Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/7010
jmr.com Mudbox to sculpt their creepy — but not too horrifying — details. "Both are Autodesk products so they interface ver y well," Mac- dougall repor ts. "Mudbox is only on its sec- ond major release, but it fits to the common industry standard for workflow." For Macdougall, who studied fine art and sculpture, Mudbox's ability "to hold tens of millions of polygons on screen at once feels a lot like working with clay. Nothing interrupts the artistic flow. I don't have to worry about edges, vertices, faces underpinning the model — just what it looks like. I see the model at once as sculpture, and that's very valuable." While sculpting the Griffin was "pretty straightforward," combining real aspects of animal anatomy — a bird's head, a lion's body and a dinosaur's tail — presented some challenges. "Fur and feathers in one creature is a bit of a headache," Macdougall reports. "Once we sculpted the entire crea- ture in Mudbox we built the feather rig by placing individual feathers in Maya. We then used Joe Alter's Shave and a Haircut plug-in for Maya to add the fur ; it integrated well with Pixar's RenderMan for fast rendering." Another complex character to sculpt was the Quadragob, an ugly four-legged beast. "This creature was a challenge because of the detail required for close-up shots as it tried to eat one of the students," Macdougall notes. "In an homage shot to Aliens, a small snapping mouth extends from inside its jaws, covered in spittle. Mudbox's ability to show the color and specular textures on the high- resolution sculpt was a great help in getting the level of detail needed for these shots." He points out that since the latest release of Mudbox has an open API, people can now build tools to expand its utility. "It's an approach used for Maya and that's worked well," he says. "Customization is pretty es- sential to making sure the software will work smoothly for a particular production." Macdougall believes the field of 3D model- ing has changed dramatically since the intro- duction of multi-million polygon sculpting tools. "With the software so much better and the hardware so much faster you're getting better-looking 3D creatures more quickly.That means the demands and expectations of pro- ducers and audiences are a lot higher now." KO M A N OTO A N D A P H O N E CG ar tist Chris Maness (CGManess@ gmail.com) is currently freelancing in Los An- geles at I.E. Effects after gigs as a modeler for Wet Cement, International Gaming Technol- ogy and Rhythm & Hues. He recently worked on a promo for the Disney Interactive Studios game Spectrobes: Origins through Digisynd,which found him modeling, rigging, animating and texturing the Komanoto character ; the promo played on www.gametrailers.com. A long-time NewTek LightWave 3D user, Maness says the software simplifies projects such as this. "I've learned other packages, but so far LightWave Modeler has one of the easiest interfaces. The accessibility of the tools for Komanoto was key: I didn't have to go through multiple layers to get a function done. Everything was right in front of me." Maness roughed out the character's basic propor tions in Modeler using character as- sets from the game as 3D reference. Then he put Komanoto into a background layer where he built out the detailed organic swirls on its head and body through point- by-point mapping out of the geometr y. He tapped the background conform function to map the details to the basic propor tions in the background layer. "That gets you in the general area, but you still have some massaging of points to do," he explains. "LightWave's Dragnet tool www.postmagazine.com February 2010 • Post 25 continued on page 38 Prime Focus called on 3DS Max to model a virtual Ripcord character for GI Joe. Max Gabl used Cinema 4D to create this model of a rusted railroad car featured in History Channel's Life After People. The Embassy Visual Effects (www.theem- bassyvfx.com) in Vancou- ver used Luxology's Modo modeling, painting and rendering application to develop alien charac- ters, weaponry and ob- jects featured in Sony Pictures' District 9. The studio worked on a buried alien ship, an alien pet, a missile launcher and an alien exo-suit for the film. VFX artist Paul Copeland says the team relied heavily on Modo's advanced UV mapping tools, 3D paint- ing and texturing capa- bilities. Embassy's pipeline also includes Softimage|XSI, Mental Ray, ZBrush and Shake.