Quad Draw Tool – Maya

Introduction In this lesson, we will be creating a mesh using the quad draw tool that conforms and has clean and evenly spaced topology. What Does the Quad Draw Tool do? The Quad Draw tool is used for manually creating low poly meshes that are easy to deform and and cut out from the rest […]

Auto Landscape Materials – Unreal Engine

Introduction This blog post documents my process in learning how to create auto landscape materials in Unreal Engine 5. These are materials that can be used to create landscapes in the software automatically, rather than meticulously crafting every detail of the landscape by hand, which takes a long time. Drawing a Node Tree In this […]

Ncloth Shatter – Maya

Introduction This lesson was an introduction to creating shatter simulations using ncloth in Maya. Shatter simulations are computer simulations of things that shatter – such as glass, brittle plastic, buildings being demolished or other such materials. Creating a first shatter simulation task The first task of the lesson was to follow the tutor’s instruction to […]

Thumbnailing

Thumbnailing is the technique in concept design of drawing images quickly to present a range of designs or ideas – it is used for character designs and concept art, where the artist can sketch out several designs quickly to express several ideas. A thumbnail sketch may be further developed into a piece of concept art […]

Substance Painter

Introduction This lesson was an introduction to the software Adobe Substance 3D Painter. It started being developed by Allegorithmic and was then recently bought by Adobe. Substance Painter allows the user to paint 3D textures, shaders and effects onto 3D models, like painting in photoshop except onto a 3D model. Models can be imported from […]

Digital Matte Painting (DMP)

Introduction This lesson focuses on using matte painting to create a composition in after effects. Matte painting in VFX is the technique of creating a photorealistic image of an environment that wouldn’t have been possible to capture otherwise. These fictional environments are created using a mixture of photo editing and digital painting techniques. Elements of […]

Unreal Engine Height Maps

Introduction This lesson was about creating landscapes using height maps in unreal engine. a height map in unreal engine uses greyscale images to assign a height value to black or white. This means that you can use a height map to create real world terrain in unreal engine by using a black and white image […]

Rotoscoping in After Effects

rotoscoping/rotoscope/roto is the process of tracing objects in a section of footage in order to remove or edit them from the video in some way. It can be used for isolating objects in the foreground of a shot from the background of the shot, or other similar editing techniques involving depth of field and layers. […]