs SouthernGFX, a small Cheshire-based studio specialising in character and creature design. He has been using and training ZBrush in the UK for over 15 years. www.southerngfx.co.uk Mike Griggs Mike Griggs is a 3D and visual effects artist with vast experience across the industry, as both a creator and a technical writer. www.creativebloke.com Pietro Chiovaro Pietro is a freelance 3D artist and YouTuber. An expert in the creation of props and environments, he shares many of his creations on his channel. www.pietrochiovaro.com Antony Ward Be it game development, rigging or recording in-depth courses for his YouTube channel, Antony boasts experience in most areas of 3D. www.antcgi.com

GET IN TOUCH

EMAIL YOUR QUESTIONS TO rob.redman@futurenet.com 70 3D WORLD

SOFTWARE: UV MAPPING

HOW DO I UNWRAP A HUMAN FIGURE? Frequent question across the UV boards Cirstyn Bech-Yagher replies So, if mirroring and overlapping parts of the model’s UVs means you can get the resolution you need from a smaller texture, that is more efficient, right?

Questions about unwrapping humans have been around since planar mapping was a thing. The most common questions are about dividing the model, cutting and unwrapping hands, faces, lips, eyes and nostrils. Feet, not so much.

As always, the unwrap depends on your model’s destination. A good rule of thumb to remember is that if your personal sculpt isn’t going any further than a render engine, you can cut it up and unwrap it as it suits you. If it’s for VFX or a game

engine, you need to consider a few more things; despite some of the big studios using one flavour or other of Ptex in their pipeline, UDIMs still seem to be the norm, and as such, they pretty much follow guidelines for good UV layouts, like good space utilisation, as flat as possible, and being easy to read and work with.

As game engines still don’t have (proper) UDIM support, you need to make the most out of layering on your single UV tile. In itself, a human body won’t need much stacking, other than i.e. hair or body hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. And while game engines currently can handle an insane number of geometries, you still need to take clothing, interchangeable

Your CG problems solved

EXPERT TIP BRUSHING When using the brushes in RizomUV, consider them as watercolours rather than oils or acrylics, and set the brush sliders accordingly.

You'll get much better results with a bigger brush and low pressure settings than the other way around.

STEP BY STEP UNWRAP A HUMAN MODEL IN RIZOMUV

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02

03

04

Humans are generally no more difficult to unwrap than other objects

parts and their shaders into consideration when unwrapping.

A workflow I took with me from project management into 3D and freelancing is to always start with the most work-intensive or challenging tasks if you can, as they require the biggest focus and effort. Once the heavy lifting is done, the lightweight tasks often don’t require as much effort, and it’s always easier to get help for those if needed.

So, when I unwrap a human, I often start with the face or hands. I take a look at where I can hide distortion (behind the eyeballs and under the hair, if I know it will have hair on a head) as well as the best places to cut in order to squarify the face, as a lot of game studios require unwraps as square as possible as part of utilising maximum UV space. I also look at the rest of the body, whether I can pelt or cut it with symmetry, as well as checking what tools to best use where, such as the magic wand, TopoCopy and brushes. I consider where to put seams and how I can minimise cuts if that’s a requirement, and how to work with my texel density budget.

01SQUARE HEAD

03 STACKING

02 HANDS

04 AUTOSEAMS

To make your head square after cutting it, start by setting constraints: in RizomUV, put a vertical constraint (ALT+V) on each side and a horizontal (ALT+T) one on top. Then run an optimise, not an unwrap, as it's ‘gentler’ on the new shape.

Also, note that the Optimise function does not keep the brushwork, so save brushwork for last. Use the Optimise (F7), Pinch (CTRL+F11), and Spread (F11) brushes to get rid of remaining distortion.

Hands are often finicky to unwrap.

Try unwrapping them in one piece, and if they are mirrored and identical, use the Symmetry tool to unwrap one hand only.

Then use the Magic Wand tool to cookiecut nails away from the hand(s), as well as the hands themselves. It's much easier using the sliders to cut out i.e. the outer hand and generating cuts that way, than selecting, tweaking, then cutting edges.

Stacking UV islands saves you lots of UV space. In RizomUV, you can stack several ways: left and bottom align a set of non-identical islands and group them by pressing G, or use the Stack (Shift+C) or Stack and Group (ALT+G) options together with TopoCopy, to stack.

For any hair or fur cards, use rectangularise to straighten them before stacking, and use the cylinder AutoSeam option to cut and pack cylindrical shapes, like tassels.

If your model is hard to work with, try using AutoSeams with the attract/ protect brush. This also works well on bad geometry, humanoids included. It's intended to be used with AutoSeams, and you paint green areas to allow seams and red areas to reject them, in effect giving you much better control over where the cutting algorithm puts the seams.

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Head created in ShapeLab VR

Your CG problems solved

SOFTWARE: ZBRUSH

CAN I USE MY VR MODELS IN OTHER PROGRAMS LIKE ZBRUSH? Hatana El Jarn, Leeds Glen Southern replies Most VR creation tools now feature a way to export your models and often a texture option in the form of vertex paint to allow you to use it in other programs. There are many new and exciting VR modelling programs available like Adobe Medium, Kodon, Gravity Sketch and very new ones like ShapeLab VR. Most of them allow you to export what you have created and simply import it into programs like Blender or ZBrush to make a more usable model or texture map. If you want to use your model for something like a game or VR/AR experience, you are going to need good topology and also UVs to enable you to create a texture map.

Vertex paint is where each point (or vertex) is assigned a colour. If you have enough points then it looks like you have painted your model. That data can be captured onto a texture map in programs like ZBrush.

VR programs come in a few distinct types. For example there is Gravity Sketch that is primarily NURBS (CAD or splinebased technology), and there is Adobe Medium that is 100% voxels. When you want to export your models out, the software has to convert them to polygons with vertex paint data to allow other polygon programs to read them. The file formats used include OBJ, FBX and more recently glTF, and these formats carry all that data in most cases. There are some programs such as Kodon and ShapeLab VR where the model is already ‘true’ polygons in the program, and they simply have to export out in the correct format to be used in other programs.

In the example here I will use ShapeLab VR, because the process of creating a model, painting it and then exporting it to almost any other program is seamless. You simply finish your modelling to a level you are happy with, then, using the on-hand controllers, pick the type of export and file format that works for you. In the example below we will explore taking a model out of ShapeLab VR and importing it into ZBrush. This could easily be ShapeLab VR to Blender, Cinema 4D, Maya or one of 100 other options.

STEP BY STEP EXPORT FROM VR TO ZBRUSH

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FILE FORMAT AND EXPORT 01SELECT

In most VR software, once you have finished your model you need to locate the export panel. In ShapeLab VR the panel on your hand gets you directly to the file format/export dialog. Choose the format that works for your needs. OBJ, FBX and GLB will give you what you need in most cases. Only use STL if you don’t care about the colour.

03 RETOPOLOGISE

You can do a number of things now.

Duplicate the SubTool. Select the new copy. Find ZRemsher in the Tool panel and create an automated retopologised version of the model. Using masking you can create some polygroups to help you split down the UV sections. Using the Project feature in the SubTool panel, add the detail back from the higher resolution version.

You can head over to the UV Master plugin and create some basic UV co-ordinates.

02 IMPORT INTO ZBRUSH 04 CREATE A TEXTURE MAP Open ZBrush and locate the Tool panel. Use Import and then navigate to where you have exported the model you created in VR. Import it and drag it out into the document windows and press T to make sure it is live. If it looks funny and tinted red, it is because the model is using the default red wax material. Head over to the material panel and switch to a Skin Shader and the model will look better.

Now you have good topology and some UV coordinates you can grab that colour data as a texture map. In the Tool panel look for UV Map and set the size to 2,028. Then move down to texture and hit ‘New From Polypaint’. This will then create a new texture map with the polypaint data projected onto it and can be exported as needed for other programs.

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Your CG problems solved

SOFTWARE: ADOBE SUBSTANCE 3D STAGER

HOW DO I USE A STOCK PHOTOGRAPH TO CREATE A CUSTOM SCENE IN ADOBE SUBSTANCE 3D STAGER? Jake Dixon, Manchester Mike Griggs replies ‘Sitting’ a CGI object convincingly into a live scene, whether a photograph or video, has always been one of the most complex tasks to master for a CGI artist. This is because there is a lot of information from the actual scene that needs to be gathered correctly, and combined to give the ‘equation’ of how the computer will adjust the computer image to fit.

Naturally, a lot of this is down to the skill 74 3D WORLD

and experience of the CG artist, who can interpret the correct solution for the scene when all the information is not available – if for example, the scene to match is a stock image.

While there are many toolsets within existing digital content applications to ‘match’ a scene, this does require a steep learning curve, especially for those artists who only need 3D once in a while for a quick product shot. So for many

designers, it is quicker to hire a 3D artist to create a 3D image of a product rather than make it themselves.

Substance 3D Stager for Adobe goes a long way to fix this issue for those artists who only need 3D once in a while.

Substance 3D Stager can take existing 3D models, or models available from its library (or the online Substance 3D Assets site), and enable artists who are totally new to 3D the ability to add materials and

Your CG problems solved

EXPERT TIP MAKE THE MOST OF THE ONLINE ASSET LIBRARY One of the main reasons to use the Substance 3D Collection from Adobe is the vast range of materials and models that are available online. These are constantly being added to. A recent highlight to coincide with the launch of Substance 3D Stager is custom studio lighting environments.

STEP BY STEP ADD ASSETS TO A SCENE WITH 3D STAGER

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01CHOOSE THE ASSET In just a few simple steps, we can grab a stock asset from the Substance Collection and apply it to a scene

their own 2D designs created in apps like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator or similar.

When the artist is ready to render, a backplate image can be dropped into a scene from which Substance 3D Stager can, through Adobe’s AI and machinelearning expertise, match both the camera perspective and lighting with a single click.

This tutorial will integrate Substance 3D Stager model assets into a stock image to show the power of this fantastic new tool.

As a subscriber to the Substance 3D Collection, the asset I needed to use was readily available. This collection offers materials, models and environments which can be used in Substance 3D Stager. For this example, an industrial lift is needed to be shown in a warehouse setting, so this 'Hydraulic Lift Trolley' model is perfect (adobe.ly/3jVfV1D). The asset can be viewed both in 2D and 3D.

ADD MATERIALS 03 QUICKLY WITH THE SAMPLE TOOL

Use the Substance 3D Stager sampler tool to select a material and then apply it to other parts. This is a far quicker way of applying materials than dragging them from the Assets library. As these are Substance materials, many of the parameters can be changed, such as grain size in plastic materials and even the type of grain or pattern used, allowing for the quick creation of bespoke materials.

THE MODEL INTO 02 LOADSUBSTANCE 3D STAGER 04 ADD THE BACKDROP IMAGE Download the trolley model as an FBX file and then open Substance 3D Stager.

Create a new document and drag and drop the FBX file into the middle of the Substance 3D Stager view.

Basic material presets can now be added to the model by selecting them and placing them on the desired parts of the trolley model. Make sure that Group Select is deselected for when adding detailed materials.

When the model has been completely textured, it is time to add the background stock image. In this case, the image is of a warehouse (unsplash. com/photos/OPjxGV7ubsY) by Jake Nebov. Drag the image into the Substance 3D Stager viewport and then press on the Match Image button. The view and perspective will then adapt to the background image. Turn on raytracing to see the full effect of the lighting.

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Your CG problems solved

SOFTWARE: UNREAL ENGINE 4

HOW CAN I ORGANISE AND CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT IN UNREAL ENGINE 4?

Jeff Smith, Florida Pietro Chiovaro replies Creating an environment in Unreal Engine 4 is similar to building environments in any 3D software, but there are some key points to consider to help bring realism to your project. In the following points, I will share some of the key elements for the proper organisation and creation of an environment in Unreal Engine 4: • Always start working parallel to one of the horizontal axes, this will make the building process faster and possible corrections easier.

• If possible, use a Scale value of 1 for the object – the closer to this value the better.

• Have the stage or map centre on the world location 0,0,0, this will make movement and location of assets through the environment easier.

• Use the Unreal mannequin as a reference of human scale in the environment.

• If a change needs to be done to any material or material instance, do a copy of the material or instance, this is to make sure that the change won’t affect somebody’s work.

• Always use reference to properly fill the environment, in this way you can increase the level of detail in the scene and make it more realistic.

• Set the LODs of the props; the quick way in UE4 is to select your static mesh, then in the LOD settings change the LOD Group to one of the presets depending on your asset (small prop, large prop, deco, etc) and enable the Auto Compute LOD Distances box. This way, you’ll also optimise the performance of the project.

• Make sure to use the proper suffix; a clear workspace leads to greater efficiency and productivity, as you will be able to find what you are looking for in a couple of seconds.

Another way to optimise performance is to limit the amount of nodes in the materials of the assets, so try to avoid procedural materials

balanced with used polygons amount; for instance, background objects that will not be viewed in close-up don’t need to have as many polygons as objects that viewers can interact with or view closely. Check the In addition to the previous points, a key environment in-depth and try to reduce element worth further consideration is the the polygons of the models that were not optimisation of the performance in your needed, in this way you will improve the 3D scene. Different models have different performance of the entire project, and you purposes in a created environment. will be able to render the scene faster or Model significance in a project should be run your game smoother.

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EXPERT TIP LODS To have better control over the LODs, you can disable the ‘Auto Compute LOD Distances’ box and set the value of detail manually, keeping in mind that 0 is the higher value with more polygons.

SOFTWARE: AUTODESK MAYA

DO I NEED TO LEARN PYTHON TO BE A GOOD CHARACTER RIGGER? Glen Luther, Rotherham

So, you just started learning how to rig in Maya and your head is already spinning, and then someone suggests you learn how to code too!? But do you really need to?

Antony Ward replies When I first started to learn how to build rigs, I made a conscious decision to also dive in and learn to script too. The main reason for this was that I’d been given the task to rig 60 characters, all with similar structures, so it would be a relatively repetitive task. I saw scripting as a way for me to help speed up the process so I could skip the boring stuff and focus more on the fun side of rigging.

Since then, I’ve expanded my knowledge and moved over to Python, but because I’m self-taught there’s still a lot I don’t know or understand. The main thing is I know enough to be able to build tools for myself, as well as offer this service to my clients too.

I realise that rigging is complicated enough with all the nodes and systems involved, so do you really need to add to that by having the weight of learning to code piled on your shoulders too? I guess

EXPERT TIP INTRODUCTION TO PYTHON If you do fancy diving into the world of Python, check out my free course where I walk you through the steps of creating an automatic limb rigging tool. Just head here: www.antcgi.com/tutorials the answer would be no. I know a lot of people who quite happily build rigs in both the games and VFX industries and know very little when it comes to scripting.

In fact, in larger companies there are teams of technical artists who focus on the scripts and tools side, leaving others to do the building.

That aside, would I recommend you learning it? Of course! From my experience I find that being able to write even a simple script can shave hours

off your workload. Once you are good enough you can even create tools that will build whole systems for you with the click of a button.

Not only this, but being able to support your rigs with extra tools for exporting and animating makes you more valuable as an employee. For example, building a rig for your client is one thing, but also giving the animators tools to quickly switch between IK and FK, or mirror the animation, saves the whole team precious time.

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Hair creation with HairNet

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News and views from around the international CG community

A comfy office environment, complete with canine companion

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Meet the artist

MEET THE ARTIST

Ellie Lucas

What’s it like to work at a renowned studio on a huge variety of exciting projects? We chat to Ellie Lucas, commercial director at Saddington Baynes, to find out

llie Lucas oversees and manages the likes of marketing, sales, neuroscience and more in her role as commercial director at award-winning production studio Saddington Baynes. This month we had the opportunity to interview Lucas about her experiences, and she provides an insight into how she got started in her career, what exciting innovations we can expect to see in the industry, and a selection of her favourite projects.

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morning scrum with my epic team to run through our schedules. My role oversees marketing, sales and neuroscience, managing communications, strategy, planning and overseeing various processes and initiatives to help grow the business and win more work. So as cliché as it sounds, no two days are ever the same.

How long has the journey from studio assistant to commercial director been? How has your role changed and what were the main challenges you faced during this period?

Why did you decide to make a Seven and a half years! My role has evolved career in the creative industry? quite a bit over that time… As studio I have always been drawn to and inspired assistant I was a runner, receptionist and by all forms of creativity. From personal PA all in one – running errands, helping styles and self expression to poetry, art, theatre, music, photography, interior design organise schedules and making myself useful wherever possible. That job had a lot and cooking, the list goes on. So, I think it was written in the stars that I would end up of perks – my Quidco account went through carving out a career in the creative industry. the roof from company supplies shopping, and I had a great time being at the heart of the studio, socialising with the team What interested you in joining and organising Christmas and summer Saddington Baynes? parties. I worked on so many different tasks I studied traditional art techniques, both and initiatives across HR, Ops, Sales and photographic and painting – so virtual

“CGI, WITH ALL ITS INNOVATION AND TRAILBLAZING INTEGRATIONS, IS A VERY EXCITING SPACE TO BE IN” SB produced a modern, stylish animation for Tommy Hilfiger fragrance ‘Impact Intense’

Marketing and ended up running our social media and internal newsletters.

It quickly became apparent to my then manager that I should move into the Marketing department and once this happened the role kept evolving, from Marketing, to neuroscience and recently into a more commercially focused role.

I’ve always enjoyed solving problems and What’s your typical day at work like? therefore have a tendency to dive headfirst into land mines or challenges, which, on the There isn’t such a thing as a typical day! whole, have worked out in my favour!

But there’s always a coffee run and early photography, VFX and animation opened my eyes to a whole new world! Saddington Baynes is vibrant, creative and fast paced; even though the company is turning 30 years old this year, we continue to function as a startup, and I seem to really thrive in this high-energy and creatively chaotic type of environment.

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Meet the artist

By nature, I’m an introvert and not particularly reflective, but when I stop and think about how far I’ve come, imposter syndrome often sets in, so I’m definitely happiest when on the move with my head buried in a project! I would say that’s my biggest challenge, but once I realised that everyone feels the same way, it’s hugely comforting and if anything it motivates me to do a better job, to prove to myself that I’m on the right track.

How has the company and the industry evolved since you joined Saddington Baynes?

One of the things I’ve loved most about working at Sadds is that we are constantly evolving, which means there’s so much room to explore different avenues and roles.

The creative production industry is small and people move around a lot, so I have seen many iterations of scaling up and down of the business. Personally, I love this aspect of our industry, as watching friends and colleagues moving onwards and upwards really inspires me.

Innovation and success drives our team so we’re constantly improving processes, investigating new technologies and sharing experiences. In the time I’ve been here we’ve scaled up our pipeline, moved to cloud-based rendering, begun using gaming engines for real-time creative development and neuro-led production techniques.

I’ve loved being a part of marrying neuroscience with creativity, powered by our pioneering Engagement Insights® service, and I’ve adored being a part of evolving and developing this service into a full consultancy department and integral part of our production workflow.

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What are your thoughts on the future of CGI production?

More than ever CGI is becoming increasingly popular and relevant, offering ultimate flexibility and creative freedom for our clients; so when you incorporate the latest gaming technologies, AI, VR and now neurocreativity, the world really is your oyster. During the pandemic, people changed the way they worked and CGI became the ‘hero’, enabling productions to move forward entirely remotely. CGI offers everything traditional photography can – and it’s more sustainable, with all its

“GAMING TECHNOLOGIES ARE ALLOWING OUR TEAM TO CREATE INSTANTANEOUSLY!” innovation and trailblazing integrations, it becomes invaluable and a very exciting space to be in.

What emerging technologies and innovations will have the biggest impact on how you work in the next few years?

Gaming technologies are allowing our team to create instantaneously! Meaning creatively developing concepts in real time.

This will cut costs, time and ultimately give us and our clients the opportunity to collaborate even more closely and really immerse them in our creative process. Real time paired with neurocreativity is gold dust. Visually optimising campaigns by implementing implicit neuroscience during production means we can reward our

clients with proven, evocative and engaging content. It’s a game changer and we’re seeing a huge level of interest in this space since the pandemic!

What skills do young creatives need to succeed in a production studio?

We know that the more diverse we are, the more creative we are… Technical knowledge, key software skills and creative flair will only get you so far. But an entrepreneurial spirit and a curious, openminded approach to life, work and creativity will produce the most erudite artist.

Do you have a favourite Saddington Baynes project?

No, I have a few! I’m pretty impressionable by what the artists have loved working on.

SB’s #TortelliniTheTortoise project, as can be seen on Instagram, was designed as an adorable reflection of the challenging year of 2020, through the eyes of a tortoise

When we have projects that they love doing and capture their creative essence, there’s a buzz around the studio! We’ve worked on some awesome pieces – I’ve always loved our HR-V Explosion, it’s just seamlessly satisfying VFX, and I’ll never forget seeing the IMAX cinema in Waterloo wrapped in our Citrus Edge campaign, or walking through Harrods before the doors opened with our EKOCYCLE animations on every screen in the building… and there are a lot of screens!

Personally, and unsurprisingly, I love our RnD projects. Redefining Beauty, Reggie The Robot and of course, Tortellini The Tortoise have all been highlights, as I get to collaborate so closely with the whole team, sharing concepts and watching them innovate, develop and explore new ideas!

Then I get to wrap it all up and share their talents and tell the stories of concepts that I adore.

I also have the privilege of working with our insights team, developing the neurocreative side of our business, and as a complete colour enthusiast – I love colour,

colour theory and the effect it has on my emotions – working on how neuroscience can help us understand the emotional effects of different creative compositions is effectively like Christmas every day… if you love Christmas!

Where do you see the future for Saddington Baynes?

Saddington Baynes will continue to evolve into a global tour de force. We will continue to trailblaze, innovate and pioneer, because that’s at the heart of our ethos and how we stay on our toes being the ultimate creative image makers! Honestly, I don’t think there’s been a more exciting time to work at Sadds. Watch this space, spectacular things are coming…

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A day in the life

McSpadden worked on Thor: Ragnarok, where her many responsibilities included the live capture of performance data for the characters

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A…

Virtual production specialist We caught up with motion capture supervisor Jennifer McSpadden, who talked us through her working day

NAME Jennifer McSpadden JOB TITLE Senior motion capture supervisor STUDIO Goodbye Kansas Studios LOCATION USA ABOUT Jennifer is a virtual production and motion capture specialist based out of Goodbye Kansas’ office in Los Angeles, California.

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ennifer McSpadden currently works as the senior motion capture supervisor for Goodbye Kansas Studios, based in Los Angeles.

McSpadden’s background centres around motion capture, with Lightstorm Technology at the forefront of her skill set.

On stage, she is responsible for calibrating and maintaining the capture software and gathering live performance capture data.

McSpadden also considers herself a virtual production specialist, with a working understanding of virtual cameras, LED walls, and virtual set integration. Among her credits are blockbusters like Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, as well as previs and R&D for Black Panther and The Mandalorian.

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08:00am I’m brewing green tea and checking my email. The majority of my company is based in Stockholm, so with a nine-hour time difference, the start of my day is the end of everyone else’s. This is also a good time for me to catch my Swedish colleagues before they go home, so I often have meetings first thing in the morning. This sets the tone for the rest of my day.

09:30am By 09:30am, I’ve settled into work. If I am working from home, I am usually sorting out pipeline solutions for virtual production and motion capturecentric projects. Due to my knowledge of Unreal Engine, I am sometimes tasked with developing training content for colleagues, to review how to use the engine for virtual production content creation.

If I am working from the office, I

am focused on a Lightstorm-driven motion capture workflow, finessing character mapping scenarios and testing different equipment combinations.

11:00am Work continues. I try to fit in half an hour to an hour of fitness before lunch. I don’t often have time to work out in the evening, so this is the best time I can find in the day. When it’s time to break, I spend some time on the mat, focusing on yoga and bodyweight exercises.

13:00pm Time to decide what’s for lunch! Depending on the day’s workload, I may have something delivered, or if I’m still at home, whip up something quick. Usually something salad-related. There are times when I’m on stage, shooting for a client, and my lunch break

A day in the life

CAREER IN MOTION

Jennifer McSpadden shares her advice for artists that fancy a future in motion capture and virtual production Can you tell us how your career in motion capture got started?

I grew up just outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

In high school I took broadcast journalism classes and decided that I wanted to work in the film industry. I attended the Savannah College of Art and Design, studying film as an undergrad student and visual effects as a graduate student. I took my motion capture courses at SCAD, and upon graduating, I started working at Giant/Profile Studios.

Eventually, I was able to be on a live set. My first foray was in Brisbane, Australia, on the set of Thor: Ragnarok.

“YOU HAVE TO REACT QUICKLY TO CHALLENGES ON STAGE, OFFERING CLEAR AND SUCCINCT DIRECTIVES TO YOUR TEAM” can tend to be cut short, in order to prep for the afternoon. I’ve learned to be flexible with the mid-day meal and to be satisfied with taking lunch ‘at my desk’.

15:00pm Mid-afternoon is when I take my West Coast meetings. I have weekly check-ins with my immediate team to discuss office needs and any matters that require input from our team in Stockholm. This way, we can send updates for them to see first thing in the morning (our midnight). I also maintain regular correspondence with a few other studios, so I check in with them to make sure that plans are proceeding on any projects underway.

17:00pm If I am actively working on shots for a client, this is when I would

queue tasks to run overnight. This can include batch processing and retargeting motion capture data, transcoding witness camera footage that corresponds with motion data selects, or finalising any data or requests that need to go to our Stockholm office for processing in our off-hours.

17:30pm From my years of working on set, I am now used to working a little bit later in the day, so my workday often ends closer to 6pm (or later). After work, and after dinner, I often like to catch up with my family, knit and crochet, and play video games with my boyfriend.

As I get older, I find myself appreciating sleep more and more, so I’m not often up very late. By 11pm, I’m already dead to the world.

What advice would you give to those looking to get started with motion capture?

While not absolutely required, a foundational understanding of 3D animation and character rigging is very helpful for motion capture, especially when focusing on a job in postproduction. If you want to work on stage, then I would suggest trying to get a job on stage in just about any capacity. It’s important to understand what it is like to be a crewperson, to understand pace, hierarchy, and general decorum. Then, you can seek a position within the visual effects department, and then find yourself on a virtual production or motion capture team.

What qualities, skills and abilities are essential to a motion capture supervisor?

Communication is key! Not every client is well-versed in the motion capture process, so you have to be able to find a way to explain complicated technical procedures in easyto-follow terminology. You also have to be able to think on your feet and react quickly to challenges on the stage, offering clear and succinct directives to your team. Patience and flexibility are also requirements. There are often multiple ways to arrive at the same conclusion, and sometimes the best solution isn’t always the easiest.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

In my field, the potential for creative problemsolving is ever-evolving. Each client, show and stage is unique, presenting different requests, considerations, and shooting conditions that need to be addressed. As a supervisor, I work closely with the client as well as with the crew. I enjoy the payoff of being able to communicate the client’s needs to the crew, aiding the crew in the execution of those needs, and celebrating with the client when the crew is successful.

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PROJECT INSIGHT

Beast masters

Go behind the groundbreaking VFX and creature FX of YT Industries’ Return Of The Goat II: New World Order

eturn Of The Goat II: New World Order is a 20-minute film from mountain bike brand YT Industries starring none other than Hollywood character actor Mads Mikkelsen.

The film was directed by Otto Bathurst of Peaky Blinders fame and presented the team at London’s Absolute Post with a ton of extensive VFX. Among the project’s challenges were turning a man into a goat with CG, a limestone quarry into the Utah desert with set extension and a host of bells and whistles across CG, effects and colour.

With a shot count of over 90, Return Of The Goat II is among Absolute’s biggest projects to date.

To find out how the team at Absolute solidified their groom and creature FX pipelines whilst building upon the portfolio of their ever-evolving film and TV department, 3D World caught up with CG artists Ameen Abbas and Craig Healy. Read on to discover how the pair helped Absolute to make this ambitious film a reality.

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The transformation sequence looks like the biggest VFX challenge in the film. How did you do it?

Before getting stuck in, we worked closely with the director, Otto Bathurst, developing many iterations of skull shapes and textures for the goat, before landing on an aesthetic.

The entire pipeline was reliant on how the concept looked and behaved, so it was important that we started on the same page.

The visual treatment needed a delicate balance between what the viewer expects and what the brand needed to convey. On one hand, it’s horror-themed with a satanic Baphomet as the hero character. But it’s also a branded film, meaning the goat form needed to be treated a certain way.

Despite horror tropes, the transformation was a change our character goes through willingly and has done many times before, so it shouldn’t be grotesque, shocking, or too graphic. It needed to show control, evolution and strength.

Once we had our aligned vision, we began the 3D workflow with rotomation – a

process that utilises tracking information from live-action footage and allows for animating 3D elements on top. Once the rotomation process was complete, our groom artist got to work creating guides and goat fur. We used our FX pipeline to do some research and development on soft-body/cloth-based simulations for the tearing of the skin until we found the perfect option via Houdini.

This scene was shot in a cavernous wine cellar in Slovenia and our team had taken lots of survey data, HDR panoramas and LiDAR scans on set, which helped us out.

Our look development and lighting team were able to recreate the environment to perfection, producing replicated lighting for high-quality, believable renders.

Were there unexpected hurdles that you encountered?

One of the biggest hurdles for the final skin-tearing money shot was perfecting the talent’s gripping hand movement. In the live footage, the actor’s finger placement meant the gripping and tearing CG simulation had very specific challenges. To combat this, we created a pipeline that allowed us to adjust the connections between the hands and the peelable skin. This was done through painting strength maps directly onto the geometry, specifying how strong the constraints were at any specific location.

Added to this was a stage of resculpting directly on the animation caches, creating additional detail of pinched areas and folds precisely where they needed to be.

We also worked hard to perfect the blood in this scene. Because of the movement of the head and the horns which grow

Beast masters

CREATE YOUR OWN CREATURE EFFECTS Ameen Abbas and Craig Healy of Absolute Post share pro tips for jaw-dropping creature effects

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Careful attention had to be given to the blood effects as the horn grows throughout the transformation

Gather strong references Creature FX is not centred around reality, but it’s always useful to look at relevant references from the real world. For the horn meniscus build up and initial tear, for example, we looked at people with body modifications and piercings under the skin and analysed how the skin stretched and reacted.

We also analysed liquid simulations, establishing how blood, a thicker liquid, might trickle out of incisions.

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Concept is key One of the main things we learnt was how important thoroughly designing the art is in advance.

Having a well thought-out goal from the beginning will save the tedious process of hundreds of CG iterations and give you something concrete to work towards.

“THE TRANSFORMATION SHOULDN’T BE SHOCKING OR TOO GRAPHIC. IT HAD TO SHOW CONTROL, EVOLUTION AND STRENGTH” speed at which Houdini processes geometry also proved really helpful, allowing us to use much higher resolution geometry when trialling out different variations.

The setup we created also allowed us to swap out our mesh and simply re-cache with minimal extra graft, as well as allowing us to seamlessly create custom attributes that were useful for shading when we exported What tools and software did you use to Maya. For example, being able to isolate the inside of the skin, as well as the area on this project? around the horns, proved useful for mixing Houdini was our hero software for many FX elements. It has a large number of tools between shaders, as well as outputting custom matte AOVs for compositing. and its workflow is very procedural and Maya was also a total saviour. We used it flexible – perfect for the large number of iterations of horn growth, skin punctures, to help with the initial animations, to create the rotomation geometry and to rig and skin meniscus, skull aesthetics and blood we went through. We were able to dive into animate the growing horns. The benefit of each shot and tailor the animations exactly. Maya is that once you’ve created an effective rig, you can art direct the movements much For the horn growth, Houdini allowed more freely compared to Houdini. The us to create very specific connections between the animating horns and the skin, hand-animated approach makes it useful for which gave us realistic results early on. The artistic, specific movements. continually wider throughout the sequence, it was tricky to maintain the shape of the blood trickles and get the build-up caused by surface tension. To make this more art directable, we simulated the blood on a static mesh, which allowed us to control the length and speed of individual trickles.

Problem solved!

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Approach with caution Some of the more basic methods are usually the quickest at delivering a decent result, but don’t be fooled.

Often, issues can arise when it comes to upping the resolution of the sims from simpler methods. Doing multiple rounds of research and development surrounding proven workflows will put a halt to continuing with an inefficient approach early on.

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Always have clean topology Getting your topology in order is a vital step before simulating. With animated geometry, intersections can often occur, so fixing this will alleviate potential errors or unpredictable behaviours from the Vellum Solver down the line.

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Keep the base rotomation as tidy as possible When it comes to this type of effect, it’s easy to over-work and over-craft the input geometry, which only ends up causing complications down the line. By using simpler input geometry, you can sculpt the more complex effects with more flexibility, which will help achieve the desired effects far more quickly.

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Which of these ultra-wide offerings is the best fit for you and your needs?

We explore the latest software and hardware tools to see if they are worth your time or money

ULTRA-WIDE DISPLAYS HARDWARE GROUP TEST

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o visual FX wizard can ever have enough desktop space. Not only do most modern workflows involve multiple applications for modelling, lighting, graphics editing and video rendering, team projects require communication, via the likes of email and Slack, plus the ubiquitous browser window that may be a source of crucial reference material.

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Having enough desktop space to ensure every part of a project is visible at once helps immensely when making edits and decisions. It’s a big reason why both dual monitors and ultra-wide displays have already become a popular choice among creative professionals of all disciplines.

Ultra-wide displays replace dual monitors though, exchanging multiple standard 27-inch or 32-inch PC displays

with a single, wide desktop, eliminating the bezel and empty space that physically separates left from right, meaning all that space is always there, all the time.

Adapting to an ultra-wide environment offers a real productivity boost.

It can be tricky to wade through the word spaghetti of specifications and jargon in display technology. You need to keep tabs on screen

size, refresh rate, resolution, colour accuracy, panel type, curvature, contrast, brightness and of course pricing, all of which vary immensely between models, and it’s not always obvious which is the right choice for your environment and workflow.

We’ve picked out four different products for comparison this month, to help you determine which display is the best fit for your work.

Ultra-wide displays

SPECIFICATIONS Screen Size: 34-inch Panel Type: VA Resolution: 3,440 x 1,440 Inputs: 2x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.2 Curvature: 1500R Price: £399

SCORE Performance: 8 Features: 8 Value: 10 Overall: 9

AOC CU34P2A

Excellent design, solid construction and all-round great performance, all at an affordable price

A BARGAIN 34-INCH DISPLAY THAT DOESN’T SKIMP ON QUALITY

AOC is competing very aggressively on pricing with the CU34P2A, a 34-inch QHD (3,440 x 1,440) display that costs just £399. And unlike other affordable screens that opt for a low-quality stand, cheap build quality and lacking in helpful display features, AOC has retained many of the more useful extras that enhance your computing experience, in addition to excellent image quality from its VA panel.

The low, entry-level pricing means those who aren’t endowed with bottomless wallets can enjoy the same benefits of a wide display as those who can splash out on the pricier brands.

Competitive brightness levels of 340 nits, an excellent 1,000:1 contrast ratio and colour reproduction results that showed 100% sRGB coverage, 85% AdobeRGB and 87% DCI-P3 are excellent results that should reassure anyone that this screen will work well for any kind of graphics work.

Brightness uniformity slips slightly, we measured 11% deviation in one of the corners, slightly higher than

other panels, and some pricier IPS screens will indeed get you bleeding-edge colour reproduction, but even when working with graphics these aspects of a display aren’t absolutely critical for day-today use.

screen costs so much less than competitors.

Our main gripe is that the on-screen display (OSD) is a bit clunky and the buttons to operate it feel clicky, and it’s not as quick to adjust settings as with the Asus PA34VC or

It’s also easier to forgive these (minor) setbacks when considering how AOC has squeezed in so much more on this display. For gaming, Adaptive Sync and 100Hz refresh rates are supported.

There’s a USB hub and the stand helpfully lets you rotate and tilt the screen, something other manufacturers cut to save a few pennies.

The overall design is excellent too. The construction is reasonably solid and the bezels around the edges are just a few millimetres, so the overall look absolutely doesn’t give it away that this

the Dell U4021QW, which both have nifty joysticks to navigate their menus, meaning you need to spend some time getting used to it.

We really have no other major complaints though.

The 34-inch screen size is admittedly less ‘ultra’ wide than ‘slightly’ wide – which we consider a personal choice rather than a setback. It’s still a 21:9 aspect ratio with more desktop display pixels.

And if that’s still not enough screen, at this price point you could even consider two of these in a dual-monitor setup and still not break the bank.

“THE OVERALL LOOK DOESN’T GIVE IT AWAY THAT THIS SCREEN COSTS SO MUCH LESS THAN COMPETITORS”

3D WORLD 89

Ultra-wide displays

A very high-quality display, but the lack of 60Hz at native resolution over HDMI is a limitation

Dell UltraSharp 40 Curved WUHD Monitor U4021QW

MORE VERTICAL RESOLUTION, MORE FEATURES AND OUTSTANDING PRODUCT QUALITY MAKE THE HIGH PRICE EASIER TO SWALLOW

SPECIFICATIONS Screen Size: 40-inch Panel Type: IPS Resolution: 5,120 x 2,160 Inputs: 2x HDMI 2.0, 1x DP 1.4, 1x Thunderbolt 3, 1x USB-C, 5x USB-A, 1x RJ45, Ethernet Curvature: 2500R Price: £1,999

SCORE Performance: 8 Features: 10 Value: 6 Overall: 8 90 3D WORLD

Dell’s consistent ability to push the barriers of screen technology is pretty clear as soon as you set up the U4021QW. This £2,000-ish monitor is at the upper end of pricing, five times that of the AOC CU34P2A, but it outclasses every ultra-wide on the market in almost every respect.

The most critical example is the vertical resolution. The native 1,440 pixels that is standard on ultra-wide displays is not enough to display a 4K image. Dell has pushed through this limit, offering 2,160 vertical pixels, a huge benefit to all visual artists, for a full native resolution of 5,120 x 2,160 (5K2K).

Here you’re getting a middle-of-the-road screen size.

40 inches is definitely wider than you’re used to, but sitting in a goldilocks zone of desktop footprint, display real estate, and underlying technology.

Besides this, the U4021QW not only has all the bells and whistles typical on most high-

end displays, such as a KVM and fast charging over 90W Thunderbolt, but it also fixes all kinds of niggling issues that are common in a lot of screens.

For example, it’s refreshing that the speakers sound so much better than anything we’ve previously heard from a desktop display, besides Apple’s iMac all-in-one. The interface is easy to navigate and cleverly thought out with a high-quality joystick for navigation. No stone is left unturned, so even settings like PiP (Picture-in-Picture) have more options than usual and are tailored to the wide 40-inch panel you’ve paid for. And when using the KVM (perhaps with a laptop connected over Thunderbolt) you get a useful RJ45 networking port plus keyboard and mouse over USB. There’s a small omission though. HDMI 2.0 does not have the bandwidth for a 5K2K native resolution image at 60Hz – so you’re stuck with 30Hz only. Either the Thunderbolt or DisplayPort

inputs work perfectly fine, but HDMI 2.1 would have solved this. There’s also no VRR support for gaming.

What you’re not getting for this outlay is the same eye-popping colour that matches certain high-end 16:9 4K screens. The U4021QW absolutely ticks the colour accuracy box – we measured 94% DCI-P3 coverage, 100% AdobeRGB and 100% sRGB, with limited deviation across the panel. But brightness hovers around a middling 300 nits, and while contrast is fine it’s not outstanding. It is an IPS panel though, with better viewing angles, and this goes some way to explain the higher pricing.

So while the U4021QW is a great display for most usage scenarios, it costs a lot and since a standard 16:9 colour-accurate screen carries roughly the same sum, there’s a trade-off between paying for either extra pixels or the best possible image quality, but sadly not both.

Asus PA34VC

IPS PANEL TECHNOLOGY, GOOD IMAGE QUALITY AND A GREAT DESIGN The ProArt brand has been hugely successful for Asus, whose fantastic high-end (and pricey) colour-accurate 4K IPS screens are capable of image reproduction that equals or even surpasses other top-end vendors. Being an ultra-wide, the PA34VC is a bit different.

It retains the ProArt branding, it uses the same IPS panel technology and it still presents great image quality.

But it unfortunately doesn’t offer quite what we were hoping for – the same industryleading colour accuracy and high brightness levels of the 4K Asus ProArt screens (such as the brilliant PA329C) stretched into a 34-inch QHD (3,440 x 1,440) form factor.

That decision may have been due to cost. At £1,199 the PA34VC is already moving into

the upper end of pricing for 21:9 displays, so the additional technological effort to raise the brightness and colour accuracy levels further would have made the cost skyrocket.

Instead of the 600 nits brightness on the PA329C, here you get more middle-ofthe-road levels of 320 nits. We measured an 800:1 contrast ratio and accuracy figures of 100% sRGB, 90% AdobeRGB and 94% DCI-P3 – which are indeed better results than we measured from VA panels.

But forget that, the PA34VC is a joy to use in all other respects. It’s extremely well built, the image quality is excellent and the features list is an improvement over cheaper screens too. Dual Thunderbolt USB-C connectivity is a big plus, offering 40Gbps data transfers and Power Delivery for device charging and display

chaining. The stand is flexible and there’s joystick control for navigating menus. Within those menus, there are a ton of ways to tune the picture quality, by saving user colour profiles, tweaking the colour temperature and so on. There’s built-in support for third-party calibrators and a Picture-inPicture mode to view multiple display inputs at once.

It’s a great overall package, represents an excellent screen for professional use and will not disappoint artists. We remain hopeful that at some point Asus will have an allconquering ultra-wide display that offers the outstanding image quality of its 4K screens.

Indeed we’d love to see Asus sell a high-end ultra-wide with the same 1,200-nit brightness and mini-LED backlight technology used on the £4,000 (approx) PA32UCX-PK. That would be a market first, but we’re not there yet.

SPECIFICATIONS Screen Size: 34-inch Panel Type: IPS Resolution: 3,440 x 1,440 Inputs: 2x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort, 2x Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) Curvature: 1900R Price: £1,199

SCORE Performance: 8 Features: 8 Value: 8 Overall: 8

Although lacking in a few areas, the PA34VC remains an excellent choice

3D WORLD 91

Ultra-wide displays

SPECIFICATIONS Screen Size: 49-inch Panel Type: VA Resolution: 5,120 x 1,440 Inputs: 2x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 4x USB A Curvature: 1800R Price: £999

SCORE Performance: 6 Features: 8 Value: 10 Overall: 8

92 3D WORLD

Philips 498P9

THE BIGGEST ULTRA-WIDE SCREEN SIZE DELIVERS INCREDIBLE DESKTOP SPACE

You’ve decided to go wide, so go all-out and opt for the widest possible display that gives you an insane amount of desktop space. That’s the reason anyone would choose the 498P9, a 49-inch screen with a 32:9 aspect ratio that really puts the ‘ultra’ in ultrawide. It will utterly dominate a room, and is so big we’d certainly recommend planning carefully before purchase.

It weighs 15kg so requires a large, strong desk, and you need to be sitting the right distance from it – but perhaps most importantly, you need to get ready for a total change in how you work. With so much screen in front of your eyes you really do gain the ability to have a lot more visible information at any one time – four applications at maximum height looks perfectly normal, and at a pinch, you can squeeze in six.

Given how much screen you’re getting here, the 498P9 is also great value at £999 RRP, and we’ve seen it for sale online for even less.

VA panel technology has helped Philips attain this value, and as with all VA panels, you get better contrast but slightly worse viewing angles than IPS screens, which is exacerbated on a 49-inch display. From a 45-degree angle a black image appeared almost dark blue.

But when viewed head on, VA gives you pretty much the same general visual experience as IPS, and isn’t the deal breaker it sounds like.

Other aspects of the 498P9 are highly polished too.

There’s a KVM with inputs for two PCs, which works really well here, given the resolution and screen size really is just like two 1440p displays side by side. The speakers are better than some displays and

With this 49-inch display, you can have a really complex, long project timeline visible from start to finish, without shrinking or scaling it

the construction feels good.

Impressively, even though this is a big screen, the stand still lets you tilt and rotate it.

Brightness levels are excellent. We measured over 475 nits with our colorimeter along with contrast of 1,000:1.

Accuracy was good too – 100% sRGB and 86% Adobe RGB isn’t bad, although falls short of IPS panels.

The market for extra-large ultra-wide screens is indeed quite small and there aren’t many alternatives to choose from. There are 49-inch options from Samsung and LG (not reviewed here) but that’s about it. Compared with them, the Philips 498P9 still holds up well.

With plenty of display inputs, good colour accuracy, excellent value and a nice design, the question of whether to invest in the 498P9 again depends on your desire for this form factor.

CONCLUSION An artist’s digital desktop is their unique personal space – and its layout, physical size and resolution is an integral part of any workflow. So the width and shape of the screen an individual chooses to use should be what feels comfortable to them and works in their environment.

It follows that we can’t say which screen size is ‘best’ for any given user. At times working on the 49-inch Philips 498P9 was an amazing experience with so much visual information available, but at sitting distance you do need to turn your head to use it. At other times we preferred using one of the slimmer panels that meant the whole display could still fit into our peripheral vision.

Besides screen size, the displays on test differ with their mix of VA and IPS panel technology. While VA is considerably less expensive, we found the image quality of IPS is better. Both the Asus and Dell displays that come with IPS panels exhibited better viewing angles, brightness uniformity and colour accuracy when tested with a Spyder5 colorimeter.

But that’s not the whole story. VA can offer deeper contrast, and the VA displays on test offered higher brightness levels, but on some VA displays fast-moving black images can occasionally result in artefacts on screen that you never see on IPS panels.

But that’s rare, and without forensic analysis, we think you’ll find it hard to spot the difference between VA and IPS screens when viewing content normally.

That’s why we think the real stand-out model in this test is the AOC CU34P2A. For under £400, you get a 34inch wide display that offers great results for most usage scenarios and is very well built.

We advise to choose a display that makes it easy to navigate through menus with a well-designed OSD, a stand

and is something we’re glad to see Dell has solved.

It’s a shame the Dell has a few flaws. The lack of 60Hz at native resolution over HDMI is annoying, and brightness levels are far from HDR levels.

For the same, or less, money you can get better, brighter image quality from a 16:9 4K screen. Right now it seems

that allows you to tilt, raise and rotate a screen and easily accessible ports. At the high prices some displays carry, you should look for extras such as KVM functionality, charging over Thunderbolt and USB, maybe an SD card slot and crucially, the use of a standard kettle lead for power rather than a proprietary external power adapter. They stink.

All of these conveniences of a display make it easier to adjust settings and integrate with your computer. Displays are something most people hold on to for years and form the hub of their environment, so frustrating issues become highly irritating over time.

On this front, Dell deserves an award for ensuring these aspects of its £2,000 U4021QW are well polished, and in some cases unique.

But on the Dell, the most crucial feature for artists is the support for 2,160 pixel height, enabling a 4K image to be displayed at native resolution.

That has been a weakness of ultra-wide displays until now,

no manufacturer offers that highly accurate, extremely bright image quality in an IPS ultra-wide – the perfect ultrawide display remains elusive.

Perfection is the enemy of the good though, and despite the niggles we’ve loved testing all four displays here, and enjoyed working with an ultra-wide desktop. We highly recommend this upgrade – as long as you’re aware there may be some limitations.

Ultra-wide displays

“AT HIGHER PRICES, YOU SHOULD LOOK FOR EXTRAS SUCH AS KVM FUNCTIONALITY”

3D WORLD 93

Vyper FDM 3D printer

AUTHOR PROFILE Rob Redman 3D World’s Rob Redman is a veteran 3D artist and creative director of a boutique studio, working across film, games, TV and print. He was a 3D artist on the Webbywinning Plot Device. pariahstudios.co.uk

PROS Self-levelling bed included Excellent levels of detail Good print speeds Colour touchscreen interface

CONS Some assembly required

BUILD IT YOURSELF The Vyper comes in two preconnected pieces that simply screw together.

Then it’s just a case of attaching the spool holder and screen, connecting a handful of electrical connectors and you are good to go. A very straightforward build.

94 3D WORLD

The Vyper is easy to use, excellent value and produces great-quality results

Vyper FDM 3D printer HARDWARE REVIEW

PRICE £335/$359 | COMPANY Anycubic | WEBSITE anycubic.com

A

nycubic has risen to the top of a seemingly vast number of companies making 3D printers, due to the consistent quality and value of its products.

FDM printers won’t be going anywhere for some time, as the benefits over resin-based machines are clear; they are quieter, easier to use and don’t produce unpleasant fumes.

This means that companies like Anycubic are still pushing the boundaries with new machines coming to market all the time.

The Vyper is a low to midrange machine in terms of cost, but does ship with some features you’d pay more for from the competition, and they are features you want too.

Unpacking the printer is a cinch, as it comes in two main sections that are half connected and all you need to do is bolt them together and link a few connectors. Mount the control screen and click the spool holder in place and

you are ready for action. Tools are provided, as are tools for maintenance and daily use, neatly housed in a drawer in the body of the printer.

The first feature that will have users praising Anycubic is the inclusion of a heated, self-levelling print bed (often a paid upgrade), which makes it much easier to obtain consistent prints that adhere properly. This feature alone adds huge value, as the prints will fail less often.

So, how do the prints actually look? Excellent. For an FDM printer the results are very good. You’d need to spend considerably more to get better results, as the

0.1mm print resolution is very fine and the self-levelling nature of the bed means everything stays in place, with few noticeable print layers that are overly visible. Of course this will never be quite as good as the very best, or match up to the resin printers out there, but for the cost and ease of use this is a great-value printer.

The build volume is middling, at 245mm(L) × 245mm(W) × 260mm(H), but Anycubic does make larger volume machines.

The accuracy of the stepper motor-driven bed movements is excellent too, at just 0.0125 x 0.002mm, so shifts in layers are almost unnoticeable.

THE VERDICT

8.2 OUT OF 10

VYPER FDM 3D PRINTER If you are on the lookout for a well-built FDM printer, with good levels of detail and an easy interface, then the Vyper should absolutely be on your shortlist. The self-levelling bed and decent print speeds add to the overall value.

Sculpting detailed scales in ZBrush

DRAGON CREATURE BUST (REAL TIME) Software ZBrush Year made 2021

Incredible 3D artists take us behind their artwork

Andres Zambrano andres_zambrano.artstation.com Andres Zambrano is a 3D character artist with a passion for CG art and games.

SCULPTING DETAILED SCALES IN ZBRUSH I approached the scales by first using the HD Geometry feature within ZBrush in order to get enough polygons to sculpt small details on a large unified surface. I decided to sculpt the scales by hand in order to avoid the repetitive look one can often get from relying on alphas. I blocked out the direction and pattern of the scales with a standard brush that was using Alpha 39. Then I went with the ClayBuildup brush to add volume to each scale individually. Finally, I added some noise with the NoiseMaker and some alphas to create surface imperfections.

3D WORLD 95

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