HDRI 3D

Transferring Vmaps Between Drastically Differing Topologies: Imagine using a “character” with less than 100 points to fully weight another character with hundreds of thousands of points. No, actually, don’t imagine—read this article and find out how you can do this, and more.

Creating Custom Color Maps With Ease Within ZBrush:
Learn how to create custom color maps in ZBrush that will hide UV seams and cover over multiple pieces. No more need for tedious test renders and multiple trips into Photoshop to check your color placement! Perfect for artists who are new to ZBrush or looking for a great alternative to coloring UVs on a 2D plane.

This is the second of two articles where we use morph maps as the basis for painting out the 3D terrain. It fully explores how you can use the Wacom tablet to create a 3D terrain.

An Industry Icon’s Legacy:
Tom Roth, veteran of Walt Disney Feature Animation, Dreamworks, Don Bluth Studios, and more, took time out to give us his thoughts on his amazing career in animation, and to talk with us about the online training program he is creating, “Animation Alchemy.”

Aaron Sims discusses his process for developing creatures/characters for film projects, along with his approach to production design. Projects discussed include Clash of the Titans, Embodied, and Sucker Punch. Aaron explains how he creates original imagery using research, ZBrush, and his imagination. 

You knew it when you saw it, that huge moment in your life where everything stopped—that one moment that changed everything. The day you decided to do this for a living...all because of something that inspired you. Chris O’Riley shares the moment when his life changed, and lets us know what’s happened since then.

VFX Supervisor Dave Codeglia takes us behind the scenes at DigiSynd, where they brought Komanoto into the real world for Spectrobes: Origins, a video game from Disney Interactive. Find out how they balanced visual effects techniques and storytelling through every stage of production, with a focus on realistically lighting and incorporating a 3D object into live action footage. Dave takes you through their entire process, including HDRI lighting reference, on-set measurements, camera matching, scene setup, lighting, rendering, and compositing. 

Discover the Helping Hands of Composition Overlays… Artists have used design principles to aid in the creation of some of the world’s most famous works of art—artists like Salvador Dali, Leonardo da Vinci, Mondrian, and even the Egyptian pyramid architects. Discover how to take advantage of these same techniques in 3D by using a timeless formula for getting the perfect composition. 

Softimage´s interface is very user friendly, with the added bonus of many little-known features to speed up the working process. These tips will allow you to customize the interface and make it even more manageable.