June2007

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 4 JUNE 2007

CGArena

Get Attention in Computer Graphics Community

GALLERY

Showcase of latest 3d inspiring art

PHOTOSHOP 3d Models in CS3

AFTER EFFECTS Animating Spirograph

INTERVIEW Justin Lassen

3DSMAX

Sticky Fluids

3D Challenge Vehicle of the Future

05 Interview Justin Lassen

18 3d Challenge

Vehicle of the Future

22 Photoshop

3d Models in CS3

32 3ds Max Sticky Fluids

27 After Effects

Animating Spirograph

41 Gallery

Showcase of latest 3d art

Magazine Edited: Ashish Rastogi Magazine Cover Image: Justin Lassen Challenge Sponsors: Npower Software

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Issue 4 June 2007

industry news Titanic VFX man joins Indian company David Crawford, one of the world’s finest visual graphic talents, is joining Pixion, a post-production arm of CCL.. The move would give Pixion a strong strategic advantage as the world’s finest in this field are now choosing India as their professional destination, said CCL director Anand Tewari. ‘This will ensure better production values and would prove a boon to the growth of the industry,’ he added.

Starcraft 2 Announced Blizzard has finally announced the sequel to Starcraft. Not Starcraft Ghost. Not World of Starcraft. Starcraft 2, the game you put on your “Do not die until you have played...” list.

Pixion is working on about 40 films under various banners to be released in the next six months. About 80 films are in the pipeline for the year ending 2008.

Designed to be the ultimate competitive real-time strategy game, StarCraft II features the return of the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg races, overhauled and re-imagined with Blizzard’s signature approach to game balance. Each race will be further distinguished from the others, with several new units and new gameplay mechanics, as well as new abilities for some of the classic StarCraft units that will be making a reappearance in the game. StarCraft II also featurse a custom 3D-graphics engine with realistic physics and the ability to render several large, highly detailed units and massive armies on-screen simultaneously.

source: www.ciol.com

source: www.ign.com

Crawford, who has Hollywood biggies like Titatic, Spiderman, Mission Impossible 2, XXX and Vanilla Sky to his credit, has over a decade of experience in Hollywood, advertising and post-production. His work has won many prestigious awards including the Oscar, MTV Music Awards.

Buzzword of the Month Go-motion - Stop motion animation can create a disorienting staccato effect; go motion was designed to prevent this by moving the animated model slightly during the exposure of each film frame, producing a realistic motion blur.

Meaning the main difference is that while the frames in stop motion are made up by images of stills taken between the small movements of the object, the frames in go motion are images of the object taken in the same instant it moves, in other words opposite of what is the case in traditional stop motion. This frame-by-frame, split second motion is almost always created with the help of a computer, often through rods connected to a puppet or model which the computer manipulates to reproduce movements programmed in by puppeteers.

Today, go motion is rarely used, as it is more complicated and expensive than computer generated effects. But the technique still has potential in real stop motion movies if a scene is supposed to contain slow motion effects. By filming each small movement of the object with a high speed camera, the go motion animated character or object will appear to move in slow motion when played in normal speed. This would be very hard to do using conventional stop motion, as the animator would have to move the puppet maybe less than a millimeter for each frame to achieve the same effect.

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interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Justin Lassen Q. Hello Justin, could you introduce yourself to our readers and how you got started in 3D... Oops… music?

Hi. I’m Justin. I am a composer, independent producer and art director/graphic artist and I’m 25 years old. I’m selftaught. I think it was during the early years in school. Since I was a child, the music and drama classes in school were always my favorites, so I worked hard to get myself into the top music classes whenever possible. I hadn’t really thought about it being a professional career until around 1996. That’s when I noticed my interest and focus started increasing drastically.

I don’t think I’ve had my “big break” yet, but my first break was perhaps the Robert Miles remix with the London Session Orchestra tracks, which was an incredibly fun (if terrifying) glimpse into what “high production values” means.

Q. So, you are creating music for still 3D-2D images, please tell us what the main basic idea/technique behind this is?

The basic idea is to bring the scene to life through necessary. This could mean melody, themes, moIt really depends on what the scene calls for.

The technique is definitely more emotional some rules, I’d say Gaussian blur calls for objects and shapes in the scene and tion of the recording, and

points painted into the mine pacing. The mood and is determined by the color palette Feel free to bust me on those if you what you’ve seen and heard in the Syaware of what I’m doing. It just seems scious. I just know what it needs, but to be able to describe it more cluefully,

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music and audible texture, by whatever means tifs, counterpoint, minimalism or other things. than scientific, but if I had to boil it down to reverb, brighter colors call for louder sounds, overall composition determines the duraperceived camera movement and action

scene detertexture in the recording and tone in the painting. notice they’re not consistent with naesthesia pieces. I’m not entirely to bubble up from the subconI don’t know exactly why. I’d love but I suspect I’m more of an artist

Issue 4 June 2007

interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Justin Lassen than a scientist. Deeper, geekier analysis is welcome, btw.

As with all art, I suspect these are not strict rules or laws. Some of the more obscure and perhaps abstract methods behind this style are the emotion in the faces of the characters, or the emotion of the environment or circumstance. Their skin tone, how they are feeling, wondering what they are feeling, or if they are feeling at all. Not every painting works this way for me, but I am most inspired by truly finished pieces that tell stories without words. The eye in the character (if there is one) really must know what is going on.

Erlend Mørk - www.erlendmork.com

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Credit: D. Rolli Photo By - Hal Bergman

interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Justin Lassen Q. What’s the meaning of Synaesthesia?

Synaesthesia is basically a condition where your senses intermingle in sometimes odd ways. Tasting shapes, hearing colors, seeing touch- that sort of thing. For instance, you might feel a mango with six tentacles in your hands at the mention of the word “ham,” and the shape of what you feel changes with infinite variety, depending on what you’re thinking of. The thing about Synaesthesia is that it is not voluntary, meaning your mind will do these things without trying.

I don’t really have to think of any of the technical issues of creation, because it seems to be playing the music in my head, just by looking at the image. It’s not really a complicated process for me. Not all images make such beautiful music though. Some just make loud noises. Some are silent. Some drone. It all really depends.

All I really do is edit. I choose which images to present to the world, for quality control of the series.

Q. Have you ever had a chance to create a soundtrack for moving pictures and how much you are comfortable in doing that?

I’ve done a few dozen short films over the years. My favorite score type project was getting the chance to do two remix/revision scores for Mark Osborne, inspired by his short film project ‘More’, which if you haven’t seen, you surely should. It was nominated for an Oscar, but it’s amazing how few people have seen it.

I would love to score a full length feature film, however, it’s a ton of work to compose for and conduct an orchestra, and most filmmakers aren’t comfy spending the kind of Benita Winckler - www.eeanee.com

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interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Justin Lassen money it takes to do it right, easily a couple hundred thousand, and that’s if you’re going with a really cost-effective orchestra like the Prague Orchestra or other Eastern European Orchestras. Even if they are willing, you’re back to that fabulous catch-22 of “have you done it before?” I’m sure you know how this tune goes.

In the studio film market where the money supposedly flows like water, there’s that Danny Elfman chap, who I must confess is really brilliant, and the bastard has a corner on the market of gothic symphonic film scores. Perhaps your dear readers could collectively pray to the Dark Faeries to impart their withering kisses to each of his talented little digits and steal them away to the Nether World from whence they came?

Q. If you have to create music for a still image which has no environment, background (may be you can see), dramatic lighting, props but great modeled character then will be possible to do? If yes, then please try to create an exclusive music for this wonderful still 3d image of Korean Actress – Song Hye Kyo by Max Edwin Wahyudi from Indonesia?

She looks almost too perfect to me, like a beautiful android from Blade Runner. She also looks a little like she’s dressed for an informal networking party where she is expected to smile, even though she’d rather not.

Listen the track inspired by the image. I gave it a slowly surging section of ethereal electronic instruments to create an ambience supporting what I interpreted as an informal party in a large, white room in a future setting. The surge is the buzz of conversations and energy in the room. She’s standing at the edge of the party, both physically and emotionally. She’s there with a jerk who cares only about his image. He expects her to conform- to be a quiet, obedient prop, and to hide her true feelings. I tried to express her strained need to fit in and the effort to suppress her true feelings in the short, staccato electronic notes that are reverberating in that lonely space. Towards the end of the track, as the surges strengthen and overlap, I imagine her losing her composure briefly as she meets a guy who encourages her to express her true self without the truncated notes, but then she is busted and embarrassed in front of the others by the jerk she came with, and the room goes painfully quiet with only a faint echo of its previous energy.

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interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Justin Lassen Q. Which software’s and hardware you use for your work and how often you update them?

I’m going to get a little geeky here, because I know some of your readers out there are pretty serious musicians.

I have a number of hardware synthesizers and workstations that I draw from. Some of them are Korg Triton, Yamaha MOTIF8, Roland XP30, Korg N5, Korg Electribe, Roland DR-770, KC-500’s, several Altec Lansing systems and loads of rack units, compressors, gates, EQ’s, etc. I have loads of Behringer gear (a 6.1 Truth Surround System, several mixers and desks, Controllers, amps, fx units, etc.). I have tons of pedals, BOSS stomp boxes, guitars, basses, my trusty violin, and everything in between.

The main audio conversion interface in the studio is my Presonus FirePod, which so far has not failed me and keeps the music flowing. The centerpiece of my software studio is Cakewalk Sonar 6.2 Producer Edition, and I primarily use the Sonitus:FX Suite of plugins. I’m currently using a beta of Sonar 7, that seems to be shaping up nicely. I use Project5 2.5 to get my ideas written down. Later, I can manipulate that data in Sonar and fine tune the composition, arrangements and sounds. By the way, if you get P5, it comes with a demo track I created called ‘The Dark Beats of Morbidia’ that uses a lot of the cool new features in the 2.5 update.

I also used Sony Acid Pro 6.0 and Sony Sound Forge 9.0 with the IzoTope plugins on of the new Synaesthesia pieces. I really liked how they turned out. I’m a big Native Instruments, EastWest, Garritan and other libraries. I’m also a sampler, creating tons of my own patches and audible odd contions for use on a number of projects. Though, that really isn’t the magical part.

The part I love is meshing those gorgeous sampled instruments with live instruments and performances, ambiences, cusverb signals, in as realistic (or othing as possible. This of string players, a tinkering on a number creatively. It’s really a

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several fan of heavy trap-

tom reorder to keep it all erworldly) and full soundcould be a full orchestra, a section small choir layered to oblivion, or just me of different instruments and layering efficiently and fantastic illusion for me when it all comes together.

Issue 4 June 2007

interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Justin Lassen Q. Have you ever tried doing 3D and how much you are successful?

I started doing 3D in the late 80’s, with some very basic ‘virtual 3D’ software for DOS. I eventually moved on to POV-Ray, trueSpace2 and later experimented with LW and 3dsmax. I learned on 3DS for DOS. I made a few short film projects, but nothing worth mentioning in your finely crafted magazine.

I think I enjoyed animating more than modeling to tell you the truth. It felt more natural for me. I wasn’t very good at modeling, except for really creepy looking trees and amoeba-like life forms and custom procedural textures.

I wanted to work at places like ILM when I was younger, but for some reason they didn’t call! I know!

The nerve.

Thankfully, music really took over and displaced those fantasies. I still enjoy typography, graphic design, layout and other forms of digital art. Though, my favorite thing is watching all of you amazing artists, and staying inspired.

Q. If you were not a musician then what you would do to earn the living and currently how you are promoting yourself?

I promote myself through music, creative photo shoots, partnering with other creative people and sharing exposure.Believe it or not, I think I’m a closet suit. When I’m not composing, I find myself negotiating deals, putting together teams, making presentations, and writing email.

I am an email machine, in fact. I am often stunned by the volume. It’s not uncommon for me to read about 150-200 really detailed emails in a day, write about 50 detailed replies, and to compose another 50 detailed letters to generate new business.

So I don’t know what I would be. How can you make a career out of that? Maybe a producer or manager?

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interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Justin Lassen

Philip Straub - www.philipstraub.com Q. What are your hobbies and what you like to do in your free time (if any)?

Food and friends are my number one hobby; I like going to fine restaurants, hole in the wall restaurants, coffee shops (even though I don’t drink coffee), interesting diners, etc. with my friends. I love getting addicted to well-thought-out and sometimes not-so-well-thought-out TV series. Some of my favorites lately have been Battlestar Galactica, LOST, Veronica Mars, Supernatural and a few others. I also like hanging out in hotel lobbies when I’m traveling places and randomly meeting new people, usually around the grand piano.

Though, I am also one of those who can admit that my hobby is also my passion. This isn’t just a career or some resumebuilding stunt. This creative multimedia that I involve myself with is my life. I only get one and I’m doing what I want to do with it. So I work on music and composition whenever I get a chance (or my free time). Especially if given a chance to try something new.

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interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Justin Lassen Q. From where you get all your inspiration?

I get inspiration from a number of varying things. I am obviously a huge fan of 2D/3D galleries scattered across the globe. I love finding unique galleries, as well as stopping by the more well known portals. There is always loads of inspiration just waiting for me.

I also love travelling and scenery. By train, car, airplane, boat and even foot; I like to walk with headphones and an mp3 player, sometimes for miles. This helps me clear my mind, organize my thoughts, defrag my internal hard drive and decide on my next move in life as a person and as an artist. It is very cleansing to just do that every so often.

Obviously I find inspiration from the typical escapist-fodder: Movies, Books, Video Games, Creative Magazines (like this one) and other forms of endless hours of distraction. We really do live in a pretty humbling and creative world, even with the current events and darkened landscape ahead of all of us.

Q. Your cinematic style brings which CG Artists paintings, scenes to life and how you benefitted with this?

I know this sounds cliché, but the Synaesthesia series has changed my life. Don’t even get me started on the benefits. They’re numerous and glorious.

Over the last couple of years on the three sets of Synaesthesia compositions; I have had the distinct and undeserved pleasure of working with (in no particular order): Philip Straub, Linda Bergkvist, Laurent Ménabé, John Wallin, Alexander Casteels, Olga Antonenko, Björn Börkur Eiríksson, Kirsi Salonen, Steven Staulberg, Specimen, Blaz Porenta, Nykolai Aleksander, Paul Gerrard, Erlend Mørk, David Ho, Benita Winckler, Lance Larson, Kornél Ravadits and Vitaly S. Alexius.

Though the art is the thing, it takes a lot more than that to create a phenomenon.

Hold on to your hat size, but frankly, it requires journalists at respected magazines to act as talent scouts and spot a cool project and popularize it. I think all of us who dig Synaesthesia owe a lot to you guys. So this list includes Paul Hellard who helped me kick start the promotion (CGSociety), Ben Barnes (3DCreative Alex Casteels - bionic7.deviantart.com

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interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Justin Lassen Magazine), Nelson Medina (RevolutionArt Magazine), Patrice Leymarie (ITS ART Magazine) and of course Ashish Rastogi from CGArena.

Q. Till now on which commercial projects you worked? And on which projects you are working these days?

Some of my favorite ‘commercial’ achievements are more on the technological side. I’m really interested in cutting edge technologies and getting the chance to see the future of it is pretty inspiring. Some of those were when I got to remix and produce on a cutting edge 6.1 DTS Surround DVD-A with Gary Mraz and Ted Price at the Voodoo Mansion to work on their project Studio Voodoo (2002). That was back when that stuff was just taking off.

I learned a LOT about studios, the industry and production from both of them. Doing the soundtrack for the flagship game released with Intel Dual-Core processors was a fun one (2005). I have been doing software and technology demos for different music and hardware companies, including a demo for the world’s first-ever 64-bit DAW; Cakewalk’s Sonar 5 Producer Edition (2005). Most recently I did the flagship demo for Cakewalk Project5 2.5 (2007).

They are a very cool company with amazing people and always have cutting edge fun stuff for us musicians. I am honored to even be associated with them in that small way.

A few other commercial achievements I’m happy to have been a part of are doing epic remixes for several different artists like Madonna, Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park, Garbage and ton of others. That taught me a lot about music and technology and combining the both of them into new creative works of art. It also taught me about crazy fans.

These days I am working on a few different projects doing various tasks, not all are musical. Some of those, which I can’t say too much about are game mod projects (Out of Hell with Long Nguyen: we were just recently featured in The Escapist Magazine together and Hexen: Edge of Chaos), a start-up business with a pal of mine, consulting and advisement to a few up and coming developers and artists, tons of e-mailing and interviews as of lately and a whole basket of unmentionable randomness. Oh yeah, I just released my 3rd set of Synaesthesia compositions ‘The Darker Side of Synaesthesia’.

Q. What is one piece of advice you would give to any person looking to get into music field?

Have rich parents or find a wealthy fan. Barring that, my best advice would be to stay inspired, keep rocking, and never relent- no matter what. This is a cutthroat industry, and musicians and ‘artists’ are over-saturated here. It’s getting tougher for the majority of artists to stay afloat.

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interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Justin Lassen I know this sounds gloomy, but there is some good news. There’s a neat trick that not many musicians leverage that can give you a huge edge and an ability to beat the odds: reading. I would recommend to any young person wanting to get into music to read as many books on the subject as possible. On the subject of paying for your rent and food while being a musician, recommendations that come to mind are ‘I Don’t Need A Record Deal!’ which has tons of good advice about making it as an independent artist, with anecdotes from several successful indie musicians, Moses Avalon’s ‘Confession’s of a Record Producer’ is also a great read and of course ‘Creating a Life Worth Living’by Carol Lloyd, which has some fantastic interviews and ideas.

Those are good starting points.

Obviously, don’t listen to the nay-sayers. Well, if they’re giving you some verifiable facts, certainly fish those out before discarding the rest. A quote that has ALWAYS helped me, at least for a number of years is this: “Never take a ‘No’ from someone not in the position to give you a ‘Yes’ in the first place. Go straight to the ‘Yes’ person.”

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

I want to give some mad props and shout outs to all of the amazing digital artists who have painted me or manipulated photos of me for posters, wallpapers and splash screens over the years.

I treasure their friendship and continued support, and my lust for their approval is giant motivator for me. I don’t know where I would be without them. Every time I see a new creation, I am humbled. One that comes to recent mind is Danone Rolli, whom has created tons of the most recent photo manipulation pieces, from photos by Lance Larson and Hal Bergman.

Linda Bergkvist - www.furiae.com

Thanks a lot Justin for taking out sometime for us from your busy schedule and making this 3D-2D industry more beautiful and expressive.

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challenge CGArena is proud to present “Vehicle of the Future” (3D Challenge), 05 June 2007 - 04 Aug 2007, sponsored by Npower Software. Express your creative ideas in a new and interesting way.

Your Mission

Modelled by Mark Rademaker in Power Nurbs Pro

Create an image which justify the theme of Vehicle of the Future using Power Nurbs Pro. This Challenge is a WorkIn-Progress Challenge -- all contestants are required to post their work-in-progress images for community to critique/ comment in order to qualify. Last date to enter in this challenge is 20th July 2007 after this no registration for challenge will be allowed.

How the Challenge will be Run This challenge will be a WIP (Work in Progress) Challenge. Each challenger is required to submit Work In Progress (WIP) images, from the initial concept sketch to the final render. to the post production on regular intervals. The purpose is that everyone can learn from each other, offer feedback and critiques.

1. Enter the Challenge by registering yourself on CGArena forum.

2. Download the fully functional demo version of Power Nurbs Pro plug-in from www.npowersoftware.com. Npower plugin is available only for 3ds max so you can use only Autodesk 3ds max for creation of the image.

3. Submit your work in progress images in forum on a regular basis. otherwise will be disqualified.

4. Participate in the community by critiquing other challengers works in the respective threads.

5. Submit your final entry till 04th Aug 2007, midnight 00:00 GMT. 6. There will be 3 winners. CGArena, Npower decision will be final and no participant allowed to contact sponsors regarding the challenge or asking reasons for disqualifications.

7. You have to submit the final 3ds max file with image for verfication process.

8. You are allowed to use any type of post -production in the final image to make image better and richer.

Terms and Conditions 1.) Entrants agree to give permission to the sponsor to use all or any part of the artwork entered in this contest, (hereinafter, the ‘Work’) in the Company’s demonstration tapes (reels), promotional materials (ads, PR, etc.), booth graphics and presentations for the promotional purposes.

2.) Entrants will retain all rights to the Work.

In addition, the Company will not sell for profit any materials or demo reels containing images or animations submitted by the Entrant.

3.) The Company, in exchange for this release, will provide a credit for the Work within the material in which the Work is used.

4.) Submissions must be the sole Work of the entrant and not require approval of any other entity.

5.) Entrants will not receive financial remuneration for their Work.

Final Image Size - Your final image dimensions should be print resolution. Do not send in a low-resolution.

- A guideline is minimum 2800 pixels wide and/or 2048 high, JPG, 300 DPI. - Send your final image in zip or rar format with your name, complete shipping address, email, telephone number in a text file on email address futurevehicle@cgarena.com with subject “Vehicle of the Future”.

First Prize - $995 USD Power Nurbs Pro - Power NURBS unique hybrid approach fuses the next generation NURBS surface construction technology with the industry’s leading Solids modeling technology bringing an unparalleled modeling experience to the 3ds Max Platform. Power NURBS modeling environment is designed to provide artist intuitive access to complex advanced modeling tools allowing you to expand your creative potential beyond the polygon world.

Second Prize- $695 USD Power Solids - Until recently NURBS based-Solids modeling technology has been confined to high end non-artistic engineering applications; however, nPower’s Power Solids for 3ds Max changes everything. Power Solids provides designers and artists an exceptional intuitive modeling environment with unrestricted access to Solids geometry.

Or Power Surfacer - Power Surfacing intergrates the world’s leading edge NURBS surface modeling technology into the heart of Autodesks 3ds Max. The Combination of nPower NURBS Surface Modeling combined with 3ds studio’s Mesh Deformation technology, UI, animation and rendering provide one of the world’s most sophisticated 3d Design concept environments available.

Third Prize- $695 USD Power Solids - Until recently NURBS based-Solids modeling technology has been confined to high end non-artistic engineering applications; however, nPower’s Power Solids for 3ds Max changes everything. Power Solids provides designers and artists an exceptional intuitive modeling environment with unrestricted access to Solids geometry.

Or Power Surfacer - Power Surfacing intergrates the world’s leading edge NURBS surface modeling technology into the heart of Autodesks 3ds Max. The Combination of nPower NURBS Surface Modeling combined with 3ds studio’s Mesh Deformation technology, UI, animation and rendering provide one of the world’s most sophisticated 3d Design concept environments available.

Download the Demo of Power Nurbs Pro Now

Sponsor

www.cgarena.com CGArena brings you latest news and happenings 24 hours a day.

Plus, join in our interactive forums to showcase your work, and get attention in the computer graphics community

photoshop

3d models in CS3 Many of you already tried hands on the Photoshop CS 3 extended version; if not then try now because Photoshop CS 3 added a support for 3d models. That means you can import 3d models, change model position, lighting or rendering, edit model textures and easily composite models with 2d content. Currently CS 3 supports five formats of models (u3d, .3ds, .obj, .kmz, and Collada file formats).

Like to mention Extended version is $350 costly in comparison to standard version but Photoshop CS3 Extended enables you to edit 3D and motion-based content and perform image analysis. So, before buying first decides will you actually need these features...

In this tutorial we will add an airplane (.3ds) in the middle of airport road in just few minutes. And believe me no authority will be able to detect who is the culprit. So, let’s start.

Step 1: Firstly open you picture and then open a 3ds format file like any other file. Yes, you are right in 3d software’s we have to actually import the 3ds files but in CS3 just open it.

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photoshop Step 2: It will ask for the image size, by default size is 1024 x 1024 and after processing open a 3d file with transparent background.

If you see the layers palette then 3d icon is available on the palette file icon and many other sub files also shown there, which are textures.

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photoshop Step 3: Drag the 3d file on the 2d image and then double click on the 3d file icon and you will see on top menu bar many 3d tools are added for rotation, scaling, dragging, playing animation, rendering, lighting etc.

Step 4: Rotate and scale the plane as per scene requirement. Click on the icon “Lighting and Appearance setting” in the menu bar and change lighting to “Day lights” or any other as you like, experiment is the key here. And press ok. If you have noticed in the same option box you can also change the appearance of the 3d object to wireframe, solid wireframe, shaded illustration and many more.

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photoshop

Step 5: Now the final thing is if you want to change any texture then double click on the texture in the layers palette and file will open for editing inside Photoshop.

Step 6: Make the changes and save the file. And that change automatically updates on the 3d file like we have changed the color of tail from blue to green. But this change will not update your main 3d texture inside 3d software.

And if you like to change main texture too then goto Layers > 3D Layers > Replace Textures That’s it for now; add shadow for the plane, so that looks on the ground.

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after effects

Animating Spirograph In this tutorial we will create spirograph style animation using any version of Illustrator and After Effects. A Spirograph is a curve formed by rolling a circle inside or outside of another circle. The pen is placed at any point on the rolling circle. Hope you have created lots of spirograph in the childhood.

Step 1: Create a new 1024 x 768 pixels size document inside illustrator and select an Ellipse Tool (L) to draw the circle or any shape you like. Press Shift for creating a perfect circle. Just remember that line color is black and Fill color is transparent.

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after effects Step 2: After creating a design select the whole design and choose the rotate tool and by pressing “Alt” key click on the design.

Step 3: This will open a rotate popup dialog, choose 5 degree inside the angle, press Copy and then OK.

Step 4: Now just press Ctrl + D and keep doing to add more overlapping copies to complete your spirograph.. If design goes out of the canvas then select the full design and scale down.

Step 5: When design creation is complete then change the line color of the design to white and save the file in “AI” format.

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after effects Step 6: Create a new composition in the after effects sized 1024 x 768 and import the illustrator file.

Step 7: Press R and rotate the spirograph from 0 second to 5 seconds.

Step 8: Enable the 3d layer button and rotate the spirograph in Z axis.

Step 9: Apply Radial wipe transition (Effect > Transition> Radial Wipe) on the layer and set Transition Complete – 100% at 0s and 0% at 5s. Increase the feather value and also change the wipe center. Check the settings dialog box image below.

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after effects Step 10: Apply the Glow effect (Effect > Stylize> Glow) on the layer and choose the following settings. Try increasing the Color Loops value for more exciting and different shades of colors.

Step 11: Now select the layer and pre-compose. Layer Pre-compose…

Step 12: Now your effect is almost complete, just duplicate the layer two times and enable the 3d layer for those and rotate the spirograph in all the axis to get the mirroring effect. Try changing the modes to ADD, SOFT LIGHT and others too.

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after effects Step 13: Add the camera layer (Layer > New > Camera) and move the camera world in the world to get the desired effect. I am not writing any settings for this because it totally depends on the experiment and settings are useless until each and everything in the scene created using exact dimensions which we are not doing here... because our main object understands the concept so we can create more wonderful effects.

Step 14: After everything is complete our background is looking little empty, so create a solid layer in the bottom and apply a ramp effect on this background layer.

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3ds max

Sticky Fluids In this tutorial we will create a sticky fluids effect using glu3d and later explain the same thing with pflow. This is not a step by step tutorial, little knowledge about the glu3d fluid system is necessary but we try to explain as much as we can.

So, let’s start by importing a 3ds model in max.

Step 1: Go into the Create > Glu3d pouring system > glu3d. After pressing the glu3d button - floor, glu3d particles and glu3d icon will be created in the viewport.

Step 2: Now select the glu3d particles and rotate, move as per the requirement and change the paramaters as shown in the below image. The main parameter in this is Thickness parameter. This is a kind of viscosity parameter for the liquid. It makes particles keep together. It gives a certain resistance to flow to the liquid. Higher the value less particles will spread out. And we are creating a fluid something like honey, so must be thick.

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3ds max

Step 3: Select the object and in the glu3d parameters change the value of CollisonGap, Bounce to 0. Change the Friction to 100 and Adherence to 0.05. Adherence controls the particles glueness to object surface when collision occurs. And friction parameter controls the object friction with glu3D particles. Particles lose their energy when are in contact with colliding objects. Higher the value particles loss the energy soon.

Step 4: Press H and select glu3D_01, here you can set how the particles will react in a scene like at which gravity, scale, flicking of particles on the surface. And what will be the drop size, melting threshold… these all settings depends on the scene scale, object, effect and that’s why presets also can’t be created.

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3ds max Step 5: Now Press the go button and check “Show Particles” is checked, so you can watch the simulated particles frames. You can stop the simulation at anytime and without flushing full simulation you can only flush the simulation from frame you don’t like by putting the frame number in “Keep until frame” in dynamic params box.

Step 6: When particle simulation is complete and you are happy with the output then press the “Build Surface” button for building the fluids surface.

Step 7:

Light and texture the scene and render your fluids.

Now if you like to create a sticky particles through pflow then create a simple setup like below.

Step 1:

Create a sphere, pflow above the sphere, gravity, deflector on the ground, UDeflector in the scene.

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3ds max Step 2:

In UDeflector pick object the Sphere.

Step 3: 2000

Press 6 to open the particle view and select “Birth” and change the “Emit Stop” value to 50 and amount to

Step 4:

Add a “Force” from the depot and add “Gravity” in the list.

Step 5: Add “Collision test” from depot and add both the deflectors in the list. Change the “Test True value of Collides “speed” to Stop. You will notice that now particles are start sticking to the sphere and not even slide.

Step 6: Create a new “Speed by surface” event and link to collision test. Change the speed to around 50 and in drop down select “Control Speed Continuously” and change direction to “Parallel to surface”. Now you will see particles not only sticking but also sliding on the sphere.

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3ds max Step 7: Now the main problem is particles not leaving the sphere when reached the end of the sphere and continue to slide from bottom to top. So, the solution is simple, add an “Age test” event and enter the frame number in the test value.

Step 8: Now create another “Force event”, add gravity in the list and link to the “Age Test” so particles start dropping on the defined frame. Check out the sceenshot for whole scene particle view.

And if you like to add a power of glu3d with pflow then add a glu3dsource from depot and Converts the PFlow particles to a Glu3D source file format that you can use to run a fluid simulation. Once you have your setup click the play button and the PFlow particles will be saved to a cache file sequence readable by Glu3D.

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winners In March 07, your mission was to create a 2D or 3D image on “Nightmare” theme and sponsored by Corel, Pixologic, Realviz, Skymatter, Hyperfocal Design, 3d.sk, ambientLight, Zoo Publishing, Strata, Vertus, TheBest 3D, Kurv Studios, Daz 3D, Environment-Textures.com, Female-anatomy-for-artist. com, human-anatomy-for-artist.com and ITs Art Magazine.

Following are the winners in 3D category

First Prize

Maciej Kotlinski, Poland budcai@gmail.com

Second Prize Stoffel Gaetan, Vietnam lesaumon@msn.com

Third Prize

Harold Francisco, Philippines hbdin@yahoo.com

2D Category Winner

George Evangelista, Australia george@vshengraphics.com

gallery

Barbarian Warrior Silvia Fusetti, Italy fiussly@libero.it XSI, Photoshop, Poser

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Anger Management U.Suresh Kumar, India suresh3dartist@gmail.com 3ds Max, Zbrush

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Dawn, The Dinotaur Sri Ram Chandra, India vssrc@yahoo.com 3ds Max, Mudbox

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Iron Man Alessandro Damiano, Italy pixel3d@alice.it 3ds Max, Vray Page 45

Issue 4 June 2007

Abandoned Well Dasilo Robotti, Italy danrobo@fastwebnet.it Rhinoceros, Xfrog, Maxwell

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Mandrillus Sphinx Diego Manzo, Argentina dmm_arg@yahoo.com.ar Maya, Shave and Haircut Page 47

Issue 4 June 2007

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Lighthouse Gultekin Utancak, Turkey info@guntho.com Maya, Vue

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Old Home Volkan Kacar, Turkey blur_maxx@yahoo.com.tr 3ds Max,Vray, Photoshop

Shark Kleber Darcio kleber3ds@hotmail.com 3ds Max, Vray, Bodypaint Page 50

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Voyager Jeroen Aerts, Netherlands itoh.takaaki@gmail.com 3ds Max

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submission

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