Volume 01 Issue 01 MAY 2004
3D ATTACK THE FORUM IN PRINT
FEATURED ARTIST MARCH
BATTLEMECH MODELING
The final results on Page 13!
Check out our featured artist for the month of May - Georg “sad” from Munich Germany. Sad’s art is not only pleasing to the eye but to the soul.
TEXTURING
If you are looking for a way to create a real good glass-texture then you should have a look at “Jeso’s” Glass-Tutorial on Page 6.
Plug-In
You want to create Trees for your Scene? Are you looking for a good plug-in that dosn’t burn a hole in your pocket? Check it out on Page 14!
3D ATTACK Board news! 3d Attack is growing fast. Sometimes you miss a topic or something interesting on the board. Well, we will help you with this article to find some really interesting articles from the board. First, make sure you didn’t forget to vote on these questions: http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewforum.php?f=29 You should also have a look at our Resources and links. There you will find lots of interesting stuff like: Textures, Objects, HDR-Maps, Blueprints and so on. Follow this link: http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewforum.php?f=28 For questions and answers about Cinema4D check this: http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/index.p hp?c=7 Our new contest started and we invite everyone to join in. A cool prize is waiting for you! Take a look here: http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewforum.php?f=30 We also have many, many interesting W.I.P’s on the board. Please check them out and try to make comments and critique on the pictures. Critique helps us all to learn and grow as an artist. It is important to get feedback on the work you do so please stop by and take a minute to reply on the topics there. Click here: http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewforum.php?f=4
Another important area is our Gallery and animation box. Here you will find finished artwork and animations. There is really some cool stuff from great artist around the world. Surely worth a look and comment. http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewforum.php?f=5 http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewforum.php?f=20 If you have any tutorials or tips on how to do this and that, then please post it in our “Tutorial Space”. Don’t be shy - we all want to learn, so this is a great way you can share your knowledge about special techniques in Cinema4D. You are also very welcome to write a tutorial. The more tutorials we gather the more we learn! http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewforum.php?f=6 Well now something different. Many people have problems with posting on our board. One reason is that they don’t have any webspace or they just don’t know how to post at all. We wrote a little tutorial about that so you might like to check it out here: http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewtopic.php?t=550 http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewtopic.php?t=416 Those two links show you how to get webspace and what you have to do to post a picture or link on the board. It’s really not that hard to do ;) We would also like to encourage every 3dAttack member to post artworks or W.I.P’s on the board. 2
Don’t be afraid to post. We are willing to help. Only by posting your work can we help you improve your skills and techniques. We have many advanced Cinema4D users on the board and we are pretty sure that we can help with nearly everything. We hope that all of you will share your art and knowledge with us. If you have questions then please ask. If you need help with something then please contact us. Our Team and members are willing to help you with whatever they can. Nobody is perfect so bring it on!
3D ATTACK FEATURED ARTIST “Georg Niedermeier”
by Tavy
permanent processing of my feelings and life situation in an artistic way. if I didn’t do that I’d break. Tavy: Most artists have mentors. Those who inspire them. Fellow artists whose work motivates them. Who are you mentors? Who motivates and inspires you?
Georg Niedermeier...I first stumbled upon the work of this highly gifted artist about two years ago. The imagery Georg uses not only speaks to your eye, but to your very soul. The longer you look at his work, you not only learn more about the artist, but your self. On March 24, 2004, Georg was kind enough to take time out of his schedule to tell me a little more about himself and his art. 3D Attack is honored to showcase Georg “sad” Niedermeier as our featured artist in this months issue of 3D Attack the Forum in Print. Tavy: Georg, first let me express how pleased I am that you have taken time from your busy schedule to speak with me. Secondly, I must tell you that your work speaks volumes to many. We, at 3D Attack, are excited and honored to showcase your talent and art in our first issue of 3D Attack the Forum in Print. Enough said...let’s move on. Tavy: Georg, could you tell us a bit about yourself? Where and when you were born. Where do you now live, etc.
Georg: Of course. I was born on the 1st of August in Regensburg, which is the capital city of Oberpfalz, an administrative district in Bavaria. I grew up in a little village with 3000 citizens. By the age of 17, I moved to Munich, where I attended a boarding, commercial school for 4 years. I graduated from boarding school and moved on to another that would have allowed me to study at a university for applied sciences. But due to a personal crisis, I wasn’t able to attend the university. After the personal crisis was resolved, I found myself beginning my career in art. Tavy: Most in the 3D world know you by the name "sad". Why is this the name you have chose to go by? Could you tell us the story behind this mysterious nickname? Georg: “sad” is a nickname that reflects part of my personality. Don´t get me wrong, I’m not a very sad guy, but sometimes very pessimistic about global issues like peace, terror, politics and society. Namely, I believe that mankind can’t and won’t survive it’s own pride. Actually, I’m quite a happy person which is caused by a <#> 3
Georg: Inspirational artists... well, there exist quite a bunch of ‘em. The 1st one I have to mention is Markus Wittl; my very best friend and a truly kindred soul. He’s a real master in painting evocative pictures. I love every single work he creates. www.wittl.de Peter Gric, an Austrian painter is another extremely talented artist. The feel of his creations is just amazing. www.gric.at Gerald Brom is a very dark character designer whose work i admire a lot.Karl Spitzweg speaks for itself as H.R.Giger does. Tavy: Now, about your art Georg. I have personally spoke with many 3D artists who are inspired by your work. Could you expand on the methods, techniques, and tools you implement, for us? Georg: My methods are easily explained. Often I listen to music while I make sketches and test-settings of scenes. Mostly I have a certain mood that needs to be intensified and for me music is the easiest method to do that. I listen to a wide range of music, thus I can step up nearly every mood I want to. Experiments, movies, music, other artists works, give me ideas or cause feelings that help me to create pictures. There are some small tricks that help me to work with natural perspective. In “Tower of Holyness” I used a self
3D ATTACK FEATURED ARTIST “Georg Niedermeier”
made 3d-object of a stairway and put it in the painting. Now I’ve been able to paint on the object. Similar methods were used in “Gruft” and “Tears of dirt”. Sometimes I paint on finished 3d-renderings as well. Examples are “Quaff Fallen”. Quaff is a local rock-band for whom I created two cd-covers. In this picture the chisels and the feather
and finally has been smeared in Painter5. “Bound” shows a vertebrae that was cloned and rotated along a spline. The tools I use: Cinema4d www.maxon.de Painter5 www.procreate.com Truespace (on older 3d stuff) www.caligari.com Irfanview www.irfanview.com Tavy: Most find our work to be mysterious. Others, spiritual. How would you describe it?
were painted with Painter5. The sky in “Der schiefe Krumm III” was made with Cinema4ds SLA gradients in the alpha-channel in 6 different layers
Georg: Dark! Personal! Everybody has to find his own way of seeing my art. 4
by Tavy
Tavy: Ok Georg... I've got to ask you this. When the name Georg Niedermeier "sad", is brought up in conversation, amongst 3D artists, most say, "Oh yes! The chair man." So much of your art displays a single "chair" somewhere in the picture. It's like it has become a trademark signature of yours. Would you like to tell us a bit more about this mysterious chair? Or would you prefer to keep this mystery a mystery? Georg: I just like chairs. Well, I believe that chairs are a very strong symbol of stability. Just throw it over and it gives a mood of weakness or even helplessness. Put it in a oblique posture and it appears unsure or unstable though the chair itself is stable. It,s just my personal point of view.
3D ATTACK FEATURED ARTIST “Georg Niedermeier”
by Tavy
Battlemech for the 3d Attack fun-contest. The next project will be the accomplishment of my chamber wip. Tavy: Well Georg, once again, let me thank you for taking time out of your day to share more about yourself and your work with the 3D Attack family. It's been an honor. Do you have any final thoughts or comments to leave our readers with? Georg: “Innovate not imitate”. Thanks a lot for the interview - it was a pleasure to answer your questions! I truly enjoyed my time in getting to know more about Georg and his art. We at 3D Attack are anticipating the arrival of new works from Georg and encourage all of our readers to visit Georg at www.sadbatu.de Tavy: Are there any projects you are currently working on that you would like to tell us about?
Georg: Not really. I have many unfinished pieces and I am very jumpy with my work. I work on several models for Pixelspell.net and on a
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3D ATTACK Tutorial: Glass by Jeso Here we go with our first Tutorial. This Tutorial is written by Jeso in which he explains how to create a good and realistic looking Glass material. It would be nice if you could follow every step and post your result on the 3dAttack board! Have fun and start working!
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3D ATTACK Tutorial: Glass by Jeso Color-C Channel: We will start with creating a new material. The only thing that we are going to change is the color-channel. Check the RGB sliders and change the one for “Blue” to 244%. That way we will have a brighter white. Reduce the brightness to 10%. Don’t change anything else. That’s it for the Color-settings.
Diffusion Channel: Make sure you activate “AffectSpecular” and “Affect Reflection”. Now we are going to activate the NoiseShader for a fine grain. We have to edit the Noise Channel a little bit. In the submenu of the Noise Shader you will have to change the “Space” from “Texture” to “UV(2D)” and change the “Global Scale” from 100% to 10%. In the “Relative Scale” settings you should only change the last setting to “0%”. Now activate “Compability”. Back in the Diffusion Settings we should change the “Mix-strength” from 100% to 25%.
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3D ATTACK Tutorial: Glass by Jeso Transparency: In the Transparency-Channel we will change the “Refraction” to 1.5 and activate “Fresnel”. In our next step we are going to choose the “FresnelShader” in our Transparency Channel.
Click on the Gradient and change the Gradient till it looks like in the picture below or similar.
Go back to the Transparency Channel and change it’s color to grey. I choosed to go with 140% for every channel (RGB). After that I reduced the brightness to 90%.
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3D ATTACK Tutorial: Glass by Jeso Reflection-C Channel: For the Reflection-Channel I just copied the Fresnel-Shader from the transparency-Channel into the Reflections-Channel.
Specular-C Channel: I changed the Specular-Channel into these settings: Width: 20% Height: 250% Falloff: -10% Inner Width: 2% For critiques and questions please mail: jeso@arcor.de
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3D ATTACK Tutorial DOF
by Tank
Let’s go on to our second Tutorial. Many people have problems using DOF. Well it’s not really that hard and easy to figure out if you know the basics of it. In this Tutorial I will show you how to use DOF for a simple scene. After that you should be able to use DOF in your scene!
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3D ATTACK Tutorial DOF
by Tank
Camera Settings: Well first we are going to create a new Camera. Click on the Camera Icon to produce a fresh new cam.
Render Settings: After we created our new Camera we have to have a look at the render settings. Go to the “effects” and make sure that you use “Depth of Field” out of the Post Effect Panel on the right upper corner. You will see some things that you can change like: Blur Strength and Distance Blur. Don’t worry about them right now. We don’t need to change any settings for our little Tutorial.
3D ATTACK Tutorial DOF
by Tank
Camera Depth Settings: Well we created our Camera and we did the Rendersettings. Now we are going to change some things on the cam. Activate the Camera in your Objects Manager by clicking on it. You will see 4 Riders: Basic - Coordinates - Object - Depth. We are going to change the “Depth” of the Camera. Right now you see your cam in the viewport. It dosn’t look any different from any other Camera. Let’s change that. Click on “Depth” in your Attributes Manager and activate “Rear Blur”.
Render Settings:
Target Distance
Now you will notice that you see a different cone (the dark green one). This Cone represents the blur distance of your Camera. The bright Green Cone will let you know which parts of your scene will be “sharp”. You can adjust this by going into the top view and drag the “target distance”. Final Words: Well you have done it so far. Play around with the “Target Distance” to see how it will change in your rendering. You can also change the Blur strength by adjusting by changing the Blur-Strength in the Rendersettings from 5% to 7%. See what it does. Well know you know the basics of DOF.
3D ATTACK Battlemech Learning Challenge
by Tank
The Battlemech Learning Challenge was quiet a successful event on 3dAttack. Many people joined in and brought up many interesting styles and lots of information. This Contest was basically made for all of us. We all learned from each other. We saw different techniques, different styles and so on.
GDouble created a spider-looking Mech. A powerful 89t Mech created for Battle. It’s an extremely fast Mech and it contains deadly weapons like: Rocket launcher and rail cannons. It comes along with a plasma shield to protect the Mech from damage. His Mech comes in a cool looking Chrome design. Check it out!
It was interesting and exciting to see the progress of our 3dAttack members. Everyone of our members actually had different ideas of what a Mech would look like. There was no style guideline or any boundaries set in this challenge. Everyone was free to design a Mech in his own personal way. Well, we set some rules for our challenge. We wanted details on the Mech and we got them.
Macling designed a very unique, funny looking Mech. It is called: “Really Strong Coffee Mech”. There are severall other Mechs on the board so make sure you visit:
Sad actually produced a Scout Mech. He put lots of details into his Mech. If you check out his Mech on the board you will see lots of details added. He thought about nearly every bolt and screw. Sad always puts lots of time and energy in his work. Everything he creates makes sense and there is not one bolt that dosn’t have the right place. His Medi/Scout Mech is really something unique.
http://3dattack.net/3dAttack/viewforum.php?f=26 It was interesting to see people joining the learning challenge and we all learned something new while creating those Mechs. Thanks to everyone who joined this challenge and we hope that you will join the next challenge on www.3dattack.net See you on the board!
Then we have Peter Koch. A very talented modeler. He built a scary impressive looking Mech. He made a recognition- and artillery-fire-controlmech. His electro-chemical muscles for his Mech are really impressive. If you haven;t see his Mech yet you should really go and have a look on the board. Jawahar impressed us with some really highly detailed stuff. His Mech is a bit different. Find out yourself and have a look. Really impressive!
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3D ATTACK TREE GENERATOR
by Sad
ning tool contained the option to use either the provided leaf-object with an attached texture or to use your own 3d-objects (and custom bitmaps) as leaves. There are some things about that you should know and therefore I'll go into detail now.
Klaus Buechner is a c4d-user who developed a very affordable little tool called "Baumgenerator" (Tree Generator). Klaus makes updates every few weeks and if you have bought it once you will get all new update free of charge. The best about this handy little tool is it's price. For 10 Euro the tool is yours.
First of all the stalk of your custom fruit object must sit in the coordinate center of c4d and it has to show upwards.
Who of you doesn't know this problem: You created a nice outdoor scene and the only thing that lacks are nice bushes or trees in the surroundings. Well, you could use XFrog which is a mighty but a bit expensive (not too expensive, though) tool. It offers a vast range of options, too much for quickly creating simple trees but at the other hand XFrog is a complete toolset for nearly anything that grows and it is fully animatable. It determines the rotation of your object. You must export it as a vrml2 file because "baumgenerator" can´t read other file types. It makes sense to keep the polygone-count very low in order to guarantee smooth handling of the trees. "Baumgenerator" allows for 10,000 points and it offers automatic deletion of the polygones which are occupied by alpha texture data.
If you only need some easily generated trees and nothing else then "Baumgenerator" (Tree Generator) is for you. Create a tree within a few clicks. You need some apples hanging on the branches? Just click the button. Any types of trees can be generated and there exist some presets already.
The viewport can be controlled by the mouse buttons. Keeping depressed the right button allows for zooming; keeping depressed the left mouse button lets you rotate the tree. One of the latest updates of this stun14
What that means is that unnecessary polygones do not increase your polygone count. The objects can also contain bitmap-textures but make sure that you also include an alpha map (black= transparent (hence just the other way round as with c4d where white= transparent)).
3D ATTACK TREE GENERATOR
by Sad
Don´t use bitmaps that have too high resolutions. The texture coordinates will be considered automatically by the program. Tree data have to be stored in the same folder as the textures. Here you see the leaves with active and inactive alpha-channel.
The trees can be used in any 3d-package that is able to read VRML-data.
To achieve that the fruits are hanging down leaf gravity has to be adjusted. Creating trees with fruit and leaves at the same time means you have to create two trees. One with fruits and the other with leaves.
Then you can combine them in c4d and delete the second set of trunk and branches. All other options can be easily examined by just fiddlin´ around. 15
3D ATTACK ChristianDesigns.org ChristianDesigns.org: Serving God through Designing Art ------------------------------------------------------Throughout history, art has been defined as a talent derived from mental thought and constant determination to create the perfect piece. Artists have tried creating that single masterpiece, propelling their life to ultimate satisfaction. At ChristianDesigns.org we understand an artists' life, and believe your art is precious, and deserves great care. Frank Lloyd Wright said it best: "I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen." An image is the completed work through many building blocks for any artist, and we are providing you a chance to host your artistic abilities on our dedicated servers. This is a chance for you to satisfy yourself with a quality service, and be managed by a determined staff. ChristianDesigns.org has been in business for approximately ten months, and has proved to its' customers the truth about its services. Honesty is the driving force behind any business transaction.
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We hope you enjoyed reading our first issue. If you have tips or tricks or even a tutorial that you are willing to share with us then please mail it with your name to 3dattack@3dattack.net! This first issue is surely not the biggest but if people like it and accept this as a great way to share information we are going to keep on producing it in a bigger way in the future. 3dAttack wants to thank ChristianDesigns.org for sponsoring (Webhosting Service) and we would also like to thank John for giving such a great prize on the “Future Computer Design” contest. If you have any questions about this e-zine then also please mail it to 3dattack@3dattack.net It would be great to have some feedback on our first issue so please take a little bit of your time and tell us what you think! The 3dAttack Team!
3dAttack.net is a true graphics community dependent on honest actions, and that's why we have alligned our company with its excellent member base. Sincerely, John Napuunoa ChristianDesigns.org CEO/WebMaster
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