CGArena

Get Attention in the Computer Graphics Community

VOLUME 6, ISSUE 2, APR - MAY 11

e Int s De
Cri

w a e i rv ar
L

Making of Turkish B u

Maya

tcher

P nting Sent of Pai

in Mak g

p man o h s a hoto Meg inel

3ds Max of the

Making ace l Dream P

Modo

Making of es My Little Fish

VOL

Get Attention in the Computer Graphics Community

Issue Contents
Volume 6, Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

05 18 24 36 46 54 62

Interview Photoshop 3ds Max Modo Maya Photoshop Gallery

Cris De Lara Painting Megaman Making of the Dream Place Making of My Little Fishes Making of Turkish Butcher Making of Sentinel Showcase of latest 3D art

Magazine Edited: Ashish Rastogi Magazine Cover Image: Yinxuan Li Dezarmenien Magazine Design: Yousef Ikhreis

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Industry News

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

CGArena AgiSoft releases PhotoScan

AgiSoft PhotoScan is an advanced image-based 3D modeling solution for creating professional quality 3D content from still images. Based on the latest multi-view 3D reconstruction technology, it operates on arbitrary images and is efficient in both controlled and uncontrolled conditions. The photos can be taken from any positions, providing that an object to be reconstructed is visible on at least two photos. Both image alignment and 3D model reconstruction is fully automated. Supported input formats: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, JPEG Multi-Picture Format. Supported output formats: Wavefront OBJ, 3DS Max, PLY, VRML, COLLADA, Universal 3D, PDF. There is also a free AgiSoft StereoScan version designed for an easy to use 3D modeling based on individual image pairs. Optimized for latest CPUs to take full advantage of the multi-core processor technology.

Thinkbox Software Releases Frost

Thinkbox Software, developers of Deadline and Krakatoa, announces the release of Frost, a fast and flexible particle mesher that allows artists to convert point clouds to geometry several times faster than other leading industry standard tools. Frost is a particle mesher plug-in for Autodesk 3ds Max which can generate a single mesh from particles, vertex clouds, object positions and point data files using various iso-surface or geometry cloning techniques. Frost takes full advantage of modern multicore hardware and can produce multi-million polygon meshes from millions of points in a matter of seconds without excessive processing memory usage. Frost integrates tightly with Krakatoa, Thinkbox Softwares production-proven volumetric particle rendering and management toolkit.

ZBrush Character Creation: Advanced Digital Sculpting, 2nd Edition - This second edition of ZBrush Character Creation has been fully updated for ZBrush 4, the newest version of this fascinating and popular 3D sculpting software. ZBrush enables users to create detailed organic models using a brush-based toolset and tablet. The startling results look as though theyve been painted with real brushes and oils, and ZBrush is increasingly popular for use in film, game, and broadcast pipelines. Author Scott Spencer movie credits include Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix and the upcoming The Hobbit.

Book Training

ZBrush Hard Surface Techniques - Mike Jensen goes into depth on many hard surface techniques in ZBrush. Mike starts off by explaining in detail many techniques like customizing the ui, creating meshes, brushes, and stamps. Next he then takes you through the process of creating an entire mechanical character and covers everything from starting with a concept mesh to creating a clean base mesh and detailing. Mike then takes the final model into 3ds Max and uses V-Ray to create materials and render out layer passes. This Training is perfect for those who want to learn how to create hard surface characters inside ZBrush.

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Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

CGArena

Cris De Lara
Q. Hello Cristina, can you give our readers a short introduction please; age, location, education, employment etc?

Dont like doing vulgar pinups or with any explicit sexual appealing in them...

Are you kidding me? A woman never tells her age, LOL, but lets say that I am just a little older than Megan Fox and much younger than Michele Pfeiffer. OK, I am around the 40s. Actually I am living in Canada, in a small city called Welland in Niagara Region, very close to Niagara Falls, USA border, but I never know my future location. It could be in USA or New Zealand depending on the job or job offer. My education.. I am graduated at Business Administration; in Arts., well I just studied in some private courses in Brazil to learn painting techniques, especially oil and charcoal. About drawing, I learned by myself. I was lucky because I always liked drawing and it was easy to me starting drawing and by practicing I got improvement in my skills. I also studied (long time ago in Brazil) Website development: Dreamweaver, Flash, HTML, and so on but never worked with that. I was more interested in the digital environment and the web design than the programming part itself. I also used to be a teacher for drawing and digital painting at university for game development post graduation program. Employment; well I worked as freelancer and under contract for TV Network Broadcast (TV Globo) in Brazil for four years, I worked in Comics Industry as colorist for five years, I worked for Newspaper as caricaturist and portraitist, I worked for Publishing as Children Book Illustrator and Painter, I worked for Colleges and Universities as Painting and Drawing teacher, I worked for AD agencies, Animation Studios wow, a lot of things done. Fortunately I learned a lot. But I always had my own business, my company, working as freelancer, like I am doing nowadays. I have my studio at home where I do my illustrations and paintings and my partner and husband does the web site work. Combined we can achieve a bigger market although the economy is slow and everybody fells the recession, that makes jobs more difficult each time. I also teach at my studio. For now, I have few students but things are getting better and I see good things on the road. Maybe it will take a little time but it is coming. www.cgarena.com Page 5

Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

CGArena

Cris De Lara
Q. You are creating Portraits, Caricatures, and Illustrations from many years, so you started it just as a hobby or did you see the potential for your career? As I said, I loved and still love doing portraits and caricatures, pinup art, fan art, actually I always have a sort of identity crisis in my work because I like so many things. I like portraits and also pinup art and also comic art, and also children illustration and also manga and so on that sometimes it is difficult to be focused in some style. I would like to live only for my pinups and portraits, but it is still not possible, so I need to do lot of things to get the money to pay the bills ;-) I was talking to my partner and we found out that actually I like to develop the characters in my drawings more than only drawing, I mean I love pinup art, but what really attracts me is drawing and painting one character that I just developed in my mind. I think about a situation and I come up with an illustration that is also a pinup and I look for the references and after that I start my pencil sketches before painting. So, coming to the subject I saw a potential for arts in my life although I did not realize that until twenty one or two years old (I lost lot of years because of that). Q. With freelancing, sometimes you work as a part-time teacher too, and as far as we know you enjoy the teaching a lot, can you tell us what you enjoy in the teaching and can you leave freelancing work for full time teaching? Lets see. Teaching is wonderful, is being alive, is exchanging knowledge, teaching is challenging, is motivating, is to be updated, is researching, and is simple. Something I really love. I like to teach kids, not so much the young ones, I prefer students after 10 years old and I like very much teaching seniors, but I am not saying that I do not like teaching students less than 10 years old OK. The point is that teaching such young students is more exhausting than the other ages. I really admire teachers that deal with junior Kindergarten up to grade 5. While I am teaching I am also practicing and studying with the students and I also learn about new comic characters, I learn about games, I have a lot of fun because I play music to them, I mean I ask them what www.cgarena.com

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Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

CGArena

Cris De Lara
kind of music they like but I stimulate them to draw listen to the music like soundtracks (manga, anime, games and movies: Superman, X-Men, Starwars, Twilight, God Of War, Shadow of Colossus, etc.) and they love that. Actually is like a hobby to me, it is a great pleasure and for older students, teenagers and around 20 years old I also play Jazz, Blues, New Age; you know my classes are really nice, a lot of learning and fun indeed. Leaving freelancing life to be full time teacher? I guess it is not possible, I mean even being a full time teacher I will be freelancer, perhaps much less workload but I wont stop. I have a theory that a teacher needs to be in contact with the industry, needs to work with clients and pass through all stress of dealing with clients (hahahahaha), working with other artist in teamwork, suffer the deadlines pressure, faces new programs and techniques in order to achieve clients expectations.. Being update and challenged every time. At least, I would continue producing my pinups and doing commissioning work for collectors, fans (portraits) and so on. I would like to say, clearly and to avoid mistakes that I do not think teachers are not professionals like freelancers. I respect and admire them very much (I am also a teacher), I just think, and this is my opinion, that I could not stand only in the academic environment, I should do something else and this is my nature, the way I am. Q. Do you do any preliminary drawings before you start painting, or do you just start and see what happens and how long on average would you spend on an image? I absolutely do a lot of sketches before starting painting. I do traditional pencil sketches, lot of them, especially if I have time. I can feel better the drawing and according to many sketches I do better is the result. I provide my client with pencil sketches to be evaluated and approved. After that I do a speed painting sketch to show how the colors will be and again client evaluates and approves. Only after that I start my final painting process. By doing this I can avoid updates and other tweaks problems. I follow strictly my clients instructions and references. www.cgarena.com Page 8

Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

CGArena

Cris De Lara

Q. In your portfolio we have seen lot of images of Pinups, can you please share why Pinups made the major part of your portfolio? Nice question! Well... I love pinups; I love the idea behind one good pinup, like a gag. I always liked Norman Rockwells job and style. He was able to show different emotions in one illustration in such simple and awesome way that it is my inspiration. At the same path I always admired Gil Elvgrens job, the way he painted the women in a simply but glamour way, provocative, sexy for that ages (not vulgar) and also simply. When I think about one new illustration I think about creating a new pinup mixing those masters styles and ideas. As I told before, I feel good creating a situation using pinups, just that. As if I am developing a character. I do all research and sketches and I love each phase of the image It is like that. I love drawing anatomy, and I can play with my pinups. Many times I use a manga or comic style in one pinup with a realistic painting and some people think the image is wrong or some perspective is not so nice, but they do not realize that image, I mean that girl is not a real girl, it is one stylized character. I do not use photos to do my pinups, I mean I use photos references of course but I draw my pinup, I do not www.cgarena.com Page 9

Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

CGArena

Cris De Lara
paint over photo, I go to my drawing table and I do pencil sketches, many of them first, looking at my references, the photos I got in Internet or magazines of course. Rockwell used to do that, Elvgren used to have models posing to him, so I have my references for sure. I show my sketches and steps from my work when I produce my pinups so the audience can see more than only the final image. This is why pinups are the majority in my portfolio.

Q. Can you share how to calculate the quote for the commissioned work, which things need to be remember so just dont give the shock to the client. I am a lucky artist because this part is with my partner Alexandre Stockler, hehehehehe. But basically this is what happens: We established a basic rate for my time, a minimum price which less than that is not worthy. When a client gives all the instructions, descriptions and references we measure how many hours I will spend working on that job and we get the raw price. We also calculate the costs with our structure, my partner time on dealing with client, making research, writwww.cgarena.com Page 10

Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

CGArena

Cris De Lara
ing e-mails, wrapping up and posting prints, when I am doing a commissioned pinup, for instance. We also add some extras and we got the final price. But one thing that is really important is asking for the client what his or her budget is because depending on how much client has sometimes we do not even get the job. Lets suppose that you would like me to do a realistic pinup for your girlfriend and you wish a lot of elements, a very complex scenario and so on something that would demand me more than 10 hours of work at least, and I mean only me working, and you have $100.00 as budget, it means that I will work for $10.00 hour and that is not nice. I prefer to do my own pinups and sell them in my online store and I can post them in forums like CGArena and have much more exposure that attracts better clients. Understand, we have a principle that is not refusing work, but there are some works that if we accept we will get problems more than anything else. When I say we I mean me and my partner. And we face situations like that which our client budget is below our minimum rate my partner tries to negotiate another type of job with our client, like a different image, less elements in the scene, an easier style of painting and so on. Nowadays, everybody feels the pressure of the tight economy and money for the job is difficult; we need to adapt our rates to our clients reality but there is a limit which I can not work below it. We say that to our clients, they know our quality, we work in time, we offer solutions instead of problems, we have a reputation, so if with all that issues the client still ask for less or tries to take advantage from us. Forget! We refuse the job. The relationship between freelancer and client should be friendly, for sure, and also respectful. If client does not respect the artist work, the job will be a great headache in many aspects. www.cgarena.com Page 11

Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

CGArena

Cris De Lara
Q. Please tell us about your company Artepixel? Whats your future plan? Well, I am co-founder and co-owner with my partner and husband. I am responsible for the artistic issues and he is responsible for the other issues. I do most of the artistic job. I draw, I paint, I teach, I supervise other artists; actually I am the one that produces the images everybody sees. Sometime we get projects that I can not work in, so we hire other artist to work with us. I deal with the client and my third party artist like an art director while my partner, Alex Stockler, does the project management. He is the one that supports me with artistic things, I mean he is skilled in many things, he helps me with basic colors, I mean, he applies basic colors in the pinups when I ask, he does the artline with inking (traditional and digital way), he provides me references when needed and a lot of other things. But his main tasks are dealing with clients, plan things for the company, he come up with suggestions for new pinups, he searches for products for the company, for instance if we need an external HD, he is the one that will get it, he evaluate hardware, software and other materials, he prepares our educational material and even does the page layout, the graphic design and so on. His background is engineering, but he graduated as Web designer at Niagara College in 2010 and he does our websites and provides all the web services for our clients. Plans for the future.. well, we have planned to open a drawing and painting course: comic, manga, anime, portraits, traditional painting and also start selling our products, pinup t-shirts, prints, sculptures, and other things like game cards, comic books, and so on beyond our activities as art studio. We have plans about stories we have written and we would like to make them comic books, art books, etc., and having our own students we could train them and the best ones we could offer them an internship to start working with us. So we could train our own artists and for the students it could be a very good opportunity to start at the market. For now, we just need some more money, perhaps a partner. We are looking for some options and partners in Canada, but we are also open to other proposals. We will get it, we will get our company even if takes a little more time than we expected. www.cgarena.com Page 13

Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

CGArena

Cris De Lara
Q. Various times we heard the negative point of view of female painters on painting the nude female to represent the skills or art or as a piece of entertainment, so as a female painter whats your viewpoint on this? Hummm, this is a very interesting point, but I prefer not to judge it. I have a very business opinion about that. First of all, what is ART? How can we define ART? How can we judge ART? It is very, very, I mean a huge mistake to standardize that because art is personal, is dynamic, is social, and is an ever changing issue. Art has its own niche, and a lot of people like nudity, the adult audience for sure and we can see one Gil Elvgrens nude painting as one wonderful piece of art however the model is naked. We can also have some photographers work using a porn star girl as model and the photos were really nice, or we can have a painting of a couple having sex but with beautiful expressions, in a suggestive pose and so on that the image will be beautiful, on the other hand we can have the same models in a very aggressive and vulgar pose that wont be well accepted by the audience. I think that nude art depends on how the artist shows it and for which audience the artist will show it too. I like to paint female figure and women sell better than men, period, there is no sexual orientation or preference on that, just artistic and business preference. I do not like doing vulgar pinups or illustrations that remember pornography or that be offensive or anything like that. Once, long time ago, Alex was asked if we were gays (LOL), because I paint women, pinups and female themes very well like if I were a man and our logo looked like the gay flag, I mean the colors of our logo. Geez, so may bullshit from one person but we though about that and we had some conclusions. I paint pinups and women because I prefer and because sell better and it does not mean only men draw women nice, that is ridiculous. If so, I could say that a comic book penciler that draws superheroes and prefer drawing men is gay because he does not draw women? www.cgarena.com Page 14

Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

CGArena

Cris De Lara
We have nothing against gays, we have gay friends and we respect everybody. About our logo, Alex created a logo based on the color wheel with our name, Artepixel, something very cool in our opinion, actually he designed many logos and we chosen that one. It was not related to the colors of the gay pride but with the colors of the color wheel. We never thought that could be any relation our work with pinups with being gay, but if someone made a comment, so other people could think the same. Anyway, since nobody is offended, we can deal with that. Just to finish this point, I think that the artist should respect his audience and be sensitive to them. If the artist does a pornographic naked woman painting, he should show it in the right form, for adult audience only. If he does a cute, sexy provocative cheesecake girl he could show it in other forms, but be respectful. The niche, the audience will follow the artist with the connection is made. I just not like doing vulgar pinups or with any explicit sexual appealing in them, although I know that when it is provocative is really interesting and sells better. Q. Please tell us about your favorite picture till date and which picture was very difficult to paint and why? Wow, that is easy and I say everytime: Abighail. I mean the Jolly Halloween 2007 character. That is my logo, my mascot, my favorite one, although is not the best one. I am working on her to present another project with that character. The most difficult actually I guess there are two of them: Nadja and Mothers Day 2009 because there were a lot of details in them, many references and I did between clients projects. They are big, originally 18x 24 inches and took a lot of processing time in my machine. We would like them perfect but I think they could be better at the end. www.cgarena.com Page 15

Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

CGArena

Cris De Lara
Q. What other interests do you have that help influence your work and keep you motivated? Well, beyond pinup art and portraits I like fantasy art, fashion art very much. Sometimes it is difficult to define because I like so many different things, I like Fantasy Art, images with warriors, monsters, mythology and so on, but at the same time I love cute children images, I love to see caricatures, especially when they are well done. I also love watching movies, listen to the movies soundtracks. I like comics, especially graphic novels, but I do not have much patience to read regular comic books because some stories are weak, I mean the argument or the drawings they do not stimulate me, but with graphic novels are different, the content is more interesting and when I say graphic novels I do not mean only Superheroes stories, I also like cartoon style like Will Eisner, Asterix and so on. But I would say what influences me is reading a lot of art books. Yes, I am always reading art books, I go to the public library and rent some books just to see the content and learn something new.

Q. What are your hobbies and please describe your free time, if you have any or are you the kind of lady who lives for her work all the time? My hobbies are reading art books, magazines like International Artists, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stones, and fashion magazines (in general). I love watching movies, and ride my bicycle (in spring and summer, sometimes in fall too when the temperature is OK; in Canada is very cold). Although I do have my hobby time, whenever I am doing something, like watching movies or going to a coffee shop to have a cup of coffee, or when I go out to have dinner I am always with my sketchbook and I start drawing someone at the same place and so on. My sons already know it and, for instance, when we went out to anywhere, I always have my sketchbook and I look for an opportunity to start drawing someone, it is like a game among us (they also draw). At the same time I could say that when I am having fun I also works and I work with something that gives me fun.. Wow, you know, my job is really cool (LOL).

www.cgarena.com

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Interview with

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

CGArena

Cris De Lara
But sure, at home with my family we have our hobby time. We always read some book together, we draw, we play cards for instance, we develop characters and stories, we watch movies and TV series, and we are a very calm family. Q. Can you give few tips for the upcoming artists? I should say to chose an artist as reference to follow his/her style and practice a lot, always practice to improve your skills. Whenever you are doing anything than drawing or painting, for instance, have you sketchbook with you and practice. Look for good references, beyond the traditional way of learning, I mean look at movies (see the extras of a movie when you buy the DVD), magazines, go to the libraries, increase your network by being member of websites and forums like CGArena, and show your work. Do not be afraid of showing what you do and be ready for the comments. Q. Anything you like to add? It is your chance now to state your opinion about anything? I would like to thank you for the interview, I loved the questions and it is very important for the artist to receive promotion and exposure. I may say that all my work is always done with a huge passion and care to offer to my audience the best of me. Not every time we will please every body but my concerns are sharing my art with quality, good content and in a unique style which people will look at my images and think: Hum. I know this artist, I know this style, it is Cris De Lara. Being an artist is a great responsibility because we motivate and influence people, so we must do it in the good way, showing good examples, offering good knowledge. The world needs us to create better things in all ways and art is, for sure, one of the best areas to do that.

Web: http://www.crisdelara.com

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Mark Hansen, Australia CGArena Software:

Painting Megaman
I started out with a rough sketch based on the idea that I had seen in the reference image of Megaman and his bird ship. I tried finding an interesting composition of Megaman flying towards the camera through this sketching stage. I already had a rough idea for the colors so I wanted to block out the sky, clouds and ground colors with an opaque and semi transparent brush. In the next stage I blocked out the flat base colors for the characters and the ship. Keeping in mind what time of day it is (the suns position) and where the light source is coming from. This I can use to show the specularity in the metallic surfaces and where the casted shadows will go.

Photoshop

2D

Now I have my background, characters and all other elements. I laid a grid down and divide the image by 9 rectangles. I also added an off page vanishing point to use as a guide for composition and perspective. I tried to avoid having boring void spaces in the sky or clouds so I shifted the things around to build up some interest in those areas. At this stage I also flipped the image to make sure things looked right when mirrored and the image isnt too heavily weighted on one side only.

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Mark Hansen, Australia CGArena

Painting Megaman
With the perspective and composition done, I hide the base colors of the characters and begin to work more carefully on the line drawing. This stage is mainly about the design and appeal of the characters. If something is not looking right I erased it or drew on the top of it on another layer. Then with selection and lasso tools I paint bucket fill what will be the base for the final painting.

Im fairly happy with line drawing (on a separate) layer so I go back to the painting. Using the previous rough color base I made before, I used that as a guide or palette for my final coloring/painting stage. With the preserve transparency lock on the color base layer, I began to paint away. Using mainly a round hard brush with opacity and flow set on 5070% using alt click color pick, I render the overall image and tweak colors that need adjustment.

Now that Im done using the line drawing I merged it with the color base layer and painted some more. Once the palette is down and Im happy with the overall value and lighting of the image I moved on, to clean up areas in the whole image. This stage was more about making sure no areas look unfinished or rushed and that there was a good balance of hard edges and soft paint strokes or gradients where suitable. www.cgarena.com

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The final stage is mostly polishing and adding fx; subtle glows, bounce light, solar shines on metallic surfaces, interesting colors in shadows etc. Its also helpful to take breaks from looking at the image and then came back with fresh eyes to look at it and the areas that need adjustment will usually stand out straight away. The very last step I did was that I flattened the whole image and added subtle vignette on the edges with an air brush on multiply mode and with same brush on color dodge mode, a light touch on the central area where I wanted the focus on star of the image.

Web: http://markyzan.blogspot.com Email: markhansendiaz@gmail.com

16th Conference on Animation, Effects, Games and Interactive Media 3 - 6 May, 2011, Stuttgart, Germany

CONTRIBUTE INTERACT PARTICIPATE

Come and visit us this spring. Discover why we are Europes premier conference on animation, games, visual effects and interactive media. This year we discuss the hottest topics taking place in the industry, including a fresh look at Stereo 3D, an overview of recent developments in Lighting and Rendering, the impact of Open Source software and the way New Interfaces create new opportunities. We will present on the Transmedia Challenge, Global Production, Visual Arts for Games and on the changing art of Visual Effects. In addition there will be the Virtual Humans Forum, selected SIGGRAPH and Eurographic Papers, new Commercials, new Chinese Animation and the most influential companies from France, Spain and Germany. Participate in Tech Talks, Workshops and Masterclasses, the Trade Floor, the School Campus and the Recruiting Booths; go to our Screenings and two Parties! Visit Stuttgart during FMX and see our partner events, Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film, May 3 - 8 and the Animation Production Day, May 3 - 4. For FMX program and early-bird tickets visit

www.fmx.de

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Vladimir Kostyuchek, Russia CGArena Software:

Making of the Dream Place

Lets begin!

3ds Max

3D

Hello! My name is Vladimir Kostuychek, aka Sacr. I am currently living and working in Voronezh. In this article I will discuss the process of creating this work, entitled The Dream Place.

I wanted to do a similar job from long time, but as they say, something hands did not reach , and some lack of knowledge stopping the beginning of creation of this work. I decided to start developing own ideas and compositions, I have also created the WIP in the forum, where I represented the process of creating this work, listen to the criticism, suggestions and other comments to the draft . In this artwork, I used the following programs: 3DS Max 2009, V-Ray, Photoshop, Fusion, Onyx Tree. First of all, I created a primitive stage throughout the compositions in 3ds max, because I cannot draw, often have to make the whole idea in my head and then create an overall picture of primitives in 3D.

Of course, the final camera angle and composition were not chosen at once, as shown in the picture, had to tinker for a while, however, received a share of criticism from people, I eventually came to what we have now.

www.cgarena.com

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Vladimir Kostyuchek, Russia CGArena

Making of the Dream Place

So, at first modeled the house. Scattered density of the grid is not big in some places, the question arises - why? Where the density of the mesh is little, mostly in the house of the wall, where I used VrayDisplacementMod, at the rest of the places was enough to pull an acceptable quality of geometry. Lighthouse with a small house was created on the same principle as the main house in the foreground.

I will not describe the process of the modeling of all the objects because everyone understands and nothing unique. The only thing I wanted to add - all the objects I have deliberately made a little uneven, and slightly bent with the curvature, which gave a fantastic effect in the final image. TEXTURING I have skinned all the work in the old fashioned way, making the sweep in 3DS Max or Unfold3d, and then worked in Photoshop with these scans. Next as an example I will describe the process of texturing on the walls of the lighthouse. So first I made a sweep of the main wall of the lighthouse. Then picked up the basic texture of the wall (1), imposed a scan and adjusted to the format. The next step was to add the texture of the crack (2). Then on the wall were added to the in homogeneity, some spots; taking texture (4), I lost the regimes and to me quite approached Color Burn opacity of 50. Next, you need at the top of the lighthouse to begin to flow, what typically happens in these corners. Texture (3) was taken and posted on the sweep to the right place; at least for the contrast of the form I put away a little transparency. In the same way at the bottom, near the ground, you had to do www.cgarena.com Page 26

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Vladimir Kostyuchek, Russia CGArena

Making of the Dream Place

something similar with the texture of (5), I also worked with the modes and choose Linear Light with transparency 82, laid it all together in the order of 1 +2 +3 +4 +5 and got the result as in the picture shown.

In principle, nothing complicated, most importantly - work with regimes that understanding where and what should be on the texture and get a good result. The same method of texturing was used in other parts of the scene. What the result was I left on you to judge. ADDING TO THE SCENE DETAILS Then I started adding to the scene many different parts such as barrels, shovels, rakes, cart, stones and so on. For a variety of scenes Ive done chickens around the parameter of the yard, also for the beauty of patio, I added lot of flowers, which gave the work its beauty. The figure below shows examples of some models: Grass and Trees Separately, I would like to create grass. Before making the grass, I tried several variants of its creation, such as Alphas or special plug-ins to www.cgarena.com Page 27

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Vladimir Kostyuchek, Russia CGArena

Making of the Dream Place

create it, but remember that in V-Ray has a great tool for creating these kinds of things - VrayFur. So, what is good in VrayFur? In my opinion, the fact that he has the ability to manage the growth of hair (or in this case grass) with maps. The below picture shows the settings of VrayFur, used in my scene. In my case I used 3 cards: Length map (Responsible for length / height of the grass), Gravity map (for snuggling fur / grass to the earth gravity) and Density map (responsible for the density of growth of wool / blades). Below pictures are maps which are drawn by me Gravity and Length Map

Density Map

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Vladimir Kostyuchek, Russia CGArena

Making of the Dream Place

Apply a texture to the grass is very simple, just select VrayFur and assign it a material with the desired texture. Firstly, created the stained blade of grass that lies beneath the colored grass.

In the end I got this grass...

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Vladimir Kostyuchek, Russia CGArena

Making of the Dream Place

The trees were taken from the library program OnyxTree and then a little further elaborated by me in 3ds Max. For the background trees are quite acceptable.

LIGHTING AND POST-PROCESSING In my opinion, one of the most interesting stages of creating this work - its lighting and post-processing. From this stage depends on half of the success of your work. Before beginning the stage of lighting, I pondered over what lighting option to choose, day or sunset. After many thoughts I decided to do the sunset, because the sunsets are always beautiful and the colors will be soft and warm. In my work I walked around with just one light source, Target Direct, the picture below shows the location of the source and its setup.

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Vladimir Kostyuchek, Russia CGArena

Making of the Dream Place

So, the whole scene is ready, you can start the final rendering. The final render I had to split into 3 parts: 1. hill with trees and the sea 2. Lighthouse with its island and the bridge 3. Directly himself a house with a yard. All the images been rendered with an alpha channel to the final post-processing could assemble the whole picture.

This was done to accelerate the process of rendering the entire scene, since there are many objects, and the whole scene weighs more than 5.5 million polygons.

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Vladimir Kostyuchek, Russia CGArena

Making of the Dream Place

I have also been rendered a few passes for each of the three images, such as Z-Depth and WireColor, to assist in the final post-processing.

For the background image I have chosen just such a beautiful picture of heaven. Now youre ready for the final layout and image post-processing. As the main tool I used the compositing program Fusion. This tool is exceptionally good of its convenient nodes of a system that allows the flexibility to work with all components of images and video. Also very convenient to build a chain of transformations on an image 1 times, and then, in this case, all passes pre render it again and just replace the images and their path in the corresponding nodes. In the picture below shows my chain of transformations:

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Page 32

Finally, I brought a picture in Photoshop, and as a result I got an interesting picture: Thank you for your interest in my work and all the success!

Portfolio: http://sacr.cgarena.com Email: Sacred111@mail.ru

CG Store Corner
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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Yinxuan Li Dezarmenien, France CGArena Software:

Making of My Little Fishes

Modo, Maya

3D

Hey there, I m so happy to be here and thanks to CGArena to give me the opportunity to share my workflow with you. A little bit about me, I am a freelance character artist working from France and I made this character during some spare time. Lets get down to business. First of all I always start by sketching the idea of how the final image will look. I really think its one of the most important step, to put your ideas on paper, it clarify your mind for later on when youll start using mouse and all these fancy 3d softwares, be sure of where you are heading will save your time later on. Never give up on paper and pencil. Also I like to have my character standing in a natural pose, as you can see on this frame she is just standing up looking at us. She looks like a bit proud of herself it also gives me the idea of her mood. I will use that image as a reference and jump right into Modo and start modeling. I always start with some basic shape for the body, nothing complex just to get the idea of the volume and the I refining the shape step by step, adding details. I am working on the eye Socket, the nose, and the cheeks, giving volume to every thing and always having a look at my drawing. Same things for the hair, I used very simple volume and I refined it. I also used different Grey tone to have a better contrast like here the eyebrow appear in a darker grey then the skin, same thing for the eyes. Remember to always start with simple shape of your volume and add details on it.

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Yinxuan Li Dezarmenien, France CGArena

Making of My Little Fishes

The textures are pretty easy just simple diffuses for everything except the skin who also have a SSS, no use of bump map or normal map. Mental Ray will give me everything I want later on.

Setup the character is also pretty easy I used the Maya script : AdvancedSkeleton. You can find it on Creative Crash. And then going for the skinning, the only fancy thing I did was to use a simple Ncloth for the skirt, and of course after that I am going to do the posing. www.cgarena.com Page 38

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Yinxuan Li Dezarmenien, France CGArena

Making of My Little Fishes

As soon as the character is posed I started tweaking everything, the facial expression, shoes, hair, the bent of the arms and legs. I am not adding any polygons at this stage, but I moving vertices and polygons to obtain the facial expression I am looking. A nice bent on the elbows and knees, no polygons interact with each other. And so on. I am doing this by using the Soft Modification tool and Soft Selection Tool.

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Yinxuan Li Dezarmenien, France CGArena

Making of My Little Fishes

Now lets see the rendering, again nothing fancy. 1) Switching to Mental Ray (but of course) 2) Uncheck Enable Default Light in the panel Render Options 3) Quality preset is set to production 4) Final Gathering is Activated. On the panel Indirect Lighting, click on Image based lighting and on the Type drop down menu select Texture. Click on the texture button and pick a Ramp. 5) For this illustration I used 4 lights, you can see the different parameters here.

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Yinxuan Li Dezarmenien, France CGArena

Making of My Little Fishes

I created the background directly in Maya. For this image I am pretty straight forward, I just did the render in one single pass, not use the Ambient Occlusion pass, shadow pass, texture pass, Spec pass, Fancy pass, blahblah pass. Everything is on one pass. The reason is, I just want to have fun, artistically speaking I just dont want to spend too much time in tweaking around this different passes on Photoshop. Rendering from Maya and different kind of fishes Ill use to compose in the final image. This little fellow will be drawn in Photoshop. In Photoshop I only have few layers. One layer for the fishes, 3 layers for the seaweed, the green line in the middle, the color and the contour line. For the oil pencil effect I used the free brush set: Blurs good brush-4.1 Pro. Then I have one layer for the gradient all around the image.And a last one for my website :). That pretty much it!

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Yinxuan Li Dezarmenien, France CGArena

Making of My Little Fishes

Here the final version after 12 days of work. Thank you for your time reading my tutorial I hope you enjoyed it, if you want to see more of my characters you can visit my website

Web: http://www.tyanim.com Email: li_yinxuan@hotmail.com

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

Have you created your CG Por tfolio?

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Ahmet Arif Eken, Turkey CGArena Software:

Making of Turkish Butcher

Maya, V-Ray

3D

Hello everybody. My name is Ahmet Arif Eken. I am a freelance 3d illustrator specialized in advertisement in Turkey. I couldnt work on personal projects for 2 years since I was busy with commercial works. I did this project in my one week vacation. It was a quick work so I didnt draw any sketches. I tried to enhance the composition by modeling and making test renders. My idea is based on the butchers I had seen in my childhood. This butcher is working in a not so clean environment but hes good at what hes doing. This shop is his fathers legacy and he is bounded with family traditions. I wanted to achieve a live scene with angles, lights and composition. As if we are waiting there for our order and looking at each other...

Because I started this project without any sketches I started with ZBrush; the fastest platform I can produce sketch form. I modeled the head first with default sphere. Then I reconstructed the head with Topogun after making his shirts with ZSphere. I reconstructed the t-shirt with ZBrush retopology tool. Actually there are not much differences with both tools basically, Topogun is more professional and controllable. www.cgarena.com Page 47

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Ahmet Arif Eken, Turkey CGArena

Making of Turkish Butcher

I constructed the scene simply using cube and sphere before I started other modelings, to see the angle and lights in general. Then I made sketches on test renders in order to see what I can add to the composition.

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Page 48

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Ahmet Arif Eken, Turkey CGArena

Making of Turkish Butcher

I modeled everything in Maya except the man model. I think if you know what youre doing and got some sketches or reference visuals then polygonal modeling is more controllable and fast. Of course ZBrush is better when it comes to fast sketching and creating forms. I modeled hands in Maya because its more logical to create the form properly from scratch than reconstructing its topology. I think using different tools through a project keeps you focused and you dont get bored.

By the way I made details for the character in ZBrush, and painted its diffuse texture.

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Ahmet Arif Eken, Turkey CGArena

Making of Turkish Butcher

Every UV belongs to man model in scene has been created by UV tool. I used Maya UV tool for the objects I modeled in Maya.

I used V-Ray SSS material for the skin of the man. I did not see any reason to use displacement map since I imported head and arms in high polygon level. Only normal map is applied to them. Wall, cutting wood, apron and t-shirt are coated with displacement map. Textures on character are in 4096X4096 pixels. I painted diffuse maps by hand. I used V-Ray materials and V-Ray rect lights. To simulate daylight, I used a main light, a fill light and a light for ceilings reflections and another for choppers reflections.

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Page 50

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Ahmet Arif Eken, Turkey CGArena

Making of Turkish Butcher

I made some test renders for posing and materials. I used shave and haircut tool and I drew intensity map in Photoshop. I rendered in mental ray with different render pass.

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Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Ahmet Arif Eken, Turkey CGArena

Making of Turkish Butcher

Because I have to make very high resolution renders for my professional works, I wanted to render this in high resolution too. Besides I can see the mistakes better in high resolution renders. I rendered this work in 7000X5250px. Irradiance calculation takes very much time as resolution gets bigger. Thats why I have a trick for these kinds of big resolution renders.

For instance I save the irradiance calculation result in vrmap format after I make a test render in 1500 pixels. When I make the final render I use this from file. So I can make high resolution renders without much loss and computing power I made pass renders because its more control-

lable in compositing. So I could make some artistic retouch at the final stage. It was a fast and fun project for me. I feel happy after one year I could make a personal project. I hope my mini tutorial is helpful for you and fun too. Blog: http://ahmetarifeken.blogspot.com Email: ahmetekn@gmail.com www.cgarena.com Page 52

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Bob Nolin, USA CGArena Software:

Making of Sentinel

Photoshop

2D

Though I painted the bald eagle portrait, Sentinel, using a Wacom digital tablet, the method I use comes directly from my many years as a traditional watercolor painter. In the traditional method, I would trace a photograph, using a lightbox or a projector, and then transfer the drawing to watercolor paper. This is a long and tedious process, but I cant paint without a complete line drawing. I never liked doing the drawing part. I just wanted to get painting! So when I began to paint digitally, I was thrilled to find a way to create the line art in just a few minutes, rather than days. The line art can be made visible or invisible, at will. It can be faded out as the painting progresses, and then deleted at the end. In this walkthrough, Ill show you my technique for creating a quick and accurate line drawing using Photoshop (CS3 or later). If you have an earlier version, theres a work around. If you prefer to create the line art manually, by all means do so, and just skip ahead to the next section, where I will show how I applied a transparent watercolor technique to digital painting. CREATING THE LINE ART Open the file in Photoshop, and then duplicate the background layer (click and drag the Background layer down to the duplicate layer icon in the Layers palette). We need to turn this duplicate into a black and white image, and the best way to do this is to use the Black and White image adjustment, available since CS3. (If you have an earlier version, use Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.) Go Image > Adjustments > Black & White. In the Black and White dialogue, choose Maximum White from the presets. Depending on the photo, you may find that another preset works better. The goal is to maintain the full range of values from dark to white, with as much detail showing as possible. Rename Background Copy as Image-Adj-Black&White Max White. This way your layers become self-documenting, for future reference. Copy the Image-Adj-Black&White Max White layer (click and drag the layer down to the new layer icon), and Invert it (go Image > Adjustments > Invert). Rename the layer Copy Inverted. Change this layers blending mode from Normal to Color Dodge. The image should vanish, leaving you with a blank & white image. Sometimes (and this is one of those times), a high contrast image with www.cgarena.com Page 55

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Bob Nolin, USA CGArena

Making of Sentinel
dark blacks will not work well with Color Dodge. Try, instead, Linear Dodge. Use whichever makes the image disappear. If a little bit is still showing, dont worry. Now, with a bit of Photoshop magic, we will create a line drawing from this apparently empty image. Make sure the Copy Inverted layer is active. Go to Filter > Other > Minimum. This is a filter youve probably never used before. The Minimum filter dialog shows some odd, blocky stuff in its preview. Just ignore that, and pay attention to the image itself. Slide the Radius setting down to 1, and if the lines are too faint, keep sliding to the right until the lines are distinct. If you use too high a Radius setting, the lines may become too heavy. Dont worry if the lines are rather pale, as they are here. Well darken them up next. Click OK. Add a Curves Adjustment Layer (go Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves). Click the middle of the curve line, and drag it down just until the lines are darker. Save the file, and then flatten the image (Layers > Flatten), and save it with a new name. The line drawing is done! GETTING READY TO PAINT In a traditional painting, the line drawing is underneath all the paint. Towards the end of a typical watercolor, some of the lines become covered over with pigment. Not so in the digital painting world. We will make the line art layer the topmost layer, and keep it there until were done. After flattening, were left with a single layer, the Background Layer. Click on the name of the layer, and type a new name: Line art. Now add a new layer (Layer > New Layer, or just click on the new www.cgarena.com Page 56

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Bob Nolin, USA CGArena

Making of Sentinel
layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette). Fill this layer, using the Paint Bucket, with a solid color. If this were a portrait of a person, Id pick a mid-range flesh color, as a base. For Sentinel, I chose a light blue, since this is the color of the light (from the sky - the photo was taken outdoors), and it influences all of the middle to light colors. In traditional painting, this is known as toning a canvas, and was typically done with burnt umber or gray. The goal is to replace the stark white with a middle value, between the brightest whites and darkest darks. All colors you add will be either darker or lighter than this background color. Lock this layer by clicking on the Lock icon at the top of the palette. Click and drag it so that it is below the Line Art layer. Highlight the Line Art layer, and lock it, too. This will prevent you from accidentally painting on the wrong layer. I usually have only one layer unlocked at any given time. Insert a blank, transparent layer (Layer > New Layer) in between the Line Art and the background blue color layer. Leave it unlocked. Okay, so now were ready to paint...almost. We need to do something to the line art layer. This was one of those ah-ha moments for me, when I learned how to do this, so forgive me, those of you who already know what Im about to explain. This part is very important. With the blending mode set to Normal, the Line Art layer is opaque. Its at the top of the layer stack, and we cant see through it to the layers below. But, by changing the blending mode to Multiply, suddenly the white seems to disappear. Multiply doesnt see the white at all. So now the Line Art layer is, essentially, transparent. Pretty neat, eh? Now when we paint on the middle layer, we can see the paint. For Sentinel, we want a pure black background, coming right up to the edge of the eagle. The Minimum filter has given us a nice, fat outline, which makes painting up to the edge a breeze. www.cgarena.com Page 57

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Bob Nolin, USA CGArena

Making of Sentinel
BEGINNING TO PAINT Before painting, rename the new middle layer Black. Choose a solid black and a round brush with just little hardness. I tend to use brushes with a little blurriness to them. Paint on the Black layer until all of the background area is covered. Reduce the brush size down, and zoom in, to paint in between the feathers sticking out. In traditional watercolor painting, the first step is called blocking in. You paint thin areas of color, to begin establishing the forms. When this paint dries, you continue to develop the color and detail by adding thin washes or glazes of color. Towards the end, the brush contains quite a bit of pigment, and less water. In the blocking-in stage, a large brush

is used. Brush size gets smaller, generally, towards the end, to paint the details. Well use a similar method in our digital painting. We need to add at least one empty layer, to paint the eagle itself. I prefer to keep major elements on separate layers, as show in picture in left. Use whatever method works best for you. Ive got most of the initial color blocking done. Resist the temptation to start painting details. Use a largish brush and low opacity (20-30% or so), and airbrush in light layers of color. For the beak, the color is rather heavy, but the feathers stay light at this point. Notice how the line drawing remains visible (see the beak, for instance). I have begun to develop the eye. THE EARLY STAGES Ive turned off all but the Background, Black and Feather layers. With the Line Art turned off, you can see how loose things are here in the beginning stages. Were still blocking in colors, really, though in smaller www.cgarena.com Page 58

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Bob Nolin, USA CGArena

Making of Sentinel
areas, with more accuracy. Little by little, the details become more concrete. But at this stage were using low-opacity and a very soft brush. Many digital painters use a very hard-edged brush in the early stages. This is very foreign to me, due to my many years of watercolor painting. Again, use the method that works best for you. My approach is to start off blurry and slowly bring the image into focus, using smaller brushes and higher opacity. Like watercolor, the paint in Photoshop is transparent at lower opacities. It acts very much like watercolor or colored pencil, at least the way that I use it.

REFINING THE DETAILS You can see how I handled the feathers in the front, which are partially lit by sunlight. Notice how theres little or no hard edges in the feathers, and not much detailing. Painting sunlit feather areas is mostly a matter of getting the shadows and lights right. You dont need to paint every single filament of feather. I used a harder www.cgarena.com Page 59

Tutorial

Issue 2 Apr - May 2011

by Bob Nolin, USA CGArena

Making of Sentinel
edged, small brush, and zoomed way in to paint the mouth part of the beak. It took about 40 hours to paint Sentinel. I just look very carefully at my source photo, and try to match what I see. I use the color picker to choose color from the photo, but usually I adjust it to suit the painting. For instance, the blue cast from the sky is played up a bit, compared to the photo. The beak is more brilliant, and seems to be translucent, which is not the case in the photo. Heres the final result. Thanks to Joshua Sexton for permission to use his original photograph as reference.

Web: http://www.bobnolin.com Portfolio: http://bobnolin.cgarena.com Email: bob@bobnolin.com

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Yaroslav Grigorash, Ukraine erigoart@gmail.com Maya, ZBrush

Dani Garcia Forns, Spain woody@woodys3d.com 3ds Max, ZBrush

Andreas Aust, Russia andreas.aust@pixomatix.de 3ds Max. Mudbox

Paolomu, Italy paolo.mu@tin.it Cinema 4D

Bruno Hamzagic, Brazil jadecilcleton@gmail.com Maya. ZBrush

Adrian Corsei, Romania acorsei@gmail.com Maya, Mental Ray

Nicolas Richelet, France contact@nicolasrichelet.com 3ds Max, V-Ray, Photoshop

Dennis Petkov, UK ragevvorks@gmail.com 3ds Max, ZBrush, Photoshop

Victor Hugo Queiroz, Brazil vitorugo@mail.com 3ds Max, VRay, ZBrush

Mohamed AbuYhia, Egypt abuyhia@hotmail.com 3ds Max, VRay

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Upload Images through Website

Follow this link http://www.cgarena.com/submit.php This is by far the quickest and easiest way to send your images to us.