3d art

Artist
Showcase
Antony Ward
I’ve been working in the games industry for close to 16
years now and have been freelance for the last three.
During this time, I have worked for some of the biggest
companies in the industry and have experienced
nearly all areas of game development, with character
modelling, animation, MEL scripting and rigging
being my areas of choice.
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Materials and textures
Giving the character the right look
Before starting work,
mock up a background image
plane so you can get a proper feel for the
scene, and how it should be lit. We know
we want her to be up in the air, which
means a bright scene, with plenty of
clouds and blue sky behind her.
The next job is to nail the
05 lighting and the camera position.
Having these and the background in place will
help dictate the final look and feel of the
image. It’s also important to add lights to the
base of the rocket as we will later be painting in
the flames, which naturally emit light.
Athria Silo, Maya,
Photoshop (2009)
I decided to brush up on my
game art skills and create a
real-time character from the
ground up. I wanted to
create someone with a
futuristic feel; Athria was
born. She was built in Silo
and then made ‘game ready’
in Maya with all texturing
done in Photoshop.
Red Sonja
3ds Max, Silo, Maya,
Photoshop (2008)
For this image, I took an
existing 2D concept and
brought her kicking and
screaming into 3D, using
similar methods I adopted
for Flight of the Raven. I was
looking to develop my highresolution
modelling skills
and this seemed like a
natural step forward.
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Next, set to work on the main
colours for each element. Her body will
be the trickiest part as we’re looking to create
more natural skin tones, so we’ll work on these
first. We opt to use Maya’s misss_fast_skin_
maya shader to achieve a subtle Subsurface
Scattering effect.
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Now move on to the rest of her
clothing, first blocking in the main
colours you want before adding subtle
reflections to her visor and metallic areas. To
add more detail, we also apply basic tileable
Texture and Bump maps to her jeans and
jacket, to give them more of a denim and
leather appearance.
Kila Maya,
Photoshop (2004)
Kila is one of the characters I created in my first book, Game
Character Development with Maya. This was back before Normal
maps and sculpting became commonplace in the games industry
meaning the model and textures were among some of the key areas
to focus on.
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The final step is to apply a rim
lighting layer to the materials. As this
scene is shot in the sky, you want to add lots of
ambient lighting, which the Rim light does
perfectly. It also helps to pick out details
previously lost in the shadows.