When you compose an image – focusing on the detail, adjusting the light to accentuate the shapes and edges perfectly – every detail matters. Every gap, surface, material and texture is a brush stroke to complete the masterpiece. One person familiar with creating extremely detailed and realistic compositions is Vitaly Bulgarov. He currently works as Senior Cinematic Artist for Blizzard Entertainment. You have likely seen his work in video games, online and may have even gone through one of his video courses from the Gnomon workshop where he takes you through the process from modeling in ZBRush and Softimage XSI to rendering in KeyShot. We caught up with Vitaly to find out a little more sparked his interest in 3D visuals and how he’s using KeyShot to create his incredible photorealistic images.
維塔利·布爾加羅夫
維塔利於2004年在摩爾多瓦開始了他的職業生涯,成為一名自由藝術家。在莫斯科與一家主要的俄羅斯遊戲開發商合作期間,他繼續為其他遊戲工作室做自由職業者,提高自己的技能和才能,以製作詳細的作品。從那時起,他已經成為業內最受尊敬的3D藝術家之一,贏得了許多獎項。作為暴雪娛樂的高級電影藝術家,他繼續製作出色的3D視覺效果。“我對電影和電子遊戲的熱情使我走上了這條路。我可以同時在兩個世界里:為暴雪的精彩遊戲製作電影預告片。
Vitaly 的主要建模工具是 Softimage XSI,使用它來建模他的許多高度詳細的自由形式模型,就像你在這裡看到的壯觀的外星生物一樣,它是為他的 Gnomon 研討會課程創建的。 “Softimage XSI 有一個非常有效的細分建模工具集。它的快速性能讓我感覺就像在駕駛一輛跑車。
Rendering with KeyShot
HDR environments, realtime rendering and library of physically correct shaders in the simplicity of a toaster. I’ve found all of it in KeyShot.“KeyShot is seriously one of the best things that happened to me in my whole carrier as a CG artist,” Vitaly says. “I started to use it for my personal design work about a year and a half ago as it soon became clear that its potential for rendering in a fast-paced modeling/design work with a lot of iterations and tight deadlines is invaluable. For me, it was a first rendering software that makes sense for a designer who doesn’t have time to create heavy lighting/environment set-ups in a 3D software and generally doesn’t need to stay within feature animation production pipeline to work on a design.”
“All the designer wants to do is to bring his 3D model in a realistic environment or studio, find a good angle, take a picture of it like if he was a photographer and show it to client. That would require things like interactive HDR environments, realtime rendering and library of physically correct shaders in the simplicity of a toaster. I’ve found all of it in KeyShot. So generally speaking Keyshot’s accessibility to photorealistic rendering is what brought me to the decision to use it.”
適用於整個設計過程的工具
When asking Vitaly how he uses KeyShot, he explained, just as you may be familiar with, how it has helped through various aspects of the 3D design process. “During a process of building a 3D model if I need to show it for a review I will take the model into Keyshot for couple of screenshots. It’s amazing how a little lighting helps approvals! For a more advanced design, KeyShot is cleary the way to go when you need to develop a final, photorealistic looking product with all the materials in place.”
然而,他也將其用於早期的概念工作。“在我快速完成 3D 遮擋后,我將使用更中性的照明進行渲染,並在對象上應用啞光灰色材質。我使用此渲染作為在 Photoshop 中進行詳細 2D 塗裝的基礎。由於觀點和價值觀已經到位,因此很容易推進完善這一概念。
科幻:機甲和金屬天使
可以想像,維塔利是科幻機甲設計的忠實粉絲。“任何與此有關的事情通常都會出現在我的最愛名單上!對於專案,到目前為止,我在暴雪最喜歡的是《星際爭霸II》新戰役的電影,因為我有機會參與設計和許多硬表面事物的高多邊形3D模型。但是,它還沒有發佈。
除此之外,我還有機會在空閒時間與Oakley一起製作一個12英尺高的金屬天使雕塑的設計/3D模型,該雕塑的翼展為25英尺。我非常幸運能與Oakley Hans Moritz和Tony Kern的頂級設計師一起做這樣一件很酷的事情,他們有很大的創作自由,並從產品設計老手那裡學到了很多東西。顯然,這是我有機會參與的最有趣的專案之一。您可以查看一些圖片並閱讀更多相關信息 這裡.”
It helped throughout the concept and design process, he explains, “I used Keyshot everytime I would send an update. It saved me a lot of time providing context for the lighting and how everything would look and feel after it was built.”
Vitaly’s KeyShot Tips
Keyshot is so easy to use. You really don’t even need a tutorial to figure it out and can do it on your own pretty quickly. My one piece of advice is to learn the hotkeys (‘K’ on the keyboard) – it helps!
這裡有一個快速提示給你。當您不使用背板時,您會在背景中看到 HDR 環境貼圖。如果您對照明感到滿意,但背景的構圖無法滿足您的需求,那麼有一個技巧可以在不改變光線方向的情況下創建構圖。如果您對邊緣光照射到某物邊緣的方式非常挑剔,並且想要稍微旋轉環境以打破模型和背景的重疊輪廓,那麼這將非常有用。為此,請隱藏您的模型,使用您需要的旋轉角度截取空環境的屏幕截圖/渲染,並將其作為背板帶回。然後,只需取消隱藏模型並將環境旋轉回提供您喜歡的照明的角度度。完善!
您可以在 bulgarov.com 上看到 Vitaly 的更多工作以及他的 cghub 投資組合。
所有圖片均由 Vitaly Bulgarov提供。
Oakley Angel 圖片由 Oakley 提供。