NOVEDGE blog

The Edge: 3D Print Your Favorite Game Character With Sandboxr

Have you heard of Sandboxr? I met the team at GDC and saw their creations. This startup company lets you 3D print a figurine of your favorite game character and is currently raising funds on Kickstarter (their drive ends on April 11th, so hurry up and check it out!). Berkley Frei, the founder and CEO, tells us a bit more about how it all works and how you can sign up to license your designs.

Novedge: Why Sandboxr?
Berkley Frei: I grew up in a small town and as a kid the sandbox was my favorite place to play.  You could make anything you wanted in the sandbox.  I wanted to replicate that experience with Sandboxr.  We allow people to play in a digital sandbox where they can unlock their creativity, really make one of a kind creations.  When they make something they are really proud of, they can have it printed in 3D and mailed to their house.  My hope is that people will spend hours perfecting their pieces. The experience is just as important as the final product.

 
Novedge: What designers and/or companies have already signed up with Sandboxr to allow consumers to 3D print their designs?
Berkley Frei: I wish I could tell you everyone we are in talks with, but we are under non-disclosure agreements until the deals are finalized.  These are very exciting times.  However, we already have support from Super Villain Studios who have licensed awesome characters to us from their games Order Up and Tower Wars.  We also have a diverse group of independent artists that have uploaded their work, street artists, animators for big companies that are doing work on the side in Sandboxr.  We add more everyday.

Novedge: How can designers sign up with you?
Berkley Frei:  Right now we are still in our Beta phase, but if you have work in Maya file format that you would like to see on Sandboxr, contact peter@sandboxr.com with a link to your portfolio or examples of your work.  We would love to get your work up on our site.  We have a range of licensing options to make sure you maintain the ownership of your work.  You can specify how you want it to be used, set your own prices, the customization options, limited series runs, etc.  For more info, check out Sanboxr for Artists.  Once we have officially launched, artists will be able to upload content themselves just by visiting our site and following our guide to best practices.

  

Novedge: What 3D printers do you use? Can someone 3D print designs from Sandboxr at home? 

 Berkley Frei:  We use professional grade industrial sized printers from Z-Corp that print in full color sandstone, which gives our pieces a nice weight and high resolution detail.  However, we hope to provide a variety of material and color choices in the near future.  We have made .STL export available to select backers on Kickstarter to test whether or not we will keep that functionality going forward.  There are licensing concerns with home printing that we still need to work out and we also want to protect the quality of the experience.  Home printers have a long way to go, but we are thrilled with what we are seeing and hope that one day everyone can easily print high quality pieces at home. 

Novedge: What software do you use?
Berkley Frei:  We developed our own software for the app because no one has done what we are doing yet.  Basically we take the animation files, simplify the interface so that anyone can easily manipulate and customize their creation, automate the post-processing and conversion for printing so that you don’t have to be an expert to prep your models.  You just have to click print.

 

Novedge: In his book Makers Chris Anderson compares 3D printing to the internet, for its revolutionary impact. What are the advantages of actually having more people participate in making products? How is 3D printing changing manufacturing?
Berkley Frei:   I haven’t read his book yet, but I agree with that assertion.  It is democratizing manufacturing.  The more people creating, the more creative we will get.  I think we will see the rise of designers that would otherwise have never had the resources to manufacture samples.  Right now we are in the early phases.  There is a lot of excitement, but I think there are many surprises ahead.  People will gravitate to things we never expected them to.  New ideas and innovations are coming out everyday.  It’s exciting.  The response to what we are doing has been amazing and there is so much more to come. 

Novedge: What can we expect to see from Sandboxr in the future?
Berkley Frei: We want to be a community where skilled designers and animators can interact with their fans.  Right now the video game industry is really excited about us.  We are talking to developers that want to integrate Sandboxr into their games so that as people play the game, they can earn access to new characters, unlock accessories and build things in Sandboxr that only players can access.  We also expect to see artists experiment on Sandboxr.  There is so much potential for collaboration between artists or an artist with users.  I think when we open our doors to the public, we will be surprised with all the ways people will use Sandboxr.  It will be a great big experiment for all of us and I think the results will be amazing.

 

What are you waiting for? Donate to Sandboxr's campaign on Kickstarter, it ends in just a couple of days!

You can also request an invitation to join Sandboxr on their website and watch more cool videos on their Vimeo channel.

All the figurines in the photos above are Super Villain Studios Characters Posed and 3D Printed using Sandboxr.

The Edge: Gavin Goulden, The Game Master.

Today we we talk to Gavin Goulden, the author of our March Book of the Month, about his work and inspiration.

Novedge: Tell us a bit about who you are and what you do.

Gavin Goulden: My name is Gavin Goulden, I am the lead character artist on Bioshock Infinite and have contributed art assets in the past to titles such as Dead Rising 2, The Bigs 2, Dragon Age: Origins, F.E.A.R. 2 and Damnation.  My main focus is on character art (modelling, texturing and rigging) for games on current generation platforms. I also have a keen interest in creating art pipelines, teaching character art, and toy sculpting. On top of the the game projects that I have been a part of, I have contributed dozens of articles to 3DArtist and 3DCreative magazine as well as authoring The Swordmaster.

Novedge: What is a recent project that you worked on?

Gavin Goulden: Throughout my career, I have been involved with nearly a dozen titles ranging from “kids games” to first person shooters. As part of that, three big projects stick out to me. My most recent project, which should be on store shelves soon, was BioShock Infinite. While on BI, I created many of the general population seen in the game as well as enemies you encounter during combat scenarios. During this project I also entered a lead role which required me to start managing schedules, maintaining best practices, and conversing with other departments about their needs and what our team could do for them. This is, by far, the biggest project I have been apart of – though I can't go into too much detail about it – it was certainly rewarding.

Before joining the team, I was working with Capcom on Dead Rising 2. While on DR2, I took care of many “psychopath” characters, player outfits, and weapons seen in game. Definitely a fun project given the genre – Who doesn't like zombies?

Before Dead Rising 2, I was working with Blue Castle Games (which later became Capcom Vancouver) on 2K Games' The Bigs 2. While I am not a sports fan, this project taught me so much in the way of structuring a team, managing schedules, working within a pipeline, etc. that previous projects did not. So, while not exactly a game that I would play on my own, the entire experience helped lay down a foundation of lessons that I still practice today.

Novedge: What software do you use? Why?

Gavin Goulden: On a day to day basis I use 3ds Max, Zbrush, and Photoshop. I generally supplement these programs with more specialized apps like CrazyBump, xNormal, and Wings 3D. For the most part, I'm just a creature of habit. The work flow for game assets, especially characters, generally requires the same exporting point, or at least a common ground so that problems are not introduced for other departments. So, for that, we are all required to use the same software as a project standard. 3ds Max has generally been the accepted program for the studios I've been with, along with Maya which I previously used for the same reasons. Zbrush and Photoshop, for pretty much the same reasons, they are industry standards.

For the more specialized programs, I tend to use them because they are just quicker and/or more efficient than what is out of the box when it comes to major applications. Like the baking speed (and the need to not have to load models into a viewport for baking) within xNormal saves hours of work, Wings takes less time to unwrap objects, CrazyBump produces nice cavity maps in seconds – it's just quicker and easier.

Novedge: Your book, 3D Masterclass: The Swordmaster in 3ds Max and ZBrush, is our March Book of the Month. Can you talk about how it came about?

Gavin Goulden: The Swordmaster was a long running series for 3DCreative. I was originally approached by the magazine to do a few short articles covering the process of current generation character art. Once I was approached, I jumped on the opportunity. I had written a bunch of smaller articles in the past, and tutorials roughly covering my process in a few pages – but this time I really wanted to go in depth. And I did. Eventually, we realized that we were producing A TON of content which would make a great book. So, we added even more information, created a set of new renders, bonus material, and brought all of the pieces together.

Novedge: How do you find inspiration to stay ahead of the curve? 

Gavin Goulden: I think there's a few different things going on here. Where I find “inspiration” is the same place I found it as a kid doodling poor renditions of imps from DOOM, and Spider-Man. There are things that I nerded out over which have shaped my personal tastes that still have some degree of influence over the choices I make now. As a kid, I wanted to be the guy who created these characters, that was the dream and, in a way, I still am that person – it's just that now I get to do it as my career. What “motivates” me to do that and to stay where I am within my industry is that I am extremely competitive. I always want to stay relevant, I don't want to fall behind. I've worked incredibly hard to be where I am now, so, if I didn't pay attention to the next great thing – I would be doing a disservice to myself.

Novedge: What are some of the rewards and challenges of working as Lead Character Artist?

Gavin Goulden: My goal is to make life easier for everyone. By establishing and maintaining a process that empowers artists but also encourages quicker turnaround times and easier iteration, everyone can walk away happy – and that's a good feeling. One of the challenges I face, personally, is that eventually you will have to say, “No” which can be tough. Sometimes, there just isn't enough time or resources to do everything you had hoped to do – which is common on all projects.

Novedge: What is the best advice you have ever received?

Gavin Goulden: While I don't think I've ever had a heart to heart conversation with someone and received a solid life lesson, I do think that the collected advice regarding portfolios from the game art community has been incredibly valuable and is a mindset that I try to share with people breaking into the industry. Simple things that, to an industry veteran, may seem obvious but may be slightly shocking to students. The biggest point that stands out to me is that you are not competing with your classmates and the ones in your immediate circle of artist friends. You need to consider yourself in the same market as the ones you idolize, like the people in your reference folder could be looking for the same job as you. While it's one thing to be the top of your class, there are other people out there who have years of work under their belt applying for the same job opening. You need to wow potential employers. You need to learn to self edit and really compare yourself to heavy hitters. Rather than having an expansive portfolio full of school projects, life drawing, and works in progress , you need a handful of solid pieces that are relate-able to the projects you want to be a part of and better than artists in the industry that currently have the job you want. Not a lot of schools will tell you that, and it can be a little demotivating – but it is a competitive industry where you need to stand out of the crowd.

 

Learn more about Gavin's work on his website and blog and don't forget to connect with him on Twitter.

Gavin's 3D Masterclass: The Swordmaster in 3ds Max and ZBrush comes out in June. Read about it here.

Looking for your own copy of ZBrush, Maya and 3ds Max? Get them from Novedge: Tools to Design the Future. And don't forget to join us on Facebook.

The Edge: Vincent Gault's Avatar

Vincent Gault is not only a talented artist, but has a great sense of humor. Here he is eating "angrily" a cricket candy!

Novedge: Tell us about yourself and what you do.

 Vincent Gault: Hey, my name is Vincent Gault, I am (now) an Art Technical Director  and (sometimes) a game designer at UBISOFT. I was lucky enough to start my career at UBISOFT Montreal five years ago, and I have now been part of the Barcelona studio team for one year.

Basically, my job is to make sure that the artists I work with can unleash their talent, within the reality of real-time constrains. Thus, it is a collaboration with the art team to define what we want to achieve, and how we can do it.

Novedge: Ubisoft is known for working with new technologies. How do you find inspiration and stay ahead of the curve?

Vincent Gault: There are two aspects to this.
From a technical point of view, we indeed have to stay up to date with the evolution of different technologies, and how it can be relevant for us, or if it can fit with actual hardware capabilities.
Artwise, it's easy to find an infinite amount of inspiration nowadays. I am trying not to focus only on videogames or CG art : photography, classic art,movies,  sculpture, etc... There so much to look at !
Of course the other games, and all the indie game community, are a great source of inspiration as well.

Novedge: What is a recent project that you worked on?

Vincent Gault: I had the opportunity to work on Far Cry 2, James Cameron's Avatar, Just Dance 3,  and more recently on Sports Connection.

Novedge: What software do you use?

Vincent Gault: With the engineering team, I mostly use 3ds Max, ZBrush and Photoshop.
They are really powerful and well known softwares.
3ds Max is used at lot at UBISOFT. I like the fact that the scripting language is really powerful, and that it allows me to build interesting tools for the artists.
While I don't consider myself as a good artist, I just love ZBrush and I do some scripting in it as well: this software has no limit, except the imagination of the artists. I am lucky enough to be in close contact with the Pixologic team, as I was one of the tech beta tester of the 4th version.

Novedge: How many people do you usually coordinate? What are the rewards and challenges of leading a team?

Vincent Gault: I don't directly lead people, but rather, the tech side of their job. It can vary from 3 to 10 people. I think the reward comes from the mutual respect you can build with a team: in order for people to follow my guidelines, and sometimes to accept making some concessions on their work, they have to trust me and to be sure that if I ask for these concessions, it's because the result will be better in the end.
There is no real leadership, without a relationship based on mutual trust and respect.

Novedge: What innovations do you see in your field?

Vincent Gault: A lot! Optimizing the production pipeline, so the artist can focus on art rather than anything else is the final goal.
Also, real time lighting and rendering, will be one field that will greatly improve in the coming years.

Novedge: What would you say to young people who want to work in the video game industry?

Vincent Gault: Be passionate about what you do, but stay open to any kind of art. Mastering your art is more important than the tools you are using. 
Go on the net and look at the best artists you can find. Train a lot, post your work online to receive feedback: it can be hard sometimes, but it's one of the best way to improve.
Don't put only Orcs and Space Marines in your portfolio ;-) 
Show that you have your own style, but also that you are able to adapt to different kinds of art directions.
Participate in a small game project: it may be one of the best and most relevant experiences for your portfolio. Between the indie and mobile market, it's now easier than never.

 

You can read Vincent's writing on his blog, in French, or follow him on Twitter and Google+.

To find out more about 3ds Max, ZBrush and Photoshop, check out Novedge: Tools to Design the Futurefor great prices, users' reviews and advice.

Novedge Webinar #65: ZBrush Q&A with Paul Gaboury

Last week's webinar with Paul Gaboury on ZBrush was awesome! We got so many questions, though, that Paul and his team couldn't answer them all during the live recording. Here are the questions they couldn't get to.

Q: How do you add or remove points on the curve?

A: Simply click on a point, and drag it up to the top of the menu or outside of the menu window until it is removed. This works similarly in the Photoshop curve editor.

Q: Also can you keep UVs with IMM brushes?

A: At this time UVs can not be kept when using the IMM brushes.

Q: How do you snapshot?

A: Shift + S

Q: UVs with IMM brushes? Is it possible to keep them?

A: There is no way to keep the UVs while enabling the mesh to be an insert mesh.

Q: Can ZBrush be saved in stl format for 3D printing?

A: Yes it can.:) This is done through a ZBrush plugin that is shipped with ZBrush called "3D Print Exporter"

Q: Please provide some links to the workflow with lower cost 3D apps like Rhino 3D for real world fabrication with tolerances for manufacturing... converting these assets into 3d solids.

A: Not sure if you are looking for this but here are some links of items being created for the real world through ZBrush. Don’t have a ton of stuff for Rhino but I know the forums for Rhino has a lot. We are working on putting more examples together.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?173664-From-a-ZBrush-model-to-a-wood-sculpture&p=987009&viewfull=1#post987009

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?61205-T-S-Wittelsbach-s-Jewelry-Sketchbook/page25

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?56489&p=759970&viewfull=1#post759970

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?162584-Carver-s-Sketchbook-%28tutorial-added-Pg-4%29&p=982015&viewfull=1#post982015

 http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?135212-Mouse-Jeweller-s-Work-Bench

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?166374-du-Rose-Gallery

Q: How to get the ring back into Rhino as a NURB surface with accurate scale...

A: ZBrush does not export or import NURB surfaces. Would have to export a STL or OBJ then use Rhino to convert that back into a NURB surface.

Q: Hardware question: On a Windows based PC, what is a FAST system that runs Z-Brush/PS/Premiere, just wanting to get a realistic baseline not minimum spec system hardware.

A: ZBrush requires less system power than both of those applications. When working with all three simultaneously however, it would be better to use around 8 GB RAM or higher.

Q: Will Z-brush take advantage of an Nvidia Quadro Graphics card? I am an Industrial Designer by training and have loved the organic nature of ZBrush but have not found a good demonstration of how to workflow for taking the 3D assets into, say, Rhino 3D for working these models into real world 3D printed assets for molds etc.

A: ZBrush does not use the video card at all so there will be no advantages of using the Nvidia Quadro card for ZBrush. We are currently working on videos showing the workflow between ZBrush and applications like Rhino.

Q: Any dvd/movies/tutorials that cover this process in detail would be SUPER appreciated. Thank you Paul, you are an awesome instructor!

Q: Do you offer any video tutorials on ZBRUSH for production, or could refer ANY videos?

A: What specific type of videos are you looking for? How to get out your displacement and normal maps to render somewhere else or are you looking for videos on what type of topology flow you should have for production? We have some free videos on ZClassroom that show some of this but the The Gnomon Workshop is a good place for this type of videos. I would like to recommend certain ones but I need to know more specifics.

Q: I find it really difficult to get very high-res with DynaMesh!

A: This could be because the object itself may not be scaled/sized properly within ZBrush. Try to do a "unify" in the Deformation palette and redynamesh at high rez. If you do unify keep in mind that the physical size of the sculpt will be changed. It could just be the resolution is not turned up high enough.

Q: I'd like to know the specs of Paul's PC!! I feel like mine does not manage so well undo timeline and sometimes doesn't allow DynaMeshing... :-(

A: I’m using a 4 year old MACBook Pro notebook with 8GIGs of RAM and a core Two Duo processor at 2.66GHz. Not too strong. If you are on Windows XP that may be the issue with DynaMesh. We no longer support WindowsXP.

Q: Is it better to increase DynaMesh resolution or dividing the dynameshed mesh when going high definition?

A: I would actually come out of DynaMesh and begin to use Subdivision Levels to get my detail. This way I have lower levels to make big changes.

Q: How do you keep the mask from going through the model?

A: If the mask is going through the mesh, inside the "Brush Palette" down in the "automasking" subpalette you will find the option to turn on "BackFaceMasking" which will solve that issue if needed. If you are using the MaskRect, MaskLasso, MaskCircle, or MaskCurve brushes you have to hide the back portion of the mesh and then complete the masking.

Q: Is there a source for all the keyboard shortcuts?

A: Yes you can download them here.   

Q: I see that decimation master often leaves open holes when I try to verify the mesh in a different package like Rhino...are there any settings that allow this to be guarenteed watertight for printing?

A: Once you have completed a decimation you can run the Close Hole algorithm that is in the Tool>Geometry>Modify Topology menu

Q: Is there any chance to control what edge loops you get while using decimation master?

A: No, not at this point 

Q: Would dropping the undo history improve performance?

A: It will just make your file sizes smaller and when ZBrush AutoSaves it will not take as long.

Q: Not really a question, but I'm a jeweller and I just want to tell you how much I love Zbrush. I used to use Rhino and ZBrush but since the last updates I've switched to only using ZBrush for all jewellery, including stonesetting and sizeing and exporting for printing. Love it, thanks alot, it feels like you listen alot to your users. Great job.

A: Thank you! I will pass along that information to the team:) Thank you.

Q: That's great for stonesetting :D

Q: Is there a lasso tool for that or only a box?

A: Only a box, there is no lasso tool to select the image.

Q: Are there any plans to work more closely with the T-Splines plug in in Rhino?

A: Could not say at this time, sorry.

Q: Where were the algorythms for smoothing the pulled polys? And do those algorythms not change the poly levels for the more simple parts of the panels?

A: I am not sure if you are asking for the Polish by Feature here... it is found in the Tool>Deformation sub-palette.

Q: When do you want to use a dynamesh vs a polymesh?

A: One of the most effective uses is to start as a conceptual phase. This is because it gives you the freedom to work without worrying about the base topology of the mesh. There are many other uses of DynaMesh as the resolution can go very high and retain high quality surfaces, including hard surfaces.

Q: Why would you not want to work in that format all the time?

A: That would be a personal preference to you the artist. For example, if you are working with meshes that are needed for animation and have been prebuilt for rigging purposes you obviously wouldn't want to DyanMesh as that will essentially remesh the object.

Q: What is the advantage of the dynamesh?

A: For the purposes of scultping, there is a huge advantage to essentially free sculpting while dynamesh will redistribute topology. For example the way that I just pulled out the ears and did a "re-DynaMeshed" to get more topology in that area for sculpting.

Q: I have a question about the Memory Stress test in the perforance panel. Is that a way to optimize your system for ZBrush?

A: No that is to test the system when you are having issues with ZBrush. Our support team will use that information to help you.

Q: Should you turn to the Topology Brush only when qRemesher or only-fashioned remeshing produce inadequate results?

A: I would turn to the Topology brush when I want to be more precise how the topology will be following the surface.

Q: Any way to import a precise curve for the profile initialize feature for the profile primitive?

A: You can only import profile curves that were saved from ZBrush.

Q: Fast way to repair holes?

A: Either use DynaMesh or run the Close Holes algorithm in the Tool>Geometry>Modify Topology menu.

Q: Has anyone worked with scan data and polyloops in order to clean up the scan?

A: Yes, there are quite a few people using ZBrush with scan data. I myself scan items and bring them into ZBrush. I actually cover this in my book ZBrush Professional Tips and Techniques.

Q: When do you use qremesh, dynamesh, remesh?

A: In most workflows, DynaMesh/Remesh would be the conceptual sculpting stage, and QRemesher would be the finessing of topology phase or "cleanup phase" for control of where the edgeloops are placed for completion.

Q: Can you touch on how you use the wacom for those of us without it?

A: What are you using if not wacom? ZBrush is a pressure sensitive application so it gives the user a great benefit when using the Wacom product. The user will be able to use pressure to sculpt and paint. 

Q: coming from Photoshop, ZBrush's selection tools are a bit hard to use/get used to. Are there plans to improve them?

A: There are no plans to change the way these tools are working at this point. You could submit this into the ZClassroom Feedback section in ZClassroom.com :)

Q: Is there a way to align a ZBrush object to an arbitrarily-angled photo? Not orthographic x, y or z view.

A: You could use the Deformation Palette controls, which would be more precise, and allow you to type in values to get the angle of the 3D object. Use the sliders "offset" "rotate" "size" etc.

 

Do you love webinars? Check the upcoming webinars in the Novedge Webinar Series here.

To order your copy of ZBrush, click here.

To connect with other ZBrush and Rhino users, join our Rhino Jungle community and ZBrush Central.

 

Meet Christy Lee of CLO: "Our technology has tremendous potential to improve upon the fashion industry’s traditional workflow."

Kevin Luu, our Marketing Associate (congratulations Kevin on your promotion!), recently travelled to South Korea and took the opportunity to visit the headquarters of CLO and meet with Christy Lee. CLO Virtual Fashion makes MarvelousDesigner and CLO3D, two 3D softwares for fashion designers.

Kevin Luu: Can you tell me a little about who you are and what you do?

Christy Lee: My name is Christy and I am the Global Marketing Manager at CLO.

I am in charge of online marketing through our website. I occasionally reach out to our clients at CG conferences, and publish articles as well as news about our work here at CLO. 

Kevin Luu: How did Marvelous Designer come about?

Christy Lee: The story of our product goes back to our founder’s childhood, Jaden Seungwoo Oh. Growing up and seeing his mother’s work as a tailor, Jaden saw firsthand the limitations on creativity when it comes to working with real world cloths and fabrics. While pursuing his master’s degree in Engineering in Kaist, South Korea, he became inspired by positive feedback to turn his cloth simulation project into something more practical for real world application. From that moment on, Jaden, now our CTO, made a decision to continue towards his PhD, at the same time developing the first version of MarvelousDesigner.  

Kevin Luu: What is the difference between Marvelous Designer and CLO3D?

Christy Lee: MarvelousDesigner and CLO3D are separate, yet distinct software.
MarvelousDesigner is a tool for Computer Graphic artists and CLO3D is meant for specialists in the fashion industry.

CLO3D includes additional features like avatar sizing and dxf export format options. Depending on your design needs, you will find our products to be a more than capable addition to your toolkit.

Created by Zahaoha

Kevin Luu: What's in store for the latest version of Marvelous Designer 3?

Christy Lee: Based on feedback from the community, we are aware of anticipation for the Quad Mesh feature specifically. We’ve been working tirelessly to develop the Quad Mesh to run smoothly for Mac and Windows versions of MarvelousDesigner 2. With a new user interface and new features like 3D Pattern Editing and the Symmetric Pattern editing tool, and so on, MD 3 will be a vastly more powerful software for CG artists. Furthermore, we are looking into the possible inclusion of a Rigid Body Simulation tool and a FBX or Alembic loader. 

Kevin Luu: What innovations do you see in your field, now or in the future?

Christy Lee: So far we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from game developers to artists working in the computer graphics industry.

Outside of the CG industry, we believe our technology has tremendous potential to improve upon the fashion industry’s traditional workflow. We’d like to see ourselves as the pioneers who innovated a new ecosystem for the 3D virtual fashion market.

 

MarvelousDesigner is available from Novedge.

You can read more about CLO on their website.

 

Interview with Joseph Drust, Character Artist: "By far Zbrush is the tool that has changed how I work the most"

If you are a ZBrush user, you have probably already heard Joseph Drust and his video tutorials. He is not only a wonderful artist, but also a great teacher. We asked him to share a little about his work and his passion for character design.

Novedge: Tell us about yourself and what you do

Joseph Drust: I am a Character Artist for Ubisoft residing in Pittsboro, North Carolina. Growing up I always knew I wanted to do something with art. In High School I wanted to be a graphic designer/product designer (work on design elements for retail packaging etc..) I also played A LOT of games; pretty much anything I could get my hands on (One Must Fall 2097, Quest for Glory, Madden, X-Com, Doom, Quake, Raptor:Call of the Shadows, and anything on a Nintendo system.)  I never really thought about games needing artwork until my senior year when my drafting teacher by the name of Stephen Satterwhite said "You enjoy playing those games so much why don't you make art for them." Until that point I had never thought about games needing artwork to exist.  After that all my artwork through college shifted to having something to do with games (along with any elective courses I could take.)
I have been creating character art for video games for over 10 years.  I have worked on projects such as Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Ben 10 Alien Force, Earth Defense Force Insert Armageddon, and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.                

 

Novedge: What inspires you?

 Joseph Drust: There is no sole item that inspires me.  I have a large library of Art Books that I reference constantly, then a dedicated folder on all the computers I use that is home to any image I find appealing on the internet and right-click save.  I use these two resources quite frequently to find inspiration. I feel that the wider range of art you expose your mind to, the better art you will produce. I also find a lot of inspiration in nature, focusing on patterns and structures that organically exist. For most of the work I produce, I try to establish functional realism and lore. I think this is a product of creating military characters for quite a bit of my career. Now the list of Artists that inspire me changes constantly, some of the artists I have been enjoying following recently (their philosophies and art) are Danny Williams, Andrew Jones, Derek Stenning, Kris Kuksi, Odd Nerdrum, and Maarten Verhoeven.

 

Novedge: What is a recent project that you worked on?

 Joseph Drust: When working in games, production cycles can sometimes go on for years before the product ever sees store shelves.  The most recent game I worked on that shipped was Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. I was tasked primarily with modeling the high-res and low-res customizable headgear objects that the player could select in multiplayer.

 

 

At home during the late evenings after my toddler goes to sleep I continue working on various other projects in my shop. Most of the time I am up till the wee hours of the morning sculpting, kitbashing, recording tutorials, writing zplugins, or painting something. The Piggyson Steam Series (kitbashed vinyl KidRobot Munny's) has been one of my larger fully tangible endeavors  I am currently working on creating a new line of those and some larger scaled steampunk style robots (that function of course).

 

 

 

Novedge: What software do you prefer and use? Tell us why.

Joseph Drust: The main software I use daily for digital sculpting is ZBrush. Then I also use 3ds Max (varying versions pending on what the project requires), Photoshop, xNormal (for map baking), Headus UVLayout, CrazyBump, Marmoset ToolBag, and occasionally Marvelous Designer. I am always on the lookout for new software or tools to help speed up my production pipeline and let me do more art and less technical processes. Most of the tools that I use are related to my production pipeline (sculpting, generating retopology, unwrapping, map baking, and previewing).

 

By far Zbrush is the tool that has changed how I work the most on a day to day basis. Before Zbrush my day to day job was pushing and pulling single vertices, and turning edges inside of 3ds Max.  With the release of Mudbox  (before Autodesk acquired it) I was instantly hooked on digital sculpting. After AutoDesk acquired Mudbox there was a lull period for the program and I had a friend by the name of Abraham Valdez that convinced me to give Zbrush a try. After getting used to the Interface I never went back.  I've been using Zbrush for about 80% of my working day since then. It's a excellent tool and it keeps getting stronger with every version release. So now I go to work and sculpt with a Wacom Stylus rather then move single vertices with a mouse. I was a Zbrush fanboy even before I started creating tutorials for them :) 

 

Novedge: We are big fans of your tutorials. How did you get into teaching? What do you like the most about it?

Joseph Drust: I'm glad you enjoyed the tutorials! I hope they were useful!  My desire to teach started back in college. At the time it was extremely hard for me to find any information on creating game assets. I spent most of my time doing trial and error attempts for a lot of the processes (this was back in the Quake1/Half-life1 mod era.)  When I got my first game job, I was fortunate enough to be able to stand behind an artist by the name of Eric Armstrong.  In a period of one week of 'over the shoulder' learning I had every single question I had about creating game art answered.  After that, I decided that when I could I would help distribute my knowledge of game art to others.  My first open forum for tutorials was with the original Ghost Recon.  I set up a FAQ page that covered how to mod Characters, Weapons, and Vehicles to Ghost Recon.  Users could email me questions and I would reply with diagrams and 'how to' steps if necessary.  Back then there were a lot of little things you had to rotate/place/label in order to get items running in game.  From there I started giving talks at local schools and writing tutorials. The tutorial writing eventually was upgraded to video and that's were we are now.

The thing I like the most about teaching is the ability to share knowledge. I find that if I can share knowledge with someone, then they have the potential to do something that I may not have thought about, then if they share that knowledge the cycle continues.  This also directly relates to inspiration; giving others information to help them create better art that in return inspires.

 

 

Novedge: What innovations do you see in your field now or in the future?

Joseph Drust: Even just since I have been in the gaming industry the field has changed considerably. I see the character creation process in the industry continuing to move to more traditional methods (but of course with Undos and Symmetry.)   The 3D printing is taking off as well (in the future maybe having the ability to go to Sears and have a part for your lawn mower 3D printed right there!), and so is 3D Scanning (the resurge of photogrammetry.)  I see the usage of 3D printing, digital sculpting, traditional sculpting, and scanning to be intertwined as standard practice for character creation. 

In other technology I personally would love to see the removal of the UV mapping process/requirement for game assets. Never having to create a UV map would be great, someone needs to get on that ;)

 

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