BlenderArt Magazine Issue 46 Fantastic FanArt

ISSUE 46 | MAR 2015 | WWW.BLENDERART.ORG

Back to the 80's

FFAANNTTAASSTTIICC FFAANNAARRTT

Making of DJ Boyie

Tribute to Pierre Gilhodes

Pipey - by Rowan

BLENDER LEARNING MADE EASY!

Minas Tirith

EDITOR - GauravNawani

MANAGER/EDITOR - SandraGilbert

WEBSITE - NamPham

DESIGN - GauravNawani

PROOFERS

Charlie Shene

Fade Shayol *

Scott Hill

Brian C. Treacy

Bruce Westfall

Daniel Hand

Daniel Mate

Henriël Veldtmann

Joshua Leung

Joshua Scotton

Kevin Braun

Mark Warren *

Noah Summers

Patrick O Donnell

Phillip Ryal

Wade Bick *

WRITERS

Rob Hurley

Peter Boos

Jorge Vásquez Pérez.

Carl Endres

Krzysztof Bozalek

Moses Bullut

Grady Pruitt

Stephan Deutsch

Chris Vian

COVERART

Pipey - by Rowan

DISCLAIMER

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COPYRIGHT© 2005-2015 ‘Blenderart Magazine’,‘blenderart’ and Blenderart logo are copyright of GauravNawani. ‘Izzy’ and ‘Izzy logo’ are copyright Sandra Gilbert.All products and company names featured in the publica-tion are trademark or registered trademarks of their re-spective owners.

I have always thought artists aregigantic visual sponges. We are

inspired and influenced by everythingwe see around us on a daily basis aswell as by amazing work of otherartists. Often the work of otherartists inspires us so greatly that weattempt, with varying degrees ofsuccess, to replicate that inspiringartwork.

The rising popularity of “Fanart”would make one think that this is arelatively new phenomenon. When inactuality, practicing and attemptingto copy the work of another artist isa long standing tradition in the worldof art. Once upon a time, mostartists got their training under thetutelage of an established masterwho set them to copying theirmasterpieces. Even today, it iscommon practice to attempt torecreate artistic masterpieces whilestudying for art degrees.

And rather than being seen as“copying”, it is viewed as anacceptable way of practicing andimproving your skills. And with a fewlogo/copyright issues, as long as youdon't try to pass it off as your ownwork/idea you are generally free topractice your skills in this way.

But although the practice is acceptedin regards to known masterpieces, aslightly gray area has sprung up withthe rising popularity of Fanart.Artists often want to practice theirskills by creating popular icons suchas cartoon and game characters,which can lead to copyright issues ifnot handled properly.

So how do we handle it properlywith respect to the original artists?Well that is fairly simple, always givecredit to the original artist and stateclearly that you are practicing yourskills. Never claim someone else'swork as your own. While mostartists have no problem with youattempting to recreate their work forpractice, if they ask you to remove itfrom wherever you have posted it onthe web, be respectful enough to doso.

Okay, now that we have that out ofthe way, let's get to the fun part ofthis issue. The “FANtastic Fanart”gathered within is sure to inspire youto practice your skills. So settle inwith your favorite beverage andcheck out all the fun goodies wehave gathered for you. : )

Sandra GilbertManager/Editor

EDITORIAL

CONTENTS

BLENDERART- ISSUE 46 | MAR

2

ModelingClayCharacters

FinalInspection

Making ofDJ. Boyie

Back to the80's

4

16 25

10

Tribute toPierreGilhodes

12MinasTirith

14

An artist develops his or her artistic styleover time. Time that is spent exploring and

experimenting what works for them personally.Part of that exploration is seeking out and beinginfluenced to varying degrees by other artists.

While it is important to develop your own senseof style and not just copy others, it is importantto recognize those influences that shape ourjourney.

Last May, Tim von Rueden, posted aninteresting exercise over at Concept Cookie. Hecalled it an Influence Chart with the goal beingto realize your influences, tastes, and knowledgeon what creates your own style. As you filledout the chart, it gave you a visual reflection ofthose artists who influenced your work.

I think it is a great way to think about whatappeals to you as an artist and how much thoseartists that you admire have contributed to yourown sense of artistic vision.

If you haven't done the exercise, I encourageyou to do so. The exercise and Tim'sexplanations of how to complete the exercisecan be found at the following link

http://cgcookie.com/concept/2014/05/27/exercise-25-influence-chart/

IZZY SPEAKSthe truth and nothing but the truth

3

WHAT INFLUENCESYOU

IZZY SPEAKSBLENDERART- ISSUE 46 | MAR



I've never felt comfortable with charactermodeling. It was a task that always seemed toelude me. The shapes seemed too complex tofigure out.

When I went to the library earlier this year Icame across a book on modeling clay creatures.Flipping through the book, I realized that thewriter was making some easy shapes with “Playdough” that I could recreate with basic shapes inBlender. These were basic shapes I was alreadyvery familiar with from the numerous otherprojects.

In this tutorial, I'll show you how I created a fanart scene using these simple shapes. The greatthing is that with this method, you don't have toworry about edge loops and topology outside ofwhat is needed to hold edges.

BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

While I could go into step by step detail even anewbie could follow, such detail would make thistutorial way longer. So to keep things brief, Iwill assume that you have at least some Blenderexperience and are already familiar with some ofthe more basic concepts such as moving and

editing a mesh. If you know how to extrude, doloop cuts, and add modifiers, you should be ableto follow along. Those who have been doingBlender for at least a little while should be ableto do at least that. If you happen to be acomplete newbie, there are plenty of tutorialsavailable on sites like CG Cookie and BlenderGuru (not to mention YouTube) that can showyou these basics.

For the character I'm showing here, I use onlythe subsurf and Displace modifiers. The first mostpeople will already be familiar with and thelatter can be done with some tweaks to the basicset up, so it won't be that hard. On the subsurfmodifier, I usually use a level of 2. Higher levelscan give you more detail if you wish.

Part of the fun of creating a clay style characteris the variations you can get by applying yourown sense of what looks good. Let your innerchild run free as you work through these types ofcharacters. You can add as much, or as little,detail as you wish.

CREATING THE HEAD BASE

The hardest part of the character is creating thehead. That's because in this style of character,most of the detail is in the head. Once you havethe head, most of the rest of the character comesout pretty easily.

4WORKSHOPLerning blender bit by bit

CREATING “MODELING CLAY” CHARACTERS

TUTORIALBLENDERART- ISSUE 46 | MAR

Grady PruittContributor

To start off with, you need a quad sphere. Youcan easily create one by creating a cube that issubsurfed to two levels and applying the subsurf.This can also be done by subdividing a cube anddoing a cube to sphere. While you can use a UVsphere if you like to start off with, I generallylike the quad sphere because it gives us a fewpoints of reference that make it easy to create acharacter.

This style of character can get pretty confusingreal quick if you don't stay organized, so mightas well get that off at the start. On the objectproperties, give the object a name. When doing aclay creature like this, I like to use the charactername and the object's intent. So in my example,I'm calling this Luke-Head.

I also like to give at least a visual material as Igo along. This helps me to identify the pieceswith a glance. Using the Blender Internalmaterials, I give this a material with thecharacter's name and the function of the material,in this case, Luke-Skin. We can always changethis to Cycles later. This just gives us a startingreference. I change the color to the color I wantto use. Since I'm doing a human character, Igave him a color that looks like it could be askin tone. I also turn down, or turn offcompletely, the specular highlights, since in play

dough, they are minimal if at all present.

In edit mode, shape the head to the shape youwant for your character. In mine, I scaled alongthe Z- axis just slightly so that the head was alittle taller than it was wide. When I did theYoda character, I did more of a wider head witha narrower height. Whatever you think wouldlook good for your character.

We know we'll want to add eyes later. While notcompletely necessary, I think it would be nice toadd in a little “socket” to put the eye in. In myexample, I selected the two faces to the left ofthe center line and just above the centerhorizontal line. With those two faces selected, Iinset them until I get them to about the size Iwant the socket to be. Then, with the inner twofaces selected again, I extrude those back a way.I do the same thing on the right side.

Remember, since we're not worrying aboutdeformations, and we don't have to worry aboutimages for texturing, bad “topology” is fine.You could do this without the insetting, but theinset allows you to change the shape of the eyesocket if you desire. You can make the eyemore round by scaling the two faces on the leftand right on the eye socket along the X-axis andthen scaling them again on the Z-axis.

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TUTORIAL

CREATING “MODELING CLAY”CHARACTERS


Be sure to do this for both sides.

Next, we need to put in a mouth. Again, sincewe're not overly concerned with deformations, weonly need enough geometry to hold our shapesinto place. I usually select the 4 faces at thebottom of the front. These are in just the rightplace for a mouth. I inset these four faces, justlike we did with the eye, and then extrude thefour inner faces inward. If you want, you can useloop cuts to hold the edges for a sharper mouthcorner.

EARS, NOSE, AND EYES

With the base details of the head done, it's timeto add in the rest of the details that will makethis look like a head. To add these details, wewant to go back to object mode, and before weforget, set the shading to smooth. An easy wayto make the other features of the face in clay isto make them using other pieces, so we'll do thatwith the rest of the pieces.

For the nose, I start off with a cube that issubsurfed. Remember to give the nose object aname (I chose Luke-Nose) and give it the skinmaterial. Position and scale the nose so that it isin the front of the face between the two eyesand above the mouth. It's okay to place the noseinto the head slightly.

This will help give it the “pressed together”look. Now, this round shape can be fine for somenoses, if you like. But you can also give the cube2 loop cuts in edit mode and extrude the topmiddle face up. You can then add loop cuts on

this extruded piece so that youcan shape the nose however youwould like. Remember to extrudeout the tip of the nose just alittle as well. Then scale any partof it until it gets the right lookand feel you want for yourcharacter. For my scene, I wentwith the simple sphere nose.Once you're done, go back intoobject mode and shade smooth.

To start the ears, I add in another cube that Isubsurface to level 2. Because this is a part thathas a “mirror” to it, I make sure and add theside it's on. So I call this one Luke-Ear-Right. Imove it to the right side of the head. In editmode, I scale the mesh to the right ear size inthe x, y, and z axis independently. Since the earis mostly flat, the Y-axis gets scaled the most.For a human ear, I usually go for about twice ashigh as it is wide. I also give it a loop cut alongthe narrowest edge.

The front face of the ear gets inset a little wayswith the interior face of the inset extruded backto form the cavity of the ear, making sure thatthis face is not taken too far back, or it willcome out of the back of the ear. An extra loopcut around the front outside edge will help holdthe shape. That's as easy as it gets for the ear.

Back in object mode, we do a smooth shadingand reposition the ear if necessary and give it theskin material. Any additional scaling can be donein edit mode (to keep the scale of the object at1), but any positioning should be done in objectmode.

Creating a second ear is as easy as duplicatingthe ear, moving it to the other side, andrenaming the ear by changing the side listed inthe ear name.

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TUTORIAL



Make sure thatfor human ears,they are rotatedso that theoutside edge isslightly forwardto the front ofthe face.

The eyes may seem tricky, at first glance, but wecan easily do this by “stacking” clay pieces.First, take a UV sphere and place it in the eyesocket. Give it a name, like “Luke-Eyeball-Left”and a material that is mostly white (Luke-eye-white). Create a second UV Sphere, but squashthis one in the Y-axis. Scale it on the X and Z-axes until it is smaller than the eyeball sphereand place it in front of the eyeball.

Shade smooth, name it (Luke-Iris-Left) and give ita color (Luke-Iris-Color). Duplicate the squashedsphere and scale it again along the X and Z axisso it is even smaller than the iris. Then positionit on top of the iris. Name this one (Luke-Pupil-Left) and give it a black color (Luke-Pupil-Color).Select all three spheres you just created,duplicate the three of them, and move it over tothe right eye socket. Rename the duplicates tothe right side.

You can give your character eye lids if you wish.They are easy to create with a simple subsurfacedcube that is scaled in the Y-axis to make it flatand then extrude and pull back, the left andright sides and pull them back slightly. If youneed to, you can extrude the top faces and pullthem back as well. The lower eyelids can bedone the same way. On my Luke character, Ichose not to do eyelids, but on Yoda, I used aslightly modified version of this process here forthe eyelids.

For the most part, you now have a completedhead. One last thing remains, and that is to

parent each object to the one it touches. So thepupil would be parented to the iris, which isparented to the eyeball, which is parented to thehead, for example. When this is completed, youshould be able to move each part independentlyfrom any parent. If you move the right iris, forexample, the pupil should come along, but allother parts would remain where they are. If yourotate the head, everything that is connected tothe head, and their children, should also rotatewith the head.

THE REST OF THE BODY

Believe it or not, the rest of the body is just aseasy. You can use cylinders, cubes, spheres...Whatever primitive you feel will help you get theshape that you want. With objects that are“tube” in shape (whether from a cylinder or acube), adding a loop cut near the edge can helpto hold it if you need it held. If you use acylinder, you can use either a triangle fan or anngon for the edge, but I would suggest extrudingand scaling that inwards along the normals andthen adding in some loop cuts to smooth out thesurface before it hits that shape.

As we did with the face, you can make as many(or as few) separate pieces as you want to createyour character.When I did Yoda,for example, Icreated separateobjects for hisfingers, hand, andeach part of hisarms so that Icould move themany way I wantedto. For Luke,though, I knewthat I wouldn't bemoving his arm

7

TUTORIAL

Creating “Modeling Clay”Characters


or hands much, so his arms are all one piece andhis hands and fingers are all another. BecauseLuke's boots were a different material, I createdthem as a separate object.

When deciding on whether to do it as a singlepiece or as a separate piece, think about howyou might approach it if you were actuallyworking in clay. If you would do it as a separatepiece, then do it that way with the model.Overlapping is fine, too. Though not completely“accurate”, unless it is super close up, you won'treally be able to tell.

For doing the hair, you can do it one of twoways. You can create a new cube object and“shape” it into the hair style. Another way youcan do it, which is how I did Luke in my image,is to select some faces on the top and back ofthe head, duplicate them, and separate them intotheir own selection. That piece could then begiven a particle hair system. Since dealing withhair can be fairly involved on it's own, I won'tgo into much detail here, other than to say thatto get the look I have here, I used fewerparticles (around 50) withchildren (100,interpolated) with a largerroot and tip (both near 1).Either way will work,depending on the lookyou are going for.

GETTING THE CLAY LOOK

To get the clay look, wehave one more thing thatwe need to do. Now,when I'm working on aproject, this is something Iusually do as I go alongand create each piece, butthis can be done afterever

ything is created as well.What we are going for isthe “lumpy” look withthe variation in thesurface of the object thatyou would see withmodeling clay, rather thana smooth, straight surface.

With the displacemodifier, we can quiteeasily get the look we aregoing for. On the modifierpanel, add a displacemodifier. If this is thefirst object you are doingthe modifier on, you'llwant to make sure youadd a new texture. Besure to give it a namelike “clay-disp” so youcan easily find it. For theother objects, you caneither create a newtexture or reuse the oneyou've already created.On the texture properties,find the three boxes atthe top. One will look like a world, one like asphere, and one like a checkerboard. Make surethe checkerboard is selected. You should see“Displacement” listed underneath with your“clay-disp” texture. Make sure that the type isset to “Cloud”.

On the texture panel, you can change the settingsof the cloud. Changing the size, depth and nablaof the cloud will affect the way the lumps lookon the object. Doing so isn't necessary, but youcan if you wish. I find a slightly larger cloudusually looks best, depending on the object. Forme, I like a size around .4, and a depth between0 and 2.

8

TUTORIAL



Back on the modifierpanel, we want tolook at the settingson the displacemodifier. With astrength of 1, theobject probably looksvery spiky. That isbecause the effect isway too strong andthe mesh is beingdisplaced too far. A much more subtle look iswhat we want. I usually go for somewherebetween 0.1 and 0.4.

One thing to watch out for is places on a meshwhere it “crosses” itself. This will show up as a“dark” spot on the mesh. When this happens, itsimply means that your strength is too high forthe size of object that you have. Lowering thestrength should fix this.

The final result of the displacement in yourrender will depend on a number of factors. Firstis the mesh density. Ideally, you should have thedisplace modifier after the subsurface on thestack so that it has something to work with.And the higher the subsurface levels, the moredetail from the cloud will show through. Thesize, depth, and nabia of the cloud texturesettings can also affect how the mesh isdisplaced. The strength of the displace modifierhas an impact. And though I didn't show anyadjustments for it,the mid level canalso affect the finalresult.

If you're going to beshowing a close upshot of your “clay”object, one otherthing you can do,and this can be done

simply in the material settings, especially withcycles, is to add some “fingerprints” in the clay.

Creating clay characters is fun and easy. Youdon't have to spend a lot of time worrying about“edge flow” and topology, like you would for a“normal” character, outside of what you need tohold a shape, because you're not as concernedwith deformations. With a proper parenting ofobjects, you can easily set things up so that youcan do some posing, as you might do with “stopmotion” animation. For a still shot or a simpleanimation this may be more than adequate. Thekey to doing these types of characters is tounleash your inner child and have fun!

If you'd like more practice with this style ofcharacter find a book on “clay modeling”characters, particularly one aimed at children.These usually show the characters broken downinto the basic, simple shapes which can easily bedone with the basic primitives with some lightmodifications that even a beginning Blender artistcan create.

One last note is that if you can create these claystyle characters, you can also create your ownplush characters. Instead of using a displacementmodifier, you could use the techniques for theplush fur from the fuzzy teddy bear tutorial byTutor4You on YouTube. In fact, you could evensimplify the process by not modeling some of thedetails, like the finger separation or mouth, anddo them with “stitching” instead (not covered inthat tutorial, but easy enough to figure out).The basic techniques to do the plush characters isvery similar to what I've shown here for the claycharacters. Have fun creating your own claycharacters!

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TUTORIAL



Note: The character I created here isn't the same as theLuke character I created for my gallery image, but wasmade using the same techniques.

My recent work that I made for anothermodeling challenge.

The theme for this challenge is "Classic Cartoonaround 80's-90's". So I pick Looney Tunes and itis Lola Bunny & Bugs Bunny (actually I wasgonna make one model and it was Bugs Bunny,and some guy gave me the idea I could makeLola too. It’s thanks to him that now Bugs Bunnydoesn’t have to perform alone. Since both ofthem are bunnies, it wouldn't take time tomodel).

So I start to brainwash myself with this stuff.Since I’m a fan of Looney Tunes too. So I go to

youtube or wherever to find inspiration. I re-watch the old Looney Tunes cartoon and thatwas sooo fun for me. I also re-watch the SpaceJam movie (Lola Bunny is really hot >_<).

Almost everything I did inside Blender 3D frommodeling, sculpting, and also rigging. The goalfor the final image is smooth and cheerful colorsso detailed texture or model didn't bother me atall. Carlos Ortega's artwork was my biggestinspiration at that time.

I know it is too stupid to model this stuff (whydon’t you just go to google and find the LooneyTunes text, or grab some Warner Brothers logo?)Well I believe if I could model those in 3D, I canget more control of how it will look in the finalimage. As you can see, I also model the circlesfor the background.. Silly me =))

When everything's modeled, it's time to setupsome lamps and give it a basic material, becauseit will

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MAKING OF

MAKING OFExploring blenderart and blenderheads

BACK TO THE 80's


Images. Base models & Sculpted model

Images. Model Meshes

Chris VianContributor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looney_Tunes

http://carlosortega.prosite.com/

give me an idea of how it will look like when itis textured. Too bad that I can't change the pose,because I saved the file and overwrote the riggedone T_T.

I still have all the backup T pose model that Icreated though, but doing all the sculptingprocess again, or setup the lamp/camera again, Idon’t think that would be a happy time for me.So I move on.

IMAGE NODES, LIGHT, COLOR HARMONIES

And render time! After I'm happy with all thosetextures and lighting stuff, I double checkeverything just to make sure there is nothingmissing. Because I will render them with CyclesRender which means it will take time to render.And also I did some color harmonies just to finda good combination between Lola Bunny andBugs Bunny.

IMAGE RENDER PASSES

I use multiple passesto make the lightingmore interesting. AndI'm very-very happythat Blender Cyclesnow supports that(dancing happily).There are DiffuseDirect, Glossy Direct,etc. So with thosepasses, I can create somany variable lightingeffects combined withmaterial ID, and meshID as a masking

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MAKING OF

Back to the 80's


Image Nodes, Light, Color Harmonies

Image Render passes

Being a 3d artist, Blender user and avid fanof old school Adventure Games, such as

the LucasArts Classics, Monkey Island, ManiacMansion and Day of the Tentacle, as well asthe Sierra's great ones, like King's Quest, SpaceQuest, and a host of many other Quests.

I often find myself using some of those classicgames' art as inspiration for personal projectsto further develop my skills and learn newcrafty techniques.

This character in particular is not taken froman actual game as such, but it is the creationof one of my favorite artists that ever workedon the Adventure Game genre of yesteryear:Pierre Gilhodes, an awesome envisioneer ofsuper eccentric and charismatic characters, thatpopulated a number of less well knownAdventure Games such as the ones from theGoblins Series, and "The Bizarre Adventures ofWoodruff and the Schnibble", among others.

This project took me some 4 weeks of littlebits of time I could squeeze between the cracksthat my day job and personal life left open,helped me to consolidate a lot of things Ilearned on a character modeling class I justhad taken some months ago online.

Mostly I learned to work with topology andflowing edge loops, crucial skills whenanimation is the ultimate end.

And also, I had never done much texturepainting or shading before, so I learned a lotworking on this one.

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MAKING OF




Jorge Vásquez PérezContributor

This is my Tribute to Pierre's great work.

You can check out the original sketch fromhim, right here:

http://bouzoukblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/loup-de-mer.html

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MAKING OF





I've been using Blender since January 2012 in ahope to build some skills and a portfolio for a

University interview. Thanks to Blender I am nowstudying 3D Digital Design and Animation at theUniversity of Greenwich.

For the last year-ish, I've had my own long termpersonal project I've been working on, recreating'Minas Tirith' from 'The Lord of the Rings'... Ireally felt like a challenge. I had uploaded avideo of it on my YouTube channel and it'sproven to be my most popular upload, withpeople constantly asking me for the blend file inany way possible.

I have declined every one of them unfortunately.I just want this to be a personal achievement ofmine to bring this project to a full completioninstead of distributing it before it's done.

The projects and designs I had been making inBlender before this were fairly simple. I'm notthe worst, but I'm nowhere near the best. Assoon as I feel I'm getting better at something anew update comes out with a new terrifyingfeature that looks awesome, but I just can't getmy head around it just yet.

I decided to stick mainly to just the modeling

side for now until a time where I feelcomfortable to move onto more advancedfeatures. I had been doing CAD design work for afairly long time, even before I found out aboutBlender, so it’s my comfort zone.

So here is a bit about the The Minas TirithProject.

This modeling project was started on the 25th ofAugust 2013, to try and create a high-polyreplication of the legendary city of Minas Tirithfrom the award winning film The Lord of theRings: The Return of the King. This stage ofmodeling is after 12 months of casual work bymyself.

A lot of progress has been made from the outerwalls, mountain structures, and some of the mainfeatures. There is a lot of work to go excludingdetails.

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MAKING OF


Fanart - Minas Tirith


Rob HurleyContributor

The current work being done is on the manyindividual buildings that complete each levelwithin the city walls. Hopefully after this iscompleted a full animation walk through of thecity can be made.

If I'm honest, I'm happy. By all means it's not thebest, and for the time I've spent on it, it's fairlyridiculous. But life has other arrangements.

To keep up with the progress of this model andother projects visit www.robhurley.com

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MAKING OF

Fanart -Minas Tirith


www.robhurley.com

About a year ago something nudged me tostart a new project, so I decided to model

and animate a slot machine. Over the course of ayear, this project would morph into an entirehotel and casino resort, and then finally into theshort film Final Inspection.

A SHORT FILM ABOUT VEGAS, VICES, AND ONE VERY BAD DAY

I started a WIPthread atBlenderartists.orgMany peoplehelped me out byansweringtechnicalquestions,contributingcreative ideas,keeping memotivated to pushforward, and evencontributing assetsthat they made forthe project.

Collaborating withthem is what

really made this project special to me.

THE IDEA MORPHSINTO A WHOLE NEWLEVEL

The project thenbecame a massivearch-viz project,when I decided tocreate The HarleyHotel & Casino.

It was a lot of funjust dreaming up myown little gamblingworld and addingnew things.

A grand entrance, VIP

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MAKING OF


FINAL INSPECTION


Carl EndresContributor

Early design of the slot machine

Additional assets were created withthe intention of a simple scene.

Branding is important. Final design ofthe hotel's logo.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?295082-One-Arm-Bandit-amp-Casino-Resort-WIP

penthouse suites, a water casino, a hugewaterslide, other pool and spa areas all began tosprout up over the next few months.

With each new area of the resort, numerousassets needed to be modeled to populate it.

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FINAL INSPECTION


Lounge chairs, umbrellas, bar areas, lifeguard and towel stationswere all modeled to give that resort feel.

Rear area of the resort at night

The Water Casino at night A huge amount of lights were neededto bring the resort alive at night.

www.robhurley.com

One of the major additions to the resort was ThePlayroom. It features a private casino, bars,lounge areas, spa tables, hot tub and pool. It alsohas elevator access to very private 2nd level.

What really finished the resort off nicely was theaddition of the lake in the front area.

It added about a months worth of modeling, butI felt it was well worth the effort.

The lake house and watercraft rental area wereadded along with numerous watercraft.

Originally I only wanted to create an outdoorenvironment for the resort, but after beginning to

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MAKING OF

FINAL INSPECTION


The Playroom - A private rental space for events and parties.

think about a storyline, I felt that I needed alobby area where some scenes could occur. Sothis began the final modeling stage of the resortwhich was the check-in lobby.

A STORYLINE & SHORT FILM BEGINS

After putting so much time and effort into theresort, I wanted to create a short film. Thebiggest problem I faced is that this resort wouldeasily have a lots of people outside.... I could notmanage a lot of characters, so that's how thetheme and idea of a final inspection came to be.

I was able to work with just a couple ofcharacters, and allowed for a storyline to occurbefore the hotel opened up and becamepopulated with customers.

I wanted the film to be as photorealistic aspossible, bring the resort alive with movingwater, fountains, fireplace effects, animatedvehicles and watercraft, working slot machinesand of course character animation.

As I began doing early test animations andrenders, I quickly realized that I would not beable to render everything on my small 1gbGPU... the project was just too massive.

So this is how each scene was set up to animateand render within blender.

I had both a day and night master file whichwas exclusively used to render the 3d backplates.

Objects that needed to be interacting in theforeground animation, were temporarily removed.I would then render the still 3d backplate.

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FINAL INSPECTION


This beautiful resort is not all as it appears... trouble awaits theinspector at every twist and turn of the storyline.

The inspector has his own set of issues which also playsprominently into the storyline.

Overview of the entire workflow pipeline

Almost 130 backplates made up the scenes inFinal Inspection. Render times averaged about 3-5hrs each.

Next came the animating, this was all done inseparate blend files. Foreground objects that werepart of the animation, the identical camera andmatching lighting used to make the backplate,were appended. I had to set up ashadow plane to capture shadowsfrom the animation in most scenes.

Finally at this stage I would begindoing the actual animations. I wouldfirst do Open GL test renders to workout the timing and finalize theanimation.

I would then render (GPU) theanimation only, and an additionalshadow render for just the shadows.

The main animation and shadowimage sequences were imported into

After Effects and composited over the backplatesin preparation for other VFX.

VFX “FINAL INSPECTION”

After Effects was the other major workhorse forthe film.

Compositing, color correction, particle and lighteffects. The fire /smoke and fireworks were all2d video footage that had to be masked in and

integrated. I used After Effects in some way foreach and every scene.

This is an example of a scene to show what typeof things were done in After Effects to achievethe special effects and additional realism I wasgoing for.

I really spent a lot of time in editing “FinalInspection”. Once the composited scenes werecompleted in After Effects they were importedinto my video editor of choice, Premiere. I spenta lot of time continuing to edit the film with theintention of really making it flow well and havea good pace.

I received a lot of great feedback that told me,even though it was an 8 1/2 minute film, itreally seemed like it went by fast. This was aresult of the many editing decisions and cuts I

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FINAL INSPECTION


Blender was the main program for all the 3d work, but othersoftware was also used.

made. Hours ofrender time wasedited out with eachcut of the edit knife,but I’m really happywith the final edit.

There were about 70 sound effects and 4 songsthat make up the audio portion of the film. Theyall had to be mixed together and timedappropriately. Integrating the right music for thefilm was a big challenge with a lot of time spenttrying to find something that blended well withthe film, but didn't overpower it.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON “FINAL INSPECTION”

-Thank you for taking the time to read this“making of” overview of Final Inspection. Ireally hope you will take the time to watch thefilm. The link to the video is at the

beginning of the article.

-Hopefully you can get an appreciation for theeffort that went into making this. I would reallywelcome your comments and input at the BlenderArtists thread.

-I left the door open for a sequel (It will be

called “Relapse”), but I really want to have theright storyline before I dive into it again.

-Most importantly I want to thank the BlenderArtist forum members who became my creativeand technical consultants throughout this yearlong process. Without their help, this projectwould not have seen the light of day. They arementioned in the credits

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FINAL INSPECTION


What happens at the Harley Hotel.... stays at the Harley Hotel

https://vimeo.com/99065278

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?341189-quot-Final-Inspection-quot-short-film-%28warning-brief-CG-nudity%29



Hello all mixing maniacs. Today I would liketo share with you some system settings.

I am not going to go through all of the settings,I just want to show you what I change in mysetup. I think it’s useful. Any time you install anew Blender on your computer you get thefactory settings, you can manually return tofactory settings by pressing the factory button inthe file tab.

It took me some time before I found how flexibleBlender is, I can actually customise almosteverything. Instead ofgetting used to usingthe program, you canmake it work likeyou would like.

1. For example:Factory settings formoving object in the3D view is Shift +mid mouse, but itwas not right for meI spend most timemoving then rotatingit “mid mouse” so Ijust wanted to flip

these two functions. No problem, go to Userpreferences; then go to Input;

and open 3D view tab.

Now you can customise the buttons if you want.

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BLENDING

QUICK TIPUnravel blender mysteries

QUICK TIP: SYSTEM SETTINGS

Krzysztof Bozalek

Contributor


Just press the button that says middle mouse togo to the settings mode, then press shift followedby mid mouse. The setting is changed.

Use the same technique to change Rotation viewinstead of pressing shift + mid mouse just pressmid mouse. Now the moving and rotating optionare swapped. You cansee how flexible Blendercan be.

In this tab you can alsotick Continuous Graboption, so your object isstill rotating even if themouse cursor hits thewindow border.

In the Editing tab Ichange undo steps frommaximum 32 to 64 steps.

In Themes tab choose 3D view and go to thebottom, there are two options to check:

Use gradient and header, you can also changethe colour for this option, but I keep it as adefault.

The first option changes the 3D view background,and the second highlights the additional options

availablefor theobject onthe sidepanels.

If youhave CUDAgraphicscard youcan changethe wayyourcomputer

is dealing with processing your work, go toSystem and choose Compute Device to CUDA andpick your graphics card.

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BLENDING

QuickTip: System Settings


Now Blender will use the GPU instead of CPU, soyou can use your PC while Blender is Processingyour model.

I also find it useful to include Loop Tools andCell Fracture in my Blender. You can find itunder the Add-ons tab. Just find one you wouldlike to include in your edition of Blender andcheck the box on the right hand side.

Under the file tab you can set the paths youstore the additional items for Blender like: fonts,textures, sounds, etc..

Don’t forget to select Save User Settings beforeleaving.

And one morething. If you haveone folder youkeep all yourBlender work, youcan set this folderas a bookmark.Open the favouritefolder and thenunder the tabbookmarks pressthe button Add,now you cansimply press yourlocation name andgo straight to yourfiles.

Thanks all

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QuickTip: System Settings


Hi I’m Moses Bullut. I usually alias as MoiseItachi in Twitter and Google plus. In my

blog, the 3D Kenyan, I work mainly on the waysof modeling and animating characters in simplerways as well as explaining the work flow.However, I’m happy to model one of my favoritecomic book characters, DJ Boyie.

BACKGROUND STORY

Dj Boyie is a kenyan comic book character in acluster comic book series called Shujaaz. Hestarts an illegal radio station to help others withbright ideas to youth empowerment. Thus herelates with the other characters towards thesame purpose.

WORK THROUGH

I prepared a basic head by modeling it from thedefault cube, respecting the dimensions from thecharacter concept. Sculpted and topologised theface respecting smooth areas around it andparticularly the eyes and lips.

Boyie has a characteristic Afro hair. To produce amore look-alike result, I used mesh hair insteadof particle hair.

Extruded the scalp and separated it from the

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Fanart - Making Of DJ Boyie Bust


Moses BullutContributor

head. Then, extruded each face individually andscaled to size. The hair looked a bit too neat, soI added some randomness by pulling them indifferent directions in Edit mode. Then, Iproceeded to the glasses, which started from amesh circle using the mirror and subsurfmodifier.

Usually when modeling clothes, I prefer to modelstarting from low poly so that the meshsubdivides evenly, so that when bones are addedor sculpted, the uniformity is kept constantinstead of stretched squares. Usually, this can befound out by using the grab tool. However suchdetails aren’t necessary unless preparing for 3Dprinting thus re-topology may be necessary.

Continuing with the restof the mesh, I added acircle and modeled itinto the coat jacket. The

coat extended upwards randomly, so I addedsome push-and-pull along the coat collar.However, the hair seemed to collide with thecoat, so I pulled the coat away from the edges ofthe hair in edit mode. Edit mode doesn’t affectmesh detail thus it is better for minimizingerrors.

I moved onto the shirt, which required sculptingof the neck collar and the folds. I added a circleand edited it under the jacket in different layers.

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Fanart -Making Of DJ Boyie Bust


Finally, I had to add material to the character. Iprefer pyroevil’s cycles skin shader. It worksbest in making the skin more realistic for simplework rather than searching for normal maps andsubsurf scattering. However, the skin shader doesallow use of normal maps.

Another trick is using the same skin shader witha little adjustment for the lips.

I added the cloth materials and added to the

cycles materials. After this, I added dark glossymaterial onto the mesh along with transparencyonto the spectacle lenses. Finally, adding a darkcolor onto the hair.

Then, I addedUV unwraponto the eyesapplying thetextures ontothem.

The bust isrendered at 150samples

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Fanart -Making Of DJ Boyie Bust


Mastering an end-to-end workflow creatingCGI has a steep learning curve for some of

us and whether we are professional 3D artists orenthusiasts, Blender offers a great path intocreativity.

But before the actual result is composited into anice glowing still or animated artwork, we haveto put the work in. Therefore it is always usefulto choose an objective with high reward thatkeeps us motivated and lets us overcome theinevitable barriers. Fan art is such an objective,because we are only fans of things we really like.It also often spares us the first and veryimportant step in the creative process – conceptart and references that provide a good way topractise our skills against.

This was the very reason I chose the iPhone 6 tomodel as a fan art and as a practice exercise forhard surface modelling. Taking you through mythought process and explaining some of theobstacles I faced and needed to overcome mighthelp you tackle your next fan art projectsuccessfully.

THINKING IT THROUGH

Looking at your objective – with the iPhone 6 as

my example – it is very worthwhile to spendsome time looking at it and making a plan.Rather than just starting to set some backgroundimages up in blender I first looked at theartworks on the Apple site to see what I wouldengage. This resulted in a list of details on thephone`s body which can be addressed in atargeted manner.

The most prominent elements are clearly thetoggles, the fingerprint button and the camera.For the camera I could just model a mesh for itand intersect it. For the speakers I decided for atexture approach. Painting holes on a model is alot easier than punching them through, especiallyif you are facing smooth, rounded hard surfaceobjects that cry “sub-surf me!” The loudnesstoggles and the speaker toggle, but also theon/off switch were clear candidates for a punch,though.

Some other thoughts went into potential shadingand materials.Looking at thephone, fortunatelymost of thematerials are prettysimple and theCycles render enginegives us a verygood solution forthem. The onlychallenge was the

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UP YOUR MODELLING SKILLS THROUGH FAN ART


Stephan DeutschContributor

need for different shaders without the option toseparate the meshes into distinct objects due to aconsistent surface.

From a workflow perspective it is alwaysimportant to be on top of your work anddocument it for later sharing. Even if you areworking enthusiastically for yourself, you canbenefit from how the pro’s do it. So build somelists of the elements you want to create andname them after a defined scheme. This providesvaluable checkpoints you can tick off.

What I skipped at this point are the thoughtsabout setting up a scene or compositionrequirements. I intended to build a single devicemodel for versatile use which is not applicable toa dedicated project. If you are aiming at adedicated result, it might be very valuable to sitback and look at it as well.

MODELLING TIPS AND INSIGHTS

There are tons of modelling tutorials out there,therefore I will concentrate on some aspectswhich might help you overcome inevitablebarriers during the process. Here are my personalkey lessons which helped me get through thesomewhat tiresome task of actually completing amodel end-to-end.

Break it up and link it back. As in computeralgorithms, split your objective into smallersimple tasks. To put it all nicely together in theend requires planned connectors. I decided tomodel the phone body parts separately as well asthe camera and the toggles. Especially for thetoggles insets, I needed to plan how to join themwith the rest of the body. So I had to make surethat the border around the phone would have theexact same topology all the way round to enableme to close all the gaps for a totally smoothsurface. While I naturally created the main bodyfirst, I immediately tackled the details on the

toggle housings and then remodelled the bodywith the connecting topology.

Create references and proxies. The first and mostobvious references are the background imagesyou can use in the orthogonal views. You canalso use reference images as planes that remainin the view while you rotate your view. Scalethem properly and find a centre point to alignthem. You can use a cube mesh to achieve yourfirst proxy.

Duplicate it and start modelling from it. Proxymeshes are great for storing reference points foreasy snapping or remodelling (shift-D andseparate with P, separate selection). Also nameall things you create immediately after the firstShift-A command. One such proxy helped metremendously in my iPhone project as I hadmodelled the rounded edges with the wrong pivotpoint. Returning to the proxy I was able to usethe correct pivot point and recreate the verysame edge without any hassle.

Backup parts of your model before taking thenext step. This is virtually a no brainer justfollowing the “save your work often” hint.Saving regularly with incremental file names atimportant steps helps you keep a log of yourprogress. You can revert back and append stufffrom older versions into your new file to getsome backup meshes and models back in case ofdead ends.

For minor changesyou can backupmeshes or parts ofmeshes within yourblend file. Shift-D toselected geometry andmove it aside on oneaxis you can retain itin the same object. Ifyou model something

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Up your modelling skills through fan art


into oblivion you can delete it, move the backupback into the original place and start over.

Topology, topology, topology… if you startthinking about modelling a form and how thetopology for that form has to flow at the sametime, you won’t have a lot of problems hittingyou later. Punching holes into subdivided hardsurface models is a prime example, but alsocreating connecting topology without distortion.Of course you can use sculpting and re-topology,but if you are at that skill level, getting thetopology right in the first place should be abreeze.

So for people with limited modelling skills, suchas me, we need to keep topology in our line ofsight. For the iPhone I used a circle to build theholes for the toggles. The circle had to match thetopology of the body side geometry and I had tocalculate how many vertices I needed to matchit. The size of the hole and the resultingstretching from the shrink-wrap to the bodysurface played a role as well.

Snapping is yourfriend. I admit that90% of the readersmight say: “Hah! Iknew that.” Luckyyou, because youalready unlocked thetremendous power ofsnapping in yourmodelling process. Sothis is for theremaining 10%. Especially vertex snapping andedge snapping allows you to align your geometrywhile you move it. You can also snap wholeedge loops while you slide them along an axiswith a move command. This is helpful in the gapfilling process. Combine this with the tip onproxies and you can snap different parts of yourmeshes to a defined

point easily.

Be ready to model everything several times, evenon purpose. The last lesson is probably oncontinuous motivation, especially in the face offailure. A lot of times things do not work out asplanned. And while we all dislike a good plangoing to hell just after we started, it helps to puta number of “I intended to re-model thisanyhow” turn points into your intendedworkflow.

My iPhone project was the very first time Iembraced this approach and I started to happilydelete parts of my model (back-up of course!),making cuts, doing reconnects (check out thebridge an edge loop function!) or simply trying adifferent idea. I can only encourage you to dothat as well. With the backup, reference-geometryand snapping tip combined you can bring yourmesh quickly back to the original state withoutlosing your work at all.

ORGANISING YOUR MATERIALS

After the modelling I was ready to proceed to thenext level – shading. The upside of Cycles is theability you gain from it to create realisticmaterials which are physically accurate andbehave nicely. For most gadgets these materialswill not be overly complicated. In addition tothat, blenderartists.org has various threadsproviding you with great ideas on how to setyour materials up and there are other resourcesand cycles material courses.

If you shade any object more complicated than asingle cube, you will end up with a growingnumber of materials and the list in the materialstab is pretty small. So for organisational purposesthe outliner is your friend. It shows you allparented objects, their meshes, modifiers andmaterials incl. the textures they use.

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The second friend you have lives in the nodeeditor and is called the frame node. As soon asyou start using a lot of different shader set-ups inone material driven through imported textures orprocedural sequences you quickly get to a bigsized node map. Use frame nodes to documentyour work – right there and then.

You are even able to put in a rudimentary textline on the top to name things without losing theshader name property. And you can colour it inthe properties tab of the node editor. Thisincreases your shader organisation significantly. Ifthe blender developers read this: Adding a freetext field to the frame node at the bottom tostore our explanations would be fantastic!

For the iPhone project I used this approach todocument how I build the shader for the mainbody as well as for some other materials. Iwanted a set-up that allowed me to quicklychange to all three colour variants of the fan artphone. You can realise this easily through mixnodes with colour inputs that you changeaccording to your needs. The image of the nodetree shows an example for it.

Likewise, you can also see how to organise a set-up with different textures driving your shadersettings. I first did a UV unwrap of parts of themodel and created textures to drive the shading

through the mix factor input.

You can layer this technique in the same wayyou handle layers in GIMP or Photoshop. Yourinput driver texture is the mask that is steeringhow the layer is applied to the model. Then youcascade mix or add shaders as you require tobuild these layers. You can of course useprocedural textures as well to drive these layer ormask effects. The camera light of the iPhone isan example for this.

SHARING YOUR FAN ART WITH FANS

The next step includes appropriate lighting and afair amount of compositing. I will not dive intothese topics, because they are heavily dependenton what you want to use your model for. Thereis no such thing as the one proper lighting set-up. The classic 3-point lighting (key-light, fill-light and back-light) will give you a very nicestandard set-up and I used it for the iPhoneimages.

But for other dedicated purposes it might not bethe right one. To really understand how lightaffects how you sell your creative art, you needto study it a bit. A good starting point for mewas “Light for visual artists” from Richard Yot.It set me on an exploration path that changedhow I look at the world – and my art.

Also, do a lot of test renders. Experiment withyour object. Look at it from various angles. Moveyour lights, change your light maps. Hopefullyyou stumbled across an HDRI lighting tutorial.Put reflectors in. Put spotlights in. Just imagineyourself running around in a studio scene withlamps and setting them here and there for a newlook. Then open the compositor and take it tothe next level.

Show your render to others and ask them fortheir opinion. Make them your focus group and

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take it from there. They maybe be fans of theobject of your fan art and you can enjoy ittogether.

Happy blending!

REFERENCES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

iPhone and Apple are trademarks of Apple, Inc.

Light for Visual Artists, Understanding & UsingLight in Art & Design, Richard Yot, LaurenceKing Publishing, ISBN 978 1 85669 660 9

iPhone 6 model download on blendswap:http://www.blendswap.com/user/eknightger/blends

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http://www.blendswap.com/user/eknightger/blends

Well, I am not a real great Blender artist, I'mstill learning daily about it and I guess that

never stops.

When thinking about fan art, this picture comesin mind to me. As well this duo inspires a lot ofblender hackers, I think.

I mean aren't most creative people a bit likethem? Inspiring, fantasy, funny. I placed this'famous' pose in a house scene to get more ofthat old English look.

The painting in the back is a real water paintingI made.

It’s a bit of a different style but adds to theEnglish cup of tea style, there is always

something hanging on a wall in a smallhouse.

It was made by using a backdrop image infront view, starting with larger shapeswhich I refined. Having only the frontlook, adding the depth was the difficultpart, I especially like the frown of thedog.

That characters never say a word, but hisfrowns, eyes are really good animated intheir movies, and speak for themselves

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UP YOUR MODELLING SKILLS THROUGH FAN ART


Peter BoosContributor

34

GALLERIA

GALLERIABlender artworks from the blenderheads

Celestine -by Light BWK

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GALLERIA


League of Legends fanart - by Cody Winchester

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GALLERIA


Sagat - by Paulo Ricardo S. Ribeiro

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GALLERIA


Warrior - by Candr

38

GALLERIA


Starwars Fan Art - by Grady Pruitt

39

GALLERIA


MSteinebach - by Markus Steinebach

40

GALLERIA


Dr. Bigotes - by Yunior Frómeta Carbonell

41

GALLERIA


Evil - by Edwin Hernández

42

GALLERIA


Castle of the wind_fanart - by Gioele Santi

43

GALLERIA


Falcon - by Lester

44

GALLERIA


Game of Thrones-fanart - by Rafael Esteban Clares

45

GALLERIA


Aventador J - by Pranavjit Virdi

46

GALLERIA


Low Poly Celebs - by Rahul Parihar

BlenderArt Magazine Issue 46 Fantastic FanArt

Documents