Antony Ward finds out if the promise of an advanced modelling workflow is enough to win back those who model elsewhere

PRICE: Standalone licence £3,200 / $3,675 / €3,900

OTHER EDITIONS: One-year subscription £545 / $625 / €665

OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows / Mac OS X

FEATURES

• Next-gen viewport display and shading
• Accelerated modelling workflow
• Grease Pencil
• Scene assembly tools
• New Paint Effects surface and volume attributes

DEVELOPER: Autodesk

For years there has been a battle between Maya and 3ds Max, and most users, particularly in game development, are either in one camp or another. Maya has superior animation tools, but 3ds Max has the polygon modelling toolset; Maya is easy to configure and code for, but 3ds Max has a better real-time viewport. The list goes on and on, and I suspect if you’re reading this you have already decided which path you want to follow yourself.

Maya has been in development, in one form or another, for over 20 years. It began way back in 1993 when Alias, the creator of Power Animator, started working with Disney to build a new, customisable, all-singing all-dancing animation tool that the latter could use on future feature films.

Paint Effects can be used like a traditional painting program or to paint repeatable textures that you can apply to geometry

Fast-forward to 2005 and, after earning a handful of Academy Awards and enduring a few unsteady years of being passed between companies, Maya came under the ownership of Autodesk, which has continued to develop it to this day. Since its inception, Maya has grown and evolved, with each release bringing a host of new features and improvements to make digital content creation easier and more accessible. As well as modelling and animation tools, the latest version boasts a full suite of dynamic tools to simulate cloth, fluids, hair and particles, enabling you to create any effect you can imagine.

With its roots firmly in the visual effects industry, Maya is also well known as a ‘go to’ tool for animation. From a technical standpoint, its rigging and scripting tools are easy to work with and allow users to create custom tools using its embedded languages, be that MEL, Python or C++. Animation itself continues to be a natural and fluid experience as long as you have the right rig – and rig creation is also one of Maya’s strong points.

With the release of Maya 2014, Autodesk has introduced a new addition to the animation toolkit: the Grease Pencil. This tool allows you to draw directly onto the screen, with each stroke of the pencil locked to the current camera. This may not initially seem like an animation tool as such, but you can add new frames into the Time Slider, essentially outlining an animated sequence before any 3D work is done.

Initially this seems like a gimmick: being able to draw onto the screen is a nice idea, but in reality how usable is it? In this case, it works well and has the potential to become a great way for managers to assess work in the same scene. Imagine critiquing an animation that has been outsourced. Rather than send a lengthy email, you could draw onto each frame to suggest pose or timing tweaks. This offers an intuitive way to work, and would be simple for an animator to follow (especially if there is a language barrier).

You can make your high-poly models more efficient using Maya’s Poly Reduce tool

MODELLING FEATURES

If your skills lie in modelling then Maya is an ideal tool, with NURBS, Subdivision Surfaces and basic polygon techniques all catered for as well as a full suite of intuitive UV editing tools. That said, polygon modelling is one area of Maya that has needed updating for quite some time now, and because of this many users moved over to modelling in an external application.

With this update, Autodesk is finally taking polygon modelling seriously with the addition of the Modelling Toolkit. Anyone who has used the NEX modelling tools by digitalRaster will be familiar with the setup, as Autodesk has simply taken the toolset and integrated it into Maya.

Enabling the Modelling Toolkit brings up a set of handy new features in the right-hand panel. The idea is to take all the most common tools, dramatically enhance how they are used, and have them immediately available so you aren’t searching through menus to find your next operation.

The new Joint Tool Symmetry Setting makes the creation of symmetrical skeletons simple

Playing around with these tools, I was pleasantly surprised by how well they worked. Anyone who has enabled Smooth Mesh on an object and then tried to use the Split Polygon tool will know how painful it is to be forced back onto the proxy model. With the new Multi-Cut tool, you stay on the smoothed model, and are free to cut however you like.

Unfortunately the tools are still limited and you will find yourself having to dive back into the menus from time to time, but the developers have kept a small space free at the bottom of the Modelling Toolkit panel to customise with your own favourite tools for ease of access.

REAL-TIME PREVIEW

Alongside the new Modelling Toolkit is the addition of the DirectX 11 display. I say ‘alongside’, as with the Viewport 2.0 update users can now fully preview their real-time artwork, which could be created with the Modelling Toolkit, so you can visualise your models as they would appear in-game. It’s a welcome addition and something game developers have wanted for a long time.

As a game artist myself, I can already see how much time this could potentially save if an artist can set up the DirectX shader and export those settings directly to a game engine. Other enhancements in Maya 2014 have been made to the Joint Tool, Node Editor and the File Path Editor as well as the Polygon Reduce Tool. In fact, it seems each area has had some love and attention.

The improvements to the Node Editor in Maya 2014 are focused on workflow and visual feedback

With this release, if feels like Autodesk have succeeded in addressing a lot of user issues while also including some much-needed improvements. If you’re still wondering which camp to pitch your tent in, this update adds many of the features Max users have enjoyed into the Maya environment, making it a much more rounded and appealing choice.

PROS

• Upgraded modelling tools
• DirectX 11 Shader & Viewport support
• Grease Pencil tool is very useful

CONS

• Expensive
• The Modelling Toolkit is more an evolution than a revolution

Autodesk has succeeded in addressing a number of the issues Maya users were experiencing, while also including some much sought after improvements, making this a worthwhile upgrade

RATING 4

Antony Ward has been provoking pixels since the early 1990s. In that time he has worked for some of today’s top studios and written three books

What should be in the shortlist for the Software Update of the Year in the 3D World CG Awards 2013?

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Discover 40 free textures for you to download now, over at Creative Bloq.

This cheerful app aids your creativity in the world of clay modelling without the mess, as Rob Redman finds out

PRICE: Free

OTHER EDITIONS: Let’s Create Pottery HD, £2.99 / $4.99 / €4.49

OPERATING SYSTEM: iOS 4.3+

FEATURES

• Manipulate 3D clay
• 3D-print designs

DEVELOPER: iDreams

While limited in its scope for true creativity, Let’s Create! Pottery HD is an entertaining title and demonstrates what is possible with touch interface applications and the way they are integrated into our digital lives, as well as offering yet more ways to 3D print objects.

The basic premise of the app is to digitally sit at a potter’s wheel, where, using a fingertip, you manipulate digital clay to shape a vase or pot. The interface works well, and the lack of options is a good thing, letting you focus on the task at hand.

Once satisfied you can bake the pot and move on to the texturing stage. The options are limited to begin with but if you work through some challenges you gain access to more, in a very game-like fashion. For the impatient, there is an option to buy textures directly.

This highlights the real nature of the app. It is very much a casual gaming experience, with some social media built in, where you can rate other people’s pots and link to your Facebook account.

As a digital artist’s tool, Let’s Create Pottery Lite is not much more than a quick bit of fun. However, it is well presented and the ability to have a 3D print of your finished pots directly from the app is certainly an impressive feature. At the time of going to press, I hadn’t received my print but the provider, Sculpteo, have delivered good-quality prints in the past and I see no reason why this shouldn’t be the same.

This isn’t meant to be much more than an entertainment experience, but the interface is well crafted and it’s fun to use

RATING 3

3D World’s technical editor Rob Redman is a 3D artist and trainer

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* Closing date: 14 June 2013
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Change can be a good thing when it’s an upgrade. That’s the case with the new version of Modo, as Mike Griggs finds out

PRICE: £999 / $1,495 / €1,169. Upgrade from £324 / $495 / €379

OTHER EDITIONS: Education licence, £99 / $149 / €116

OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows / Mac OS X / Linux (beta)

FEATURES

• Advanced subdivision modeller
• Integrated live and final GI rendering
• Multi-resolution sculpting and painting
• Character and constraint-driven animation solutions
• Complete dynamics and particle solution

DEVELOPER: The Foundry

It has barely been a year since 3D World reviewed Modo 601 – and yet somehow Luxology has managed to shorten its development cycle on major releases from approximately 18 to 12 months while at the same time going through a merger with The Foundry. The latter event has changed the landscape of the 3D application market, bringing Modo to a whole new audience within a high-end VFX market that The Foundry is increasingly well placed to develop, thanks to products such as Nuke and Mari.

So, despite a tightened schedule and corporate shake-ups, we have Modo 701, one of the first children of this new creative marriage. Other than a change of the Modo icon to a look more in keeping with the other Foundry apps, at first glance it appears that not much has changed. But looks can be deceptive. For a start, the familiar tabbed layout has been developed into part of a tabbed view switcher. The view switcher takes a bit of getting used to, but it is worth getting to know: Modo intelligently adjusts to the last used layout, which allows quick switching between layouts if you’re in a specific workflow, which definitely speeds things up.

The Environment Importance Sampling technology fixes historic Modo rendering problems

Speed is probably the defining word for 701. Put simply, it flies in OpenGL view. Once complex meshes have loaded, it is genuinely stunning how capable Modo is at handling large data sets. This becomes very useful when you want to retopologise a sculpt from an application like ZBrush, for example. Instead of the previous workflow of trying to reduce the size of my ZTool, I exported a 8 million-poly .OBJ into Modo: once the model had cached into the OpenGL view, I was freely able to use Modo’s excellent retopo tools. These have been improved both in terms of speed and accuracy from 601, and have been augmented by additions as the Contour tool, which allows you to create edge loops across a mesh. The loops can be connected by smart bridging tools to allow you to speed through your mesh creation, much quicker than if you were using ZBrush alone.

NEW FEATURES

I was able to flip between rendering and retopo layouts with the heavy ZBrush mesh and work with the preview improvements. While every view of Modo now has advanced ray tracing available, the speed improvements in the preview mode are phenomenal. There is also a new feature in the Global Illumination settings called Environment Importance Sampling, which optimises the renderer based on the HDR used for lighting it, and with one checkbox fixes most of Modo’s legacy rendering problems instantly. Obviously tweaking can still be done to optimise your render, but the render enhancements make 701 worth the upgrade in terms of speed, reliability and render quality alone over previous versions – especially since the gains are still realised on older equipment and so-so graphics cards.

The new particle system works with the dynamic system to let you create complex simulations

It feels like every one of Modo 701’s features have been overhauled, but it’s not all upgrades. New features have been added, the biggest being a particle system. This is placed in the Setup tab along with the rigging systems, which were added in 601 and have been enhanced with deformers; and an improved dynamics system that finally works as advertised.

The particle system allows a range of tools such as emitters, which can be combined with specific particle modifiers, such as flocking and terminator tools, to get an advanced particle system setup in minutes. The particles can even have dynamics working quickly and easily and, with the new Workspace view, setting up logical connections combined with the existing replicator toolset allows an exciting range of possibilities that are applicable to VFX and motion graphics. There is a range of caching options, which work with the OpenGL speed improvements to allow you to see very complex sims play out in real time. There is an added benefit to particles in Modo: Modo’s core has always been about modelling, and particles and their paths can be frozen as meshes, which can be sculpted and used just like any other piece of geometry.

Animation has also received an overhaul, with a well thought-out interface which works well. New features such as audio track ingestion and dynamic parenting, which allows you to pass animations from one mesh to another whenever you please, could be revelatory to a lot of 3D artists who have been scared away from rigging due to its steep learning curve. The new feature sets in Modo 701 really do make certain types of animation simpler in Modo than in any comparative application.

As well as new features, Modo 701 has received upgrades to its rendering toolset which make images such as this one by Richard Yot and Seth Richardson readily achievable

INTEGRATION

One of the worries with Modo has been that artists were gaining new tools with every new release while losing the focus on what made Modo great in the first place: speed, simplicity and a new methodology of creating content where the app got out of the way. With Modo 701, The Foundry has managed to regain this core feeling and have made a truly astounding 3D application.

While still presenting steep learning curves in some areas, Modo 701 has at its essence a core toolset that’s applicable across virtually all of the new features, which allow a breathtaking array of creative possibilities. While most 3D applications really do benefit from plugins to help provide complete workflows, Modo is pretty much feature-complete for most 3D tasks. In areas where other applications may offer better solutions for specific tasks, Modo integrates into most pipelines exceptionally well.

This integration will be improved with the long-term stability that being part of a product suite alongside the rest of the Foundry’s applications brings. The benefits can be seen in Modo 701 becoming available on Linux for the first time: a beta is currently available.

When you consider that this package is a third of the price of most of its competitors, with one of the best licensing systems (cross-platform, unlimited render nodes) on the market, there is no reason not to recommend Modo 701 as one of the best tools that a 3D artist can have.

The new particle modifiers combine with replicators to let you to make complex instance rigs with targeting, using the improved Workspace view

PROS

• Revised interface improves workflow
• New features have been integrated
• OpenGL speed and stability improved

CONS

• Steep learning curve in setup mode
• Price has increased
• Stability and UI redraw can be problematic

Modo now has the potential to become one of the standard 3D tools in the industry. Modo 701 offers an exceptional combination of toolsets, value for money and render capabilities

RATING 5

Mike Griggs is a freelance 3D, VFX and mograph artist. He can be found on Twitter, and his work is available on his site

Discover 15 inspiring examples of 3D art at our sister site, Creative Bloq.

Rob Redman takes a look at Autodesk’s latest iOS app for sculpting creatures on the move

PRICE: £2.99 / $4.99 / €4.49

PLATFORM: iOS (iPad only)

MAIN FEATURES

• Large-scale modelling
• Fine-detail sculpting
• Texture painting

DEVELOPER: Autodesk

When Autodesk released 123D Sculpt, I was impressed with its usability, but I also knew that something even more impressive was coming down the line. So when 123D Creature was finally released, I was quick to get it in for review.

This new release walks you through a number of stages to create a creature. You start by drawing out a skeleton using simple joints and bones. You then define the large volumes before moving on to the sculpting section, where fine details are added. Once happy with the geometry you can paint textures and – in a limited way – render out lit versions.

Where this app really shines is in its presentation. The excellent ‘first-time use’ guides explain the user interface perfectly. The UI itself is simple but effective. Creating your first creature takes minimal learning – if you get stuck, you can access the training with one click. You can save, duplicate and open projects easily, as well as export your mesh or share models with the community via the built-in browser.

The final icing on the cake is Autodesk’s partnering with Sculpteo, the 3D printing company. From within the app you can order a print of your model, even in colour, which can be with you in just two days – and there’s nothing quite like seeing a model you’ve created in real life. The quality of the prints is good, with a decent level of detail. You can choose from a range of sizes, with larger prints having better detail.

123D Creature is a fantastic app for creating critters on the move. It isn’t high-end, but it’s fun and intuitive to use

RATING 4

3D World’s technical editor Rob Redman is a 3D artist and trainer

More creature design tips and tutes

• Creature design is both exciting and daunting in equal measures. Mike Griggs helps you get started with this Creature Design tute
• Step-by-step ZBrush workshop by Ryan Kingslien on sculpting and painting a bust of the mythical monster Medusa
• Sculpt a biomech figure in ZBrush with Scott Spencer
• ZBrush Tutorial: Scott Spencer shows you how to create an insectoid alien
• Discover Aaron Sims Company’s concept artist: Luca Nemolato

This upgrade to Luxion’s real-time renderer makes light work of product visualisation and look development, says Steve Jarratt

PRICE: KeyShot Pro $1,995, Upgrade from $795

OTHER EDITIONS

• KeyShot, $995
• KeyShot Pro + Animation $2,495
• KeyShot Pro + KeyShotVR $2,995
• KeyShot Pro + Animation + KeyShotVR $3,495
• Other bundles available

OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows / Mac OS X

FEATURES

• Real-time ray tracing
• Certified physically correct render engine
• Materials library
• Transform-based animation
• Render passes & layers

DEVELOPER: Luxion

Luxion’s KeyShot is a real-time renderer for artists, designers and engineers who need to produce quality visualisations with the minimum of fuss. It’s entirely CPU-based and relies largely on HDRI for lighting. Workflow is a matter of importing your mesh, adding materials by dragging and dropping, and adding a suitable HDR image or backplate. The main window continuously renders the image as a high-quality preview, which can be saved at any point, although you can output a final render for large, print-quality images or to create a KeyShotVR sequence.

As with previous updates, the core rendering technology remains much the same, but the application gains lots of new features to help improve workflow. KeyShot now has live linking with Rhino, SolidWorks and Creo, so models can be textured, lit and rendered while being built or modified. One major upgrade is in the area of lighting, where you can drop a physical light material onto any object, and it will act accordingly.

KeyShot Pro can now export render passes. Here’s the original image, plus depth, normal and clown passes. The latter isolates objects for easy selection in an image editor

To add some specular hits to your object, for example, simply import a primitive, such as a plane, disc or sphere, and apply your preferred light source – area, point, radial, IES – then adjust the scale and position of the object and the intensity of the light.

It’s not a huge issue to have some primitives on hand for just such a purpose, but it would be nice to have the option to add light sources directly within KeyShot itself. Still, this is a really valuable addition for those times when you simply want to sweeten a shot without messing about with HDRs or doing it in post.

If you apply an area light material to a plane or disc, the object remains visible, so it’s easy to get beautiful lightbox-style reflections. Of course, you can still toggle the object’s visibility to the camera, in reflections and in shadows, to get the shot just as you want.

To add a light bulb to these wall fittings, Steve stretched a sphere and added a light material, then duplicated it. The Wood and Rippled Glass are standard KeyShot presets

You can also apply emissive materials to any part of your object, so if your latest gizmo has a cool blue glow – and what doesn’t these days? – you can replicate the effect and have the rest of the model lit accordingly. When used in conjunction with KeyShot’s glass or iridescent paint materials, for example, you can get some really lovely results.

Given that you now have all these extra objects to manipulate, however, I think it’s about time that direct keyboard shortcuts for the translate/rotate/scale widget were added to KeyShot, instead of having to access it via the right-click menu or Position panel. It’s a minor gripe, I know, but the current set-up makes manipulating parts or objects a fussy, multiple-click operation.

With really heavy scenes, such as interiors, scene navigation can also become quite slow, even in Performance mode. It would be really useful to have the option of switching to a wireframe or other proxy view while placing objects and lights and setting up your camera.

MATERIAL WORLD

Designers working to a specific brief will welcome the support for the Pantone and RAL colour libraries. Colours can be searched for by number or shade – a neat proximity search brings up any colours that match ‘blue’, ‘red’ and so on – or by using the colour picker. Then you can simply drag and drop it onto the model, which is then coloured irrespective of the underlying material.

The curved edges feature adds the effect of micro bevels at render time. There’s a real improvement in these before and after shots although it doesn’t cope well with corners, and some edges go very dark

KeyShot 4 also gains hundreds of Mold-Tech textures, with a range of grains from stippled to leather to wood grain to textiles. The mixture of industry-standard colour swatches and textures offer a quick way to iterate design and material changes, and KeyShot’s final output can generate a wonderfully realistic representation of your product.

The translucent material presets benefit from faster and more accurate subsurface scattering, helping you to recreate a range of material effects such as plastics, wax, skin and so on. It relies on using real-world units with small objects to get realistic SSS effects, although you can rescale your objects with the Set Model Units menu.

A new work-in-progress feature is the ability to render sharp edges as curves. It’s accessed from the Scene Tree Properties panel, with simple slider values that control the edge radius and minimum edge angle. It’s great for making angular CAD models look like real-world objects, but it has a few limitations: it only really works on solid, untextured materials and with small values.

Introduced in KeyShot Pro 3.1, the HDRI Light Editor now allows you to interactively allocate a highlight on your object, which pins a new light to the HDR

With things like glass, it generates unsightly black edges, and textured materials tend to distort. Even with simple surfaces, you get black corners where the rounding can’t be properly resolved. Hopefully, this will continue to be refined, because it’s a simple and largely effective way of getting realistic images from models that lack fine geometry.

LIGHTING CONTROL

The Pro version of KeyShot gains other niceties, such as stereoscopic viewing, render passes, View and Model sets for managing multiple shots, and more. The HDRI Light Editor introduced in KeyShot 3.1 now allows you to create highlights from within the real-time window – hold down [Cmd] and click the object, and a new pin is made on the HDRI, which can then be moved around the scene interactively or scaled and coloured in the Editor window. You can also blur and tilt the HDRI to better suit your scene, so Pro users now have nigh-on complete control over every aspect of their lighting setup.

KeyShot 4’s range of new features constitutes a substantial upgrade that helps make product visualisation easier, more efficient, and – dare I say it – more enjoyable. There are still a few UI and workflow niggles, but KeyShot is rapidly maturing into a dependably solid app that answers all the questions thrown at it. The improved range of materials and lighting options means its final output is better than before, with even less effort. If the price isn’t too much of a hurdle, there’s much to recommend here.

The new translucent materials have faster and more accurate sub-surface scattering. Here, an object is lit via a physical light placed inside

PROS

• Physical light sources for precise lighting
• Live linking for CAD users
• Vast range of preset materials

CONS

• Object manipulation still clunky
• Some features limited to Pro edition
• UI still needs a little work

KeyShot continues to evolve, and with each iteration it gets better and easier to use. Long may the trend continue

RATING 4

Steve Jarratt has been into CG for many years. He’s a regular contributor to 3D World and edited the magazine for two years

What’s next for Augmented Reality? Find out at Creative Bloq.

Now priced for mere mortals, this finishing software promises to be a useful tool for your edit workflow. Mike Griggs fires it up

PRICE: £3,200 / $3,495 / €3,900. Upgrade from £615 / $675 / €863

PLATFORM: Mac OS X

MAIN FEATURES

• NLE and VFX finishing tool
• Supports 3D environments
• Wide range of conforming tools
• High-end interface
• Advanced keying technology

DEVELOPER: Autodesk

Applications such as Flame, Inferno and Smoke have always been talked about in whispered tones – mainly because many of us have no experience of these applications and what they can do. This was unsurprising given their eye-watering price tags, which were high because the applications came bundled with hardware. They were so prohibitively expensive that rather than being bought in, they were usually accessed by ‘renting’ time at a post-production house with an operator.

However, the price of some of these applications has plummeted and, with Smoke 2013, Autodesk has brought the price point down into ‘normal’ application pricing territory, so that for the first time it can be considered a viable tool by a much wider range of artists.

FINISHING SOFTWARE

Originally, Smoke was one of a range of products by Discreet (which was later bought out by Autodesk) that enabled the finishing of films and commercials – working with the footage at full resolution in real time, which programs like After Effects and Final Cut Pro were not able to handle, and therefore had to work with offline (usually lower-res) versions. Any offline changes were noted in an EDL (Edit Decision List) file, which was then brought into a finishing program where the work could be applied to the full online footage.

These finishing packages were sold as complete hardware and software solutions, with products like Flame and Inferno concentrating on VFX and compositing, and Smoke and Fire working more on the editing side. However, the increase in hardware computing power has made the purpose of these highend tools increasingly harder to justify – especially with the majority of client deliveries moving to pure digital formats – so it’s time to take a fresh look at what Smoke can do.

Smoke has integrated a lot of the VFX tools from other Autodesk/Discreet products. In a nutshell, Smoke 2013 combines the functionality of a non-linear editing package (such as Avid, Premiere or Final Cut Pro) with a really decent set of VFX and 3D compositing tools, which can hold their own against high-end programs such as Nuke.

The high-end heritage of Smoke becomes apparent when you open it – the pedigree comes satisfyingly through the UI, unlike some other programs that offer niche features but don’t seem to worry about a clean, easy-to-use environment. Even if certain workflows are not immediately apparent, Smoke is a lovely place to be working in, and the start screen – which makes sure everything is set up before you get stuck into your work – feels like a kindly concierge.

Smoke can handle working with the majority of footage, from RED to OpenEXR; and with a toolset that includes advanced keying, tracking and masking tools, there isn’t much Smoke can’t do in a modern 2D workflow.

Which is just as well, because in use Smoke takes over your Mac (Smoke is only available on this platform) in terms of resource requirements, unless you have specified otherwise by placing media folders at the root level of your drive. Be prepared to do things the way Smoke wants to, or not at all.

I ran Smoke on both a 2012 MacBook Pro with a high-res Retina display and a 2012 12-core Mac Pro, and was pleasantly surprised at how well it ran. However, it did show up the need for apps to be stored on SSDs if hardware is to keep with today’s video workflows.

In terms of the user interface, I found it to be surprisingly intuitive and easy to use, and the range of features is impressive. Nuke users will probably find it easier to grasp than others, but expect to invest in training to get you up to speed. Thankfully Autodesk supplies a good range of starter tutorials on its YouTube channel.

Applying effects using the ConnectFX nodes is simple, and the node UI is simple and responsive. In fact, it makes you wish all nodes looked like this. But if you’re unfamiliar with the system, trying to get immediate feedback – even to see the result of a quick key of two bits of footage – can be daunting to the uninitiated.

Smoke will extract a commitment from you, then, but it feels like persistence in training will pay off with a well-established workflow that has been honed over decades, allowing you to move through shots quicker than any other application I’ve used. Comparing Nuke to Smoke does throw up some interesting contrasts in terms of workflow.

Nuke is a freeform playground that, with the right team of artists and TDs, can create virtually anything in the composite. In many ways, Smoke is a better tool than applications like Nuke for the standalone artist who doesn’t want to code new gizmos for the vast majority of tasks, and should be seen as a potential ‘upgrade’ from the Adobe pairing of After Effects and Premiere, with its tortuous dynamic link that’s still not ready for serious production use.

While you probably wouldn’t want to edit a motion picture in Smoke, it’s more than capable of handling the majority of short-format work, from footage and 3D file input through composite and grade to export, and its fast, responsive interface is a joy to work with. Smoke is an application you want to use because it makes you feel like you’re improving your work while you’re doing so, and it brings the term ‘finishing’ into the 21st century.

PROS

• Handles edit and VFX in one application
• Robust UI and workflow
• Comparatively good value for money

CONS

• Mac only
• Needs latest hardware and fast drives

An excellent application, especially at this price, offering a fast workflow to get your projects done and out of the door

RATING 4

Mike Griggs is a freelance 3D, VFX and mograph artist. He can be found on Twitter, and his work is available on his site

Discover 2013′s best 3D movies at our sister site, Creative Bloq.

Does the texturing tool of choice for VFX artists have enough additions to get more artists on board? Mike Griggs finds out

PRICE: £1,210 / $1,995 / €1,450

PLATFORM: Windows / Linux

FEATURES

• Enables direct painting onto geometry
• Ptex support
• Layers and channels
• Integrates with Nuke and Photoshop

DEVELOPER: The Foundry

Ever since its launch as the application that painted Avatar, the 3D community has been looking at Mari by the Foundry as the next logical step in image manipulation for 3D asset creation. With its integration of Ptex, Mari’s ability to paint seamlessly directly onto a model was a huge eye-opener for 3D artists, and gave hope that one day we might be able to avoid the complication of UV maps in our workflow.

The first version of Mari was a breakthrough application, but it was daunting to most people outside VFX studios. (It was originally created at Weta.) Its workflow was shader- and channel-based rather than layer stack-based, the conceptual model used by 2D image creation mainstay Photoshop. The notion that Mari is a Photoshop-killer, while not necessarily fair, has been around since Mari launched. As its name suggests, Photoshop has a vastly different 2D remit, and there was always the potential for Mari to become the 3D artist’s texturing tool of choice alongside Photoshop.

The layer system integrates seamlessly with the channel workflow to expand Mari’s potential to new 3D artists

With Mari 2, the key feature that has deterred many artists from the software has been asddressed: Mari now has full support for layers. And instead of just copying the Photoshop system we’re all familiar with, Mari has expanded on the idea in an innovative and robust way.

In Mari 2, you can have layer stacks controlling individual layers and masks. Initially this sounds confusing, but it’s exactly what you want in a paint program. By right-clicking a layer in its palette you can add an adjustment stack, which is essentially another layer stack. This new stack can contain adjustment layers, filters and so on – just as a normal layer stack can – and enables a level of fine control over individual layer elements, which is fantastic to see and easy to implement. Adjustment stacks are also applicable to masks as well.

The new procedural layers allow you to create complex patterns from the built-in generators or your own images

LAYERED COMPLEXITY

As you add layers, you get to see one of the other new killer features in Mari 2. Procedural layers enable you to quickly cover your object or patch using either one of the built-in patterns to add noise or one of your own images. Once applied, the full power of the new layering system and Mari’s paint tools can be brought to bear on the procedural layer, with masking and layer overlay, adjustments and filters all available, so you can build up complex textures very quickly. Substance Designer also uses procedural textures as an integral part of the workflow, but the Mari implementation is easier to use and customise if you’re coming from an app such as Photoshop.

Setting up a project is also much more simple, with logical creation of channels, which are now directly linked to the layer system by the underlying architecture of the application. Also, layers can be linked to other layers so that attributes such as opacity can be controlled, which is great if you have am image layer in various channels such as diffuse and spec – one adjustment will control all linked layers throughout the project.

The new layer system is augmented by adjustment stacks, which let you add layer stacks to individual layers or masks

This relative simplicity seems to be one of the core principles of The Foundry’s work over the past year across many of its releases. Mari really is simple to use once you’ve got your head around the interface and initial workflow, for which there are some excellent tutorials in the included guide. Little things such as the paint buffer caching as you rotate the model are great, but take a bit of getting used to if you use other, similar apps such as ZBrush and Mudbox.

Mari works with OBJ models either with or without UVs, where Ptex becomes an option. Even with models where the UVs are not especially tidy, Mari can still make a fair stab at letting you paint successfully on your models.

Mari needs everything you can throw at it in terms of hardware, especially on the graphics front, with a pro-level card being the optimal solution. I had some stability issues, but these could be attributable to my gaming-level Nvidia graphics card. Mari still did the best it could, and I was able to work reliably. If you’re on a tight budget, Mari should work on your hardware, but it’s best to check before you buy. The free 15-day trial should allow you to work out any kinks.

Mari 2 allows layers to be linked in the same stack or in adjustment stacks in channels, where common attributes can be controlled by one element

DIFFERENT STROKES

The one thing I haven’t touched on so far is what it’s like to paint with Mari. There’s a responsiveness to the strokes – a tablet is mandatory to get the most out of it – and layer control is unlike any other program I’ve used when working with models in UV or with Ptex-based texturing solutions. This is enhanced by touches like the well thought-out symmetry tools; the scratch pad at the bottom of the Brush palette, which enables you to test your brush before you commit to painting onto your model; and the good range of stock brushes that get you up and working quickly.

Mari is an easy application to pick up, yet there’s a huge depth to the toolset and digging deeper into the tools brings up menu upon menu of options that you can tweak to your heart’s content. However, Mari still feels complex on launch, and has the vestigial feel of a facility pipeline tool rather than a dedicated standalone application.

The customisable UI can be streamlined to suit the way you work. Pop-up boxes help you find the tools you need

For the texturing artist in a studio or standalone 3D artist, Mari 2 is very nearly a must-have tool. While the price and the lack of a Mac version could put off new buyers, Mari 2 cements The Foundry’s reputation as one of the most exciting developers in image-creation software. The well thought-out implementation of layers, along with other enhancements such as procedural textures, makes this an essential upgrade for existing users. The other new additions, along with the already capable painting toolset, make Mari 2 the most intuitive 3D painting tool on the market without a doubt.

PROS

• Excellent new layer system
• Well thought-out procedural layers
• Intuitive workflow and UI while painting

CONS

• No Mac version
• Expensive for a painting tool
• High-end GPUs required to maximise use

Mari seems expensive at first glance, but there’s no faster way to create complex and innovative textures and shaders

RATING 4

Mike Griggs is a freelance 3D, VFX and mograph artist. He can be found on Twitter, and his work is available on his site

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Mike Griggs finds that while this package offers a way into creating interactive 3D scenes, there are no short cuts

PRICE: €99

OTHER EDITIONS: Professional, €299

OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows / Mac OS X

MAIN FEATURES

• Interactive content creator
• Requires no programming knowledge
• AI game character toolset
• Able to create for mobile platforms
• Programming options can be added

DEVELOPER: Ambiera

Interactivity is becoming a bigger part of CG artists’ everyday creation requirements. This has been especially true since the mobile app explosion for devices on iOS and Android platforms. However, the issue for many 3D artists is that when they want to give one of their models or scenes interactive properties, it normally means learning a new piece of software, such as Unity, as well as a programming language – or hiring a programmer.

This is where an application like CopperCube comes into its own. It enables artists to either create or import 3D scenes or animations and then create interactive elements, which can then be published as a mobile, web or desktop app in a matter of clicks, all without any programming knowledge.

In use, CopperCube delivers what it says on the tin, but with some caveats. I was able to import a car mesh as an OBJ file, attach a camera, add a couple of behaviours to the car to instruct it to respond to keyboard control and for the camera to follow the car. I then pressed ‘Publish’, and I had a working car interactive. The whole process took two minutes.

More functionality can be added to your objects, such as items following a path, as well as a range of camera options including first- or third-person cameras. For interactive product demos, CopperCube could be all you need, because it supports UV maps, has a range of dynamic lighting options, and can cheat reflections using skymaps. CopperCube also supports the import of meshes with animated skeletons, and you can have these assigned as game objects with AI via a reasonably intuitive control system.

CopperCube can import a range of model and animation file types, and has a simple but effective dynamic lighting setup

THE CAVEATS

But – and it’s a big but – to get the most of out of CopperCube’s interactive possibilities, you need to add programmed elements via a range of scripting options such as JavaScript, ActionScript and so on, dependent on your output platform. (If you buy the Professional edition, you get a command line interface.)

This means that all of a sudden you’re starting to get into complexities that the basic – and at times frustrating – UI and control scheme can’t handle. At this point you’d probably be as well looking at a program such as Unity, which can handle the management of complex projects with more aplomb.

That doesn’t mean you should dismiss CopperCube. For some uses it can provide an end-to-end interactive solution; it could even be seen as a prototyping tool for game development. The biggest thing you learn from CopperCube is that there are no short cuts to creating great interactive content, and with a range of tools, both for scene building and interactive connections that require no programming, CopperCube could start many artists on the road to full interactive development. Considering its low starting price, it should be considered a viable development platform for prototypes and simple projects.

VERDICT

PROS

• Intuitive way to create interactive content
• Accepts standard model formats
• Good value

CONS

• Interaction types potentially limited
• UI not suited to large-scale projects
• Works best with lower polygon assets

Without programming it’s limited, but CopperCube offers an easy-to-learn option for creating interactive content

RATING 3

Mike Griggs is a freelance 3D, VFX and mograph artist. He can be found on Twitter  and on his site

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Steve Jarratt test-drives e-on’s bundle of an updated improved population plug-in and a brand-new plant-editing extension

PRICE: $295 / €246

OTHER EDITIONS

• Carbon Scatter 2, $195 / €163
• Carbon Botanica, $145 / €121

PLATFORM: Windows / Mac OS X

MAIN FEATURES

• Instances displayed as point clouds, bounding boxes or geometry
• 360-degree population around objects
• Instance placement via splines
• Stacking of instances
• Nitrous display support in 3ds Max
• Control the phase of EcoSystem instances
• Library of 3D plants and billboards included
• Carbon Botanica extension for creating and editing plants

DEVELOPER: e-on software

This update to e-on’s instancing system promises to scatter more objects with greater control than before. I looked at the plug-in in Cinema 4D with the Carbon Botanica extension, although it’s also available for Maya and 3ds Max.

The initial release of Carbon Scatter provided automated control over placement of instances, based on the underlying geometry, manual painting of instances and the creation of complex EcoSystems, mixing objects and plants. Version 2 provides additional control, with the ability to add instances 360 degrees around an object, such as a sphere for Super Mario Galaxy-style mini-planets or greeble-covered Death Stars. It also now uses native Bézier splines to provide a fine level of control, should you wish to make queues of traffic or people, ornamental flower beds or tree-lined avenues.

Splines can be used to define a stroke or an area of instances, or to preclude instances from specific regions. As well as having the instances aggregate around the spline’s own influence (with a definable width and profile), you can use it to describe where the instances fall on any geometry that sits beneath the spline itself. So if you wanted to make a curved line of trees, you’d simply draw your spline on the XZ axis and lift it above the ground mesh. With Populate on the spline deselected, your instances are projected onto the geometry below.

This is a really powerful and flexible feature for controlling the placement of instances, but it does lack the ability to have them follow the path of the spline, facing along its length. So for example, you couldn’t use it to have a troop of soldiers, snaking back and forth: when the spline doubled back on itself, half the soldiers would be facing the wrong way.

You can populate instances all around a host object, and define how they are aligned

Instances can be painted in by hand, or the host object can be populated automatically. A new fast Population mode enables you to interactively move sliders for density, scaling, orientation and so on, so you can rapidly iterate your scene. You can also choose to display the instances as bounding boxes, point clouds or billboards (even with native objects), and the process is very quick indeed. Even with tens of thousands of instances, the scene still remains fluidly interactive.

3D PLANTS

One of the key features of Carbon Scatter 2 is the inclusion of the Vue SolidGrowth library (or most of it), which allows you to add vegetation to your scenes, offering up to four variations for each model. These are generated at the point of adding the EcoSystem, and with variations in size and rotation, this provides enough randomness to generate a suitably organic vista.

However, if that’s still not enough, you can use Carbon Botanica’s Plant Editor to make your own permutations, either by tweaking the various settings or just hitting the New Plant button, which randomises the object. Then you can save off as many variations as you like and use those to populate your scene instead.

To speed up scene manipulation, instances can be viewed as bounding boxes, billboards or point clouds. You can also view them as actual geometry, if you need to see how they’ll look in the render

You can also use any .veg object in an existing Vue collection, or one bought from Cornucopia, but these have to be converted to .csplt files in the Plant Editor. The conversion is fairly painless (although I had one tree that wouldn’t keep its texture mapping), but time-consuming if you have a considerable collection.

SPRAY AND PRAY

As well as varying the instances, you can also change their colours. However, rather than changing individual instances (as you might with an instance ID node), it employs a native material to apply variegation across the entire collection, using a noise filter or an image map. This effect is much like spraying paint across the instances, and while it can offer a range of hues across a forest of trees, for example, you can’t specify a set of colours and have them applied to individual objects. I also tried experimenting with image maps, but this applied the same texture to every instance. In truth, it’s a very basic system: the fact that the manual devotes a single 43-word paragraph to the feature speaks volumes.

Other new features include the ability to stack objects, such as crates or rocks, which is useful. There’s often some intersection between objects, although this is understandable in a scene with thousands of instances. Carbon Scatter 2 also provides control over the phase of animated instances to prevent them all from moving in step.

Carbon Scatter is obviously powerful, but comes with a few niggles. The control panels aren’t dockable in Cinema 4D’s interface, so you keep moving them to make room. They also maintain focus, so on the Mac at least, they’re always visible no matter which application you’re running. This means you have to click the Cinema 4D interface to do a test render, which often deselects the object you’re populating, so you have to close and reopen the panel to make changes.

EVOLUTIONARY DEAD END

Another minor complaint is that the plant library included with Carbon Botanica is pretty much the same one that’s been with Vue for years. It’s perfectly usable, but it really feels like it needs bringing up to date, like the control panel design. Many of the trees are also quite basic in terms of branch and root structure, and are only good for medium- and long-distance viewing.

Carbon Botanica’s Plant Editor enables you to load an existing vegetation model and randomise it

I also suffered quite a few fatal crashes. Such little annoyances spoil the overall experience, which is a shame because Carbon Scatter 2 clearly has loads of power under the hood, and is fun to use. But while it’s far from perfect, it adds such a range of useful features for quickly creating rich, organic scenes that you should be willing to forgive its flaws.

VERDICT

PROS

• Spline placement of instances
• 360-degree population and stacking
• Fast to populate or paint instances

CONS

• Non-dockable interface
• Aging library of vegetation
• General instability

This is a decent upgrade for Carbon Scatter users, but minor niggles prevent it from gaining our highest accolade

RATING 4

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Lance Evans reckons that a powerful and evolutionary upgrade, plus a few kicking features, make this a very impressive release

PRICE: $895, Dongle $50, Upgrade from $395

OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows / Mac OS X

MAIN FEATURES:

• Animation toolset
• Phong rendering
• Unlimited rendering nodes included
• Cross-platform licence

DEVELOPER: EIAS3D

Electric Image Animation System (EIAS) version 9 is the first upgrade to this venerable animation and rendering system in two-and-a-half years. Tomas Egger, the company’s CEO, tells me that their focus is clearly on the animation/VFX, architectural and graphic design markets. EIAS offers some keen strengths for all those groups.

For architects, the software has long been able to import and render huge dataset models that choke most programs. EIAS’s ease of use, texture map layers and multipass Photoshop export enable designer types to feel at home. And the inclusion of camera mapping, explosions and other effects are great for VFX.

Compared with direct competitors like Cinema 4D Prime, and the pricier offerings of modo and LightWave, EIAS has a few glaring omissions. With no real modeller, it should be viewed as more of a scene building and animation tool (both things done in Animator) and rendering package (done in Camera). But fortunately, it does all of this very well.

WHAT’S NEW IN ANIMATOR?

While the Animator application is still a 32-bit program, it has been made many times more efficient and capable. Scene building in version 9 has become even better with the addition of a few welcome new features. They include OpenGL previews that are able to display as many as eight texture layers deep on models, each with its own Photoshop-style blend mode applied (Darken, Multiply, and so on). This is a wonderful capability, but don’t let it tempt you to add too many layers. Also new is Smart Image Based Lighting, a relatively new industry standard that organises IBL sets and makes them both portable and far easier to use.

The EIAS 9 interface with new Smart IBL environment and library windows open, along with the material and shader palettes

Animation controls have also been given a huge shot in the arm with the inclusion of Bullet Rigid Dynamics, an open-source library also found in other major 3D software and games. This first round of implementation is easy to use and includes simulations, forces, vehicle controls and constraints/bones.

Less whizz-bang but just as important in day-to-day workflow, Animator has improved its import modules for ZBrush and Illustrator, Wavefront OBJ files now import UV coordinates with the MTL files, plus there’s a host of interface tweaks.

WHAT’S NEW IN CAMERA?

The rendering engine Camera is now optionally either 32- or 64-bit, and finally multi-threaded. As before, it is a superfast rendering engine compared with any renderer I know of – sometimes, and maybe frequently, over 1,000 per cent faster. This update, like most others, increases Camera’s speed even further than before, and adds some nice rendering refinements. And as before, unlimited rendering nodes for Mac and Windows at no extra cost is priceless.

PROS

• Stable
• Competitive features and price
• Fast, high-quality network rendering

CONS

• Lagging interface problems
• Missing modeller
• Minimal industry saturation

Offers some high-end features unseen in this price range, and is easy to learn and use, but the ageing interface holds it back

RATING 4

Lance Evans is creative director of Graphlink Media. He has written books on 3D, and produced the 3DNY Seminars for Apple and Alias

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