CGArena: Dec-Jan 2012 Mag

CGArena

VOLUME 6, ISSUE 5, DEC - JAN 12

Get Attention in the Computer Graphics Community

Interview

Dan Roarty

Photoshop

Making of Airbattle Making of Natalie

3ds Max

Making of a Cop Making of Steampunk Faith

Latest 3D Inspiring Art CG Store Deals Submit your Artwork for 2012 Calendar

VOL

6

Get Attention in the Computer Graphics Community Issue Contents

Volume 6, Issue 5 Dec - Jan 2012

05

Interview

Dan Roarty

14

Photoshop

Making of Airbattle

22

3ds Max

Making of a Cop

30

Photoshop

Making of Natalie

36

Photoshop

Making of Steampunk Faith

50

Gallery

Showcase of latest 3D art

Magazine Edited: Ashish Rastogi Magazine Cover Image: Jay Mosquera Magazine Design: Yousef Ikhreis

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Issue 5 Dec - Jan 2012

Industry News

CGArena Adobe faces criticism for change of upgrade policy

Dreamworks Animation to form China JV

Photoshop trainer and author Scott Kelby has published an ‘open letter’ to Adobe requesting it rethinks its product upgrade policy. The company, in a recent blog post about its ‘Creative Cloud’ online computing service, revealed that it will only allow owners of the most recent versions of Photoshop and Creative Suite to upgrade to the CS6 versions, when they become available. This moves away from its traditional position of allowing owners of the previous three versions a discounted upgrade. The company is offering a 20% discount for these owners to bring themselves up-to-date in time for the policy change. Kelby’s letter acknowledges there may be a business case for the change in policy but asks Adobe to delay the policy change until CS7, so that users have more time to make an informed decision about their upgrade options.

Dreamworks Animation SKG Inc, producer of hit movies such as “Kung Fu Panda”, is in talks to set up a joint venture studio in Shanghai as early as January next year to produce animation and design theme parks, Caijing Magazine reported, quoting government sources.

Book

Prototyping Augmented Reality - Augmented reality (AR) is used all over, and you may not even realize it. Smartphones overlay data onto live camera views to show homes for sale, restaurants, or historical sites. American football broadcasts use AR to show the invisible first-down line on the field to TV viewers. Nike and Budweiser, among others, have used AR in ads. Now, you can learn to create AR prototypes using 3D data, Processing open-source programming language, and other languages. This unique book is an easy-to-follow guide on how to do it. Explains how to interactively link 3D to physical, virtual, and streaming environments.

Training

The joint venture, to be established in the first quarter of next year, would be formed by Dreamworks Animation and a consortium of Chinese companies that may include Shanghai Media Group and China Media Capital, Caijing reported. It said Dreamworks Animation and the consortium would invest a total of $2 billion in the joint venture, Dreamworks East, over the next five years to produce animation for the Chinese market.

CryENGINE Vol-1-2-3 - Intro and Application - Hélder Pinto starts by walking you through many of the common features of CryENGINE 3 SDK like Customizing the User Interface, Folder Structure, Viewports, Entities, Panels, Objects and much more. Hélder continues where he left off on the creation of an entire level from scratch. Hélder starts off by placing particles in the scene and then goes into the “Boids” system to place things like flocks of birds. Helder goes into more intermediate and advanced topics now that the first level is complete. Hélder starts off by explaining how to create and add custom decals, roads, and terrain layers to the level.

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Source: Reuters.com

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Interview with

CGArena

Dan Roarty Q. Hello Dan, could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background in CG and from where you have taken some training?

Create a character with purpose. From clothing, to color, to expression to back-story.

Sure! Well, I am Originally from Vancouver B.C. and grew up in a small suburb of Vancouver called Maple Ridge where I grew up most of my teen life. I can remember obsessing about art and 3D art from a very early age and really wanted to get as much exposure from it as possible. For my 13th birthday I begged my parents to buy me a 3D program called true-space, which they did. From there I obsessed over it and created as many pieces of art in my spare time as I was able to and couldn’t wait until high school was over so I could pursue college to begin my eventual career in CG. I went to CDIS in Burnaby B.C. (Now known as the Art institute) and before graduating I was fortunate enough to be contacted by MTV who got a hold of my W.I.P. demo reel and asked me to create a small movie/skit for one of their Canadian shows. My demo featured an old character of mine called Guzz.. A story about a green alien who is invaded by a human from earth who tries to abduct him) eerily similar to Planet 51.. however; this was years before the movie came out. From there, I moved onto a few different game studios working on a game for Midway called ‘Spy Hunter 3’ and then to Radical Entertainment on some Crash Bandicoot games and eventually ‘Scarface’ and Lead Character Artist on ‘Prototype’ After Prototype I made the move to 2K and working on some sports titles there before moving to LucasArts (which has been a long term goal of mine) and here I am now! Q. Currently where you are working and what’s your nature of job? Currently I am working at LucasArts as a Lead Character Artist.

Q. How do you typically approach character design? Do you have a process through which each design goes (fleshing out a backstory, following a script, sketching, etc)? At LucasArts or other studios there has always been back and forth between 2d conceptual to eventual 3d design. All elements are talked about and discussed in a design and artistic fashion before proceeding with building the asset. On personal projects I usually 3D conceptualize character before building. It makes it easier to target issues that arise when you’re working in a 3d environment. I usually see the rough finished piece in my head though before proceeding with building it. So I always have a basic visual to build from.

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Interview with


CGArena

Dan Roarty Q. What do you think is the best work you’ve ever produced? Are you a perfectionist? Does it take you long to achieve that final perfect image you are happy with? I would say that ‘The Blue Project’ is currently up there for work that best demonstrates my ability. That being said, at LucasArts I am always pushing to better myself on my current project. The label Perfectionist is almost too loaded. You will always push and push to achieve perfection, but what is perfection? I usually assume perfectionism with ‘reality’ as we see it on a day to day basis. If you are trying to achieve this, then there are always elements you can stride to get better at but nothing beats reality like reality. In a production standpoint, I do find it hard to let go of projects until I find there is nothing else I can physically do any better. I always notice small details afterwards that I would change on artwork I have completed but I think that’s a great element of growth. As an artist you want to come back to your work and notice elements you know you can improve on next time around. Q. Please tell us in detail about your “The Blue Project”, from where you got the idea, references and what obstacles you faced while creating this artwork? Which things to remember while creating the realistic portrait? The project stemmed from a promise I made my wife years before that I would create a 3D version of her. I am always interested in creating 3D characters that look as real as possible and I hadn’t had a piece focused on a female or a likeness either. This was the perfect project for tackling all those goals but at the same time it was tricky as well because if you don’t create a likeness that looks like your subject then it makes you both look bad! (Luckily I took my time and it does look like her) Another large goal I wanted to accomplish was creating hair. This was by far the largest obstacle for me and I learned a lot from the project. I found that creating 3 sepa-

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Interview with


CGArena

Dan Roarty rate hair spawns enabled me to control the look easier. Some important tips I would use when creating a realistic portrait is focus on the lighting of your subject. It comes down to the mood and response you want to get from creating your portrait but if the lighting is not believable then your model can look off. Another tip I would say is don’t go too crazy with saturation and contrast in your final piece. We have a tendency at times to over saturate and create too much contrast within our image which can also appear CG. Another tip I would say is focus on your sculpt and have it look as real and detailed as you’re able to. All that work you put into your sculpt will serve you greatly in the long run!

Q. What’s the most important factor to consider when designing a new character? Create a character with purpose. From clothing, to color, to expression to back-story. Where are they from? What is their motive? Your character should not always ‘just look cool’ If you plan with intent then it will show in your character. Create a piece that provokes an emotional response. From a personal standpoint, I also create characters that will make me better as an artist as well as touch on technical software and approaches that I haven’t tackled or encountered yet. Q. Do you get to have creative control over the characters you develop? At work it’s a very collaborative effort with very creative people which is fantastic. The fun thing about creating personal projects is that it has no pressure of deadlines and it works towards building pieces you are really motivated to create for yourself. www.cgarena.com

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Interview with


CGArena

Dan Roarty Q. Do you feel that you work better with strict structure and deadlines or with more autonomy and freedom? I personally like to work with deadlines. But deadlines slip and as an artist you’re always going to want to make it that much better. Sometimes, you have to call it quits though.

Q. Do you feel your life is more or less stressful than people in non-artistic careers? For me personally it is more stressful. I think because I slightly obsess and always want to be as good as I can it just has strain on myself and my wife/others around me. I do admit that I tend to shut down from everyone when I’m working on a creative project. It just comes with the territory unfortunately and I have a tough time with a balance. That being said, anything you want to be better at is going to require effort and sacrifice (which isn’t necessarily an artistic career). Q. How do you manage to combine your personal life and work? Do you have any hobbies? Is it easy for you to find the time for your family, friends? I must say this is not my strongest area. I can sometimes obsess about working on projects and at times it does pay a toll on my personal life. I am doing a better job of finding a ‘balance’ though and have gotten better. As mentioned, sometimes it’s hard for artists to shut off once you’ve left your desk and it comes with the territory I believe. I would tell anyone to just take your mind off it as much as possible and try having fun www.cgarena.com

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Interview with


CGArena

Dan Roarty outside of work. I have lots of hobbies and am very much into working out, sports and any activity outside. I also have a great black lab called Bailey and I love taking her for walks around San Fan with my wife. Q. Do you believe in ‘talent’ or just daily practice and understanding concepts will help? There is no denying talent. If you’re talented It gives you an edge I believe. That being said, nothing beats hard work. If you work hard it will usually show (especially for an artist) No one has ever achieved anything without failure. Failing is just the building process to success in my opinion. What you put in is what you get out.

Q. Do you have any dream as an artist? How would you like to see your career evolve in the next few years? I am having a lot of fun right now at work and working on personal projects. I want to create as many projects in the next year or so as possible and hopefully focus more on realistic studies and approaches. One day I would love to complete a book based off an idea that has been in our family for years and create all the art work in 3D. I love doing art and couldn’t find myself doing anything else. It’s a great feeling to hear people enjoy looking at your work and take an interest in it. This is very motivating for me and I really appreciate all the wonderful comments and feedback from people.

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Interview with

CGArena

Dan Roarty Q. Do you have a certain type of character that you prefer working on? I love working on characters that provoke a response as well as push my limitations and abilities and hopefully make me better.

Q. On which projects you are working these days, and which project you enjoying the most I have already started to think about my next project and things I want to do better and push myself more. I am also working on a fantastic project at LucasArts which is also very motivating for me as an artist. I will hopefully get the tutorial finished as soon as possible and then move on to the next project! Thanks a lot Don for taking out sometime for us from your busy schedule. Web: www.danroarty.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/danroarty.art

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

Tutorial

Issue 5 Dec- Jan 2012

by Francesco Corvino, USA CGArena Software:

Making of Airbattle

Photoshop

2D

Hi, I’m Francesco Corvino. I’m a 27 years old italian concept artist and matte painter currently working at the Aaron Sims Company in Hollywood. Today I will show you the making of a sci fi concept. The subject is a fleet of alien starships flying over new York. Let’s start. STEP 0 The first thing I do is to throw on the canvas some sort of background, just to start filling the empty space and having a precise idea of the camera angle. I want to achieve a very dramatic effect, and I think that having the camera looking straight down and really high in the sky can be a good choice. I found this picture of ground zero that has the exact same angle, one point perspective and a great vertigo effect. In this piece depth is critical. I want to show the huge space between the alien ships close to the camera and the city way far in the distance. STEP 1 As you can see from the beginning I decided to go for a really horizontal frame. The original picture is a square and now I have to fill the empty space all around. I just duplicate the image to the left and to the right. I’m really rough with it. There are seams and the perspective is not accurate, but I know that before the end of the concept I will put so much stuff on top of this image that it will be really hard to perceive this inaccuracies. It’s really important to understand when you can avoid useless refinements. The image looks really contrasted to me, so I lower the contrast and put a bluish solid layer with low opacity on top of it. I want to push the city more in the distance. STEP 2 Now let’s start to have an idea of the final composition. First of all I want layers of clouds on top of the city. These will give a great effect of air and altitude. Just a white airbrush with zero harness and low opacity will be ok for now. As you can see from the image, I put the clouds along the diagonal of the frame, leaving just some spots of the city to perceive what’s going on underneath. This sense of directionality is important, I always try to guide the eyes of the viewer along a precise path. This helps the viewer to read the composiwww.cgarena.com

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Tutorial


by Francesco Corvino, USA CGArena

Making of Airbattle tion and to enjoy the story in a more dynamic sense.

STEP 3 And now the main feature, the ships. I quickly rough out a basic shape, something organic, that feels more alien than human. I do this really fast, I know that going on with the painting the design will change significantly. The brush that I will use to paint these ships is really easy. Airbrush with 100% hardness, 100% opacity and flow. In the brush options (pressing F5) I have no particular options, only Other Dynamics is activated with Opacity jitter activated on pen pressure at 0%. I paint one and then duplicate multiple times. I try to play with scale, placing some ships really close to the camera and some really far. Being the shape of the ships the same, this is a great indication of distance. STEP 4 Now I feel the need to work a bit on the lighting. The image starts to be cool, but my eyes still wander on the canvas, with no precise areas to focus on. For my taste this makes the image usually a bit weak. You want

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Tutorial



Making of Airbattle

to indicate clearly where the light is coming from, guiding the eyes of the viewer from the brightest area of the image to all the other parts of the composition. In order to do so, I use a lens flare and some vignettin on the edges of the canvas. Regarding the lens flare, create a new layer, fill it with black, select the screen blending mode, then go to Filter -> Render -> Lens flare and you have your nice flare. I usually blur it with a Gaussian or motion blur that you can find in Filter -> Blur, in order to get rid of his ugly perfection. Now I place it on the top left corner of the canvas, where the light is coming from. I usually change is hue more on the yellow, so that it feels more natural. At this point, with a black airbrush, the same I used to indicate the clouds, I paint delicately with low opacity on the edges of the canvas, in order to make those areas darker.All this procedure is really important to make the image dramatic. As you can see from the image I placed the flare and the darkest areas along the diagonal of the frame. Now the lighting is following nicely the movement of the ships, which is the element I want to underline the most. STEP 5 The main elements of the images are now established. It’s time to start detailing out stuff. To paint quickly the ship I take the random image of a jet fighter. This is a great base to start with and the jet fighter has that dynamic shape I’m searching for. I place a couple of the same jet fighter in order to mimic

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Tutorial



Making of Airbattle the shape of the sketch. STEP 6, 7, 8 I now start painting on top of the base with the same brush I used to rough out the ships at the beginning . Not be scared to cover completely with the painting the photographs, remember that these are just a helpful base, eventually you want to create something new and completely different from the initial jet fighters. Keep painting, invent the new shape, and slowly make the pieces of the jet fighters disappearing. The most important thing is defining the shape with light and shadows, harmonizing the lighting of the ship with the lighting of the scene.

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Tutorial



Making of Airbattle STEP 9 The ship is now almost done. I clearly define all the edges to reach a fully finished look. To give a more photographic touch I place a texture on top of the painting with a soft light or overlay blending mode. You want something futuristic, that mimics the panels of a big sci-fi vehicle. Just writing something like “sci-fi texture” on google will give you tons of examples for this texture.

STEP 10 Before duplicating the ship let’s take care of the clouds. Grab from the internet a random clouds picture with the right lighting and place it on top of the rough sketch you did before. Blend the picture with the background using the same white airbrush you used at the beginning to indicate the clouds. Edges need to be really smooth and slowly fade out. www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial



Making of Airbattle STEP 11 Just some final refinements on the ship. Some lights to make the vehicle more exciting. I usually create them just grabbing random pictures of cities by night. In these pictures there are tons of small lights that you can cut out and put on your image with a screen blending mode. To enhance the effect you can put on top of these lights some really small lens flares as we did before. It can be even useful to create a black layer on top of everything, set the layer on color dodge blending mode and paint on top of the lights with an airbrush with a bright color. STEP 12 The only thing that we need to do at this point to accomplish the concept is just duplicating the ship we made in the other locations. Remember to put a thin layer of white painting on top of the two ships far away in order to make them look distant. That’s it! Our sci fi concept is done! Hope you enjoyed the tutorial! Website: http://www.francescocorvino.com Portfolio: http://francescocorvino.cgarena.com Email: [email protected]

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Have you created any art which is really exciting? The 2012 Calendar Wallpaper is a great way to inspire artists to create something on which whole community can proud. Now watch the talent on the monitor, every day of the year. 2011 Calendar (with artist name, email, and website) was downloaded by approx 48 million times. So, are you ready to shine on the CRT, LED, LCD, OLED monitors? Once again, We hope you will consider being a part of the 2012 calendar by submitting your entries!

Some Points to remember - You can submit 2D or 3D artwork of any nature like fantasy, cartoon, character, vehicle, horror etc. - Send your 2D artworks on [email protected] and 3D artworks on [email protected] please include the following details... -

Name - Your Real name Email - Your email address where email don’t bounce Website - Your Personal website, no blog or other websites link CGArena Portfolio URL - Leave blank if you don’t have CGArena Portfolio URL Country - Where you live or Working

You will receive the automated email about receiving the email. If you don’t receive the Autoreply within one hour then we don’t receive your entry, please send it again. - Artists may submit only 1 best image in both the categories created only in year 2011. There is no cost/ fee to submit artwork, so all artists are encouraged to submit their best artwork to be considered for the calendar. Please don’t spam or submit more than 1 image otherwise none of the image will be considered. - Please don’t submit untextured, incomplete, low-resolution images. - Submit the hi-resolution image of your artwork in jpeg, tiff or tga format. (300 Dpi and recommended minimum size 1920 x 1080 pixels) - Final 24 images will be selected by CGArena from all the submissions, so only the best one will find the place. Last Date of submission for calendar is 24th Dec 2011. On 1st Jan 2012 final wallpaper calendar will be available for free download.


Tutorial

by Ruslan ’ars’, Russia CGArena Software:

Making of a Cop

3ds Max, ZBrush

3D

Hi everyone, this is a short making of my pic ‘a cop’. There is no secret that every project starts from searching for references. So, I goggled a little and found some really serious American guys. The left picture in the top row with a Real McKenzie’s is my favourite of course. My idea was to make a series of images with a similar huge-head characters and one-style environments with box-stylized forms of the objects. Not all of them are ready for now; maybe I’ll finish all of them someday. But actually I guess it will never happen :) MODELING AND CHARACTER SETUP I’m not going too deep into the modelling process cuz it’s pretty simple here. I have nothing to say about environment modelling; mostly it’s just slightly modified cubes. As for the character I did a base mesh in 3ds max and then made some refinements in ZBrush, mostly for clothes. I didn’t want to make a rig for face and decide to do a morph targets. For this reason I copied my base mesh and sent it to ZBrush right away (it must be at the same position as the original mesh, otherwise it won’t work). I did just 4 morph shapes, it was more than enough to combine them in morpher and get the expression I needed. It’s even possible to make something absolutely crazy, like below. After that I did a character setup with CAT skeleton and skin modifier. Morpher must be under skin modifier in the modifier stack. Unwraps were done with a help of great UV master plug-in inside a ZBrush.

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Tutorial


by Ruslan ’ars’, Russia CGArena

Making of a Cop LIGHT SETUP My goal was to show an atmosphere of smoked-up jail ward. So, to simulate the sun I used yellowish target directional light with V-Ray shadows and multiplayer of 3. For skylight I turned on V-Ray GI environment, set it’s multiplier to 4 and make slightly yellow color. In the windows I put V-Ray sky portals to make interior brighten. I also wanted to make slight burns around the windows, and for this reason I put one more V-Ray light plane near each window and decreased their intensity to 0.5. But anyway, prison is a dark place I guess, especially with such small windows, so I needed some indoor lighting. For this I used 4 lights to lit the room and 4 more to improve character’s lighting. Here’s indoor lighting setup for scene and the character.

MATERIALS When I was happy with my clay render, it was time to work with materials. Usually at first I set the light up, www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial


Making of a Cop then assign materials to my geometry and after that tweak light a little bit according to materials. As scene is cartoonish, they are not very complicated. Mostly it’s standard V-Ray materials with diffuse, reflection and bump maps. On a rusty object I used V-Ray blend material mixed by V-Ray dirt. For character body V-Ray fast SSS2 were used with the settings and textures below...

For a scatter texture just a brighten version of diffuse map were used. RENDERING AND COMPOSITING V-Ray render settings are mostly default; I tweaked just a few parameters. Color mapping type was changed to reinhard with a burn value set to 0.8. I like this type of color mapping cuz it gives you full control over the burns, you can set it up to work like a linear multiply with a burn value of 1 or exponential with a www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial



Making of a Cop burn value of 0. In the indirect illumination tab post-processing saturation was set to 0.75 to decrease color bleeding effect. Irradiance map was set to medium with hsph. subdivs = 60 and interpolation samples = 30. Light cache was set to 1000. Everything else was left as it was...

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Tutorial



Making of a Cop I rendered main beauty pass, specular, zdepth, reflection and some other passes. Besides that, I rendered volume light pass separately. It could be done with scanline or V-Ray with GI turned off. You should also assign black material to all the objects in the scene. The only thing about this is that geometry must be solid; otherwise volume light will go through the walls. Shadow type of light should be set to shadow map. I also played with V-Ray environment fog a bit. It looks nice, but the problem is that it renders much longer than standard VL. Usually I render a lot of render elements and experimenting with all of them. When you work on personal project and have enough time - more is better than less :) Here’s the beauty render and VL pass. While compositing I usually work in 2 phases: at first I combine all my render passes, collapse them and then work with a new image until I’m satisfied with the result. So, here’s the final picture. Thanks for reading this! Actually there is nothing extraordinary, but I hope you have found something useful in this short project overview. If you have any questions - feel free to contact me on ars1024@ gmail.com

Portfolio: http://ars1024.cgarena.com Email: [email protected] www.cgarena.com

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CG Store Corner www.cgarena.com/store

CGArena

r|shaders - r|shaders is a collection of procedural shaders for 3ds max. The 1st release named “Core Zero” will be the foundation version and it will includes 8 different shaders to give the possibility to create many kinds of natural surfaces. Actual release includes the following shaders: Ice, Ocean, Sand, Snow, Ice Land, Snow Land, Magma and Ground. Majority of it was developed during R&D phases on commercial international projects like movie blockbusters, videogame cinematics, commercials etc. etc. Original Price - $ 149 | CGArena Price - $ 135

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CG Store Corner www.cgarena.com/store

CGArena

psd Manager 3.0 - psd-manager 3.0 is the first and most advanced PSD file exporter for 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design available on the market. Now, for the first time you can readjust nearly everything in the rendering with Adobe Photoshop or any another application that supports PSD files. psd-manager is the tool to help you save time and money by integrating the tools you best know and like. Saving the rendered image as a layer in a PSD file is an easy task; psd-manger can do this and much more. Original Price - $ 189 | CGArena Price - $ 179

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Tutorial


by Jay Mosquera, USA CGArena Software:

Making of Natalie

Photoshop

2D

I was inspired to make a portrait of Natalie Portman after watching her movie “Black Swan”. I’ve always been inspired and fascinated by human form, emotions, and characters. So for this painting, I wanted to create her likeness based on her photo and add my own character interpretation. With that idea I opened my Photoshop, created a new file (17” X 11”, 300dpi), picked a basic #13 & #19 brushes with an Opacity Jitter set to Pen Pressure, and started sketching using my Cintiq 21UX. I usually start with rough outlines on a tinted background…in this case I used medium warm gray. My focus here was to construct the basic forms, not on any details yet. Once satisfied with the outlines I created a new layer and applied darker gray to establish the shades “blocking”.

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Tutorial


by Jay Mosquera, USA CGArena

Making of Natalie At this point; in a new layer I applied a lighter grey color on some part of her face using basic #13 brush. I lowered the opacity of the outline layer, then, I switched to my “stipple” brush to gradually add darker shades

on her eyes and lighter shades on her face. This stage, I began introducing rough details to the location of the eyes, nose, lips and other facial features. I also added a lighter background layer.

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Tutorial



Making of Natalie

I smoothened the neck area & the hair area using “airbrush soft round brush”. Then I continued using stipple brush to add more details to the forehead and hair. This stage, I concentrated on her hair by adding some rough details and refining the edges.

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Making of Natalie More painting done here. I did some minor adjustments on her cheekbones & jaw area and I also worked on her hair using stipple, bristle and soft brushes. Painting hair is always tricky part. Since the mood of my picture is minimalistic, I focused on the curls and wisps and not on the hair strand, working more on the shapes, while slowly introducing the minimal highlights. Eyes and lips are my favorite parts of the human face. So here, I began to carefully introduce additional shadows and highlights. I also worked on the background…just loose and broad strokes to achieve painterly feel.

The picture was almost finished, time to add finishing touches. It looked OK, but a bit flat. I created new layer and painted additional highlights on the eyes, lips and earrings and I set the layer mode to “Screen”. I liked the result. www.cgarena.com

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Making of Natalie

I wanted to give it a subtle “vintage” feel so I decided to create a light warm filter layer then I set the opacity to 25%. Lastly, I added my mirror-image signature. The picture was considered finished! I hope you enjoyed reading this and you will find my tips and explanations helpful. Feel free to email me if anything seems confusing. Thanks for reading! Web: http://www.jaymosquera.com Portfolio:.http://elbertjay.cgarena.com Email: [email protected] www.cgarena.com

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by Jonfer Maia, Brazil CGArena Software:

Making of Steampunk Faith

3ds Max, Keyshot

3D

INTRODUCTION The idea of this project was to take all the objects from a Steampunk book and turn them into 3D (Some of them I designed by myself)! The objects were made by scrap in real life and I wanted to keep the same designs from the book. I had a lot of trouble trying to render it before… So, I rendered it in KeyShot with normal quality because my computer wouldn’t let me use any higher settings (I’m happy with the result though.) I did the background in Photoshop, like steampunk stuff hanging around in some paradise. REFERENCES

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by Jonfer Maia, Brazil CGArena

Making of Steampunk Faith MODELING PROCESS I started modeling it using splines following the “side reference” because I think it’s a good way to do that in this kind of shape. Then I started with the “front part”! I did not have any blueprint so I had to change the design and the symmetry a bit because this car concept is just a Reference, I did not want to match exactly with it. After guessing the symmetry and all that stuff I called it done! It’s time to place all the objects on it.

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Making of Steampunk Faith To put all the objects together I did a very quick sketch on Photoshop just to create the idea that I had in my mind, like placing all the objects and making the main design of it. The modeling process is pretty simple, I modeled in 3Ds max almost all of them using primitives and then I used chamfer and Smooth modifier (with autosmooth on) instead of using Turbosmooth because that would give me some crazy calculations. :-)

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KEYSHOT PROCESS So, Now that they are all placed together it is time to take them to keyshot and start shading it. I used “paint

and metal materials for all the parts except for the front robot’s case that I used wood. When I’ve done shading it I started looking for a nice perspective, I tweaked the camera and locked it when I found a nice position. With all that done I used nice HDRI for the lighting! Inside keyshot you can find some, but I used a custom HDRI that I’ve got on my personal library. Now it’s time to render this thing |o|! You can use any config you want, I used at normal quality cause my computer wouldn’t let me do any higher settings, Just change to normal quality option

Tutorial



Making of Steampunk Faith and Hit the “Render” button (If you are wondering why I did not tell you the render config... that is because when you select normal, good or whatever quality, keyshot does it automatically =D )! That’s it.

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Making of Steampunk Faith PHOTOSHOP PROCESS This is the final part and one of my favorite! Where you can use all your imagination and turn your dreams into “Reality” :-) . I wanted to do something like Retro/Vintage/ Steampunk/Fantasy. The first thing I did on this was the road, I placed the road according with the Clean render perspective that I imported from keyshot, after that I put some clouds and smoke textures to finish the back ground. When the background completed then I started the texturing using some high res textures that I have on my personal library like stains, scratches etc... You have to play with the Photoshop blend modes until you find the best looking for your textures, mask and start editing them! For the Final touch I used some Adjustment layers like Color balance, Levels, Hue saturation and Brightness/contrast. You can find all the textures you need on the internet.

So, I hope this tutorial can be any useful and you learn something from it. Thanks for reading!. Blog: http://jonfer3dartist.wordpress.com/author/jonfer3dartist/ Portfolio: http://jonfer.cgarena.com Email: [email protected]

Have you created your CG Por tfolio?

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Kazuhiko Nakamura, Japan [email protected] ZBrush

Benoit Patterlini, France [email protected] Lightwave

Aleksandr Kuskov, Ukraine [email protected] Maya, Mentalray

Nikita Veprikov, Ukraine [email protected] 3ds Max, ZBrush

Carles Gonzalez, Spain [email protected] 3ds Max, ZBrush

Guang Yang, Shanghai [email protected] 3ds Max, ZBrush

Ren Peng Dong, China [email protected] 3ds Max, Maya

Mohamed Abdelfatah, Egypt [email protected] 3ds Max, ZBrush

Nikita Veprikov, Ukraine [email protected] 3ds Max, ZBrush

Mathias Herbster, Germany [email protected] ZBrush, Photoshop

Miao Li, China [email protected] 3ds Max, Photoshop

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