Inside “Sculpting Comic Book Style”, John demonstrates how to sculpt a comic book superhero character. Beginning with a special illustrated montage “ORIGINS”, the sculpted character morphs right off the comic book pages into the clay model where the student learns the origins of the character and the importance of creating a backstory for the superhero. Followed by a concept sketch and a scaled illustration, students will quickly learn the essentials of male anatomy through a comparative study, learning how to extrapolate and overemphasize male anatomy to superhero proportions. Other exciting topics include the creative thought process, costuming and sculpting attitude. Developing good work habits for creating these dynamic characters is unveiled step by step.

On this DVD, Matt focuses on the fundamental implementation and functionality of Mental Ray from within Maya. He covers many areas, beginning with an in-depth exploration of the interface of Mental Ray, including the use of MEL scripts to access custom features. Next,

he shows an initial scene setup using a custom naming script to label files automatically and correctly as they are output. Many other topics are covered in depth, including setting up basic frame buffers, using diagnostics to debug your scenes, various implementations of motion blur including the rasterizer (rapid motion), lens shaders, a custom shader allowing you to blur in post, depth of field, displacement utilizing the latest techniques, including a thorough explanation of ccmeshes (Catmull-Clark meshes) and how to access them from within Mental Ray for Maya.

In this DVD, Laurent reveals his process for creating a high resolution creature, designed by Carlos Huante, for the video-game cinematic production pipeline. The pipeline presents many challenges such as working with short deadlines, achieving a clean topology and being able to interpret a 3\4 view concept into a complex and detailed 3D model. This DVD will cover the creature modeling from low-poly modeling to high-poly detailing using 3ds Max and ZBrush. Topics include Max's basic polygon tools, creating the base volumes and proportions, cleaning up topology, reshaping in ZBrush, and lighting and rendering a sample still with Brazil for presentation to clients and supervisors.

3 hours of lecture.

Product Code: LPI01

Topics Covered
Max's Polygon Modeling Tools
Volumes and Proportions
Achieving Clean Topology
Reshaping Volume with ZBrush
Lighting and Rendering the Final Mesh
Quick Sample Presentation for Clients/supervisors

Chapters
01: Low Poly Modeling of the Body
02: Subdividing the Body
03: Low Poly Modeling of the Arms and Legs
04: Subdividing/Detailing the Arms and Legs
05: Reshaping the Mesh in ZBrush
06: Adding the Final Details
07: Lighting, Rendering for a Sample Still

Click here to view a sample clip from this DVD. Note that while this clip is 640x480 the actual movie size is 1024x768. View the stills to the right to see the actual resolution.

Laurent Pierlot is an alumnus of ESAAT in Roubaix, France and Supinfocom in Valenciennes. After finishing his student movie Baecktopur, which combined live footage mixed with 3D characters, he began working at SPARX in Vietnam as a modeling and lighting artist. He then worked at Attitude Studio in Paris for one year before joining Blur Studio in California as a character
modeler and CG supervisor. At Blur, Laurent has worked on lighting, rendering and compositing on a number of projects including the game cinematics for BloodRayne 2, Area-51, The Punisher, Hellgate, Rise of Legends, Fantastic 4 and X-Men Legends.

In this DVD, character rigger Carlo Sansonetti demonstrates the rigging process from research to completion. Carlo covers creating the skeleton and rigging the spine, arms, hands, legs, head and neck. He discusses the core concepts of rigging, including joint orientation and understanding rotation order, as well as some more advanced techniques like stretchy limbs, forearm twist without volume loss, and connecting attributes with Hypershade. This DVD is for students who are new to rigging as well as for professional riggers who are looking for different approaches to rigging their characters

Topics Covered:
Joint Orientation, Naming and Placement
Animation Controls
Utility Nodes
Stretchy IK Spine
Head and Neck Rigs
Stretchy Legs and Arms
Foot Roll Using Group Nodes
Local vs. World Space
Connecting Attributes with Hypershade

Chapters:
01. Overview / The Importance of Research
02. Skeleton Creation, Part 1
03. Skeleton Creation, Part 2
04. Iconic Representation
05. The Spine Rig
06. The Arms and Hands, Part 1
07. The Arms and Hands, Part 2
08. The Arms and Hands, Part 3
09. The Legs, Part 1
10. The Legs, Part 2
11. Head and Neck
12. Control Cleanup

GNOMON POLYGONS 1
Modeling Basics by Darrin Krumweide – 683mb



GNOMON POLYGONS 2
Advanced Tools / Subdivision Surfaces by Darrin Krumweide – 697mb

Darrin is an alumni of the Art Center College of Design, where he studied transportation and industrial design. He was employed as an Application Engineer for Alias Wavefront for three years where he received numerous awards.

The tutorials forcuses on the principles behind basic polygon modeling in Maya