CGArena
VOLUME 3, ISSUE 6 DEC - JAN 2009
Get Attention in the Computer Graphics Community
INTERVIEW Yousef Ikhreis
PHOTOSHOP
Twisted Mind of Puyuh
AFTER EFFECTS Text Super Zoom
GALLERY
Latest 3d inspiring art
MAYA
Wireframe Rendering
ZBRUSH
Making of Manolia
VOL
3
Get Attention in the Computer Graphics Community Issue Contents
05
Interview
Yousef Ikhreis
21
Photoshop
Twisted Mind of Puyuh
29
After Effects
Text Super Zoom
32
3D Challenge
Winners Announced
34
Maya
Wireframe Rendering
40
ZBrush
Making of Manolia
48
Gallery
Showcase of latest 3D art
Volume 3, Issue 6 Dec-Jan 2009
Magazine Edited: Ashish Rastogi, India Magazine Cover Image: Stuzzi, France Magazine Design: Yousef Ikhreis, Jordan www.cgarena.com
Page 2
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
Industry News
CGArena
Tutorial content created by industry experts, ZBrush Foundation enables artists of all levels to grasp the incredible power of Pixologic’s industry standard sculpting tool. Delivered through Escape’s proprietary online learning system, ZBrush Foundation provides students with a comprehensive learning experience and the ability to ask questions of Escape’s industry professional tutors, using the system’s unique Q&A feature.
Mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD), digital content creation (DCC) and broadcast applications received a major performance boost with the introduction of the NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 4800 ultra-high-end professional graphics card. With advances in GPU architecture, added graphics memory and 30-bit color, the Quadro FX 4800 gives professionals the right toolset to dramatically push the boundaries of realism, performance and quality.
“I am very impressed with the quality of the ZBrush training Escape has created,” said Martin Knapp, marketing and education director at Pixologic Inc. “The videos are easy to follow and the unique player that allows interaction with the instructors is top notch! ZBrush users, new and old, will benefit from this training course.”
Equipped with 192 CUDAT parallel computing cores, the Quadro FX 4800 delivers a 2X performance increase over previous generations of ultra-high-end graphics cards. A 128-bit precision graphic pipeline and 32x FSAA for better image clarity and quality. The NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 is available and has a MSRP of $1,999 USD.
Book
High-end Visualization with New Quadro FX 4800 Graphics Card
Learning Autodesk Maya 2009 The Special Effects Handbook: Official Autodesk Training Guide - Learn how to produce desired design techniques with the how-to, detailed instructions in Learning Autodesk Maya The Special Effects Handbook. This book uses actual production files from an animated short film in tutorials that will get you familiar with Maya’s tools, options and capabilities. Follow the clear, step-by-step instructions to understand the dynamic stages of productions. You can explore lighting, texturing and visual effects and become familiar with the latest features through the book. ISBN - 978-1-897177-50-1
Training
ZBrush Foundation online course in Escape Studios
nParticles in Maya 2009 - A comphrensive guide to creating effects with nParticles. Learn Maya’s robust toolset for simulating complex physics simulations and an intuitive workflow for creating liquids, clouds, smoke, spray, and dust effects using Maya nParticles. Contains over 2.5 hours of practical projects and self-paced training. Perfect for new and experienced artists using Maya 2009. This DVD contains nParticles Overview, emission, collisions, style presets, nConstraints on nParticles, Perparticle expressions and much more. The DVD box contains 2 Discs and this DVD ships next business day and the cost of this DVD is $55.99
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Page 3
Interview with
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
CGArena
Yousef Ikhreis Q. Could you tell us a bit about yourself (age, location, country, and education in CG) and your background in CG?
When heard Autodesk acquires Softimage, it was like a shock or bad joke...
My name is Yousef Ikhreis, I’m 30 years old, and I live and work in Amman, Jordan. I’ve been involved in the graphic design and animation industry for 10 years; I now work as an Art Director in JAID Productions with 70 employees and this is a subsidiary of ITG Solutions, one of the leading companies in design, animation and e-learning in the region. I am self-taught artist, and this is my story of how I got involved in this business: Going back to the beginnings of the eighties, when I was a child (around 4 years old) I was afraid to go to the bathroom alone and always looking for my mom or waking her up to be around with me, because I used to see strange faces and creatures in the corners, and was always very upset when my mother and brothers would not believe me and stare at me with strange faces with a hectic smile, sometimes I would run naked to get them to watch them, pointing with my little fingers, but no one see….so they couldn’t believe. (it’s funny, I still remember). Later in 1995, when I was watching TV programs with boredom feeling, moving from one channel to another I watched the last minutes of behind the scenes program, and they were talking about the making of “Alien” character (H.R. Geiger) and while watching it with great enthusiasm I kept telling myself (ha, you can do that!! it’s easy, you are a grown up now to watch such things, you always see these creatures, but don’t tell anyone…they will start joking on you again), I waited for the next episode, and it was about “ Jurassic Park” where they mentioned “Softimage”, a word which was like Big Ben in my ears, I spent the later days like a fugitive with this word “Softimage”, it was like the holy sword that will empower me to create my creatures and will enforce the disbelievers to bow to that little child visions. By Softimage I will recreate my worlds. At the time Softimage was unknown and not available in Jordan, I started investigating about computer graphics and someone told me that there is a good software called Photoshop, with flicker speed I purchased a book about Photoshop, I read it three times (it was hard at the beginning), then I started learning Illustrator, CorelDraw, Macromedia Flash, Premier to help me in my presentations, After Effects, 3Ds Max, Maya, Digital Fusion, ZBrush, Softimage XSI ….etc, also learned script writing, screen play, storyboard, layout ….etc. Until now I spend a lot of time, effort and money (most of my income) buying tutorials, books, Software’s, searching for articles and extra knowledge and experience… Talent alone is not enough to flicker in this dazzling industry.
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Page 5
Interview with
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
CGArena
Yousef Ikhreis Q. Can you tell our readers what’s the actual work of the Art Director and what qualification is necessary for this job? Actually, There are different Art Directing types, the actual work of the Art Director is depending on the nature of the type; Printing Art Director, Multimedia Art Director, Life Shot Art Director, e-learning Art Director, Architectural Art Director, games Art Director, Cartoon Art Director….etc. so every Art Directing type has its own consistent workflow that is built to guarantee, achieve and reach the highest levels, and each workflow has its own specialty such as; the targets, the production pipeline, the Soft tools, the Hard tools, the resources… My responsibilities in JAID Productions are: • Direct the design and production of graphics and animations. • Formulating concepts and supervise workers engaged in executing layout designs for art work and copy to be presented by visual communications media. • Review illustrative material and confers with client regarding background information, objectives, presentation approaches, styles, techniques, and related production factors. • Formulate basic layout design concept and conduct research to select and secure suitable illustrative material. • Assign and direct staff members to develop design concepts into art. • Review, approve, and present final layouts for approval. • Mentoring, training, career directing and performing evaluations for the Art teams. For the Art Director qualifications, I will consider his philosophy, personality, vision, creativity, educated and cultivated as the most important qualifications. Those simple descriptions will lead him to present the most unique and innovative results, those are spiritual resources for the real talent, which will give him the ability to visualize the ideas and visions by words or images.I have always repeating this word ” Yesterday we had philosophers. Today we have directors”
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Page 6
Interview with
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
CGArena
Yousef Ikhreis Q. What are the tools in your arsenal and what’s the reason of choosing those? As I mentioned before, I spent a lot of time and effort to educate myself, to use and understand the software’s, preproduction, production, postproduction, pipelines… which are the tools to create my own worlds and to be a winning director (prizes are not my target they are my massages). And there is the software’s selection that I am able to work with, while my choice of selection is based on the software consistency and strength features that each has, and the most important, the project nature. This knowledge is helping me very much as Art Director. -
Graphic Design: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign. Motion Animation: Flash, After Effects, 3D Software, Photoshop, Illustrator. 3D works: Softimage XSI, Maya, Max.
* I have basic to intermediate knowledge using MotionBuilder, Lightwave 3D, Modo. Recently I am concentrating to enhance my knowledge and skills in Houdini. - Digital Sculpting: ZBrush, Mudbox. - 3D Painting: Bodypaint 3D, ZBrush, Mudbox, Photoshop. - Rendering: Mental ray, V Ray, Render Man for Maya. - 2.5D Tracking: Boujou, Syntheyes. - Landscapes: Vue, Teragen, Photoshop, Source images. - Editing: Premiere * I have basic knowledge using Avid. - Compositing: After Effects, Fusion, Combustion, Nuke, Shake. - Other: Painter, Deep paint, HDR Shop… And there is my favorite software with comments: - Softimage XSI: the elegant innovative style. - Maya: strong enough to fight the world. - Houdini: the big deal. - 3ds Max: the lucky man. - Pixologic Zbrush: actually they should rename it to Digital Cure or Yoga. And use it in the sanitarium for curing and relaxation, no... they should use it as enjoyment and happy tool for children…or… I love it. Fusion: if Fusion turns to a man, I will try to be his friend; he is honest, strait forward, confident and reliable. - Vue: great potentials, and bright future. - Photoshop (The King) no one dares to compare, critic, or judge it, any person who hates Photoshop should be sent to hell. www.cgarena.com
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Interview with
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
CGArena
Yousef Ikhreis Q. What’s your comment on the Autodesk acquires Softimage? It was like a shock or bad Joke, and I asked myself: for god sake why is the fate of Softimage to be dealt like that? (He) doesn’t deserve that …then after accepting the fact, I thanked my god...why? 1-
Crying can’t turn anything back.
2-
No one can blame Autodesk because they are a successful company
3-
Autodesk is the most powerful company that is able to understand and undertake Softimage.
4-
Autodesk has excellent knowledge and experience in the CG industry ;( its obvious).
5- Softimage has a solid history and very powerful to compete (no doubts!), so...Softimage will stay alive and healthy, because everybody loves the power. Also the words of Mr. Marc Peti reflect that. 6-
Who can guarantee that Softimage will be down in the near future?
7- By looking at the last two versions of Maya (Autodesk) we will notice very good enhancements, such as the n cloths, n particles, selection tools, UV folding, animation layer, speed…, all of that should be considered as a confident points.
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Page 8
Interview with
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
CGArena
Yousef Ikhreis
8- As we remember, when Adobe acquired Macromedia everybody thought that all Macromedia products will be distorted or metamorphosed, on the contrary Flash has great features with Action script 3, bones, Animation tracks… 9- If you are a wealthy rich man and start to bankrupt, and you have a Rolls-Royce car that you love very very much, but you have to sell it, and you got two buyers, rich arrogance man who knows how to deal with such a car and strange man who has no license to drive, for whom will you sell the car? Of course to the rich man because with him it will stay clean and live, I know you will feel that your pride is heart (I am so sorry for Softimage developers and employees) but this is the fact. Facts are the strongest words. 10- Hatred waves are increasing for Autodesk, EA, Adobe, Microsoft... but these things are always happening form the beginning and changing naturally, look at ZBrush for example, they are the innovative of Digital sculpting technique, and everybody thought that it will be dominating on the digital modeling industry, but look around you now, new Mudbox, Silo, Modo created their own displacements,… even Softimage or Maya after three or four releases will be able sculpt as we do in ZBrush, on the other hand for the last release of ZBrush it’s revealing their pure vision by working three steps ahead. Everything is changing whether Autodesk or Adobe or any else, but now it will be faster. This is a NEW ERA, and I agree with Mr. Kim Davidson President and CEO of Side Effects Software.
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Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
Interview with
CGArena
Yousef Ikhreis Q. As an Art director you have worked on several projects, can you share the experiences when you think why you are in this job, or how to overcome the obstacles faced? The most important mission for the Art director is visualizing the ideas with extra spices, our work starts from idea or request from the riverside A (client), and inventing or recreating ideas and concepts to be visualized in new image through the dashing water (deadline) to the Side B (the audience), and back to the Side A, where the audience will turn to be the dashing water instead the deadline, sometimes it could drag the Art Director to the waterfall or to the Side A safety with river virgin. Every task or project is a new river with different new sides, rolls and conditions, sometimes the river is wide and deep with storming winds, sometimes the water is shallow, cold and freezing, or torrential with dangerous broken pieces, other times the gold is shining under the water, or there is no Side B - the client at the Side B is dead (ran away)…. Every project is a different challenge. One of the most obstacles that we face is getting the real talent and creative minds around us within the perfect scheduling. Creative people like Mercury you can’t catch them easily. I love Art Directing because it’s always pushing me to think more and more. - The client: who is my client? How he describe his request? How he move and waive his hands? What he likes? His artistic awareness! How can I move step ahead and impress him? How to earn his trust? How much is he paying? … - The audience: who is my Audience? His age, education, culture and tradition! What he expects to see… - The media type: is it a presentation show? Demo reel? Magazine? TV? Internet? CD, DVD… - What is the plan…? - What are the words that I need to choose for communicating with the Storyboard artist? The graphic designers? The animator? The editor…every work type needs to be addressed with his special words and vocabulary to understand you clearly…
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Page 12
Interview with
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
CGArena
Yousef Ikhreis Q. You provide lots of services to the clients and one of these is “Pipelines and Software Consulting”, please tell us in detail what exactly is this and how much this service is in demand? There is an old say, describing the problem is half the solution, everybody in this industry knows that most of the wasted time is lost in the management and the project planning (because every project has its own specialty), the leftover time will be divided to the production phases with killing deadline, including the extra requests, and how hard to modify and change the pipeline or the plan. My services is to present common language between all sides and save the precious time, all I need is a full list of the project requirements, available infrastructure and resources, human skills, software, hardware resources…, then I start studying the project requirements and targets, researching, planning to produce the recommended reasonable pipeline, recommendations for software based on the project demands, deadlines for the production phases and more… also good knowledge in choosing the right software’s could affect positively on the pipeline, deadline, and performance, because of the variation of the proceduralism in the software’s workflow and the variation in the strong features in these software’s. Someone could ask; what are the differences in my services that other studios could not offer? When the manger loses one hour from the project time it will be discounted from every level down, my pipeline is to built and base the pipeline from down up of the pyramid, on the contrary of other pipelines (I can’t clarify more), this will afford more time for all artist (designers, modelers, animators…) and will get their satisfaction, more time for artists means better details, quality, and less stress. The most hated thing for the artists is the tight schedules, because they can’t achieve the great results which they are searching for, and this gives them deep feeling of embarrassment inside and dissatisfaction (many artists are quitting their jobs for that reason). The demand on these services is increasing, especially in my country, from the new small studios and boutiques, also the design houses and studios that are looking for a transition to this work type. They are looking to achieve the lowest risk levels with highest quality and profits. www.cgarena.com
Page 13
Interview with
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
CGArena
Yousef Ikhreis Q. Don’t you think if anyone aware of their goals, latest technology trends and working of the software then easily setup all this? I don’t think that will be easy, specially for the new studios who are lacking the necessary experience and knowledge, also to reach your goals you need to be guided to the right path with the right tools, resources, pipeline and methodology. For the professional experienced studios they would reject a lot of projects because they do not match with their standards and methodology, and this does not mean they don’t have the latest technology. Also if you look at the biggest commercial studios you will discover that they contain lots of cells or teams; one director or supervisor or both and a bunch of skilled artists. Every project has its own challenges and there is no one pipeline that can match all the projects needs. Q. Please tell us about the Fancy Planets and when we able to see the preview of this short film? It’s a valid statement when I say that I will recreate my own worlds. Fancy Planets is my first personal short CG movie, it’s a science fiction, HD movie around 20 minutes. It’s about an Alien who tries to achieve his greedy dreams… I wrote the story, created the Storyboard, designed the characters (more than 15 character species, varying from Aliens to Monsters, Creatures…), these character are now modeled, digitally sculpted (complete displacement, normal, cavity maps), textured and rigged. Now I am working on the animation stage phase1, it’s going to be marvelous, strange character movements, fantastic inspired environments, cities, a spaceship, clouds, colors, mood and music style… even I designed two new typographic font styles for some of the Aliens civilization. I am happy to live in my real dreams. I don’t know exactly when I am going to finish, because all my dedicated efforts are in my spare time, I spent the last two years working on it, and sleeping three hours per day (this is suicidal). I expect to finish in close of 2010, I still have huge amount of animation, lighting camera works, lots of composing….but I will finish it. www.cgarena.com
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Interview with
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
CGArena
Yousef Ikhreis Q. What do you like the most: Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Rendering, Sculpting, Compositing or Direction and please give 5 tips to the future wanna be animators? Frankly, I don’t know, Because I love everything related to the Art and the CG, some times I feel that I am a greedy artist, and I wish if the day is 60 hours or more. I love to write my stories, sculpting digitally or manually, Arabic calligraphy, graphic design, character design, environment design, inventing Aliens languages, modeling, animating, compositing, directing …. Everything. What should I do with my passion…its killing me? Five tips for the animators: - Timing and body language: read the world best novels and learn from the masters how they deal with timing, read for Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Victor Hogue… how they time their words, sentences, paragraphs…, sometimes they were writing three simple empty lines (for example) just to make you breath lightly and relaxed, and in the fourth line they will put one exploding word that will make you irritated, also read carefully how they describe their characters poses and body languages. - Learn from the music: sometimes the animation rhythm should be like the classic music, or like Pop music, Hip Hop… also think of the animation of a certain scene as one unit (not as parts), this will help you to find easily the dissonance in the Animation. - The audience eyes are mine: while you are animating keep thinking were the audience eye is in every picture and frame, and keep your movements perfect and convincing with good animation rhythm, if you do that, then the audience will trust you and give you their eyes. This is the best chance for you… so; don’t lose the trust. - Read the script many times before you start animating and draw your key frame poses. - Test your animation many times with different speeds and screen resolution; it’s a shame to answer the director that you did not notice that in your animation.
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Page 16
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
Interview with
CGArena
Yousef Ikhreis Q. If you had a choice to work with any CG Artist who would you want to work with and why? There are the artists that I admire watching their works; Rick Baker: 6 time Academy Award Winner Aaron Sims: his works and character designs are splendid, I like his works, when I watched his picture when he was at 16 years old, working at a sculpture at Rick Baker Studio, I asked myself what a talent this guy has at this age. Pascal Planche: his works has great original mood, lighting and composition. His works are very special, also his characters. Meats Meier: the most committed CG artist to the art concept, after one hundred years his name could be side by side to Van Cough, Salvador Dali… The list goes on … Q. What’s the most useful thing you have learnt in 3d? Learn from others experiments and share your knowledge and experience. Also believe in your team ability Q. Anything you like to add? It is your chance now to state your opinion about anything. I would like to invite everybody who likes or wish to be in this industry and believes in his ability, to step forward and try, no matter how old you are your gender, artistic or educational background. Art is for all, and no one has the right to kill your dreams, even you. Thanks a lot for taking out sometime for us from your busy schedule. Thank you for this chance to talk and to share my thoughts to CGArena community. Good luck for all. Web: www.yousefart.com
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Email: yikhreis@gmail.com
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Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Leong Wan Kok, Malaysia CGArena Software:
Twisted Mind of Puyuh
Photoshop
2D
Hi, I’m WanKok. I have been involved in art industry for almost 12 years. Over my career path, I’ve been exposed to different techniques of creating digital art work for game industry, post production and publishing company. These experiences have somehow helped build up my personal way of rendering a scenes. In this tutorial, I’m happy to share my techniques and will walk you through the many steps I take, from initial conceptual work to final rendering. Basically, this tutorial divides into 5 main sections: Brain Storming; Prior to Coloring; Coloring; Texturing; Final Touch Up. Each step of the way will be accompanied by WIP art works and shall also explain the tools and methods I used. As always, it is vital to know what’s your artistic direction prior to painting. What kind of style, design element, the canvas size, final output file format, etc. These are essential. If you have not received any brief from your art director, ASK! If this is your personal project, I strongly advice you to plan out one. This will indefinitely save you time in the end. BRAIN STORMING Read the design brief carefully. Design your character and roughly work out some thumbnails, rough and fast. Get the overall feel for it. If time permits, develop your characters. Think of the environment they dwell in, what kind of climate and clothing they wear? What’s their characteristic? Consider these questions and slowly you will start to “feel” for your painting. I believe this will make the painting more interesting and thus has a “longer read”. For my case, since this Twisted Mind of Puyuh is a front cover for my comic, I basically know what kind of composition, characters and direction I need to draw/achieve.
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Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Leong Wan Kok, Malaysia CGArena
Twisted Mind of Puyuh PRIOR TO COLORING Once the layout is done, get it scanned. Usually I go with 300dpi, grey scale.
COLORING On top of the layer, open a new one. Choose “paint bucket” (type ‘G’) and fill the whole canvas with a suitable darker tones. Here I go with warm brown for the basic coat. Turn the layer to “multiply” (under layer), so that the underneath layer is still visible. For personal liking, I always start coloring the characters first, then background, an “inside out” method. This way enables me to judge the colors’ relation more precisely. Constantly change your brush’s opacity. I love to work somewhere around 20-50%, “flow” sets to 68%. It builds up the color nicely this way IMHO.
THE JOURNEY CONTINUES Make full use of the layering function. (Create layer by typing “ctrl + shift+N”) This is most advisable as you can always return to that layer and make changes if need to. Bear in mind that the more layers you have, the heavier the file will be. You need to balance it out. Merge selected layers by “Ctrl+E”. Change the brush’s size by exploring the brush list. Call out brush (type “B”), control the diameter by “ ] ” increasing; “ [ ” decreasing. Remember to save your files constantly and do back up. www.cgarena.com
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Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Leong Wan Kok, Malaysia CGArena
Twisted Mind of Puyuh TEXTURE MAPPING_01 This is one of the fun parts and challenging process. To give the painting a unique rusted look, I choose a rusted metal texture as my base. Open a new layer, paste the texture in, and set the layer mode to “multiply”. Decide where you want to map the texture. Move and scale the texture to the right size. Make sure the texture size is relative to the painting, or else it will look out of place. Delete the areas you do not need (the texture). Once nicely mapped, change the texture’s opacity. Adjust brightness/contrast to the texture. Erase the hard edges of the texture by using eraser tool, or “E” to call it out. Make sure it looks subtle and merges well with the painting.
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Page 24
Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Leong Wan Kok, Malaysia CGArena
Twisted Mind of Puyuh COLOR EXPANSION I usually keep on painting one character until it’s done. I feel comfortable seeing the characters take shapes one by one. This is my preference. As usual, “ctrl+shift+N” to create a new layer to paint on. Toggle between “normal” and “multiply” for layer mode. For the shadow, I go for “multiply”; for detail and new coloring, I go for “normal”. Try these out and you will get the feel of it. My habit is to always start with coloring the characters first, and then move on to background.
TEXTURE MAPPING_02 Repeat Texture Mapping_01. Important note: subtlety is the keyword. The texture is here to enhance, not over powering the whole painting. Do not make it look too strong or introduce too many texture maps. It will make the painting looks congested and stifling. Balance is the art here. Various shortcuts: - Level (ctrl+L) ; Curves (ctrl+M); Color Balance (ctrl+B); Brightness/contrast; Hue/Saturation( ctrl+U). Combine the above methods, or choose one or two. Try them out.
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Page 25
Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Leong Wan Kok, Malaysia CGArena
Twisted Mind of Puyuh DECORATION / ACCESSORY A nice painting consists of not only catchy character design, focus point, good layout but also introducing small elements/details. It will definitely spice up the work. Add some supporting characters here and there. Have some fun!
FINAL TOUCH UP Tips: To ease your viewing, you can always open another window to view the work by hitting: Window > Arrange > New Window
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Page 26
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
Tutorial
by Leong Wan Kok, Malaysia CGArena
Twisted Mind of Puyuh This is where the painting seems coming close to an end. (But actually far from it) Maintain your patience. I know when the painting close to an end, sometime we might “rush it a bit”. But refrain from that! Keep your patience and stay focus. Is good to always have a navigator in your scenes. With navigator, you can view the overall painting in a small individual window, without having to constantly zooming in and out. Detail is the key here, make or break the painting. Adjust the color for the last time. Hit “Tab” in your keyboard to close all windows, let alone the file. Now, really look at your illustration, and spot for places where you need to further refine. Until you have a smile on your face, you know you have an excellent painting. Congratulation, you are done! I hope you enjoy going through my tutorial and thank you for reading it. To know more of my works and projects I’m working on, please visit my website at: www.1000tentacles.com I can be contacted at pkok@1000tentacles.com Happy painting!
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Leong Wan Kok is an award-winning illustrator from Malaysia, specializing in character design and illustration. His work can be seen in various media : art print, illustration, poster, product design and comic, with clients listed from both local and oversea. Sculpting is one of his passions as well. Web: www.1000tentacles.com
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Email: pkok@1000tentacles.com
Page 27
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Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Suzane Smith, Canada CGArena Software:
Text Super Zoom
After Effects
3D
In this tutorial I will try to create a Superman opening titles effect where text comes with the outline and zooms towards the camera. Hope you will like this short and sweet tutorial. 1Create a text of your choice. We don’t require a filled text; we only need a stroke text. So, select the fill color as “No Fill Color” and stroke color as per your choice. Keep the stroke weight to 1pixel.
2Now animating the text in the scene is the main work but here no tips or tricks. Move the anchor point of the text in between of the text and use the position and scale values according to your ideas of animating. In movie, titles are moving in the space so they can appear and go anywhere. My composition is 4sec long, so first 2 sec I keep the title slow so viewer can read the text and then moved in a zip-zap way. 3Press Ctrl + D to duplicate the layer and change the stroke weight to 0.5 pixels. Also change the color of the text little darker in comparison to what you have selected before. 4-
Now apply the Effect > Time > Echo. Choose the settings as shown on the next page.
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Page 29
Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Suzane Smith, Canada CGArena
Text Super Zoom Echo Time Seconds = 0.005 -> Specifies the Time in echoes, positive values echo forward in Time. Starting Intensity = 0.90 -> Specifies the intensity of the starting frame in the echo sequence Decay = 0.99 ->Specifies the ratio of intensities of subsequent echoes. For example, if the decay is set to 0.5, the first echo will be half the strength of the Starting Intensity. The second echo will then be half that, or 0.25 times the Starting Intensity. Echo Operator = Blend -> I don’t think this required any explanation. Now, Number of Echoes set to around 100. But this value need to be animated so at time 1.20 presses the stopwatch near the Echoes and set the value to 0. At time 2.10, set the value to 100. This takes time according to your system processing power.
If you RAM preview the effect then you can see that you have achieved the effect similar to movie titles but still you can see the lines of the echoes. To solve this problem apply the Effect > Blur > Fast Blur and set the value to 2.0, so now lines doesn’t visible to anyone. (Tip: During RAM preview if you notice that your echoes get’s missing in some frames then purge the caches. Edit > Purge > Image Caches. www.cgarena.com
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Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Suzane Smith, Canada CGArena
Text Super Zoom
Lines Before Adding Blur
Lines After Adding Blur Enable the motion blur and render the composition. Simple Isn’t.
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Email: suz.smith@hotmail.com
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3D Challenge
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
Winners Announced CGArena
CGArena organised a “Beautiful” 3D Challenge, 18 Sep 2008 - 27 Nov 2008. Now the time comes to announce the Winners and they will be rewarded with special prizes from Craft Animations, Softimage, Pixologic, cmiVFX, Eat3D, Polyboost and TheBest3D.
Ist PRIZE Describe the theme beautiful in a poetic way and eyes wanted to discover every single pixel
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Prashant Suyal, India prashatnsuyal@gmail.com
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2nd PRIZE What a great Imagination!
Marc Hermitte, Switzerland info@digitart.ch
Asan Umerov, Ukraine umerov@gmail.com
www.cgarena.com
Cool pose and inviting you to go on a journey over her body.
3rd PRIZE Page 33
Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Andy Halls, USA CGArena Software:
Wireframe Rendering
Maya
3D
Hello friends, while going through various forums I have noticed one frequently asked question. I think many of you already know the answer of this question who ever created the modeling demo reel but still never find out a proper explanation of this question, so I tried to answer this question according to my capability and hope this solves the problem of many. The question is: How to do a wireframe rendering and control the wireframes in brightness, color, looks and so on. I used Maya to explain this problem but this technique works in every 3d package because this technique depends on the UV Texture editor of the program. I noticed there are several answers of this question but the simple answer has some limitations but this is the fastest way. So, I decide to answer virtually all possible ways. 1- Select your model and go into Window > UV Texture Editor, here you will see the UV’s of your mesh. Fix the UV’s distribution according to your requirement. In my case I just select the soccerball so, nothing required.
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Page 35
Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Andy Halls, USA CGArena
Wireframe Rendering 2- Now inside UV Texture Editor go into Polygons > UV Snapshot, give the filename, select the size (bigger is better for detailed UV’s so all edges get some space) and finally select the image format which supports “Alpha”. Here I selected the Targa. Press Ok.
3- Open Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade, create the Blinn shader, open the Attributes and in Color Attribute select “File” render node and browse the UV snapshot exported in the previous step. Scroll Down and under “Effects” select the “Invert” to invert the map otherwise black color will be transparent. (Not create any connection in Transparency and if created during invert the map then break the connection)
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Page 36
Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Andy Halls, USA CGArena
Wireframe Rendering 4- Render this, now first way is complete. Hope you are getting the result but using this way in complex meshes you will notice the lines are very thin, jagged and missing. You can also use the exported UV texture in specular, bump to get different results. When adding in specular then play with the “Eccentricity” and “Specular Roll Off” for the brightness of the lines. 5- In this second way, we will make the lines little thick so in the complex meshes doesn’t look missing or jagged. Follow Step 1 and 2, after taking the UV Snapshot, open the file in Photoshop. In the channels tab, Ctrl click on the “Alpha1” layer and this will load the selection (marching ants) on the image. Create a new layer, and choose Edit > Stroke, select width as 3px and color black. Fill the original layer background with white. 6- Now follow the Step 3 and don’t check the “Invert” because we already change the background to white. Now second way is also complete. (If you notice some likes are thick and some are thin on the mesh, because this is accordingly the UV’s laid out on the mesh).
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Page 37
Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Andy Halls, USA CGArena
Wireframe Rendering 7- In the final way you get the most control on the wireframes. Follow step 1 and 2 and 5. Now select Surface Shader in place of Blinn shader. Select “File” Render node in “Out Color” and select the file which saved from the Photoshop. Render the scene. 8. Now you are thinking this method is complete too but not exactly. You have to open a compositing program, I used the After Effect and in which I used two files. One normal render of the whole scene with blinn shader and second render with Surface Shader. Change the blending mode of Surface shader layer to “Multiply” and that’s it… this method is also complete but now you can change the color of the lines, adding glow or anything else which you can think ok.
POSSIBLE DIFFERENT RENDER STYLES So, from now on you have more control on your wireframe renderings. Hope you have learned something from this tutorial and will used for you in future renderings. Thanks. Email: andyhalls123@yahoo.com www.cgarena.com
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Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Stuzzi, France CGArena Software:
Making of Manolia
Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop
3D
INTRODUCTION I do appreciate the special mood of the studio’s photography’s. I thought it could be interesting to reproduce this feeling in CG. Even if I haven’t practice this exercise before, I believe it has already been done by talented artists. Rather than taking inspiration from them I prefer to take advices of the photographers about how to set up the composition. MODELING AND UV I started from an existing low poly mesh. The morphology of this base has already some interesting features. This starting point could save me a lot of time later once I’ll need to block a nice silhouette. Because I don’t have much time to finalize this illustration, anything that can speed up the process is welcome. The Essential is to keep the topology as even as possible. We can have some exceptions though. As far as I’m concerned some edges could be pinched at this production step. It helps me as references plus adds some more irregularities at some strategic localization. This allows me not to subdivide too much once sculpting with Zbrush or Mudbox. I always keep in mind to optimize stuffs to make the rest of the process easier by limiting the resources. I don’t believe whether it is the number of polygon which makes the model; it is more about exact features and of volume. I already know the overall look of the final illustration. As I know which parts are visible at the end, for evident reasons of optimization I remove the backfaces -almost the half of the head. I’ll have some more definition with UV’s, Render process and speed up my ZBrush’s performance. In this case, the level of detail of the displacement shouldn’t be too high. There is a fundamental difference between high and low frequency. The data of these levels have to be stored into a specific map for an optimal use. Once subdivided, I consider that in most cases the female face shouldn’t exceed 300K polygons. I use the transpose tool to adjust the neck rotation. Brushes like inflat and move, allow me to block quickly tendons and muscles. Some news features of Zbrush can be useful to modify the topolwww.cgarena.com
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Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Stuzzi, France CGArena
Making of Manolia ogy if the edge flow is not matching with the fine details. Sometimes the retopology tool of Zbrush appears not intuitive enough; I believe some other alternatives ways exist to recover details from an arbitrary mesh. I like to combine different approaches and software’s. I try to add details with subtlety. Adding too much detail without a proper adjustment could alter the realism of the model. Some artists prefer to exaggerate the details in order to make them obvious but I think that it’s better to leave it as it should be in the real life. We just need to feel that something happen with the surface. I paid attention to give a feeling of weight and materials at this step. The bones and cartilage tend to be solid whereas the fleshy parts have rather a perturbed surface. Here is the level of displacement. I’m satisfied with its definition and its visual effects latex mask look. At this point the morphology of the character is distinct. The curvature of the nose and the eyes sign a Eurasian type. Hopefully the pulpy mouth will add some more glamour. The facial expression is strengthening with the subtle opening mouth. The neck will take a large part of the picture; the finest details appearing under the skin will add some more fragility to the character. A sphere is used as a reference in order to make sure that the shape of the eyelids is consistent. It can be benefit to break rules and stereotypes. I mean that we see often recurrent morphologies in computer graphics. I take time to refine the imperfection and turn it as a characteristic. Anything that is not common may accentuate the nature of the character no matter if the nose is too short or the eyes not as big as it should be. The last level of subdivision is not that heavy (170K polys). As long as we are making a still image, in order to make my life easier I decided to export this level. The lowest level is exported as well for the UV unfold task. I take in consideration the size of UV shell depending of their exposition from the camera and details. Even if some painter 3d www.cgarena.com
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Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Stuzzi, France CGArena
Making of Manolia give the opportunity to work out the seams, I prefer to avoid them as much as possible or hide the at least. It’s very meticulous to refine the pores and other finest details with UV border edges. As I’m using the highest level of subdivision for my render, I have to input the new UV contains in the lowest mesh into the highres one. To do this, I re-import the base mesh with the unfold UV within my ZBrush tool. I make sure that « Suv » option is selected while creating the subdivisions. Now, I have my higher resolution with the proper UV’s. Although I try to keep the UV layout clean, it does not really matter as long as I plan to use camera projections. However I take in consideration the scale ratios of each UV shell. In certain cases it could be annoying to unfold UV with automatic process. As far as I’m concerned, I prefer to have a good visualization when grooming the texture with Photoshop.
The parametric properties of the nurbs are pretty useful to obtain accuracy with elements such as the eyelashes. The geometry of the eyelash is an extruded polygon shape along a path which is a nurbs curve. However it could be boring to tweak these elements one by one. For this reason I recommend to write a script to have much more flexibility with it. I can go back at this step at any moment of the production. I noticed that small groups of eyelashes tend to be clamped together at their tips. I generate them keeping in mind the idea to path of each item has to be perturbed to give a more natural look. Tweaking each nurbs CV’s for this case is just fine. Anything that could break the perfect world of 3d is a good approach. The ribbon around the head uses almost the same method. The extruded shape has been exported to Zbrush. The brush snakehook allow me to add some fraying at some specifics areas especially where the degrees of curvature weaken the ribbon. Generally, details are not always evident at the first sight. I find more interesting to play with several different degrees of subtleties that can be catch if we really pay attention. The brush flattern and magnify help me to create imperfection to the surface. www.cgarena.com
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Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Stuzzi, France CGArena
Making of Manolia MAPPING & HAIR It is important to start the texture task with a good base of reference. I recommend the website www.3d.sk which provides some good texture resolution and a large data base. I prefer to pick up the references that have a constant light so less effort to remove shadows and hard light when refining the texture with your favorite 2d painter such as Photoshop. I know that my illustration at the final stage will be black and white; it will make the job easier for the color map and shaders. It seems that I’m able to recover much more details with the tanned skins and a little wet. So I tend to focus with this kind of reference for our case. There is several different ways to project a texture on a surface. The ZBrush way of doing it is quite intuitive due to the Zproject brush which allows us to paint on the mesh from a canvas. This process is also possible to do with miscellaneous 3d packages. There is not only one way to achieve a result, I believe that everyone has to choose the solution that fit his philosophy and production’s constraints. Then I used a 3d painter to refine the details. For this I am giving preference to Bodypaint. Its structure looks similar to Photoshop especially with the layers management, the tools and its compatibility with the psd format. Because it gives a good feedback with high quality display, I like to use Bodypaint to adjust the seams and add subtle details. This accuracy is appreciable for sensitive area such as lips and eyes makeup which can be separated within layers as well. Obviously, the pores of the skin have specific properties from one area to another. I had to www.cgarena.com
Page 44
Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Stuzzi, France CGArena
Making of Manolia pick up different type of references to recover fine details. I didn’t hesitate to use a reference from an Asian woman to get more bumps with the neck. Actually I tackle this problem like a puzzle game. Anything lack of details is saved with another piece of reference I copy and paste into it. Then the properties of the layers turn into luminosity, overlay or soft light (etc) provide a good way to blend them together. The essential thing is to have constant tones of skin everywhere so that it won’t alter the shadows or lighting when rendering. I create the new layers to add more wrinkles around the eye, more freckles and so on and so forth. I isolate each type of feature as much as I can, in this way I could adjust their intensity with the layer later if needed. As I’m using a psd file, I can switch from Photoshop to body paint to have the advantages of each of these packages. Once I’m happy with the color map, I hide the superficial layer (makeup, freckles…) and generate the bump map from the blue channel of the color map. Briefly, due to skin properties and its light transmission, this channel provides most of the information we need for this purpose. The Dodge tool is quite nice to adjust the contrast and sebum with the specular map.
I tried almost all plug-in’s within Maya to generate hair. Shave & Haircut stand for the most intuitive and powerful commercial tool. It’s rib export is work pretty well for renderman compliants. I believe rendering hair with mental ray is too resource hungry and time consuming compare to renderman. I created guides for the eyebrows, hair and some parts of the hair close to the ears that needs more control. Grayscale textures help me to give information with the thickness and density at the root. www.cgarena.com
Page 45
Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Stuzzi, France CGArena
Making of Manolia I generate the hair just on one side of the head as i’m creating only what is seen. The hair count and hair segment is pretty high, but renderman can handle this without suffer. I use quite often the « comb using curves » option which is efficient to obtain the right shape of the hairs very quickly. It is a good start to rough the haircut then brushes like translate and puff is a good support for grooming.
LIGHTING & RENDERING There is very few lights in the scene, the directions of them are pretty straight. Depending of the style I’m looking for, two direct lights are just enough for this purpose. The area light will provides an accurate soft shadow with primitive rectangle. These shadows are generating in raytracing. This will give a nice interaction with the skin and the ribbon for instance. The regard of the character leads to a point outside the canvas. I gave a representation of the target with a second light source which is a point light. It draws the silhouette of the character out of the dark background. The positioning of this light will pop out the pilosity on the skin that I’ll add at the end of the process. The principal lights added, the global illumination is active to bring more realism to www.cgarena.com
Page 46
Tutorial
Issue 6 Dec - Jan 2009
by Stuzzi, France CGArena
Making of Manolia the scene. The shadows get more diffused and the lights aren’t seemed to come from two directions anymore. I keep it subtle so that we still feel the studio’s lighting. I decide to render with mental ray then I convert my file texture in *.map format to optimize the renders. The outputs are in float bits to enhance in order to get more range for the compositing. COMPOSITING Here we can see most of the passes used for the final compositing. The final output has been desaturated to obtain a black and white tint. And finally the image is completed.
Hope you liked the explanation of techniques used in this image. Thanks for reading, please send me your queries and comments.
Web: stuzzi.free.fr www.cgarena.com
Email: stuzzifr@hotmail.com Page 47
gallery
Iker Cortazar, Spain iker.cortazar@gmail.com Maya, Photoshop
Jose M Lazaro, Spain ballobello@gmail.com 3ds max, ZBrush, Mudbox
Guido Zatti, Italy info@guidozatti.com 3ds max, Vray, AE
Jimmy Chow, Hong Kong cgriders@gmail.com Maya, Zbrush, Photoshop, Nuke
Istvan Vastag, Hungary dy217@freemail.hu 3ds max, Vray
Sinan Ilkaz, Turkey sinan@sdu.edu.tr 3ds max, Vray
Alessandro Prodan, Italy marlaprodan@hotmail.it Maya, Mentalray, Photoshop Mohamed AbuYhia, Egypt abuyhia@hotmail.com 3ds max, Vray
Moahemd Nazafi, Sri Lanka nazafiroyal@yahoo.com 3ds max, Vray, Photoshop
Jakub Goda, Slovakia jakub.goda@gmail.com 3ds max, Vray, Photoshop
mvirtual, Venezuela mvirtualca@gmail.com 3ds max, Vray, Photoshop
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