Maxwell Render features its own powerful material manager – Rob Redman demonstrates how to make the most of it

Download the supporting files and video for this tutorial.

Many people set up their scenes in a host application, and then export to Maxwell. This can make life easier if you’re used to setting up textures and shaders in your favoured host, but you may miss out on some of the options Maxwell offers.

So next time you work on a scene, don’t use your host’s material manager, but use the Maxwell one instead. It offers many kinds of surfaces, all of which are easily layered for complex and realistic results.

The trap people seem to fall into here, though, is not knowing which control to use to set up what’s showing from the lower layers through to the top. Each layer has a weight control with a slider and a textured control slot. This seems like the place you’d load in an alpha image, which enables you to blend layers, but in fact it isn’t. To load an alpha image, you need to go up a level, so click the word ‘layer’ for the layer that houses the uppermost part of the material. You’ll now see the opacity control. Click the texture slot of mask map, then the folder icon at the bottom right to navigate to your alpha file. It’s also worth noting that you have control over other aspects of the image here, such as inversion, brightness, and contrast, so you may not need to edit the image in Photoshop if there’s a small fix needed.

This layering system is very flexible, and allows you to build hugely complex shader systems all within one material. For example, you could start with a matte ceramic finish; add a layer of dust and scratches (note that you could just add bump here – you don’t have to have colour in every channel); followed by a glossy SSS layer, as if the dust is trapped under a lacquer; and on top of that you could have a light-emitting layer. Maybe you want to add some surface detail that a bump isn’t suitable for? Well, just add a displacement layer.

The opportunities are endless, and layering up elements is not only easy, but fun, and with Maxwell Fire running you get instant feedback, too.

Layering multiple textures together in Maxwell Render is easy and fun

Layer materials

Create a layer

Add a layer to a basic material by right clicking the layer panel. This will give you the option of the available layer types, such as a BSDF or Displacement layer. For this example use a normal layer.

Load a texture

Load a texture for your top layer using the texture map button to navigate to your chosen image. I used this mossy texture to go with a grungy alpha to control its placement. If it’s too saturated or too bright you can use the image controls to adjust it.

Add layers

Your preview will show a pure mossy sphere. Click the word ‘layer’ in the layer panel (ensuring it’s the top, mossy layer) and in the opacity control, load your alpha image. I used a simple gradient with some noise and grunge. It was the wrong way round, so I chose the invert option in the image controls.

3D World technical editor Rob Redman is a CG artist and trainer with over 10 years of experience in the field

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Neil MacCormack breaks out LightWave 11’s new FiberFx tool to create a hairy monster

This was my first attempt at using the new FiberFx tool in LightWave 11, so it was quite a learning process for me to try to create some semi-realistic/ stylised-looking frozen icicle hair and fur.

The first stage was to rig and pose the character. I knew that this was never going to be animated, so it made it a lot easier for me to create separate layers from a pre-posed character.

Once I was happy with the pose, I could save out the model in the posed position and select only the polys I wanted the base layer of hair to grow on.

The first layer was a torso and arm layer, so with those polys selected I used the FiberFx tool in LightWave Modeler to create some fibre polys. These were flat polys with tipped ends to mimic icicles. Each icicle ended up being a poly divided into four parts, which could be bent and twisted to hang down to simulate the weight of the frozen ice that they were made from. You can use the Gravity tool in the FiberFx panel to do this.

FiberFx automatically assigns surfaces, so I textured these using an image of some ice and then experimented with some variations in transparency/ reflection and translucency until I was happy with the results. This object was then saved out and added to the original posed character for render.

The second layer of hair was intended to be the finer, thinner hairs of the character, which would appear in between and matted in with the larger frozen spikes from the first layer. In order to do this I had to render out in real time rather than have them pre-modelled as before.

For this, I again selected the necessary polys (the torso, forearms, feet, and hands) from the pre-posed character and saved this out as a separate object. This would then be the active object for the fibres to grow from.

In LightWave Layout, with my object selected, I activated the FiberFx tool and chose a Thin Fiber Type and started to play with the width, length and scale until I was happy with the results. This took a lot of tweaking and test renders to finally get the correct settings. Next, I moved on to the colour and shading, for which I chose some light and dark grey colours for the Base and Tip of each fibre to simulate an old person’s hair, which I thought was appropriate for my yeti model.

I made sure the diffuse was quite high to make sure that it would be seen among the larger polygon hair that I had already modelled. I made sure the tip of the fibres was slightly translucent, then I increased the ambient light value to try to make sure that each fibre would be lit – even the ones under the larger icicle polys. This, of course, adds to the render time. However, it produces a slightly more stylised effect, which is the look I was going for with this cartoon-style yeti.

Grow a super furry animal in LightWave

Create the hair fibres

In Modeler make sure you have the object or polys selected on which you want the fibres to grow. Experiment with the settings until you’re happy with the results.

Create the hair polys

Click OK and the hair polys will be saved out in an object layer ready for you to render.

Import and render the object

With the hair layer now brought into the scene and added to the posed character, you can start to tweak the surface settings until you get the results you want.

Neil MacCormack is a freelance 3D artist. His work has been featured in numerous publications around the world

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Creating custom graphics for your 3D models is an excellent opportunity to exercise your design and texturing muscles – Mike Griggs shows you how to do it

Download the support files for this modo tutorial here.

The texturing tools in modo are brilliant for creating and modifying graphics on the surface of a model, but what happens when you want to apply custom graphics from a client, or some that you’ve designed yourself? For this tutorial, I’ll use the Nascar model that comes with modo (you’ll find it in Meshes/Automotive/NASCAR 01). The model comes with a full range of material selections, as well as a UV for the car body.

With graphic design of corporate logos and so on, it’s best to work at the highest resolution possible. Ideally, this means working with vector graphics in an application such as Illustrator. It’s worth noting that Photoshop has a good range of vector drawing tools as well, but they aren’t in the same class as those in Illustrator.

To get the car livery applied to the model, you need to get the UV map of the car body from modo to Illustrator. To do this you select the NASCAR 01 mesh, go to the modo UV tab and make sure you can see the Texture UV map in the UV map drop-down menu of the Lists tab. If your model has more than one map, select the Texture UV and rename it by holding down Alt and clicking the UV name. Make sure the centre line of the car UV is horizontal in the UV tool by selecting the polygons in the UV view and using the rotate tool. Next, go to Texture > Export UVs to EPS. This creates a generic .eps file that can be read by the majority of vector or 2D bitmap editing software. Even if you’re going to be using a vector program such as Illustrator, it’s better to open the UV.eps in Photoshop first so that you can define the canvas size. This is important when re-importing your graphics back into modo to maintain UV alignment. In the Rasterize EPS Format dialog, open the UV.eps as a 4,096-pixel square image in RGB mode, with Anti-aliased switched off. You now have a file with a correctly placed outline bitmap representation of the UV map, which you can use as a template for your graphic work. Save this file as a transparent PNG.

Make a new RGB document in Illustrator the same size as your newly created PNG, and use File > Place to insert the PNG of the UV into your Illustrator file. Now you can create your livery design with Illustrator’s drawing tools, with the bonus of having the lines of the UV map as a guide.

When you’re ready to try your design on the model, go to File > Save for Web to create a transparent PNG. Give this file a unique name. In modo add an image layer to the Car Body Material and load your new design. It should appear on the model in the correct place. When you iterate the design, overwrite your design PNG. If you do this, modo notices that the file has been updated and asks to reload it so that the model updates accordingly. This workflow is valid across design and graphic elements, which can be enhanced by modo’s painting toolset by using custom image stamps or by using the image ink toolset to create wear and scratches on the car paintwork, for example.

Use custom graphic artwork in modo

Export the UV map

With your model loaded and selected, make sure you have a suitable UV map, which you then export as an EPS using Texture > Export UV to EPS.

Open and define the file

Open the EPS in Photoshop, even if you’re going to use Illustrator to create vector artwork. Open the image as a square RGB image with Anti-aliased switched off.

Reopen in Illustrator

Save the image as a transparent PNG using File > Save for Web. Create a new file in Illustrator the same size as the PNG. Use File > Place in Illustrator to insert the transparent PNG of your UV map, which you can now use as a template for your design.

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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Illustration studio Fescher Neoilustração explains how it created this motley pack of rats for a pest control advert

Download the screenshots to accompany this tutorial here.

Fescher Neoilustração has over 15 years’ experience of presenting visual solutions to clients, combining the varied backgrounds of its studio members.

The chemicals company BASF has developed a new product for pest control, and contacted us through the advertising agency e21. Our challenge was to develop an image that could in no way elicit a sympathetic response for a group of rats, while trying to avoid showing any aggressiveness within the ad. Easy task, right?

Our solution was to show the rats becoming mesmerised by the client’s product. We worked closely with the agency’s input during the development of each individual rat’s personality traits, aiming for the right balance between funny and repulsive. The whole illustration took us almost two months.

Intelligent team co-ordination is vital to keep track of all the parallel workflows we deal with on a daily basis. Any mistake could set us back a few days, and the last thing we want is to compromise our reputation of beating all of our deadlines while maintaining high standards.

01 Image concept

We wanted each rat to have its own personality, including fur and eye colour, to help avoid any kind of image staleness. At the studio we have a cartoon department that was fundamental in developing the gesture and expression of each character. The concept phase shouldn’t be overlooked, since any mishap at this stage will show up in the next ones, just like all the modelling and shading work won’t cover up a weak idea during the early image-planning stage.

02 Texture research and development

Plenty of laborious research was necessary for the effect we were trying to achieve. Besides a complete study of rodent anatomy, we needed a convincing environment. A quick walk around the block with a camera in hand can be surprisingly useful, and creating your own textures can be very rewarding for the complete control it brings to the image-planning stage. An ever-expanding and reliable texture library can never be a bad thing, either.

03 Modelling

The rats and the sewer were modelled in Blender 2.49, with a few touch-ups in ZBrush 4 for the hands and eyelid wrinkles. The bricks that appear where the wall stucco has fallen were made from the photos taken in the previous step. Once we edited the texture, we used it to create the 3D bricks by displacing them from a mapped plane in 3ds Max.

No camera on earth could recreate the forced perspective effect we wanted for the image, so the whole sewer was modelled in straight planes. We then used a Lattice Modifier to distort the whole scenario at once, with the benefit that all mapped textures would be following the same distortion, creating a coherent image.

Despite the hard work that goes into every detail of the illustration, getting the fur just right on the rats was essential to sell the image. So we took special care with it.

In addition to creating a height map texture for the fur that would be generated in 3ds Max, we modelled small planes (which would be converted into splines later) that would dictate the flow and direction of the hairs. It’s important to have a hierarchy of splines in mind: the fur that will be generated later will take into account the order that the splines were created, and the direction of the extrusion from the original vertices. We were also careful to model the rats with an even topology, so that the fur generated from their bodies’ vertices had a uniform spacing.

04 Hair generation from splines

We used the native Hair & Fur for this part. The hair orientation was done after careful placement of geometry (planes) that had their edges extracted and converted into splines. The order of the splines affected the direction of the fur, so care was taken to make it as close as possible to the concept of the image. With some test renders, we were able to correct and adjust the hair orientation and size through the splines. To distinguish one rat from another, we used a different configuration in each fur and some specific body parts, such as head, eyebrows and cheeks in a different geometry to allow better control. Hair Styling was used when a specific adjustment was needed.

05 V-Ray hair rendering

To create the fur, we first tried mental ray, but in the end went for V-Ray because the fur rendered with more information. Every fur instance was rendered separately from the rats to allow a better degree of editing. The fur had different passes, giving special attention to their selection when in Photoshop. We rendered two distinct Light Select passes (to separate the background lights from the ones from below), then Specular, Wire Color and Reflect Glossiness passes (the latter two being the selection passes).

06 Subsurface scattering textures in Photoshop

For the skin, we decided to apply subsurface scattering (SSS) material with two layers of textures – one subdermal, with veins and hints of bones, and a top layer with a lot of dirt and scratches. This was especially important to get the final grimy aspect of the rat skin. It couldn’t feel too plastic or it wouldn’t be icky enough. The textures on the skin areas were tailor-made for each model, so no single dirty pattern would be recognisable elsewhere.

07 Subsurface scattering skin parameters

An essential element while considering SSS is scene units. In our scene, the main rats were approximately six inches tall. We did some skin materials with slightly different settings for the bodies, hands, ears, tongues, tails and noses.

The scatter radius setting was a very important aspect of these materials. For the parts where the SSS effect needed to be more apparent (such as the ears and hands), a bigger radius was chosen (4cm and 3cm, respectively). The bodies had a lower radius (0.5cm), for a more subtle effect. The previous textures were then applied to the diffuse colour and SSS colour slots. In order to have a more realistic effect and to enhance the forms, Trace Reflections was activated. The diffuse amount was tuned and ended in 0.8 in all of the materials, in order to make a good balance between the diffuse and subsurface textures and colours. A procedural bump was created to make the skin more realistic through a Cellular map independent of UVs. We also put it in the specular amount slot on this same map, but with more contrast to further break up the specular lighting.

08 Lighting the scene

The lighting was a bit tricky. We wanted to make a dark, damp environment that contrasted with the brightly lit street outside, while at the same time lighting the rats from below in an ethereal way. We first lit the environment, and then the rats. To do that, we started to place V-Ray lights to simulate the light from the sun and sky, while at the same time trying to make the details in the image easily readable. A small light was placed to simulate the warm rays of the sun and to make the shadows a bit sharper, while the blue sky was achieved through a combination of a dome light from outside and two V-Ray light planes to simulate scatter inside the sewer. We then added the rats and foreground pipes to see how everything was coming together and saw that some parts were too dark. A third V-Ray light plane was then created to better simulate the sky light on the rats and make their silhouettes stand before the background.

A counter light was placed on the ground level and pointed upwards to simulate the light bouncing, and to make some details in the pipes a bit clearer. Two lights were also created to better illuminate the foreground pipes. Every light except the counter light had shadows. For the light coming from below the rats, three small V-Ray light planes were placed to make the three central figures stand equally and have proper specular reflections. To achieve the ethereal feel we wanted, none of the three cast shadows.

09 Scene materials

Next, the background materials were detailed. We wanted to convey a wet, dirty environment. Since it was very dark and we wanted to show some details, each material had a slight reflection, even the concrete and bricks. To have more control over them, they had Fresnel activated in the reflections; most had high IORs. The wet walls had water running down them, so in order to make that effect visible, the materials were very reflective and had a B&W texture applied to the Reflection Glossiness slot. We also rendered some high reflections for the foreground pipes.

10 V-Ray rendering

The final image size was very large (9,000 pixels wide), so we needed a renderer that would be able to capture the amount of details with enough speed. We opted for V-Ray for all the renders. When the lighting was set, we didn’t need indirect lighting, which shortened the process. When setting up the renders, we divided them to make the image as editable as possible, so we did the outside street, the background, the furthest rats, the distant rats, the middleground rats, the main rats (the four biggest ones) and the pipes in the foreground.

11 Making the render passes

An important aspect when choosing render passes is information. Even weird render elements can end up with interesting results. Another important part is time. Every render pass adds to the final render time. We did a lot of tests with low-res renders in order to choose which of them were best suited for editing.

For the environment, we rendered diffuse, different lighting passes, different shadow passes, light select passes (to separate the front blue light from the other lights), varying reflection passes, specular and ZDepth passes.

The rats were rendered with two lighting setups: the background and the lights below. They had the same passes as the environment, plus the SSS and Reflection Filter passes. Both the rats and the environment had two Ambient Occlusion renders, with different radius values.

12 Post-production scene detailing

Small webs between the sewer pipes and the mould on the walls were added using textures extracted from the photos taken in step 2. A The smaller cracks were made using two Curves adjustment layers – one for darkening and the other for lightening the image. B Putting two brush strokes together – one on each layer mask – creates a naturalistic bevel effect.

13 Post-production rat detailing

One of the consequences of living in a sewer is crawling in the mud all day. So the rats would have to lose their fresh-from-render, 3D-clean appearance. A textured brush with low opacity can be used on a Solid Color layer with a Bevel & Emboss setting. Each brush stroke will then create its own bevel effect, and the low opacity will prevent the strokes from blending too fast with each other, creating a richer texture.

Several areas of fur were erased, showing the skin beneath, simulating a piece of skin or fur that could have been lost to scabies or in a fight. These aren’t cuddly cartoon rats, so a few pieces of their ears have been bitten off in post-production as well. Look really close and you’ll find a few ticks and lice, too.

Because the ears, hands and tails were modelled separately from the main bodies, it was necessary to create a transition from these areas to the rendered fur, including the naturally sparse hairs that rats have in these areas. These extra hairs were drawn one by one to create a specially organic feel. The whiskers were drawn in Photoshop as well.

14 Post-production on the lighting

The volumetric light was simulated in Photoshop, so that we could have a better control of the light sources according to the design of the advert’s layout, and respecting important areas such as the customer logo and slogan. The whole environment was darkened a little to help better define the silhouette of the rats and bring them to the foreground. On the same note, a small glow was added to simulate a rim light around the rats’ edges and to help separate their figures from the background, which we did by creating a selection of the rats, and then expanding and feathering this selection. We also added an atmospheric perspective to the buildings in the street to make them recede further into the background using Curves adjustment layers and lowering the opacity of the sky.

Fescher Neoilustração is a Brazilian illustration studio established in 1995. The philosophy of the studio is to seek out and incorporate new trends and techniques to add to the studio’s diversity of styles

Pat Imrie puts Maya 2013 and mental ray to work on a great time-saver for 3D artists

Download the accompanying video and screenshots for this Maya 2013 tutorial.

Baking out ambient occlusion maps to the UV space is a really great time-saver. The technique is most commonly used in the games industry, but it’s applicable in many other areas, too. It’s also a fairly easy process to master.

The first thing you need to do is ensure that you have clean and organised UV shells, otherwise you might find errors such as dark patches around the edges. These can be fixed in Photoshop, but it’s more efficient to take the time to lay out the UVs properly. Next you need to increase the polygon count of your meshes. This is to make sure that you get a high-quality, clean ambient occlusion result. You do this by simply going to Mesh > Smooth. Alternatively, turn on the Smooth Mesh Preview for the desired mesh by pressing [3] and going to Modify > Convert > Smooth Mesh Preview to Polygons. If your mesh is already quite complicated, then you can miss this step out if you prefer. Don’t forget to back up the non-smoothed version of the file so you can go back and edit the mesh if required. Remember that you’re only smoothing the meshes to make cleaner maps.

Once you’re happy with the UV layout and the detail of your meshes, the next step is to go into the Rendering menu and go to Lighting/Shading to create a new Bake Set to use as your settings for the AO maps. You can make as many Bake Sets as you like for each object, but I prefer to just make one and adjust the settings as required.

With the objects selected, go to Lighting/Shading > Assign New Bake Set (Mental Ray) > Texture Bake Set and the options will appear in the Attribute Editor. In the options change the Fill Texture Seams to 2.5 and adjust the resolution of the map you want to the required resolution.

Now that the Texture Bake settings have been sorted, you need to create an ambient occlusion shader to actually bake down onto the UVs. In the Hypershade create a new surface shader and rename it AO_Shader. In the Attribute Editor select the OutColour channel, and in the Create Render Node window, go into the mental ray textures and choose the mib_amb_occlusion node. Set the Samples to 256 and the Max Distance to 10. Increasing the Samples will reduce grain, and setting the Max Distance higher will tighten up the effect of the AO. Apply the shader to all the objects in the scene that you want to create a map for.

Before you start baking out the maps you need to change the mental ray settings to get a higher quality map. In the Render Settings, switch the Quality Preset to Preview, then set the Samples to 2 and the Filter type to Gaussian. This will create a clean, smooth render. Press [Ctrl]+[H] to hide any objects you haven’t selected. This will decrease the time it takes to make the map, and reduce the chances of small errors. It’s inevitable that some specks will appear on the map, but these are normally small and easily fixed in Photoshop.

Go to Lighting/Shading > Mental Ray (Batch Bake) and make sure that Bake Shadows is selected. The rest can be left at their defaults. Click Convert and Close, and after a few minutes it will save out the map to a new shader in the Hypershade, and apply it to the selected object. This is handy because it gives you immediate feedback on how the map looks. Maya will save your map in your project files, normally at C:\Users\User\Documents\maya\projects\[project-name]\renderData\mentalray\lightMap.

Bake ambient occlusion into UVs

Optimise your scene

Lay out a clean set of UVs and smooth the geometry accordingly, before setting up a new Texture Bake set for the scene.

Set up the surface shader

Create a new surface shader and attach a mib_amb_occlusion texture to it. Adjust the AO settings and apply the shader to the objects.

Bake and save the maps

Double-check your Bake and Render settings, then batch bake to create the map. Open it up from the Hypershade and save it out.

Pat is a freelance lead 3D artist and trainer, specialising in modelling and digital sculpture, with experience in TV, film and games.

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3D artist Francisco Martinez shares the modelling pipeline he used on his short film project It Never Ends

Download the screenshots and breakdown video for this tutorial.

This tutorial is a brief exposition of the key techniques I used to create my It Never Ends project at Vancouver Film School during a 3D animation and visual effects course. I’ll explain my modelling pipeline on one of the bricks I made, which uses pretty much the same methodology I used for all the assets in the scene. I’ll then reveal how I made the textures and shaders for this asset, and finally I’ll explain how I lit the scene and fixed some of the problems in post-production.

01 Build a proxy model

I always start by modelling the proxy model in a 3D package (in this case, Maya). I make sure the brick has real proportions, and then I add a few bevels on the corners.

02 Start to sculpt

I import the asset to ZBrush to sculpt details such as cracks and holes using the Clay Tubes, Clay Buildup, and Trim Dynamic brushes.

Every time I work on the corners I go back to Maya (using GoZ) to change the topology. It’s important because when working on corners the vertices crash into each other, and that’s bad when baking Displacement and Normal maps. I just try to adapt the topology to the new shape. I go back into ZBrush to project the detail on the new geometry. I repeat this process as many times as necessary.

03 Unwrap the UV and apply corrections

Before texturing, I unwrap the model in Maya using traditional projections. I usually use Unfold in Softimage for this task, but in this case Maya was more than capable. I then use the ZApp Link plug-in in ZBrush to texture the brick, using different areas of my picture references in Photoshop to avoid obvious repetition in the surface patterns.

After finishing the projection process I go into Photoshop to colour-correct the image. In this case, I needed to desaturate the colours a little, and remove some of the highlights and shadows.

04 Test with lighting

I use the mia_material_X_passes for all my assets, and I always test them with the same light rig, which imitates a studio lighting environment with two portal lights and a 50 per cent grey background.

05 Apply displacements and test-render

I connect the colour map and the displacement map that I baked in ZBrush. For this sort of displacement I always use an approximation subdivision using the mental ray Approximation Editor with Spatial mode so that the model gets subdivided depending on the edge or pixel length needed.

I don’t try to get all the detail from the displacement map because it needs a lot of subdivisions. Instead I use a normal map for smaller details that don’t affect the silhouette of the asset. I like to turn on and off the portal lights one at a time to test that the displacement and normal maps work with the shaders. I use linear workflow to get photorealistic results.

06 Apply bump and specular maps

To match the colour map detail, I always use a bump map. To create it I work in Photoshop with a fully desaturated version of the colour map, using Levels adjustments with masks to get the darkest and brightest areas. I use the High Pass filter to get a more even greyscale image.

I do the same for the specular map, but after desaturating I put the bump map on the top with a Color Burn blend mode.

07 Add the key, fill and rim lights

I always start my lighting by adding the key light, which in this case was a directional light that imitates the sun with a subtle warm colour. I love portal lights. I use them all the time to add gradation and get better shape out of my assets. Sometimes it’s useful to link some lights with specific objects.

08 Final Gather and rayswitch

I always work with Final Gather in combination with a rayswitch camera shader, where I connect a detailed HDR image on the environment and reflection channels, and a blurred version of the same on the Final Gather. It helps to remove the common noise and artefacts.

09 Add blockers

To avoid undesirable overall brightness from the Final Gather, I set some huge boxes (as blockers) off-screen to fill the opened spaces of my scene.

10 Check the renders

Before colour-correcting the image, I use some cleaning plate techniques in Nuke to remove small problems, such as the UV seam problem I had on the character’s head.

I check to see in which frame the problem starts to show up, and then I remove it with the Clone tool (with the colour source set as the foreground) in the roto node. In this case translating on x and y was more than enough. I disconnect the roto node and use a tracker, using the same UV seam problem as a tracking point to calculate the tracking path.

11 Reconnect the root

I go back to the frame where the tracker starts, and disconnect the tracker to connect the roto again, then I link the translate (x,y) and the center (x,y) from the tracker to the roto node.

12 Set the colour space

By default Nuke always works in linear colour space, but I like to work in sRGB because that’s what I use in Photoshop. To do this you just have to set two colour space nodes: one before the colour correction (set from linear to sRGB) and the second one right after all the colour correction is done (set from sRGB to linear).

Francisco Martinez has been a 3D artist for three years, working in advertising and videogames. He’s now breaking into the film industry

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Creature design is both exciting and daunting in equal measures. Mike Griggs helps you get started

The whole reason that we get into 3D is to create stuff, and one of the purest expressions of this is designing new creatures. Until we discover alien lifeforms – or they discover us – CGI offers us an amazing way of imagining them for ourselves.

Designing creatures isn’t just about new life: it’s applicable in interpreting written descriptions of prehistoric or fantasy worlds, from dragons and yet-to-be-discovered dinosaurs to Gollum.

• Read an interview with Joe Letter about the making of Gollum

So how do you go about designing a creature? It’s easy to get stuck staring at a white piece of paper or screen while you try to imagine a creature and how it looks. Thankfully, there are techniques you can use to get your creature-creating juices flowing.

If you’re designing the creature yourself and not to a brief, why not write a description of what you want your creature to be? This can include what character traits you want it have as well as its appearance.

Sketching out rough ideas is also important, but don’t worry if you’re not confident in your drawing skills – use basic geometric shapes and lines to block out your creature, which you can then build upon later.

You can use these shapes to create interesting silhouettes of your creature design; these will be the key elements of any new creature or character design, and should depict the character of the creature as well.

Another great source of inspiration is the world around us. Don’t be afraid to mix in elements from creatures that already exist, but use plausible anatomy to link them – it won’t look convincing if you don’t use realistic proportions.

Reference is key to creature design, as is starting simply with a clear idea of what you want your creature to be like. If you look at one of the most iconic creature designs – the Xenomorph from the Alien film trilogy – it succeeds in being relentlessly terrifying as it mixes recognisable bipedal form, juxtaposed with an elongated human skull with no eyes – artist HR Giger felt the creature would be more frightening if you couldn’t tell whether it was looking at you.

Without Giger’s designs we would have never known such a creature could exist, even in our nightmares, and that’s what makes creature design so compelling.

The foundations of creature design

Get good reference

The key to all good design work is reference. To give your creature a grounding in reality, it’s good to gather as much image reference as you can. The human photo reference site 3D.sk has a large range of animal imagery as well, including skeletal breakdowns. Consider enrolling in a life drawing class to hone your skills, or take as many photos as you can of yourself and other people. Animals are also a great reference for creature design.

Test your design with silhouettes

Creating thumbnail silhouettes of your creature design is a great way of getting to the essence of your design. Whether you’re just designing a bust or a whole form, silhouettes give you the ability to play with scale and shape quickly and intuitively. Most 3D applications have a way to show your model in silhouette only; another method is to give your model a pure luminous texture, which remove any surface detail.

Use basic shapes

When designing creatures, try to break down the major forms of your creature into simple shapes. For this creature, the basic form of the face can be broken down into a series of triangles. Using this method helps speed up your design, and also allows you to define a logic to your creature’s structure, which can be useful later down the CG pipeline – for example, when rigging.

Create for free

Sculpting your creature is the most natural way to create on the computer. While most 3D applications now come with some form of sculpting package (either built in, or as an associated application), learning curves can be daunting. Sculptris – from Pixologic, the maker of ZBrush – is a free sculpting and texturing application that is quick to learn and can export 3D meshes ready for other applications.

Finish in Photoshop

If you have your creature design blocked out but don’t have the time, or experience, to texture it using techniques such as UV mapping, don’t worry – many leading concept artists render a version of their design with no colour and then ‘paint’ the texture onto the model in Photoshop (or a similar 2D package). While not practical for animation, if you’re working on still images this technique allows you to focus on your image with little render overhead.

From paper sketch to 3D

01 From paper to screen

I first drew a design based on geometric shapes to block out proportions and shapes. I used my camera phone to take a photo of the sketch.

02 Digitising your image

I then prepared the photograph in 2D in order to isolate the elements of the sketch I wanted to use for my creature design.

03 Adding detail

Now I have scanned in my basic sketch, I can iterate a number of designs as well as using it as the background for 3D work.

Mike Griggs is a freelance concept 3D, VFX and motion graphics artist working across TV, exhibition and digital design

More creature design tips and tutes

• 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

James Cutler puts VRayFur and 3ds Max to work and weaves a luxurious floor covering

Download the support files and video for this tutorial.

VRayFur is a very simple procedural fur plug-in for V-Ray. Start by opening the file t_Q&A_167_Max_ Start.max. Select the rug object, go to the Create panel and choose V-Ray from the Geometry drop-down menu. Click and apply VRayFur to the rug.

Set the VRayFur parameters to represent and control the strands of a rug

In the VRayFur rollout, set Length to 2.0cm, Thickness to 0.05cm, and Bend to 0.8. Under Geometric Detail, clear Flat Normals: this will make the strands appear cylindrical and much more realistic for the rug. For objects such as grass you may wish to leave this on, because grass is flat. Leave all the Variation settings at their default value of 0.2, because you’ll be controlling some of these parameters via a texture map. Under Distribution, select Per Face, and set this to 10 – this will mean that each face now has 10 strands.

The colour of the strands are taken from the intersecting point on the texture map

Under the Maps parameters, click the empty slot for Bend Direction Map (RGB) and choose Fur Direction.jpg. The bend direction is now controlled by the texture map’s RGB colours, but the bend amount is still affected by the bend parameter. Red offsets in the U direction, green offsets in the V direction and blue offsets in the W direction; any colours in-between would be an amalgamation of the three main colours. On a colour wheel, red and green are opposite each other, so in this instance it would make the strands go in opposite directions. Add the same Fur Direction.jpg file to the Initial Direction Map slot to control the direction of the strands. Now the majority of the strands follow the same direction, but with some variation.

Use RGB texture maps to control the direction and the bend amount of the rug’s strands

Select both the rug object and VRayFur and assign a new VRayMtl to them. In the Diffuse slot, add Rug.jpg as the texture map. VRayFur will take the colour of a pixel where it meets a strand, and use it to colour that strand. In the Bump slot, add a Noise Modifier, set Noise Size to 0.05 and set Bump Amount to 70. This will give added texture to the individual strands.

VRayDistanceTex is used to stop the strands intersecting with surrounding objects

There’s a table positioned on top of the rug: you don’t want any of the rug strands going through it, but instead to appear flattened by its weight. In the Maps rollout of the VRayFur, scroll down to Density Map and add a VRayDistanceTex. Click and drag the VRayDistanceTex into an empty slot in the Material Editor, then choose Instance. Set the distance to 1.0cm, and under the VRayDistanceTex Objects rollout, choose Add and select the table object.

If you hide the table object now, you’ll notice that there are no strands present underneath it. By setting the distance to 1.0cm, strands will not start to appear until they are outside of this distance. Currently the near colour is set to pure black, meaning no strands will appear, and pure white in the far colour so that 100 per cent of the strands will be present.

Increase the available dynamic memory limit to let V-Ray decide how much memory it needs

In Render Setup under the Settings tab, set Dynamic Memory Limit to 0 in the System rollout, because VRayFur uses dynamic memory to calculate during render time. The majority of other calculations made by V-Ray use static memory, so by setting the limit to 0, you’re letting V-Ray decide how much memory it needs.

Techniques for using VRayFur

Use Blow Up and Region tools for adjusting the strands

VRayFur can sometimes render slowly, so you can use the Blow Up and Region tools (under the Common tab in Render Setup) for adjusting and fine-tuning smaller areas.

Set the strand distribution to a low number

To tweak bend direction, texture and length, set the distribution to a low number when test-rendering – you don’t need to see the entire area until the final render.

Use ambient occlusion to bring back any lost detail

Due to lots of tiny strands, shadow detail can be lost during render time from occlusion. Render an Ambient Occlusion pass to add detail back in post-production.

James Cutler runs MintViz Workshop, a resource for any CG artist, designer or generalist who’s looking to develop their skills

Discover 15 great free 3D models at our sister site, Creative Bloq.

Want a neatly manicured virtual lawn without the effort? Here’s Rob Redman with his green fingers, ready to help

Maxon’s Cinema 4D has a great hair engine, which can be turned to a number of other uses, including grass of various lengths, colours and thicknesses. The main benefit of using the hair system is that it’s very controllable. Just about every aspect of it can be driven in some way, usually by way of the shader channels, although some parts can be driven by splines as well. On top of this, you have brushing and cutting tools that enable you to refine your fibres in the Perspective view.

Add a Hair tag to a simple plane – this is the geometry for the grass to grow on

In this instance, you’ll take a plane and recreate a patterned lawn. The first thing to do is add the geometry for the grass to grow on. You can be as extravagant as you like, but to keep the example simple, I’m using a flat plane with just one polygon. Now add a Hair tag. Depending on your version of Cinema 4D, this will either be found under its own menu, or under the Simulation menu. Before you start the texturing and growth mapping, add a couple of lights to the scene and enable Soft Shadows. This will help you get a better idea of the grass when you test render: the default light does no favours to the hair engine.

Locate the Length channel and add an image or shader here to drive the strand length

Add hairs and hair segments as needed in the Attributes Manager – I’ll run through all of this in the video, so watch that if you’ve not used the hair engine before. Open up the default hair material that has been made, and under the Length channel, add either a shader or greyscale image that will drive the length of each strand. You can also set the maximum length here – the whiter the area in your shader, the closer to 100 per cent of your maximum length the strands will be in that area. For my example, I added a checkerboard shader with simple black-and-white for 0 per cent and 100 per cent length growth.

Next, add a couple of lights to the scene and add some colour to see the results

This is a simple example, but you can experiment with shaders and images, or combinations using the Layer shader or fusion. It’s easy to create complex set-ups, including using the Proximal shader to have the length interact with objects as they near the grass. If you find it hard to visualise what will happen where, you can always copy your Length Map shader and paste it into the Colour channel of a standard material. Apply that to your plane (or other underlying object) and you’ll have a much clearer idea. This is very useful for setting the scale of tiling lengths like checkerboards or spirals.

3D World technical editor and 3D artist Rob Redman has been working in the field of VFX and motion graphics for over a decade

Discover the best 3D movies of 2013 at our sister site, Creative Bloq.

Photoshop offers intuitive ways to build up your textures. Leigh van der Byl reveals her top tips

While 3D painting applications such as The Foundry’s Mari are gradually replacing 2D software for texture painting, Photoshop nevertheless remains a stalwart for many, with its flexibility and advanced blending, painting and masking tools still offering a robust package for texture painters who have either not invested in a 3D painting package yet, or continue to use it alongside a 3D package.

• Read a review of Mari 1.5

Photoshop still has a few tricks up its sleeve that the 3D options don’t yet offer, especially when it comes to blending and adjusting layers in a texture. Additionally, the user-friendliness and familiarity of the application make it a good solution for things that need to be done quickly and with minimal fuss.

This is a collection of essential techniques and tips for texture painters using Photoshop.

These represent some of its greatest strengths with regards to our particular discipline, and will help to improve your efficiency and texturing approach if you incorporate them into your workflow. Many of these are particularly notable for their non-destructive approach.

In other words, they use tools and techniques such as adjustment layers and layer masking, which offer a great way to alter your document in a non-permanent fashion, so you can change or even completely undo your work at a later stage without excessive reworking.

This non-destructive workflow has always been one of Photoshop’s greatest flexibilities when it comes to painting textures, and is a core reason why it remains an essential part of most texture painters’ toolsets.

01 Customising your brushes

Using Angle Jitter set to Direction with a custom brush is great for painting hair and fur

Photoshop’s brush engine is an extremely robust and highly customisable one, offering a wide array of custom features that you can tailor to your particular style of painting, or to achieve a specific effect.

Creating brushes from any bitmap shape is as simple as selecting the shape and then selecting Edit > Define Brush Preset, which creates a new brush in your current Brush palette from the selection.

You can then open the Brush Tool palette and add additional enhancements to it. Among the most useful of these are Angle Jitter, which causes the brush’s shape to follow the direction you’re painting in – which is great for painting things like fur or stitching details on clothing.

02 Good cloning techniques

Everyone loves Photoshop’s Clone Stamp tool, mostly commonly simply referred to as the Clone tool. However, there’s a trick to using it in such a way as to prevent areas from becoming soft and blurred, and that’s to use hard-edged, custom-shaped brushes.

Using Photoshop’s default round brushes with soft edges, which is what many beginners use (and what you would use in many other circumstances), tends to result in soft patches in the texture, due to the soft edges of the cloned patch of pixels. Using a custom shaped, grungy type brush with hard edges will reduce this soft effect. Use custom-shaped brushes – round brushes don’t look good when cloning with hard edges.

03 Use layer blend modes

Using Photoshop’s layer blend modes generally produces more natural-looking results than simply lowering the opacity slider on a normal blended layer.

Modes such as Overlay, Multiply and Soft Light in particular are very useful for layering different photographic textures or painted layers with pleasing and organic-looking results, with each mode using the tonal values of the layer differently to produce the final result.

While these blending modes can be useful for all kinds of textures, they’re particularly efficient at creating organic textures, because blending multiple layers on top of one another produces a sense of substantial depth. This impression of depth is especially good for creating the look of living organic tissue.

04 Advanced blending

Hidden away in the Layer Style dialog, under Blending Options, are the incredibly useful Blend If sliders. You’ll find them under the Advanced Blending header.

You use these to blend the layer according to either its own grey or RGB values, or the values of the layer beneath it, or both. They enable you to define value ranges that become transparent.

The sliders are particularly useful for dropping a photographic texture onto the one beneath it, such as a photo of some rust onto an underlying metal layer. Holding down [Alt] while adjusting a point on the slider splits it to allow a finer transition.

The dialog also offers a number of other options for expanding and fine-tuning layer blending.

05 Adjustment layers

Adjustment layers non-destructively alter underlying tones and colours

Adjustment layers have long been one of Photoshop’s greatest features, allowing you to alter the values of colours or tones of the layers beneath them without permanently applying the change to them.

Levels, Hue/Saturation and Color Balance are all of particular use to the texture painter, and when used in combination with the Blend If sliders (see tip 4), they’re a powerful way to selectively alter tones and colours without having to use layer masks.

For example, you can use the Blend If sliders to make the adjustment layer affect only the light pixels, or just the dark ones, or any of the red, green or blue tones of the underlying layers.

06 Layer clipping

Clipping an adjustment layer to the layer below protects the layers beneath the clipped layer

Another somewhat hidden feature of layer usage is the ability to clip layers to others. Clipping an adjustment layer to another layer will have the adjustment affect only that single layer, while clipping a regular layer to another will have the original layer’s visibility controlled by the layer to which it is clipped.

In other words, the visibility of the clipped layer will depend upon the opacity of the pixels of the layer to which it is clipped. To clip a layer to another, simply position one above the other, hold down [Alt], position your cursor between the two layers in the Layers panel to get the clip option, then click.

07 Layer masks

Layer masks are the most effective way to control a layer’s visibility non-destructively

Masks are a great way to control the visibility of any layer. Due to their nature they are totally non-destructive, as you can use them to simply ‘hide’ portions of a layer instead of permanently erasing those pixels.

They’re especially useful in texturing when combined with grunge maps, which are essentially high-contrast images created from detailed photos. This allows you to blend layers together using highly detailed, organic masks that retain natural-looking shapes in their details.

Right-clicking a mask also allows you to open the Refine Mask dialog, which has numerous options for further refining the results. These are also all non-destructive, because the pixels of the mask aren’t permanently altered by adjusting them.

08 Masked adjustments for removing lighting

Masking adjustment layers is the best way of non-destructively removing lighting from an image

Using layer masks in conjunction with adjustment layers provides a highly flexible and effective way of painting light out of photos and evening their tones, especially when using them to mask Levels and Hue/Saturation layers.

Again, this is a non-destructive technique, which allows for constant refinement or alteration at a later stage, and because you’re not painting onto the actual pixels of the layer that’s having its lighting removed, you end up with a cleaner, more controlled result.

We use this technique a lot when dealing with reference photos of actors, or set pieces that need to be projected onto their equivalent digital doubles in film work.

09 The High Pass filter

The High Pass filter can be used to create a quick base for bump maps from a texture

The High Pass filter, found under Filter > Other, is useful for two things in texturing: sharpening photo textures that are a little soft or need more detail enhancement, and for creating quick bump maps.

For the former, simply duplicate the layer, desaturate it, and apply the High Pass filter with a relatively low radius (below 5 pixels), and then blend it using Overlay above the original layer.

For bump maps, desaturating and applying High Pass at a relatively high pixel value is a quick way to get a good base image, because the filter’s effect is based on an average of 50 per cent grey; this is good for bump maps because 3D renderers use 50 per cent grey as the median point for greyscale maps such as bump and specular.

10 Using opacity effectively

Carefully build up tones by using low opacity brushes for a more natural look

Perhaps one of the most crucial pieces of advice I can give about painting textures in Photoshop is to use a build-up approach – in other words, painting (whether it’s actual painting on layers or on layer masks) is often best accomplished by using low-opacity brushes to build up the tones slowly, as opposed to simply slapping opaque paint details onto a layer and trying to blend them down.

Painting with a gentle approach is likely to yield the best results in most cases, especially when it comes to organic textures, but also when dealing with hard surfaces.

Leigh van der Byl is a VFX texture painter in London. Her recent credits include X-Men First Class and the upcoming sci-fi thriller Gravity. She also scours the globe shooting landscape photography in cold, bleak environments

• Check out this ZBrush, Maya and Photoshop tutorial, by readers of 3D World
• Also see Arch-Viz top tips

• Read a review of Photoshop CS6 Extended

Master Photoshop! Discover 120 top Photoshop tutorials at Creative Bloq.