Welcome to the third session of Lacuna Expanse Game Art. In this session we will go over the creation of the new web site mural (background). This is a change from the original plan for this session, although with the spur of the moment decision to budget for a mural design similar to the "Blizzard" sites, I think it is appropriate to do the same here with discussing it. The process was a fast moving machine with a short deadline. I created the mural in under 72 hours from start to finish. The web interface took a bit longer.

The game is now released for play and has been a success thus far. There are well over a thousand people playing at the point of releasing this article. The IPhone App has also been released!

A Tournament server has also been released. New features and enhancements are constantly being added… this is quite the game to play for free.

Author: Ryan W. Knope

Ryan W. Knope is a freelance 3D / 2D Artist / Consultant with 14 years experience in the 3D and 2D industry. His main artistic love lies with interior and exterior rendering although he takes on just about every type of graphics work. Ryan is also the architectural / interior rendering voice for 3D Artist Magazine’s Question and Answer Panel along with being the Art Director for Lacuna Expanse. He lives with his wife Krista, in sunny Denver, Colorado.

Article Details

• Programs: Autodesk 3dsmax 2010, Pixologic Zbrush 4.0 and Adobe Photoshop CS4
• Difficulty: Medium To Difficult (Prior Knowledge Of Software Interface Is Needed.)

Seed Planted – The Backstory

About a month ago JT sent me an email giving me a try with creating a new web site design. It included a background mural and a web design much like the "Blizzard" sites. This was both exciting and daunting. I was a bit nervous, but ofcourse I said yes.

This especially made me nervous because the company was looking at different options with web graphics which kept coming up a bit short when the votes occurred between the owners and staff.

All in all this actually was a dream project. I just wish I had more time with it. With more time it would be spectacular, but it still went very well and all parties seemed to be happy.

I do plan on continuing the mural when I get some free time. You can see the finished pre-deployment below.

Step 1 – Conceptual Ideas

When it came to conceptual ideas it was both simple and complex. I was told that it needed a punch, something that grabbed people, made them sign up and hopefully it would be "Blizzard Quality Artwork".

With these comments in mind, I looked at all of the Blizzard sites for hours, contemplating design elements, talking to friends about ideas trying to figure out regions of space, land and ships.

Finally, I began sketching and sketching, although the ideas were very raw, they gave me the base I needed. These sketches conveyed the idea and helped me plan, but looked crappy as an art piece, so I tossed them at the end of the project.

Try to sketch out your ideas. It makes it much easier to organize things in your head. I am a very good "Inside my head visualizer" and sketching absolutely helps me every time. The main idea was to create a web site like the one below, but in a really fast pipeline.

Step 2 – The Starting Point Of Creation

With any image, the starting point can often be the most difficult part. This sounds a bit cliche, but I find this even more the case with a mural type image. If it is a vertical mural, then I find that starting with the ground or bottom is easier, as it provides a point of reference with the rest of the image.

This took some time to figure out. I started with the top, outer space area and shortly I was drawing blanks on the shading and visual process of blending down to the land.

Soon after I built my ground base and it was much easier to visualize how it needed to proceed and the entire process flowed very quickly.

Step 3 – Box Modeling The Ground Base

For starters, I created a heavily segmented plane in 3dsmax. Next I defined a rough view and created a camera. Setting up the basic view helped me determine rough camera angle content and creation.

OVERVIEW OF THE 3DSMAX SCULPTING PROCESS:
• Create a Plane primitive.
•
Add an "Edit Poly" Modifier.
• Turn on "Soft Selection" and set it to your desired falloff.
• Begin pushing and pulling to start the land definition.
• Add a "Turbosmooth" modifier to see heightened smoothing.
• Continue pushing, pulling, extruding, chamfering and beveling.

The next step was to export the model for ZBrush import. For this I simply exported as a .obj. My model upon export was 12,880 faces. This gave enough definition to know what I was going after inside Zbrush.

Step 4 – Detailing The Ground Base In Zbrush

Now, I imported my .OBJ file, placed it into the scene and pressed "T" to make it an editable object. At this point the sculpting began. I used various brushes and laid in details at various brush sizes. Use alphas to add more specific details and texture to the object. Test out different brushes with various alphas. You can get some interesting results that way. Also vary your brush size and intensity of the brush.

Once I was finished adding the details, I then used the "Decimate" plugin to bring the poly count down because my model was now 6.5 million polygons and I knew that I would possibly have other land models, spaceships, buildings and more. I used Decimate to bring it down to about 2 million poly’s, keeping quite a bit of the detail.

The last step in Zbrush was to export the mesh. Export it in whatever you feel comfortable with, but I used .OBJ once more. There is also GOZ which can export directly into 3dsmax, Maya and more in an automated way. This is nice because it brings the model directly into 3dsmax for you.

Step 5 – Defining The Lighting Scheme

The lighting in the main scene was very simple. I used "MR Sun / Sky" only. Then I set up my Exposure control as "MR Photographic, Clear Sky Daytime".

OVERVIEW OF THE LIGHTING STEPS:
• Start up 3dsmax.
• Change the renderer to Mental Ray.
• Import the base object. Place is correctly and set up the correct camera position.
• Drag out a "Daylight System" from the "Systems" menu.
• Change the system to "MR Sun / Sky".
• Set the Exposure Control.
• Test different times of day / sun angles.
• If the render is too dark then lower the "Exposure Value". I went from 15 to 13.

*** NOTE***
Upon testing, I added in a second instance of my base object, transformed it and tested a few more times. This second object added some needed variation and details. I also created another ground plane that had many segments and a noise modifier applied. This object went off into the horizon, adding much more depth.

Step 6 – Applying The Base Materials

For the ground materials I used a dirt texture map. This was added to both "Diffuse" and "Bump" slots of a "Arch & Design" Material. Then I added a "Reflectivity" of .5 and a "Glossiness" of .4. In this case, the bump helped to diffuse the reflections enough to make it less apparent.

This reflection also helped to bring in the sky materials. In my opinion this helps to add some depth and realism. Next I added box UVW mapping from the modify panel and scaled it accordingly.

The materials over all for this project were very simple. No need to complicate things when 3/4 of the work was Photoshop.

You can use "Displacement" and more detailed textures maps if you prefer.

I chose not to unwrap my model, but by unwrapping you could paint very detailed texture maps for all ground elements. You could then utilize the unwrapped coordinates for all of your image maps, creating very realistic surfacing.

Step 7 – Two Worlds, Working Simultaneously

At this point I began working in both 3dsmax and Photoshop at the same time because of the quick deadline. I have several computers in my office. If you only have 1 then it will be difficult to work this way as rendering usually takes most of the cpu power.

The ground base was where I wanted it placed and it was time to plan where to begin putting the city elements. I knew that I wanted them in the foreground, so the background areas of the land mass was open season to adding fires, farms and other interesting elements.

As long as you keep the same lighting and rendering scheme, the items added later will match. Layer masks may need to be added later for some elements as new buildings and objects come in.

If time is short, try to split the creation process so that you can work while you render (If you have more than 1 machine). Working on it this way saved me tons of time and kept the creative juices flowing.

HOW I WORK SIMULTANEOUSLY:
• Create and render the ground base.
• Work on distant Photoshop elements while placing buildings in 3dsmax.
• Render the new base with the city models while adding the sky, clouds, fire, smoke and hues in PS.
• Add in the new city base and continue placing ground overlays next to the buildings
• Edits to buildings can be made inside 3dsmax, resulting in minor adjustments in PS layer masks.

Step 8 – The City In 3dsmax

Models from inside the game were used for the 3D city parts. Minor edits were made and more detailed textures applied. Model edits included beveling and detaching window areas, transforming and duplicating parts along with more detailed materials / textures.

While placing the objects into position I showed only the land mass and the object to be placed. This makes it easier to see object interaction.

I used "Self-Illuminated" Arch & Design materials for the windows. I also made sure that these materials had "Visible In Reflections" and "Illuminates The Scene (When Using FG)" turned on.

Step 9 – The City In Photoshop

Once the 3D portion of the city was rendered and brought into Photoshop I began adding overlays to give the feelings of farms and small buildings. I also used this method for making the appearance of roadways. This helped fill the void between the massive in-game buildings and created a more realistic sense of what was going on.

I also added in orange, yellow and blue hues to give a more dramatic effect to the lighting scenario. I always use the dodge tool a lot as well to lighten up certain facades of buildings and ground areas.

LIST OF PHOTOSHOP EDIT ITEMS:
• Road / City Elements: Find photos that work with your camera angle. Test blending modes and mask.
• Paint in Hues on new, upper layers to create a better sense of mood.
• Add various "light Sparkles" via city images. Test blending modes and use a layer mask.
• Add trees and forests, test blending modes and use layer masks.
• Use the Dodge and Burn tools. Try to accentuate the lighting and lack there of.
• Blend the bottoms of buildings with the ground area. Check out the sharp edges.

You can go as far with this as time permits. I often find myself lost in this, and the next step as long as I am allowed time wise. Set aside time for contemplation. Look and think, take a break and do it again.

Step 10 – Ground Based Effects – Coloring

For the non city Photoshop work, many items were added. I was able to build up details quickly along with adjusting the overall hues of the lower area to give it more feeling and drama. Keep in mind what elements are adding light. Think about how much drama you want to convey. Nothing adds drama like lighting and hue shifts!

LIST OF PHOTOSHOP EDIT ITEMS:
• Clouds: Mask out and blend visually with a layer mask. Check blending modes
• Planet: Use a layer mask and play with blending modes. Sometimes they can create a nice glow..
• Smoke: Set blending mode to screen. Other blending modes often work. Go through the list.
• Fire: I painted in the fire and used a "Screen" blending mode.
• Painted Hues: All over the image I painted various oranges, yellows and blues. Test blending mode.
• Painted Fog: As the distance grows particulates add a haze, paint this in and lower layer opacity.
• Distant Faded Mountains: Use a layer mask and decrease opacity. I used "Soft Light" as blending mode.
• Painted Shadows: Shadows were painted and the burn tool was used. (Shadows = New Layer)
• Painted Highlights: Highlights were painted and the dodge tool was used.

Step 11 – Sky To Space

Creating the sky / space was a very quick process that lasted only minutes. When blending the sky up to outer space, I decided to use orange, purple and blue hues. I did not need to blend the center together perfectly because it would be covered up with the web interface.

The stars were added using a texture map of fireworks from cgtextures.com.

SKY / SPACE PROCESS
• Add the star background.
• In a new layer above the stars paint in hues. (I used 1 layer per color for ease of editing later)
• Test blending modes for hue layers. (Overlay worked best for me.)
• If the falloff on the painted hues is not enough, use some blur.

Step 12 – Adding In The Ships

The ships were already created for in-game use, so the models were already textured and ready to go. First I had to decide which ships to use. Once that was decided, then I simply imported them into my 3dsmax scene file and did "Region Renders". This allowed me to render out only the sections with the ships.

If the file becomes too heavy, you can delete the rest of your objects, keeping the MR Sun / Sky. Keeping the same lighting rig will make all of the items match in lighting. Otherwise shadows will be in the wrong places and it will present a problem later on.

Once rendered, I saved them as a .png with an alpha channel.

TIP: Sometimes there are slight white edges around the objects. To combat against this I rendered the spaceships at double size, then in Photoshop I made a selection and decreased it by 1 pixel and pressed delete. This removed the white edge. Then I sized the space ship renders to the size of my working file and placed them.

Step 13 – Conclusion

In this session we went over the initial concept and the talks of how the beginning came about. We also covered creation elements for the lower half of the mural rendering.

OVERVIEW:
• Plan the object layout even if you are not good at drawing or sketching.
• Find a starting point that works for you. Test both upper and lower if you can’t decide.
• Build whatever base you decide to start with. Keep in mind ease of creation.
• Do not detail the base until you are satisfied with the pre-viz.
• Don’t over complicate if you decide to use Photoshop or Post for most detailing.
• Render out an "Ambient Occlusion" pass in 3dsmax to accentuate shadows.
• Keep in mind thedensity of the 3dsmax scene. You don’t want rendering problems later.
• If time is short, work in both Photoshop and 3D simultaneously if you have acces to multi-machines.
• Utilizing photos of cities at night can save a huge amount of detailing time.
• Test blending modes of each PS element that you are adding. Sometimes it will surprise you.
• Paint in shadows to accentuate the depth. Most of the time game murals are not about reality.
• Contrasting colors and light / dark are your friends, it brings out the mood more.
• Think about what color combinations accentuate the "Urgency of the situation" inside the image.

Please take some time to check out the game. It can be played for free at www.lacunaexpanse.com

Related posts:

1. Creating The Lacuna Expanse Game Art – Session 2
2. Creating The Lacuna Expanse Game Art – Session 1
3. Creating A Space Ship In 3DS Max (Session 2)

In this tutorial will be exploring one of many production pipeline methods used for creating a next-gen game weapon. This process can easily be adapted to be used for any type of game asset, such as props, characters and environments.

This tutorial is designed for intermediate to advanced users and assumes that you have at least a fair understanding of each of the programs used. We will cover the entire process of creating a next-gen game asset, but I will not be going into a lot of detail for each specific step, just giving a general overview of the workflow involved. So let’s get started.

Author: Angel Trudeau – AngelTrudeau.com

Angel is an experienced and award winning 3D artist with over 7 years of industry experience. He specializes in hard-surface and environment models, with textures, for use in next-gen, current-gen and casual games. After graduating from the Art Institute of Colorado, Angel has been working as a freelance artist producing many illustrations and game assets for over 9 titles. Some of his most recent game releases were ARB Studio’s SteamPunk MMO and Buck Hunter for the iPhone.

Tutorial Details

• Program: 3DS Max 2011, Zbrush 4.0, Xnormal 3.17.3, Photoshop CS3
• Difficulty: Intermediate to Advanced

Scripts and resource files:

• Textools: http://renderhjs.net/textools/
• Resource Files: Shotgun_refrences.zip

Step 1: Concepts and Modeling

I generally start with research and concepts, but for this weapon, the client wants a next-gen weapon that is similar to the Browning automatic shotgun, but only 5k triangles or less. Its to be used in an iPhone game, so it doesnt have to be super detailed but have enough detail that it will look realistic in-game. To avoid any copyright infringement for the weapon we will need to make some small changes to the body of the gun, but nothing to drastic.

Since this model is going to be based of a real-world weapon I don’t really feel the need to do concepts but I did do a quite of bit of extensive research to ensure I had good references of the shotgun. I have included the reference images I used for this in the zip file, so have a look.

Once you have had time to look over the references and get a good understanding of the direction we need to go, then you can start the modeling process. Over the course of this tutorial we will actually make several meshes. The first mesh we will create is the game model, followed by the base mesh model and then the sculpted high-rez model.

On the game model the mesh will appear without any smoothing and the mesh will be highly optimized for use in a game engine. The game model will also have all the UVs, whereas the base mesh doesn’t need to be UV’d.

On a base mesh you have to consider a few things: One of which is the fact that the base mesh will be smoothed to high degrees, so any hard edges we want to keep hard, needed to be preserved. It is also extremely important that the base mesh has an even poly distribution because this insures that during sculpting all of the mesh will have even resolution. If the poly distribution is uneven, with some areas having a high density of polys and other areas with low density, then sculpted strokes and details will not appear uniformly smooth. (more on this later)

- Basic Form

We start the basic form using primitives, then convert them to editable polys and adjust the shape further.

- Creating the Game Model

After creating the basic form, we can begin adding in details, starting with the largest details first and working our way to the smaller details. Once the main details are modeled in we can then optimize the mesh, meaning that we remove all unnecessary edges, vertexes and faces. Some edges may appear as if they could be removed at this stage, but when dealing with a normal map it is important to have a few extra edge loops around tight edges. This will ensure that the normal map displays correctly in the end. If after applying the normal map to the model you have dark areas around some of the edges, you will need to add in some extra edge loops to clear them up. Eventually we should come up with something like this:

- Creating the Base Mesh for Sculpting

For the base mesh, we will start by cloning the game model. It is important to ensure you don’t move either the game or base meshes at this point, as they will need to be aligned in order to get a proper projection for the bake later on. You will see why this is when we get to baking the normal and using a cage.

Once you have cloned the mesh we can start redoing the topology. The goal here is to ensure that there is a fairly even distribution of polys so that we maintain our edges and get a uniform sculpting mesh.

- Exporting Base Mesh Pieces

When exporting it is important to break the model up into as many separate pieces as possible and export each of those pieces individually. This serves two purposes; first is that we will then be able to import each individual piece into Zbrush and assemble the weapon again using sub-tools. This gives the ability to work with and edit each piece individually, so we have a lot more control. The second reason for doing this has to do with the baking process later. If you were to try and bake the whole weapon by itself, without breaking it up, then you would get many different errors on the normal map due to overlapping mesh pieces and lighting of those pieces. To ensure that you get a good clean bake it is vital to break up any mesh into as many separate pieces as possible.

In total I had 7 pieces to export for this mesh, which were all exported as Obj’s and using the ZBrush preset within the exporter.

Step 2: ZBrush Sculpting

This part is fairly simple because we don’t need to do much, we mainly just need to add in the grip and wood patterning with a little bit of damage.

- Importing, Sub-dividing and SubTools

Import each of the pieces that you previously exported from max. Then draw the main body mesh onto the canvas. Open the sub-tools menu and append all of the other pieces you just imported. All the pieces should appear in their proper position and now you have total control over each piece.

Now we go through and subdivide each individual sub-tool. For pieces that I need to add a lot of detail to, such as the wood stock and grip, I will subdivide up to a level of 6, whereas I will set all the other sub-tools to 4. You can always add more levels later if needed.

-Sculpt in Details

A few things to keep in mind when doing these kinds of details is that a normal map won’t pickup really fine details, so it is important to over exaggerate the details you do want to come through on the normal. For all those finer details we will use the specular map to draw them out.

Now we can start on sculpting. We use masks, a little bit of projection master and some free hand sculpting to get the look we are after. I start by adding the wood grain and build up from there.

We then do the stock and grip detail using projection master again.

Add in any other detail you want. You take the details as far as you want at this stage, down to the finest detail. Just remeber that the normal map won’t pick up really fine detail and you must exagerate any detail you do put in for them to show up reasonably. For this model I just threw in a few basic details like some screws and finsihed the front grips detail, but you could also add in things like lettering on the barrel, some etching details
on the sides, wear and tear on the barrel end, etc…

- Export Pieces

Export each sub-tool individually and at their highest sub-division level. Although if some pieces are just has too many polys to export, then you may need to use decimation master to lower the poly count without losing detail. Decimation master is a great way to get a super high poly model down to a reasonable and workable file size, but once an object has been decimated it can no longer be edited, or sculpted on, so only use it once you are sure that you are finished with the sculpting stage.

Step 3: UV the Game Model

- Textools – http://renderhjs.net/textools/

I use textools by Renderhj for several reasons, but mainly because it helps simplify the UV process quite a bit. I won’t go into much detail on all the options of textools, but you can get plenty more info on them if you go to Renderhj’s website. I do highly recommend looking it all over though as it is a great help with the entire UV process.

- Flatten

First you will need to break up the UVs and there are a variety of different ways to do this. I like to do it one element at a time so that I don’t get cluttered up. I also always make sure that Normalize map in not selected in the Unwrap modifier, so that all faces stay their true dimensions. Of course this means that the UVs will be very large and will need to be scaled down at the end, but it makes reassembling them a lot easier in the end

- Stitch and Align

Once the element(s) have been flattened you can go about stitching together all the faces. I use the Textool Linear align tool to straighten a lot of edges after stitching. You want to ensure that all straight edges on the mesh stay straight in the UVs. To align any uneven edges, select the edge(s) or vertices and click the linear align button. All the selected should snap into a straight line.

- Pack

Once all the elements have been flattened and stitched back together it is time to pack them and we want to pack them in such a way that we maximize the UV space and use as much as possible. We also have to consider that some of the pieces of the model may be a lot more visible then others when in-game, so it may be prudent to give those pieces more texture space.

Textools has several features in it that allows you to set texel and pixel density for specific UVs, which is very handy for larger projects, but for this particular weapon I just visually note which pieces I want to get more texture space and scale them up accordingly. You can find more about how to set the texel density by going to RenderHjs homepage

I then select various pieces and click the pack button. I then manually move and arrange each of the pieces to fit them into a square region. Once I am happy with that, I select them all, uniformly scale all of them down, and move them into place within the UV area.

If you have any mirrored UVs you will need to offset one of the mirrors by exactly 1 unit to avoid any baking problems.

Step 4 – Baking Normals and AO

- xNormal – http://www.xnormal.net/1.aspx

xNormal is by far the best when it comes to baking your normal maps. It produces much better quality bakes then even max or Zbrush can do, so that is why I use it and recommend that you do to as well. It is free to download and use, so there is no reason not to. You can do the bakes in Max and Zbrush if you don’t wish to download it, it is a similar process to baking AO maps, which I will go over later, but xNormal is less prone to baking errors and has several tools that aid in cleaning up any errors that do occur.

- Importing and Baking Individual Pieces.

This part is pretty simple and repetitive as we will use the same process for each piece of the mesh. I will go over it in a little more detail, but feel free to explore xNormal more thoroughly on your own.

Start by loading the high definition mesh first. Click the High definition button on the right. Right click anywhere in the left screen area and choose Add Meshes. Locate and select your high poly mesh. Now scroll over to the far left and select Averaged normals from the drop down menu.

Now click the Low definition button to the right and load the low-rez mesh the same way as the high-rez. Scroll to the left and change the smoothing to Averaged again, and also be sure to select Cage. The cage is important for getting a nice smooth normal map. It tells the program exactly how and where the high- rez details will be projected onto the low-rez. We can create a cage in 3ds max and import it in if we wanted to, but xNormal gives plenty of controls for creating and editing the cage.

To access the cage we need to use xNormals 3d viewer. Click the 3d viewer button on the right and then click Launch Viewer.

The controls in the viewer are much like a FPS game and uses the same keys to move forward, back and side to side etc…You should see your object(s), but you may have to orient the camera a bit to find them.

Turn on Show cage and then Edit cage. Several sliders will appear which will enable you to push and pull the cage mesh so that it fully encloses the other meshes. You want to make sure that the cage does not penetrate the high or low-rez meshes so that it can project the details properly. When you have finished, click the close button.

Now go to baking options. Set your output file and make sure normal map is selected on the left. Set your desired map size and edge padding to 2 with a bucket size of 16. Click generate map. If there are any glaring errors you may have to adjust the cage more to get a better bake. In the end you should get something like this:

- Compile in Photoshop

Repeat the same process for all the other pieces and once you completed them you will need to assemble them in photoshop.

Some people like to just copy over each piece into one file and set them all to overlay, but I prefer to cut out the excess blue areas using the saved alpha because then I avoid the possibility of losing some of the detail in the normal map. To do that you need to copy the image and the alpha over to the master file, then use the alpha to cutout any excess. By copying it over like this you ensure that the image is exactly lined up in its position. If you were to cutout the excess blue before copying over then you would have to manually place the piece which can lead to various headaches later.

Once all the pieces are assembled, merge them into one layer. Now go to the green channel for the layer and select it. Press crtl-I to invert it. You do this because otherwise the normals will display funny in max. You can invert the green channel in Max as well but its just better for the development team later if it is done in Photoshop.

The last thing to do here is to normalize the map. This makes sure that the normals of each of the pieces is cohesive. xNormal makes this pretty easy and installs a Photoshop plugin for doing just that and the plugin should have installed along with it. Just go to Filters>xNormal>Normalize normal map. You can also use the NVidia tools plugin as well if you have it.

Now apply the normal map to the game model and turn the bump value to 100. Click render and you should get something like this:

- Baking the AO

We will bake the Ambient Occlusion (AO) map in max using the render to texture feature. There are several ways to bake AO maps and some of those ways a fairly involved, but for our purposes we will stick to the quick and dirty method.

First we set up a very simple lighting rig. Basically you just want enough light to tell the renderer where the dark and light spots are, as well as bring out the normal map. Do a few viewport renders to ensure you got the shading the way you want it.

Next go to the Render to Texture menu. Add the AO map and set the paremeters to your liking. Then click render to get something like this:

Step 5 – Textures

- Base Metal Texture

You can use a pre-made base metal if you wish but I prefer to start from scratch to give me more control of the texture as a whole. I start by choosing two similar colors of gray in the color picker, then go to Filters>Render> Difference Clouds. Now add a little bit of noise, between 10-15%, and then use a Gaussian blur of about 2-4 pixels. You should get something like this:

- Add in More Detail and Texture.

First add in the AO map we generated earlier. Paste into the image and set it to multiply. Adjust the opacity to your liking.

I then hand-paint most of the damage on the weapons using my tablet and a 1-5 pixel brush. I also turn on pressure sensitivity and jitter to give the paint stroke a more natural look. I then paint in damage where I would expect to find it, like edges of the body, the barrel iron-sights, butt of the stock, etc…

I then use a soft square brush to paint highlights on a new layer.

We can use layer masks and dirt maps to add in a final bit of detail.

- Specular

To make the specular we need to copy the base metal, the wood grain, and the scratches layer so that we can desaturate them and then adjust their levels to suit the specular map. Adjust each layer individually to get the desired look.

6. Variations

Once the main model is done it is pretty easy to make some variations of it. For this job the client wanted 3 versions of the weapon. The one we just completed is the first version and from it we can quickly make a double-barrel, and sawed-off version of the weapon.

Being mindful to not destroy the UVs, I cut and copied different pieces of the mesh to get the two versions. I then did a little bit of texture variation to complete the package.

7. Final

When all is said and done, you should have 3 different versions of the same model. Each should have a Diffuse, Specular and Normal map and all are 1500 polys or less.

Related posts:

1. Creating The Lacuna Expanse Game Art – Session 2
2. Creating The Lacuna Expanse Game Art – Session 1
3. Creating A Detailed Master Plan Rendering – Part 3 – 3D Studio Max and Photoshop

I hope you enjoyed the prior session of the Lacuna Expanse artwork tutorial. In this 2nd installment I will be discussing the experiences of taking a raw 3d render into photoshop and creating the finished detailed planetary tiles, with variations. I will also be discussing the ground base creation along with a bunch of quick notes at the end.

This set of articles is meant to educate on the processes with tips and general information rather than being a complete tutorial from start to finish with creating a certain object. If you would like a dedicated tutorial for a certain object or item in this session set please contact me or Instatuts.

The game is now released for play and has been a success thus far. There are well over a thousand people playing at the point of releasing this article. The IPhone App has also been released!


Please take some time to check out the game. It can be played for free at www.lacunaexpanse.com

Author: Ryan W. Knope

Ryan W. Knope is a freelance 3D / 2D Artist / Consultant with 13 years experience in the 3D and 2D industry. His main artistic love lies with interior and exterior rendering although he takes on just about every type of graphics work. Ryan is also the architectural / interior voice for 3D Artist Magazine’s Question and Answer Panel along with being the Art Director for Lacuna Expanse. He lives with his wife Krista, in sunny Denver, Colorado.

Article Details

• Programs: Autodesk 3dsmax 2010 and Adobe Photoshop CS4
• Difficulty: Medium To Difficult (Prior Knowledge Of Software Interface Is A Plus.)

Detailed Land Mass Tiles: Variation In Levels

With the game play in mind, I needed each of the detailed land mass tiles to include about 10 variations or more per PSD file. So, creating extra brushed metal structures, vegetation and add-ons to the buildings became important.

As I built each piece, I had to count the variations and additions that were possible. Otherwise as a player upgraded their buildings, they would not differentiate from level to level. I also had hopes that these level variations would intrigue the player enough for them to try to get to the next level to see the upgraded building.

Step 1 – Taking The Render From 3dsmax

In the last session we left off with rendering the main building mass. Since the tile size is 450px, 450px, I usually zoomed to that size in 3dsmax or rendered a bit larger, scaling down inside Photoshop.

Save out the render as a .png, without the ground, as long as the shadows are easy to replicate. Otherwise, render with the ground plane (Apply a material to it as medium gray.) and delete outside the shadow area in Photoshop.

You can also set up a matte shadow material inside 3dsmax and apply it to the ground plane. Utilizing a matte shadow material would keep the shadow in the rendering and make the ground plane transparent. This is a good option, but I will not cover it in this article.

You can see below that I deleted the ground mass outside of the shadow area.
(Note, different buildings are used in certain steps, but the end result is the same.)

Step 2 – Detailed Building Part 1 – Land Base

Adding the base is important because it grounds the building a bit more. It also adds a bit more detail in comparison to the building sitting on the land mass alone.

In Photoshop, I blended three detailed ground layers to match the building. For some of the building tiles I used up to 5 different types and colors. I also tried to use ground colors that matched the building type and style. For example, I used dirt around the "Development Ministry", not green grass.

You want to blend them nicely together using layer masks. This allows you to edit the blending more later without having to bring in the image once again. Quick edits can be made much faster.

Step 3 – Detailed Building Part 2 – Trees and Vegetation

Now we need to begin placing tree’s and vegetation. With the tree’s, I used my library of pre-rendered top view elements. You have a few options with this, you could purchase a top view tree library, find tree’s on google and mask them out, or find 3D tree’s and render them out in the view desired.

My library of top view pre-rendered tree’s is available HERE.

If you render the tree’s, save the image as a .png or .tga. These formats includes the alpha or transparency. NOTE: Personally I have found that .png works the best for me when saving out of 3dsmax. There seems to be less of a halo when compared to saving as .tga.

We need to create the shadows once the tree’s are brought in. I created the tree shadows by adding a "Drop Shadow" layer effect. I visually matched the shadows from the building structures. When creating the shadows for the tree’s, keep in mind that the tree’s may be shorter than the buildings. This means the shadow that is thrown will be smaller in distance.

Another thing to think about is shadow color. Depending on the lighting system you use to render the buildings, the shadows might have a blue, yellow or black tint. Make sure the shadows added in Photoshop match this.

Step 4 – Detailed Building Part 3 – Out Buildings and Mechanics

For many of the detailed planetary tiles, I added small out buildings and mechanical details that could be turned on or off depending on the building level. This added to the variation between levels, giving new details to each building as they were built and then upgraded throughout play.

Some of the mechanics and out buildings were created in 3dsmax as simple boxes or eaved structures with a metal material applied. Other items were found in random photographs via google and other texture sites.

In theory you could use elements from an aerial photograph as well.

Step 5 – Detailed Building Part 4 – Overlays

Various buildings throughout the game include overlays to add to the details. This is a fantastic way to add a ton of quick details. This can turn an average building into one with a very detailed look.

I started by finding structural bracing, mechanical images and night shots of buildings with the lights on. The sources are not limited to this, you can actually use anything you desire. Be creative.

Next I placed the images inside the psd and deformed them to match the building angles using the "Transform" tool and "Distort". I blended them with the eraser tool once they were in position. You can also use layer masks.

Then I scrolled down the blending mode list to find a mode that worked well. In this situation "Soft Light" and "Color Dodge" worked best. Play around with the blending modes and take note of how different colors, saturation levels and contrast play a part.

Light glows can also be added in the same way. Many great images can be found at CGTextures.

Step 6 – Bring In A Ground Backdrop – Testing With Lands

Now that all of the building details and surrounding elements are added, it is time to test the tile with several backgrounds along with black and white. This is the final check.

First, I made sure to check for hard edges, where I missed with the eraser or layer mask. Often these are hard to see with a textured background, so I also checked with a white background and then again with a black background. This problem occurs most when you are using layer blending modes other than normal. Make sure to check well, because it can be a little embarrassing if you send a gnarly tile to your boss.

Also check for elements that have moved, shadows in the wrong direction and tree’s that are intersecting with building elements the wrong way.

Once I was happy with the result, I sent the tile off for approval.

Step 7 – Creating The Tilable Planetary Grounds 1

There are a lot of ways to create tiling images. You can create them in Adobe Photoshop or you can use an application to automatically create the tile.

I began by creating them in Adobe Photoshop, but they had a bit of a tiled appearance still and did not match the quality I was looking for. With this in mind I began asking some of my friends in the industry and checking the web for an application that would create a better tileable ground.

In my discussions Luxology Imagesynth was mentioned. I checked out the web site and did some reading. This, I quickly discovered would be the solution! So, I went and purchased it for $100 and it was well worth it. An hour later I had all of the games planetary land masses finished.

This application can be ran as either a plugin for Photoshop or as a standalone program.

I will not go into detail on how to use Imagesynth. There are many detailed written tutorials and videos online.

Making a Seamless Brick Tile with imageSynth

Step 8 – Creating The Tilable Planetary Grounds 2

I found most of the initial ground images at www.cgtextures.com They have a fantastic library to chose from if you go to the "ground" section. They also have just about every other type of image or texture.

Below you can see the product of using imagesynth. This is actually 9 of the tiles placed together to show the minimal visual tiling. I created over 20 land tiles in a little over an hour with this process.

Step 9 – Creating The Tilable Planetary Grounds 3

This step is a wish list item I have and is great in artistic theory and creation, although I don’t know how well technically it will work inside a browser based game, such as Lacuna Expanse. I don’t know because I am not a programmer. I assume it would add more to the load time and stress of the server.

To add a more detailed basic ground variation, in theory you could add a 2nd ground "Layer" that loads above the ground base that we created above. Even better would be 2 or 3 that load at random. These would be .png images with transparency. The point of these layers would be to add variation of color and texture to the planetary surface.

This could be done artistically by bringing in other ground types that were previously created. In Adobe Photoshop you could erase areas of the secondary ground, blending them with the lower ground type, thus creating the variation. Once blended to the bottom ground image, only the blended layer would be saved as a .png.

These layers would then load at random within the game. If the use of several .png images within the same layer is possible, then the game map could be very detail oriented and realistic.

Great Race / Ancient Structures – Overview

The "Great Race and Ancient Structures" were created with almost all of the same principles in mind as the "Modern Technical" tiles that we just went over. There are 2 major differences between both.

1) Old style textures were used for the great race, instead of the futuristic metal and glass.
2) The 3dsmax greeble plugin was not used for any of the great race buildings.

The structures themselves remained very basic inside of 3dsmax. The most detailed structure was a set of towers I created after watching Lord Of The Rings many years ago.

Most of these structures began with primitives and a little bit of edit poly. A lot of them included spectral or fire special effects. These effects were all created in Adobe Photoshop by bringing in images of lightning, fire and even water refracting. These images were then deformed and masked out to the areas that I desired. Next I went through the layer blending modes finding ones that fit nicely with a supernatural effect.

Modern Farming Tiles – Overview

Below you can see the overall process of creating the farming tiles. All of the items were quite basic in nature, defining a much more complex complete image. The 3D design in this tile only consumed about 8 minutes of my time. Super basic structures were used and then modified and combined in Photoshop.

The wood decking and wood boxes were created in Photoshop using textures of planking from www.cgtextures.com

Many aerial photographs were used during the creation of this type of tile.

I did a lot of painting shadows and highlights in a top layer.

One thing I kept in mind with the farming tiles… all of the buildings and elements are at a super low elevation when compared to any of the modern buildings. This made shadow creation a breeze. With the structures being so short, they would be created inside of Photoshop easily. With that in mind, drop shadows worked perfect.

Conclusion Of The Tile Creation Process

Once the process was identified, it made creating hundreds of pieces very easy, fast and high quality. Identifying a standard process early in the game can be extremely beneficial!

The goal is to find a way to create buildings that are similar enough in process, but different enough in viewing that the player can distinguish between the types quickly.

Some Quick Notes:
• Utilize Google images to find suitable overlays and images.
• Define a process that encompasses most of the artwork creation.
• Research workflow’s that other artists use.
• Define a style and stick to it. There needs to be a level of cohesion.
• For 2D games, use Photoshop to add details. It can be quicker than creating them in 3D.
• If a commercial plugin will yield quicker results within budget, do not be afraid to use it.

This closes up the writings of this session. I hope that you enjoyed this article on the Lacuna Expanse game artwork. It has been a lot of fun writing it.

In the next session we will continue the discussion with a quick segment on space ships and then move on to discussing the "Natural Formed" tiles. The creation of the "Naturally Formed Tiles" included a lot of Pixologic Zbrush use. I will be covering the tools in zbrush and the process of getting the models into 3dsmax for rendering, along with finishing the tiles.

Thank you once again for checking this out. See you next time!

-Ryan

Related posts:

1. Creating The Lacuna Expanse Game Art – Session 1
2. Experiences In Creating The Lacuna Expanse Game Art – SESSION 3
3. Creating A Space Ship In 3DS Max (Session 2)

In this 5 session set I will be going over my experiences with creating the world of artwork for the online and IPhone based game "Lacuna Expanse". The article set will start with JT Smith saying a few words about the game. Then I will begin to cover the difficulties and experiences involved with creating the mass of artwork and directing / creating the in-game and promotional materials. Then I will begin explaining the process of creating the artwork.

This set of articles is meant to educate on the processes with tips and general information rather than being a complete tutorial from start to finish with creating a certain object. If you would like a dedicated tutorial for a certain object or item in this session set please contact me or Instatuts.

Please take some time to check out the game. It can be played for free at www.lacunaexpanse.com

Author: Ryan W. Knope With Game Forward By JT Smith

Ryan W. Knope is a freelance 3D / 2D Artist / Consultant with 13 years experience in the 3D and 2D industry. His main artistic love lies with interior and exterior rendering although he takes on just about every type of graphics work. Ryan is also the architectural / interior voice for 3D Artist Magazine’s Question and Answer Panel. He lives with his wife Krista, in sunny Denver, Colorado.

Article Details

• Programs: Autodesk 3dsmax 2010 and Adobe Photoshop CS4
• Difficulty: Medium To Difficult (Prior Knowledge Of Software Interface Is A Plus.)

What The Game Is About

The Lacuna Expanse (or Lacuna for short) is a friendly, massively multiplayer empire simulator where each player takes the helm of a fledgling empire. Unlike most games that you’ve heard of in this genre, Lacuna is not about building huge fleets of ships to go crush everyone else. Instead, it’s about Espionage, Economics, and Politics. That doesn’t mean there isn’t conflict, there is, it’s just that it is carried out in the form of an espionage driven cold war using spies rather than using massive fleets of ships.

As a player you can take many roads to success. You can simply toil along playing the game like it is in the vein of Sim City or Railroad Tycoon, building the best single colony you can build, and not be involved in working with other players at all. It also has a healthy dose of strategy elements similar to games like Civilization and Masters of Orion. You can become a master trader, ship builder, or mercenary. You can even become an explorer scouring the Expanse looking for ancient artifacts. You can be involved in alliances, help to form a government, and pass laws. Or you can be an antagonistic marauder. These choices and more are yours. – JT Smith

Game Genre

Lacuna is very much a genre crossing game. In the early stages it feels very much like a simulation, like Sim City. As you reach out into space it starts feeling more like an empire builder Masters of Orion or Civilization. It has elements of all of those games, and a lot more. While those games are mainly designed as single player games (or a couple of players), the Lacuna Expanse has thousands of players. 

Genre is a sticky subject because it gives you an impression of a game without even playing it. Some games fit neatly into a genre, but with The Lacuna Expanse the player’s style greatly impacts what genre it fits. -JT Smith

The Games Supported Platforms

At launch Lacuna will have a web-based client that will work with the latest version of Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It will also have an iPhone client soon after launch (waiting on the Apple App Store to approve it). One of our play testers is already working on a native client for Windows, Mac, and Linux. And we anticipate doing an Android client at some point in the future. 

A unique feature of our game is that we are exposing the API publicly to developers. Lacuna is built off of a Service Oriented Architecture, which is just a fancy way of saying that it’s capable of working with everything. The server doesn’t care what client is interfacing with it. This means that fans that are more technically inclined can write their own user interfaces for the game and simple utilities to make aspects of the game easier. Most massively multiplayer games frown on that, but we encourage it and have developed the entire game around this premise. – JT Smith

A Bit About The Game Staff

We are a small group of developers who usually build high-end business applications. One of us, JT Smith, wrote one of the first web based role playing games back in the late 1990s. The idea for Lacuna came from an idea he had back then, but the technology didn’t yet exist to make this sort of a web-based game until the past few years.

We’ve been working on Lacuna since January and plan to launch our public beta in October.  -JT Smith

Groundwork To Be Laid (Overview Of Land Mass)

In the beginning of the contract I tried to get a feeling of the style in which the artwork had to be designed. I also had to figure out all of the technical aspects of how the art was to be used in game. Once the technical aspects were defined, I decided to create the in-game artwork at over twice the size of what was specified. I did this for 2 reasons.

• Detailing in Adobe Photoshop is easier when painting onto a larger image, then scaling down when needed.

• If the in-game artwork was to be zoomable later, then I would already have the size, thus not having to re-create all of the in-game artwork.

Deciding to create the art over 2 times larger proved very beneficial! Soon after finishing the initial planetary tiles JT noticed that he could add the zoom feature in the game and showcase the game artwork at a heightened level. This was not something we were counting on, but it was possible because of pre planning.

To be quite honest, the last thing I wanted to have to do is go back and re-create everything larger when there are hundreds of planetary tiles, each detailed and a piece of art in itself. I was also hoping to have a poster printed of all the tiles connected. So, I was looking out for my client and I wanted to have a nice framed piece of artwork displayed in the office showing the vast amount of work and the details therein.

Moral of the story here, is to create larger than the client needs, especially if there are hundreds of images you have to create. It could save you months of time and quite possibly make the client smile ear to ear!

Defining A Planetary Tile Style

When first beginning the project I was provided a basic description of the buildings purpose and it’s name, no concept sketches. JT left it up to me to come up with an in-game planetary style and did not want to spend a lot of time working on coaching the style type of each piece.

With this in mind I designed a few tiles and got his thoughts on the style and general look. From there I kept the style similar for the rest. In the long run, I believe the lack of direction actually proved very beneficial to all parties involved.

At first it was scary not having any conceptual design, but then it began to flow very fast and I was able to utilize certain tools inside Autodesk 3dsmax 2010 along with plugins to replicate the process quite simply and more importantly… very fast.

We decided upon a general glass and chrome / stainless steel look for most of the modern building based tiles, futuristic in design. Generally this meant I could use about 5 3dsmax materials over and over. Cutting down most material creation time after the first tile.

Planetary Tile Technical’s

Original Size Specification: 200, 200 Pixels
Actual Creation Size: 450, 450 Pixels
Size Used In-Game: 450, 450 Pixels (Zoomable)

The planetary tiles began as including the ground mass, then was switched out to having 2 sets of tiles. The two sets being the buildings as .png without a ground floor (Or just shaded ground detailing), leaving the main land mass out.

The land masses / ground floors were done in a different tile set, so that each planet could have a different land mass color / style.

Building / Detail Tiles: These were saved with a transparent background, thus negating the importantance of tiling.

Ground Base Tiles: Created to tile using different ground type images and tiled using "Image Synth". These tiles were created at a larger size so the tiling effect, if any, did not match the building size / bounds.

The Four Basic Planetary Detailing Subsets

For starters. I began with defining a general look and feel for each type of planetary tile. This set of parameters would transfer through to almost all of the tiles within the game.

Modern Technical Tiles: Variations of metals and glass.
Modern Farming Tiles: Mostly created in Photoshop. Created to mimic current farming.
Natural Formed Elements: A mix of 3D and Photoshop. Many tree’s are rendered and reused.
Great Race / Ancient Structures: Created mainly in 3D with some Photoshop. Aged stone and wood used.

These 4 land detailing subsets make up most of the planetary based artwork. With that basic direction, I could reuse many of the elements and materials.

Step 1 – Modern / Technical Tiles: Adding The Sun and Sky

I began with opening up 3dsmax and setting Mental Ray as my render engine. Then I created a "Daylight System". You can find this under Create/ Systems either in the top menu or the tabs to the right of the interface.

Drag it out and set it to the time you desire by changing it under the "Modify" tab (the time is under the button labeled "Setup".). Also change the sunlight and skylight type to "MR Sun and MR Sky".

For the date and time I chose "Manual" and I placed the sun where it gave me the shadows that I desired.

This sun / lighting rig was used throughout all of the tiles, as all of the lighting has to match.

At this point, setting up the "Exposure Control" is a good idea. You can find the exposure control setting under the "Environment" window. I changed the exposure control to MR Photographic, Physically based Outdoor Daylight, Clear Sky.

Step 2 – Modern / Technical Tiles: Getting A View Approved

Next, I placed a few boxes into the scene with an average set of building heights. I then placed a plane as the ground. Once the test objects were in, I went to the top view and rotated the view down slightly, creating an orthographic view.

At this point, I threw a gray material on the boxes and the plane and rendered it out. I then adjusted the lighting and viewing angle to match what I desired. The render was then sent to JT to verify the view type. Once approved, I began creating the real artwork.

Step 3 – Save A File With The View / Light Setup

Ok, so this is a quick step, which I could have mentioned in the previous paragraph… although, I made it it’s own step because of how important this is. Save the file from the previous step and use it as a template. If you lose the camera angle and lights, you will have to try your best to match… which may not produce the best results.

Step 4 – Boxing Out The Building

I began with a box situated on the ground plane. Then I added an "Edit Poly" modifier. In face mode, I used the extrude tool to create a more dynamic shape. You can go as far as you want with this method. Box modeling is a very common technique that has been around for quite a long time.

Step 5 – More Edit Poly: Insets

I want to add some windows. So, I am going to use the "Inset" tool under edit poly, face mode. Simply select the face that you want to inset and drag in. This will automate the cutting and create a even border.

Step 6 – More Edit Poly: Extruding The Insets

Now we want to use the Extrude tool to push the insets in, creating the window masses. You can find the "Extrude" tool under face mode in edit poly. Just click on the face and drag it in.

Step 7 – More Edit Poly: Bevel

Bevel is a great tool. It can be used to bevel in or out, just as extrude can. I beveled my window surrounds and building tops. I also double beveled some items. This is a fun and quick way to give the model some shape.

Step 8 – More Edit Poly: Detaching The Insets

While in edit poly face mode, select all of the window faces. Scroll down to the "Detach" button. After you click it, you will see a dialogue box pop up. Name the new object and choose if you want it to be a clone, object or element. I chose to have it detached as its own object by leaving the 2 check boxes blank.

Now that we have detached windows… we can now apply some materials.

Step 9 – Creating The Materials

The material creation for the modern buildings is quite easy. I used 2 presets for most of them. Press "M" to bring up the material editor. Select one of the material editor slots and change the material type to "Arch & Design". Now, where it says "Select a template", select "Glass (Thin Geometry)". Apply this material to the glass objects in the scene.

For the main building object, repeat the same steps in a different material slot and pick the "Brushed Metal" preset. To help round the edges of the building, I turned on "Round Corners" under the special effects tab in the material editor. You need to either be working in scale to know the distance of this value, or play around with it.

For the ground, you can add any dirt or grass oriented image to the "Diffuse" slot of a new material. I used Arch & Design for this as well. The ground plane was less important, because it was not used in most of the final renders.

Step 10 – Applying Materials And Rendering

The materials have now been applied, changing the samples per pixel was the only difference from the standard render settings. I used 16/16. This value helped smooth out the brushed metal material, making it less grainy.

You should now have a render similar to the one below.

Step 11 – Adding More Detail With Greeble

Greeble is a plugin for 3ds Max that creates boxy structure quickly and easily. It proves very useful for adding mechanical wall type details. This plugin has saved me days of time while working on Lacuna Expanse.

You can download and read about Greeble HERE.

Install the plugin and then reopen 3ds Max.

The previous detailing could work for the building, although with each modern building type I tested using the "Greeble Plugin" to add detail very quickly and easily. Select the main building object and scroll down the modifier list and pick greeble. Instantly you should see the geometry change.

Play with these options to get the right density, heights and tapers for the look you desire.

Quickly and in only a few steps, we have a futuristic building suitable for a far shot.

Conclusion

So far I have went over some of the conceptual ideas on how the art works together. Understanding the needs of the project is the first task. Once you understand the technical needs, then you can progress to actually creation. Creation of the land tiles can be streamlined by following a similar process for each one.

We also began creating a planetary building within 3dsmax.

In the next session I will go over taking the raw 3D render into Adobe Photoshop and finishing the building tile. I will also cover the artistic differences between the 4 land detailing subsets, and how the creation progress differs a bit for each.

I hope you enjoyed this session.

-Ryan W. Knope

Related posts:

1. Creating The Lacuna Expanse Game Art – Session 2
2. Experiences In Creating The Lacuna Expanse Game Art – SESSION 3
3. Creating A Space Ship In 3DS Max (Session 2)

Welcome to the 2nd session of creating a space ship in 3dsmax 2010. In this session we will go over mirroring, welding and other various detailing elements including the thruster system and decals. This tutorial should be used as a guide to create and design your own space ship.

I hope you enjoy this session.

Author: Ryan W. Knope

Ryan W. Knope is a freelance 3D / 2D Artist / Consultant with 13 years experience in the 3D and 2D industry. His main artistic love lies with interior and exterior rendering although he takes on just about every type of graphics work. Recently he has directed and created most of the artwork for the game "Lacuna Expanse".

Ryan is also the architectural / interior voice for 3D Artist Magazine’s Question and Answer Panel. He lives with his wife Krista, in sunny Denver, Colorado.

Tutorial Details

• Programs: Autodesk 3dsmax 2010
• Difficulty: Medium (Prior Knowledge of 3dsmax interface and tools is a plus.)

Supplied Data

• .MAX Zip: spaceship-session2.zip (Only to be used for educational purposes)

Step 1: Where We Left Off

At the end of the last session we had loosely modeled both sides of the ship, then started refining one side, while leaving the other side basic. We also added detailing with the "Greeble Plugin" on one side. The engine bay was left open in back for placement of a thruster system later on.

Step 2: Fine Tuning Vertices

To start with, we need to go over the active side of the model (The side we will use) and make sure that the base is what we want it to be. The last thing you want to do is to have to go back and edit a ton of vertices on both sides of the ship independently to fix problematic inaccuracies making the ship sides different in design.

Check over the model and make sure vents, inlets, and all other items are modeled the way you want. Try to remove any pinching by moving vertices so that faces do not cross.

Also soften any edges you wish to, via the chamfer tool in edit poly, vertex or face modes. This can be done at any point, but is easier when only doing half of the model.

Step 3: Slice Plane – Cutting In Half

Here we have to find the center point and cut the model in half. We will do this using "Slice Plane" under edit poly with "Element Mode" activated. Make sure that you have the "Angle Snap Toggle" activated, because you may need to rotate the slice plane. This will ensure that the cut is perfectly vertical.

Once the slice plane is located perfectly center click the "Slice" button.

Step 4 – Deleting The Other Half

Select the un-needed half with "Polygon" Selection mode activated. This part can be tricky and you may have to zoom in very close to the model to make sure that you have all of that sides faces selected. Once fully selected, press delete.

Double check to make sure you have a clean mid section and delete any random faces that might be sticking out.

Step 5 – Mirroring

Now that we have cut our model in half we need to mirror the model and match them together so that we can weld the center vertices in the next step.

Select the model and SHIFT + Move and create a copy. Now mirror the copy along the, axis in the front viewport. Move the mirrored copy to match / touch the other side, zoom in and get it as closely matched as possible.

Step 6 – Welding Vertices

Now that we have the centers matched, we can attach and weld the 2 models together to create 1 mesh / element.

Hide all objects except the 2 sides we are working on. Select side 1 and under edit poly hit the "Attach Dialogue Box" button. This will bring up a list of objects to attach. Pick Side 2. Now the 2 sides are the same model, but different elements.

Next, with vertice selection mode activated, scroll down and hit the "Weld Dialogue Button". This will bring up the weld vertices entry box, as shown below. Since I built this model to scale, or close to it, 3 inches is a very small distance. If you built your model out of scale, you will need to change your threshold accordingly.

You should see the number of vertices change as matching doubles become 1. Test render the newly welded model to make sure you didn’t over or under weld.

Step 7 – Editing And Adding Base Items

Now that we have 2 sides that match, you can extrude and detach panel faces and apply the greeble plugin to them. Do this using the same methods we used in session 1. You can also use "Soft Selection" to edit the shape of the ship in a more organic manner. It is best to do this by selecting both parallel faces (Same face on both sides).

Below you can see the result of detaching and adding more details with Greeble and creating side windows.

Step 8 – Thruster Overview

Below you can see the thruster both assembled and disassembled. Each piece was started as a basic object from the create panel. Then I used "Edit Poly" to change the shaping accordingly.

The wires were created from renderable splines. The front turbine area was created in the same manner, then using edit poly I enlarged the front area. You could then instance the turbine nodes manually or use the array or spacing tools.

I won’t delve into the creation of this too much. The methods employed should be a lot more self explanatory once seeing the exploded view below.

Step 9 – Adding Decals – The Overview

There are a few different methods for adding decals or graphics to the ship. You could unwrap and texture the entire body of the ship, which I will not cover as it is tedious and does not need to be done with this type of model. You could add a ship name or number with the text tool. Finally you could extract a set of faces and apply a material that includes a diffuse and opacity map. This I will cover.

Below, you can see the product of adding the decals.

Step 10 – Adding Decals – Creating The Faces

To create the decal geometry, go into edit poly "Face" mode and select the faces that you want the decal on. In this case it is the back wing. SHIFT + Move this face out just ever so slightly, you will now see the "Clone Part Of Mesh" dialogue. Make sure you pick "Clone To Object" unless you want to use a "Multi / Sub Object Material".

Now that the decal object is created, we need to create the material for it.

Step 11 – Adding Decals – Materials And Maps

For the decals I will be using an "Arch + Design" material. This material should include diffuse (Color) and Cutout (Opacity) maps. Notice the difference in the maps. With opacity maps, Black = 0% visibility.

Step 12 – Adding Decals – UVW Maps

Now you need to add a UVW map for each of the decal objects, otherwise the material will not show up in the proper location. Select one of the decal objects, hit the down arrow at the modify panel and select "UVW Mapping" from the modifier list. Use Planar Mapping.

You may need to change the alignment axis as shown below.

You will most likely also need to rotate the "Gizmo". To do this click where is says "Gizmo", under UVW Mapping and use the rotate tool to fit it properly to the object.

Changing the length and width will most likely need to be done as well.

Step 13 – Hatch Detailing – Detaching

This step is pretty simple. Under polygon selection in "Edit Poly" select the hatch faces, and hit the "Detach" button. This will separate this area from the rest of the model, creating a new object.

This new object will later have a different material.

If you do not want to separate the object for material purposes then you can also use a different material ID and use a "Multi / Sub Object Material".

Step 14 – Hatch Detailing – Extrude

I wanted to add just a bit of depth to the hatch detailing. I did this by extruding a short distance. After extruding I added the darker brushed metal material that we created in the last session..

Step 15 – Vent Details

For the vents I simply added boxes matching the curve of the vent. I did this for both front and back vents. Then I added an "Arch + Design" Material that was a complete default setting other than changing to diffuse color to black.

Step 16 – Conclusion

Over the past 2 sessions we have went from a box to a detailed space ship. The many items covered can be applied to a multitude of different objects. When going through any tutorial, try to think of where tools and topics could have been applied in the past models that you have created, along with the models you plan to create in the future.

On an object such as this I could go on detailing for days and days. Remember that depending on the time line and project pipe line, this process will not work for every project. In-Game models will require a very different method.

I hope you enjoyed this session along with learning a little. Thanks for reading.

-Ryan W. Knope

Related posts:

1. Creating A Space Ship In 3DS Max
2. Creating The Lacuna Expanse Game Art – Session 1
3. Creating The Lacuna Expanse Game Art – Session 2

Here we will be begin to cover the modeling of a space ship in Autodesk 3ds Max. This is part 1 of a 2 part series. In this installment box modeling, soft selection, plugins and the use of modifiers will be covered. A general understanding of 3ds Max is needed for this tutorial. Topics covered in this tutorial can be applied to modeling a wide array of objects.

In this tutorial, I start by modeling both sides of the ship. About half way through, I stop modeling the other side of the ship, because we will mirror the other side, making it match perfectly.

Author: Ryan W. Knope

Ryan W. Knope is a freelance 3D / 2D Artist / Consultant with 13 years experience in the 3D and 2D industry. His main artistic love lies with interior and exterior rendering although he takes on just about every type of graphics work. Ryan is also the architectural / interior voice for 3D Artist Magazine’s Question and Answer Panel. He lives with his wife Krista, in sunny Denver, Colorado.

Tutorial Details

• Programs: Autodesk 3dsmax 2010
• Difficulty: Medium (Prior Knowledge of 3dsmax interface and tools is a plus.)

Supplied Data

• .MAX Zip: spaceship-session1.zip (Only to be used for educational purposes)

Step 1: Starting As A Box

Start by creating a box. Add as many segments as you feel you need to create the base detail and shaping. I have added several segments for each side. It is also wise to work in scale. Make sure you have the units set to what you prefer (Standard or Metric). When creating the initial box, please keep in mind the size of ship that you wish you create. This boxes size will make up the bulk of this space ship.

Step 2: Deforming The Nose

Apply "Edit Poly" to the segmented box. You can find it under the "Modifiers Tab". Activate the "Vertice" selection mode and turn on "Soft Selection". Soft selection will create a blended range of deformation as you scale the vertices. To change the blend amount, change the falloff value. You can also experiment with "Pinch" and "Bubble".

I selected and scaled down only the front vertices, setting the falloff as shown below.

Step 3: Nose Shaping

In this step I have pulled the nose out further without soft selection. I have also selected side edges and moved them inwards and downwards. Start by activating the "Edge Selection Mode" and move the edges to the desired location. You have to be careful not to pinch the model. I did not use soft selection in this step. You can use soft selection is you prefer a more organic looking ship.

Step 4 – The Basic Cockpit / Helm

For creating the basic shape of the cockpit I went back to "Vertice Selection Mode" and made sure to check "Ignore Back facing". This allows you to make a selection in the top viewport without selecting the ships bottom vertices. Pull the vertices to the desired height, angle and location.

Without ignore back facing on, you will either have to deselect the ship’s bottom vertices or you will be deforming the bottom of the ship as well.

Step 5 – Beveling The Nose Inlet

Select the inner snout faces and activate the "Bevel Tool". I have only beveled them slightly.

Step 6 – Pulling Back The Nose Inlet

Bevel the nose inlet a few more times. Then pull the nose inlet backwards with the move tool, creating some depth for the inlet.

At this point you should be familiar with Soft Selection, moving vertices / faces, using the Bevel Tool and the Scale Tool for shaping the model.

Step 7 – Beveling The Snout Edges

In this step, I simply beveled the remaining front faces of the snout. Creating details like this helps accentuate highlights and shadows along with reflections.

Step 8 – Cockpit Edges 1

In this step I have moved vertices to shape the "hatch or cockpit" area a bit better. After you are satisfied with the location of the vertices go to edge selection mode and select the edges as shown below.

Step 9 – Chamfering The Edges

I wanted to add some detailed edges to the cockpit / hatch areas. In this step I have ‘Chamfered" the edges twice. Now we have faces that we can extrude or bevel.

Step 10 – Adding Hatch Glass Definition

Here, in the polygon selection mode I selected certain faces and used the "Bevel" tool to extrude and chamfer them at the same time. Then at the front of the hatch I pulled the top faces backwards.

The bevel tool essentially take care of 2 steps in one, saving time.

Step 11 – Creating Vents

These vents or inlets were created using the same tools that we have already covered. The faces were extruded, then the top vertices were moved to create a certain slope in all directions. The front and back faces were then beveled.

You may have to move the inside face inwards a bit to create the effect you want.

Step 12 – Sculpting The Rear

In this step I have sculpted the rear of the ship a bit. First I selected the 3/4 rear vertices with "ignore back facing" OFF. Then I scaled them down making a bevel effect. The rear of the ship was scaled up and rotated. You can edit the vertices to create any type of ship rear.

You can also use the cut tool under "Edit Poly" to create new faces if you so desire.

Step 13 – Detaching The Hatch Glass

This step is pretty simple. Under polygon selection in "Edit Poly" select the hatch faces, and hit the "Detach" button. This will separate this area from the rest of the model, creating a new object.

This new object will later have a different material.

If you do not want to separate the object for material purposes then you can also use a different material ID and use a "Multi / Sub Object Material".

Step 14 – Adding Side Windows

I decided to add some windows on the sides. This again was done by using the "Bevel" tool. Then I detached the windows just as we previously did with the hatch.

Step 15 – Turbosmooth

At this point I wanted to test out adding the "Turbosmooth" modifier to check how a more organic feel would look. It is up to you whether or not to use it. If you prefer a more blocky space ship then you may not want to add this modifier.

If you do add this modifier be careful setting the number of iterations. Many times I have been asked "How come 3ds Max freezes or crashes when I set the Iterations to 10?" This is because of the mesh density created.

I prefer to stick to 1 or 2 iterations
.

Step 16 – Editing The Base Cage

With Turbosmooth applied, you can edit the "Base Cage" while viewing the smoothed result. This makes sculpting organic shapes much easier. You can see the cage below in orange.

Go back to "Edit Poly", edge selection mode and check "Show Cage". Now you can move, rotate or scale the edges as you see fit.

Have fun moving the cage and experimenting with different shaping.

Step 17 – Comparing Smoothed and Un smoothed

In this step I set the render engine to Mental Ray and added a MR Sun and MR Sky. The Exposure Control was set to MR Photographic Exposure Control with the "Outdoor Daylight, Clear Sky" option set. You can read more on setting this up Here. It is covered in Step 10 of that article.

Then I applied an "Arch + Design" material to the main ship. Under templates I picked Brushed Metal. I did the same for the glass objects, but picked the glass (Thin Geometry) preset.

Both rendered options can be seen below. Now we can decide if we want to go with the smoothing or without.

Step 18 – Adding More Base Detail

Now that I have seen both smoothed and un smoothed, I have decided to use the version without turbosmooth. In this step I plan on adding more base surface detail. I am chamfering edges, editing vertices and extruding faces.

One goal is to Generally create a more pleasing model by softening the edges manually (Chamfering).

I have also detached certain faces that were extruded inwards. Then I applied a copy of the brushed metal material to them and made the base color darker (Diffuse Color)

Step 19 – Using The Greeble Plugin For Details

Greeble is a plugin for 3ds Max that creates boxy structure quickly and easily. It proves very useful for adding mechanical wall type details. This plugin has saved me days of time while working on a game titled "Lacuna Expanse".

You can download and read about Greeble HERE.

Install the plugin and then reopen 3ds Max. Select the faces that you have detached. (The ones that have the darker brushed metal material.) Now go to the modifier panel and select Greeble from the list. You should automatically see the geometry change. Play with the distances and amounts to get the right look.

You can view the options I chose below, along with the end result.

Step 20 – Conclusion

So far in this tutorial we have created the base of the ship and began some detailing. Many tools were discussed and used. All of the tools can be used to create a wide array of objects, please keep that in mind as you try new things.

In the next session we will go over the majority of detailing items, materializing the model and then finally rendering it in Mental Ray.

Related posts:

1. Creating A Space Ship In 3DS Max (Session 2)
2. Creating A Detailed Master Plan Rendering – Part 4 – 3dsmax and Photoshop
3. Creating A Detailed Master Plan Rendering – Part 2 – 3DS Max and Photoshop

Author:Tudor-Ionel Cucu (nickname:Crimz)

Freelance graphic designer Cucu Tudor-Ionel is a student located in Bacau, Romania and currently writing tutorials based on personal projects. At the age of 13 he started working in Photoshop doing virtual-tuning, and then creating different tutorials and websites in his non-existent free time.

See my GraphicRiver portfolio

These are free to download and you can use them in any application whether it’s personal or commercial. Please just be sure to let people know where you got the icons from. We’re offering them at 256px (PNGs) and 500px (PSDs). Download, and be sure to tell your friends to come visit the site to download their icons as well, and as a courtesy, we hope you’ll link to our site. We have a lot more great things coming!

Freebie Details

• Program: Adobe Photoshop CS4
• Version: CS4
• 15 Social Media Icons
• Sizes:256px / 128px
• Zipfile includes: PSD, PNG

DOWNLOAD THE ZIP FILE

Related posts:

1. Free Icon Pack Plus Bonus Set of Social Media Icons
2. Awesome Christmas Icon Pack Freebie!
3. Free Graphic Design Tutorials in Photoshop, Illustrator and More

In this tutorial I`ll be using Adobe Photoshop CS3 but you can use any version of Adobe Photoshop.
There is an image for every step that will be very helpful.
After you have made all the steps you`ll be able to make an original bodykit for your car using 100% brush/dodge/burn tool techniques .

Author: Pintilei Adrian-Dumitru

Pintilei Adrian-Dumitru is a graphic designer in Romania. He learned how to use graphic design software by practicing virtual-tuning projects for several years. He lives with his parents in a little village called Vorniceni but he studies at the National College A.T. Laurian in Botosani, Romania. His dream is to be an important computer-programmer in his country.

Tutorial Details

• Program: Adobe Photoshop
• Version: CS 3
• Difficulty:Intermediate

Donors

• Donors for car : Donors

Step 1: Starting the tutorial

Open a picture with a car

Step 2: Place it into a new background.

I moved the car in the new background . If you don`t know how , search for “Virtual Tuning Tutorial Part 1 ” on the Instatuts site.

Step 3: Stroke technique

Make a new layer , call it “Sketch”. Using Stroke Path technique (Brush size : 2px) make next sketch :

Step 4: Brush technique

Make a new layer , call it “Brush ” , put it under the “sketch” layer then fill it with the selected color.

Step 5: Lighting

With pen tool , make next path :

Step 6

Again use stroke technique with the white color , (Brush size : 2px size ) , then erase the bottom of the stroke :

Step 7

Using same stroke technique make all the edges.

Step 8: Pavement reflections

Select the “Background” layer , make a selection like in the next image using PEN TOOL or LASSO TOOL then , right click – Layer via copy :

Step 9

Put the selected pavement on the front bar , lower the opacity and erase a little in the bottom of the reflection.

Step 10

Like in the step 9 , copy a piece of pavement.

Step 11

Lower the opacity , and erase a little in the right part of the reflection.

Step 12

Repeat those steps for all the front bumper

Step 13: Gaussian Blur

Blur a little the white strokes using Gaussian Blur ( 0.3 px )

Step 14

Select this part . Use Feather Radius on 0.3 px.

Step 15

Right click -> Layer via copy

Step 16: Resizing

Edit-Free Transform :

Step 17: Stroke sketch

Make a new layer , make next sketch for orientation . I used pen & brush tool for the sketch. (Brush size : 2px)

Step 18

Select and fill the selection with black color (Remember , for better selections use Feather Radius : 0.3 px )

Step 19

Make next selection :

Step 20: Smudge tool

Select the “car” layer and smudge like in the next picture :

Step 21: Repeat step 20

Repeat step 20 .

Step 22: Smudging result

You should obtain something like this :

Step 23:Update sketch

I added some new elements on the sketch.

Step 24: Highlights/shadows

Make a new layer , call it “Highlights/Shadows” , select next color :

Step 25

With pen tool make next path :

Step 26:Stroke technique

Right Click – Stroke path ( Brush size : 2px)

Step 27

Erase the parts where the light can`t reach.

Step 28: Resize the stroke layer

Duplicate the “Highlights/Shadows” then resize a little.:

Step 29

Replace green color with white color.

Step 30

Lower the opacity to 40%

Step 31

Select this part (Remember , for better selections use Feather Radius : 0.3 px )

Step 32: Add Mesh

Load the selection in the picture with the mesh donor.

Step 33:

Move the selected mesh to our picture.

Step 34: Adjustements

Go to -> Image-Adjustements-Brightness/Contrast , make next settings :

Step 35: Shadows

Using Burn Tool , add some shadows in bottom of the mesh :

Step 36:

Make a new layer , with pen tool , make next path :

Step 37: Stroke technique

Set Brush size on 3px , Right click-> Stroke Path (white color , Brush size :3px)

Step 38:

Lower the opacity to 90% and erase a little the line sides.

Step 39: Intercooler

Add an intercooler . You have the car with the intercooler in the “Donors” archive.

Step 40: Adjustements

Go to -> Image-Adjustements-Brightness/Contrast , make next settings :

Step 41: Desaturate it

Go to -> Image-Adjustements-Desaturate

Step 42

In a new layer make next selection on the top of the intercooler :

Step 43:

Fill the selection with the selected color :

Step 44:Stroke technique

Using stroke technique , make a line like in the next picture :

Step 45

Lower the opacity to 38%

Step 46: Shadows

Add a shadow under the created layer.

Step 47: License plate

Add a license plate , i made this license plate , so you can use it. You have the license plate in the “Donors” archive.

Step 48

Make next shape using black color :

Step 49

Make next path using pen tool :

Step 50: Stroke technique

Right click->stroke path ( Brush size : 2px), lower the opacity :

Step 51: Highlights

Using Dodge Tool to add a little highlight on the begining of the hole.

Step 52

Go to the car layer and make next selection

Step 53: Eliminate the old reflections

Eliminate the Old reflections by smudging with smudge tool.

Step 54: Headlight effects

Select the headlight , and make next settings for brightness/contrast :

Step 55

Make same thing for the other one.

Step 56

Make next selection (Remember , for better selections use Feather Radius : 0.3 px )

Step 57

Move the selection on the bonnet , then copy and paste on the headlight :

Step 58

Same selection , in a new layer under the eyelid layer.

Step 59

Fill it with black color and blur a little :

Step 60

Add an eyelid on the other headlight

Step 61: Wheels

Add wheels ( I used same technique like in the “Virtual Tuning Tutorial Part I “. You have the wheels donor in the “Donors” archive.

Step 62: Resizing

Edit – Free Transform , fix it to look better.

Step 63

Make same thing for the back wheel :

Step 64: Sideskirt

Now let`s make the sideskirt. Make next sketch .I used pen & brush tool for the sketch. (Brush size : 2px)

Step 65: Stroke technique

with pen tool , add some strokes on the sideskirt (erase a little where the light can`t reach very good) :

Step 66: Pavement reflections

Add some pavement reflections :

Step 67: Clouds reflections

Now it`s time for clouds reflection , add on the image a cloud picture . You have the picture with clouds in the “Donors” archive.

Step 68

Erase the excess:

Step 69: Blur

Go to -> Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur :

Step 70

Lower the opacity :

Step 71: Shadows

Add the shadows :

Step 72

Lower the opacity :

Step 73: Tailight effects

Select the tailight and go to Image-Adjustements-Channel Mixer:

Step 74

Then select the spoiler , and go to Image-Adjustements-Hue/Saturation :

Step 75: Interior

Ok. We have finished the exterior.It`s time for the interior. Let`s do it.

Step 76

In a new layer , fill the windows with a black color :

Step 77: Sport seat

Add a picture with a sport seat . You have the sport seat in the “Donors” archive.

Step 78

Using Magic Wand tool , erase the white part :

Step 79: Shadows

Erase the excess and use burn tool to add some shadows :

Step 80: Roll cage

Make next path using pen tool :

Step 81: Stroke technique

Right click – Stroke path – Brush ( Size : 14 px , 100% Hardness)

Step 82:

Erase the excess & and fit the roll cage to look more real

Step 83:

Make next selection with a 5px feather :

Step 84: Shadows

Add some shadows using Burn Tool :

Step 85: Highlights

And some highlights using Dodge Tool :

Step 86: Roll cage highlights

Add a stroke ( 2px size ) with a highlighted green :

Step 87: Blur

Go to -> Filter¬-> blur -> Gaussian Blur :

Step 88

Repeat those steps to add more rollcages :

Step 89

Into a new layer make next shape on the seat:

Step 90: Shadows/Highlights

Use Burn/Dodge tool in the indicated places :

Step 91

Duplicate the layer , and move it a little to the left :

Step 92: Effects

Right Click -> Blending Options -> Drop Shadow :

Step 93

Duplicate the seat created and move to the left.

Step 94: Front window reflections

Add some clouds on the front window:

Step 95

Lower the opacity :

Step 96: Wall reflections

Copy this part of the wall :

Step 97

Move it on the window :

Step 98

Now add the rest of the roll cage(Note : Put the roll cage layers under the reflection layers )

Step 99

Make some shapes on the windows :

Step 100

Lower the opacity :

Step 101: Make window looks more realistic

Using Pen Tool , make next path :

Step 102

Right Click -> Stroke path , make next settings :

Step 103: Clouds reflections on the side windows

Add some clouds on the side windows :

Step 104

Go to -> Image-> Adjustements-> Hue/Saturation :

Step 105

Go to -> Filter-> Blur -> Gaussian Blur :

Step 106

Make a new layer , select next parts :

Step 107

Fill the selection with the wall color

Step 108

Go to -> Filter-> Blur -> Gaussian Blur :

Final Step

Go to Image -> Adjustments -> Brightness/Contrast, and then move the contrast to the right (maximum) :

Related posts:

1. Virtual-Tuning Tutorial PART2 – Changing the BodyKit Color
2. RSS Christmas Stocking Tutorial in Photoshop
3. How to transform a car into a chop in Adobe Photoshop

In this tutorial we’ll learn how to make a DIY Light Box for capturing small stuff in a professional way. We’ll build our own studio for as low as $35! Then, we’re ready to shoot.

Author: Samet Cicek

Samet Cicek is a graphic designer, an illustrator and a photographer based in Istanbul. He is a world-wide freelancer currently working at Microsoft as online marketing specialist.

Tutorial Details

• Shopping List:1 Medium Size Box ($2)

  2 150W Garden Lights
  ($10 each)

  1 Utility Knife ($6)

  1 Duct Tape ($4)

  A few pieces of white paper ($3)

• Skills:Ability to cut and tape
  objects
• Difficulty:Easy

Step 1: Having Your Stuff Ready

OK, if you did the shopping now let’s see what we’re going to use for what.

Step 2: Enfold the Box

Enfold the box. Next, we’ll cut the edges. If you can figure out which side to cut, it’s easier to cut before enfolding.

Step 4: Draw Lines

Draw the lines a little bit smaller than the paper size. Leave some space to tape around the paper.

Step 4 – Cut the Edges

Cut out the part using the utility knife. Then do the same thing for the opposite side.

Step 5 – Main Structural Frame

Here’s how the main frame looks like. I use the blank white paper for background, you can use anything you want.

Step 6 – Cover the Sides with Paper

Using the duct tape, cover the sides with paper in order to soften the light coming accros to your object . Be sure to use quality duct tape, because light may go through the tape at a different intensity and cause line shadows on your product.

Step 7 – Hit the Lights!

Place the lights according to your box . You can use stronger lights for bigger boxes. I’ve used 150W garden lightning for a box at this size.

Final Step – And We’re Done!

Here’s the final. Wasn’t hard, was it?

Examples

You can play around with colors and add sharpness in Photoshop later on. But I’m adding raw images for you to see what can you do at minimum price. I hope you liked this tutorial.

Related posts:

1. Paper Icon Pack: 15 Social Media Icons
2. How to create a Music Theme Poster using Adobe Photoshop
3. How to Draw a Vector Character in Adobe Illustrator

Welcome to “Furniture Design Rendering”. In this tutorial we will cover the concepts of putting together a rendering that a furniture manufacturer and outlet would prefer. This tutorial is more of an overview of the entire process, rather than a complete modeling guide in 3d. Throughout the last year I have been working with a furniture company in Sweden, providing quick renderings at very cheap prices. This could be called you’re guide to breaking into that niche of the industry a little more easily.

Author: Ryan W. Knope

Ryan W. Knope is a freelance 3D / 2D Artist / Consultant with 13 years experience in the 3D and 2D industry. His main artistic love lies with interior and exterior rendering although he takes on just about every type of graphics work. Ryan is also the architectural / interior voice for 3D Artist Magazine’s Question and Answer Panel. He lives with his wife Krista, in sunny Denver, Colorado.

Tutorial Details

• Programs: Autodesk 3dsmax 2010, Adobe Photoshop CS4
• Difficulty: Beginner To Medium (Discussion Concepts May Be More Advanced.)

Step 1: Understanding The Concept

These types of renderings often need to be completed quickly and cheaply. Understanding the idea or feeling behind the concept will save a ton of time. The rendering above was created for a Swedish client of mine. He wanted a rendering that would appeal to his Scandinavian client base. In this case, a bright, elegant and simple scene setting that promotes luxury.

With this in mind, simple is often better. I tend to only create the essentials in 3D and complete everything else in Adobe Photoshop. You can see the mix of 2D and 3D elements in the image below. The Blue shows elements totally completed in Photoshop. The Red Shows the elements created in 3dsmax. Touch ups over the entire rendered image is also important.

Step 2: Deciding On A Color Scheme Early

When producing quick renderings, I like to get a scheme from the client at the start along with some samples of exteriors that fits his or her fancy. Then I pick a background image, in this case the mountain and ocean, then get approval to build off of the color scheme tied to that.

For example, the wood decking ties into the color of the mountains, the pool ties in the water / sky color in the background and the gray pavers along the bounds of the deck compliment the black sofa base, providing a nice accent.

Step 3: Testing The Camera Angle

First create your main base object. This is often the floor or patio. I created the wood decking by drawing a spline, applying an edit poly modifier and extruding it to the desired height.

Next I try to match my camera angle quickly, then take a screen shot and see if the background matches well enough. Most of the time I just match the angle by eye without importing the background into 3dsmax. Paste your screen shot into Photoshop and place your background behind. With the magic wand tool, select and delete the non occupied area.

You should only have to set the tolerance to 1, since your background in max should be one solid color.

Step 4 – Creating The Patio Walls

These elements were started as renderable splines with 4 sides and an angle of 45 degrees. This angle will turn it straight instead of diagonal / diamond.

Then I applied an edit poly modifier and edited the vertices. The outer wall was split horizontally with “slice plane”. Box UVW mapping was applied after along with a concrete stone material. This material is not nearly as important as the top paver stone material and the other more prevalent maps.

Step 5 – Creating The Wood Deck Material

The wood decking material is extremely important. This is the closest material to the camera and ties in most of the image. With this in mind, care has to be taken to make this material the most realistic and pleasing to the eye.

Keep in mind that the orientation of the decking can be used as a guide to the eyes if the grain and boards are running toward the furniture.

I start with the default Arch + Design material. I then edit the reflectivity and glossiness. You can view the different image maps and settings of the material below.

Place a planking image in your diffuse map and test the render for color and contrast. Then I place the same map in for the bump, test render and then adjust the contrast in photoshop and save it as a new image.

For displacement I open the diffuse image map in photoshop. Create a new layer and fill it with white. Adjust the white layer opacity so that the wood is just barely visible. Next draw a black line with the brush tool on a new layer, press ALT and drag a copy of the line between each of the planks. Repeat this until all of the centers are filled. Save this image map and apply it to the displacement slot.

I set my displacement to 1.5, but you will have to test this in accordance to the displacement render settings.

Step 6 – Modifying The Global Displacement Settings

The global displacement settings in the render dialogue control the overall amount of displacement along with detail adjustment settings. Look below for an explanation of each setting. Change the settings and test render the wood decking to see how it changes.

Step 7 – Adding The Furniture

For this blocky modern style of furniture you can often start with a “Chamfer Box” or “Box”.

For the sofa base I used a box with Edit Poly, and extruded faces as necessary. Once I had the general structure built and measured properly I went ahead and chamfered / beveled the edges in “Face” mode.

The pillows were created by using a multi-segmented chamfer box with a large bevel. I then used soft selection in the Edit Poly modifier to create a more smoothly curved surface. Renderable splines were used for the pin line ridges at the edge. The feet are simply renderable splines with 4 sides and the angle set to 45 degrees.

Step 8 – The Furniture Angle

With the focus of this rendering being the furniture, the angle of the subject definitely matters. Generally speaking, the furniture should be angled to show inside and outside edges. It is basically the same concept as car photography.

The importance of this is showing the depth of the furniture. It is difficult to tell what an item looks like if it is shot straight on. So, either angle the shot or angle the furniture, even if it wouldn’t be placed in such a fashion in real life.

Step 9 – Aligning The Feet With The Deck

Skip this step if you are not going to use displacement.

There is a slight issue with using material displacement for flooring… you cannot visually see how far it is displacing, which means it can be difficult to line up objects that lay flat on the floor.The only way that I am aware of solving this is with zooming into the floor in the perspective view. Angle it so that you see the space between the floor and the feet of the sofa and test render, each time moving it closer, until it is just touching.

This process has been quite time consuming in a few of my projects.

Once you have one object aligned, you simply need to move the rest to the same plane or height.

To bypass this you could apply displacement as a modifier, but you will then have to create a floor object that has a extremely high amount of segments, which will slow the viewport’s down quite a bit and make the entire process of working with the scene slower. I try to stick with material displacement when I can.

Step 10 – Setting Up The Sun – Softening Shadows

As with all of my tutorials, I used Mental Ray.

Go to Create > Systems > Daylight. Drag out your system, then go to the modify panel. Select “MR Sun” and “MR SKY” from the drop down menu’s. Next go to setup and adjust the time to match the angle of light you prefer.

If your are creating an outdoor scene then you should set the “Exposure Control” to ” MR Photographic Exposure Control” and change the preset to “Outdoor Daylight Clear Sky”.

Now, with the sun system selected, go to the modify panel and under “Sun Basic Parameters” you will see an option labeled “Softness”. To have softer sun shadows you can adjust this as needed. The higher you raise this value, the more you should raise the sample value. With more samples you will achieve a smoother gradient of shadow. Unfortunately this will also raise render times.

Step 11 – Render Settings

In a scene that has a lot of glossy reflections I tend to use a minimum sample rate of 4 Min to 16 Max. If your scene has more than a million polygons, I would also turn on BSP2. Make sure Finalgather is checked.

If you have a scene that is half indoors with interior lights and half outdoors, then you will want to turn on Global Illumination most likely. Most furniture manufacturers and distributors want to use the renderings for the web, printed catalogs and boards. With this wide range in mind, I always render my still images at 5000 pixels wide or more.

Now it is time to render your image. Save it as a .png.

Step 12 – Post Production 1

Backdrop: Place the backdrop image behind the rendered layer. Place it in a pleasing position that makes sense for the camera view.

Pool Water: Finding a quality image of pool water is the first step. Next drag the image into working Photoshop file. Make a selection (Magic Wand) of the flat blue area as seen above. Zoom in and make sure that you have it entirely selected. Go back to the new water image layer and press CTRL SHIFT I to invert the selection and press delete. Now you can cycle through the blending modes and find a mode that works. I used “Multiply”. You may need to overlay a few layers to get the effect you desire.

Adding the backdrop reflection into the pool is next. Duplicate the backdrop layer. Place it above the water layer. Using the “Move” tool, with “Show Transform Controls” active, grab the top handle and drag it down flipping the orientation vertically. Lower the opacity and cycle through the blending modes. You can use “Multiply” or “Normal” with a low opacity (There are other options as well). You can either erase the unneeded areas with the eraser tool or CTRL click the layer thumbnail in layer properties and press CTRL SHIFT I and delete as we just did before.

You should have a result similar to the image below.

Step 13 – Post Production 2

Softening Effect: Adding a softening effect is very easy and adds a lot of character / mood. Create a new layer at the top of the set. Go to Select > Color Range, a window will pop up, now change “Select” to “Highlights”. Press OK. Now go to Select > Modify > Feather, this will bring up a window. I usually use a feather radius of about 30 pixels when working on a large image size. Make sure you have the new layer selected and fill the selection with white. The layer opacity will need to be adjusted. A value of about 20% – 30% should work.

Painting: With a quick production render such as this, painting can be super valuable to your time schedule and the final product. Sometimes reflections show up that you really don’t want in the rendering. For example, the wood decking back behind the furniture takes on a bluish / gray hue. It would take longer in 3D to resolve this issue than just painting a brown overlay in Photoshop (Seen Below). Accentuated shadows are another item that I often paint in. This helps give the rendering a bit more depth and creates slight boundary’s between objects. The edges of a pool are a great place to use this technique.

Dodging And Burning: I use the dodge and burn tools a lot. Often furniture manufacturers want very brightly lit scenes. Sometimes it is just easier to dodge areas of the image rather than adjusting the lighting and re-rendering over and over. I attempt at getting the lighting close enough and then take care of the rest in Photoshop. Burning can be used to accentuate the shadows and add depth. Sometimes this works better than painting in heavier shadows.

Step 14 – Conclusion

In this tutorial we went over many tools and tricks to creating quicker furniture renderings. These tips and tools can be applied to most applications and genres of visualization. While the furniture rendering niche is not extremely lucrative like other genres of visualization, these tips will make the process move along faster, thus making them more monetarily pleasing.

The most important things to remember is to try to create a harmonious scene that portrays the furniture well to the end buyer.

If you have any questions or comments about this tutorial please feel free to email me.

Related posts:

1. Designing Text & Signage In 3D (Autodesk 3dsmax 2010 and Earlier)
2. Creating a Detailed Master Plan Rendering in 3dsmax and Photoshop
3. Creating A Detailed Master Plan Rendering – Part 4 – 3dsmax and Photoshop