CGI

Overview:In this tutorial you will learn how to create real time digital playground that can be used to create endless compositions and lighting scenarios in Unreal Engine 4 while using Megascans t...

This tutorial shows my typical process from begining to end. The bulk of the work is done in Photoshop, with a lot of photobashing, but I will start from doodling to building a 3D scene in Blender,...

Level-up your 3D lighting skills by watching a premium 9+ hour course that offers a step-by-step guide for setting up cinematic lighting in Blender.Now includes NIGHT LIGHTING Extension Pack(see be...

Blender - Game Ready Character Modeling - Full process video & 3D modelApp: Blender - Substance 3D Painter - Photoshop- Video quality 1080p- About 25 hours video in normal speed- No audio- 3D m...

Welcome to my latest Tutorial, Barbarian - Lookdev for Realistic Characters.This tutorial is an update of my older lookdev tutorial, with new processes and techniques while using up to date softwar...

In this tutorial, I will show you how I designed an Architectural Environment for a film using both 2D and 3D methods. We will first design a 2D sectional drawing in response to a brief, then take ...

OverviewIn this tutorial series, you will learn how to approach to very complex hard surface shapes, you will learn new Subdivision Surface techniques to get a very fast and easy results, after thi...

Showcasing how Fusion 360 can fit in your AAA pipeline and learn how to create AAA game assets for video games!Included:27 HD Videos in English / 17hrs+ video content1-hour intro to Fusion 360Adobe...

More info and samples herehttps://www.hendrix-design.com/3d-environment-design-for-productionSee how Blender and its real-time tools can be used in a professional production workflow for Hollywood ...

In this tutorial, I share my process to make CINEMATIC FRAMES in BLENDER Around 1H and 40 Min of videosContent1. 35 Min videos with Audio to setup the scenes including- Shading-EEVEE settings-Fog- ...

This is the first of 2 tutorials where I go through my process of creating realistic skin for characters. In this tutorial I will be taking advantage of the fantastic resource, texturing xyz. Here ...

Learn Blender for concept art with this 4.5-hour workshop designed to help you accelerate the detailing process of environment concepts using 3D assets. Starting with the creation of loose 2D sketches, Jonas Hassibi shares how to get initial ideas down quickly before deciding on a sketch to block out in Blender. By zooming in on the elements of the design that are required for the piece, you’ll discover how to start creating your own 3D kitbash library and successfully bring 2D and 3D elements together for efficient environment detailing. This workshop is intended for beginner to immediate-level concept artists who have taken their first steps in Blender and those who are more advanced and want to build on top of their knowledge. Jonas covers the very basics of Blender, including navigation and modeling, and also delves into some more advanced plugins like Hardops, BoxCutter, and so on. In addition to Jonas’s demonstrations, he offers industry insights from his own career history, including what to expect when you are a young artist trying to get into the industry. He also offers his personal tips for staying motivated when for those already in the industry who may be feeling a little stuck. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have developed the skills needed to convert a 2D sketch into a 3D scene by creating 3D assets to speed up the process efficiently. Jonas’s Blender scene file and Photoshop file are included with this workshop to provide full visibility into how the final scene was created.

Successful head sculpture begins with understanding where the vertical/horizontal planes and facets are, and the fundamental relationship the features have with them. In this tutorial, figurative artist and educator John Brown breaks down the life-size male head into a series of planes and facets, establishes the facial feature land marks, discusses depth, creating shadows and shares valuable techniques for sculpting the best head possible. John also demonstrates how to use templates, translate a 2D drawing to 3D, symmetry tricks, how to model a hard surface, and create a light-weight full-scale armature. As supplementary featurettes, we visit 3DScanLA and demonstrate the process of creating a digital model through Photogrammetry scanning, how to import into ZBrush, and the basics of cleaning up scanned data to create a 3D print ready model.

Learn how to translate a 2D concept into a 3D miniature using ZBrush and KeyShot in this 4-hour workshop by Digital Sculptor Francesco Orru. This tutorial is intended for artists who already have some knowledge of digital sculpting in ZBrush and are ready to delve into the world of creating miniatures from concept art. The workshop covers the entire process of sculpting for miniatures, from considering the initial scales to using DynaMesh, ZRemesher, Transpose Master, ZModeller, and lastly, KeyShot for rendering. When resin printing miniatures, consideration needs to be given to the level of detail to be included in the model, which all depends on the scale, proportions, volumes, the interpretation of shapes — and you need to know which liberties you can take while sculpting. As well as sharing his workflow, Francesco discusses how to optimize your work to save time when sculpting, and shares his tips for developing good communication with art directors in order to receive feedback early on during the process. He talks about how to work under certain limits including time and resources, and stresses why it’s important to be open to reworking models — and never falling in love with your first attempts. By completing this workshop, you’ll have a solid understanding of the full pipeline when working from a 2D concept to create a 3D miniature using ZBrush. You’ll also discover how to present your work to an art director. The final prototype featured in this workshop was printed by Valkyrx Gaming in the UK. Provided as a downloadable resource with this workshop are the STL of the decimated high poly model, the ZTL of the T-pose with all the Subtools, plus the ZTL of the final posed model with Subtools.

Join us on Thursday, March 9th for an exciting presentation from Senior Character and Creature Designer Ehsan Bigloo!

Learn to create photorealistic procedural shaders with Arnold and take advantage of the procedural nature of Houdini with this workshop by Wojtek Piwowarczyk, Environment Generalist TD for film, animation, and game cinematics. During the course of 8.5 hours, Wojtek reveals his personal collection of techniques used in production and developed over several years while creating visual effects for a variety of entertainment projects. He covers not only detailed methods for creating procedural shaders but also discusses how Houdini’s procedural nature can be used to full effect. You’ll learn several techniques for extracting information from source geometry to create effective shaders — and because it’s procedural, you’ll be able to apply them to any models, and even reuse them entirely, or in parts, on future projects. Wojtek’s ultimate goal for this workshop is to give viewers a solid foundation for procedural shading and an understanding of look development for surfaces. The robust methods he demonstrates for building shaders are techniques that are universal and will remain useful regardless of software, meaning your skills will stay relevant in the ever-evolving world of computer graphics. By completing this workshop, you should have developed the confidence to create any type of surface for any project. ZBrush and Photoshop are also used in this workshop as part of the workflow. Project files include a complete Houdini scene with final processed objects, lighting, and shaders to assist with learning, as well as a breakdown of all the steps and shading techniques presented in the tutorial. The package also contains 3D models, ZBrush files, and baked displacement textures for relevant objects plus proxies for the Megascans textures used. This complete set allows you to recreate the scene from the tutorial and will serve as a base for your own look-development experiments.

Whether it’s in movies, TV shows, music videos, or video games, digital humans are everywhere. This comprehensive workshop by Sefki Ibrahim demonstrates how he approaches the look development of a digital double, and covers his complete process for lighting, shading, and rendering using Maya and Arnold.  Starting in Maya, Sefki shares his techniques to light the character model, utilizing area lights, HDRI maps, and light blockers to establish the right mood before adjusting the camera to achieve the very best likeness of his digi-double.  The look-dev process begins with the set up of the shaders for the eye geometries, including the sclera, iris, pupil, caruncle, and meniscus, using the Arnold Standard Surface shader. Once the eyes are in place, Sefki demonstrates how to set up the skin shader, plugging in texture maps and fine-tuning values for a photorealistic finish.  The workshop advances from there into some procedural techniques that will push the look of the skin using specific nodes in the Hypershade window. Finally, the tutorial concludes with shading the hair groom using the Arnold Standard Hair shader, as well as setting up a leather and cotton material for the clothing. 

Capture and create your own 3D props for production using photogrammetry with this comprehensive guide for Modo, Marmoset, Photoshop, Agisoft, Lightroom, and ZBrush. In this 4-hour workshop, John William Crossland, a Lead Principal Artist at Remedy Entertainment, sheds a light on the entire process for those looking to get started with photogrammetry on a small scale. He details several ways to achieve low, medium, and high-range scans and explains how to produce a decent-quality scan that can be used as a baseline for a production asset. John walks through the entire process of creating a mountain boot asset using his tried-and-tested production workflow, from initial capture through topology clean-up, hard-surface modeling, and applying materials, before tackling the final renders. Throughout the demonstration, he shows various techniques to process scan data and how to create a clean, high-poly sculpt, as well as a low-poly mesh with UVs ready for texturing in Marmoset. This photogrammetry workshop is designed to help those with limited experience to successfully produce a scan to be proud of. His pragmatic guide to photogrammetry goes through all the steps needed to process your scan data and take it all the way through to a final sculpt, including baking and materials. Upon completing this workshop, you’ll have gained many practical insights into the photogrammetry process and will have a solid guideline for starting your own projects with minimal setup needs. The workshop is intended for you to sculpt along with John. His ZBrush ZTL file is provided with all the working steps, along with his Modo file (scene supplied with .obj) and the final Photoshop composite. The Marmoset scene file is also included with this workshop for subscribers to access and utilize.

In this workshop, Concept and Character Artist Pablo Munoz Gomez shares his workflow for generating an original and appealing creature concept from an arrangement of abstract 3D shapes. The process covers everything from the initial idea, explaining the methodology and core concepts of the technique, all the way to the final render and composite. The steps to achieve figurative forms may seem counterintuitive, but producing quick variations early on is crucial for the development of a solid and convincing design. Throughout this workshop, Pablo emphasizes the importance of the iterative process and the exploration of ideas, sharing practical advice and tools to refine the abstract forms into a concept with a more cohesive visual language. Although the subject of this workshop is the concept of a creature, the workflows and application of the 2D and 3D tools are not specific to creature design. The techniques that Pablo shares are segmented in clear steps that can be applied to any type of project. The first steps introduce the technique of creating thumbnails using Photoshop, Krita and ZBrush, before then moving into 3D space to build custom assets. The 3D assets will then be used to create an abstract ‘cluster’ as a base to further explore the design. The second stage of the process consists of developing variations of the cluster and to identify suggestions of a more figurative creature. In the third and final stage, the creature is defined, detailed, textured with polypaint, posed, rendered with Keyshot and finalized in Photoshop. For those looking to explore new forms and shape language with their designs, this title offers insight into an effective and practical workflow.

Learning ZBrush at your own pace has never been easier. This detailed guide by Madeleine Scott-Spencer will take you from the bare basics of ZBrush through a full ZBrush sculpting workflow. You’ll follow along with Maddie’s chapters in an organic, hands-on manner, gaining confidence with ZBrush’s unique interface and powerful tools at every step of the way. Beginning with a quickstart chapter that shows how to sculpt a detailed creature bust, Maddie continues with in-depth dives into ZBrush’s key features. She demystifies the ZBrush interface, menus, and windows to remove any intimidation factors early on. Explaining the logic behind the program’s UI as well as what the tools do, you’ll quickly learn how to work quickly in ZBrush and how to take advantage of custom hotkeys for even greater efficiency. The full ZBrush Brush system is explained in this workshop, including 3D Alphas, VDM brushes, IMM, and even how to create your own custom brushes. You will learn how to sculpt a full body using DynaMesh and explore the importance of Subdivision levels in creating accurate anatomical forms. Alphas and detailing for fine pores and wrinkles — and even how to paint skin textures from scratch — are also covered in great detail for your educational benefit. Maddie also covers how to get your work outside of the program by exploring ZBrush’s retopology and UV tools, as well as how to export Color, Normal, and Displacement maps for rendering in Maya, 3ds Max, Unreal Engine, and any other rendering tool you prefer. For those interested in 3D printing, this workshop includes a look at Decimation Master and 3D Print Exporter for you. The intention of this comprehensive workshop is to help you become a confident intermediate ZBrush artist that is ready to tackle the creation of 3D creatures, characters, props, and more. Topics covered include how to create complex models with Subtools, managing Polygroups for more accurate modeling, sculpting and painting in layers, modeling with ZSpheres, posing figures, and much more. Extensive downloadable project files are available with this workshop to help you follow along with many of the important lessons covered.

In the third and final volume of Eric Keller’s Introduction to Maya 2023, you’ll learn all the fundamental concepts of shading, lighting, cameras, and rendering, focusing on using the Arnold render plug-in and associated interfaces. This introductory series gives a comprehensive overview of the Maya interfaces you'll work with to shade, light, and render your scenes. In the finale of this beginner-level Introduction to Maya series, Eric demonstrates the different types of lights available, how to set up rendering cameras, and how to use the render preview windows to fine-tune your images. Eric details how to work with the Hypershade interface; how to create render nodes, such as file textures, and how to connect them to your materials; how to create Standard shaders; and how to create and apply material presets. The detailed instructional videos also show the process for setting up AOVs, render layers, and how to work with UDIMs when applying file textures to models. You'll learn how to work with file references and alembic caches, as well as how to use references and MASH networks together when setting up environments. You'll also learn how to set up a batch render to create an image sequence of your scenes using the Arnold plug-in. This third volume concludes with an overview of using the Game Exporter interface to export models and animation clips from Maya into Unreal Engine 5. Example files for all chapters are available to download as Project Files with this workshop. The goal is to get you up and running quickly, so you know where to find the tools you need and how to use them. By building a foundation and giving yourself a roadmap, you can then go on to explore some of the more in-depth and advanced series available on rendering in Maya with Arnold available at The Gnomon Workshop. Watch Introduction to Maya 2023: Volume 1 Watch Introduction to Maya 2023: Volume 2

Eric Keller returns with the second volume in our Introduction to Maya 2023 series. Following on from Introduction to Maya 2023: Volume 1, Volume 2 consists of 14 short chapters which focus on introducing the primary tools that you'll be using to build and animate models in Maya.  The goal of this workshop is to help you establish a foundation of understanding of the Maya polygon workflow and the various approaches to animating your models. You'll learn about the Modeling toolkit, the UV toolkit, the GraphEditor, improvements to deformers, and animation visualization tools and animation layers. The skills that you develop in this workshop will help you tackle many of the more intermediate and advanced tutorials available at The Gnomon Workshop. A number of helpful assets are available to download as project files with this workshop to help you with examples and to follow along with the workshop. Plus, a bonus chapter describes some of the new tools and updates recently released in Maya 2023. If you haven’t watched Volume 1, be sure to take a comprehensive tour of the Maya interface, covering navigation along with the many editors that you'll need to use when building 3D models and scenes in preparation for this second volume. In Volume 3, Eric will introduce lighting shading and reveal how to export assets for use in real-time game-editing software, like the Unreal Engine development kit.

Get up and running quickly in Maya 2023 with this beginner’s guide tutorial by one of our most-watched instructors, Eric Keller. Introduction to Maya 2023: Volume 1 is comprised of 12 chapters that take you on a comprehensive tour of the Maya interface, covering navigation along with the many editors that you'll need to use when building 3D models and scenes. Eric then walks through the creation of a Maya scene using a network of interconnected nodes. The relationships between these nodes define the shapes of your virtual objects, the shaders that determine the material qualities of those objects, the animation that moves them, and the lights and cameras that turn your creations into cinematic elements, game assets, scientific visualizations — or whatever you need to bring your digital art to life! A number of helpful assets are available to download as project files with this workshop to help you with examples and to follow along with the workshop. In Volume 2, you will explore the modeling and animation tools. In Volume 3, Eric will introduce lighting shading and reveal how to export assets for use in real-time game-editing software, like the Unreal Engine development kit.

This three-hour workshop teaches how to create a creature design with the kind of character and personality traits that can evolve with a story throughout a movie or game. With over 15 years of industry experience designing characters and creatures for Marvel Studios and many more, Ian Joyner presents his complete design workflow with a focus on the importance of believable anatomy, history, and story. The class begins with the all-important reference-gathering stage using the free online tool, PureRef, as well as how to create a character synopsis that can help focus and guide efforts. Deciding on a space-pirate, bounty-hunter-style character for this workshop, Ian kicks off the sculpting in ZBrush, working from a simple sphere. Fusing animal and human elements as he sculpts, Ian discusses his most-trusted tools and brushes, and shares notes and industry tips as he builds out the character’s head and torso into a fully realized model. Moving into Photoshop next, Ian shows how costume designs can be explored in 2D before sculpting them in 3D. Using masking techniques in ZBrush, Ian builds up armor over the character as one piece. He also details how KeyShot can be used as part of the pipeline to render images that can be painted over in Photoshop for further design and color exploration. Blender is then taught as the main tool for retopologizing the hard-surface armor parts as well as how to use ZBrush’s own retopology tools. Once satisfied with the final pass on the sculpt, KeyShot is used to render out the character before taking it into Photoshop for the last time. Here, the final paint-over takes the design through to a film- or game-ready concept ready to present to a client or director.

In this course, students learn the fundamentals of creating 3D models with polygon geometry. Lectures delve into the various production techniques of asset creation through the exploration of polygonal modeling and the preparation of constructed models for texturing. The basic toolset in Autodesk Maya will be covered, and students will benefit from lectures about the technical and aesthetic issues that professional modelers face while modeling environments and man-made objects. Students will create weekly models throughout the term and the class will culminate in a final project consisting of building an intermediate to complex model like a vehicle, robot, or prop.

Procedurally generated terrains that can be art-directed — or even combined with real-world satellite data — are an important cornerstone of CG production. Gaea is an exciting new tool for developing photorealistic environments and has been quickly adopted by the industry. In this 4.5-hour workshop, Dax Pandhi, creator of Gaea and Co-Founder of QuadSpinner, provides a thorough look at all the essentials you need to know to create realistic, high-definition terrains using a procedural methodology. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a 3D hobbyist, this workshop will help you get up to speed quickly in terrain-generation techniques being used in the real world. In this comprehensive crash course for Gaea, Dax shares techniques that have been used on high-budget productions to create a multitude of photorealistic environments, including an overview of how to use real-world satellite data and Dax’s personal techniques for “bulking up” and eroding terrains for naturalistic results. As the workshop progresses, you’ll learn how to create even more sophisticated terrains for very high-quality and photorealistic results that follow the laws of nature. Dax shares a variety of texture setups — all driven procedurally using the Texture and Satmaps nodes to give you complex color maps to colorize your terrains. As well as demonstrating standard Mountain and Erosion nodes, you’ll also see how other nodes including Anastomosis, Snowfall, Canyonizer, Fold, RockMap, Stacks, Shear, Carver, Surface, and Shatter can be utilized to achieve very specific looks and terrain shapes — particularly helpful when exploring look-dev options. Gaea project files are included with this workshop.

When it comes to designing an enemy boss character for a game, where do you begin? For J.P. Targete, the answers lie in the process itself. In this 4-hour workshop, J.P. explores, discusses, and demonstrates how to design an enemy/boss creature design, from ideation sketch through to the finished concept design using Photoshop. In FLESH-TEK — Vol. 1, you will learn all the essential elements of design that you need to know to move forward with your preliminary ideations through to a final colored 2D concept. Throughout this workshop, you’ll discover J.P.'s thought process and see how he iterates from one idea to the next to create variants of a design. You will also develop some easy-to-follow Photoshop techniques that J.P. has been using throughout the years to great success. J.P. is a highly accomplished freelance concept artist and illustrator with 25 years of experience creating illustrations and concepts for the publishing and entertainment industries. In this thorough workshop, he intentionally uses simple-yet-key descriptions throughout to make his process accessible to all levels of artists. The workshop is aimed at artists with some prior working knowledge of Photoshop, and standard drawing and digital painting skills are expected.  Project files supplied with this workshop include J.P.’s ideation design and final concept design Photoshop files for your reference.  Coming Soon: In FLESH-TEK — Vol. 2, J.P. will take the completed 2D enemy boss concept design and create a fully painted 3D sculpt in 3D-Coat. The forthcoming workshop will walk through all of the key tools that 3D-Coat offers, and discusses how beneficial and powerful they can be to add realism and depth to your designs.

A key to being a successful concept artist is the ability to express a believable and unique design clearly. Explore the various ways you can think about vehicle designs to ensure arriving at a distinctive and creative end product. This 2-hour workshop by Senior Concept Artist, Jose Borges, is intended for intermediate Photoshop artists with a basic grasp of concept design and digital painting techniques. This workshop aims to focus on understanding design direction, how to use key reference information to inform designs, as well as developing strong narratives to give your ideas a strong foundation. By learning how to balance the detail in your designs, you’ll discover the art of creating recognizable and memorable vehicles for digital production. This video tutorial aims to support both working professional artists as well as those seeking to break into the field. Jose shares how to improve your creative thought process to bring stronger ideas to the table, which can elevate any project and make you a vital team member. Jose’s tutorial is handled entirely in Photoshop; his final PSD and JPG versions of the design files are provided as a download for subscribers who want to study them more closely.

This creature design workshop by Wētā FX Lead 3D Modeler, Pascal Raimbault, covers his complete pipeline for concepting unique characters for production. Starting from the 2D design in Krita, Pascal moves on to progressively build a 3D model that is truthful to the original concept, using Maya and ZBrush. This comprehensive workshop details some of Pascal’s favorite skin-sculpting techniques in ZBrush. He explains how he makes his models production-friendly, including how to rework the topology and handle the UVs in Maya. Pascal also covers creating additional elements, such as hard-surface costume pieces detailed in ZBrush, making extensive use of ZBrush’s powerful Polygroups. The texturing portion is all handled using Substance Painter and covers a variety of materials. The look-dev and turntable setup is then explained in Houdini using Solaris, and finally, the model is rigged in Maya to be posed and rendered in Karma. The result of this workshop is a final asset suitable for any department in a studio environment to take over, whether to use the asset for a visual effects production or in a game cinematic. To finish off, Pascal shows his high-res renders produced using some basic compositing tricks in Houdini. Project files include the ZBrush 2022 tool file, which includes the high-resolution skin sculpt and an early WIP version of the costume model, for your reference.

In this workshop Ara goes through his workflow and creative techniques for ideation, concepting and designing a mech for a film, videogame, or VR project. As visual demands continue to escalate and project timelines shrink, the concept design phase in production has shifted to using 3D tools. Ara goes through a 3D workflow using various tools and VR to sketch, refine, model and render a piloted combat mech used for personnel insertion or extraction, the MP9 PIX mech. The workflow begins with exploration and research of the specifications and designs for the mech and obtaining an overall vision 3D sketch. After getting approval of this milestone, the mech is then divided into functional parts and broken out into projects for each part, then the entire model is combined, and further detail is added. The model is then taken into Substance Painter and textured. Then the mech is rendered into compositions and delivered to the production teams for design review and iteration if needed. Software and techniques used by Ara include block-out sculpting in Oculus Medium, Modeling sculpting and retopology in ZBrush, utilizing 3D Kitbash libraries to add detail. Finally, the model is rendered in Keyshot and color corrected and composited in Photoshop.