Gnomon Workshop

Storyboard artists will often have to pitch a project before pre-production can even begin. Storybeats is a concept used by artists working at this critical point in a project to interpret a script and develop a pitch that, if greenlit, will later form the fundamentals of the production sheet. Think of it as the concept art before the concept art; it’s used by animators, storyboard artists, and concept designers alike throughout pre-production and beyond. Rembert Montald, a Storyboard Artist working in videogames in California, introduces and shares his complete workflow for creating beatboards that will impress stakeholders and producers. From reviewing an initial script and overcoming the anxiety of creating something when there are no existing designs yet, Rembert walks through his thought process and workflow, demonstrating 11 different storybeats along the way. This insightful workshop has a heavy emphasis on drawing and journeys from the initial thumbnail sketches all the way through to a rendered beatboard. This 3.5-hour workshop is suitable for anyone interested in drawing, filmmaking, or working in pre-production. By completing the 16 chapters, you will develop an understanding of what it takes to create a satisfying beatboard that has the potential to greenlight a project. You’ll also uncover effective techniques for sketching complex scenes, from hero shots to overlooking skyscrapers.

Blockbuster creatures and monsters all start somewhere: With a sketch. Senior Character and Creature Concept Artist Kyle Brown demonstrates the industry-proven workflows he’s mastered through working on high-profile creature designs for film, television, games, and advertising projects. His 3.5-hour workshop demystifies the process of bringing creatures to life, with Volume 1 dedicated to the sketching and idea-exploration phase. Before delving into the world of creature design, you’ll encounter many questions. How do you bring an unimagined creature into existence? How big, small, dangerous, or strong should it be? What environment will the creature be occupying and what role does it play? Will it have any unique skills or traits? Kyle discusses how, by applying fundamental design principles you can build a solid foundation to work from, and ultimately create a creature that will resonate with audiences — while still feeling fresh and original. Kicking off with the initial research and methodology phase, Kyle shows the importance of using references to serve as a spark for a new design, inspiring new shapes while always rooting design decisions in real-world anatomy and physiology. The workshop then moves into silhouette exploration using simple two-value construction to focus on shapes. Advanced thumbnailing follows, where Kyle applies secondary forms while ensuring that everything still reads at a small, bite-sized scale. The following exploratory process takes the initial thumbnails and fleshes them out into more resolved sketches, varying the shape and design language to create multiple iterations for a creature brief. To complete the workshop, the final design is translated into a three-quarter pose for the final presentation — whether it’s for your portfolio or a client. Watch Introduction to Creature Design: Volume 2 With Kyle Brown to explore how to color your creature concepts in Photoshop.

Senior Character and Creature Concept Artist Kyle Brown returns with Volume 2 of his Creature Design workshop to share his coloring and texturing techniques for Photoshop. With Volume 1 dedicated to the sketching and idea-exploration phase, Volume 2 now focuses on the core skills at the foundation of creature design and discusses the differences between real-world materials and textures that can help to achieve photorealistic results and bring concept sketches to life. Kyle revisits the original reference used to create imagined shapes in Volume 1 and this time puts them to work to show how to apply color and texture to designs. Taking the final creature concept from Volume 1, Kyle’s first color demonstrations reveal how to rapidly ideate using different color combinations and materials to flush out design options. He then shares quick and efficient methods for using some of Photoshop’s simple yet effective tools to create an additional color option on the same design. You’ll learn how to convey multiple conceptual ideations to a client for feedback, providing them with a wide net of options to see what works and what doesn’t. Chapters 4 – 7 show Kyle’s approach to designing a brand new creature from start to finish using the lessons from both volumes. Kyle showcases every decision — warts and all — including both the successful ideas and mistakes made through the designing process. His demo focuses on a non-destructive workflow. The final chapter offers a bonus lesson where Kyle shares his armor- and weapon-design techniques for those looking to add a further dimension to their creature designs.

Houdini is an industry leader in visual effects, putting power into the hands of FX artists working in production for films, TV, and games. As one of the most-used effects tools in the industry, artists can often find Houdini a daunting tool to get to grips with. Here, Alessandro Cangelosi unravels the learning curve to introduce a simple way to approach particle FX using Houdini. There are many approaches to creating impressive particle FX simulations in Houdini. Alessandro gets started with an overview of the basics that you need to know, and explains why Houdini is used as well as the fundamentals for how to use SideFX’s powerful software. This 7-hour workshop takes you step by step through how to manage different types of operators, including DOP, SOP, VOP, and focuses primarily on POP (Particle Operators) Networks. You’ll discover how to create a particle setup from scratch as well as how to take advantage of Houdini Shelf presets. The workshop aims to teach a sound understanding of how a particle system works in 3D. Particle emission rules and techniques are also covered, including how to manage different setups, and you’ll learn various ways to create particles using meshes, scatters, and volumes. In addition, some of the useful nodes that can be used to control colors, emissions, particle-caching, collisions with 3D objects, and basic bounce and drag forces are discussed in detail. The Mantra rendering engine is a great way to render millions of particles; Alessandro shares how to shade your projects, and explains how instancing works. You’ll also see how rendering points can be used in production to simulate effects such as dust, sand, and many other natural substances. How to control shading and motion blur with collision detection is also a highlight, where Alessandro discusses sub-groups, particle replication, sampling techniques, and optimization. The final part of this workshop tackles a final project: How to generate a CG nebula using volume velocity advection with a simple VOP. Helpful tips about how to create pyro FX advection are provided, as well as a deep look at particle rendering for gaseous FX. The Houdini files for each chapter are included with this workshop.

Learn the art of storyboarding with this drawing-intensive workshop by Rembert Montald, a storyboard artist at Riot Games. In this 3.5-hour workshop, Rembert shares his process for creating and choreographing a visually pleasing storyboard from scratch, from the initial drawing through to an animatic of the final sequence. Using a fight sequence as the story, Rembert teaches how to lead the eye through your shots, and details his various shorthand techniques for detailing characters and action poses quickly and effectively. This workshop is intended for anyone with an interest in storyboarding, visual storytelling, and drawing. The lessons taught are aimed at intermediate and expert-level artists and aim to prove industry insights for those working in games and films, including techniques for pacing yourself, setting the expectations, and understanding working standards. By completing this workshop, you’ll have a complete understanding of Rembert’s method for boarding a sequence including how to turn it into an animatic that can be presented to a director. Included with this workshop are Rembert’s working files, including a PSD with full boards and his 4 PSD animatic files for you to dissect and better understand his approach. JPGs are also provided to show the various storyboard sheets.

Learn how to turn your rough storyboard sequences into fully colored animated videos with this new tutorial by Rembert Montald, a Storyboard Artist at Riot Games. Following on from his Storyboarding Techniques: Creating a Fight Sequence workshop, Rembert shares his professional techniques for turning a rough animatic into a final animatic. Focusing on the first 16 seconds of his fight sequence, he gives an in-depth explanation of his thought process when approaching storyboarding for animation. His lecture includes a discussion of the importance of camera placement, as the way a camera moves can be used to great advantage — especially when working with dynamic shots. This is an advanced drawing workshop; however, Rembert’s approach to teaching is to make his techniques inclusive for all levels and abilities. This workshop aims to empower artists with the confidence to create their own animations, whether for showcasing in a portfolio, using to secure a new job, or pitch an idea to a stakeholder. Rembert’s final animatic can be downloaded with this workshop.

There are many approaches for designing characters for the screen. Industry veteran Aaron Sims details two of his tried-and-trusted workflows for creating iconic concept designs for film and TV, using Photoshop and ZBrush. As well as guiding you through his production-proven techniques, Aaron shares his thoughts on the importance of conveying personality and character through designs and shares some of the key lessons he’s learned over his 35-year career. Beginning with a 2D workflow in Photoshop, Aaron walks through his personal approach to visualizing a mutated character, using photo-bashing techniques that skillfully cut, splice, and warp multiple layers of human, creature, and organic elements to craft a completely unique design. Discussing the reasons behind his decisions at every step, the lecture details not only how to master photo manipulation for incredible results but also why the techniques and outcomes are his chosen workflows for likenesses, prosthetics, and digital augmentations. Today, artists can create any creature or character imaginable with the tools at their disposal. The second part of the two-hour workshop dives into ZBrush to develop a fully realized and dimensionalized alien character. Explaining why this approach serves well for full-CG characters, Aaron shares his ZBrush workflow, from base mesh to final bust, discussing the importance of anatomy, how to create points of interest in 3D designs, and how to push the envelope to create designs while still creating something an audience can relate to. The 3D workflow concludes with rendering techniques in KeyShot, pushing the settings and playing with various lighting scenarios, before finalizing the design in Photoshop.

This six-hour workshop by Alessandro Cangelosi details his tips and techniques used to create large-scale natural environments, such as those used in visual effects. The workflow shows how Clarisse V4, as well as Houdini and Terragen, can be used to create impressive CG environments with realistic skies, atmospheric effects, and procedural assets. While there are many workflows available to environment artists, Alessandro explains why his tools of choice are essential, such as Terragen for the creation of realistic skies, clouds, and for generating backplates for image-based lighting techniques. After introducing Terragen and showing how to take advantage of its atmospheric and cloud-rendering features, the lecture dives into Houdini, revealing how to tackle terrain modeling, build mountains, add details of all sizes, and how to use area masks, along with many other essential tasks. Houdini is also demonstrated for the creation of rocks and fog, detailing the workflow as a basic setup for every skill level to follow. Additionally, Alessandro covers exporting the rocks (Alembic) and clouds (VDB) — everything is generated procedurally. Continuing the workflow, Alessandro takes the terrain, rocks, and clouds into Clarisse where he shares his process for preparing scene blocking and tackling an initial lighting setup. Using Point Clouds, Particle Paint Tool, Scatter, and many other Clarisse features, this workshop breaks down the complete scene-dressing workflow and offers an introduction to vegetation setup using Quixel Megascans. The final section of the workshop discusses creating custom shaders for 3D plants, terrain, procedural displacement, adding instanced color, and applying variations at different levels of detail. The critical lighting stage also gets broken down, along with rendering the scene ready for look-development in Fusion.

Discover the complete process that goes into executing an epic water simulation shot featuring a sea creature breaching out of the ocean and diving back in. This comprehensive workshop, taught by CG Supervisor Miguel Perez Senent, begins by defining a large ocean surface and then showcasing Houdini’s latest water toolset to simulate interaction with the creature. Using the latest FLIP Solver, you will create the base fluid simulation and dive into tips and tricks to make it more realistic and efficient. You’ll then learn how to generate and blend the mesh of the fluid with the rest of the ocean using some clever techniques and discover how to use the result to define a custom whitewater emission source based on the mesh surface properties and physical characteristics. The simulation of realistic whitewater poses significant challenges, especially at large scales. Over the course of several lessons, you’ll explore a range of techniques to achieve realistic motion, from simulating an airfield to modifying the dynamics of millions of particles using various methods based on real-life observations to mimic the behavior of water at different densities. Finally, you will look-dev and render the shot using Karma within the Solaris USD context, making sure each component of the water is tightly integrated. By splitting the various necessary passes, you can easily put together a final comp using Nuke. Throughout the workshop, you will learn to keep your scene efficient in order to be able to create the shot with a single computer. Notably, the showcased FLIP and whitewater simulations at the final resolution took under 1 hour to run. Through the power of TOPs, you’ll unlock the ability to wedge and parallelize simulations and renders. Even though this workshop covers some advanced topics and techniques, following along without prior experience will get you to the end result. Included with this workshop are the materials needed to fully create the FX shot, including the animated creature with textures, light, and camera.

Virtual production is an emerging filmmaking method that uses real-time rendering to combine live-action footage with CG, first used on films like The Lion King and The Mandalorian TV series. In this 2-hour workshop, Vladimir Somov, former Principal Cinematics Artist on Assassin’s Creed, For Honor, and Far Cry, shares the core concepts and techniques required for creating Virtual Production-ready environment art using Unreal Engine. He walks through the entire pipeline of creating the exterior and interior sets of an ancient temple — an environment that allows for the exploration of two scenarios for lighting and mood, so you can learn how to set up and tell a story with lighting and post-processing for different environments.  The workshop begins with a lesson on understanding how to work with references and shows how to create a custom construction kit and a trim material. You will learn how to set up Unreal Engine, what project settings and plugins to use and why, as well as how to organize and structure Unreal projects. Vladimir provides both practical and theoretical advice on effective and believable set dressing and lighting, and offers techniques to profile and optimize performance with tools like Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) from Nvidia. The workflow also includes a look inside the techniques used for capturing a basic cinematic with an animated character and a virtual hand-held camera operated by using a smartphone as a tracker.  While this workshop is targeted at beginners, some basic knowledge and understanding of Unreal Engine and 3D modeling is recommended before starting. 3ds Max, Quixel Bridge, and Quixel Mixer are used in conjunction with Unreal Engine 4. At the end of 2 hours, you should have a strong understanding of the entire process involved in creating real-time environment art, and feel confident with techniques that can be scaled up and applied to anything from a full LED volume Virtual Production to Cinematics and Post-Visualization.

In this tutorial, Generalist James Miller takes an in-depth look at designing, lighting and compositing a landscape environment from beginning to end. Starting with Houdini's terrain tools, he builds up the landscape to fit the desired natural formations taken from photo reference. Following this, he imports this asset into Clarisse and takes a look into project construction, material building, and asset importing. Once this is all set up, he continues by laying out and lighting the shot, creating and animating a camera, and exploring the different ways we can view our shot in the package. For the cloud volumes, James goes back into Houdini and covers Volume VOPS to helps build the atmosphere, before returning to Clarisse to lay out these new assets for the render. The render is then taken into Nuke, where he explores relighting using AOVs, creating gizmos, building a skydome, and installing & using the p_world tools for matte work. The goal of this tutorial is to take you through all the steps involved in a large environment build of a mountain landscape, and how they all link together, so you can experiment, play, and enjoy building up your own shots from beginning to end.

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.