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

Discover 85 amazing Illustrator tutorials at our sister site, Creative Bloq.

On this piece reader Jan Jinda had fun with concepting and enjoyed the surfacing and lighting too

Artist: Jan Jinda
Title: Will be Next?
Software: ZBrush, modo, Photoshop

I work as a general artist, mainly on commercials in the post-production studio R.U.R. in Prague. Much of my work involves 3D, compositing and occasionally supervising on set. Before I went to R.U.R. I was working as
a 3D generalist in the biggest VFX house in middle Europe, UPP, where I touched up blockbusters such as 2012, Pandorum, Season of the Witch
and The Nutcracker in 3D.

It’s hard to tell how long it took me to create this image. I guess it took around two years from start to finish, but with a few long breaks in the middle. The modelling, lighting and rendering was done in modo. Then I used ZBrush for concepting and detailing, and finally Photoshop for texturing and post-production. I used ZBrush for concepting the whole character because it’s a very fast and effective method. ZBrush was also used for a lot of the other stuff, including the fish, and the rocket was sculpted, too.

I’m inspired by all things around me. I have several favourite sculptors, both traditional and digital, who inspire me very much. And I also look for inspiration in movies, games and books, too. I’m a generalist so I enjoy all parts of the production process. But on this piece I had a lot of fun with concepting, and I enjoyed the surfacing and lighting a lot, too.

Get published

If you would like to see
your work featured in 3D World, email us, attaching a low-res version of the image

The Halo 4 Spartan Ops game trailer series is Axis’s most ambitious project to date. Executive producer and MD Richard Scott reveals why

We had been working with Microsoft Game Studios for over two years on a number of different projects, so we’d always hoped we’d get a crack at being involved with Halo. It’s such a massive brand in the games world.

We were first approached by the Halo development team 343 Industries, and we were asked to create a proposal for how we could tackle a ten-episode series. We set to work on treatments, creative ideas and style frames that proposed a range of approaches from stylised 2D animation to a mix of live action and CGI.

From here we were asked to consider how we’d approach a photorealistic CGI approach, which is a big challenge for any studio. Axis Animation owner and the director of Halo 4 Spartan Ops Stu Aitken was really excited about this idea, and started to plan an approach, alongside senior producer Debbie Ross, CG supervisor Sergio Caires and department leads John Barclay, Bruce Sutherland, Nicholas Pliatsikas, Marco Godinho and Andy Miller.

What went right

1. We did as much pre-production as possible within the schedule

The sheer scale of the project was like nothing we had done before. Over 35 characters, 20 sets, 1,200 shots, and the highest quality production values we had ever done.

This meant we needed to use pre-production time to concept, design and visualise as much of the episodes as possible before starting key parts of the work. Director Stu Aitken worked with our art directors Jon Beeston, Gareth Hector and Szymon Biernacki to create three distinct types of artwork.

The final frame of the Infinity Engine Room, showing the lighting inspired by the sequenced colour scripts

Concept designs were created for all the elements that were new. New environments such as the Infinity Hangar Bay, and new props such as communication devices were created to give the modelling team as much detail as possible. Production art was created to define the look and feel of the lighting and atmosphere in the new environments. Thumbnail colour sketches were developed to define the lighting for all the major story beats and key shots for every episode.

2. We automated as much of the workflow as possible

Our pipeline supervisor Nicholas Pilatsikas was charged with growing our pipeline development team, and defining a list of priorities for which tools should be improved and which tools should be developed from scratch.

Automating manual repeatable tasks was put very high on the list, and tools were developed to save artists repeating these processes by hand. These tasks included splitting layout scenes into shots for animation, lighting and rendering, creating animation caches and shader updates before scenes were rendered on the farm, therefore guaranteeing all caches and shaders were the most recent, and updating our tracking software Shotgun by allowing it to interrogate Maya scene data.

Ultimately, this was a drive for efficiency, to allow artists to create art and not spend so much time running scripts and waiting for processes to complete – something we’ll be applying to all of our projects from now on, no matter what their scale.

3. We wanted photorealistic characters, so we used real people

Shaded and rendered model of the Grant character. The hair was created in Maya and rendered via Houdini

A big part of the project was making convincing character performances. 343 Industries wanted the most realistic human characters we could create. The best way to do this is to cast real people and scan their heads. Costs for 3D scanning have been reduced so much since the technology’s inception, and scanning captures all those little nuances of the human face that are hard to sculpt from scratch no matter how skilled an artist you are.

Working with real people allowed us to translate the fantastic character performances to great-looking models. Motion capture was done at Giant Studios with the facial capture provided by Cubic Motion. We provided enough time in the schedule to further refine our facial rigging setup to allow for more automated setups and better quality results. Working with the scanned characters and the facial data allowed us to guarantee high quality animation across a high volume of character screen time.

What went wrong

1. We modelled detail that you didn’t see

Another big challenge with Spartan Ops was the parallel nature of the workflow. Modelling was going on at the same time as script writing and storyboarding, for example.

A side effect of this was that the modellers were working on environments without knowing exactly what was going to be seen on camera. The schedule just didn’t allow us to build proxies for every asset, do all the layout and then go back to the proxies and increase model detail where required.

This was frustrating, not only for the amount of time put in, but also for the artists to know that all their hard work, care and attention to detail doesn’t get fully appreciated in the final cuts.

The final frame of the Infinity Hangar Bay, showing motion-captured Hangar Tech characters approaching the Pelican Dropship

If we could have changed anything, it would have been to extend the schedule to allow for smarter working on these types of problems. If we could do it again, I would recommend defining cameras before adding details to models – this would have saved a lot of time.

2. Speed and consistency in shot lighting

We underestimated the amount of time it would take to light this volume of shots at high quality. We had rapidly grown our lighting team, and so there were a lot of talented new artists in the studio that had to get up to speed with our workflow.

The schedule demanded fast turnaround on the shots, and when we started out, the shots were taking twice as long to create and to get final approval as we wanted them to.

Our solution was to create time in the schedule for each of our leads to ‘package up’ the light rigs in such a way that they could be quickly re-used by other artists. This resulted in us analysing each sequence, and setting up lighting rigs for the key camera angles. These were then approved by the lighting supervisor, and rolled out to other artists to implement and refine on a per-shot basis.

Lessons learnt

Spartan Ops has been an incredible growth project for Axis. We doubled our team size, restructured their organisation, created new departments, and refined our pipeline. We learnt that creating 50 per cent of an animated feature isn’t easy. It’s given us even more respect for those who successfully create an animated film for theatrical release.

However, I think the most important thing we’ve learnt is that at this scale you need to constantly look for ways to let your artists create art, and not have them wrapped up in technical process and laborious tasks. This is the constant battle for everyone, even if you’re working on your project alone or as part of a huge animation studio.

The Engine Room concept art explores the overall layout of the room and the lighting treatments

The first five episodes of Spartan Ops were released before Christmas, and were well received by Halo fans. People have been impressed by the quality of the production values and positive about the character and story development. That’s massively important to Axis as a studio and our future goals.

VITAL STATISTICS
Studio: Axis
Format: Digitally distributed episodic series
Client: Microsoft Games Studios and 343 Industries
Time taken: One year
Team size: The team started at around 45 people and topped out at almost 100 during the most intense periods of production
Software used: Maya, Houdini, modo, ZBrush, Fusion, After Effects
Release date: 6 November 2012

Richard is one of the founders of Axis. Originally an artist himself, he became Axis MD and executive producer in 2005. As well as Halo 4 Spartan Ops, Richard has recently been involved with trailers for Aliens: Colonial Marines, GRID 2 and Until Dawn

Creating convincing wear and tear on objects is one of the keys to creating a believable model; Mike Griggs takes you through modo’s weathering tools

Luxology’s modo software includes a range of texturing tools that can help create convincing weathered textures. One of the key texturing additions has been the use of Occlusion Layers in the shader tree: this feature can transform your texturing workflow within modo as well as being used as the foundation of creating weathered elements for other 3D applications.

The Occlusion Layer in the Shader Tree examines any geometry that it’s applied to, and offers a range of parameters to allow you to create interesting texture effects within materials without needing to create UVs. To create this scene of a hallway on a space ship, I’ve used Occlusion Layers in a number of ways to add wear to the surface textures as well as to manage the colours of the ceiling lights.

To create the staining on the side panels, I used two materials: one is a base metal paint, and the other a dull rusty metal that has some reflective properties. Both of these material groups are themselves grouped under the Panel material, which I have created and applied to the wall geometry using the M key.

I then add an Occlusion Layer (under Add Layer > Processing in the drop-down menu at the top of the Shader tab) to the Panel material and nest it into the top Metal material group. I then right-click the Diffuse Colour of the newly created Occlusion Layer under the Effect column, and in the drop-down menu, change the effect to Shader Control > Group Mask. This tells modo to use the Occlusion Layer as a mask for everything within the folder of the material group that it’s applied to, and will allow the properties of the material group below it – in this case, the rust – to become visible. The stacking of the materials is crucial, because modo calculates its renders from the bottom of the shader tree to the top.

Now that I have the basic setup, I can set the Occlusion Layer to the desired effect – in this case, I want streaking to depict grime descending from the panelling. In the Properties tab of the Occlusion Layer, I switch the Type to Down Slope, and adjust the Occlusion Distance to a suitable scale for my model – in this case 1m. I also change the Variance to 100%, which controls the randomness of the streaking, and I change the Variance Scale to 150mm to create small, narrow streaks.

When adjusting the Occlusion parameters, if you can’t see what you’re doing, add some luminosity to the lower material group so that it can shine through and allow you to judge the patterns of your wear and tear. I use an Occlusion Layer in the same way to create the material for the corridor skirting, but I use a smaller Occlusion Distance and fewer Occlusion rays, which gives a wider pattern and allows more of the rust to show.

To add the text to the wall panel, I create a UV texture from the panel geometry, and make a sign graphic in Photoshop. Back in modo’s Shader Tree, I make a new material group under the Panel material’s Occlusion Layer, specifically for the text graphic. I apply the sign graphic I created as an Image Layer Mask to a basic material that has a small amount of coloured luminosity to it, to make it read in the render.

I instance the Panel material’s Occlusion Layer by right-clicking it and selecting Create Instance, and then place the instance of the Occlusion Layer in the Text for Panel material group – this creates a staining effect for the sign that’s adjustable independently of the rest of the Occlusion parameters for the material group.

Another example of how Occlusion Layers can be used is in the ceiling lights – to create the stained yellow of the lights I used an Occlusion Layer on the top (white) light material as a Layer Mask (because there were no other grouped material layers that the Occlusion Layer needed to be applied to), which allowed the lower (yellow) light to appear through. This time I used the Reflection type to create a different look to the staining.

Creating material groups

After modelling

I move to the Render tab in modo and create two material groups in my Panel material. modo calculates its renders from bottom to top, so the intention is for the bottom Rust material group to appear through the Top Metal material group at the top.

Occlusion Layer

I place an Occlusion Layer at the top of the Top Metal material group and change its Effect to Group Mask, and Type to Down Slope. This allows all the texture layers in the Top Metal group to be affected by the Occlusion Layer and create the streaking pattern I want.

Create the stained ceiling light effect

I use the Occlusion Layer, with Type set to Reflection, as a Layer Mask. This will appear below the top White LED in the Shader Tree: it only affects the material it’s applied to, which is much simpler for basic material mixing.

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

Spacesuit 3D mesh from Nasa 3D Resources

Discover 10 amazing examples of projection mapping over at Creative Bloq.

Rafael Vallaperde shares the production process behind his atmospheric illustration of an octopus

This walkthrough on the creation of my ‘Evil Octopus’ image is pretty straightforward: I usually follow the steps I describe here while I keep sketching over the work-in-progress image to plan my next action.

Sometimes I keep going back and forth through some steps just to make sure I get the results I want – like tweaking a model after noticing something that happens under a specific lighting set-up.

I think of it as building in layers. The first part to get right is composition (if this isn’t working, I keep redoing it until the image works), and then lighting, shapes and so on.

Blocking the scene with simple models, or even blobs that have the same weight as your finished model, helps you to figure out the tweaks you need to make on things that have got lost in translation between 2D and 3D. After the steps above are done it’s all about modelling, UVing, material creation and the final render.

01 Sketch the concept

I start by sketching an idea. This one came to me during render time on another job. Later on I decided to make a complete illustration out of it.

02 Modelling the base of the octopus and the cage

I do a quick model just to block out the shapes. I import a low-res mesh into ZBrush and play with its shape a bit.

03 Use modo’s retopology tools

I bring the decimated mesh back into modo and use its retopology tools to make a clean mesh with loops. This was the first time I’d tried the new modo 601 retopology tools: they were pretty great.

04 Add the tentacles

Next, I add some tentacles. I think for a while about how to make them and decide I don’t want to rig it because I’d spend a lot of time just trying to figure it out. I end up using polymodelling – I decide this will be fine as it’s a static image. It’s surprisingly fast, but I’d probably do them differently now.

05 Back to ZBrush

After setting up the model in modo I bring it back into ZBrush for detailing.

06 Polypainting in ZBrush

Next, I paint some textures with Polypaint. I then export the textures and a displacement map as well.

07 Import finished model to modo

Now it’s time to put the maps and model together. I start to play with some base materials for the octopus.

08 Creating the background

I didn’t plan a background from the start but feel like creating one, so I start to block out a dark library scene. After trying it, it doesn’t work as well as I want, so I change it to a lab in the attic.

09 New direction

I do a rough sketch of the lab scene in Photoshop, and now the background is on the right track.

10 Light the room

I start changing the light so that I still have good volume on the octopus and light the background. This step is very important. I like to create a simple material that carries the property of the surface prior to lighting and then, after lighting, I craft them as final materials.

11 Final 3D tweaks

It’s time for me to get fussy about what I don’t like and change it! Here you can see the notes I’ve made on things I want to alter.

12 Render time

Now I’m ready to render the scene. I set a few passes as reflection, SSS, diffuse and so on, and hit go.

13 Photoshop compositing

Lastly, I composite all the passes in Photoshop. This is when things start to get better than the actual render, as I reveal more or less of a particular pass. The fire and smoke were real pictures I added.

Brazilian artist Rafael Vallaperde likes to create images and videos, and he currently works as a CGI artist at Lightfarm Studios 

See 10 amazing examples of experimental design at Creative Bloq.

Mike Griggs is here with some modo tips to prevent your massive battlecruiser from looking like an escape capsule

Adding scale to space scenes is an interesting challenge – you can guarantee that no one will have seen it before, so terms of reference for the viewer will need to be supplied within the image. modo is an excellent package for creating space scenes. It has a range of tools in the stock version of the application that can help you to block out and detail your model at speed, and enable you to set up convincing renders very quickly.

modo comes with a wide range of content, from materials and environments to well-thought-out meshes. Handily, it even has a range of mesh elements under the Spaceships tab, where you can have a lot of fun playing as you invent your spaceship. Here, I’m going to use them to create a battlecruiser.

Use a couple of engine elements to create the fuselage of the ship, and create a bridge by mirroring a wing-shaped spaceship element. The good thing about using engine elements for the body is that they can contain interesting pieces of detail, which you’ll repurpose using textures to create a plasma cannon.

To create the environment for the scene, as modo doesn’t come with a stock space environment, go to www.luxology.com and then to the Share page, where a lot of excellent additional assets are available for free – and you’re encouraged to add your own. modo user Andrew Cockburn has created a fantastic procedural space environment for modo. Download this and use it as the backdrop for your scene.

Lighting for space scenes is reasonably straightforward: target a directional light to one of the fuselage elements to mimic a nearby sun and provide some contact lighting. If this was a real space scene, this would mean that the areas of your ship that are in shadow would be very dark. While this is scientifically accurate, it can lead to flat imagery – especially if you’re creating larger spaceships, where the ship’s own lighting won’t have the reach it has on smaller ones to illuminate elements of the superstructure. This is where modo’s excellent lighting system and preview window come into their own. After you’ve switched on Global Illumination, create a large polygon and place it on the dark side of the model. This enables you to bounce light from the directional light back into the model to help lift the shadow areas. You can get instant feedback on your results in the preview window, and can increase or decrease the amount of light on your shadows just by moving and scaling the polygon.

Now that you have the basics of the lighting and the scene in place, move on to texturing. Although you want to add more detail to the model, especially to the bridge, modo’s advanced texturing solutions enable you to develop a look for it that helps you to get the image you want quickly. modo has a range of materials in its space section, which can help you to add lighting and detailing, but for now just use the spaceship panel material preset to give you a sense of how you wish to proceed. This is an excellent texture that makes full use of modo’s procedural texturing system to create convincing panelwork on your ship. As with nearly all elements in modo, this texture is adjustable and can be added to and scaled to your heart’s content. Now you have your initial blocking model complete, you can proceed with more detailing. Concentrate on the bridge and plasma cannons, for which you can use luminous textures to help you get the right look, before you start to move on to the proper polygonal and subdivision modelling.

If you enjoyed this workflow, Luxology provides a Model Bashing Kit, which is a paid-for add-on for modo that adds many more meshes and textures that you can use to detail your models. However, the elements that come with modo as standard can be used, with a little imagination, to create a potentially infinite number of space scenes.

Use modo’s tools to model a spaceship

Add engine segments

Using modo’s existing spaceship meshes, add a variety of engine segments in the Layout tab. Size and rotate them until you have a fuselage blocked out. Add another engine segment, which you can then clone using an array command to create nacelles.

Set up the lighting

Switch on modo’s Global Illumination in the Render tab and then use a simple polygon to aid with bounce lighting. When you’re happy you have the correct amount of bounce light, move on to texturing.

Scale the panels

Apply the stock spaceship panels preset to all the meshes by placing it at the top of the shader tree. After that, press [Shift] and scroll to zoom in on an element of the ship so that you can scale the panels using the Properties palette.

Mike Griggs is a freelance 3D, VFX and mograph artist. He is on Twitter and you can see his work on his website

Discover where to find textures for 3D projects over at Creative Bloq.

Robots get vocal in this Live Aid-inspired spot created for Citroën by VFX studio The Embassy

The 30-second spot, in which robots with beautiful singing voices take centre stage, came about when The Embassy was approached by Citroën’s Paris-based agency Agence H. “The Embassy has a solid history in producing high-quality photoreal visually driven work, so coupled with our previous work for Citroën, we were a natural fit for the project,” says creative director David Casey.

To enable the team to integrate the CG robots into a live shoot seamlessly, they used modo, Softimage and Arnold Renderer. MotionBuilder was also used by The Embassy’s third-party mocap studio, Animatrik.

“In times past, we’d have supplied a basic skeleton to the mocap studio for the recording sessions,” says Casey. “This time around, with advances in hardware performance, we were able to send a fully articulated robot model. This allowed us to see our performers in real-time as the robots, and address any issues there as opposed to later in animation.

“Secondly, with the advent of reliable digital film formats, matching plates to captured HDRs is a very simple process. The quirks of film are no longer an issue for matching CG. The speed at which a shot can go from animation to lighting and then to comp has been greatly sped up.”

Discover what’s next for Augmented Reality over at Creative Bloq.

Steve Jarratt puts the latest incarnation of the HDRI creator through its paces, and finds the results very illuminating

PRICE: Node-locked licence £299 / $499 / €399; Floating licence £599 / $999 / €799 per seat

PLATFORM: Windows / Mac / Linux

FEATURES:

• Real-time creation and editing of HDR lighting setups
• Live preview of illumination and reflection elements
• Live linking of HDR map to KeyShot, Maya, Houdini and Maxwell Studio
• Asset import from modo, Cinema 4D and 3ds Max via plug-ins
• Huge collection of light presets

DEVELOPER: Lightmap

While image-based lighting is a very fast and simple method for generating photoreal scenes, the process lives or dies by the quality of the high dynamic range (HDR) images you have access to. Almost invariably they’re not quite right: too bright in certain areas, too dark in others, the wrong time of day, the wrong format for your software and so on. It can be a long-winded task to supplement the scene with physical lights or emissive objects to get the effect you desire, whether that’s for a VFX sequence, illustration or product shot.

HDR Light Studio speeds up that task by enabling you to either create an HDR file from scratch or make edits to existing HDR images. Light sources are placed on a pane representing the unwrapped spherical HDRI, and their shapes automatically conform to the distorted map. There are three ‘synthetic’ light sources in the form of a square, circle and hexagon, which can all be edited to alter their dimensions, brightness, the length of the ‘bulb’ and the falloff. However, the app also comes bundled with over 120 Picture Lights, offering photographically captured real-world light sources from neon tubes and softboxes to spotlights and sunlit windows.

Ars Thanea used HDR Light Studio in the production of this Dodge Durango image, created for Chrysler

Instant feedback

Light Studio’s built-in real-time renderer, LiveLight, provides instant feedback on exactly how your objects are lit and how the reflections will appear on a 3D object. Previous versions required you to move lights by hand to get the specific look you wanted, but version 4.0 cleverly reverse-engineers this workflow with a feature called LightPaint. This enables you to select precisely where on your model you want the reflections to be – you simply add a light source and then click on the object preview to locate its reflection. Light Studio fires rays outwards from your object’s poly normals to place the light source on the spherical map – and all you then need to do is tweak the light’s size, shape, colour and intensity as you’d like.

The HDRI creator was also used for this ‘Bringing Fun To Your PC’ ad, made for Nvidia by Ars Thanea

The viewer is fully interactive, enabling you to pan around the scene and zoom in on specific details, and a Camera Move mode lets you look at your scene from any angle. You even have the option to view your subject from the light sources you’ve placed on the HDRI, to ensure they’re in the right location.

To better support the LightPaint feature, you can now import your scenes directly from Cinema 4D, modo and 3ds Max. A small plug-in pushes a Collada file to Light Studio, providing a preview of the objects from the camera viewpoint (so the preview matches your final render). You can apply a gloss, metallic or satin effect, but only on a per-scene basis, and in truth this offers more of a visual guideline than an exact preview of your finished scene, which can look quite different when the various shaders and effects are applied. These plug-ins are a useful addition to the package, and make the round trip of editing a scene in conjunction with its HDR lighting much easier.

However, for the full Light Studio experience you need to be running the likes of KeyShot, Maya or Maxwell Render, which now feature a Live Link. This continually updates the HDR image file so you can see the results in your native real-time renderer, complete with associated materials and shaders. This provides a much slicker workflow and, when you can see your scene being illuminated in situ, there’s no guesswork at all. 3ds Max will probably have Live Link support by the time you read this, while the OS X version of KeyShot will gain it when KeyShot 4 is released next year.

Another feature in Light Studio 4 is Sunshade, a small but useful addition that enables you to ‘clamp’ parts of an existing HDRI to reveal fine detail in bright areas or simply tone down any reflected hotspots. Indeed, since we last looked at version 2, Light Studio has gained an array of tools for dealing with HDR images. It features an extensive colour picker toolset, with support for Kelvin temperature and sRGB/HSV/CIE-XYZ and CIE-LAB formats, and a colour-matching system that reveals the underlying colours in an HDR backplate.

There are four modes that display typical HSV values, the image’s true colour (ignoring brightness values), the most dominant colours in terms of brightness, and the most dominant in terms of coverage. Using these, it’s possible to analyse the image in order to understand how your scene is being lit (the ground might look brown, for instance, but it’s actually casting blue light reflected from the sky), and then colour-match your light sources to supplement or compensate for the HDR lighting.

The extensive colour matching and analysis tools give you a good understanding of what’s going on inside any pre-made HDR images, and then allow you to colour-match your synthetic lights accordingly

It’s even possible for you to mask out unwanted parts of the image (a brightly coloured object, for example) by colour-matching the surrounding area and placing a light source over the offending article – although it would be useful to have a specific light source with a feathered edge for just such a job. With its comprehensive toolset and new LightPaint feature, Light Studio 4 makes the task of HDR lighting sublimely easy. Certainly for jobs where the client wants a very specific look, they can now point precisely to where they want a highlight to fall and the result is a mere mouse click away. It’s hard to see the counter argument for studios creating product shots against dropping a few hundred pounds on an application that will both save time and improve the quality of their final renders.

The app is simple to set up and – with one or two very minor foibles (LiveLight is a separate application, but we’re told this will be unified) – it’s a joy to use. And at half the price of the old Pro version, it’s now accessible to a much wider range of users. We’d still like to see more plug-in support for a greater variety of applications, and we’re told that LightWave is next on the to-do list, with other apps being promoted to Live Link status. But whichever program you use and whatever field you work in, HDR Light Studio is a terrifically useful addition to your creative toolset.

PROS

• LightPaint is brilliant
• Useful HDRI analysis tools
• Extensive light sources/editing

CONS

• More preview material options needed
• Multipane UI not to everyone’s taste
• Live Link not supported on all apps yet

A near-perfect solution for bespoke HDRI lighting. With wider Live Link support, it’s sure to gain a lot of satisfied users

RATING: 4

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

Learn the basic concepts and terminology of colour theory, over at Creative Bloq.

Gearbox Software’s Borderlands used a bold concept art-inspired graphic style. Now Mark Ramshaw takes a look at the game’s sequel, which boasts richer visuals, more variety… and more guns

One inevitable consequence of the games industry’s starry-eyed push to emulate the Hollywood business model is polarisation. Indie developers scurry at one end, releasing their wares for ‘casual gamer’ platforms or else struggling for a foothold in the PC and console markets. At the other lie the tentpole releases: software assembled using huge teams and massive budgets, and launched – like blockbuster movies – with mammoth marketing spends. In the push for a high Metacritic score and multimillion sales, creativity, originality and good old-fashioned risk-taking are increasingly rare.

The success in 2009 of Borderlands was therefore cause for celebration. While not exactly a game shipped out under the radar – published as it was by 2K, one of the few heavy-hitters with a history of pushing original content – it was a game boasting a singular visual style and a risky genre blend. Best of all, its sales of around 4.5 million were arguably driven as much by word of mouth as by review scores and ad men. Now comes the inevitable follow-up, and the big question (as with any sequel) is whether lightning will strike twice. Can Gearbox Software break new ground a second time while still essentially giving fans more of what made them so passionate about the first one?

Seeing the potential

Over at developer Gearbox Software, art director Jeramy Cooke admits the runaway success of the first game came as something of a shock. “It wasn’t immediately apparent on the surface, though I guess we did have an inkling that we were on to something,” he recalls. “There was an interesting turning point around alpha, when it was finally possible to play a bunch of missions back to back. The whole company ended up playing it throughout the day, and even with all the problems present at that stage, everyone immediately saw the potential. It was a real ‘a-ha!’ moment.”

Cooke also admits that knowing what they wanted to achieve with Borderlands – to take the best parts of a Halo-type experience and enmesh that with the best looting aspects of role-playing games – and actually pulling it off were two very different things.

“The studio has always been shooter-oriented, and having played a lot of overbearing role-playing games we knew we wanted something closer to the Diablo experience. That game was all about being in the moment, and just mashing right through. But ultimately it took a lot of balancing between the two sides. There was a lot of stuff lost or changed along the way. The whole development was one long process of iteration.”

By contrast, that attention-grabbing visual style, one that owes more to concept art design than the usual cel-shaded cartoon style, was never even planned. Until midway through the development cycle (and seen in early previews), Borderlands rendered its post-apocalyptic action in a gritty, semi-realistic style.

“There was a sense among our art community that the graphics were good, but nobody was truly inspired by them,” says Cooke. “At the same time the guys over at iD were showing off their first-person shooter Rage, and we began to get a little worried about our game looking a bit too similar. And obviously they had some pretty incredible graphics! We thought, okay, there have been a lot of post-apocalyptic games, so just how do we stand out? Once everyone saw the prototype road-testing this new art style, it was like somebody had lit a match. It was really a done deal.”

“There’s a sense of cohesiveness and connectivity to the game world now, with the boundaries between the different types of areas blended, and geography that gives players a sense of where they are at any point,” says Jeramy Cooke

Refining the approach

Having effectively invented the ‘looter shooter’ sub-genre with the first game, Borderlands 2 understandably finds Gearbox building on the frenzied ‘quick feedback loop’ format rather than rewriting the rulebook. Fans of the original will doubtless feel instantly at home. Nevertheless, much time has been spent improving, expanding and refining game mechanics. These include better mapping, even more procedurally generated weaponry (“gazillions”, according to the Gearbox blurb), improved enemy AI and pathfinding, and a completely new UI for the PC version.

With a range of new character types available to the player, there has also been a conscious effort to connect these more directly with the game world. There’s less grinding, more inventive use of the play space, and quests have more meaning within the main story arc. Gearbox admits that the original Borderlands was quite experimental, and that much was learned – in terms of what worked, what didn’t and what needed improvement – from gamers spending an inordinate amount of time playing through it. (There will certainly be no repeat of the infamous bait-and-switch ending that capped off the first game.)

Much has changed under the hood, too, not least with an upgrade to the latest version of the Unreal 3 engine. This has facilitated the introduction of a new shadowing system (complete with self-shadowing), real-time radiosity, high dynamic range lighting and a full day/night cycle. Cooke says there’s also far more visual nuance this time around.

“A huge amount of effort went into the pixel shaders and other underlying graphic tech. Last time we were forced to keep things a bit generic. We just didn’t have the ability to put in as much detail as we wanted. This time around, I wanted enough detail that players would be able to pick up individual weapons and immediately recognise which of the several in-game manufacturers it comes from, for example.” Cooke says that, after rooting the first game in desertscapes, greater environment variety was also a key priority. “We’d originally planned for more variation in Borderlands, but after revamping the art style midway we just didn’t have the time,” he explains. “This time I was determined that we jazz things up. Of course, that meant generating three-to-five times the number of art assets…”

While the game engine has been upgraded and the visuals given greater clarity and a touch more realism, Borderlands 2 wisely sticks with the ‘concept art’ style formula. Cooke believes that the graphical style resonates with players, and avoids the pitfalls of many other cel-shaded games. “I think when other studios have attempted to go full bore into ‘drawing land’ they’ve ended up with something that can be off-putting and inaccessible to the general public,” he reasons.

Using the Unreal 3 engine facilitated the introduction of a new shadowing system, complete with self-shadowing

“They get hell-bent on making it look exactly like an illustration, whereas we realised that if it gets too much like a drawing then it just becomes overly fake. I think with the best concept art, you don’t even feel like it’s a drawing – you pick up more on the sense of colour and lighting. So we sort of split the difference, to create something that players would feel comfortable with. There’s an artistic maturity here, so they don’t immediately associate it with anime or cartoons.”

Choosing the tools

Cooke says the decision to utilise a customised version of the Unreal Engine 3 middleware solution was a natural one for Gearbox: “Pretty much all of our engines have been hybrids. We’ve worked with Epic since Brothers in Arms and they’ve been great at providing us with a really amazing base platform that allows for some very rapid prototyping. First with UE2 and now UE3, our code team has been able to go in and heavily modify them on both the game code and render sides to give us what we need.”

For a studio like Gearbox, Cooke says this mix-and-match technique makes more sense than building something from scratch in-house. “Making a game engine is no small task. I think our approach gives us a nice balance, while keeping us efficient and avoiding the need to reinvest our time in engine development.”

While the game engine has been upgraded, Borderlands 2 sticks with the ‘concept art’ style

Cooke notes that using Unreal Engine 3 also considerably simplifies the cross-platform development. “Even our assets are totally consistent across all three platforms [Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC], with the code team tweaking each to ensure the best performance on each.” While the PC always represents something of a moving target for game development (in contrast to the single-specification console platforms), Cooke says it’s actually been the easiest one to write for. “The specifications are generally so high now, and so far ahead of the consoles. Even a low-end PC is better, especially in terms of memory and hard drive. Instead, the big challenge with the PC has been to create a completely new user interface.”

The UE3 code base aside, Gearbox remains relatively tool-agnostic. “We use ZBrush, Mudbox, 3ds Max, Maya, Photoshop (obviously), and also a few of the guys worked with modo on this project – especially for translating the world geometry into a final mesh,” says Cooke. “It really is just about whatever gets the job done and what the artists prefer to use.”

Creating the art

While Borderlands 2’s visual style apes the look of concept art, Gearbox concept artist Kevin Duc says that he and his fellow concept artists didn’t worry unduly about generating images that would directly translate. “We just focused on making the images, using whatever approach felt right,” he says. “One of our guys would do incredible marker images, knocking out Syd Mead-style stuff really quickly. Another worked with a comic, edgy feel that was perhaps closest to the art style of the final product. And then I’d sometimes just create loose sketches or at other times would render the art. It was a very liberal approach.”

“I think that’s actually fundamental to the finished game,” Cooke chips in. “The game’s visuals have a lot of energy, which comes from all the artists on the project being left free to do what they want to do.”

Gearbox’s coordinated FX system can swap materials, spawn particles, drive material or particle parameters and trigger full-screen effects

Such a freeform approach can sometimes result in a non-cohesive art style, but Cooke says that was never a worry. “Rather than clamping down on individuality, they had the latitude to explore and see what works. We’d then review each other’s work and pick the best bits, and those elements naturally filtered through into each other’s pieces. As a result, everything naturally coalesced over the course of the project. It all ties in with our very organic approach to development.”

Shifting gear

Cooke is proud that the company has managed to maintain a relatively relaxed approach to game design and development. “Things have changed here, and yet they haven’t. Certainly from a technology standpoint I think the studio has levelled up a lot. We’ve built an incredible art team, and we’re a much stronger studio now in terms of power and ability. And obviously when I got here it was much smaller. When there was around 20 people it was a tight-knit group, and it’s been a challenge to keep that as we’ve grown to around 200. But I think we’ve managed it.”

Vehicles feature once again in the interlude levels that connect the different areas of the game world

Despite its size, Cooke stresses that Gearbox maintains a flat hierarchy and surprisingly loose structure. “If people are excited about something then we encourage them to get stuck in – he who gets in there and does it, wins! We also work in peer groups, where teams of people can get together to make something cool or solve a problem. And even the owners of the company stay here working hard to get games out of the door. It’s that ‘get it done’ mentality, always pushing hard to make sure what goes into the box is the highest possible quality.”

“A lot of companies try to make a bunch of rules about what makes good videogames,” says Cooke. “We’re the opposite. We prefer to take a seat-of-the-pants approach, relying on gut instincts and then just working our hardest to get it done.”

This article is from issue 160 of 3D World – you may like to check out the other games-related features in the special issue…

3D World’s Games issue
Discover the secrets of Method Studio’s epic Halo 4 trailer, make real-time CG with Unreal and CryEngine, build low-poly buildings, game levels and more.

Find Photoshop tips and the best 3D movies over at our sister site, Creative Bloq.

Not all cars drive on tarmac. Mike Griggs demonstrates how to create a realistically rough terrain for rallying

Tasks that not so long ago would have taken a long time to learn are becoming much easier to administer with a single click or a dedicated plug-in as 3D software becomes more advanced. One of these is moving a car along a predefined surface geometry.

Most of the time this will be a simple, smooth road, which can be done with traditional animation or using particle systems. Custom rigs are now available for most 3D apps that enable you to place your own or stock vehicle models and then add working suspension, contact with the ground, speed, direction – and even collision deformation, should you wish to add damage to your car. However, having access to these rigs does mean that you can potentially lose the character of your vehicle and its environment. A lot of rigs deal primarily with the car and its placement on tarmac – but what if the car is driving through wet mud, desert sand or even on the surface of the moon? Understanding what impact different types of terrain can have on the passage of a vehicle will improve your CG skills immensely. You should also take into account the impressions the car could make on the terrain; tyre tracks are an obvious one, but there could also be dust and disturbed vegetation.

Some packages now come with deformers that enable geometry to be modified interactively by another object. This can also be achieved with animated bump, normal and displacement maps. Flying debris should also be considered when creating your scene. This should be straightforward if your software comes with a physics simulator, but if not you can create looping animations of dust and stones flying into the air as the car drives over them – see here for more on creating dust clouds.

No rally car ever looks as pristine at the end of a stage as it did at the beginning. Using occlusion maps can really help to give your vehicle a weathered look, alongside hand-painting your textures and adding scratches to the paintwork as you advance through the scene.

Using these techniques will help give your vehicles character, and a lot of the skills you learn will be applicable to other types of work – plus it’s a lot of fun!

Download the supporting files here.

Make a rough track

01 Create the base terrain
Make a simple plane, subdivide it a couple of times then convert it into a subdivision surface for sculpting into a rally track.

02 Sculpt in details
Use a Push tool to create a series of bumps in the surface and sculpt in some detail. Then add some noise displacement for extra texture.

03 Add the rocks
Using a duplicate of your landscape, reduce it to its constituent points. Now jitter the points and use them as a cloner source for your rocks.

Artist tips: four ways to make your car more credible

01 Custom car rigs
Most of the common apps have car rigs that enable you to add geometry to animate them. These can range from simple rigs, which just animate direction and wheel turning, to highly realistic plug-ins that can handle suspension and collision deformation. These more elaborate rigs do have a corresponding price, so the free, open-source 3D app Blender is a good place to start if funds are tight.

02 Create wear with occlusion maps
Occlusion maps are a good way to weather your car. An occlusion texture can be created by baking an ambient occlusion map then adding dirt in Photoshop. This is brought back into your 3D program as a mask for your texture. Alternatively, you can create cavity maps in programs such as ZBrush or xNormal. Some apps, such as modo, have a special texture to create modifiable occlusion layers.

03 Light using the golden hour
Lighting your car scene can go a long way to help your image. In car commercials (and Michael Bay films), the vehicles look amazing because they’re being shot in the golden hour, the soft light as the sun rises or sets. Apps with time and geography systems, which enable you to dial in the sunlight and control shadow direction and ambient daylight colour, are now entering the market.

04 Differences in tyres
Tyre pressures can change radically according to the type of terrain a car is on – snow requires less, tarmac requires more. The profile of the tyre can depict this pressure in different ways: a monster truck’s tyre will show the deformation of low tyre pressure much more than a rally car, for instance. Bigger, chunkier tyres will also throw up a lot more debris than more conventional rubber treads.

Mike Griggs is a concept designer working across 3D, motion graphics and VFX. He’s based in Sussex, UK