oct-

CGArena

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 6 OCT - NOV 2007

Get Attention in the Computer Graphics Community

GALLERY

Showcase of latest 3d inspiring art

PHOTOSHOP Shutter Text

AFTER EFFECTS Sweeping the Light

INTERVIEW Jason Busby

3DSMAX

Making of Italian Creek

Maya

Making of Cheese Platter

05 Interview Jason Busby

14 Photoshop Shutter Text

18 After Effects

Sweeping the Light

33 Maya

22 3ds Max

Making of Italian Creek

Making of Cheese Platter

43 Gallery

Showcase of latest 3d art

Magazine Edited: Ashish Rastogi Magazine Cover Image: Khalid Abdulla Al-Muharraqi

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Issue 6 Oct - Nov 2007

industry news Luxology Licenses Pixar Animation Studios’ Subdivision Surface Patents

Halo 3 Registers Biggest Day in US Entertainment History

Luxology® LLC, an independent technology company developing next–generation 3D content creation software, announced that Pixar Animation Studios and Luxology have finalized an agreement under which Pixar has licensed its Subdivision Surface Patents to Luxology. The agreement covers key Pixar proprietary computer graphics technology that will enhance Luxology’s products. Luxology is making no specific announcements as to when this technology might be incorporated into future Luxology software offerings. The specific terms of the agreement are confidential.

Microsoft announced that the Xbox 360 exclusive game “Halo 3” has officially become the biggest entertainment launch in history, garnering an estimated $170 million in sales in the United States alone in the first 24 hours. The Xbox 360 title beat previous records set by blockbuster theatrical releases like “Spider-man 3” and novels such as “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

We are very excited to have clear rights to use some of the most fundamental SubDivision surface modeling and rendering algorithms on the planet.” said Brad Peebler, President and Co-founder of Luxology

More than 1.7 million copies of “Halo 3” were preordered in the United States before a single store opened its doors, making this the fasting pre-selling game in history, surpassing the previous record-setting pre-sales of “Halo 2.” Well beyond just a U.S. phenomenon, the launch of “Halo 3” was a worldwide celebration that released in 37 countries and available in 17 languages.

Buzzword of the Month Mo-Cap - Motion Capture or Mo-Cap – is movement capture process of a real

man and/or object for further use of received data in production of character and/or object animation. For motion capture special markers are put on actors, wearing special elastic tight-fit costumes, than special mocap-cameras determine the positions of these markers in space, and mocap-system generates a file with motion data.

In the early days, the effort required to ‘clean up’ motion capture data often took as long as if the animation was created by an animator, from scratch. In entertainment applications this can reduce the costs of animation which otherwise requires the animator to draw each frame, or with more sophisticated software, key frames which are interpolated by the software. Motion capture saves time and creates more natural movements than manual animation, but is limited to motions that are anatomically possible. Some applications might require additional impossible movements like animated super hero martial arts or stretching and squishing that are not possible with real actors.

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Issue 6 Oct - Nov 2007

To find out more about nPower CAD Translators for Maya Visit us at www.nPowerSoftware.com

interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Jason Busby Hi, my name is Leonard Halmrast. I have the privilege of doing this interview with Jason Busby, for CGArena. Jason is known to most as Buzz from 3D Buzz.

Q. First can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Well, I’m the President/CEO of 3D Buzz, Inc., where I work hard to provide the world with professional quality training in 3D, programming, and a lot more.

I live in Dickson, Tennessee, which is where 3D Buzz is based, along with my lovely wife Angela and my daughters, Heather and Meagan.

Aside from my work - which pretty much consumes every aspect of my life – I enjoy flying (I’m a private pilot), scuba diving, and going to the movies with my family. I don’t get a lot of time to do these kinds of things, though; 3D Buzz keeps me very busy.

Q. How did you get the idea to start something like 3D Buzz?

Several years ago I took on a job as the Director of Animation at The Renaissance Center, a local learning facility that had started its own animation studio and training center. The classes we held were great, but I quickly became discouraged at how many students I had to turn away simply because they couldn’t afford to participate.

I thought it would be great to start a website in which the training would be free to the public, but paid for by the software companies who were making the applications. The idea was fairly simple; we’d create training videos and host them on our site, and the companies who developed the software would be so excited about their software being covered that they would sponsor us.

Things have changed a lot since then. The original idea for 3D Buzz didn’t really work out the way I wanted it to. We had to start charging for our training, although we work hard to make sure that it’s the very highest quality and the most competitively priced training on the market.

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Issue 6 Oct - Nov 2007

interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Jason Busby Q. How could you best describe the 3D Buzz community?

3D Buzz’s community is one of the most helpful and learning-driven groups you’re going to find on the Internet. We welcome newcomers openly and have a lot to offer those who are trying to get into 3D, programming, game design, etc.

3D Buzz has been operating since 2002, but it has only been a full self-sustaining business for about 2 years.

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Issue 6 Oct - Nov 2007

interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Jason Busby

Q. What do you enjoy most with what you do at 3D Buzz?

Seeing my students start to “get it.” That’s always been my favorite thing. I like knowing that we’ve got people who come to us to learn their desired skills, and that they become members of the community as they become better artists, developers, technical thinkers, or whatever they came to 3D Buzz to learn.

Q. Where did you get your background in teaching from?

Most of my teaching experience comes from my time at The Renaissance Center. I tried to keep all of my classes engaging and entertaining. I wanted students to feel challenged by what they were learning, but make sure they realized that with enough perseverance, they could master the topic and it would become easy for them.

Q. Have any of the members of your site been able to learn enough skills to make it into the CG Industry?

We’ve had many students go to work for major studios. The names are far too many to list here. I often get emails and

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Issue 6 Oct - Nov 2007

interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Jason Busby PMs from members thanking me for the training videos we put together, because it was those skills that landed them their new job.

Q. How do you and your team come up with the ideas of what kind of courses to teach in VTM form?

It usually starts with coming up with some skill or topic we want to cover, and just sort of grows from there. There’s usually a lot of discussion and planning. Some ideas are so vastly different by the time they get recorded that they’re something new altogether. It’s a bit of an organic process, I guess you could say.

Q. Are all of your videos for purchase, or do you still offer free videos for users who’d like to get a taste of 3D? We still have hundreds of hours of free training on the site. Much of it is with older versions of the software, though the basic concepts are still valid today. We also release free videos whenever we can. In fact, we’ve got some free videos over Houdini lined up for release very shortly.

Q. What projects do you have cooking over at 3D Buzz?

We’ve just launched the registration of our MasteringMaya: Advanced Digital Production online class. I’m really excited about it; it’s a six-month intensive online class which will teach people the entire production process of a digital short. We’re also still working on the XNA Xtreme 101 class, and we’ll be releasing the second volume within the next couple of weeks.

We’ve got several Houdini projects in the pipeline as well, including the first volume of the Houdini Technical Director series, which I’d like to see going out the door in three weeks or less. Needless to say, we’re very busy right now!

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interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Jason Busby Q. Can you tell us what is in your Mastering Maya – Advanced Digital Production online and how is this is different from others?

The Mastering Maya: Advanced Digital Production class is the only online course or training DVD set that walks you through the entire production of a digital short from concept to final result. It currently includes 19 different lessons ranging from concept art and storyboarding through dialog recording and capture, modeling, texturing, rigging, animating, lighting, rendering, compositing, and final video compilation. We’re teaching it as part of a six-month online class, provided we don’t need to extend the class session a tad; it will depend on how long the curriculum turns out to be as it is recorded.

Q. Today many different companies jump into the field of making training DVD’s, or tutorials and no need to say, some are very good and some very bad, so how is an artist to decide which one too choose?

In short, do your homework. Contact the people who make the videos and find out what’s in them. Watch some of their other work (most everyone has free videos to offer these days) and find a teaching method that suits you. Some people like to have every possible thing explained to them, other’s like a quick overview.

Find the style that helps you learn the fastest and make the most of it!

Q. What advice would you give to future wanna be CG artists and freelancers out there?

Know going in that this is hard work and don’t let yourself get discouraged. The tools get better and faster every year, but there’s no such thing as instant gratification. The skills that will impress an employer come with time and dedication.

It’s too easy to glance around at various works on the web and start to think that you don’t have the chops to compete.

Every single breathtaking image you’ve ever seen produced in 3D was created by people just like you, and if you take the time to really learn this stuff and are patient with yourself, you have every opportunity to join the ranks of the CG industry.

Thank You for your time in answering these questions for us, and we shall catch up with you again at 3dbuzz.com

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challenge CGArena is proud to present “Animals out of the Zoo” (Masking Challenge), 12 Oct 2007 - 20 Nov 2007, sponsored by Vertus - Fluid Mask. Express your creative ideas in a new and interesting way.

Image By: Massimo Righi

Your Mission Create an image which justify the theme of Animals out of the Zoo using any masking techniques. You are allowed to search for any images, painting, matte paintings to use in the images, use can also create any part of the scene in 3d or 2d but in final image ratio of masking must be higher. and blended properly with other things in the scene. This Challenge is a Work-In-Progress Challenge -- all contestants are required to post their work-in-progress images for community to critique/comment in order to qualify.

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

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

4. Submit your final entry till 20th Nov 2007, midnight 00:00 GMT. 5. There will be 3 winners. CGArena, Vertus decision will be final and no participant allowed to contact sponsors regarding the challenge or asking reasons for disqualifications.

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.

- 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 animals@cgarena.com with subject “Animals out of the Zoo”. You will get a auto-reply email after submission which confirm the acceptance of image on cgarena server.

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photoshop

Shutter Text

In this tutorial we are trying to create a shutter text effect using layer styles, pen tools and color blending. This is just an explanation of the simple technique, so you can create unlimited effects on this base.

Step 1: Like always create the canvas, if you are using CS3 then you have noticed that Adobe categorized the Presets because those are fillinf lots of space. Btw, fill the canvas with the radial gradient tool. I will not explain more than this or increase the number of steps explaining this.

Step 2: Select Freeform Pen Tool (Shift + P) and draw your shape or write your text as per your choice. Make sure in the menu bar you select the second one called paths. This is not necessary that you use Freeform Pen Tool, you can also use Pen tool and create the shapes by clicking and dragging the mouse. But always remember not to use too many points.

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photoshop Step 3: Once you have a nice curve or text, create a new layer. Then click on the paintbrush tool (B) and choose a thin, hard brush. In this case I choose the 5 px Diameter brush.

Step 4: Now switch back to the PEN tool. Then right click and select “Stroke Path”. Choose “Brush” in the dialog box and make sure there is a tick next to “Simulate Pressure”. This is important as it will give your curve tapered ends!

Step 5: Now you have your white line right click on the same layer and go to the blending options by double clicking on the layer. On your left select Outer Glow. Now you can adjust your glow, play around with the colors & sliders.

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photoshop

Step 6: Firstly duplicate your text layer twice by going to Layer > Duplicate Layer. Select both duplicate layers and press Ctrl + E to combine them. Now drag your new combined layer below your main text. You should now have 3 layers, a background, your text and the combined layer of text.

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photoshop Step 7: Select Duplicate layer and click Filter > Blur > Radial Blur and set amount to between 15-20, Spin and best settings.

Step 8: Now we add some particles. To do this create a new layer then select a tiny paint brush, make changes in the scattering settings - and just paint some dots on of different colors and reduce the opacity. You can also change the whole look of the image by creating a gradient on a new layer, keep this layer on top and change the blending mode to Color. Keep experimenting and Enjoy!

Andy Halls

andyhalls123@yahoo.com

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Issue 6 Oct - Nov 2007

after effects

Sweepinmg the Light

May be you have read many tutorials like this on web but to create this effect I used 2 wonderful plugins called Trapcode Stroke and Shine. And today we combined these two to create the sweeping of light.

Step 1: Make a new composition at 768 x 576 with the duration of eight seconds. Press Ctrl + Y to create new solid of same size as composition.

Step 2: Select the pen tool and create a shape of your choice but try to keep the shape bigger the size of the layer because when we apply the 3d stroke and bend the stroke then enough size of the stroke makes it watchable.

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after effects Step 3: Apply the Effect > Trapcode > Stroke. Click the stopwatch for Offset, Z Position, X Rotation, Y Rotation and Z Rotation to set keyframes for each at time 0:00. And choose the same settings as shown in below image

Now you need to make the changes in the settings on the regular time intervals. At 2:00

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Issue 6 Oct - Nov 2007

after effects At Time 4:00

At Time 6:00

At Time 8:00

Step 4: Now apply the Effect > Trapcode > Shine and choose the following settings. Shine is a fast light effect plug-in. The effect looks very much like volumetric light, but is actually a 2D effect.

There are special controls to make shimmering lights and numerous coloring modes.

Step 5: Duplicate the layer and change the color in the shine plugin, you can also make some changes in 3dstroke too for making little different. You can also apply the Glow on both the layers. That’s it, hope this is useful for someone. Don’t hesitate to email me.

Suzane Smith suz.smith@hotmail.com

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3ds max

Making of Italian Creek

by Honza “IcemanJ” Jinda icemanj@maxarea.com

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3ds max Introduction I’ll explain creation of my last picture Italian Creek. I wanted to show you my techniques and procedure. I’ll take it almost step by step and I’ll focus on most interesting parts of production.

Inspiration I want to create some environment scene in short time, but in quiet high quality. I was surfing the web for some inspiration and I found some great photos, but the best photo found by my friend. It’s photo made by Sanja Veletanlic. I didn’t want to change anything in the scene accept lighting and then some details because of time.

Blocking First of all I prepared lines in original photo in Photoshop for better orientation, after that I’ve created a camera in max and set up resolution aspect same as in original, then I applied photo with perspective lines as a viewport background in camera view. So my scene was ready for blocking part. This is one of the most important parts in creation of “copy” of some photo. I built the whole scene with simple boxes with their approximate position and orientation. Then I tweaked the whole scene because it wasn’t very accurate, because I didn’t know lens of camera etc. so I fixed for example sizes of steps and pavements. A lot of problems with the houses in background, but I’ve tweaked it and faked it a bit. I don’t know why but I wasn’t able to hit correct distances etc, but from camera view everything is all right :).

Modeling I didn’t use any special techniques for modeling. It was only standard poly modeling and basic modifiers like Bend, Noise, FFD, Lathe etc. You can see some more interesting models in pictures. I must point out that plants and tree are models from database. I don’t think that modeling of

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3ds max this scene was difficult. Actually there are only modified basic primitives. After elementary modeling I added some irregularities to the scene by using Noise modifier, damaging corners of houses, deforming surface of pavements etc.

In scenes like this organizations is very important. For example using layers, I got used to use script written for Blur Studios for layer management, it’s called the Onion (http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/theonion). This script is like an upgrade of standard layer manager. You can create sub layers, give layer alternative materials or properties and many other useful things. I really recommend this script. I think we can close this chapter about modeling, it wasn’t too interesting, but we are going to move to chapter about texturing and this will be much more interesting.

Texturing I think texturing was the most interesting part of production. I want to create really complex realistic looking textures.

I used a lot of textures from mainly from cgtextures.com and from my own photo library. I paid most attention to textures which take most space in render. My final resolution was about 3000px so I must prepared suitable textures.

Texture size should be two times bigger than its space in render. I tried to adjust resolution for almost all of my textures with my sample mapping reference (made by loocas duber - http://www.duber.cz/dump/uv_map_reference.jpg). If reference was sharp in render, resolution was right so I start to create final texture. In pictures you can see examples of some interesting textures.

I used almost same technique, some base texture of surface, mostly desaturated or with very low saturation, then I was adding lot of other layers to achieve some irregularity, these textures maybe of little different color. After creation of some surface I add details and lot of dirt, because buildings are quite old. Finally I add color layer with some suitable blending mode and adjust levels etc. When I’m satisfied then I create other maps for material of the object, especially bump maps. I used finalRender R2 for rendering all materials and those are based on fR-Advanced material. Materials in scene are really really simple, nothing complex.

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3ds max This is my first project where I tried to use NodeJoe plugin. It’s awesome upgrade for materials in max. With NodeJoe, it’s really easy to create complex materials and mainly it helps to orient in maps of our material. In picture you can see tree of one most complex material used for cubes on pavement. I must point out that I’m using Color correct map, which is coming with finalRender, it allows you to control a lot of parameters of map directly in max such as brightness, contrast, RGB values or HSV etc.

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3ds max

Lighting and Rendering Lighting was very simple. As sunlight I used finalRender RecLight. The color was light orange, because I want to achieve warm sunset mood. Then I adjusted size of light, it caused little more blurred shadow. I also used skylight with physical sky and GI. For nice shadow from tree I used plane with opacity map. That’s all about lighting, simple as I said.

More interesting part was rendering, I used pretty same technique as Tim Jones on DVD series about Environment creation from Gnomon Workshop (http://thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/tjo01.html).

I rendered background houses and the rest alone. I’ll explain my passes. Main was keylight, there was skylight and GI turned off and RecLight has a bit bigger multiplier, about 2. All passes were saved in 32bits with alpha. This is important; when you save in 32bits you can later adjust intensities of light, colors etc in large scale without damaging image. Then I rendered only ambient, it was skylight and GI, last pass was fog, with this I created little mood and fog for background. I rendered whole image with all the lights together and it took about one and half hour in 1000x863.

Hardware was Core2duo 6600 and 2GB RAM; I must thank my friend Loocas Duber who borrowed me his computer for that when he was at Siggraph. So it’s time to put all passes together.

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3ds max

Post Production I want to try Eyeon Fusion for postproduction. I briefly wachted tutorial and try it. I’ll explain it shortly. If you want to learn Fusion better, you should download learning videos from eyeon’s website. I imported all passes to Fusion and also imported sky image. I applied Color Correct node on every footage and adjusted all parameters. Then I used Merge nodes to merge all image togehter. I also add Glow node to Keylight footage and finaly Hotspot node to simulate decent volumetric light. Above all nodes I applied final Color Correct and adjusted final look of image. You can see whole tree of nodes in picture below.

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3ds max

Conclusion So, I explained whole creation of Italian Creek. I know there are lot of things to tweak and make them better but I need to create this image in approximately 10 days. Finaly I made it on evening and weekend in nine days. I want to thank my friends for valuable advices and support. I hope that you enjoyed my Making of and it was useful for you. If you want feel free to contact me on icemanj@maxarea.com.

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Honza “IcemanJ” Jinda

icemanjcg.blogspot.com icemanj@maxarea.com

Issue 6 Oct - Nov 2007

winners In Sep07, your mission was to create a 3D image on “Addiction” theme and sponsored by N-Sided.

First Prize

Quidam + Low Poly Access Plugin worth USD 678

Trond Elling Haveland, Norway postmaster@trondart.com

Alex Cervantes, Mexico sportguy182@gmail.com

Second Prize Quidam worth USD 270

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

maya Wrapping & Animating Grass around objects

Cheese Platter Making of

by Hau Ming ( Jamie) Li, USA

tvholicjames@gmail.com

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maya

Introduction Hi, my name is Hau Ming ( Jamie) Li and this will be my first tutorial so I will try to explain how I did this Cheese Platter the best that I can.

I created this Cheese Platter using Autodesk Maya 8.5 and Adobe Photoshop. It is actually a photo concept derived partially from the image on right.

Originally, I was told to create this based on the original reference, but I feel the point of Shading and Lighting is to show off your texturing skills and give it better lighting if possible.

As you can see, the lights are overblown in the original picture. So I added more stuff like blue cheese, cheese cubes, brie cheese, almonds and crackers to make it busier and at the same time, make it look like a painting.

References It is always good to have more than one reference to look at when modeling and texturing. Try to find ones that you can purchase and have it in front of your face when modeling and texturing. This is because the pictures you grab online can have bad lighting, be pixilated, or not contain enough details.

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maya Here are some of the references I used.

Modeling For the strawberries, I modeled one in NURBS and converted it to Polygons. I checked the normals and then reversed the normals (very important, but I will explain later), then UV mapped it.

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maya For the strawberry leaves, I used Polygon planes and the append tool. I shaped it with a lattice, and then UV mapped it.

For the bowl, I used a NURBS CV curve, revolved it, and then used the rebuild command on the surface.

For the crackers, I modeled it in Polygons and extruded. I modeled only one side, not two because you are not going to see it.

For the cheese cubes, I basically modeled one good one in Polygon with rounded edges, and UV mapped it. Then I duplicated and shaped them with a lattice individually to make them look less uniform and less perfect. Then when I placed them, I rotate each cube so the camera can see one side of the textures. This will save you time instead of modeling, uv mapping and texturing them individually.

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maya For the blue cheese, I used a Polygon cube, shaped it, and then extracted the Polygons to separate the skin and the cheese. I duplicated the skin to make the wrapper. I deleted the Polygons at the back of the cheese skin because you are not going to see it. I used a lattice to bend and shape the wrapper.

For the almonds, I used a NURBS sphere, converted it to polygons, reversed normals, and UV mapped it.

For the Brie cheese, I used NURBS CV curves, which I lofted, and then shaped them by pulling the vertices. I converted the surfaces to Polygons and UV mapped them.

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maya Subsurface Scattering For an organic character, the conversion scale will generally remain small. However, the fruits and cheese have translucencies which are a lot higher. Therefore, there will be more noise to balance out, which means higher values for the scale conversion.

However, there is more than one way to balance the noise without having such insane numbers for the scale conversion. You can play with the numbers of the samples of the lightmap in addition to the minimal numbers of the scale conversion.

The reason why I said it is important to check your normals earlier, was because NURBS have a tendency to have normals facing inwards. If the normals are facing in, light cannot scatter throughout the object and you would not be able to see the real details of the texture maps. Notice in the left picture below, the cheese cube looks dry and you can barely see the textures, even with a specular map, versus the picture on the right, in which the cheese cube looks more detailed, wet and translucent.

For all the cheeses and strawberries, I used the Maya’s Skin Shader instead of the simple fast shader because of the control for the specularity and reflectivity attributes.

Overall is a tint.

Diffuse and Epidermal attributes multiply each other.

Subdermal and Back Scatter attributes are where you control how translucent you want your object to be. I found it is mostly the Subdermal weight that you have to play with to get an object more translucent.

Primary specularity is where I put the specular map I created using different size brushes, and then tinted it very light blue in the color gain of the strawberry primary specularity.

Secondary specularity is where I put a black and white noise map to break the highlight of the strawberries.

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maya Since people kept asking me about the strawberries, I’ll tell you how I did it in Photoshop. For the Color Map of the strawberries, I cropped a good looking seed, individually place them on the UV layout for the imperfections, then I duplicated the jpeg seeds several times and merged visible. I did that so the seeds won’t have that pixilated look from the jpegs that I got on the internet. Next I used the brightness and contrast from Photoshop and beveled them so the seeds can have that curvy popped out look without using geometries. For the base color, I sampled the redness of one of the photos, added noise and gaussium blur. Next, I painted the rawness of the strawberry’s white and green color, blurred and blended in Photoshop. For the Bump Map, I duplicated the seed layer, inverted it to have the bump up look, then I duplicated again and turned them into black and gaussium blurred it and put that layer under the white bump up layer.

This will give the look of the dentedness with the seeds popped out. For the Primary Specular Map, I used different size brushes and randomly paint it onto the UV layout. As for the Secondary Specular Map, I used a noise filter, played around with the level, brightness and contrast, duplicated the layers several times, merged the layers. This is important, because Maya can’t seem to be able to show the white specs of the noise in the attribute editor when I plugged it into the Secondary Specular Color. So what I did was to bring more of the whiteness out in the noise map so I can see it in the attribute editor. Here are the maps of the strawberries and the Skin Shader attribute:

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maya For the strawberry leaves, I used an Anisotropic Material and manipulated the sliders of translucency attributes.

Color Map

Specular Map

Bump Map

For the crackers and almonds, I used a Phong.

Color Map

Color Map

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Bump Map

Specular Map

Specular Map

Bump Map

Issue 6 Oct - Nov 2007

maya For all the cheeses, I used a skin shader.

Diffuse, Epidermal, Subdermal and Back Scatter Color Map

Diffuse and Subdermal

Bump Map

Epidermal and Back Scatter Color Map

Primary Specular Map

Primary Specular Map

Secondary Specular Map

Bump Map

Secondary Specular Map

Blue Cheese Interior

Diffuse, Epidermal, Subdermal and Back Scatter Color

Primary Specular Color

Bump Map

For the Blue Cheese Skin, I used a Lambert, and played around with the translucent values. Same thing for the brie cheeses.

For the wrapper, I used a two-sided shader and plugged in the front and back color map.

For the tray, I used a metal texture from www.cgtextures.com and plugged it into the diffuse and reflectivity attribute of the MIA material.

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maya Lighting HDRI, 1 Area Light, emit photons with a yellow and orange color for the photon color and light color. If you want to show emotions and make it appetizing, don’t use white light. Render with Global Illumination, Caustics and Raytracing on.

The more translucent an object is, the more you will lose the shadows to show depth. But don’t let that frustrate you; as this is where post production work with an occlusion pass comes in.

Post Production Do NOT use the default Occlusion presets. The shadows are way too dark, and it looks horrible. You want to be able to control how dark the shadows are.

Use the MIB-Occlusion node in Maya 8.5 and change the black color to dark gray, and play with the sliders. I used 2 MIB-Occlusion nodes for the scene.

Now render the color and occlusion separately and bring them into Photoshop. Duplicate the color file and put the occlusion pass in the center. Use Multiply or Overlay for the Occlusion. Play around with the opacity. For the Color on top, use a little Gaussian Blur and screen the top color file.

A little warning about using the skin shader and rendering with Mental Ray: If your scene has 90% skin shaders like mine, it gets pretty expensive to render even with a core 2 duo processor. This present scene takes a bit over an hour to render a frame with the school’s computer and their computers are way better than mine. Good luck!

Hau Ming ( Jamie) Li www.haumingli.com tvholicjames@gmail.com

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gallery

Luna Jang Seong-Hwan, Korea flcl38@naver.com Lightwave, Max Page 44

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Pandu Mayuresh .J Salunke, India mjsalunke@gmail.com Maya, Photoshop

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Liquid Dress Anselm v. Seherr - ThoB, Germany mail@3delicious.de 3dsmax, FumeFX, Glu3d Page 47

Issue 6 Oct - Nov 2007

Fat Boy Giuseppe Calcagno, Italy pinkio75@virgilio.it Lightwave 8.5, Photoshop

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Pascal Cristian Mihaescu, Romania cristian.mihaescu@gmail.com Blender

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Cheese Platter Hau Ming ( Jamie) Li, USA tvholicjames@gmail.com Maya and Photoshop

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The Rain Ongie Ongushi, BKK ongushi@hotmail.com 3dsmax, Photoshop

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Octo Andre Holzmeister, Brazil andrevh@gmail.com 3ds Max, Photoshop

Issue 6 Oct - Nov 2007

Watches Janne Hellmann, Germany info@b-w-design.de Cinema 4D, Final Render Page 53

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Issue 6 Oct - Nov 2007

The Market District Ognian Bonev, Bulgaria ogyb99@yahoo.com 3ds Max, Photoshop

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