Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome Takes Off

NBC Universal visual effects artists adopt LightWave 3D to deliver fast-paced VFX

Posted: Fri 09 Nov 2012

Battlestar Galactica fans are ready to rejoice. A new and much-anticipated two-hour event returns eager viewers to the epic battle between Cylon forces and the 12 colonies.
Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, a new science-fiction drama airing on Machinima Prime's YouTube channel beginning November 9, 2012 for 10 episodes and airing on  SyFy February 2013, falls on the timeline between Caprica and Battlestar Galactica, in the tenth year of the first Cylon war. To bring this highly anticipated television series to life, the artistic team at NBC Universal relied on a LightWave pipeline  to get the job done.
Blood & Chrome was originally envisioned as an innovative Xbox project comprising nine 10-minute segments with a budget of only $2 million. “Obviously, we can’t shoot Battlestar Galactica for $2 million,” remarks Gary Hutzel, visual effects (VFX) supervisor at Universal Cable Productions and on Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome. “I suggested that we look at a radically different approach to the show: to shoot it entirely against greenscreen. As the project gained momentum and the studio realized the cost benefits of this approach, the project gained more financing and grew into a two-hour “backdoor” pilot for a potential new television series.”

Hutzel and the team at Universal were faced with a formidable challenge: producing a Battlestar Galactica-quality, VFX-heavy film from scratch—with “no sets and no locations,” he recalls—at a cost far less than a typical sci-fi pilot. “The way that we accomplished that was to do the entire show on greenscreen,” Hutzel describes, “and I mean the entire show. We are breaking the mold. Right now, we have 89 minutes of content and roughly three minutes of that is filmed against a set piece. The rest of it is greenscreen or pure CGI (computer-generated imagery). That’s how we attacked the project.”
An all-greenscreen production made financial sense. “The executive producers and writers were able to do the kind of show they wanted, as scripted, packed with action and environments all over the universe, including sets, all for much less than the studio would normally pay for a pilot. They came out way ahead. The project is groundbreaking in that nature. It’s something the network is going to hold up and say, ‘This really works, and it makes a lot of sense to do pictures this way.’”

Going Greenscreen

For Hutzel, Blood & Chrome was the ideal project, one he has wanted to do for a long time: “an all-greenscreen, all-virtual environment show for television. It’s something that we’ve broken ground on,” he says.

Hutzel is no stranger to the Battlestar Galactica franchise and to delivering impressive design and visual effects cost-effectively. Originally hired as VFX supervisor on Battlestar Galactica, he worked on the miniseries and the first season. “The miniseries and the first season were done in a traditional way: I oversaw the set and parsed out individual VFX shots to the facility offering the best bid. Going into second season, it became apparent we couldn’t continue outsourcing VFX for that show. The writers couldn’t do the shows that they wanted to do, so we began to bring the work in-house,” he recalls. “By the third season, we were doing the entire show in-house. We call ourselves SyFy’s in-house visual effects operation.”
“We are not a visual effects house in the normal sense,” affirms Doug Drexler, CG supervisor on Blood & Chrome. “Gary has set up a new paradigm. In his model, visual effects is part of the production, just like the art department. We’re there to do anything needed to get the job done.”

Blood & Chrome pushes the new paradigm even further, Drexler adds. “The visual effects department art directed, built, lit, and lined up the shots, designed all the action sequences, created the mood, and drove home the intent of every single scene. What person who fancies himself a filmmaker doesn't dream of being able to do that? And what other department could even conceive of being able to? This is the kind of power that comes from that unassuming little CG package called LightWave.”

Production Progression

Blood & Chrome was a natural progression for Hutzel and his team, as they moved out of Caprica. In the last half of the season, the artists working on Caprica started to expand the show’s VFX footprint by doing entire virtual sets—something they perfected in Blood & Chrome.
Blood & Chrome is, nonetheless, a departure from previous productions in the franchise. “The show is unusual in the sense that it is cut very, very fast,” Hutzel describes. In fact, most of the shots in the two-hour movie span three seconds or less. “Consequently, we ended up with more than 1,800 shots, either full-CGI shots or shots with virtual backdrops created completely in-house for the scene. Battlestar Galactica never delivered anywhere near that number of shots.”

A staff ranging from 22 to 35 VFX and CG artists also delivered the shots on a short schedule. “We delivered up to 150 shots a week, which was barely getting it done in time,” Hutzel affirms. “When I did the Battlestar Galactica miniseries—which, for the time, was a huge VFX show—we had six months to complete 320 VFX shots in the show. Now, we’ve just completed 1,800 shots that are an order of magnitude more complex in five months.”
The Blood & Chrome production script spanned an impressive 117 pages, almost 30 pages longer than typical for an 84-minute show. “The script was enormous,” Hutzel says. “We shot all of it and we shot it in 15 days, which is an extremely short schedule for a two-hour show.”
After the team shot the live action against greenscreen, the artists moved ahead with designing the virtual elements, including the mood and look, says Drexler. “The computer and LightWave give us a lot of freedom; we can experiment to our hearts’ content without the constraints of budget and building physical sets.”

Drexler and his team of 10 CG artists used LightWave to retrofit the Galactica, including the battlestar’s interior sets. “Because the show was all greenscreen, we had an opportunity to expand the ship and give it greater scope.” He and the artists pushed back walls and raised ceilings, but stayed true to the original Galactica design and layout.
“Nothing ticks off my geek sensibilities more than going to my favorite franchise prequel/sequel and finding out that they completely redesigned my favorite character in the show, the spacecraft,” Drexler notes. “The trick was to come up with a design logic that wouldn't tick off our audience. If you were to examine the sets, you’d see that the structure from the last show is intact; even though the sets are more expansive and complex, they still feel like the same place—and, in fact, they are.”

Above and Beyond

Given the show’s greenscreen nature, Hutzel and his team were the de facto production designers, constructing everything except minimalist set pieces, which the art department created and with which the actors interacted. The Blood & Chrome pilot boasts more sets and backdrops than the Battlestar Galactica miniseries.
“It has Cylon robots, a snake creature, and a total of 23 sets we constructed entirely in  LightWave 3D,” Hutzel enthuses.

Extensive virtual environments permeate the entire pilot. Hutzel’s goal was to create environments that enhance the live action shot on greenscreen, without drawing so much attention such that the audience is aware of them. “We have a very natural feel with some large-scale elements that are very believable,” he affirms. “LightWave was instrumental because we can work with very large, high-resolution models very quickly. The latest visualization and lighting tools really expedite that process. I can literally light on the fly, just like I would if I were lighting a set. You simply can’t do that reliably in other packages and get the kind of results that we have.”
Artists also looked to LightWave when modeling and animating Blood & Chrome’s unique CG characters, including robots and a unique snake creature. “Despite what a lot of people think, a large number of artists do character work in LightWave,” Hutzel notes. “The look of it, the render, and the animation are tremendous—and fast. Every robot in the show is literally animated by one artist, CG Artist Jesse Toves, and there are dozens of robots. The fact that he can move through that animation so quickly and customize his rig so effectively is due to LightWave’s setup.”

“When people say ‘you can't do character animation in LightWave,’ what they really mean to say is that they can't or don't want to do character animation in LightWave,” Toves explains. “When you want a certain result and you are on a deadline, you simply can't say "my software can't do this, so it can't be done.’ You find a solution. Using LightWave for Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome was a no-brainer. The deep history Lightwave has in handling the hard-edged look of science-fiction content is well earned in television.”
“Honestly, I don't know if any platform other than LightWave could have pulled off this project,” Drexler admits. “The LightWave pipeline is fast. How else could 10 CG artists have pulled off the enormous number of shots in Blood & Chrome? Gary likes to call it ‘our dirty little secret.’ LightWave is the little engine that could, and did; it defied all the odds on a show that by all rights we never should have been able to pull off.”

All-around Experts

The bulk of the VFX shots in Blood & Chrome were done in LightWave. In fact, a majority of the Universal team working on the project, including Hutzel, have been working in LightWave for more than 10 years.
“We have been very fortunate to put together a great team,” Hutzel mentions. “The reason we can do this work is, honestly, because of LightWave. It’s a 3D product that allows us to hire artists with a lot of background, who move very quickly, and are used to working independently. I’ve used other 3D packages, but I keep coming back to LightWave. It is a just a powerhouse and I can find the right kind of people to do the job I want that work in LightWave.”

Experienced artists proved essential to executing virtual backdrops to a standard that works in the show in a short amount of time. “Working with LightWave artists and LightWave, we can do that effectively. We can make the schedule. Trying to do it in [Autodesk’s] Maya would be a nonstarter. We would never get done in time. [Maya artists] are used to a pipeline; they are used to having other people do many different phases of a project,” Hutzel says. “The LightWave team that I’ve put together is used to doing it all, ‘soup to nuts.’ They’ll set temporary lighting in all the scenes and they do previs, complete with all the storytelling elements—all in the same software we eventually use to render out our passes for comping. It makes for a very efficient, fast pipeline.”
“LightWave is terrific for previsualization, which we can do very quickly. The big benefit is that you can present new ideas in their entirety to executive producers and directors,” Hutzel explains. On Caprica, for instance, he would present an entire two-minute segment of an action sequence in LightWave previs after seeing a first pass on a script. “We can put a one- or two-minute segment complete with audio together in a couple of weeks to present ideas to the producers. Once it is approved, the editor intercuts the CGI with the live-action plates. As soon as the show is locked, we do final lighting touches, break it out, and go to render from the same scene file. It’s very productive.”


“From a render perspective, our main challenge was tackling close to 1,800 shots within our pipeline,” explains Manuel Choi, render coordinator on Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome. “Because of our fast turnaround, we don't have the luxury of dialing in render settings per shot, or even per sequence. Instead, we'll spend a few days with Gary Hutzel finding general render settings that work for 90 percent of all shots: large space battles, complex outdoor and interior virtual sets, creatures, etc. Having solid settings that give us the render quality that matches Gary's vision enables us to focus on taking previs shots from our CG artists to final (by updating lighting, swapping low-res models for final ones, and performing an overall quality check) and stay on course to tackle 1,800 shots in a short schedule.
"Rendering our final shot count of roughly 1,800 would be close to impossible without having LightWave as our main CG and render platform,” Choi continues. “It's a relief knowing we can always count on LightWave to get us there.”

Continued Progress

Hutzel has been working with LightWave at various levels and on myriad projects for 12 years. “It’s just a very productive tool and pervasive,” he says. “Wherever I went and whatever I worked on, from features to presentation projects to documentaries, LightWave has been there.

“In recent years, [LightWave] has developed and improved in lockstep with exactly what I want to accomplish,” Hutzel continues. “For the past four years, it has taken huge strides in improved functionality. In versions 9 and 10, render throughput improved dramatically. In 10.1, we have improved control over the radiosity render settings, so we use it for everything we do now. The combination of increased speed, the ability to adjust settings in radiosity, and the new Hexacore render engines allows us to hammer this stuff out. It has been very productive; we have been very happy with it.”
Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, like LightWave version 10.1, was a natural progression for Hutzel. “I started out on Battlestar Galactica with what was at the time a very large-scale pilot; nobody else was doing that kind of thing at the time,” he says. “We started in a workstation environment using LightWave, and it worked out very successfully. That was eight years ago, and although VFX demands have increased exponentially, LightWave has persevered as my 3D tool of choice.

“LightWave has increased in flexibility and quality to the point where we feel very comfortable going into a project like Blood & Chrome and saying to the director and writers: ‘Write whatever you want. It doesn’t matter. You’ve paid to have us to do every shot on your show, write anything,’” Hutzel enthuses. “That is exactly what we did on Blood & Chrome, and we’ve been successful in bringing this idea to life. VFX are no longer cost-prohibitive. Greenscreen can help you get there from here.” So say we all.

Follow Your Vision

Abiogenesis" creator Richard Mans shares how LightWave helped him realize his vision

Posted: Fri 31 May 2013

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=z4Kl8JGzsKA

Dilated Pixels Drives it Home

A Small House Dreams Big with LightWave 3D

Posted: Mon 10 Jun 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1zlrC2mS73c

Unfolding the World of “Bunraku”

Origami Digital blends creative CG, stunning VFX, and true artistry onscreen

Posted: Fri 02 Apr 2010

Bunraku, the second film from acclaimed director Guy Moshe, is a unique blend of cutting-edge computer graphics and choreographed live action, comic book and video game styles, gritty reality and fantasy, and samurai and spaghetti western genres.
Crime boss Nicola the Woodcutter (Ron Perlman) commands an army of thugs headed by nine deadly assassins in a post-war future without guns. Citizens of the small town, terrorized by Nicola’s regime, wait in hope of a hero to save them. A mysterious drifter (Josh Hartnett) and young samurai (Japanese star Gackt) soon cross paths and, with guidance from the local bartender (Woody Harrelson), join forces in a quest to overthrow Nicola’s tyrannical reign. At Nicola’s side are Alexandra (Demi Moore), the femme fatale, and Killer No. 2 (Kevin McKidd), Nicola’s lethal right-hand man.

Origami Originality

The one-of-a-kind film, which debuted on September 30, 2011 in a limited release, delivers an impressive cast and a wealth of eye-catching, awe-inspiring visuals—all within a $25 million production budget. Bunraku is written and directed by Moshe, based on a story by Boaz Davidson.
Moshe’s Picturesque Films, Ram Bergman Productions, and Snoot Entertainment—all in Los Angeles—partnered to produce the film and bring Moshe’s vision to cinematic life. To realize the truly unique and strong visual style envisioned for Bunraku, the production team elicited the help of Oliver Hotz, owner and visual effects (VFX) supervisor at Origami Digital LLC in Los Angeles.
Moshe decided early on that he would tell the story of Bunraku by filming entirely on a green-screen stage and using a wealth of VFX and computer graphic imagery (CGI). The crew filmed the live action over a 12-week period and on roughly 30 sets at MediaPro Studios in Romania.
Hotz, named VFX supervisor on the film, led a team of artists at Origami Digital as they crafted a novel folded paper—or origami, coincidentally—world of Bunraku. “The world it’s set in is almost circus-like in the feel of it and it’s all origami,” described McKidd in a Los Angeles Times interview. “The whole universe is constantly folding paper to create a cityscape or interiors of rooms or the sunrise.”

Green-screen Greatness

“Even though Bunraku was shot entirely inside of sound stages, the director (Moshe) envisioned a massively expansive world,” Hotz explains. Origami Digital was initially contracted to deliver approximately 90 of the more difficult VFX shots in the production, while Snoot Entertainment’s Snoot FX division were assigned roughly 300 “A over B” set extensions. The project’s VFX work soon grew in both quantity and complexity, so the decision was made to reassign all work to Origami Digital.
The Origami Digital VFX team was responsible for creating virtually everything that wasn’t in the immediate set, including a view through the City Square’s main archway, a flyover from a Mob Office over the city and past several landmarks, and a colorful, paper-lantern sky. In all, Origami Digital artists delivered more than 1000 shots, which can be seen over roughly 83 minutes of Bunraku’s running time.
Given the volume of VFX the team had to deliver for the movie, Hotz elected to farm out preparation tasks to other facilities and enable artists to devote more time to the look and design of the shots. RotoFactory, together with Origami Digital’s in-house rotoscope/paint team, delivered mattes for several green-screen sequences. Pixel Magic completed speed changes that were introduced in the edit stage. Algous Studios delivered the type of blood Moshe wanted in the movie, as well as provided elements for Origami Digital’s comps and finished “blood only” shots that didn’t require any other VFX elements. Lastly, Imaginary Forces handled a montage sequence, “because we had really liked the style of some of its other work and it fit perfectly into this movie,” Hotz describes.

Design Departure

The visual style of the work in Bunraku was a departure for Hotz and his team at Origami Digital. “Most of our prior work was of a photorealistic/invisible style. Achieving the stylized look that [Moshe] wanted took a lot of trial and error, so we came up with a work flow that allowed for experimentation without incurring overages or getting into a major time crunch,” he explains.
“Another challenge was the length of the more intricate transition shots that, at 2000-plus frames each, included a lot of geometry and passes to allow for control later, during compositing. Perhaps our biggest challenge was doing this all with a small team. At our largest, we had 25 artists,” Hotz adds, “but we had a very good crew and a streamlined work flow that allowed us, on average, to get 40 to 60 shots out per week—including all the exploration time that the director needed.”
Hotz entrusted his Bunraku workflow to NewTek’s LightWave 3D, which he chose as the primary 3D application for all the modeling, texturing, and rendering. Artists also used LightWave to do all the setups for the shots. “We used [Autodesk’s] Maya to create a majority of the transition sequences where buildings had to fold and unfold, and then transferred the animation back to LightWave for texturing, lighting, and rendering. Not having to think about licensing the LightWave renderer on our render farm was a huge relief,” he affirms. “We then used LightWave to create all the passes that we needed and then passed those off to compositing.”

Intensive Integration

A smooth, tightly integrated production pipeline was a prerequisite for Origami Digital artists to produce a wealth of scenes combining live action, CG with high polygon counts, and striking VFX—all on a deadline.
“The integration of LightWave and Maya on the 3D side, as well as getting camera and geometry information from LightWave into our compositing software (Eyeon Fusion), was key to the speed in which we were able to crank out iterations of work,” Hotz insists. “Having this seamless integration allowed me to make certain calls that would allow the artists to work more effectively. Sometimes, we would choose to use the geometry in the compositor rather than a 3D package, because we could make interactive changes while sitting there with the director.”
Origami Digital also enjoyed tight integration with its internal job tools. The artists did not need to create render folders or passes folders, Hotz mentions. “We automated things like z depth or matte passes, and submissions to the render farm—all to make it easier on the artist, who could concentrate more on the creative work.
“The integration with Maya was also key in moving elements to and from LightWave,” Hotz says. “We used our own tools for that integration and it was a very smooth process. We have a very tight integration of LightWave with the rest of our tools, including our entire motion-capture pipeline.”

Multiple Iterations

Artists need to be able to iterate to improve work, admits Hotz. “LightWave allows us to do that,” he says. “I find shading and texturing in LightWave so intuitive that we didn’t run into any slowdowns on that end, giving us the opportunity to explore many different looks in a very short amount of time.
“It has an extremely fast renderer, and where you usually shudder to use motion blur with [other] renderers, I don’t even have to think twice with LightWave,” Hotz enthuses. “We render with 3D motion blur.”
LightWave also proved to be highly effective with scenes having large polygon counts. “We had millions of polys for our transition shots, and we had a much easier time dealing with the geometry in LightWave,” Hotz continues.

Lasting Impression

Bunraku’s visuals are being compared to those of Sin City and 300, both of which commanded much larger budgets than Bunraku’s modest $25 million price tag. “I am extremely proud of the work we have achieved,” Hotz says. “I’m equally proud of the way in which we were able to manage this project.
“Typically, a project with 1000-plus shots would only go to a large facility working six- and seven-day weeks to finish; or, it would be broken up into smaller, sequence-sized chunks and distributed to companies all over the globe,” Hotz recognizes. “Due to our pipeline, tools, and management, we were able to deliver this project in the time allotted, with a small crew, in Los Angeles, without overtime or weekend work.”
What Hotz hopes independent movie producers take away from Bunraku is that high-quality VFX work is available to projects of all sizes and budgets. “Going forward, LightWave will continue to be our primary 3D application and package of choice for modeling, texturing, and rendering. Its speed, robustness, and support for custom scripting are all key to our success as a provider of 3D content to the entertainment industry,” he says. “We will definitely continue to use LightWave 3D for future work.”
Bunraku IMDB: www.imdb.com/title/tt1181795/
Visit Origami Digital at www.origamidigital.com

From Cars to Cartoons

Power Artist DJ Waterman turns his love of cars to works of art with LightWave

Posted: Wed 06 Feb 2013

While most men dream of owning and driving cool cars, Sydney, Australia-based Des "DJ" Waterman likes building them in LightWave. Whether it’s a VW Beetle, Alpha Romeo, or Mini-Cooper, bringing 3D cars to life has been a long-time passion.
As a professional 3D animator, doing business as Gloss Design in Sydney, Australia, Waterman regularly contributes 2D and 3D animation to all sorts of client projects, including commercials, corporate marketing, children’s programs, and medical/health videos.

While his freelance work as a 3D animator and motion designer covers diverse subjects and techniques, he’s known on the LightWave forums for his car renders. Waterman’s creative experimentation with his 3D car hobby has advanced his knowledge of what works and what doesn’t, and helped him refine his 3D modeling, surfacing, lighting and rendering techniques.
Waterman works from his home-based studio using LightWave 11. Occasionally, a real vehicle—like his green Fiesta—serves as inspiration for a 3D car and a handy reference for realism, but for the most part he works from photographs and blue prints.

The Body shop

“If I’m just modeling something out of my head, I can always cheat; whereas a car makes me stay true to a design and work through all the hard parts,” Waterman said. “A car contains most modeling and surface challenges. It has hard and soft shapes, sometimes flowing into each other. It also involves all kinds of surfaces like metal, glass, rubber, leather, and plastic. It’s a great subject.”
Waterman’s modeling algorithm of choice is Sub-D, short for Sub-Division, also known as quad modeling because every object is comprised of four-sided polygons, although there are instances where three-sided polys can’t be avoided.
He begins a car by building it panel by panel using four-sided polygons. These car parts are then grouped together to become a single object.
“Once I’ve modeled a panel using four-sided polygon shapes, I can hit the E key on the keyboard to extrude an edge and drag out a new shape that will become another panel,” Waterman said. "I also use the Tab key (smooth/unsmooth) to check back and forth as to what is really going on with the mesh. A non-smoothed mesh will often reveal where the problem areas are. Tiny adjustments to untangle the underlying poly mesh will magically improve the look of the Sub-D’d mesh.”


There are alternative modeling techniques—like spline patching—that one can also use to model cars. “With spline patching, you get a blueprint you can use as a background image, and the spline-patched model you derive from that serves as the starting point for your car,” he explained. “After you draw the spline-based curves of the car, you select points along these curves and click a button and it patches it and puts a nice, smooth mesh over all that.”
“While that approach gets you up to speed quickly, the problem is that if you discover a problem with your blueprint after the car’s fully formed, it becomes quite difficult to correct or modify one detail without affecting the whole object. That’s why I usually forgo spline patching,” Des said. “With Sub-D, when you build the car one panel at a time, you can go back and solve problems on one isolated part without having those fixes affect the entire car.”

Shear genius

There are many tools in LightWave that are extremely helpful but relatively obscure. One such hidden gem is called the Shear tool. According to Waterman, “Shear has many useful properties for getting nice curvature to a mesh where one might use a Lattice Deformer in another 3D animation program. Once you get a feel for the Shear tool, it will constantly surprise you. It’s very interactive and flexible.”
“If you slide your curser over a box, the object will lean in one direction, like a shed leaning to one side,” Waterman said. “Artists can quickly get the idea that that’s all the Shear tool does. If you explore further, you find that you can actually use Shear for deforming and getting very nice curves. The shear tool lets you make these adjustments interactively and see them in real-time.
Shear is just one of many LightWave tools capable of doing deformations. Waterman has noticed a lot of people on the forums talking about problems they’re having that could easily be solved by applying the Shear tool. “I just figure they either don’t know about it, or they don’t realize it can be used in a way that would solve their problem,” he said.

Detailing cars

Once the cars are modeled, and it’s time to apply the surfaces, textures and lighting, he moves them into Layout where the View Port Renderer (VPR) allows for real-time, interactive creative experimentation. “In Modeler, you’re basically dealing with wireframes, but in Layout, you can use the surface editor to apply different textures, such as chrome or leather, and finesse their reflectivity and other properties,” he explained.
“If you’re going to do surfacing, you need to get to a lighting situation that fairly closely mimics reality. If the universe you put your car into isn’t correct, you’ll be adjusting your surfaces to match an unreal environment,” said Waterman. “If your surfaces aren’t Energy Conserving, they’ll never relate to radiosity lighting in a realistic manner.” The surfaces will look wrong or odd in some way. For example, they might appear too luminous, too hyper colorful, or too dark, to name a few of the problems.


While animators used to be limited to just a few kinds of lights, like spotlights, point lights, and distant lights, Waterman said since LightWave added its broader set of lighting tools, including dome lights and area lights, quickly achieving a photo-realistic look is now very easy. Also, since LightWave 11 has a very fast, advanced renderer, animators no longer have to keep their scenes and lighting simple to economize on rendering time. “Being able to experiment freely with lighting is the key to giving surfaces a realistic look,” he said.
"Whether it's a studio set up or an outdoor location, I try to mimic reality as much as I can so that I can be surprised by the effects of light and reflection, as would happen in a real photo shoot where you don't have absolute control,” Waterman said. “This is where LightWave's renderer has really impressed me. I don't have to fuss around or employ tricks, it just works like I expect reality to work."
"It helps to think of the cars as celebrity portraits,” Waterman explained, “where I'm trying to enhance their personality or communicate a feeling, not just showcase a completed model.”
After you’ve finalized your presentation in Layout, “if you discover a small detail you’d like to change on your model, you can go back to Modeler, isolate the problem area you want to alter, and make the change,” he added. “When you return to Layout, with the click of the mouse, the object instantly updates to reflect that change.” This is extremely advantageous, because the animator only has to deal with the model and not the entire scene file.

DJ 2.0

Picture Real-Life, Only Better

Power Artist Eugenio Garcia Villareal creates stunning visuals from deep in the heart of Mexico

Posted: Tue 12 Mar 2013

If you read 3D magazines and frequent online galleries, you’ve undoubtedly seen the work of 3D Artist Eugenio Garcia Villarreal. While he’s a relative newcomer to the industry, he’s prolific in the creation of environmental 3D stills and generously shares his techniques and workflow with other LightWave artists in the global community.
Based in Monterrey, Mexico—a media rich industrial center in the northeastern province of Nuevo Leon—Villarreal is self-taught and self-made. In 2005, he began honing his craft through online tutorials and investing considerable creative energy in 3D modeling as a hobby. He has since parlayed his love of 3D environmental stills into a professional career that he loves by co-founding an agency called D10 Studio with a group of fellow artists, animators, designers, and programmers.
D10 Studio—a name he says was inspired by a famous Argentinean soccer player—regularly perform a wide range of creative services, including broadcast design, 3D animation, motion graphics, and interactive media, for television commercials produced by advertising agencies throughout Mexico, Latin America, and Miami, as well as print, television, and other media outlets.

“Clients like to use beautifully crafted 3D environments as backdrops for their talent or products in commercials, marketing, Web videos, and illustrations. Compared to finding and using real-world settings or actually building physical sets, the 3D environment lets them easily control all the creative parameters within the scene as well as hold the line on costs,” said Garcia Villarreal.
For an archaeology book by Mayo Moller, featuring Mayan pyramids that is still in production, Garcia Villarreal is creating 3D illustrations that go beyond what photographs can illustrate. Using LightWave 3D as his primary software tool, he’s creating 3D environmental stills that accurately portray the way the Mayan pyramids looked at the peak of their luster, before time eroded their surfaces and faded their colors.

While LightWave 3D is his preferred and primary 3D animation system, he often supplements it with software such as Photoshop for color correction, particle effects, and other postproduction finishing. He also uses a few trusted LightWave plugins, such as the fprime render engine from Worley Laboratories, which offers interactive tools for lighting, shadows, radiosity, and textures. Since he does not do 3D animation, most of his LightWave work takes place within Modeler, where he models objects that will be featured in his 3D environments. He then moves to LightWave’s Layout where he experiments with 3D camera angles, shot composition, and all types of lighting prior to rendering out the finished image.

A showcase of his 3D environments displays how diverse his creative vision can be in terms of subject matter, mood, lighting, contrast, and overall inspiration. The 3D stills and spaces he creates are not only painstakingly detailed and photorealistic, they are in some cases hyper-real.
“Most of the stills I do are inspired by things I see in nature, movies, and places,” Garcia Villarreal said. “I try to manipulate lighting to create nice contrasts, moods, and atmosphere.”

An image called Guanajuato Alley (above), inspired by his visit to a quaint old Colonial city in Mexico, is a good example of his approach to 3D modeling. The project, which took five days to complete, also involved extensive research about the architecture, buildings, tunnels, alleyways, and other characteristics of this special locale.
“For the modeling, I created some ‘primitives,’ and did a rough sketch with primitives, one per layer, which ultimately formed the buildings and floors. Next I refined the buildings by using basic LightWave modeling tools like band saw for making geometry, knife, edge bevel, magic bevel, smooth shift, and others to make my models detailed and believable,” Garcia Villarreal said.

While his 3D still environments are varied and distinctive, he generally follows the same highly efficient workflow. It typically begins by referring to photographs he’s taken while visiting interesting or exotic places or found by searching online. In many cases, he also creates 2D sketches to flesh-out his creative concept, and then bases his 3D modeling upon these photos and/or sketches.
In most instances, he uses box modeling, basic cylinders, spline guides, UV maps, and other simple, basic modeling tools to get the elements of his scenes started just right. Wherever practical, he saves modeling time by using existing 3D models, such as plants from 3Dplants.com, as well as elements like rich textures, gravel, and skies available from online 3D stock footage libraries so he doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel each time he needs to put something into one of his 3D stills.

For a 3D environment called “Desert Gas Station,”  (above) an image inspired by the roadside gas stations in old westerns and B-movies, Garcia Villarreal created the gas station with basic box modeling and then used tools like multishift, bevel, knife, and band saw to cut openings for windows and doors. He then built the scene up layer by layer by adding 3D objects like gas pumps and potted cacti, and embellished it with area and point lighting. However, he searched for and imported a mountain scene from CGtextures, as well as sunset skies from another online library, which he composited into the background. He used displacement maps to add gravel and stones—also 3D objects obtained online—to make the ground look uneven. To achieve a hot, desert look and feel, he used Photoshop color correction to give the overall scene the bright, orange glow of sunset.

For Detective’s Office (above), a work commissioned in 2011 as a step-by-step 3D tutorial for 3D Artist Magazine, Garcia Villarreal needed to create a vintage detective’s office. After researching online photos of 1940’s detective offices and creating a variety of sketches, he used these visual references to establish his basic LightWave 3D modeling setup, including historically accurate materials and textures to apply to objects in the scene. In Layout, he manipulated the natural light pouring through the office blinds, and the realistic way they reflected off surfaces and cast shadows and illuminated this retro setting to give it a moody, mysterious feel.
“I like to alter the volume and quality of the light, using area lights, global illumination and other lighting and shading tools that produce soft shadows, sharp contrasts, or any other mood I need. Once you’re proficient at using LightWave, you can create any object or environment you may want,” Garcia Villarreal said. “For radiosity, I use [fprime’s] Montecarlo radiosity, and then frequently check my lighting work in LightWave’s Viewport Renderer (VPR) before rendering. The VPR is great. It’s always nice to see your creation before pressing the F9 key.”

“I use my main computer, as well as LightWave’s native rendering engine, for most of the rendering, since my work doesn’t involve a lot of animation,” Garcia Villarreal said. “I like the way the render engine gets faster in every new version of LightWave.”
For 3D artists and animators just starting out, Garcia Villarreal says to read the manuals, look at online tutorials, and learn keyboard shortcuts that make the job go faster.
“Don’t be afraid to be adventurous and experiment with all the tools to learn something new,” he said.

LightWave 11.5 Streamlines Broadcast Graphics at NAB 2013

Powerful new After Effects Interchange gives artists greater flexibility with 2D and 3D elements

Posted: Tue 09 Apr 2013

At NAB 2013 (booth SL4610), the LightWave 3D® Group, a division of NewTek, Inc., is demonstrating its new LightWave 11.5 3D modeling and animation software, including the new After Effects Interchange feature and workflow enhancements for broadcast and motion graphics.
“LightWave remains a go-to solution for the 3D motion graphics and broadcast markets—its ease of use, extensive features and affordability make it an essential tool for 3D graphics and visualization in television and film,” said Rob Powers, president, LightWave 3D Group. “With the new After Effects Interchange tool in LightWave 11.5, we’ve improved the flexibility of the pipeline by allowing artists to easily share elements between the two programs.”

LightWave 11.5's new After Effects Interchange -- Moving from LightWave to After Effects.
With the LightWave 11.5 After Effects Interchange feature, artists can easily select elements in a scene such as animation, lights, and cameras and move them between LightWave and After Effects via the GoAE button. The new After Effects Interchange in LightWave 11.5 supports:
Cameras: Combine 2D footage and 3D elements by tracking the cameras of live-action footage in After Effects to cameras in LightWave. Move the cameras between After Effects and LightWave to achieve identical real-life camera movements inside LightWave.
Nulls: Send nulls from After Effects to LightWave and place them in 3D space for compositing.
Lights: Achieve the desired look by moving lights, including spotlights and point lights, between LightWave and After Effects for multiple test scenes.
View the LightWave 11.5 After Effects Interchange video tutorial detailing the many uses of this new interchange.

LightWave 11.5's new After Effects Interchange -- Moving from After Effects to LightWave.
LightWave 11.5 also includes new features and functionality that enhance creativity and streamline productivity for everyone—from individual artists and designers to large animation or visual effects studios. Some of the many new features in LightWave 11.5 include the Genoma character rigging system with modular presets, predator and prey Flocking capabilities, per-object Instancing control, and soft-body Bullet Dynamics with support for FiberFX. Also included are Interchange Tools for Pixologic’s Zbrush software, stereoscopic and depth-of-field motion blur in the Viewport Preview Renderer (VPR), major workflow enhancements, and more.

Pricing and Availability

LightWave 11.5 supports Windows and Mac OS and is priced at $1495 (USD). Registered LightWave 11 customers can upgrade to LightWave 11.5 free of charge; upgrade pricing from LightWave 10 or earlier is priced at $695 (USD). Educational pricing is also available. Visit www.lightwave3d.com/buy to purchase or locate an authorized LightWave reseller.
Download a free full-feature 30-day trial version of LightWave 11.5 at www.lightwave3d.com/try.

About LightWave

LightWave 3D combines a state-of-the-art renderer with powerful and intuitive modeling and animation tools. LightWave includes hundreds of cross-platform render nodes for near limitless rendering, support for Windows and Mac UB 64- and 32-bit operating systems, free technical support and more. LightWave is enjoyed worldwide as a complete 3D production solution for feature film and television visual effects, broadcast design, print graphics, architectural visualization, game development, and more. LightWave is responsible for more artists winning Emmy® Awards than any other 3D application.
LightWave has been used in the creation of CG and visual effects for leading feature films and television shows, including “Skyfall,” “The Hunger Games,” The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Adventures of Tintin,” “Avatar,” “The Walking Dead,” “Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome,” “Fringe,” “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” and more.
For more information about LightWave or the LightWave 3D Group, please visit: www.lightwave3d.com, Twitter, YouTube or connect with us on Facebook.

About NewTek

NewTek is transforming the way people create network-style television content and share it with the world. From sporting events, Web-based talk shows, live entertainment, classrooms, and corporate communications—to virtually any venue where people want to capture and publish live video, we give our customers the power to grow their audiences, brands and businesses, faster than ever before.
NewTek is privately owned and based in San Antonio, Texas.
● LightWave 3D is a registered trademark of NewTek.
● NewTek, TriCaster, 3Play and LightWave are trademarks of NewTek.
● All other products or brand names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.