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Issue 7

March 2011

Premium Edition

Moon Dust

In one sense, the ultimate artist for this genre is Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the moon and the only

Apollo astronaut to document his experience by artwork. He started painting after working in other NASA pro-

jects; his last venture was training astronauts for the soon to end Shuttle programme. He could easily have tak-

en other jobs at organisations such as Rockwell or McDonnell -Douglas, but it was painting he cared about

most. It was a hobby he did at weekends, but he decided to take it to a new level and turn it into a profes-

sion.

He paints with acrylics, tending to be impressionistic as well as technically detailed. His images show an eye-

witness account of the first human exploration of another world. There is an irony that his paintings somewhat

fill in a missing gap, because the TV camera taken to the moon for Apollo 12 was broken by Alan himself by

inadvertently pointing it at the sun, so no moving footage was taken of this mission, although still pictures

were.

What is remarkable about each painting is that it includes small amounts of materials from his space suit mis-

sion patches, the gold foil that insulated the Apollo 12 command module and finally a small amount of moon

dust (gained from his dirtied mission patches). It is a high level of personalisation and real history that Alan in-

cludes with his paintings.

you can use on the Moon and make it look real; you can use reds and oranges which are becoming my

favourite

publishing 2005, Pg 185).

Including some kind of personalisation in our artwork is a continual goal for all of us. It might not be moon dust,

that we include in our art, but using symbolism, self created models or an image presenting a personal story

may be our own way of showing our uniqueness.

The content of this magazine is 2010 3D Art Direct

Paul Bussey Editor

mag@3dartdirect.com

2

digital space art.

terrain creation software.

extraordinary art

3

CONTENTS

Page 2

Page 4

Page 15

Page 22

Page 34

MARK EDWARDS

4

3DAD: Was Terragen your first introduction to 3D digital art? Were you impressed with what it could achieve when you

first came across it? Tell me a little about your background. Did a previous interest in computer graphics lead into 3D

digital art?

ME: I actually started with Bryce but found a free test version of Terragen and was amazed at how real the land-

scapes looked. Also Terragen can use digital elevation models (DEM) and render real places, like Mars, the moon or

actual places on earth.

3DAD: You clearly have a love for

Space Art. Where did this passion for

this type of art come from was it

particular books or media in the past

that inspired you to create in this

way?

ME: I was 12 years old when the first

man set foot on the moon so, with all

the news and excitement around this

achievement learning to love space

and anything to do with it came

easy.

Neptune, The Mystic

Mark Edwards lives in Mississippi and

has used Terragen to create a magnif-

ic ent portfolio of space art. Like many

of us, he was greatly influenced by the

NASA Apollo moon missions. As a 12

year old boy at the time of Apollo 11,

with all the news and excitement

around this achievement learning to

love space and anything to do with it

came easy.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?username=Markal

MARK EDWARDS

5

3DAD: What digital artists inspired you when you first started with 3D digital art?

ME: Don Dixon , Joe Tucciarone , Michael Carrol, Kim Poor, Chesley Bonestell and all the other artists whose art

graced the numerous sci -fi books I read as a kid. I have collected some of the artists listed above in numbered

prints. My office walls are full of space art!

3DAD: Were there any initial barriers as you started out with the learning curve in digital art? How did you overcome

these difficulties?

ME:

with practice and experience you end up playing Beethoven. Hopefully!

3DAD:

would you suggest it be improved?

ME:

tings and one slight adjustment usually effects two or three other settings. For improvement perhaps a simplified ver-

sion without the settings for very advanced users.

Chesley Bonestell

Don Dixon

Joe Tucciarone

MARK EDWARDS 3DAD:

ME: Jungle Falls surprised me. I thought it was an O.K. image but, people seemed to really like it. I used a lot of postwork. The real breakthrough was

- it helped other TG users to

branch out and experiment even more.

6

Jungle Falls

Ashkelon Valley of Shadows

My 2049 Ashkelon terrain made using the

expander filter in World Machine. The verti-

cle slopes or pillars is a 100 x 100 BMP of a

metal grid tiled at 110 x 130. The stone roofs

is a 200 x 200 BMP of a sidewalk, 100 x 120

tile settings. I guess BMP texture files don't

have to be huge to be effective.

MARK EDWARDS 3DAD: Holst's "The Planets" series. I think my favourite is Mercury out of this series with the solar flare affects you achieved. Di d

did it provide inspiration as you went to work on

these?

ME:

7

Jungle Falls

Mercury The Winged Messenger

MARK EDWARDS 3DAD: the ir placements be-

hind and in front of the ring. Do you try to provide some elements of realism, according to science, in your planetary artwor k?

ME: ret ch the limits of reality

3DAD: - stark, well composed, with the angles of the ground terrain mirroring

details in the sky or star field. How did you construct this scene and were you pleased with its out-

come?

ME:

-work them

until worthy. I do have favourites and

am more proud of some over others.

Early Morning Frost started with a spiky

terrain that I tweaked with a twist and

sheer shader. A wide camera angle

made them flare out and I just had to

place the planet in the centre. The col-

our blue seems to be made for space

images would look repetitive.

8

Jungle Falls

Many Moons

Early Morning Frost

MARK EDWARDS 3DAD: -fi style artwork. Do you have som e good resources

(particular artists or books) that you reference for this style of art?

ME: I read a lot of Sci -fi growing up, even into my teens and High School years. The

cover art always drew my attention. Most of these artists were from the 50s and 60s

and I remember some of those book covers and they inspire me to this day.

3DAD:

from Hubble. Do you do this quite often in your post work, adding in real world as-

tronomical images?

ME: In the older version of Terragen you had to add backgrounds in postwork. With

TG2 you can add these background images into the main render. It makes it a lot

easier. A real image, especially the Hubble images, adds a wow factor as well as

realism.

9

Deep Freeze Blue Forever

MARK EDWARDS 3DAD: riod of time. Is this one of

your favourite series?

ME:

10

After Before

Way After

MARK EDWARDS 3DAD:

laborated with WeeLaddie

(John Robertson) on this

one, whom we interviewed

last year. Have you teamed

up with other artists to cre-

ate some of your other port-

folio.

ME:

collaborations over the

years. From the Renderosity

community: Choronr,

Buzzzzz, Corleonis, we did a

3 image series posted under

his name. A few others that

to start over is the Zodiac

series. My idea was to team

up with an artist from each

month of the zodiac. That is:

the artist had to be born in

that month and we would

render an image which fit

that astrological sign/ with

the stars aligned to the sym-

bol in the background.

an artist born in each

month and willing to team

up and share

11

Rare Rain

MARK EDWARDS 3DAD:

use to consider myself an intermediate to high end

user until I used this program....its like program-

ming....numbers without any box labels describing

quite a high learning curve to Terragen 2 for begin-

ners?

ME: There is a slight learning curve. Its just that I was

use to using Terragen .9.43. TG2 is completely differ-

ent. It takes a little time to get it under control and

use it the way you want.

3DAD:

Do your prefer to keep to other world landscapes,

rather than filling up an image with models or cre-

ating more sci -fi urban environments?

ME: Sci-

have the modelling experience to make buildings or space ships. I would love to do more sci -

fi type images.

12

Tilt

Starbase Crash Investigation

MARK EDWARDS 3DAD:

How important has Renderosity been in helping you develop your skills since

you started with digital art?

ME: Artists at Rero are very helpful and most share files or techniques. Feed-

back on the other hand is wrong. It consists of friends being nice and not

wanting to step on any toes. Comments are not always honest but, they are

nice. I think people should state both good and bad points of the image or

what looks good and what area(s) need more work. Being too harsh on any

image is just wrong.

3DAD:

that this was created using the expander filter in World Ma-

chine. Not being familiar with Terragen, what does the ex-

pander filter do and have you experimented with it much

more in your images?

ME: The terrain was created with World Machine

generator and a great program.

The expander filter can make blocks or circles and yes I have

used it often. I then import the terrain files into Terragen for

rendering.

13

Mars Rebirth

http://www.world-machine.com/index.php

MARK EDWARDS 3DAD: Looks like the expander filter was used in

for this image as well. Do you do this sometimes

with your images? Is there a writer in you?!

ME: I tried writing a sci -fi novel once, never got

I have a great idea for a fantasy/science type

thriller and may begin working on it with the

help of my sister who has a knack for the English

language and for putting sentences together in

an exceptional way. Its like I have a movie run-

down on paper. It really would be a page

turner or as a movie I think it would do well.

3DAD: Finally What three tips would you have

for those who are just starting out with 3D digital

artwork?

Tip one : Go with what you love. If its portraits,

people, landscapes, photography, abstracts,

architecture, whatever, then do it. Specialize in

masters of all types of art. You have to love it

and have so much passion for it that you want

to show others so they can love it as much as

you do.

Tip two ne looks at your work

they should know who did it before looking at the signature.

Tip three er.

14

3DAD: What is your background and how

did you become interested in 3D terrain

generation?

SS: Hello folks. My name is Stephen, and I am the sole creator of World Machine. I'm a software developer living in Seattle, WSS: I've been interested in

computer graphics for almost as long as I've been into computing -- and since I was one of those kids who geeked out on computer s in grade -school, that's

a fairly long time!

I first became interested in 3D Terrain because I love nature, and geology has always fascinated me. Recreating what we see w hen we step out our door is

a tricky and interesting problem.

3DAD: When and where was World Machine born?

SS: World Machine was born circa 2002. It's hard to believe it was that long ago! At the time I was finishing my degree in applie d m athematics at the Univer-

sity of Washington. The inspiration for World Machine came from two different sources:

15

Stephen Schmitt is an independent software

developer, the creator of World Machine , a

powerful terrain generator. Stephen began

research and development on terrain gener-

a tion solutions as a hobby while studying ap-

plied mathematics at the University of Wash-

ington. Stephen resides in the northwest cor-

ner of the USA in Seattle and also enjoys hik-

ing, skiing, beer brewing and photography.

http://www.world-machine.com/index.php

WORLD MACHINE 1) As an amateur artist, I was playing with the terrain rendering software "Terragen" and was amazed with the visual results, bu t unhappy with how difficult it

was to create terrain I wanted to render.

2) As a budding programmer, I was interested in computer game development. At the time, the internet gaming phenomenon was just beg inning, and if

you recall back then we were all using slow dial -up modems. It seemed that if we were to keep users from having to wait forever while downloading many -

megabyte map files, we would have to have a way for the terrain artist to synthesize the terrain they wanted on the user's co mpu ter without having to send

millions of pixels across the wire.

These two challenges were to run right into each other, and World Machine directly grew out of my experiments to solve these problems.

3DAD: You mention that there were some other terrain generation

tools at around the same time that World Machine came into being.

What were these tools and what were their limitations?

SS: As mentioned above, I've long been a fan of the original

"Terragen" software. Its in -built terrain generation was quite good actu-

ally, but frustratingly inflexible and unable to produce the kind of ter-

rains that I wanted to create. And every terrain generation tool out at

the time provided what I call the "masterpiece" approach to terrain

creation. You would craft the terrain much like an artist would create

a digital painting (indeed, quite frequently even using Photoshop!),

laboriously detailing the terrain as you desired. Which has two prob-

lems: Our brain is surprisingly bad at producing realistic looking terrain

details in height fields, so the results would often be quite fake looking.

You would also have to spend a long time painting this terrain. And if

you decide you want to make major changes --- you lose everything

3DAD: Was the main premise behind World Machine the fact that fractal terrains are difficult to control and edit, and that you were trying to bring greater

control to the user?

SS: Definitely. Fractal terrains are quite useful tools, but getting the result you want can be sometimes difficult. And if you w ant pleasing results you can al-

most never directly use the output -- you have to shape, combine, stretch, and process the raw terrain to get the look you want.

It occurred to me that if you were given careful control of how and when all of these steps are used, those very plain -seeming f ractal terrains could be rap-

idly transformed into something very sophisticated. Thus from the very beginning the focus has been to allow you to reach ins ide the terrain generation

'black box' and design the terrain generator the way you want.

16

WORLD MACHINE SS: As an aside, this is how I came up with the "World Machine" name in the first place. I envisioned WM as a "meta tool", where you design the machine

that then goes and creates the world for you.

3DAD: You have a graph based interface for creating terrains - was this an early part of the software? Was it a top feature for user s once this was in place?

SS: This was one of the key original parts to World Machine. I had been introduced to graph based interfaces in other software do mai ns such as audio pro-

cessing, and to me it "Just Made Sense" to use it to visualize the terrain creation process. It's always been one of the thin gs that's made World Machine

unique.

3DAD: You include some erosion mod-

eling functions in your software, includ-

ing a river erosion model - was this a

later feature to appear and was this

prompted by users wanting this fea-

ture or your own drive to improve

world Machine further?

SS: Just like the graph interface, ero-

sion was actually one of several "killer

features" in World Machine that popu-

larized it. At the time, there were nu-

merous other packages that featured

erosion, but none that neatly fit into

and also allowed the sort of control

that World Machine offered.

Erosion has always been one of the

most popular features of World Ma-

chine, and it would be a rare terrain

indeed that has no erosion applied to

it!

3DAD: You include some pre -built

macros that makes it easier to apply

textures to the landscapes. Tell me a

little about this feature?

17

Graph Based Interface

WORLD MACHINE SS: One of the things that I am very proud of in World Machine is its "Macro" capability. A Macro is simply a collection of World Ma chine actions (called

'devices') hooked together and customized to allow people to control them. A Macro is a black box -- it has knobs and switches, and you put inputs into it

and get results out of it, but you don't have to know what it's doing internally. These macros are stored in a library and ca n b e shared with others easily.

Some of the simple macros I've included with World Machine, in particular the "Basic Coverage" macro, were intended to be sim ple demonstrations. In-

stead, I've found that virtually everyone (including myself) uses this macro in real life projects!

I encourage people to share macros they created with other users, and in fact have created on the website an online library w here you can upload and

browse other peoples' macros.

3DAD: One function that excites me is the "explorer view" allowing you

to fly, drive or walk through the terrain. Being a Mojoworld fan, this is

quite an appealing feature! Was this idea borrowed from Mojo?

SS: I was a big fan of Mojoworld too! When you have a world that is de-

fined everywhere, its a very natural next step to want to explore it intui-

tively. Before this was available, users would run into situations where

they might have a great terrain defined, but the mountain you want is

sliced in half right on the edge of the world. Being able to simply look

around and say "OK, lets just move the render output box... THAT way. "

is a very powerful ability.

3DAD: From the last release of World Machine, what new feature or

function are you most proud of?

SS: One feature that I'm extremely proud of was introduced in World

Machine 2, and is called Layout Mode. This is essentially a vector -based

graphics tool that is seamlessly meshed into World Machine. With it, you

can directly control what areas receive which effects, create paths,

roads, or rivers, and much more. It finally provides the bridge between

the world of fully synthetic terrain and artist -painted ones. Unlike work-

ing in a paint program your layouts remain a part of the flexible frame-

work of World Machine and allow you to change the underlying terrain

model at any time.

18

WORLD MACHINE 3DAD: Do you have some projects where World Machine has been used where you have felt especially proud of?

SS: I hear all the time from users who find that World Machine makes their life better, and I can't emphasize enough how much th is feedback matters! The

World Machine website features a lot of these testimonials. Another example comes to mind from the earliest days of WM: I wa s contacted by the team

behind visual effects for the fantastic television series "Firefly", who wanted to use its terrain generation abilities for a pa rticular shot. Having WM be used at a

high level before it was even for sale as a commercial product was a great encouragement to continue development.

I'm also very proud every time someone does something with World Machine that makes me say "wow, I never thought of doing THA T!"

19

WORLD MACHINE 3DAD: The export functions seem very flexible and popular with the users. Are you enhancing this part of World Machine 2 even more in the near future?

SS: Definitely! World Machine now has a fair number of export formats, but there are a few weak spots that I plan to improve upon . In particular, exporting

nice high -resolution normal maps to go along with lower -resolution meshes is more cumbersome than it should be right now, and is one of the areas slated

for imminent improvement.

3DAD: World Machine is targeted to three different types of users: - game developers, skilled artists and enthusiasts. Which group of users tended to take up

the product first? Were you surprised with its initial take up as the software became available on the market?

SS: World Machine developed its original following among enthusiasts first. This is not surprising, because it's what I was too! As WM rapidly grew into a ma-

ture product I started getting feedback from people using it in completely different markets than I had imagined, ranging fro m g ame developers to archi-

tects to visual effect studios.

Indeed, one of the coolest things about developing World Machine has simply been to watch its uptake across so many different segments of the visual art

industry.

20

3DAD: Which direction will World Machine take next?

SS: Good question! There are many improvements that I really

want to add that will keep World Machine on the cutting edge

of terrain creation.

However, smartly developing software as a small business owner

is a constant set of careful compromise between pushing the

technology and not biting off more than you can chew.

I can tell you and your readers, however, about two broad di-

rections I want to encourage. One direction is to increase the

licensing of the core World Machine technology to others, let-

ting the on -the -fly creation abilities of World Machine help pow-

er the next generation of video games.

The other direction is to provide artists more tools based upon

natural, geological processes.

WORLD MACHINE SS: Expanding briefly on the second point, the existing building blocks in WM consist mostly of digital -art -type, mathematical opera tions performed upon the

terrain. We're all familiar with how confusing these can be at first. Just try explaining succinctly to someone the meaning b ehind the various Photoshop

blending modes! My desire is to move to a higher level of abstraction and operate mostly on geological principles, without gi ving up any of the control cur-

rently offered. This is no small task! I'm still deep in research and development along these lines, and don't know when the results will be available.

However, hopefully this does give some insight into the direction I ultimately want to travel with World Machine. I try to p ost frequently to my development

diary on the website to keep everyone up to date with what's happening with the future of World Machine.

3DAD: Finally what would you recommend to users who are just starting out with 3D art and who want to trial the use World Machine 2 ?

SS: Whether terrain is your focus or simply the background for the other things you're doing, I truly believe that having a convi nci ng environment is incredibly

important in 3D art. The Basic Edition of World Machine 2 is free for non commercial use. So experiment! Join the forums, as k questions.

You might be amazed at how easy it is to create some pretty unique worlds.

21

WOLFGANG SIGL 3DAD: From your renderosity bio you mentioned you started drawing and oil painting traditional art mediums. Have you

managed to take advantage of certain traditional art skills in your digital art work and if so, what are they?

WS:

3DAD: You obviously have a huge passion for digital art and you frequently post your work in Renderosity as well as on your

own website. How did you get started with digital art. Was Bryce your first 3D application?

WS: Early in 2001, a friend of mine who knew that I liked to draw with my computer, gave me information about software to

als, so I tried to learn the software by doing trial and error. With Bryce in opposite to Poser -

me to understand the functions and the handling of the software easily. So I worked with Bryce and learned to love it , and

3DAD: What were some of your initial challenges in creating

digital art and how did you overcome these challenges?

WS: Beside the handling of all the

functions of the software, the main

challenge has been to think tri -

dimensional. For instance: In 3 -d -

software like Bryce you work with 3d -

objects on an endless ground area. If

you create a 3d -scene with anything

in the foreground you should not for-

get the background for instance a

mountain - to give your picture the

necessary depth. And to let the sce-

place the mountain object deep

better to do this than to place the

mountain near the foreground and

make it smaller to give a pretence of

depth.

22

Wolfgang lives in the north

of Germany and started

working with Bryce begin-

ning in 2002. Since he can

remember, he has liked to

draw and paint. His daugh-

ter writes sci -fi models and

Wolfgang creates the cover

art for her books. He regular-

ly adds new images to his

large Renderosity gallery.

The Four Kingdoms

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?user_id=76998

WOLFGANG SIGL 3DAD: Were there some digital artists that you first looked up to, when you started out? Who were they and what did you like about the ir work?

WS:

1. Andy Simmons alias Hobbit from my point of view the Master par excellence.

2. Primaltruck / Primal - a Poser master.

3. David Robinson alias BamBam131 creates space ships in a masterful way.

3DAD: In your view what are the top two

strengths of Bryce? Is there an area that Bryce

could improve in?

WS: Strengths:

1. Easy handling of the functions (in compari-

son to other software) to get quick and good

results for the newcomer.

2. It is easy to create simple 3d -objects to

work with inside Bryce.

Improvements :

1. The export functions of self created 3d -

objects into other 3d -formats

2. The stability of Bryce when you create a

very complex scene sometimes it crashes and

your scene is damaged.

3. A better function to create stars in the night

skies the actual function is much too crude for

-fi pictures have stars created as postwork with

other software (Universe).

23

Rocky Desert

WOLFGANG SIGL 3DAD: -fi novels? Has some of her work inspired your images?

WS: I have created nearly all of her book covers, though she has her own ideas how a cover should look!

I think my daughter has been inspired mainly by my interest (and the interest of my wife as well) in Science Fiction to write he r first sci-fi novel.

3DAD: You gain support for your artwork from your family as well as the Renderosity community. Has this support and feedback carr ied your artwork further

than you first imagined?

Yes. Mainly my family supported me to de-

cide sometimes which version of a picture

would be the best. Also they supported me to

make pictures of other genres not just sci -fi.

3DAD:

new piece of artwork can often start with a

new object and grow from this including a

story around the object, which can sometimes

and tell me why it is

your favourite.

WS:

Basically I love all my artwork in the same

an amateur astronomer and have tried to

show some areas of the universe in such a

of a hobby astronomer.

-pictures too.

I show them in similar situations like humans.

shows spectacular points to live, not always a

24

Somewhere on Mars