[PR]
CGWORLD-sponsored student CG trial "WHO'S NEXT?" "WHO'S NEXT?" 1st in 2021). Among the high-level works that competed fiercely, "THE SPARK: BLACK WOLF", which received high praise from many judges, won first place. This time, we asked the creator about the learning method of CG production and points for creating works, and asked him to verify the performance of the mouse computer notebook PC "DAIV 5N" for creators, which was the prize.
● DAIV 5N
TEXT_Toshinari Kondo (Spool) EDIT_Hiroki Ikeda / Hiroki Ikeda (CGWORLD)
Utilizing video tutorials and mastering skills through days spent immersed in CG
"THE SPARK:", which won the honorable 1st place by brilliantly drawing a highly difficult photorealistic character. BLACK WOLF” author Su Haika. Mr. Zou, who is from Taiwan, said that he got interested in graphic design when he was in high school, and that is what got him started in CG. From there, I decided to go to Kyoto Seika University, which is a sister school of my alma mater, and came to Japan in 2017.
From this background, Mr. Zou majored in the "Animation Course, Department of Animation, Faculty of Manga" at Kyoto Seika University, but in his first class, an unexpected fact was discovered. Until now, he had thought, "If you draw the original picture, the computer will automatically turn it into a video (=animation)." Mr. Zou, who had not been very confident in his drawing ability for a long time and felt that he could not beat other people with handwriting, immediately reconsidered his future direction based on this fact. In the second half of his first year at university, he decided to pursue a career in 3DCG.
From there, Mr. Zou started learning about 3DCG and reached the level of completing "THE SPARK: BLACK WOLF" in less than three years. It's amazing how in such a short period of time he's mastered a wide range of tools, including ZBrush, Marvelous Designer, MARI, Substance Painter, XGen, Maya, and Photoshop. affirm. Of course, free tutorials on YouTube etc. are also quite useful for studying, but the paid ones have better content and sometimes detailed explanations, so it seems that the efficiency of studying is considerably improved. On the other hand, for Mr. Zou, who modestly says, "I'm not a genius," one of the important factors is the steady effort he made during his school days. It seems that once he immerses himself in his work, he becomes obsessed with it, and it is said that he devoted himself to CG production for 6 to 8 hours on weekends and several hours on weekdays. "It was just a day full of CG," he says with a wry smile, but he looks back on those days, saying, "I wanted to get better, so I did my best."
In fact, if you compare the work "THE SILENCER" that Mr. Zou produced in 2019 with a similar taste to this award-winning work, the difference in the degree of perfection is obvious. The overall shape, texture of the skin, hairline, discomfort around the eyes, etc. have been improved, and you can see that it has grown dramatically. However, Mr. Zou is somewhat confused as to why he was able to do it. Nonetheless, he seems to have a definite sense that he has "understood something" and said, "I'm sure I'll get better with practice."
Introducing all the tips for creating skin and hair that create "that atmosphere"
"THE SPARK: BLACK WOLF", which was created as a graduation project for university, is Zou's commitment. It's packed to the brim. For example, the setting of the work is a cyberpunk near future, but in order to bring out the humanness of the main character, ``I didn't put too much remodeled human elements in the face part, and appealed that he was a real human with blood and wounds.'' It says. Furthermore, considering that most of the main characters in sci-fi movies and games are Westerners, he dared to challenge himself to create cool main characters based on Asians. As for the technical aspects, I would like to point out "the shape of the head," "the texture of the skin," and "the hair." Strangely enough, it is quite interesting to see the points in common with the points that the judges highly rated.
Regarding the shape of the head, unlike Westerners, Asians, who do not have a clear facial unevenness, say, "If you don't pay attention to the structure, you will end up looking like a plastic person." It is said that he took care of it. In addition, since it is quite difficult for a beginner to create a skeleton from scratch, Mr. Zou uses various photographs of real celebrities and 3D scan data that can be purchased on the web (related URL: https://www.3dscanstore.com/3d) -head-models/male-head-3d-models/male-018-head-scan-cleaned), etc.
1 Creation of images that focus on guiding the line of sight
From the shape of almost all objects to the lights in the background, it is created to focus on the character's eyes. However, he didn't design it that way from the beginning, and he realized during the production process that it would make the picture more attractive.
2 Skin expression with attention to detail
In making the skin, he said that he was particular about expressing bruises, red spots, details of capillaries, and SSS materials. I aimed for a work that looks beautiful even when I focus on it, so instead of using the purchased texture as it is, I added skin expressions such as capillaries and bruises with Organic Brush and Basic Brush. By adding bruises, we are pursuing natural skin (see the figure below).
“When painting with MARI, it is important to create at least two layers, not just one. You can't achieve a natural look unless you increase the layers with color in mind.In the real world, after taking a photo, you apply a beauty mode filter to hide bruises and red spots on the skin, but CG Conversely, when you make it, by creating such a place, it becomes a natural atmosphere."
I also spent a lot of time adjusting the materials. In particular, the SSS Density Scale and specular map had a large effect on the results, and they used two maps to suppress reflections.
3 Using XGen to achieve natural hair including the hairline
The hair is created using Maya's XGen, but the points here are "utilization of the collection", "guide placement", "clumping density", and "hair color variation". For example, there are cases where the length and flow of actual hairstyles are extremely different depending on the location, so it is important to create separate collections. Of course, it's not impossible to create all the hair in one collection and adjust it with a region map, but that would "take a lot of time and be difficult to create beautifully" (Zou). Also, since the hair color is not a single color, Mr. Zou says, "I used the Ramp map to increase the color variation and increase the reality."
Using Collections
“Even within a single hairstyle, there are parts where the length and flow are extremely different, so it is important to create separate collections. It is also possible to make it as and adjust it with the area map, but I think it will take a lot of time and it will not be possible to make it beautifully.In this work, I have a two-block hairstyle, so I made three collections. The long part in the center, the short part on the side, and the hairline (bottom of the image) are all different lengths, so it's easier to make them separately, and it's easier to adjust the seams."
For those who want to observe details such as the hairline, "Robophot" is recommended as a reference site. You can see hair and skin with a high resolution reference many times up.
Using Guides
Since Xgen is designed to grow along the Guide, if you just place the Guide appropriately, it will not be beautiful. The following are points to note when using Guide that Mr. Zou summarized for study purposes.
Clumping Density Control
When creating a hairstyle, I basically use four modifiers: Clumping, Noise, Coil, and Cut. This work also uses only these four modifiers. Among them, Clumping plays a central role as it is the first modifier applied.
"Once you've arranged the Guide, instead of applying a lot of modifiers at once, it's a good idea to apply only Clumping and adjust the shape of the Guide and the value of Clumping while observing the effect. During Clumping" The clump map generation is also important, and this determines the clump density (number of clumps). If you understand this mechanism, you can easily create hair such as beards and eyelashes. One yellow line will make one bundle. ”
"In addition, when using the second or more Clumping, you can make a beautiful clump by increasing the density of "Generate Clump Map" to 3 times or more than before. For example, if you create 3 clumpings and the first has a density of 1, the second has a density of 3 or more, and the third has a density of 9 or more. In my case, I initially generated according to the guide, so the first one was 1, the second was 5, and the third was 18. There is no fixed numerical value for this density, so for the time being, I think you should be conscious of at least 3 times or more, and then adjust it while observing the effect.”
In this way, Mr. Zou won first place in the contest thanks to his constant efforts and various commitments. This time, using the mouse computer notebook PC "DAIV 5N" presented as the prize, performance tests based on the production of "THE SPARK: BLACK WOLF" were conducted. We explored its capabilities by comparing it with the desktop PC used when creating the work. How many specs are required for high-end CG production like digital humans? ? Please check it from the next page.
Next page: What specs are required for high-end CG production? Verification of DAIV 5N with GeForce RTX 3060! !
[[SplitPage]]Verifying the DAIV 5N mouse computer with RTX3060 based on the winning entry!
This time, we prepared a notebook PC for creators as a prize "DAIV 5N" and the current machine (desktop PC) that Mr. Zou uses at home. Using the materials and tools used in "THE SPARK: BLACK WOLF", it was verified by a test that assumed the work process.
DAIV 5N is equipped with an 8-core / 16-thread CPU "Intel Core i7-10870H Processor" and the latest GPU "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU" that supports real-time ray tracing. With high-performance parts and a 15.6-inch display, it is a model that can comfortably handle creative work. In addition, it is a major feature that it has a lightness of about 1.73 kg and is also mobile.
Zou's desktop PC was purchased for about 220,000 yen in March 2018 when he decided to take up the challenge of 3DCG. The 6-core CPU "Intel Core i7-7800X Processor" and the GPU "NVIDIA Quadro P2000" are the same as when they were purchased, but even at that time, high-performance parts were selected. In addition, the memory has been upgraded to 64GB, and the storage has been enhanced to multiple SSD + HDD.
DAIV 5N
Zou Peihua's current machine (desktop PC)
CPU rendering time with CASE 01 V-Ray 5
V-Ray In the verification of 5, part of the data of "THE SPARK: BLACK WOLF" was used, and the processing time was measured with two patterns of rendering resolution of 2K and 4K in CPU rendering. The test scene has 53751 vertices, 107258 edges, 53516 faces, 107032 triangles, 55130 UVs, 150,000 XGen lines, and 8K textures.
In the verification results, the DAIV 5N was 6 minutes 9 seconds at 2K and 16 minutes 9 seconds at 4K, and the current machine was 3 minutes 37 seconds at 2K and 16 minutes 9 seconds at 4K, winning by a large margin over the DAIV 5N. It was decided to The CPU equipped with DAIV 5N has higher performance than the current machine with 8 cores, 16 threads and 6 cores, but it is presumed that due to the memory of 16 GB, the performance could not be maximized. The DAIV 5N can be customized up to 64GB, so it would be better to increase the memory to at least 32GB, preferably 64GB for high-end CG.
Results of CPU rendering time with V-Ray 5
Baking time with CASE 02 Substance Painter
In Substance Painter verification, "THE SPARK: BLACK WOLF" We used data from the production process to measure the time required for baking. The test scene information is 6,154mil>6,054 polygons, Resolution.
Since Substance Painter's baking process reflects the performance of the GPU, the verification results of the DAIV 5N equipped with the latest GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU overwhelmed the current machine. However, Mr. Zou did not expect that the DAIV 5N was 3 minutes and 5 seconds, compared to the current machine's 25 minutes and 15 seconds. In addition, when painting with Substance Painter, Mr. Zou said, "I was able to work smoothly even with 4K textures."
Results of baking processing time with Substance Painter
Verification of usability with CASE 03 and other tools
Comfortable work with tools other than V-Ray 5 and Substance Painter I also verified the sex based on the production process of "THE SPARK: BLACK WOLF".
In the work of Marvelous Designer, Mr. Zou said, "I was able to use it normally," just like the current machine. When the Particle Distance setting was increased to 5mm, it sometimes stopped for about 10 to 15 seconds.
When MARI used the high-quality 16K textures sold by Texturing xyz, there were times when it hardened a little at first, but after that, "I was able to paint smoothly" (Mr. Zou). Also, in ZBrush sculpting, even with 6 million polygons, there was no problem at all.
Finishing the Verification
Renewal of negative impressions of notebook PCs. Considering the price, it is an attractive model for students
Through this verification, the DAIV 5N It turned out that it not only has performance that is almost the same as the current desktop PC, but also has very good GPU performance. On the other hand, in the verification of V-Ray 5, it was not possible to fully demonstrate the performance of the CPU, but if the memory is increased to 32GB or 64GB, there is a possibility that performance approaching that of the current machine can be drawn out. In that sense, it can be said that it is a model that will further improve convenience depending on the upgrade of parts.
By the way, Mr. Zou bought a laptop to study 3D when he first entered university, but tools such as MARI and Substance Painter didn't work properly, and the case was heavy. "I didn't have a very good impression of the laptop," he said. However, this time, by touching the comfortable and lightweight DAIV 5N, that impression seems to have been “renewed”.
For that reason, considering the price of less than 200,000 yen, Mr. Zou recommends that the DAIV 5N should be "a very attractive model" for students who frequently carry laptops. Also, even for students who do not, if they want to receive advice from school teachers at any time, DAIV 5N gives advice on how to use it, saying, "You can see the work anywhere."
