3d art & design tips, tricks & fixes vol 1 - 2014 uk.pdf

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Unlock the full potential of 3D design

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Volume 1

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Master the latest software

Expert tipsto improve

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OF MODELSTEXTURESAND MORE

Welcome to

The world of 3D art and design has always been an exciting one, but it continues to reach new heights year after year. Whether youre an animator, roto artist, video game artist or VFX creator, advancements in the standard and availability of design technology have made the industry

more vibrant and accessible than ever before. Films like Gravity have set the benchmark for great visual design, and games like Grand Theft Auto V and Destiny have proven that aesthetics are as

important on consoles as they are on the big screen. With this in mind, weve created a book that caters to your every need, featuring the most popular industry-standard software. Youll learn everything from modelling, to rigging, to compositing, as we walk you through ideas from conception to conclusion. Industry experts provide invaluable advice on Maya, Blender, 3ds Max, ZBrush and more to bring your projects to life. Whether its creating game characters, animating movements, mastering arch-vis or rendering artwork, 3D

Art & Design Tips, Tricks & Fixes has fantastic step-by-step tutorials to suit your needs. On FileSilo, youll find free arch-vis models, sci-fi textures, artists galleries, video masterclasses and all the

accompanying files to the tutorials in the book. Read on, and enjoy!

3D Art & Design

bookazine series

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3D Art & Design

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3D Art & Design Tips, Tricks & Fixes Volume 1 Revised Edition 2014 Imagine Publishing Ltd

ISBN 978 1910 439 487

6 3D Art & Design Tips, Tricks & Fixes

10

76

38

78 50 top Blender VFX tricks86 Fracture with Blender88 Create fur in ZBrush96 How to animate a jump 100 Animate action moves 104 Perfect UVs in UVLayout106 Create an interactive character in Unity 110 Master 3D cloth effects

Tricks

10 50 tips & tricks in Maya18 Model an exterior environment in Maya22 Texture an exterior environment in Maya 28 Bring an exterior environment to life32 Master ZBrush: model for games38 Create 3D game assets46 Perfect your anatomy skills50 Sculpt the skeletal torso54 Sculpt limbs in ZBrush58 Sculpt the legs and feet62 Create realistic ZBrush sculpts68 Design a creature in modo70 Build fantasy vehicles in 3ds Max

Tips

Master the art of composing great 3D projects from some

of the most highly-rated artists in the industry

3D Art & Design Tips, Tricks & Fixes 7

70

68

120

100

120 50 hot topology fixes 128 Improve your characters 136 Blow bubbles using V-Ray Metaballs 138 Render glass objects146 Clean up 3D models150 Understand hard-surface retopology 152 Retopologise in Mudbox 156 Paint in Sculptris

Fixes

TipsGet to grips with a variety of creative software, and master everything from conception and modelling to rigging and compositing


70

46 38

10 50 tips & tricks in Maya18 Model an exterior environment in Maya22 Texture an exterior environment in Maya28 Bring an exterior environment to life32 Master ZBrush: model for games38 Create 3D game assets46 Perfect your anatomy skills50 Sculpt the skeletal torso54 Sculpt limbs in ZBrush58 Sculpt the legs and feet62 Create realistic ZBrush sculpts68 Design a creature in modo70 Build fantasy vehicles in 3ds Max

Combine a range of 3D software to create a game-resolution asset,

then apply it to a fully rigged videogame character


10

28

62

MayaZBrushPhotoshop3ds MaxmodoV-Ray

18


Industry experts share their Autodesk Maya tips, tricks and techniques, helping you master every aspect of this versatile software, from modelling and rigging to scripting and dynamics

50MAYATIPS & TRICKS

IN

Its quite surprising to learn that a lead character artist, senior cinematics animator, freelance rigger and senior software engineer all make use of the same piece of 3D software.

Autodesk Maya is one of the most powerful and highly customisable programs available today. Its the Swiss Army knife of CG software, the tool able to fully produce a polished lm or animation without ever leaving the program. At the same time its user-friendly enough to be grasped by beginners. Mayas versatility means it has been used in many diff erent facets of the industry, creating animations, VFX in lm and TV and even games. Titles include Halo 4, The Girl with the

Dragon Tattoo, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Thief, Game of Thrones and much more.

Thats why weve brought together a hand-picked selection of successful industry experts to reveal the tips they have used for the best results with Maya, from modelling and animation to scripting, rigging and dynamics. Youre guaranteed to learn something new!

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Dan Roarty

I was introduced to Maya in my rst

year of college at CDIS (now the Art

Institute) in Vancouver over ten

years ago. I was blown away with the endless tools

and features it had to offer

Oriental Delicacy By Dawid Cencora

Tips

12

Tips Tricks Fixes

Our contributors reveal how they got started with Maya Im self-taught. I learned Alias PowerAnimator in 1994 while interning at Buena Vista Visual Eff ects at Walt Disney. PowerAnimator was the precursor of Maya and shared many similarities. I learned Maya by using an early beta copy while off -the-clock at PDI/DreamWorks in 2000. Lee LanierIn 1982, I was one of the original engineers at Alias Research, the creator of Maya. My task was to prototype a new artist workstation, the Alias Power Animator. I started using Maya in production at Industrial Light and Magic in 2001. Will AnielewiczMy rst introduction to Maya was when I was still a student. I learned a bit of both Maya and 3ds Max, but only some basic manipulation with no greater depth. I worked mostly with traditional media during my student and professional life, but I found many limitations. The eff ects that I want to achieve are so much easier to accomplish with CG and Maya is such a ne tool for helping me meet my expectations. This is when I shifted my focus to Maya. Lifeng Xu

01Study anatomy carefully. Learning about the bones and muscles that aff ect the surface forms will help to sell the idea that your characters have an internal structure. This will inform your decisions as you create the topology. Jahirul Amin

02The adjustment of overall shape and structure is very important in the coarse modelling stage. Getting the muscle anatomy correct at this stage is key for later rigging and painting skin weight. Lifeng Xu

04You might notice that when you import very dense geometry your scene will slightly lag due to all the geometry currently shown in the viewport. If you want to speed up your viewport turn on Backface Culling in your Shading options. This will eliminate the drawing of backfaces in your scene and greatly improve the overall speed of your viewport. Dan Roarty

05Use the Text tool to create some curves and interesting shapes. Place these curves in front of simple NURBS primitives and project them on one or more NURBS primitives from various angles. Use these curves as trim edges to make holes or duplicate the surface curves and lift new surfaces between the curves. Eric Keller

06Leave the camera at a standard focal length (35) or Orthographic view. Try to use perspective cameras with an appropriate focal length. By modelling in Orthographic view you lose the perspective present in a photo. Dan Roarty

07Design complicated models by cutting them into smaller parts. My aim is always to minimise the poly count and

MODELLING maximise the details. Also, its good to keep that in mind that Boolean tools can sometimes help create complex models much more easily. Turushan Turna

08A creative way to model a repetitive shape along a path is by using the Animation Snapshot command from the Animate menu. By animating a piece of geometry travelling along a motion path, the Animate Snapshot function will create a duplicate copy of your model every other frame. This can be a great way to create chains, or street lights along your city street network. Jonathan Berube

09A quick way to get a base mesh is by using the Texture to Geometry tool. Create a plane with the same aspect ratio as your projected image, assign the texture to the plane, select your plane geometry and go to Modify>Convert> Texture to Geometry. Browse your input image and then apply. Jonathan Berube

10Prepare for deformation, because good deformation is completely reliant on a model with excellent topology. Pass the model to the riggers at diff erent stages of the development to enable them to test it for deformation. If there are any issues, you can make the changes early on as opposed to on a nal model. If it wont be deformed, then you have more room to manoeuvre regarding the topology. Jahirul Amin

11The Create Polygon feature is great for retopologising a mesh inside Maya. I do this by importing the high-resolution mesh then making it live by selecting the magnet icon. From here I use the Create Polygon tool and draw over the top of the high-res mesh to create my new low-res version. Dan Roarty

12Its relatively easy to bring a Photoshop shape or line as geometry in Maya. Make a selection from your painted shape and create a working path from it. Export the path as an Adobe Illustrator curve (AI curve), then import it into Maya and start creating with it. Use the path as a base for extrusions or as a Snap Align guide for existing geometry. This is a great method for modelling 3D logos or accurate meshes. Jonathan Berube

03Use quads as much as possible. You may have to use the odd triangle, but stay away from Ngons. Quads subdivide predictably, are easier to envelope when skinning and give better results during the UV/texturing process. Taking a model from a 3D package, such as Maya, to a sculpting package, such as ZBrush, will also be a doddle if youve stuck to quads. Jahirul Amin

Modelled in Maya, Happy Birthday Nana, is an award-winning image from Dan Roartys portfolio

Terra Incognita by Turushan Turna.This project was actually a simple scene that I began to create in order to explore mylighting knowledge with Autodesk Maya. Afterwards, it turned into a classroom for learningthe amazing world of MayasCloth andCraft Animation tools, says Turna

Tips TricksFixes


13Understanding the functions of your bodys limbs and protrusions will help to inform your decision-making during the rigging process. What type of joint is the elbow? How does the shoulder work? How many degrees of freedom does the wrist allow? By answering these questions and more, we can consider where we should place our bones and how our digital characters should articulate. Jahirul Amin

15Before you even touch the computer, nd out what the rig needs to do and how the animator likes to work. Does the character need to run, jump over a fence and then pull off a tornado-kick? Or does he simply sit behind a desk and pick his nose? If its the latter, then there will be no need to rig the legs as you wont see them, for example. Jahirul Amin

16Strive for effi ciency. This concept is important when designing control objects. An example of this could be seen on a foot control. If you add foot-rolling

14Stay organised. There really is nothing worse than struggling to search for nodes that are diffi cult to nd because of poor naming conventions. Remember: take the time to rename your nodes. Itll save you a lot of time in the long run. Delanos Athias

RIGGING capabilities, it might be a good idea to create a footroll channel on your foot control, instead of creating another object to control that feature. From an animators point of view, being able to tweak the animation of a characters leg and foot roll all from one object means we dont have to spend the time selecting between two or more controls for the same outcome. Delanos Athias

17Automate what you can, but be very careful with this, because we dont want to automate so much that we start to take control away from the animator. For instance, if were rigging an aircraft that will eventually y through an environment, we wouldnt want animators to have to animate the vehicles turbines when this can be handled easily with an expression. On the same note, we wouldnt want to tie the vehicles banking control to its side-to-side translation. That type of automation would be very restrictive. Delanos Athias

18Look for ways to add controls that will help animators loosen up their characters. This can be done several ways, one of which would include setting up pliable limbs that can be animated to enhance arcs,

follow-throughs and push silhouettes for staging. These are key animation principles that are, ultimately, used to make character performances more appealing. Itd be safe to say that the more exible our rigs are, the higher the chances an animator has of enhancing the quality of a characters movements. Delanos Athias

20By understanding anatomy, we can see what anatomical structures we need to replicate faithfully and which will enable some rigging license. The spine, for example, has 24 bones. Do we need that many bones in the spine for our characters? No. But we do need to know how it articulates so we can mimic the movement that it creates. Jahirul Amin

21Keep joints and controls clean. All rigs should be able to revert back to the default pose by zeroing out the Translate and Rotate values of the joints or the controls. Ive seen occasions where this is not the case and you can imagine the animators fury. Rigging shouldnt be rushed, because good animation wont come from a bad rig. Just as modelling aff ects deformation, rigging aff ects animation. Jahirul Amin

19Keep it simple. Its easy for new technical artists to assume that all control rigs must be highly sophisticated, however this mentality can cause rigs to end up over-saturated with controls, making the puppet very cumbersome to work with. Delanos Athias

Digital-Tutors

Maya has been Digital-Tutors most-watched training, with

courses starting over 13 years ago

In his capacity as VFX art director at Blizzard Cinematics, Jonathan Berube

uses Maya to work on sequences for videogames such as StarCraft II

Standardising Rigs in Maya by Digital-Tutors

22Commands or selection sets for your character that are often repeated can be saved on custom shelves by simply middle-mouse-dragging the scripts from the Script Editor onto your shelf. Kishore Vijay

23The Graph Editor is your friend. Yes, it may look scary at rst. Yes, your animation curves may look like a bad bowl of spaghetti here and there, but learning to take charge of the Graph Editor will pay dividends later on. It enables you to make broad changes, create uid arcs and tidy up any troublesome issues. Jahirul Amin

24When gathering reference, dont just look at other animation references but open your eyes to the real world. Go out, grab a pen, a pad, a camera and anything that you can use to document movement rst-hand. By solely looking at animation reference from books or online, you are relying on someone elses interpretation of what they saw. Jahirul Amin

25Use a polygon edge as an easy way to attach an object to a surface as it moves. Select an edge on a polygon surface and choose Modify>Convert Polygon Edges to Curve. Add a locator and attach it to the curve via a motion path with the Time Range set to Start. Use a point or parent constraint to attach an object to the locator. To make the object move along the curve, animate the U value of the motion path. As long as the history connection between the duplicated edge and the original polygon surface remains, the attached object will be stuck to the polygon surface. Eric Keller

26Customise with plug-ins, scripts and shelves. The most useful thing to realize is that Maya is exible and has tons of

ANIMATION priceless tools available online courtesy of its massive user base. You can easily look for planning tools, in-between tools, pose libraries, channel and curve lters, or constraining tools. The Grease Pencil was one such plug-in that is now available with Maya 2014. Kishore Vijay

27Groups are your friends. Grouping an object before constraining the group allows you to still off set the object while its constrained. Constrain the characters hand to the prop, animate the prop and switch to constraints or between IK and FK in one frame during a fast move, so its easier to avoid pops. Kishore Vijay

28You dont need to gure out how to send the next astronaut to Mars but by having a knowledge of physics and biomechanics, you can utilise the wisdom of geniuses such as Newton and Borelli. How does gravity aff ect an apple falling and therefore how many frames would it take to hit the ground? Where is the centre of gravity on that hammer I just threw across the room and how does this aff ect its rotation in the air? Jahirul Amin

29Set up your workspace effi ciently. Dual Monitors greatly increase your speed. You can tear off a panel and have a oating viewport in your second monitor. Simply go to Panels>Tear Off or Tear Off Copy. You can also set up hotkeys for most used functions: Windows>Setup/Preferences>Hotkey Editor. Kishore Vijay

30A quick way to copy a posefrom anywhere in the timeline is to middle-mouse-drag from the selected frame and set a key at a new frame. To scrub through your animation, hit K and drag anywhere in your window. You can also change your preferences to increase the height of the time slider and increase the Key Tick Size (Window>Settings/Preferences> Preferences>Time Slider). Kishore Vijay

31When animating, you should be acting out the movement and feeling that emotional beat of the character. You cant do that by looking at the screen all day, so stand up and perform the action. Understand where your body weight is, whats leading and whats following. Are your acting choices clear or could they be stronger? Is your timing working? Questions like these should all be answered before hitting the computer. The last thing you want is to realise 20 hours in that your animation is not working. Jahirul Amin

1 In general, I block in most shots and start working in pose-to-pose. I then begin working straight ahead through certain actions. For short shots, ballistic actions or animation cycles, as well as for most lip sync work, I prefer to work in a layered fashion. For example, for a dialogue scene that needs many levels of lead and director approval, I would do very detailed blocking in Step mode for all the body animation, maybe blocking in key face poses. I would also animate the face in a layered fashion, treating the upper face animation as a separate layer from the lip sync. I then break up the lip sync into the jaw-up and jaw-down movements, as well as the in and out motions of the lip corners. First I lock down the timing and then begin layering in the mouth shapes and more detail.

2 When blocking in Step mode, make a selection set or a shelf button that selects all of your character controls and set a key on each pose. This is useful when you need to be able to make rapid changes depending on feedback. It also helps to set up a hotkey to switch between Linear and Step modes as you block, to check for gimbal issues with rotations, especially in the wrists or FK arms. Navigating to Graph Editor>Curves>Euler Filter is a quick x for Gimbal ips, as is changing the rotation order.3 Use 2D Pan/Zoom to focus on areas that you want to polish without changing the perspective of your shotcam.4 Add a reference movie, storyboard or 2D blocking of your scene to the imageplane of your shotcam or a secondary camera for quick reference during animation.

Kishore Vijays animation work ow guide for pose-to-pose and straight ahead blocking, as well as layering methods

Matthieu Garnier combined Maya with

Photoshop and rendered in V-Ray to

achieve this atmospheric result

Jahirul Amin suggests performing the actions being animated yourself. This

way you can better understand the mechanics of the movement


33When lighting, work with one light at a time, creating, placing and adjusting the key light before adding a second ll light. Adjust this before adding a third rim light. This method is more effi cient than adding a whole bunch of lights at once and trying to simultaneously adjust them all. Lee Lanier

34Create a new render layer, turn off all the lights, then make a volume light with the following settings: Emit Diff use and Specular: Off , Volume Light Dir: Outward, Emit Ambient: On, Shadows: off . Select your objects and apply a Lambert shader with the Diff use Color set to 100% white. Position the volume light to surround your main subject, then render an image sequence. Import the images into your compositing program and use this as the source for ZDepth in your defocus eff ects. Eric Keller

SHADING, LIGHTING & RENDERING

Eric Keller on his volume light methodUsing the volume light method for creating a custom Depth pass opens up a lot of creative potential when you import the pass into your compositing program.

For example, you can set the blend mode of the layer to Overlay, place it above your beauty pass and then lower the opacity. This adds depth to the scene by brightening your area of focus and darkening the surrounding area. This can be the subtle touch that makes the image pop.

If you animate the camera in Maya, try constraining the volume light to the Aim Locator of the camera so that you can precisely control the illuminated area. This helps especially for creating complex rack focus techniques when you use the depth pass as a way to generate DOF blurring. You can even have more than one volume light as a way to create multiple areas of focus. Be aware that if any objects in your beauty pass have Displacement maps applied, youll need to apply those maps to the Lambert shaders on the same surfaces in your custom render layer or the edges of the surface will not match in the composite.

32Its not mandatory that all lights cast shadows. In many cases, you can activate shadows for the key light (the scenes main light, which is often the strongest) while leaving shadows off for ll lights (weaker secondary lights). Activate shadows incrementally and test render at each step. Multiple overlapping shadows often appear unaesthetic. Lee Lanier

Little Dead Girl By Lee Lanier

35When modelling a head, its very important to see how the forms, wrinkles and overall structure of the face will read under diff erent lighting conditions and angles. When Ive created a head Ill bring a version of it into Maya and test it under diff erent lighting conditions in the viewport. You can do this by creating a basic directional light, turning on Shadows and viewing it in Viewport 2.0. Its quicker than rendering and also interactive, so you are able to see how it reads while moving and rotating the light. Dan Roarty

36Use the Color Gain and Color Off set attributes found in a textures Color Balance section. You can tint, darken, or lighten a texture by changing the Color Gain or Color Off set. You can then layer two textures by mapping the Color Gain of one texture with a second texture. Lee Lanier

Tips TricksFixes


40Automatically organise your rendered images by using the Keyword feature in the le name pre x eld of the Common tab of the Render Settings. Artists often render many versions of a project and later have a diffi cult time guring out which Maya scene le created a render. Will Anielewicz

41Mental rays Final Gather is a great global illumination (GI) optimisation feature for secondary diff use light. But there are two major rendering artefacts that often occur: Final Gather icker and splotchy gradations in soft lighting. I use a simple but counterintuitive approach with the Final Gather Point Interpolation settings. I set the default value to between 100 and 300, depending on the extent of the artefacts, to blur the GI results. Will Anielewicz

37To determine bitmap texture resolution, consider the render resolution and Texture Screen Size. If youre rendering HD 1,080, yet the texture is on an object that takes up a 100 x 100 section, you can get away with a 256 x 256 texture. If the object lls the screen, youll need a texture thats at least 2,048 x 2,048. Lee Lanier

38Maya supports super-white values, values over 1.0 on a 0 to 1.0 scale. You can set any colour swatch that you want to a super-white value by switching to HSV and manually entering the V value. If you render a Floating-Point format, such as OpenEXR with a 16- or 32-bit mental ray frame buff er, super-white values will be stored in the rendered image, so keep this in mind while working on your colour swatch. Lee Lanier

Porsche 918 Spyder By Will Anielewicz

39Use the Caustic Visualizer for real-time raytracing. This Maya plug-in will dramatically speed up the lighting and rendering production work ow. The software provides a true viewport preview of your Hypershade network, plus batch rendering as well. Details about the plug-in can be found here: www.caustic.com/visualizer/maya Will Anielewicz

SHADING, LIGHTING & RENDERING

Tips Tricks Fixes

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Tips

42De nitely learn Python over MEL. Only learn MEL if some aspect of the Maya-to-Python interaction isnt fully implemented. Chad Vernon

43Never hard-code anything that ties your tools to a speci c pipeline or work ow. Dont hard-code naming or le path assumptions. These should all be accessible and easy to change. Chad Vernon

44Some MEL codes might save you a lot of time. For example,if you want to select all faces within a UV shell without opening the UV Editor, use this: polySelectBorder Shell 0; Turushan Turna

45Look at other Python-based libraries and resources besides ones tied to Maya (such as Django and Stack Over ow) for examples on good Python design and implementation. Chad Vernon

46Always separate user interface interaction from actual tool logic. Tools should always be able to work without the interface. Chad Vernon

47Build creative uid techniques using paint eff ects. Select your surface and make it Paintable. Apply to the surface using the Pebbles brushstroke found in the Fun folder of the Visor. Convert the pebbles into polygons, then select the converted strokes and turn off Primary Visibility on the Render Stats. Create a Fluid Container and add the polygon pebbles as a Surface Emitter. Adjust

SCRIPTING & DYNAMICSthe uid settings to create plumes of smoke or re from each polygon pebble. Try animating settings for the pebble brush to create an animated emitter. Eric Keller

48Dont repeat yourself. Logic, equations, design and architecture should each have just one place of origin. Duplication makes code even harder to maintain. Chad Vernon

49nCloth can provide extremely realistic folds and form for your fabrics. Create the geometry of the tent or drapery as if it were lying at on a table. Select the objects which are supposed to collide with it and apply the Create Passive Collider command to them. Select your fabric mesh or tent, place above the collider object, apply the nMesh command, create nCloth and press Play to initiate the simulation. Duplicate the simulated mesh and enjoy a realistic folding pattern. Jonathan Berube

50Make particles chase an object along a motion path. Attach a polygon object to a motion path. Convert the object into a passive collider using nDynamics. In the nRigid Attribute Editor turn on Force Fields. Set the Force Field Strength to a negative value so that it attracts objects. Add the nParticle object and adjust the force eld distance in the nRigid settings. This method provides signi cantly more intuitive and powerful controls. Eric Keller

Global tips for everyoneGo full-screen! Sometimes working off your laptop might be a necessity. Maya has a pretty busy interface to begin with, which might make your laptop work ow diffi cult. Hitting Opt/Alt+Spacebar will hide all the window tabs away, just like how Tab hides all the tabs in Photoshop. Jonathan BerubeTo excel in any of these disciplines, you need to do one crucial thing: practise. By practise, I do not mean spend ten minutes here and there or two hours, one day a week. I mean two to three plus hours a day. There may be the odd person where everything just slots into place and makes sense, but for the average person practise makes perfect. When you get to that stage where you think everything is perfect, keep striving to learn more and better yourself as well as those around you. Jahirul AminPreparatory work is very important. It is a key component for my work. During the observation stage, I focus not only on the eff ects of aging on human anatomy, I also try to see an inner expression, as well as how this is expressed over their facial emotions. Lifeng XuBefore starting work, gather as much reference as possible and talk everything over with your supervisor. Name every new object and shader. Its important to keep order on the scene so you dont get confused when there are many objects. Naming them correctly will be helpful for anyone who takes over the scene later on.Dawid Cencora

Lifeng Xu

I love the career path that Ive chosen. I enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes with creating work that I love

Chad Vernon created facial and deformation tools as a creature TD. He has a B.A.S in Animation and VFX from Expression College for Digital Arts

Cyber Girl by freelance artist Dawid Cencora. If youre working on a

model which is going to be animated you might want to make a basic rig on

base-mesh level to check if your model will move correctly, he says


This will be the rst in a three-part series, rst taking you through modelling, then texturing and shading, before nally lighting, rendering and adding life to an exterior environment. In this rst part well look at how to model a stylised olde-worlde village that has been inspired in particular by places such as Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a town in southern Germany.

However, as Rothenburg isnt exactly around the corner, I took a few visits to my local answer to Bavarias nest. I spent some time taking pictures in places such as Portchester Castle, the village of Wickham and the amazing Weald and Downland

Museum in West Sussex. Being in these environments really helped me to get a feel for the kind of look I was after, as well as providing me with a mental library of ideas and images.

Accompanying this tutorial youll nd the concept art I created afterwards. This is a loose colour sketch of the nal intended look that well hopefully reach by the end of the series. As youll gather when you see it, Im looking to give the piece a fun kind of feel. I dont want the lines to be too neat or uniform and there are some big, bold colours to come. What Im aiming to achieve is for you to be able to see this village as home to a range of inhabitants: a

grumpy old man running the tavern on the left; a loud, coarse woman selling her wares two doors down; and a bloated lawyer with his dusty practice across the street. By the end of the nal part, Im aiming to have created a kind of moving illustration, an environment rich in latent life.

Before embarking on a project of this nature, its very wise to keep the destination of your work at the forefront of your mind. Will it be for game, lm or illustration? If your work is going to be for a game, then a low poly count is imperative and youllhave to achieve detail through bump or texture maps, rather than through the modelling process. If its destined for lm, the restraints on the poly count wont be as severe. However, its likely youll be required to achieve a photoreal end product, which will bring projection-mapping techniques

With polygons as your bricks and mortar, learn to use edge loops, lattice deformers and bevelling to create an exterior environment with character

Model an exterior environment in Maya

The nal environment once modelled and arranged in MayaMaya

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Tutorial les: +.!*(-%,3.6#1,'.42#,'.42#,'.42#,'.42#,..1, 4-3(-%,!13-"11#+,2(%-,-+,

into play. As mentioned, Im looking to create an illustration, so Ive got a lot of freedom regarding poly count. My approach will therefore be to model as much as possible rather than relying too heavily on Bump or texture maps. Having the objects physically there makes them interact with light so much more successfully.

To create an overall feel of a living and breathing space, its going to be important to avoid too much uniformity. Time takes its toll on buildings, as it does on faces, and on no two houses in quite the same way. So, to maintain believability, well be looking to inject unique personalities into those houses as we would to characters. Having said that, it would be suicide to redo topology for all assets, so well be creating some hero assets for bricks, tiles and even whole houses. These can then be reworked, manipulated and lent some idiosyncrasies.

As far as technique goes, Ill be doing mainly box-modelling, working from a simple cube, then creating extrusions and adding edge loops where required. To speed up the process, as well as to add variation, well be using many tools from the animation tool set such aslattice deformers and non-linear deformers.

Because our environment wont need to deform, we can aff ord to be a little less strict regarding topology (only a little, remember). However, Ill still be sticking to quads for two reasons. First, the models can more easily be taken into other packages such as ZBrush later on, if desired. Second, quads can be subdivided very easily in order to add extra detail.

Well be doing a lot of hard-surface modelling in this exercise, so take a look around at your own environment as you work to see how light interacts with objects. Your monitor, your phone, your shelves most objects will have slightly bevelled edges that pick up light in certain ways. Ensure that you bring this particular reality into your work to add depth and a sense of even more believability.

Well be building the scene loosely at rst using simple shapes and cubes to get an idea of the entire scene. Set up your camera angle, take each building one by one into a clear scene and push each one further than the last. Once youre happy with a reworked building, bring it back to the main scene and replace the dummy geometry. As you work,try to stick as close as possible to the reference youre using. Its very easy to nd yourself muddled or unfocusedif you lose sight of your destination.

One of our last steps will be to add some foliage to the scene in order to bring more character to the wood and masonry and to increase believability. To do this well be using Mayas Paint Eff ects. This much-derided bit of kit is actually pretty useful for what we have in mind here. It enables you to build anything from grass to cosmic dust using paint strokes. Also, the fantastic Ivy Generator by Thomas Luft (download from http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/~luft/ivy_generator) will enable you to get some nice eff ects very effi ciently.

Rome wasnt built in a day

01Import concept art and block out forms In the Viewport panel, go to Panels>Perspective>New. Now go View>Image Plane>Import Image and load the supportingImage1.tif image. Under Attributes for the imagePlane1, check Looking Through Camera and Attached to Camera. Next, go to Panels>Tear Off to have this as a oating window to work with in your Maya scene. Now begin using simple polygon cubes and cylinders to block out the scene. Next, create a camera to work towards and reposition these basic shapes to match your reference image.

When modelling in Maya, I prefer to use Viewport 2.0 with the Ambient Occlusion setting turned on. Primarily this enables me to see how close objects are sitting against one another, but it also adds a bit more depth to the models. I create two lights, the rst of which is a directional light with Depth Map Shadows turned on. The other is an Ambient light, for which I take the Intensity down to around 2.5. Throughout the modelling I constantly play with the orientation of the directional light to see how the various forms react to it. I also tend to duplicate and mirror a lot of geometry over the scene, which causes the Normals to become inverted. Having lights in the scene will reveal these inverted Normals, but navigating to Normals> Reverse for the inverted polys will get everything back in order soon enough.

Lights and Normals

Some of the building variations created from the main house

The concept art used as the basis for this project

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02Shape the tower Now export out the tower geometry as an OBJ and import it into a new scene. Create a poly cube and scale it into a brick shape. With the brick selected, go to Edit Mesh>Bevel, increase the Segments value to 2 and play with the Off set value to create a softer look. Use the Insert Edge Loop tool to provide more detail. Duplicate this brick a few times and create a few variations by pushing the points around. Start using these blocks to build up the tower.

03Use lattice deformers To help speed up the process of creating unique bricks, navigate to Create Deformers>Lattice. Set the S, T and U Divisions to 2 and go into Component mode to push the shapes further. Try to consider the structure as you build the tower up. Although we arent going for a fully realistic tower, we still want to sell the idea that its had to stand strong for years. Make sure you analyse real buildings and walls, taking notice of the formation of the bricks. Gathering and analysing reference is important, as it will help inform and support your modelling decisions.

04Rooftops Once the tower is complete, import it back into the main scene and export out one of the low-poly houses. Start creating the roof by taking a polygon cube and extruding out the faces to create an upside-down V shape. Bevel the edges and then insert

some edge loops. Select some vertices and use the bend deformer to add some curvature to the roof. You can nd this tool under Create Deformers>Nonlinear Deformer. Take a simple cube once more to create a roof tile. Duplicate the tile many times to create variations and then place them against the roof using the Translate and Rotate tools.

05Create the main house To build the wooden beams of the buildings, a humble bevelled cube is the way to go. To form the variations, try using the trusty lattice deformer once more. Then, with the Interactive Split tool or, my favourite, the Split Poly tool cut into the beams and push in the edges to add grooves. The main body of the house also begins as a cube, before being bevelled and cut into for the windows and door. Next, add some extra edge loops so you can ever so slightly push and pull the vertices to break up the clean nature of the cube.

06Create variations of houses Once you have the rst house complete, you can begin creating variations to ll the environment. By using the main house as a base, you can help maintain a similar feel to the piece as a whole. Play with the silhouette to make each house feel unique. Make some tall and thin, but others short and fat. Try to alter the shape of the door and window frames and use the wooden beams to give each house its own character.

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07Use a cobbled pavement You can create a bevelled cobbled stone from a starting poly cube. Duplicate this stone to make four rows. After you have done this, create some variation in each cobble using the Soft Select tool. These four rows can then be duplicated many times over, with some small changes made to break up the uniform appearance that can otherwise occur. As you continue to build up the oor in this manner, you may nd the scene le gets very heavy, extremely quickly. If this is the case, then alternative methods may be best advised. These methods include creating a Normal or Displacement map.

08Add in some props A tower, some houses and a cobbled street give us an environment, but to make this town feel lived in, we need to add some props. These could be market stalls, boot-scrapers, a horse trough and so on. Here Ive gone for a cart and some beer barrels, a pub sign in the foreground and some bunting running through the street. I found reference online to get some basic shapes and then pushed them further by using the techniques mentioned.

09Build the foliage Natural elements will break up the man-made structures and bring age to the scene. For the grass you can use Mayas Paint Eff ects. Just load up the Visor, under Window>General Editors, and scroll down to the Grasses tab. Have a play with the many variations of grass brushes until you nd the option that suits you best. Once you are happy with your strokes, you will need to convert them into polygons. Select all of the strokes and go to Modify>Convert>Paint Eff ects to Polygons (Options), check Quad Output and hit Apply. Dont delete the history on the grass mesh, as we can use the Paint Eff ects settings to add movement to our grass later on. The Ivy can be made with the wonderful Ivy Generator by Thomas Luft.

10Bring it all together Now that we have all our assets, its time to bring them together. One by one, import each house into the low-res scene that was rst created. Spend some time rearranging the houses as well as the props until youre happy with the composition. To help frame your work, turn on the Resolution Gate to the camera. If youre nding that the assets are too heavy to manage altogether, try using Referencing. You can think of Referencing as pointing to another scene le without actually importing it. Any changes that you make to the referenced le will also update in the le that already has the assets referenced in it. Its a fantastic way to work and I highly recommend anyone not used to referencing to look into it. The next tutorial will show you how to texture this environment in Maya.

You can download the Ivy Generator from: http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/~luft/ivy_generator. For each house that would require ivy, I rst selected all the pieces and duplicated the house. I then combined those duplicated polys into one mesh by going to Mesh>Combine. I then went to Mesh>Triangulate and exported out that model. Load up the Ivy Generator, import the model and select a point where you would like the ivy to start growing. Hit the Grow button and watch as the ivy creeps out. When happy, hit the Birth button to see the ivy. Export this and then bring it back into your Maya scene.

Ivy Generator

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Here were going to add shaders, as well as UV-mapped and procedural textures to the environment we modelled in the previous tutorial. The following ten steps will guide you through unwrapping UVs, setting up a linear work ow, creating an environment to test shaders and textures, then nally how to use a shader.

To maintain consistency between our shaders, well make a look-development environment, taking all our assets into this space, then testing the shaders and texture maps there before dropping them back into

the main scene. For this environment, we will be using area lights with the Decay Rate set to Quadratic, as this will create a more physically correct light source. For the ambient lighting well use an HDR image. HDRI Hub (www.hdri-hub.com) has kindly supplied a range of images so we can test our assets under a number of lighting conditions. Be sure to check out the website, as theres a lot of useful stuff that you can pick up for free.

To get all the lighting to behave in a believable manner within the look-dev scene, well be implementing a linear

work ow. If youre hoping to take your images into a compositing package, such as NUKE, working linearly just makes all the maths work correctly. Though it may fry your brain, it can also become your best friend for life.Just note that there are many ways to approach a linear work ow in Maya, such as plugging a mia_exposure_photographic/simple node into the Camera Lens setting, or simply managing colour in the Render Settings. One of the important choices when setting up this work ow is keeping full control, as opposed to Maya making any decisions, which is especially

3D brushes and paint pots at the ready: here well cover a linear workflow, setting up a look-dev environment, UV unwrapping, plus texturing and shading

Texture an exterior environment in Maya

Tutorial les:8/1.)#!3"(1#!3.18/1.)#!3#-5(1.-,#-3(-!+4"(-%2!#-#+#23#7341#22-"1#$#1#-!#(,%#2 The nal result of the

texturing and shading work

Maya


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key when it comes to gamma-correcting any images. This may be time-consuming, but its time well spent.

As the camera is locked off , we can also go in and start optimising our main scene before shading and texturing the assets, which will be advantageous in two ways. First, by getting rid of any objects that are not seen by the frustum of the camera, we can speed up render time. Next, well only need to shade and texture those objects that havent been deleted. If you cant see it, dont spend any time on it. All this will create a lighter, more manageable scene.

Once its cleaned up, we can start exporting out each house, castle and so on, to bring them into a clean scene to unwrap UVs where needed. As we are mainly dealing with glori ed cubes, we should be able to use Mayas default UV-unwrapping tools. Primarily well be using the Planar Mapping tool, or the Automatic Mapping tool, then going into the UV Editor window and stitching the UVs together to give us as few UV islands as possible.

Youll nd that many of the objects are also just modi ed duplicates, such as the oor bricks and the roof tiles. As these duplicates have the same vertex count, we can UV a single brick and then copy those UVs over to every other brick. Sadly, using Mayas Mesh>Transfer tool will only enable you to copy from a single object to another object. Having to do this one brick at a time will drive any sane person mad, so thankfully Oleg Alexander has created a neat little MEL script called oa Multi UV Transfer 1.0.0.mel (download free from www.creativecrash.com). This script enables you to copy the UVs over to multiple selected objects.

The most important factor when unwrapping models is that the 2D representation in the UV Texture Editor looks very much like the 3D object. By this I mean that the spacing between the edges in 2D is similar to that in 3D. This will help reduce textures stretching or compressing, which can look pretty horrible and ruin an image.This doesnt need to be perfect, as we wont get up close to our assets, but it does have to be competent. We can use a simple chequerboard to assess the integrity of our UVs.

There are many objects within our scene, so to unwrap and then texture every one would be a very time-consuming process. This means for many of the objects, such as the roof tiles, well have to create procedural textures. Its amazing what can be done by simply plugging some Cloud or Noise nodes into the Color and Bump channel of a shader. The objects that will need to be hand-textured, primarily the main body of

each building and the wooden beams, can then be taken into a 3D painting program as an OBJ le. I will be using MARI here, but anything like Mudbox or BodyPaint will be ne, or you can stick to a 2D package such as Photoshop if you prefer. If youre taking your UVs straight from Maya to a 2D package, youll need to create a UV snapshot from the UV Texture Editor.

For the textures, Ive grabbed some of the amazing references from CG Textures (www.cgtextures.com) to project onto the geometry. Im not going for a photoreal look here, but using images of the real world and manipulating them will add a heightened sense of believability when working against the procedural textures. Once the Color map has been created (this will also be the foundation for the Bump and Roughness maps if needed), well take everything back into the look-dev scene.

From here, its a case of setting up our shaders and then there will be some back-and-forth to re ne the maps between Maya, MARI and Photoshop. Well create the maps at a 4,000 resolution (4,096 x 4,096), which is pretty large. This is because we can always make them smaller and get good results, as opposed to making smaller texture les larger. This enables us to pop higher-resolution maps on objects that are closer to the camera, then use the smaller maps for objects further away. You may nd that some of the objects dont need any texture maps, as they are so far away from the camera, making a coloured shader suffi cient.

As we are creating a look-dev environment thats designed to be physically accurate in terms of its lighting setup, it makes sense to also use shaders that fall into this category. The mia_material_x will therefore will be our shader

of choice. Its a monolithic shader thats been designed to handle most architectural materials such as wood, glass and metal, as well as being an energy-conserving material. The shader also comes with a range of presets, which can be a great platform to further re ne from. Once we have some hero shaders that have been procedurally created, we can duplicate them, then tinker with the Color and Bump channels to add variation throughout the scene.

A variation of HDR images to check the integrity of the shaders being used

The environment as we left it in the last tutorial

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01Optimise the scene First open up the nal scene from last tutorial, 00_ nal_modelling (available on FileSilo), and start by getting rid of any objects that cant be seen by the perspective camera (this will be our render camera). Were

deleting them here, but you can always just hide those objects if you think they may come in handy later on. Next, break up the scene le by selecting the top group for each asset in the Outliner and going to File>Export. Save the group as an MA le, open up the rst of those assets (starting with houseA.ma) and start thinking about what will need to be manually textured and what can be taken care of procedurally. As we want to add cracks to the walls, well de nitely be UV unwrapping the main body parts for each

house and also the roof tiles. Although you may be thinking youll procedurally handle the roof tiles, they shouldnt take long to unwrap and you can simply use the oa Multi UV Transfer 1.0.0.mel script to copy the UVs across. At least this will provide you with some exibility as you proceed.

02Unwrap the UVs Select the rst of the body parts for the house and go to Modify>Freeze Transformations. This will zero out the Transform and Rotate channels, as well as give us a uniform value of 1 for Scale. When using some of the UV Projection tools, you can get skewed results if you have values in the Transformation channels. With that done, select the geometry and go to Create UV>Automatic Mapping. Next, go to Window>UV Texture Editor and lets start sewing this back together so we have as few UV islands as possible. Before doing so, go to Image>Shade UVs, which will help reveal any overlapping UVs by going from the blue (what we want) to a purple. Any red UVs will mean that they are inverted and will need to be ipped back to blue.

You may nd you have so many objects and not enough time to give them enough attention. In this case you can start merging some of the objects together to produce larger chunks. For example, most of the houses are comprised of three body parts. This would result in needing three diff erent shaders and three diff erent maps for the Color, Bump and Spec. Instead, you can just combine the three parts of geo together by going to Mesh>Combine, organising the UVs so theres no overlap and then exporting out that combined object for texture painting.

Too many objects, not enough time

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03Clean up and re-check the UVs Next select a row of edges along one of the islands and go to Polygons>Move and Sew UV Edges. This should start bringing the individual islands together without too much distortion. Continue to do this until you have pretty much a single UV island (you may have the odd loose bits). Next, grab all the UVs and scale them so they t snugly into the UV quadrant. Dont scale this randomly on one axis, as this will cause distortion. Remember, we want to keep our 2D representation as close to its 3D counterpart as possible. Next, apply a new Lambert material to the object and plug a Checker node into the Color channel. Hit 6 on the keyboard to go into Textured mode and nd the place2dTexture1 node that should have been created. If you cant nd it, go into the Utilities tab within the Hypershade window, select it and increase the Repeat UV to be 20 and 20. If this looks blurry in the viewport, you will need to update it by scrolling down to Hardware Texturing, found in the Lambert Materials Attribute window, and setting the Texture Resolution to Highest (256 x 256). Instead of doing this, you can also just change the Viewport Renderer to be in High Quality Rendering or Viewport 2.0 mode. When happy, you can then export out the elements that will need texturing.

04Set up mental ray With the unwrapping complete, we can start setting up our look-dev environment. First we need to make sure mental ray is installed. Go to Windows>Settings/Preferences>Plug-in Manager and ensure Mayatomr is loaded. Set this as the renderer by going to Window>Rendering

Editors>Render Settings and changing the Render Using to mental ray. In the Common tab, switch the File Output Image format to OpenEXR (exr) and the Image Size to HD 1,080. Pop into the Quality tab, select Production for the Quality, scroll down to the Framebuff er and edit the Data Type to RGBA (Float) 4x32 Bit. Next, open up the Render View window and go to Display>32-bit oating-point (HDR). You may be told that Maya will update this setting the next time it loads up. If so, save your scene le, close Maya down and reopen it.

05Add the HDRI and lens shader Open up the Render Settings, scroll down to Render Options in the Common tab and uncheck Enable Default Light. Scroll over to the Indirect Lighting tab and click the Create button for Image Based Lighting. When the mentalrayIblShape1 attribute window appears, pick one of the provided HDRI les or any from your own collection and plug it into the Image Name attribute. Here were going for sky_cloudy_free.hdr as this gives an even amount of ambient light without being too harsh. Still in that window, select Disable Primary

Visibility under Render Stats and enable Emit Light under Light Emission. Back in the Render Settings, just make sure that Final Gathering has also been enabled in the Indirect Lighting tab. Last, select the Perspective camera and go to the Attribute Editor. Scroll down to the mental ray tab and click on the input for Lens Shader. When the Create RenderNode window pops up, under Lenses, select mia_exposure_photographic. You will probably need to crank the Cm 2 Factor to something like 10,000 to bring out the image. Please note that the current Gamma is set to 2.2, which will give us a correct image in our Render View. When it comes to rendering the nal EXR le, take this down to 1 and this will work correctly in a comp package.

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06Use area lights to gain extra coverage The HDRI with the Emit Light attribute turned on is giving a pretty strong key light, so we can add one extra area light to act as a ll source coming from the opposite direction of the key light source. Go to Create>Light>Area Light and when its done, scale it up to be much larger. Here the light is positioned coming from the screens left when looking at the

house from the front. With the light selected, you can go to Panels>Look Through Selected, to make positioning a bit easier. Make sure to change its Decay Rate to Quadratic and increase the Intensity to something between 500 and 1,000. Scroll down to the mental ray tab and check Use Light Shape and Visible. If the render is grainy, we can come in here and increase the High Samples to something like 32. Bear in mind that this setting could have a big impact on render time.

07Use texture-projection methods in MARI So weve set up our UVs where needed and created a look-dev environment. Finally, we can start texturing. Well take the OBJs that need painting into MARI and from there use Projection Brush to project through an image. Using the texture library from CG Textures, youll nd a range of images for Tudor houses, which acts as a great base. Youll should nd cracks, colour variation and some good old wear and tear. Use a soft brush with a low opacity and build up the texture while projecting through. This method enables you to minimise the patchiness that can occur when combining several diff erent images together.

08Create and apply the mia_material_x Once the Color map has been created, duplicate this channel, rename it Bump and then desaturate it to take out the colour. Create a new shader

If youre looking to do a turntable render by animating the HDRI, you will probably nd that everything looks good in the Render Settings window, but when you use the Batch Render, the HDRI doesnt actually rotate, which is annoying. To counter this, I prefer to simply select all the geometry and the render cam (in this case, the perspective) and group them together by hitting Cmd/Ctrl+G. Now simply animate that group 360 degrees and hit Render.

Turntables with HDRI

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and add a Bump Shader Module to start combining the diff erent channels together. The Specular maps will also come from the Color map, so when all three are done we can export them out as TIFF les. Go back into Maya, open up the latest look-dev scene and, in the Hypershade menu, go to Create>mental ray Materials>Mia_material_x. Open up the Attribute Editor and edit the preset to Matte Finish. For all our Color maps (including coloured shaders), well need to add a Gamma Correction node. Click on the Input icon for the Color node to open up the Create Render Node window and, under Utilities, create a Gamma Correct node. Edit the Gamma to 0.455, 0.455, 0.455 and then click the Input icon for the Value. Create a File node and plug your colour texture into the Image Name.

09Add the Bump and Spec Now plug the Bump map into the Standard Bump on the mia shader and the Specular map into the Roughness attribute. Then its just a simple case of tweaking the settings and doing some render tests. Once you have done this, try taking all the maps into Photoshop so you can play with the Hue, Saturation and Contrast settings. Run a High Pass lter through the Bump map. Once this shader is done for the body of the house, we can reuse it for the rest of the houses by simply changing the Color, Bump and Spec maps and also adjusting the

attributes so they arent carbon copies of each other.

10Make procedural shaders For the roof tiles and oor bricks, here were going with procedural textures. For all these shaders, use the mia_material_x and again starting with a preset push them further. For the Color map, rst add the Gamma Correct node and plug a Noise, Cloud or Fractal node into the value of the Gamma node. By playing with the attributes of each node, you can get great results. You can plug in extra nodes within them, such as a Ramp, to add further variation. Once you have the Color map nished, do the same steps for the Bump channel, excluding the Gamma Correct node. Finally, pop all the assets back into the main scene, ready to light and render.

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In the rst two parts of this tutorial series we have modelled, textured and shaded an environment. In this nal part of the series well work to bring life to the scene by adding some animation and also including some new animatable assets. Well also lend the scene a real lived-in look by dirtying it up and speeding up its aging process a little.

So, what elements can we pick out in the scene to inject a little reality? Of course, the bunting and the foliage are the ideal features to work on. With the bunting well be using Mayas nCloth tools to create the illusion that there is a breeze blowing along the street.

For the foliage well be utilising the animatable parameters of Paint Eff ects to give the impression that the wind is gently swaying the leaves.

Another new feature that will serve to add more vibrant eff ects is the creation of the world beyond the street, as seen through the gate in the tower. Here well use Paint Eff ects once more to make a eld of tall grass stretching into the distance.

Previously the street looked a little too IKEA, so well also add some grass between the cobbles and to the ground using Paint Eff ects. Well also include a few loose stones on the street using basic polygonal modelling. These additions seem

very minimal on-screen but they bring a lot of character to the environment.

Regarding lighting, I felt that last months render was too sharp, so I wanted to soften the air and round off a few harsh corners. We can achieve this using volumetric light eff ects. Naturally, this adds a lot of time to the render but I think the results are worthwhile when compared to using something like a ZDepth pass.

Our last major addition will be to introduce some clouds using the emfxCLOUDS tool by Emmanuel Mouillet. This enables us to get a softer transition between our CG clouds and the HDRI and they can also be animated later.

The following steps will guide you through bringing a lived-in atmosphere to an otherwise static environment

Bring an exterior environment to life

The nal image after adding all extra elements to the sceneMaya

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Flags y and grass dances

01Make the grass grow First, we need to add in some detail to the street, as it currently looks a little too clean to be real. Export out the ground from where we left off last time (01_start.ma) as an MA le and open it up into a new scene. Go to Create>Polygons>Plane, use the modelling tools to roughly match it up to the cobbles, then go to Create UVs> Automatic Mapping. Next switch to the Rendering module by hitting F6 and, with the plane selected, go to Paint Eff ects> Make Paintable. Now open up the Visor found under Windows>General Editors and scroll down to the Grasses sub-menu. To add small pockets of grass between the bricks, I used the grassClump brush and modi ed some of the settings until the right results started appearing.

02Convert Paint Eff ects to polys and add stones Once you have painted grass around the scene, select all the strokes and go to Modify>Convert>Paint Eff ects to Polygons. This enables us to render them in mental ray. Export out the grass as an MA le and we can add it to the main scene later. For the stones, take a simple polygon cube, add some extra divisions and then use the

Sculpt Geometry tool, found under Mesh in the Polygons module, to push and pull the geometry around. By simply duplicating, scaling, rotating and making small tweaks, you should be able to quickly generate a series of stones that you can scatter around the scene. Once you have the stones positioned correctly, again export them out as MA les.

03Build up the background elds Like we did with the grass, we can do the same again for the elds behind the tower. First create some geometry to act as a paintable surface, give it some UVs and then, using a modi ed eldGrass and Straw brush in the Visor, begin painting over the areas that will be seen from the main camera. The good thing about using the eldGrass brush is that it also animates by default, so we can create some minor movement in the background to keep the scene alive. Hit Play to view the results yourself and once youre happy, convert the strokes to polygons and export them out.

04Prepare the bunting Now export the bunting from the main scene into a new scene. To constrain the ags to the string, well need to add some extra edge loops so that when all the bunting elements are converted to nCloth, the ags wont simply blow away. With the string selected, use the Insert Edge Loop tool to add loops where the edges of the ags meet the string. Next, select the string and go to Edit>Delete By Type>History. Select all the ags (one row at a time) and go to Mesh>Combine so we have a single geometry. This will enable us to only require one nCloth node per ag set, as opposed to each ag having its own node.

Testing out the volumetric lighting eff ects to see what will work best

Where we started and where we left off in the last tutorial

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selected, go into Vertex mode on the string and select the points that are close to the points of the ags. Once you have all the required vertices of the ags and the string, go to nConstraint>Component to Component. Now hit Play to test if the ags stay on the string or if they fall off . You can then experiment with the Dynamic Properties of the ags to achieve the correct behaviour. I began with the silk preset and then decreased the Mass to 0.1 for the nal results.

07Create some wind eff ects To add some life to the scene, lets get some wind blowing through the ags. We could simply play with the various elds here and add them to our scene, but instead in this case I opted to use the Wind Speed attribute that lives under the Gravity and Wind tab on the nucleus1 node. By using this attribute I could aff ect all the cloth elements in the scene in one hit. To replicate this, rst we need to set the Wind Direction to 0.2, 0.2 and -1. This pushes the cloth mainly in one direction, but also gives some subtle movement from other angles. Now set some keys on the Wind Speed to adjust the amount of wind aff ecting the ags. Finally, increase the Wind Noise to 2 to add a bit more randomness to the wind. Repeat the steps for the

remainder of the bunting and export them ready for the main scene. Repeat the method to make the pub sign swing.

08Work with the ivy It can be pretty tricky to get some movement out of the ivy we created in the rst part of this series. To get around this issue we can re-create the ivy using Mayas Paint Eff ects. One by one, export out each building that needs ivy, merge all the building parts together, then delete all the parts that dont have ivy growing on them to make them lighter. Next, use Automatic Mapping for the UVs so you can use the house as a paintable object. With the Ivy brush preset found under the plantsMesh tab in the Visor, draw strokes over the areas of interest. Youll nd that the initial results create very large leaves, so edit the settings to get the best results. Once youre happy, with the outcome, save the preset and then apply it to every other stroke being used. I ended up taking the Global Scale down to 0.25 and in the Creation menu, under Tubes, I decreased the Length Min to 0.125 and the Length Max to 1.

When testing out nCloth, make sure your Animation Playback Speed is set to Play Every Frame, Free. I use playblasts to view the results during testing and then use Caching to bake in the results. To do this, with the geometry selected, go to nCache> Create New Cache (Options). Select a directory to drop the les off and set the File Distribution to One File or One File Per Geometry if you have multiple objects selected. Hit Create and you should now be able to scrub through the timeline freely. If you need to edit the settings of the nCloth, you need to go to nCache>Delete Cache and resimulate the results.

nCloth caching

05Use nCloth for the string Make sure you are in the nDynamics module and, with the string selected, go to nMesh>Create nCloth. You should see in the Outliner that a nucleus1 node has been created, as well as an nCloth1 node. Before playing with these settings, lets pin the string to stay in place. Select the vertices on one end of the string, go to nConstraint>Transform, then do the same to the other end. Hit Play and you should see the string is now rmly pinned on both sides. Select the nCloth1 node and go into the Attribute Editor. In the nClothShape1 tab, from the Presets menu, select thickLeather. Experiment with the Dynamic Properties a bit to get the desired results for the string that is pinned down, rather than owing freely. I ended up increasing the Stretch Resistance to 200, the Bend Resistance to 70 and the Rigidity to 0.5.

06Constrain the ags Now select the ag geometry and go to nMesh>Create nCloth. To constrain the ags to the string, well need to use the Component to Component constraint. In Vertex mode, select all the points at the top of each ag then, with those points still

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09Add energy to the ivy To get some minor movement from the ivy we can use the Turbulence settings, which you will nd in the Behavior tab. I changed the Turbulence Type to Grass Wind, the Interpolation to Smooth Over Time and Space, the Turbulence Speed to 0.3 and the Turbulence Off set to 0.33, 0 and 0. I also increased the Gravity to 0.5 in the Forces tab so the ivy hangs down slightly. If you edit the settings in the Attribute Editor, you will nd that you can only edit one stroke at a time. Instead, select all the strokes and, in the Channel Box, open up the Ivy node in the Inputs and scroll down to the Turbulence section to aff ect all the selected strokes. Make sure you experiment to see what suits you and create Playblasts to compare the results. Once you have the desired results, convert the strokes to polygons and export them out ready to drop back into the main scene.

10Use volumetric eff ects Currently the air is very clean, so lets add some volumetric lighting to spice things up. Create a low-resolution representation of the houses and the tower by using simple cubes. Export these objects along with the current lighting setup (mentalrayIbl1) and the main camera into

a new scene for testing. You can also export the ags and the sign for testing. Create a poly cube and scale it so it surrounds all the buildings. This will act as the volume for the eff ect. Next, create a directional light and open up the Custom Shader found under the mental ray tab. Click on the chequered icon to the right of the Light Shader and plug a physical_light node into it. To begin with, set the Color values of the physical_light to something between 10 and 15.

11Include more nodes Next, go to Windows>Rendering Editors>Hypershade and create two nodes: a transmat from the mental ray>Material tab and a parti_volume from the mental ray>Volumetric Materials tab. Select the transmat1SG (the shading group) and middle-mouse-drop the parti_volume1 node onto the volume shader attribute of the transmatSG1. Next apply the transmat1 material to the cube, acting as the volume in our scene. Select the parti_volume1 node and scroll down to Lights under Light Linking, then drag and drop the directionalLight1 here. Finally

add a gammaCorrect node to the Scatter attribute on the parti_volume1 parameters and set the gamma to 0.455, 0.455 and 0.455. We can now use the Value on the gammaCorrect node to set the colour and the amount of light coming through.

12Finalise the eff ects and unify the scene Open up the Render Settings, scroll to the Features tab and, under Extra Features, make sure Auto Volume is turned on. Hide the mentalrayIbl1 node and do some test renders. Within the Render view, Id advise using the Test Resolution settings under the Options to speed up viewing the results. I was aiming for something quite subtle here, so I ended with my gammaCorrect Value set to H: 211, S: 0.176 and V: 0.072. I also set the Extinction 0.002 and the Nonuniform to 0.545 on the parti_volume1 node and the Value to 12.5 for the Color on the Directional Light. Once you are happy with the eff ects achieved, reveal the mentalrayIbl1 node and tweak the settings if needed. After you have nished this, its just a case of importing all these elements back into the main scene le and, again, simply tweaking the lighting until you get the right outcome. Good luck with Maya and happy rendering!

I wasnt too impressed with using images for the sky, as I felt they didnt quite gel with the foreground elements. To overcome this, I used the very awesome cloud-generator tool, emfxClouds by Emmanuel Mouillet (www.emfx.fr). He has an in-depth video on how to install and use the tool, so you should be able to pick it up easily. I created a set of four clouds in a clean Maya scene and then imported and duplicated them into the nal scene to ll the sky. To light these clouds, I decided to use Light Linking so the image-based lighting node and the directional light didnt aff ect the clouds. Using the lighting options within the tool was enough to create the results.

Adding clouds

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32 O 3DArtist

Working from Jorge Laceras concept here, the goal is to create a science- ction heroine thats relevant to the current market, but has a retro feel we can associate with our youths.

When working from a concept I prefer to keep the process organic and exible. I rarely work from a formal model sheet as, usually, the proportions are

already locked down in a big project, since you have to share skeletons. Instead, I prefer to grab a snapshot of the character that best conveys what and who it is.

Not every detail needs to be gured out, as usually this is something that the character artist can handle alone. A few extra bolts and panels wont destroy the overall concept of the subject and

I think time is better spent discovering the characters overall mood.

Here well be using ZBrush with some hard-surface modelling in 3ds Max. However, the following methods can be applied to any 3D program. I will be focusing on high-res modelling using techniques geared towards baking down Normal maps for videogame assets.

TroubleshootingHighlight any areas that will require special attention

01Plan your work ow When I receive a character concept I take a moment to analyse how exactly Im going to tackle the project on a technical level. Generally my work ow stays the same from project to project. I take simple steps like nding symmetrical details that can be copied, aspects that may be exaggerated and anything that can be a problem during production. Too many ne details wont translate well in a game, but luckily this concept is simple and, other than translating the model into a relaxed bind pose, I dont foresee any major issues.

This is a high-poly model speci cally created as a target for videogame-quality assets. The goal is to create a character that can t in mainstream media, but with a retro feel thrown in for styleGavin Goulden is a character artist at Irrational Games. He has worked on titles such as BioShock In nite, Dead Rising 2, The Bigs 2, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin and Damnation.

02Identify key points There are de ning aspects within a concept that help sell the mood and idea of a character. In this case the mismatched armour pieces (contrasted against the streamlined body armour), the tribal hairstyle and evidence of battle damage are all pieces of the character I absolutely need to emphasise to help translate the concept into a 3D model.

03De ne the materials Its very important to separate the diff erent material types within the character. The subject may appear to be made of more or less the same material, but youll see there are several diff erent layers. The character is wearing a spacesuit that has exible armour attached to it, with heavier armour over it. De ning these elements will in uence the character. The suit and exible armour can be handled in ZBrush, but the heavier armour pieces will likely need extra work in 3ds Max.

Spacegirl 2013

Master ZBrush: model for games

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Easy-to-follow guides take you from concept

to the nal render

Portfolio http://gavimage.comSoftware used ZBrush, 3ds MaxExpertise Character art, modelling, texturing, rigging and sculpting videogame assets

1 Check the concept and spot any trouble areas, speci cally details that may not play well with modern game engines

2 Pick out key elements of the character concept to help translate it into 3D

3 Break down your concept to help de ne your work ow

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Sculpt characters to be used as videogame assets Build a base mesh Model hard surfaces to be applied to models Use masks for detailing Prototype with ZBrushs ShadowBox feature Manage your diff erent layers within SubTools Use NoiseMaker to generate surface detail

Learn how toThe concept from Jorge Lacera is exactly what I need to get started. It has enough detail to capture the personality within the character and allows room to play with details as I start modelling.

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Before starting a sculpt, I like to have a bank of assets that I can quickly bring into ZBrush for detailing. For this project, Im using a few unique Alpha textures for bolts and connecting ports throughout the spacesuit. The great thing about this and something that should be common practice is that these Alphas can be saved into a library for future projects, ultimately saving you time later on.

Creating these textures is usually a quick process. Simply make a black-and-white texture (usually white is the in uencing area) saved as a PSD or JPEG and import the texture into the Alpha panel in ZBrush. Alphas can be used with any brush combination; in this case Im using them with a Standard brush, with DragRect stroke active and LazyMouse disabled.

You can also create a bank of models, like nuts, bolts, clasps and so on, that have universal use. These models can be applied to your 3D application and brought into ZBrush or applied to the model using the MeshInsert brush. The one issue with this work ow, however, is that the base model cant have any subdivisions when the MeshInsert brush is being used. It then becomes part of the model as a whole and cannot be controlled separately.

Create custom Alphas & layer on the details

When the concept was being de ned for this tutorial, I worked alongside Jorge Lacera to squash any issues that could possibly come up during production. The hairstyle, in particular, was chosen to avoid sorting issues, while the suit design was kept mostly symmetrical to enable a quicker sculpt. With the addition of asymmetrical armour pieces the suit is a much bolder statement. Since it follows the proportions of a female human gure its easier to work with and removes some of the guesswork. The main issue with the work ow is translating the model into a bind pose (a T-pose at 45 degrees, upright but slightly relaxed), which is more common and easiest to work with. This process requires a good working knowledge of human anatomy. By creating a roughed-in female base mesh (which can be the base mesh from another project) I can begin to tweak the details to the model.

Problems & solutions

Model the base meshCreate a low-detailed model ready for sculpting

04Block in proportions The rst step is to block in the major proportions of your character, while not worrying too much about details and focusing on just getting the forms of an idealised female correct. Usually I model the limbs and torso separately to make positioning them easier. I try to keep the same number of edges on each boundary to make welding the connecting edges together much simpler.

05Get the correct topology At this stage I correct the posture of the character aiming for straighter arms and spine, as well as relaxed shoulders. I also attach all of the elements from previous steps and tidy the geometry across the entire model. Make sure the polygons are equally distributed, the triangles are removed or isolated to areas that wont be sculpted over, and that there are no open edges. The level of topology you need for a sculpt is diff erent to the topology required to achieve a well-deformed mesh. The entire model should have the same density of faces throughout, whereas an animated model generally has more edge loops around the joints.

06Use temporary models To help speed up the development process, I like to use temporary models for details that will be de ned later in the sculpting process. Other than the head being brought in for reference, the best example for this project is the shoes. The heels that I add here quickly block out the shapes that will eventually be there. This also saves me a ton of time not worrying about modelling the boots right away. The key thing to keep in mind is to avoid the small details at rst; get the bigger shapes blocked in and just keep re ning.

07Prototype with the ShadowBox ZBrush has a feature called ShadowBox which can form a model out of a cube using masks. Going to Geometry> ShadowBox will approximate the geometry based on painted masks on each side of the ShadowBox cube. By painting information on each axis you are eff ectively cutting a model out of a block of material. Using this, I am able to shape the jetpack ns in a matter of seconds. The drawback is that this feature is destructive to the models topology, meaning that its only useful for sculpting. You may need to retopologise after major edits. Once youre happy, click ShadowBox again to return to the normal editing mode.

4 Block out your model with simple shapes dont get caught up in the details

5 A good base mesh has equally distributed polygons to avoid errors when sculpting

6 Using temporary models can really help speed up the sculpting process

7 ShadowBox is a great feature for qui

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