In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs. This work got retweets by Doom’s creator John Romero and the official Doom account on Twitter!

Hi everyone,

My name is Vermilion Wlad and I’m a character artist and the biggest Dota 2 Steam Workshop contributor.

I’ll be going over the process of creating my rendition of a Cacodemon from the 1993 classic: “DOOM”.

I love doing fan-art for personal projects as it allows me to not worry about the concepting and design phase and go straight for technical parts, modeling, sculpting and texturing. I prefer Sketchfab to post my finished projects, because it’s always more fun to view the models in 3D instead of traditional renders and Sketchfab supports PBR and animations now, while being lightweight and working in your browser and even on mobile, so it’s the easiest way to share models for me.

Loving DOOM as a kid, I thought it would be a fun thing to render some DOOM monsters in more detail and fully 3D environment, and my choice went to the iconic happy little fella called Cacodemon. He’s round, he’s got all the details, he’s got bright colour palette, he’s got it all! Now some people may not know this (though by this year I imagine most people do), but our little guy was based on an Astral Dreadnought, a D&D monster, and you can definitely see the resemblance below.

While the Cacodemon sprite is obviously mirrored, I went to the Astral Dreadnought for it’s detailing, happy, but imposing look and asymmetry. With that I drafted my first blockout of the Astral Dreadnought, trying to incorporate subtle details into the face as much as possible.

I’m using a number of tools, including, but not limited to:

• Zbrush, for high-poly sculpts;
• 3D-Coat, for retopo, texture painting and occasional UV mapping;
• 3dsmax, for all other low poly needs;
• Photoshop, for texture editing;
• Substance Designer, for material definition;
• xNormal, for map baking.

Probably the most important part for me on this step was making sure all the teeth were as asymmetrical as possible, which the AD design really made possible. His teeth are sharper and thinner on the end and it doesn’t look like he’s ever hiding that perfect smile of his.

I’ve used Polygroups to do the tricky part like the “tubes” on his chin and I separated the teeth, the eye and the horns on to a separate sub-tools.

While having the Polygroups of roughly the same resolution, you can sculpt on both of them with your brushes and polish them seamlessly together with polish brushes. This is really useful for creating those hard to reach places and speeds up your workflow considerably, especially when combined with Dynamesh and Zremesher.

As you can see, the sculpt went through discernible stages, starting from the initial AD draft, going to the cacodemon form and then finalizing it with subtle details that will work best combined with dramatic lighting that Sketchfab can provide.

As a rule I work from the lowest resolution possible, slowly building up the design and resolution. The Dynamesh system and Zremesher make it such a smooth workflow, you rarely have to worry about the polyflow or whatnot and just focus on the designing/sculpting.

Now, after my sculpt is finished and I’m happy with it, just as our Cacodemon is happy with life, I’ll get on to polypainting the guy. Polypaint allows you to use all of the sculpting surface you created to quickly create a color map directly on your high poly model that you can bake down on your low-poly model! And with the help of some tools, Polypainting can become easy even with complex models.

Polypaint is a great tool even for color blockouts, but with the right tool it can become even better!

I’ve created a number of polypaint brushes that utilize Zbrush’s automasking system, which allows you to paint in crevices, high points or everything in the middle. Using the combination of Cavity, Layer and Sponge brushes you can take a full advantage of your sculpt and transfer all of the details into the polypaint effortlessly.

I start with the base tone that I just lay out flat. The we’ll go over with the Cavity and Sponge brushes to create the sense of volume and smooth everything out. Using the custom alpha to put in some subtle detailing like veins and covering it with Layer brush keeps the detailing but makes it subtle. And to finish up with slight Cavity and Sponge strokes of different color to bring the volume back out.

Now that our sculpt and polypaint are done, it’s time to bake down our maps. I’m using xNormal to get out vertex color, ambient occlusion, bent normal and normal maps. But why Bent Normals you might ask? We’re going to use them for our final color texture as a substitute for point light bakes.

For color texture, we’re going to start with a base grey color. Putting Ambient Occlusion bake with Multiply on top of it, it already might serve as a base to handpainting a texture, but we’ll push it a bit further.

Putting Red and Green channels from our Bent Normals map and baked low-poly Ambient Occlusion make it a far better texturing base, and since we already have our color baked, we’re going to put it on top of our base in Hard Light mode.

Now it’s just a matter of manual handpainted tweaks here and there to make certain parts pop, like the teeth, the eye and the forehead. It’ll all truly shine when put into the Sketchfab renderer though.

I’ve also used Substance designer to draft out the material setting for the Sketchfab PBR rendering. It might look like our Cacodemon is a little too happy from huffing paint, but in fact there’s an important difference between his blue frontal part that is just reflective all around. His eye and mouth share a similar “wet” feel to them and that’s why they should reflect the light completely and be as shiny as possible for that lively twinkle.

Horns and teeth are largely non-reflective, as they should be, with the exception where his horns connect to the body, this makes the material transition smoother and keeps the two together.

Now for the rest of his body I want a reflective, but subtle material that makes him feel both slimy and gross in that hellish kind of way, but at the same time not feeling like he’s sweating profusely.

With that, our little meatball of happiness is ready to be imported into Sketchfab, to get my favourite part, and that is Lighting Setup.

Sketchfab features a number of varying environments for your models and allows you to set up three-point light systems on top of that. At first I wanted to go for a hellish orange lighting and hard shadows, but in the end settled on “toned down” setup, with two camera-fixed back lights to highlight all the bumps and wrinkles our happy hellish abomination has and a frontal “Rembrandt” to get that eye shine.

Combined with the environment light, we get plenty of soft highlights all around and the frontal light brings out the slimy mouth and the eye.

With that done, Sketchfab also offers number of post-processing techniques that allow you to bring your model even closer to that look you wanted and imagined.

DOOM: Cacodemon by vermilionwlad on Sketchfab

Thanks to Sketchfab, all of the effort we’ve put into this happy monstrosity is not just wasted on a couple of static shots, but fully rendered in 3D, which allows you to share it with peers and communities and just provides a nice place to showcase your models. More so, ArtStation allows for Sketchfab viewer integration, so you can put up your high-poly shots and a finished product all on the same page.

So I just want to say thanks to the Sketchfab team for this amazing tool that more artists should use. Cheers!

Thanks Vermilion!

You can see more of Vermilion’s work here on Sketchfab and on his ArtStation. You can see him working on new Dota 2 assets on Twitch, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

- Bart

We like pushing boundaries here at Sketchfab. Last week, we showed you 4D video.

Today, how about voice controlled VR?

Click the link, enable your microphone and speak your commands for Voice Controlled Virtual Reality.

Tips: It only works on Chrome. Start by speaking the numbers to navigate between annotations. Lastly, Dropbox may run out of quota, so this preview is only for fast clickers!

Every Friday our team members can work on what we want for ‘Friture Friday’ (because we’re French). Last week, Marc’s friture led to the 4D video, this week, it’s Paul’s voice controlled VR. You can see the rest of our Fritures in the Lab.

We’ve built experiments, API hacks, cool plugins, and more. We’re open to suggestions, so email us your Friture ideas, we love a challenge.

Have a creative weekend!

-Sketchfab Team

Last week, we staff picked Vincent Scalia’s Blue Print: Ravin’s Hands. It made clever use of some of the Sketchfab rendering settings and people were interested to learn more about this effect. Here’s how he did it!

In this tutorial I will show how to set up a stylized 3D blueprint for Sketchfab. Although I used Blender to make this asset, the options that will be used to make the setup are available in every major modeling software.

Start out with an existing mesh. We’ll create a copy of that mesh and modify it to achieve the outline cell shading effect. To do this, duplicate your mesh and put it to the side. Make sure you have a way to place it back at the original position when you are done! (i.e. move a certain distance or put a reference object there as shown in Fig. 1) Now, scale the mesh along its own normals (blender [Alt]+[S]) so that it is about 1.07 times it’s original size. The scaled mesh (bottom) is shown to the side of the original model (top):

Fig 1: Positions of original and scaled mesh

We will use backface-culling to create the rendered border around the object to act as chalk lines. Since this option is dependant on the face normals, we will have to invert them on the large mesh. Flip the normals (in Blender: Tools>Shading and UV’s> Normals> Flip direction). The normals are flipped (in Fig. 2, the blue line shows the normal direction, and it faces toward the inside of the mesh):

Fig. 2: Mesh normals are flipped

Now you must give the two meshes a color. The large mesh needs to be pure white (#FFFFFF), and the original mesh should be a blue-ish color (#0033CC). Once the meshes are colored, place the white mesh back at the same position as the blue mesh. Now is also a good time to duplicate both meshes and put the new copy in profile to the top of the camera. The mesh is colored, as shown in Fig. 3:

Fig. 3: Coloring of mesh

Now, the next part of the blueprint process is to add annotations, which is easy to do in Sketchfab. But if you really want your model to look like a blueprint, you must create some handwritten ones to place around your scene (the messier your writing, the better :-)). This is easiest to perform with a drawing tablet, but if you do not have one, it is still possible using the mouse. If you don’t have a mouse, go buy one. The area around the annotation text you’re making needs to be transparent, so create a new image in GIMP or Photoshop and fill it with transparency. The image will be transparent, per the settings shown in Figure 4 for GiMP:

Fig 4.: Creating a transparent image

Now you can draw whatever you like on the image using a white brush. Try adding variation when creating the image so you don’t have too many obviously repeating annotations when you add them to your scene. Numbers and comments that make no sense at all, like the ones in Fig 5, will add realism to the blueprint. Next, export your image as PNG, import it into your modeling software, and UV unwrap several planes and map them to the image. If you scale the planes at all, just try to keep all the text the same size and resolution still. Place the planes around your scene. The planes are placed, they are mapped to the image, and the have transparency, as shown in Fig 5:

Fig. 5: Transparent annotations in scene

All that is left to do is add a background to your scene and import the model into Sketchfab. A simple box will work for the background. Make sure you scale it so it can engulf the entire model and have some room inside for the camera. Now color the box the same as the blue object. The box is colored the same, as shown in Fig 6:

Fig. 6: Example of background box

Now you are ready to import the model into Sketchfab. After the upload finishes, go to “Edit 3D Settings” to change the way the model will appear in the viewer. The first tab to edit is “Scene” depicted by a little gear icon. You must now enable “Shadeless” under the shading drop down menu, and “Wireframe”. Only a very light amount of wireframe is needed. You can also give your model any filters you want, but the essentials are “Grain” (animated or still, your preference) and “Sharpness” which will make the blueprint look more like paper. The Filters are set, shadeless and wireframe are enabled, with sample values shown in Fig 7:

Fig 7: Render settings for scene

Now you can probably see the model inside the box, but it will look white, as backface culling has not been activated for your white material. You can do this under the “Materials” tab depicted by a mountain landscape with a sun above it. Under the “Faces Rendering” menu, select “Single Sided” for the white, and “double sided” for the blue. Backface culling is set, as shown in Fig 8:

Fig 8: Backface culling set

The final step is to enable the transparency for that annotation image. If you imported the model as .zip or .rar, then this might be done for you, otherwise, open up the the annotations material and import the image. Mapping the image will be done for you. Enable transparency for the material, and select the annotation image as the mask. The image is enabled, as shown in Fig 9:

Fig 9: Annotations looking good! :-)

Now your model is ready to be shared with the universe! Make sure you give it #Blueprint so I can find it. Save settings and publish the scene.

Blue Print: Ravin’s Hands by VincentScalia on Sketchfab

Scientific illustrator Mieke Roth has an international reputation for her meticulous attention to detail. In her search for a better medium to communicate information, she has developed a custom web application on top of Sketchfab. In this post she explains all the steps that allow you to recreate it.

This article has been republished from Mieke’s blog with her permission. You can find the original article here.

Get more out of your 3D models!

I love making (biological) 3D models. It is fun, the base of the work I do for clients, I use them in my illustrations, and it is great to display them as a portfolio on Sketchfab.

But just having 3D models for display it isn’t enough, is it? And I don’t do games - yet.

Luckily the use of Sketchfab isn’t limited to that. In fact, you can make rather fancy applications with Sketchfab. Since I really love to see people make more use of the real possibilities of 3D online, here an easy tutorial on how I made the application I used for my post on the sex of ducks (link opens in a new tab) .

The whole (standardized) application is available as a zip-file here.

The Application

Here the application I made for the post on the sex of ducks, so you have an idea on how such an application looks and works. Underneath the model, that is already active, you can click on tabs that are linked to the annotations within the model. The model moves accordingly when you click the tabs.

The Basics

There is only one file within the application you have to worry about for now, the rest is scripting and layout. I named that file “viewer_app.html”. In this file I added some explanatory text so you don’t get lost. But first things first, we start with the basics:

Adding the application to your website

You need a few things to be able to add the application to your website:

• A Sketchfab account with a 3D model you want to display in the app
• Your own website
• A possibility to upload separate files and folders to your website
• A little bit of HTML knowledge and an HTML editor

That’s it. Now you can unzip the application and start working on the content.

Making annotations in Sketchfab

But before you can work on the application itself, you need to have a model with annotations to display of course! So, you have an account. Now you start with uploading a 3D file. If it is uploaded you then can make modifications to the model. There are a number of modifications you can make, for example:

• Change the 3D settings. Here you can change the field of view, post processing filters, the background, the materials used on the model and the lighting and a number of other things
• Add annotations. Annotations are easily made. You rotate the model so that you have a clear view on the point on the model you want to have annotated and then you click on that point. A box opens that enables you to add content. For this application I most of the time only add a title because I use the application to add additional information.

If you are done with the model you safe it and publish it so it is viewable for the rest of the world.

The annotations are numbered in the order you see them in your dashboard. These numbers are similar to what you will see in the viewer_app.html you have to edit for the application to work, so everything is rather strait forward.

Viewer_app.html

In the application you will see some folders and in the root one html file. This file, viewer_app.html, is a snippet. So it needs to be embedded into another html file. The easiest way to do that, so you don’t have to worry about messing up things by entangling all the html, is to use an iframe. That is just one line of code:

<iframe width=”100%” height=”500″ src=”viewer_ app.html”></iframe>

You can change the width and the height to anything you see fit of course. And the name of the html file according to the content. The reason for the use of an iframe is that you always have your application separate from your other content. If you want to change something in the future, this will make everything a lot easier.

For WordPress users: for most (older) themes you need to use a plugin to be able to use iframe. On this page you will find the best and most recent.

Changing the code

Within viewer_app.html I added accompanying text so you don’t get lost within the file. The text pieces are recognizable by this start and finish: <!– text –> . Since there is also other text in there that will be helpful if you want to dig deeper, I added numbers to the text that matters now.

Of this text, numbers 1 till 3 are the most important.

Here is where you add titles to the tabs:

And here’s where you add HTML content to the tabs:

To initialize your application you need to add the ID of the model (for example the model of the reproduction tract I used in my post about the sex of ducks is the last piece of this url: https://sketchfab.com/models/33bdf5055004465aaceb09cc431a42fb you want to display. )

Finally, you need to connect your tabs to annotations:

Uploading to your website

If you are done adding annotations to the model and content to the application, you can upload the folder with the application to your website and add the iframe code, with the correct referral to the viewer_app.html (or whatever you named it), to the page you want to show the application on.

Result

And that’s it! I would love to see what you made with it! The moment I add a different kind of application to my website, I will work on a next tutorial so you can add them too!

We’re happy to announce that we’re helping re-jumpstart the Unity Community Art Contest! This month’s theme is “Awesome Karts”. Have you ever played Super Mario Kart? Then you should take part!

Mad Mario - Bowser by catboyking on Sketchfab

Read the rules and post your work in progress models with Sketchfab on the Unity forums thread.

Take the driver out and create the “Kart” model of your dreams! Be creative! There is a lot of room for interpretation here. We want to see your “Awesome Karts”.

Good luck and have fun!

-Michael

The entries for our Heroic Voxels contest are in, voted on and counted! 39 artists submitted 48 entries (you can see all of them here) and I think it’s fair to say that this was the hardest contest to vote for yet. Before I continue let me refresh your mind: the challenge was to design a fantasy diorama and use annotations to tell a story. So don’t forget to actually read them!

Okay, on to the prizes.

Judging was done by the entire Sketchfab team and by our judges. The vote of a judge carried twice the weight of a team vote - they’re the experts after all. We also asked each judge to comment on their favorite entry. Here’s who we had on board:

Voxel artists:

• Zach Soares - @y2bcrazy - contract Voxel artist and animator
• Ben Weatherall - @SunraHeadgear - artist of Crossy Road
• Gabriel de Laubier - Elbriga on Sketchfab, winner of our Star Wars contest

Voxel tools:

• Tim Wesoly - CEO of Minddesk Software GmbH and Lead Developer of Qubicle
• Sylvain Huet - CEO of 3D Slash
• @Ephtracy - creator of MagicaVoxel

Enjoy!

3rd Prize - The Hydra Protector by ediediedi

Zachary Soares:

This had the most solid and consistent style. They weren’t afraid to setup the scene outside of a voxel grid and use voxels as a means to making art and not completely dictate the results.

The scene in itself tells a good story, and the annotations say just enough to complete it.

Gabriel de Laubier (Elbriga):

An amazingly dense, yet readable scene, full of beautiful details, a bold yet magnificent palette, and very fun annotations. Presenting the scene as a live RPG is a great concept and perfectly carried-out. The characters are simple but dynamic and adorable. I only wish this was a real game!

The Hydra Protector by ediediedi on Sketchfab

Ediediedi wins a $50 budget to 3D Print his work at 3D Hubs, a Qubicle Home license, 3 months of Sketchfab PRO, a Sketchfab T-Shirt and a Cardboard.

2nd Prize - Battling the Guardian by NomadKing

Zachary Soares:

While the golem itself has a simple design, the level of detail on the scene is gorgeous. The hidden cave underneath and the subtle details that bring life to the world he’s buildings. The colors blend well with one another and with minor improvements the scene would be perfect.

Gabriel de Laubier (Elbriga):

This scene really stands out, it’s full of poetry, the Guardian is very touching, and I love how it mixes different moods and lights, especially the hidden scene under the ground, which is very ingenious. A perfect take on the theme!

Battling the Guardian by NomadKing on Sketchfab

NomadKing wins a $100 budget to 3D Print his work at 3D Hubs, a Qubicle Home license, 6 month of Sketchfab PRO, a Sketchfab T-Shirt and a Custom Cardboard.

1st Prize - SkyLand- Erin and her leap of faith by Midio

Ben Weatherall:

Style, colour choice, presentation, great cinematic camera angles and tour through the model with the diving into 7 levels of hell narrative. I’m a fan of the top city part. I picked this for best overall.

Zachary Soares:

The scene, while large, executes its scale perfectly and feels very much like a small diorama of an even larger world. The hierarchy from top to bottom feels complete and works beautifully with the story being told in the annotations. The story is both hopeful and dark.

Tim Wesoly:

Very detailed scene with a lot of hidden areas that can be discovered by using the annotations. Best use of annotations of all entries.

Ephtracy:

Following the true heart through the cloud, falling from the heaven to the hell, really impressive

SkyLand- Erin and her leap of faith by Midio on Sketchfab

Midio wins a Lego Studio box, a $200 budget to 3D Print his work in full color at 3D Hubs, a Qubicle Master license, a Parrot Airborne Cargo drone - sponsored by 3D Slash, 12 months of Sketchfab PRO, a Sketchfab Hoodie & T-Shirt and a Custom Cardboard. Wow :)

Thanks so much for participating everyone, we had an awesome time following your WIPs and casting our votes. We’ll see you at our next contest!

Can’t get enough of voxel art?

Thanks to Heroic Voxels, Sketchfab is now quickly becoming a home to voxel artists - check out the voxel tag gallery. To celebrate that fact, we’re now hosting a weekly voxel design challenge - details on Twitter and Facebook. Have fun :)

- Bart

Hi Tennis Fans,

Our friends at VRUnicorns are hosting a “Call For Balls” to find the holy grail of tennis ball designs to include in their new virtual reality (VR) game #SelfieTennis. A VR game where you play tennis against yourself using the HTC Vive. I mean, there’s nothing like playing with your own ball(s).

How do I make my own ball(s)?

It’s super easy to participate:

When you’re done, you’ll be left with a masterpiece like so:

If you have any questions about the contest, Tweet @VRUnicorns on Twitter.

Have fun!

A friend to all games,

-Michael

In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.

BOSi USA is a video game company as well as an art outsourcing studio that provides high quality 2D and 3D art for companies around the world. For more info you can check out our site: bosiusa.com.

This model and texture was created by Shuai , one of our 3D artists on our art outsourcing team. Shuai will step you through the process he used to create the texture for this model. We are always ready and willing to answer any questions on the creation of our art assets, so if you have questions about this or any of our other models, please don’t hesitate to ask us.

Step 1: Rough color and overall light.

I use the brush tool to paint the major colors and large light and dark areas. This gives a rough idea of the overall color palette and general lightness and darkness of the model as a whole.

At this stage, I try to avoid painting too many details, or colors that are in high contrast from others as far as saturation and intensity because I am trying to establish the main colors and lightness and darkness.

Step 2 : Basic light and shadow

I use the pen tool to strengthen the relationship between light and shadow that was started in the first step. This step concentrates on light and shadow rather than color, although small amounts of color can be added.

Though not much color is added at this stage, the model becomes much more bold, and details begin to show.

Step 3 : Reference Textures

At this stage it is important to add color based on reference images and textures. Color needs to be added at the same time as texture to avoid muddy or smudged details.

For this model I found some tree, fungus, and moss textures to use for the coloration and texture.

Step 4: Final Lighting and Color

In this stage I create a lightmap. This creates shadows and bright areas on the model as a whole. I then use the lightmap in an additive layer over the image. This causes light and dark, as well as shadows to be on top of the already textured image.

This particular model has many glowing magical gems which give off light. This effect is achieved using the same lightmap.

Sketchfab is excellent for showing models like this because it can use shaders and textures the in the same way as great game engines such as Unity, Crytek, or Unreal. This is excellent because it gives you a good idea of what the model will look like in your game. We hope this was useful and we look forward to seeing everyone’s amazing art on Sketchfab.

You can view the final product in this embed from Sketchfab:

Forest Walker by BOSi USA on Sketchfab

Thanks guys!

You can see more of BOSi USA’s work here on Sketchfab, on their website, ArtStation and Facebook page.

- Bart

Jean Vouillon posted an awesome Cardboard hack on the Sketchfab forum: he connected a controler using a MakeyMakey to his phone, allowing him to navigate in VR. Let’s see how he did it!

First of all, even if I’m just mentioning iOS in the following text, I am pretty sure that you can achieve the same thing with your Android device.

Today, it is very easy to experiment VR with a smartphone and a cardboard viewer. But once the device is inside the viewer, interaction and navigation become a problem.

One simple solution, is to have a controller connected to your device, you can use without the need to look at it.

1 - The MakeyMakey

The MakeyMakey is a tiny Arduino based board which allows to connect, via USB, a computer to virtually anything in order to create funny experiments.

Moreover, the MakeyMakey can be plugged to your iOS device via an Apple’s USB Camera Adapter (Lightning or 30 pins) and can be seen as an external keyboard. However, to do so, you have to make some changes in the internal settings of the board, using the Arduino application.

Don’t worry, no need to be an electronic wizard! Eric Rosenbaum, co-inventor of the MakeyMakey, wrote a great post, detailing the steps to follow. (Note, that the url of the defitech.ch article, mentioned in the post, has changed to http://www.defitech.ch/handigeek.php?item=172)

If the procedure went well, you should be able, for example, to navigate the lines of a note by touching simultaneously one of the arrows and the « earth » area from the front face. At last, don’t worry about the « usb io board…» error message popping out each time you connect your MakeyMakey: just dismiss it!

2 - The Gizmo

To make a (quick and dirty) joystick from the MakeyMakey, you just need a solderable breadboard (recommended size 47mm x 95mm, which matches the size of the MakeyMakey), a 3x6 11mm straight pin header, a five-ways push button and of course some wire and a soldering iron.

Position the 3 sets of pin header on the breadboard, in order to plug it on top of the MakeyMakey, then the push button. Now the game consists of appropriately connecting the pins of the connector to the pins of the push button. You can check the annotations of the model below for more precision.

Makey Makey Case w/ Boards by jvouillon on Sketchfab

3 - The Code

Now it’s code time! First, copy and paste the exemplar code given on the Sketchfab viewer API page in a text file and save it as a html file.

Start by adding the parameter cardboard : 1 at the end of the initialization, in order to have the stereoscopic view. For the sake of this tutorial I’m going to keep things simple. The idea is to intercept keystrokes, particularly W,S,A and D (and just because I wired my board this way!), to trigger actions like moving the camera forward, backward, and around the target. This can be achieved by inserting, where you can read the comments // API is ready to use // Insert your code here the following code:

document.onkeypress = function(event){
    var unicode=event.keyCode? event.keyCode : event.charCode;
    …
}

Each time a key is pressed, this function is called and the variable unicode set to the code of the key: 97 for A, 100 for D, 115 for S and 119 for W. So, by using a switch statement it is easy to associate a specific action to a key:

switch(unicode)
                    {
                        case 119: //W - UP
                            action…
                        break;
                        case 97: //A - DOWN
                            action…
                        break;
                        case 115: //S - LEFT
                            action…
                        break;
                        case 100: //D - RIGHT
                            action…
                        break;
                        default:
                            default action
                        break;
}

Because each action changes the camera position, the api.lookat( ) function must be called after the switch to have the view updated.

One drawback, is that iOS does not allow key repeat, therefore you must repeatedly push the switch button to have a continuous movement. However, you can get around this problem by putting the actions in a loop function and using the switch to set flags. In this case, a push starts the movement and another one stops it.

You can test this example and I encourage you to take a look at the source code which is largely commented. Not being a code ‘guru’, I’m pretty sure there are better ways to achieve the same results, so be indulgent!

Conclusion:

In my opinion, the MakeyMakey is a great way to play around with VR experiments. Of course, because you must write your own html file, you can’t use this gizmo with the VR button from the Sketchfab 3D player. May be, it could be great to have some keyboard shortcuts wired in the player, in order to be used with such external device?

Thanks Jean!

You can find more of Jean’s work here on Sketchfab.

- Bart

LinkedIn is the world’s favorite professional network with millions of members sharing their skills, expertise and publishing though provoking articles. Ever expanding their features, we’re excited that you can now embed Sketchfab directly in your LinkedIn blog posts.

Corentin Metgy describes compelling reasons why journalists and titans of industry are already leveraging Sketchfab to illustrate their ideas. Read his LinkedIn Post and see it in action.

Don’t forget, you can also add Sketchfab right into your LinkedIn profile to show your 3D skills.

Van gogh Room by ruslans3d on Sketchfab

We can’t wait to see how the LinkedIn publishing community will leverage our platform!

- Natalia

In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.

Greetings!

I am known to you all under the name Zug Zug (That was my favorite orc saying from Warcraft). I am 27 years old, married and have children, so sometimes I am painting with one hand and changing diapers with the other ;)

A bit about me

From early childhood I was a big fan of computer games, as I am nowadays. I especially love MMORPG and RPG in fantasy style. And it is not hard to guess that I’m a big fan of Blizzard games, especially World of Warcraft. Warcraft actually inspired me to become a 3D Artist. In one moment I felt it’s not enough just to play games and I wanted to create my own worlds and crazy characters and etc. Initially my drawing skills were like children’s pictures at kindergarten… hehe. But I never gave up and was learning hard “day by day, kickin’ all the way, I’m not cavin’ in”… Reminds me of a south park episode about Warcraft ;)

Image from South Park

In less than six months I got my first freelance work and I was very happy! Nowadays I get tons of freelance work so it looks like sleep-work-sleep-work and I love it. It is funny but most times I didn’t search for freelance work, but the work found me. I post some WIP of my works at polycount and unity 3d forums, also when I have free time I do some assets for the Unity Asset store.

And now let’s talk about Fisherman Hut!

Actually it got here accidentally… It is a small environment piece from an RPG game called Tanzia, which I’ve worked on for the last 2 years as a freelancer and made almost all the environments, props, icons, and more. During this time I loved this project and have become friends with the developers. Tanzia will be available on Steam this Spring and it is a chance to see Fisherman Hut in “real life” hehe.

I made the Fisherman Hut about year ago for a beach-side area called “The Docks”. Sketchfab’s lighting looks really good, so about a month ago I decided to see how the Fisherman Hut looks at Sketchfab as a small diorama. Now my goal is to get the game lighting to look that good! ;)

My pipeline: Understanding what to do I start by thinking about the environment and the climate around. Next I focus on the story of the location: who is living there and how, what features of culture and lifestyle they have. Then I will think about materials that would be used for creating buildings and props.

My pipeline: Concepts

When I have collected enough information, I starting rough silhouette/form concepts.

My pipeline: Modeling, UV mapping and Texturing

When I know all the assets and buildings I need to do I start Modeling + UV mapping, most of my works are low poly and optimized for mobile devices with tileable textures, overlapped UV maps and modular elements in models. For example I can reuse wooden plank texture for dozen of buildings and save some performance and game build size.

Most textures I do in hand painted style, using 3D Coat and Photoshop.

So my pipeline looks like Blender+3d Coat+Photoshop. For rendering I prefer Marmoset. If needed I also set up the scene in Unity 3D or Unreal Engine. Who can set up the scene better than the Environment Artist? ;)

Fisherman Hut by zugzug on Sketchfab

About Sketchfab

At first I did not pay much attention to Sketchfab, but later I started to see lot of great works there and ability to zoom in and look around the model was awesome. There’s no easier way to share a model for concepting, getting feedback, asking for suggestions from other artists, etc. Now I can not imagine any 3D Artist without a Sketchfab account. Sketchfab became a big part of my pipeline, and I want to say big Thanks to Sketchfab for the great job.

Also I am available for freelance, just mail me zugzug.art@gmail.com

Thanks for your attention and may your wacom pens never dull !

Thanks Zug Zug!

Check out more of Zug Zug’s work here on Sketchfab and on his ArtStation.

- Bart

In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.

Hello fellow Sketchfab Users,

My name is Peer Draeger. I’ve been working in the games industry for over 8 years years now, with some excursions into the world of visual effects here and there, mostly for German television history documentaries and museums. I’ve worked on many platforms, from pc to, handheld consoles, and lately mobile games at german publisher flaregames.

First of all thank you so much for the many likes and the staff picks I received on the hand painted texture environments. These were originally part of a mobile game, which sadly never saw the light of day. It was supposed to be a fully-fledged rogue like dungeon crawler, and we had a ton of different environments, monsters and loot to find.

It was actually not very far from completion, but the publisher changed its mind in terms of what their audience was going to be, so we had to cancel the entire thing after over a year of development. At the end of development the team was nearly 30 person strong, with me leading the art team. Although we never saw our worked released, we had a ton of fun.If we had finished the game, it would surely have been a more complete game experience than most free2play games offer.

I took some of the environments I did, and improved them for a better presentation. For the versions here, I took some liberties, assembled small scenes and created some additional props.

This looks slightly better than the version we had running on mobile, mainly on the lighting part. The levels were randomly generated, so everything is based on tiles and we could not bake lightmaps for ingame use.

Dungeon by pepedrago on Sketchfab

My main tools are 3ds Max for modeling and Photoshop for texture painting.

For painting textures I’ve also deeply fallen in love with 3DCoat. I’ve been looking for a software that that has a good connection to Photoshop and 3dsMax, and 3DCoat has very simple one click solutions for both.I recommend having a look at Kevin Tan’s tutorials on Gumroad if you haven’t considered using 3DCoat for texture painting yet. That will probably convince you.

The textures look very soft, so what I wanted was an equally soft and warm lighting.I usually prefer baked lightmaps for these kind of environments, as you get a far better control. You can use a second UV channel for a lightmap when using the “classic shadeless” mode in sketchfab. To layout the UVs for this channel, I just ran an automatic unwrap. The bake of the lighting was done in 3dsmax with a couple of simple lights using global illumination.

On top of the lightmaps, I did some further color correction to give more mood to the scene, especially lifting up the blacks and tinting them slightly purple.

The Desert Tomb by pepedrago on Sketchfab

The desert sand was created with free modifier for max called Houdini Ocean. It can create super nice ocean surfaces, and I just threw an optimized modifier on top of it to crank down the polys.

The process with creating the assets is pretty straight forward. I didn’t keep any WIPs of the environments, so I quickly made up a chest.

1. Concept for getting the general idea and establishing a color palette. 3D coat can actually load in an image for color picking, so this becomes very handy there.
2. Modelling and unwrapping
3. Laying down base colors on separate layers. This will make it a whole lot easier in 3DCoat. There’s a nice addon for the 3dsmax UV unwrapper called Polyunwrap which lets you render UV islands pretty quickly.
   
4. Texture Detailing in 3dCoat and some touch up afterwards in 3ds max.

You can see the finished result here:

Chest by pepedrago on Sketchfab

Big props to Sketchfab for creating such a great platform to showcase and share our work. It’s a huge inspiration for me to come here and browse all the great artworks. Since I found Sketchfab over a year ago I’ve converted many of my artist colleagues into using it for their portfolio. There’s literally no reason have a to have a portfolio with static images. The usability of the editor is fantastic, and I was able to grasp everything instantly.

Right now I’m working on an indie game called Neo Wars for mobile to be released early march as well as dabbling around with VR using Oculus and Smartphones. I’m very excited about the newly added VR features. It would be great to be able to export a camera fly through - but I guess it’s only matter of time until sketchfab implements this.

Check out my portfolio on Sketchfab, ArtStation and follow me on Twitter.

Thanks Peer!

- Bart

Calling all students! We’re excited to partner with The Rookies Awards to help recent CG graduates showcase their skills and get their careers started.

The Rookies is an International Award for young designers, creators, innovators, and artists, created to discover and showcase the outstanding talent emerging from higher education facilities and help launch them into careers at the world’s top studios.

There are 11 official categories for 2016 and Sketchfab is proud to be sponsoring three categories: VFX & Animation, Next Gen Gaming and Virtual Reality.

The prizes are outstanding, with the chance to win 19 fully paid internships around the world at stellar companies ranging from Gameloft, Animal Logic, Dreamworks, The Mill and Framestore.

Here’s some helpful tips to get you started. What are you waiting for? Create your profile, and share your entry on Sketchfab with the tag #TheRookiesCO!

We can’t wait to see the best student work out there!

Good luck,

- Natalia

With the support morph targets on Sketchfab, we’ve seen a whole new range of animations appear. One that I found particularly interesting was a scene by Dennis Haupt.

Hello there.

Here is a tutorial on how I made my animated ocean scene by using animated modifiers and shape keys in Blender:

Animated Ocean Scene by DennisH2010 on Sketchfab

First add a mesh object. I used a plane but you can use any mesh object, like a cube, sphere or the monkey. Select the object and click on ‘Add Modifier’ and choose the Ocean modifier.

Animating the Ocean Modifier

To animate the Ocean modifier, set the current scene frame to 0. To do this, hover over ‘Time’ in the ‘Modifier’ panel and press the ‘i’ key so time 0.00 is the key frame for frame 0. Then go to scene frame 100 and set ‘Time’ to 20.00 and key it by pressing the ‘i’ key again.

Now you have an animated ocean which starts slowly and ends slowly during the animation. This doesn’t look natural because the animation is interpolated as ‘Bezier Curve, so let’s fix that by making the animation uniform / linear. There are two ways to do this; by using the Graph Editor or the Droop Sheet Editor. I used the Graph Editor to see the animation curve for the modifier from frame 0 to 100 in one graph.

In to graph editor window: select the start and the end point of the graph by pressing the ‘a’ key, so you select everything that is contained in this window. Under ‘Key/Interpolation Mode’ you can define the handles of the graph. Select ‘Linear’ to get an equal increase and a uniform ocean animation.

Converting the Ocean Modifier into shape keys for use on Sketchfab

First, select the object with the ocean modifier and export it as Lightwave Point Cache (.mdd). File/Export/Lightwave Point Cache (.mdd)/Export MDD). In the Export MDD settings as well as the render settings, you can define the frames per second and start / end frame of your animation.

Now a copy of the object with the ocean modifier is needed. Copy it with Shift + D and put it on another layer with the M key. Choose an empty layer. Go to the layer where your copy is.

To transfer the Lightwave Point Cache (.mdd) to the copy the ocean modifier must be applied. But before that, set the waves scale to 0.000 to get an even surface.

Why was this done?

The Lightwave Point Cache (.mdd) file needs the same vertices, so the ocean modifier had to be applied (because the animated vertices are saved into the .mdd export per frame). Remember, the object with the Ocean Modifier is just a plan; so this must be done.

The even surface makes it easier for objects to interact with, like a boat (by using Vertex Groups). More about this later.

Now import the Lightwave Point Cache (.mdd) file to the new object. Select the surface, press ‘space’ and enter ‘Import MDD’. Select your MDD file and click ‘Import MDD’. You are now done and have your ocean animation as shape key animation in Blender.

You can now upload it to Sketchfab and you will get something like this:

Animated Ocean Scene Tutorial Example 1 by DennisH2010 on Sketchfab

(Model is downloadable)

Now I show you how I made the waves break on an object in combination with a Shrinkwrap Modifier for the ocean object. Find or create an object you want to use like a boat, flotsam, etc.

This object will be used for the Shrinkwrap Modifier; we will setup for the ocean object later. Create a vertex group for the ocean object to mark the vertices which will be influenced by the Shrinkwrap modifier. Select the ocean object and go into the Weight Paint Mode to paint on it.

Painting on the ocean surface will cause a new vertex group to be created automatically. The vertex group is named ‘Group’; name it as you wish. Since I am lazy, it is still called ‘Group’ ;)

Enter your group into the vertex group section of the Shrinkwrap Modifier. Also the object for the Shrinkwrap must be assigned. In my case it is called boat. After this you can play your animation to see how it looks and to fix your vertex group if you are not satisfied with it.

(For a better result I have used two Smooth Modifiers and another Shrinkwrap Modifier in an arrangement like you can see in the picture below. For the Smooth Modifiers I have taken the same vertex group like I used for the Shrinkwrap Modifier.)

Almost Done

If satisfied with your scene, export the selected ocean object as Lightwave Point Cache (.mdd) and reimport it like explained before.

Do not forget to delete the Modifiers and the old Shape Keys before importing the new Lightwave Point Cache (.mdd) to the ocean object.

And here’s this tutorial’s result:

Animated Ocean Scene Tutorial Example 2 by DennisH2010 on Sketchfab

Note: the model is downloadable

Thank you very much for reading. I hope it was interesting and informative :) Feel free to post a link of your result in the comments below.

Thanks Dennis!

You will find more work of Dennis’ work on his Sketchfab portfolio, and on his personal website.

In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.

Hi, I’m Sofia “Fi” Silva, and I’m an artist from Portugal. I used to do 2d art, but in 2015 I started doing 3d art. The transition from 2d to 3d was easy for me, and knowing the basics from 2d, like lighting and composition really helped. I fallen in love with 3d art when I tried it so I practiced everyday and already made a lot of work and improvement. I always use Blender for my work. I work as a freelance 3d artist for games, but my passion is 3d illustration. I’m also still studying in university.

I started doing 3d art after seeing some art and games in low poly style. Some inspirations were the artists Turnislefthome, MKeverydays and Mezaka, among others, and the games Monument Valley and Lara Croft: GO.

Low poly style is a style characterized by low number of polygons, flat shading and each face having a single color. It usually uses a lot of triangulation and displacement, and beautiful lighting.

When I started I knew I wanted to do low poly dioramas of games and movies I like, and I started with Fallout, because I was playing Fallout 3 at the time. I wanted to add iconic things from Fallout, like a Fatman and mini nukes, supermutants, the dog, Dogmeat, Nuka Cola, a broken car, all in a small scene that could tell a story.

I started by doing a humanoid base to use for all the humanoid characters. It was inspired by Lara Croft: GO. The base is rigged (I did my own rig based on the armature from Rigify) and can be posed.

I used this base for human characters. I just colored the faces and did extrusions. (I didn’t use the guy for the final scene)

As well and super mutants!

I aimed to make the props as simple as possible while still being recognizable. You can see the flat shading, the low poly count and the colored faces. I did not use any textures. You can see the wireframe on the bottle.

The dog was also modelled standing and rigged, and then posed.

When I assembled the scene, I wanted everything to have a wasteland vibe, so I used low saturation colors and brown tones. The exception is the Nuka Cola Quantum, I wanted it to stand out.

A lot of people asked me to upload my models on sketchfab, so I did it. It’s a lot better to show the models in 3d, since lot of details are not shown with a single 2d render. I also learn a lot from viewing other people’s models from every angle and studying the topology with the wireframe on.

And this is the scene on Sketchfab!

Fallout Diorama by Fi Silva on Sketchfab

Thanks Sofia!

You can find more of Sofia’s work here on Sketchfab, Twitter and Tumblr.

Our Museums Page highlights our ongoing support of museums and cultural institutions with free accounts and access to tools. In Museum Spotlight, we’ll explore museums who are using 3D technology to bring new life to their collections.

Morbase is a project from the Montemor-o-Novo’s Municipality with the primary goal of promoting the scientific knowledge related to the cultural heritage of Montemor-o-Novo’s region in Portugal. Through the guidelines of public archaeology, presenting the data and scientific interpretations to the general public, thus enabling the interaction with the scientific community. To captivate the audience and make them aware of what is theirs by cultural heritage, translating that which is their historical past. This should be the duty of an archaeologist and of those who manage cultural heritage.

The awareness for cultural heritage will ease its preservation, empowering individuals with knowledge towards prevention and not just remediation. It is also intended that MorBase is able to encourage the innovation of techniques regarding the gathering of scientific knowledge while at the same time regarding the registration and dialog with our cultural heritage, developing public and experimental archaeology.

It was precisely through experimental archaeology that Morbase promoted the Virtual Reconstruction Marathon, on the 1st Symposium of Virtual Archaeology. For 48 hours, a group of archaeologists, illustrators and heritage technicians took part in the 3D virtual reconstruction of a medieval village ancient house, with a wine cellar inside. For this 3D virtual reconstruction, the Sketchfab 3D scan model seen below was used as a work tool. The results of the Virtual Reconstruction Marathon can be seen in this video.

Adega - Castelo de Montemor-o-Novo by Morbase (Carlos Carpetudo) on Sketchfab

This is the main reason why the 3D survey and Sketchfab’s viewer have been crucial for Morbase, providing an immersive visual contact in three dimensions of many archaeological and art pieces, as well as monuments whose access is often limited for several reasons. The collective burial of the Neolithic from the Escoural Cave is one example of that. It was taken from the Montemor-o-Novo’s region in the 1960’s, and brought to the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia where it is preserved in their archaeological storages. Even though it is physically away from the eyes of the public, it can be seen in 3D on Sketchfab.

Enterramento Colectivo da Gruta do Escoural by Morbase (Carlos Carpetudo) on Sketchfab

In an ever more globalizing world and with the constantly evolving capabilities provided by the computer industry, publishing our data has now become a priority. Being able to publish it in 3D is a step forward. Morbase has integrated 3D models on its website database for the unique collection of 16th century pottery and will continue to provide 3D models of Montemor-o-Novo’s Heritage. We are also currently developing a technique for the 3D survey of megalithic monuments. The 3D model of the Dolmen 2 of Comenda da Igreja (also known in portuguese as the Anta Pequena da Comenda da Igreja) was the first essay for a project that Morbase is planning to extend to several other prehistoric monuments in the region.

Dólmen | Anta Pequena da Comenda da Igreja by Morbase (Carlos Carpetudo) on Sketchfab

Thank you for sharing, MorBase!

If you are part of a cultural institution, get in touch with us at museums@sketchfab.com to set up your free business account.

-Nico

In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.

Hi guys, My name is Hong Zhi Hao, or Hao for short. I work in a small studio in Singapore, working on 3D assets for games. My main focus is in low poly modelling, and I like to create characters. If you guys checked out my gallery you would have noticed all my personal work are fan art. Reason for this is I wasn’t always an artist - I was in a totally different industry. I had a lot of interest in video games, animation and comics, so I started doodling characters from games and comics I liked and learning as I went along. I saw an opportunity to switch industry and grabbed on to it, taking up courses in digital art, such as illustration and 3d modeling. In a way, I feel that it was working on fan art that fueled my passion in the CG industry. The key is to have fun, and I have fun doing it!

My process in creating any piece of art is to first conceive an idea. The idea will usually come when I am watching a show, playing a game, reading a book, having a conversation. Ideas come from almost everywhere actually. In this case it was the train of thought beginning from Valentine’s Day, which lead me to think of love stories, I merged that with my interest in animation and I thought of Disney animation, This particular scene in Disney’s Tangled left much impression on me so I decided to create my own rendition of it.

References. Find lots of it. I am not sure if I am allowed to show screenshots of Tangled here. But I collected a lot of references for the characters and props. Shown here are just some of the references I found on the internet.

I start to build the characters first. Being a professional 3D artist means that I have an extensive library of base mesh, I made use of a base mesh I have that most closely resembled the proportions I want in this piece of work, and start tweaking the mesh from there to create my first character

I do not intend to create the models looking exactly the same as the ones from the movie, I prefer to inject a little bit of my own style into the models

Flynn is a pretty straight forward modelling and texturing process.

Rapunzel is at least 3 times more complex, she has her braided hair, flowers, skirt and embroidering on her clothes.

At this point I have to decide on how I want to present my characters. I have a few ideas on what facial expressions I want for my characters, so I modeled in the topology that allows for that.

I modeled Rapunzel’s body parts separately, the hair on its own, head, hands and feet, and clothing on their own as well. I do this because it allows me to completely focus on particular areas finish them before I move on to other body parts.

After modeling the parts separately, I UV unwrapped them, and begin to texture the parts one by one. I go for soft gradual tones rather than strong contrasty ones. Again I go back to my references.

Screenshots from the viewport:

Texturing is a time consuming process, and luckily 3Ds Max allows painting on the models via the viewport canvas tool. I use it to block in the base colors and then apply details on photoshop. It is more convenient to access the viewport canvas directly to fix any errors in texturing than having to go back to photoshop to do so. I usually go back and forth between photoshop and 3Ds max’s viewport canvas tool to get my texturing done.

I modeled the flowers separately, textured them, and attached them to the hair one and a time, making sure they look evenly spaced and not too repetitive.

Finally, I combined the meshes into one single mesh and baked all the textures to one single texture map. I kept separated the mesh that require transparency and used a different piece of texture map for those.

Time for the boat!

I import my character mesh into the same scene as the boat to use as scale reference

Next I created simple skeletons for the characters, nothing too complicated, except for the face, I wanted them to have a certain expression so I focused a bit more on the face. The reason I chose to rig and pose the characters’ expression rather than just straight out modeling the expression out is because of symmetry in terms of modeling, UV and texturing. Also, I have yet to decide on what expressions I wanted so with rigging, I could effectively test out the poses and expressions.

After the simple rigging process is done, I posed the character accordingly, and at the same time, fix any skin weighting issues as needed.

I then moved on the to miscellaneous items, mainly Pascal, and the lanterns. I created two variations of the lanterns and scale their axis to create more variety of different looking lanterns. I proceeded to duplicate dozens of it to fill up the environment.

After this,I put all the characters and props in the same scene, and adjusted their positions accordingly.

Next, I created a large plane for the water.

I used a little trick for the reflection on the water. I duplicated everything that should show as reflection on the water and mirrored them along the appropriate axis.

Next I added lights to the scene in 3ds max. The purpose of this is so I could do a bit of light baking. I need to determine the light sources and the kind of light I want to use. In this case, a few point lights will do, the main light source will be from the lanterns, which should have a warm orangey glow. The ambient should be reflection from the water, I made this light slightly weaker and blue-ish in color, another light source is the lantern from the boat. With that in mind I bake in the light source into the textures. I usually apply the layer of light map onto the original texture map using the soft light blend mode in Photoshop. I think it adds a nice subtle tint that I am looking for. Feel free to try other blending modes as well if you are looking to achieve different effects.

Finally I created the globe that forms the sky surrounding the scene. I did not spend a lot of effort detailing this because I just needed the sky to form a contrast to the subjects of this scene.

Now on to Sketchfab.

I simply make sure the relevant mesh is connected to the appropriate texture map. I applied the same lanterns texture map to the emission settings and have it glow.

The water plane does not have any UVs and texture map assigned since I plan to use Sketchfab’s native material settings for it. I turned the transparency settings and color settings accordingly so the reflected mesh shows through enough to to be seen like it was reflection on water.

Lastly, I tweaked the bloom settings on the post processing filters to give the scene a softer, warmer glow.

Here is the final result on Sketchfab:

Happy Birthday Rapunzel! (from Disney’s Tangled) by CGHow on Sketchfab

Sketchfab has been awesome for my 3D portfolio so far. Imagine modeling a character or asset for work and presenting it to your team or to your client. Instead of rendering out the respective views or a turnaround video, and having to add in notes to explain design decisions, simply upload the model on sketchfab and throw in your notes as annotations, send your team or clients the URL and let them have fun with it! It has speedy load times and plays without issues on mobile. This way I can show my friends and potential clients my 3D work even on the go!

That’s all for now, for more of my work, feel free to check out my Sketchfab Gallery. I also have a Facebook Art Page where I update with my 2D illustrations as well. Finally There is my Deviant Art page where I accept both 2D and 3D commissions as well. Do feel free to follow me for more updates!

A final shout out to Sketchfab and all my (tens of) followers, thank you Sketchfab for providing me with this avenue to share my process. Would gladly do so again if the occasion allows!

Thanks Hao!

Thanks for taking us along the creation process of this beautiful scene, and for sharing your transparency trick with us!

- Bart

In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.

Hello!

My name is Gregory and I am a PhD from Russia. I teach biology at the university, so computer graphics is my hobby. My first computer was a Vector-06C, which worked on the magnetic tape. When I was a child, I used to draw on this computer, mostly pictures of small dinosaurs.

In school I became interested in 3D. I was attracted by the opportunity to look beyond the picture to see the back side of it, just pick up and rotate the model. Also, always attracted by photorealism in 3d (this project is obviously not the case :)).

When I discovered Sketchfab, it was something new for me. I wanted to make some kind of model or miniature and upload it there. I want to watch, rotate the model right in the browser. I especially like how it looks on your smartphone, all these little parts begin to move, rotate right under my fingers :). Some natural curiosity makes you to do things like that.

“Go on vacation!” is a small personal project, the sketch. This is my first work in this gallery and I am delighted and pleasantly surprised that many people liked it so much.

Bart, thank you for the invitation to write about my experience here.

Inspiration

The idea of the scene was born when I was browsing Pinterest. You can find a huge number of photos and illustrations on a variety of topics there. For example, such as wonderful miniatures (see below), or urban landscapes, or cars, or … you name it!

There are images that I just love, and there are those that I like and I’d really like to make them three-dimensional model. So I have accumulated more than a hundred photographs and drawings of houses, which I would like to do. Among them, the concept of Alejandro Ddiaz Cardoso.

What I liked about it? Everything is fine in this picture: the color and light, and the story that comes to life before our eyes. In my interpretations girl came on vacation to the seashore. She barely came in and stopped to rest. She put the suitcase on the ground to look around and take a breath, the wind waves her dress and almost rips off her hat from the head.

The house has its own history: does a distant relative live here? Or maybe she wants to stay in the house and just saw it for the first time?

In any case, it looks impressive.

Now in my hometown it is still winter, with snow on the street, and the weather can be quite frosty. I love winter and winter activities, but in the middle of winter start to miss the summer sun and green grass. Vacation was a long time ago, but until next summer is still far away … So, “the scale of inspiration” continues to fill up :)

My design process

The whole scene was created and texture painted in Blender. I have a graphics tablet, but for this work I used only the mouse. Obviously, I am not a 3d expert and I even think that from a technical point of view, I did the scene wrong all that is possible, from the beginning to the end, but I have a ready-made image in the screen and in my head.

When I started I had a few starting points that I formulated for myself. I need to:

• Express the feelings and emotions that arise in me when watching the sketch, the whole scene was supposed to tell his story for itself.
• Do an extremely simple model, but with an optimal (rather large) number of elements.
• Do the whole scene in a single model with a single texture (just because).
• Finish this project! I have nobody forces, I do not have a deadline, so a lot of projects remain unfinished. This is a very bad habit.

Now I will speak mostly about the inspiration and my attempt to express my emotions through this scene.

For me in this picture are three main elements, the three “characters” that interact with each other:

1. House. The house is habitable, he seemed “alive”. The task is to image as much details as possible - all these traces of time and interaction with the inhabitants of the house. Trying to make the model as simple as possible, but you can not be ignored details.
2. Summer. It is the light, green grass, blue sky, the wind and the sea. The original picture just glows, it is impregnated by the sun. Of course, I would like to express the contrast sunlight translucent greens, heating wood and the refreshing coolness of the shade. Sunny and shady side of the house help to create that feeling. White, painted wood glows against the blue sky, green grass lit with gold, and a porch on the contrary, in the shade: cool tones and greens in pots create a feeling of fresh here. Wind is represented by the shapes of objects dynamic: vane, windsock, dreamcatcher, and, of course, the silhouette of a girl.
3. Girl. I like the way she confidently standing on his feet: the young, the strong, though tired from the long trip. Returning to the theme of inspiration: I was thinking about a girl named Vika, who lives near by the sea (hello, if you reading it :)) and surprisingly in this 366 polygons I still have some of my thoughts and feelings associated with her. Never did the characters before, but here I knew exactly what I needed: silhouette, dress, hair, hat. I did not make the face, firstly it is not visible from the main perspective, and secondly it was difficult to do what I need for me and I decide to left this practice for other projects. I hope that I will come back to the character modeling, I liked this process.

Ta-dum! The triangle is closed, all the elements form a single composition. They interact with each other and tell us the story, a small episode of someone’s life.

Modeling and texturing

I guess I can not teach you something new and better advise the lesson, for example .. here’s this guy:

His channel has a good video about modeling low poly and texture of hand-drawn for Blender.

But here’s how I worked:

I put the original sketch in the background and copied the basic elements of the drawing in 3d. Some difficulties have been associated with the transfer perspectives from image in 3d.

A very useful thing, which I enjoyed (as I decided to do all scene in one object with no reasons) is Vertex Groups. So, for example, I have grouped the grass to not allocate every blade of grass, when I want to rotate or copy multiple, or grouping all vertices, belonging to the girl, so I can quick select them.

Textures were drawn directly into the Blender. For a quick and easy UV I used function Project from view: selects the desired polygons, set up the perspective and made UV (“U”-> “project from view”). Often, when I thought it was possible, I made the UVs overlap.

Features of this approach can be seen in the mailbox. I set up orthographic projection about how it will look in the final work and made UV. Advantages - UV was done in “two clicks” . Lack of - on the back of the crate texture stretched.

Also with this approach you can not bake a texture, such as Ambient occlusion. Same texture coordinates correspond to different parts of the model - here’s such glitches. For example the shadow of the bedroom window on the other side of the roof, etc.

So I made one texture - diffuse. In it, I tried to pass the light, color and shade in accordance with the planned result. For the sea and the sky had to create a separate texture:

The background occupies a large area of the screen, and details such as clouds and the ripples on the water in the low-resolution textures would look awful.

Well, perhaps that’s all. Bye!

Go on vacation! by Gregory Khodyrev on Sketchfab

Thanks Gregory!

Follow Gregory on Sketchfab to receive updates of his new work. You can also visit his Pinterest page and see his models on TurboSquid.

- Bart

In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.

Hi! My name is Hiroyuki Akasaki. I’m a 3D artist at JetStudio in Japan. JetStudio is a company that makes a 3DCG video of Animation, Games, Amusement and others. I usually working on the direction, character R&D and others.

This character was created in order to introduce a series of steps for character making to Maya beginner in Autodesk’s AREA JAPAN.

My motto is to experience their own all of the production process - every designer should have a wide range of experiences in different CG departments.

It is also important to study as a specialist of each step, and experience all the process on your own understanding, now it can be seen to be caring in each process, I believe that more accuracy is increased.

First, character design. It was inspired by Medusa from Greek mythology and Indian Snake Charmers.

I always create characters from a rough silhouette - not with details. I adjust the shape while checking the image from various angles with a simple model. Flat lighting is useful to adjust the silhouette.

Next, I model details in Maya. “Modeling ToolKit” and “Grab Tool” are very useful in modeling. It is now easier to use with Maya2016.

Then, I make some textures by painting in PaintTool SAI & Photoshop. It’s simple, diffuse map only.

HumanIK (Maya/MotionBuilder), Biped and CAT(3dsMax) are also very useful and powerful. But for hair, clothing and other you need to create a custom rig by yourself. Now for also serves as research and practice, has created a whole body with custom rig.

Here’s the rig I used for posing the character:

Here’s the 3D model that uploaded to Sketchfab.

Character inspired from Medusa by akasaki1211 on Sketchfab

You will also find some video of each step in the process on AREA JAPAN. If you interested, please visit. I hope that I can be be a reference for your art work, even a little.

Thanks Sketchfab!

I think that thankfully can show the model that was created in 3D, from easily various angles, not only in a still image. I would like to upload with animation in my next works.

Thanks for reading!

Thanks Hiroyuki!

You can find more of Hiroyuki’s work here on Sketchfab, and on his ArtStation.

- Bart

Easter Eggs 2015 Contest by Bart on Sketchfab

Our yearly Easter Eggs Painting challenge is turning into a proper tradition! For the third time we’re inviting you to put down your high-end 3D tools for a bit and have some fun decorating digital eggs.

And once again Shapeways is generous enough to send a dozen winners (we’re talking eggs, after all) a gorgeous 3D printed version of their work, made with their new Coated Full Color Sandstone. Curious what they’ll look like? Check out these pictures from last year’s winners.

You don’t need to be an experienced 3D designer to enter this contest - just visit our Egg Painter, paint on the egg with your mouse and save the model to your Sketchfab account. That’s all! And you can enter as many times as you like (which is better than with real eggs - you have to eat all those, eventually).

How to enter

• Visit our Egg Painter. Use your left mouse button to paint on the egg, and click and hold your right mouse button to look around your egg and reach other parts.
• While painting, you can select different brush sizes and colors with the Radius, Intensity and Color options.
• When your egg is ready, click the ‘Publish to Sketchfab’ button and log in to your Sketchfab account (you can create one at this point too). It will automatically be tagged with #Easter2016.
• Get your model in before Monday March 30th 2016 at 11:59pm GMT.
• Prize: Coated Full Color Sandstone 3D Print by Shapeways, delivered to your home.

Contest Rules

1. Eligibility. This contest is operated by Sketchfab. It is open to Sketchfab users worldwide over 13 years of age at the time of entry who live in a jurisdiction that does not prohibit this contest. Employees, officers, and directors of Sketchfab or Shapeways and their immediate family are not eligible to enter. Individuals may enter more than one entry into the competition. No purchase necessary. By entering this contest, you agree to be bound by these Rules.
2. Eligible countries. Entries are limited to residents of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada (excluding Quebec), Denmark,France, Germany, Hong Kong S.A.R, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden Turkey, United Kingdom and United States of America. Sketchfab reserves the right to verify eligibility after picking the winners.
3. Prize. The winning entrants will receive a 3D printed egg from Shapeways, with maximum value of US$50. No alternative prizes available.
4. Contest period. This contest is open on Monday, March 21st, 2016 from 10:00am GMT and closes Monday March 30th 2016 at 11:59pm GMT.
5. How to Enter. Use the Egg Painter app and color your egg. No other software allowed. Pick a title, and upload to Sketchfab with the hashtag #Easter2016.
6. Winner Selection. Sketchfab will select the winner from the pool of entries on Monday March 30th, 2016. There can be up to 12 winners. Sketchfab will be prepared to award the prize to a runner-up in the event the winners cannot be contacted in a reasonable amount of time. Sketchfab will determine the winner with a qualified panel of judges. Sketchfab reserves the right to verify eligibility after picking the winners. The promoters decision is final – in case of dispute, no correspondence will be entered into. Winning entries may be documented and may be used for promotional purposes. (excluding any Russian winners).
7. Judges are artists from Sketchfab and Shapeways (Bart, Natalia, Andrew and Kat) Eggs will be judged on their creativity, artist meric and technical proficiency. All entries have equal chance of being one of the 12 winning entries.
8. Winner notification. The winner will be notified via email. Upon contact, Sketchfab may need to obtain confirmation of the winner’s eligibility. If Sketchfab cannot contact the winner through the contact information in their Sketchfab account in a reasonable amount of time, a runner-up will receive the prize.
9. Liability and Jurisdiction. All federal, state, and local laws and regulations apply; void where prohibited. All international laws apply; void where prohibited. All disputes arising out of or connected with this Contest will be resolved exclusively by a court located in Manhattan, New York, USA. Decisions by Sketchfab regarding the interpretation of these rules are final. By participating in this contest, you agree to release Sketchfab and its agents from any and all liability, claims, or actions of any kind of injuries, damages, or losses to persons and property which may be sustained in connection with the receipt, ownership, possession, use, or misuse of any prize. Sketchfab reserves the right to amend these official rules and to permanently disqualify from this contest any person it believes has intentionally violated these official rules. Sketchfab reserves the right to suspend or cancel this Contest in the event of hacking, security breach, fraud, viruses, or other tampering and reserve the right to terminate or modify the contest.
10. Taxes. The winner will be solely responsible for paying all federal, state, and local taxes that may be due on winnings and, as a condition of receiving the prize, Sketchfab may require the winner to complete tax documentation.
11. Additional Terms & Conditions. Winners retain all Intellectual Property of their entry as per Sketchfab standard Terms and Conditions. Any data collected is covered under Sketchfab’s privacy policy. Promoter: Sketchfab Inc, 1123 Broadway, Suite 501, New York, NY 10010, USA. Any questions regarding this contest should be directed to community@sketchfab.com.

- Bart