Cgarena aug-sep 2010 ezine

Get Attention in the Computer Graphics Community

VOLUME 5, ISSUE 4, AUG - SEP 10

CGArena

Interview Carlos Ortega Elizalde Lightwave Making of Interested Photoshop Leaves of GreensI’m the Godfather 3ds Max Hippopotamus Maya Making of Stewie Gallery Latest 3D inspiring art

Magazine Edited: Ashish Rastogi, IndiaMagazine Cover Image: Dilip Suthar, IndiaMagazine Design: Yousef Ikhreis, Jordan

www.cgarena.com Page 2

Issue ContentsVolume 5, Issue 4 Aug - Sep 2010

Get Attention in the Computer Graphics Community

5VOL

05

14

24

32

42

52

58

Interview Carlos Ortega Elizalde

Making of Greens of Leaves

Making of Interested

Making of Hippopotamus

Making of Stewie

Making of I’m the Godfather

Showcase of latest 3D art

Photoshop

Lightwave

3ds Max

Maya

Photoshop

Gallery

Industry NewsCGArena

Issue 4 Aug - Sep 2010

Phoenix Fluid Dynamics isOfficially Released

Phoenix Fluid Dynamics is the latest product re-leased by Chaos Software. The software perfectly combines a grid based simulator with outstanding rendering capabilities. The product comes with a number of new features like fast physically based simulation core, background simulation, wind from movement, fluid source form pre-simulated sur-face, particle based sources, GPU accelerated preview, texture driven simulation, displacement, rendering of textures and many others.

Fluids are substances that continually deform, such as liquids, gases, plasma etc. Phoenix FD lets you simulate these fluids in 3ds Max. The sim-ulation is stored in a finely subdivided 3D box, or grid, where each cell contains the fluid’s properties at that location.

Prime Focus Software Releases Deadline 4.1

Prime Focus Software, the R&D arm of Prime Focus, announces the release of Deadline 4.1, the latest ver-sion of its popular easy-to-use administration and ren-dering toolkit for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX-based render farms. This release features several new fea-tures and performance enhancements and will debut alongside the Deadline Mobile iPhone app, available for a free download on the Apple App Store starting from August 3rd.

New Features in Deadline 4.1 include:• Speed improvements • Increased usability • Simpli-fied power management configuration • UAC compli-ant • New software support: After Effects CS5, Arnold Standalone, Lightwave 10, RVIO, RealFlow 5, and Softimage 2011.

Book


Trai

ning

The VES Handbook of Visual Effects: Industry Standard VFX Prac-tices and Procedures - The book covers techniques and solutions all VFX artists, producers, and supervisors need to know, from preproduc-tion, to digital character creation. In-depth lessons on stereoscopic mov-iemaking, color management and digital intermediates are included, as well as chapters on interactive games and full animation authored by artists from EA and Dreamworks respectively. Written by 88 top leading vfx practitioners & covering everything about vfx from pre-production, production, and post-production. ISBN-13: 978-0240812427

Character Skinning - In this DVD, JP Self takes you through the process of skinning an animation-ready character from head-to-toe. He goes over how to fit the biped to the mesh, using the weight tool to adjust the folds in those tricky areas (such as the hands, shoulders, and pelvis), mirroring the vertices from one half of the character to the other in order to achieve that professional outcome, and even resizing the character after the skin-ning is complete. This DVD will help you get a better understanding of the methods and the reasoning behind the techniques that professionals use in production.

http://eat3d.com/blog/eat-3d/new-dvd-release-character-skinning-skinning-low-res-character-animation

http://www.amazon.com/VES-Handbook-Visual-Effects-Procedures/dp/0240812425/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281388486&sr=1-1

http://www.cgarena.com/ccount/click.php?id=398

Since my childhood I wanted to be an archaeologist or a geologist, I have a big passion for science and paleontology, and I kept that goal for year’s even days before applying for the University. Somebody recom-mended me to give Graphic Design a try, due to my passion for graphics, arts and drawing. Of course I was a bit wrong since Graphic Design is not all about drawing. Still, I choose wisely and I fell in love with the ca-reer. I was introduced to 3D graphics with Rhinoceros -thanks to a deceased old friend we all still miss- then I moved to Carrara Studio and later to Maya. I spent many nights learning the 3D world by myself since it wasn´t part of the career at that time. I still cannot picture myself doing anything else. It’s one of those jobs you want to relax from doing the exact same things in your free time.

Q. Please tell us about your first professional project and how did you get that?

I was working in an advertising agency doing flash and web stuff, but I also had my own 3D noob projects running in my free time. A good friend of mine invited me to join in an upcoming project at the University where he was working at that moment. The project involved a 3D ani-mated sequence for a paleontological exhibition, so I didn´t think of it twice to merge, two of my great passions in my first big project, 3D and dinosaurs. That lead later to get a full time job at the Gua-najuato University, here in Mexico.

Q. Please tell us what you enjoying the most modeling characters, build-ings, cars, objects and why? Which areas do you like the most modeling, texturing, lighting, rendering or post?

I love to model characters the most. I know it´s a bit cliche but it is awesome to create some kind of “life” straight from a cube or a plane. Once I complete a char-acter I enjoy modeling anything from ac-cessories to buildings and environments

Carlos Ortega Elizalde

Q. Could you please tell us about yourself a bit and what is the reason of choosing Graphic Design and 3D Art as a career?

Really don’t care that much about money or fame

Interview withCGArena





as long as all of it helps to fill the world of the previous created character. As for the area I enjoy the most, each one has its own fun and magic, but I can say modeling, texturing and lighting are my favorite stages. I hate modeling toes though.

Q. Which software’s and renderer you use to create your image? Have you any trick for getting a good quality of realistic or toon image?

I use Maya and mental ray most of the time; recently I had the luck to put my hand on FurryBall which is an awesome jewel too. Other helpful tools I often use are ZBrush, CrazyBump and Carrara Studio. I love toon imagery, and one thing I always focus on is the atmosphere and lighting to enhance the attitude of the char-acter or the mood of the scene. If simple things works well for the project I often go for it. I´m not a big fan of physically accurate values regarding toon stuff and whenever I have the chance to enhance something in a post stage I do it. On the other hand, realistic images requires being more sharp-eyed, cause most people can spot when something is wrong. I always try to observe the real life as much as I can and put special attention to those small details you can only spot when they aren´t present. I´m not an expert at hyper realistic render-ing though, so my only trick is researching when looking for realistic effect (as an example, I learnt a lot from MasterZap´s blog) cause even when I´m not that much into technical stuff, it’s great to know what the ren-der engine is doing every time you hit “Render”.

Q. Have you ever worked for any big film and what was your role?

Not yet unfortunately, but I hope to have the chance in the future though since I have big admira-tion and respect all the people behind that scenes.





Q. Please tell us in detail about your image 4Girls?

I was requested to generate a few renders for a shoe brand with some cartoony fashion-girls. Since I had a small schedule to complete the work and other freelance projects running at the same time, I kept things simple... avoiding to create anything that wasn´t going to be used. So, modeling is pretty simple. I modeled only one girl with no complex shapes or anatomy, but trying to get a nice silhouette and a charming face. I used no sketches since the client gave me complete freedom for the character.

The clothes were one of the main things I focused on. The client provided some internet references and from there I combined a few styles. I modeled folds directly into the mesh since it was only for a few still im-ages. Textures were taken from some pictures also and other ones just with color variations by hand. The materials are mostly Blinn and Phong shaders with several ramp nodes. After I generated several assets to work with, I started to combine them to create specific moods and attitudes for each girl, so each one could depict a different environment even without a background. For posing, I created a very simple skeleton and a small set of blend shapes for the face. Most of the weight painting after the binding was made on the fly as I was posing the girl. I always find too fun to work with female characters, you get more freedom posing and still getting a dynamic and nice aesthetic figure. I generated various poses taking special care of the silhouette, balance and curve flow. I wanted it to be something friendly, playful, charming and cute. Lighting consists of a couple of spotlights with raytraced soft shadows; which was complemented with a glowing plane to help with reflections. I rendered with mental ray using Final Gather with two secondary bounces. After the image delivery to the client, I de-cided to spend a little more time to create extra renders for portfolio pur-





poses, mostly because I had a couple of unfinished dresses that weren´t used. The final touch with this project was adding a pattern background to complement each girl. It was a fun project, with lots of coffee and energy drink. (Four girls for girls)

Q. Do you do any preliminary drawing about the character before starting the modeling? Which is your preferred method of modeling- Polygon, subdivision or Nurbs?

Regarding my personal work, I rarely use any image planes other than a messy sketch just to keep propor-tions since all volumes and details flow out of my head on the fly. In the case of freelance work it’s great to work with image planes because the client often has a clearer idea than me of what they want. I feel more comfortable working with polygons and SubDivs most of the time. NURBS curves and surfaces help me

for some tedious tasks though, (lofting, bi-rail, extrusions and tricks like stealing UV´s) but I always end up converting everything to polys.





Q. Do you have an aim or dream as an artist? What are your hobbies and how you manage to com-bine your personal life and work?

I always say 3D is my full time hobby, but I also like to watch movies, listen to music, reading, and spend as much time as I can with my friends, going out for a beer or coffee, it’s something I enjoy a lot since I usu-ally spend a lot of time inside the computer. Regarding my full time job and freelance activity, I have the big fortune to work with some of my best friends... so each day at the office or taking part in a group project is pure fun. In a short term, I would love to upgrade my rigging skills and taking some professional animation course. My dream as an artist has always be being able to leave a little part of me to the industry, I really don’t care that much about money or fame, just be able to take all the stuff that is going on inside my head, share my imagination with the people and gain a little space among the people I admire most.

Q. What is your source of inspiration and how do you keep yourself motivated when still after 2 years of recession artists are getting fired and studios are closing down?

I personally get inspired by several things; nature, mu-sic, science, friends, the everyday life, I must say I have a very hyperactive imagination even when I´m a very passive guy, so I always have something I want to cre-ate. Even with studios closing down and world taking other priorities I see a lot of talented CG artists doing great things, creating, and expressing their selves, I re-ally don’t know what is their source of motivation but I can say they are mine.

Q. For an upcoming artist can you give some word of inspiration and how they can improve their mod-eling?

I know it may sound obvious but practice is the one thing that helped me the most, I learnt a lot from the flaws also and I still take critique in a humble way cause there are thousands of guys better than me, this also keeps me inspired and motivated every time and of course, thinking things and life in 3D!




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

Just big thanks to the CGArena. I feel honored and it’s great being able to share a little piece of my life in these lines. Hope somebody can take a positive thing from this,( cause I did :) greetings from Mexico!

Thanks a lot Carlos for taking out sometime for us from your busy schedule

Web: www.zigrafus.com.mxEmail: [email protected]

TutorialCGArena

Making of Leaves of Greens


Software:

Photoshop

by Brooke Gillette, USA

2D


INTRODUCTION

While driving through a scenic road I was in love with all the different shades of greens of the forest nearby the road. It was spring after all and all I saw was “green”! I went home and decided to paint a fairy painting using many variations of greens for my color scheme.

BRUSHES

Aside from the default PS brush preset, I also used my own custom brushes. I called them “flat bristle” and “knife” because they simulate the look of the traditional tools that I use. I use these two throughout the whole process. I use the “knife” brush to add branches and twigs to my trees. I use the small sharp round edge for details and the soft round edge for blending. And the “bristle” I use for large brush strokes to block in large shapes.

STEP 1 - I always start my paintings with a sketch, either by pencil scanned into PS or digitally using the stylus and tablet. I used whichever I can grab at the moment. I never clean up my line work since I just painted over it. For this painting I sketched digitally, using a small sharp round brush, set on “pen pressure”.

I sketched the figure first, starting with “stick figure”, adding muscles, and finally drapery. After the figure sketch was finished I started to block in the trees in the background and few small details such as ivy leaves and drooping vines to develop the composition and also to remind me of what I wanted to add later on.

I used the “lasso” tool to select the general shape of the tree, fill the selection with dark brown. Using my “knife” brush I added branches and twigs. Then I made a new layer, set it on “Hard Light”. Using the bristle brush I shaded in the lighter brown to establish the light source on the tree. I also blocked in the dress to help me have a better idea of the form of the figure in the overall layout.

I used a guide to align fa-cial features, such as eyes,

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nose, and mouth. I made my guide lines red on a separate layer at 50% opacity. This guide is very important when I started painting the face in detail; it helps me keep the facial anatomy in check.

STEP 2 - After I was happy with the layout, I started to render. Generally I work “outside in”, rendering the background first and saving the facial details for last. I started on the big tree, adding some barks and moss.

Working at 100%, I redefined the facial features and gave some lighting direction to the figure. To keep the edges clean, I used the pen tool and saved my selec-tions as “left arm”, “right arm”, “torso”, etc. These saved selections are very useful for later stages when I started blending and adding shadow to the figure. To make se-lections from the pen tool, close your path, right click and choose “make selection”, then go to Select > Save Selection, name your selection and click “Save”.

STEP 3 - Here I started to add texture, such as moss, ivy, vines, and fallen leaves into the background.

For the moss, I created a hand-painted custom brush. Using the small sharp round edge brush, I painted in-dividual little dots and moss. The dots represented the small tiny daisies from afar. Once I am satisfied with the shape I select the moss go to Edit > Define Brush Preset. In Brush Dynamics, set the brush to scattering and pen pressure.

In this small example I added moss on a rock. Using my moss brush I painted the green moss on a sepa-rate layer. Create a Layer > Clipping mask for the active layer so that the moss fits cleanly on the rock. Set the Layer Style to Bevel and Emboss at a very slight depth, just enough to give the moss its own dimension on top of the rock. I used this same method for the moss on the tree.

I’ve also lengthened her hair, giving the character a more romantic look. I sketched in the dragonfly wings and a few hummingbirds to see if I’d like to add these elements. I decided not to go with these since they were used before in other paintings… I thought of leaves and thought that they would make a more interest-ing design for wings. The dragonfly design ended up on her dress :)

STEP 4 - Here I started on the bird feeder… taking a break from the ivy leaves! I used a ref photo that I took of the bird feeder from a garden. When using refs I use them for two things: lighting and structure. When sketching out the feeder I’ve sketch a line down the middle first; this is the axis of rotation for this object. Then I sketched the overall shape and added the flowers last. Once I’ve captured the basic form and lighting of the feeder, I started to design my own feeder… adding flowers, leaves, ornaments, etc. The key point was to study how the bird feeder looked realistically and also what components make up this feeder,

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so that next time I want to paint another feeder I could do it without reference.

STEP 5 - In this step I’ve added the log, and then the few small flowers on top of the log to add more character to the scene. I also blocked in the snails and rendered them according to the light source of the painting. I also spent a long time sharpening the ivy leaves, painted and cleaning up the edges stroke by stroke. The whole purpose of doing this is to avoid “cookie cutter” leaves that will make the painting look boring and static. Sounds simple, but it took days!!

STEP 6 - I started to render folds of the dress and added leafy wings. The design and colors for the wings were inspired by the young sprouting leaves that I took a picture of. I am never without my cheap Lumix camera. It doesn’t yield professional quality photos (and have been dropped many, many times!), but for what I do it does the job. Beauty is often found in unexpected places, and I don’t want to miss capturing it!! The folding of the leaves were one of those rare “happy accidents” that happened while I was blocking



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in the leaves.

For the dress, I used my own ref. Once again I only needed the structure and the lighting of the dress; I didn’t care that it were pink. I aimed to capture the main folds of the drapery to give my green dress a realistic look, not every fold visible in the photo. What I was looking for was “how does this fabric drape over the anatomy underneath?”

Once I’ve achieved realistic folds, I added my own design to the dress. I really enjoyed this part. I added dragonfly wing as part of the top, and overlapping that I added an ivy-like pattern that echoed the ivy on the tree. Some flowers and leaves are also added to the head-piece, with ivy leaves to unify the overall design.

STEP 7 - Once again I came back to the vines and leaves! I added small curly vines to give the vines more character and also achieve a more artistic look. I painted the berries to add variation of the shapes and some white flowers to give a focus among all those greens. Then I added the birds. I painted each of the birds on separate layers, moving them around until I was happy with where they were. One particular bird I wanted him to direct the eyes back into the painting (the one she is looking at), since the viewers will follow her eyes and look right out of the painting! But he was not enough; I later on added a flower to give more “weight” to this redirection of the eye-path.

STEP 8 - In this step I will show how I created a textured brush or “stamp” from a photo. I took my photo of fallen brown leaves into PS, desaturated it, and pumped up the contrast using the Levels sliders.

Remember that when making these “stamps”, the black shapes are the shape of the stamp. Because the leaves were light on a darker background, they looked white. If I selected this pattern I’ll end up the ground as

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texture, not the leaves. So I needed to in-vert this image to get the leaves as black shapes. Go to Image > Adjustments> In-vert. This will give a nice dark pattern that will be the leaves. I selected the portion that I wanted and “defined brush preset“. Here you can see the “stamp” in green.

STEP 9 - Adding more details!

I painted the thin webs on the separate layer. Being lazy I just duplicate the layer and added the web to other parts of the painting. I also painted glittering webs drooping from the flowers and on the lace of her green dress. I also finally rendered the foot!! It was too large and I had to re-size it. Then I added more spider webs on the ground where it touched her dress to show that she dragged and stretched the webs as she walked across the forest path.

The beads were then added to the lace. I painted “water drops” to the end of the beads, making them look dewy. I also added the swirly designs to the bottom of the dress on another layer. This layer was set in mode “Overlay”, I used a small round brush 5px to add details. I also used the fallen leaves stamp on the bot-tom of her dress as well to give it more texture.

Now I sprinkled “glitter” to the dress and ribbon as well by sim-ply use the small round edge brush and stippled in the spar-kles. Then I painted the ear-rings and the ivy necklace, just having fun adding more details at this point.


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Making of Leaves of GreensSTEP 10 - Finally I came back to her face. I modified and added more flowers and details to her head-piece. The hardest challenge about painting the face for me is not rendering her lashes, but keeping the eyes aligned with each other and other parts of the face. The guide (which I mentioned before) was really helpful; this way I can render her soft features and detail-ing away while keeping the facial anatomy correct. Flipping the im-age horizontally also helped to spot mistakes.

For final detailing of the artwork, I painted the finger nails and the wrinkling of the knuckles to achieve a more realistic look. Finally, I add-ed freckles by painting random brown dots on a separate layer that is set to “Overlay” at 25% opacity.

In the final image, after I’ve saved my painting as a new file (file 27 at this point), I flattened the whole im-age. I checked the consistency of the light source, making sure that everything was lit from left to right. For the ivy leaves on the tree, the light doesn’t spread uniformly among each leaf, but shone on the clump as a whole, with areas of lights and dark. To achieve this look I added a new overlay layer, added “light” to the ivy leaves in the middle of the tree, added some darks were the wings were casting a diffused shadow, and added light to the snails to direct the eyes to notice this detail.

For the very last step I flattened the image again, duplicate it, and set the duplicate layer on “Soft light” to sharpen the painting. But doing this would increase the saturation of my artwork, so I go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation and slide the Saturation slider to -60 (negative 60) to keep my colors consistent. I flattened the image for the last time and saved file. All done!

Thank you for reading this walk-through. I hope it gave you an insight of my work process and that you found it useful.

Website: http://shadowbrooke.yolasite.comEmail: [email protected]



TutorialCGArena



Software:

Lightwave, Modo, ZBrush

by Khalid Al Muharraqi, Kingdom of Bahrain

3D

INTRODUCTION

I was working on a project that requires me to recreate an environment from the middle east, this environ-ment will have animals from our outback like horses, camels dears etc. One of the animals that I enjoyed working on was the camel, and from there I have created several pieces just from that, like ‘Interested, ‘After the Rain’, and ‘Black’.

CONCEPT AND REFERENCES

I start every project with research, this allows me to understand more what I want to do, and make a plan on how to do it. After looking at many photos that related to the topic of camels, I wanted to have an adult and a baby, and to have the camera at a low angle. In this image, it seems like the adult is an older male, that was curious to approach the baby and the baby was overwhelmed with the size of the adult so... I called it ‘interested’.


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MODELING AND SCULPTING

I usually like to start with modeling, then test out the mesh in my sculpting application, this is a process that will take place between Lightwave, to Modo, then go to ZBrush.

I usually have my image references ready, in this case, I know how a camel looks by heart since I have seen them all my life.

I will start with a box then extrude geometry from it, this process will take a bit of time as I would want it to be usable for other purposes such as animation and posing, Once I complete my base mesh using Lightwave & Modo, then I will start sending it into ZBrush to create all the details for normal maps and displacements. It took me about three days to get it to where I was satisfied.

UV’S & TEXTURED

After I have completed all the models and sculpts, I would then start to think about how textures would go on my subject. Creating UV’s will help me in getting better results on the images with more control. I used to work hard on Lightwave to create UV maps, then things got really easy with Modo, then things totally changed-!! I used an amazing plug-in for ZBrush called UVmaster, it really took me about 10 minutes to get it right. Life is so easy these days!!

Now the UV’s are done, I can export all my normal Maps, displacement maps, and what I usually do, I link it to the object on Modo, then use Modo s sculpting tools to tweak it further, using Modo’s sculpting tool will help me to get even better control on the results.

Painting textures something that I like to start off on ZBrush, once I get the general look of my canvas, I


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Making of Interestedwould then send it over to modo and get all the textures right like I want it.

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Making of InterestedHAIR & FUR

For hair I used Fiber FX in Lightwave, hair design is not an easy process, it usually takes a lot to get it right. Here I had to create black and white maps in Modo, and then test it out on Lightwave to see how well it looks, the cool thing is that Modo uses Lightwave files like native files, so I play in Modo, save them, update it in Lightwave and see the results immediately on the hair!! For the colors I use the same image maps that are used for the skin.

RIGGI

For

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Making of InterestedRIGGING & POSING

I like the rigging process, the only thing is, it does take time to get things to move the way you want or the way it should, but in the end, I can get amazing results that can help me in posing the character in the right way that I want to give for the setup that I’ve created.

LIGHTING & RENDERING

Finally I light the camels in a scene using two dis-

tant lights and using Global Illumination from the colors of the sky, I just wanted to capture that moment in time.

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Making of InterestedPOST PRODUCTION

Well in post, I usually fix any tiny bugs on the model, add all the moody feeling like the lens flares, the overall colors.

Finally big thanks to CGArena and to all the readers, I hope that you enjoyed this basic and fast explanation on how I think.

Web: www.muharraqi-studios.comEmail: [email protected]

After the Rain

Black


TutorialCGArena


Software:

3ds Max, Photoshop

by Pedro Conti, Brazil

3D

REFERENCES AND CONCEPT ART

Here are some references and the amazing concept done by Lucas Leibholz. This is really important step of the work; you can find details that will define the quality of the final work.

MODELING I started using poly-by-poly modeling. Look-ing at many references of hippopotamus my main goal was to find the basic shapes and to define the edge loops. The most impor-tant of all is to pay attention to the camera and see how the shapes and silhouettes are working.

To fix the shapes, I also used the Paint De-form SHIFT TOOL (3ds Max 2010). It’s a powerful tool and really helpful in deforming the mesh.


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SCULPTING I had a lot of fun doing the sculpting. With Standard brushes and alphas, I was able to quickly detail the model.

For the Hair production I used a cone base mesh, than I used multiple FFD Boxes and bend modifiers to deform the mesh. The annoying stage is to set the position of the hair manually. This is the best to control and to give a natural aspect to the hairs. Here u can see the high-poly model with the hair.



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TEXTURING The UV map is quite easy. I imported the model into UV LAYOUT and sepa-rated the model in 3 parts: TOP, BOTTON and EARS.

I poly painted the mesh in 2 colors in ZBrush to determine the basic color map. This is the best and faster way to preview the map on the High-poly model. With this base I detailed the texture in Photoshop using brushes I reproduced the color variation of the hippopotamus skin. I also used normal maps and displacement maps to complete my texture. Selecting the green channel of NORMAL MAP in object space you can have a nice “ambient occlusion effect”. This is really helpful.


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I used a 7k texture because the final image needed a resolution 60 centimeters (300 DPI). The bump map is a mix of 4 maps. The composite shader is amazing for this, it works perfect like a Photoshop layer manager and you can have all control in the mix process.

LIGHTING I used mental ray with Final Gather to render and used 8 Lights to simulate an oven light. In some lights I turned on the “show icon on renderer” and used Inverse decay. This option allows the Area light visible on render and in this case acted as a light bulb effect. I also created a Self illuminated white plane (invisible to Final gather) to create a nice window reflection on the character. Final Gather in low preset and 1 diffuse bounce was perfect.

For the shaders I used Mental ray Arch&Design and SSS Skin + (mi). This is a modified version of default SSS Skin but contains the perfect A&D reflections and Ambient Oc-clusion.

You can download this shader from http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/search?q=sss , Thanks to MasterZap to share. I divided the render in 2 stages: Main render and Additional passes (additional reflection, falloff effect, furs, z-depth, etc). The main render (7K) was completed in 29 hours in a Quad Core, 4GB of Ram. This is really slowly but I was using the models (320.000 polys) and textures in high res.


http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/search?q=sss

http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/search?q=sss


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POST WORK In the Photoshop I had control of color and mood. It is much easier to control the entire composition using separated passes. I separated the parts (head, eyes, apple, hair & fur) in folders and I worked individually in each one. For the droplets, Adriano Zagottis took photography of sprayed water on a Gray ball, and it was applied by hand in Photoshop.

Well, this is a complete Bras-temp Hippopotamus making off. If you have something to say, anything at all, feels free to mail me.

CREDITS: 3D Artist: Pedro Conti

Composition: Pedro Conti and Adriano Zagottis

Art Direction: Rodrigo Bom-bana

DM9 DDB - TECHNO IMAGE Client: Brastemp


Blog: contipedro.blogspot.comEmail: [email protected]

http://contipedro.blogspot.com

Please consider the environment before printing this magazine. Save Paper. 100% Environment Respect.

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Making of Stewie


Software:

Maya, 3ds Max

by Dilip Suthar, India

3D“Hello to all the 3D artists . . . being a professional, amateur and learner . . . may be of a different age, dif-ferent experience of work, different taste or ambitions while working with such a fantastic world of 3D. I am absolutely glad and happy to share with you my experience of making a 3D model of a cartoon character named ‘Stewie’. It is my absolute pleasure to share my knowledge that I did learn while making this model up to the final output. Thank you so much.”

“Before making this model, I took a reference image of ‘Stewie’ from which I could at least imagine how he would look with my work. Here is the reference image of the character.”

MODELING

Model of Stewie in Maya - “All Right. So here we are. As we all know, any 3D artist can easily make a simple base model of a character in Maya with a proper understanding of loops and angles. The same basic rules have been used by me here to make a simple mesh model of ‘Stewie’. It’s been really so flexible for me to make it as I did go step by step method while going ahead. You can see it in the step by step images of the model in process.”

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Making of Stewie



TEXTURING

“General unwrapping of UVWs is needed for any organic kind of a model. So with the unwrapping tech-niques, I opened its UVWs by usual methodology. I guess there is no need to say ‘How I made it’ isn’t it? . . .lolz.”

“To give a proper feel of clothes, here I have used some textures which helped a lot to make it feel like

Then I made it spherical accord-ing to the shape of the model

Complete Mesh Model Oral Details

I took a Box and gave it smooth A bit details

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Making of Stewie



Here the texture is going to be used for Stewie’s pants.

Red Overlay Shadows n shallows to make a definition

Some highlights to make a feel of a real clothing

A bit detail (just simple tiling) more accuracy

a real cloth.

“Here, by this image you’ll understand the difference between ‘Now and Then’.”

Page 46

A simple Vray shaders making settings for Stewie’s T-Shirt and pants.

Just a bit imagination, some software settings and a correct thought process of ‘colors’ and you’ll get the best results from yourself. OK, now we go ahead.

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Making of Stewie



RENDERING

This is a part where the ‘ambience’ comes into the scene. Without ambience, anybody won’t understand the imagination of an artist without any explanation by anybody. So here, to make a ‘Cute Ambience’, I have used the ‘Global Ambience Maker’ i.e. ‘Vray Plugin’. It really helped me to do justice with my model and made it a presentable one. Just check the Vray Properties that I used here while rendering my Stewie with some basic spot light.

This is what I got.

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Making of Stewie



SKIN TEXTURE

Though the whole scene is rendered in Vray renderer, there was an excep-tion i.e. ‘Skin Rendering’. Because, for skin I have used a ‘SSS’ shader in Mental Ray and then I composed it in Photoshop to show it more realistic.

Here are the SSS settings.

I also rendered Diffuse Filter for my post work

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Making of Stewie



LIGHTING

Lighting this scene was not a big deal. Because I haven’t used much complicated light settings for this scene. The main reason behind lights for this scene is to make my Stewie look better. That’s it. Because there is no Hardcore background or anything fantasizing stuff except the organic model. So I did use 3 lights.

Those are1 Key Light (intensity 0.5)1 Fill Light (intensity 0.3) and1 Back Light (intensity 0.5)

You can see it in this following image showing the Light Placement in the scene.

POST - PRODUCTION

So we finally came to our last stage of ‘Mission Stewie’. Basically I love post production because I love mak-ing my models more and more realistic and comprehensively detailed one. For that, all I needed to have is a true imagination of Stewie in my own mind to do its post production. And after that it was DONE.

So Ladies and Gentlemen, after 16 hrs of work on my ‘Mission Stewie’, on next page you can see the Final Render Output of this character. I hope you liked it. That’s all folks!!! Thank you so much. Keep doing the good work in 3D. Njoy!!!!!.

Portfolio: dilipcan.cgarena.comEmail: [email protected]

http://dilipcan.cgarena.com

http://www.cgarena.com/ccount/click.php?id=274


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Software:

Photoshop

by Alexander Skachkov, Bulgaria

2D

Hi, my name is Alexander Skachkov. I will try to explain the steps that lead to the creation of “I’m the godfa-ther”, which I made using Photoshop CS5 and Wacom Intuos 4 tablet. The brushes which I used are:

STEP 1: SKETCH - I started with the sketch directly in Photoshop CS5, mainly to test the new brushes included in the software. The idea was just to draw some character. I decided that the rabbit will be the boss of the forest – the Godfather.

Making of I’m theGodfather

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STEP 2: DIRECTION OF THE LIGHT AND POSITIONING THE LIGHT SOURCE

In this stage I defined the direction of the light and the placing of the light source. I continued with lay-ing the cast shadows and the drop shadows. Then I put some more elements in the surrounding area and more texture which I achieved using rough Round Bristle Brush.

STEP 3: TEXTURING

I continued with texturing the cortex, the clothes and the fur of the rabbit and I was using mainly standard brushes, but I made few custom ones which were also used, after this I added few more details. I spent more time working on the lights and the dark spots in order to give depth and vol-ume to the painting. For darkening I mainly used

dark tone in layer of Color Mode Multiply, situated above the main one. For the light places – layer of Layer Mode Screen or Overlay and I draw with a bright tone.


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STEP 4: ENVIRONMENT I started with dividing the different grounds of the painting (foreground, mid-ground and background). Simple brush with hard edges, Hard Mechanical Brush with turned on Opacity Jitter – Pen Pressure, I started painting grass in the foreground. For the mid and background I used besides the pre-vious brush also Round Point Low Bristle. While the whole process I flipped the paint-ing often – this help finding mistakes and in-correct spots, which in the previous position could not be found.

STEP 5: COLORING

I started coloring in a new layer in Layer Mode Color, situated above all. Hard Me-chanical Brush with soft edges, Opacity Jit-ter – Pen Pressure, Opacity 10-20% were the things which I was using. Al-ways do your work in different lay-ers, so you can change anything anytime without wasting the time and work already did.

STEP 6: FINALIZING

I formatted the painting in propor-tions, which were looking in the best way when the unnecessary parts were removed by me. With New Adjustment Layer – Hue & Saturation I managed to increase the saturation of the whole paint-ing. In the layer above it I started painting plants, grass, additional elements, tones on the clothes and the fur of the rabbit, texture on the cortex of the stalk of the mushroom and on its hat, also


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put some more work in the background. With the help of a layer in mode Overlay I added more expression on the paint-ing achieving that while working more on shadows and lights.

Hope you have learned something from the explanation giv-en, if you have any doubts or questions then don’t hesitate to email me.

Web: www.skachkov.euEmail: [email protected]

Have you created yourCG Portfol io?

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Antonio Peres Filho, [email protected] Max, Photoshop

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mahmmoud SALAH ali, [email protected] Max, ZBrush

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Emre Dagtekin, [email protected] Max, Final Render

Dani Garcia Fornés, Spain [email protected] Max, ZBrush

Brunet Nicolas, [email protected] Max, Mental Ray

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Cgarena aug-sep 2010 ezine

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