3D World

ARTIST Baolong Zhang SOFTWARE Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop, Unreal Engine 4 The biggest challenge that professional 3D artist Baolong Zhang faced on this project was creating the character’s photorealistic hair. “He’s got very curly hair that required a l

When preproduction for Pokémon: Detective Pikachu started in January 2017, the original plan was that principal photography would commence in August 2017, but that was later shifted to January 2018. “There is no version of us making this movie withou

“It was extremely dispiriting and there were many moments where we asked, ‘How are we going to crack this?’” reveals production VFX supervisor Erik Nordby. “We kept pushing, specifically with Pikachu until we started to see a glimmer of light at the

It’s probably not that surprising that just about every sci-fi or superhero show today utilises CG and visual effects. Indeed, some characters in these types of shows are often entirely digital, while the locations and environments in these series ar

Every few years, a film seems to come along that galvanises audiences and, in doing so proves a useful reminder of the visual power and emotional impact that a film spectacle first experienced on the big screen can have. In spring 2019, Avengers: End

A road trip through various roadside attractions takes on mythological proportions with American Gods, which airs on Starz and Amazon Prime Video. Much like the conflict between ancient and upstart deities featured in the novel authored by Neil Gaima

“When Technical Boy [Bruce Langley] is standing inside of the tunnel, we’re offsetting the cycles of the laser with different degrees in the lens of the camera,” explains Production Design International owner/partner Howard Ungerleider. “It takes a s

“It was a unique project in that there was a live-action sequence that was shot but needed to be transformed into something totally surreal,” states Tendril founder and director Chris Bahry. “Calling it rotomation is almost funny because what we ende

AUTHOR Martin is a freelance artist living in Denmark, and has made it one of his trademarks to explore new frontiers in artmaking. He does this daily as the artistic director of MasterpieceVR. www.artstation.com/martinity Since I started exploring V

AUTHOR Adam Dewhirst is a build supervisor for Double Negative London. He has over 15 years of experience in VFX spanning games, film, TV, commercials and children’s television. www.instagram.com/dewhirstadam PART 1/2 At Vertex 2019, I gave a demo on

AUTHOR Mike Griggs is a 3D and visual effects artist with vast experience across the industry, as both a creator and a technical writer. www.creativebloke.com If you’re new to CGI, you may feel that there are far too many tools to choose from in a di

AUTHOR Mike Griggs is a 3D and visual effects artist with vast experience across the industry, as both a creator and a technical writer. www.creativebloke.com For over two decades, Chaos Group, the team behind V-Ray, have worked to make sure that the

AUTHOR Maya is a 3D artist and animator based in the UK. She started her career five years ago remaking and animating characters for Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee – New ‘n’ Tasty.artstation.com/mayajermy When modelling a character, it won’t always be based

Paul Hatton replies Your first thought might be, “Why would I want to get dirt into the crevices of my models?”. It may seem a bit odd. Maybe you’re thinking that you want your model to be as clean as possible. Or maybe you just want to rely on the l

Simon Edwards Simon works freelance at 3DArtvision. He has worked professionally both as an architectural visualiser and 3D artist for 20 years in Holland and the UK. www.3dartvision.co.uk Paul Hatton Paul Hatton has spent the last 15 years studying

Oscar Juárez replies Adding realism to our scenes can be achievable using several different methods, and over the years I have seen a lot of topics talking about whether or not it’s better to add effects to renders in post, or if it’s better to have

Pietro Chiovaro replies Here I will show you my working process for the creation of a simple and realistic cloth material using Substance Designer. For this type of material, I selected the Physically Based (Metallic/Roughness) Graph Template and del

If you need to show a younger version of an actor or a character in a particular project, there are several ways that can be done: you can simply hire a different actor to play the role; you could use archival footage; or, as is becoming increasingly

Building lifelike CG characters can be a painstaking process filled with time-consuming corrective shapes, tricky guesswork and costly throwaway results. But, as the entertainment industry continues to push the envelope, the demand for plausible crea

It’s 2019, and it’s now safe to say that we’re at a point where 4K resolution is a mainstream choice. The price for a general-purpose 4K screen has dropped to the same point a 1080p screen was at a few years ago. Mid-range workstations are more than

Traditionally, the best-quality VR experiences have been limited to PC-driven tethered headsets such as the HTC VIVE or the Oculus Rift. But now, standalone headsets are launching thick and fast. Let’s dive in and compare the pros and cons of three o

Headquartered in the Seattle metro, an area that is home to some of the oldest and most famous game development studios in the world, V1 Interactive is relatively small by comparison. With a staff count of around 30, it’s a fraction of the size of so