You can turn your artwork into an amazing networking tool when you customize your business card. Graphic designers can use business cards to show off their awesome illustrations, eye for color, or other specialties. If you’re a web designer, a card that mimics a website’s homepage can help show clients what you do. 3D business cards are also a great option—especially if you’re a 3D designer.

Trying to choose the best way to customize your business card can get a little overwhelming. That’s where this step-by-step guide to custom business cards comes in. It will walk you through the business card design process from start to finish, so you can see exactly how to improve your card.

The post How to: Create an Amazing Artistic Business Card appeared first on MakeItCG.

But the reality is that—if you’re running a design business or even thinking about starting one—you need to have some branding in place to help your business reach its full potential. After all, you’ll have more opportunities to create amazing designs once people recognize and trust your brand enough to hire you.

Making a logo for your business is one of the best ways to catch people’s attention. A good logo design sets you apart from the rest of your industry; clients can use it to recognize your work any time, any place.

This great visual resource reveals the 10+ traits your logo needs to succeed. It’s brought to you by the logo designers at CompanyFolders.com, a print firm with years of logo design experience. Read on to learn what your logo needs to succeed.

The post 10+ Best Things to Include In Your Logo Design appeared first on MakeItCG.

As a result of this great evolution of 3d industry, today we have so many applications that we can use to create 3d graphics, animation and simulations without going through the complex algorithms behind them. These software programs are easy to understand and you don’t have to be the some sort of technician in order to operate them. However, some folks may find 3d pretty confusing at first. In that case you can take advantage of internet which is stuffed with countless helpful videos and text tutorial from beginner to advanced level.

Below is the list of the most popular 3d software applications you can choose from and if you are already using one, feel free to tell us your experience with it.

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1. Autodesk Maya

   Autodesk Maya is one of the most popular software applications used in Films and Game production. Maya has been used by many well-known Studios such as Disney and DreamWorks. Maya offers some wonderful tools for 3d artists such as Paint Effects that allow users to paint in 2d and 3d.

   

   Maya has its own scripting language called MELscript and supports Python which can be used to automate many complex processes. A brand new sculpting tool set has been introduced into Maya that can be used to sculpt morph targets without any hassle. It has XGen feature which is a geometry instancer that can be used to scatter objects in large scale.

   You can also create hair and fur with the help of XGen’s groomable splines and grooming brushes. It provides some robust rigging tools such as nMuscle muscle system which makes it possible to create rigs with believable deformations. In previous releases, some new tools like Geodesic Voxel Binding and Delta Mush have been added to make skinning job much easier and faster than before.

   Maya is available for Widows OS (7.0- SP1, 10), Mac OS X 10.10.5 and 10.11.x, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 & 7.2 WS, CentOS 6.5 & 7.2 Linux Operating System.

   Download Here

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2. 3dsmax

   Autodesk 3ds max is one of the major software applications that have been used by industry professionals for films, games and commercials. It has an amazing set of tools that artists can use to model, texture and animate believable 3d characters and assets. It offers flexible tools for poly modeling and retopologizing such as Graphite modeling tools and tons of great modifiers that you can use to model and animate stuff.

   

   Its texture editor has some awesome features that come in handy while unwrapping complex objects. You can easily paint textures over the 3d models with the help of Viewport Canvas. You can organize your textures through layers and manipulate them with the tools provided by Viewport Canvas that are pretty much similar to that of Photoshop (Smudge, Clone, Blur & Sharpen, Dodge & Burn etc.)

   As rendering and texturing artist, you can take advantage of 3ds Max’s huge material library that contains tons of physically based materials and create your own real-time shaders with Shader FX.
   3ds max provides Character Animation Toolkit, Bipeds and Bones with awesome rigging tools that help user to create amazing and flexible rigs.

   3ds Max supports Python and has an in-built programming language called MaxScript that you can use to automate complex tasks and create advance rigs. In the latest release, one of the biggest features, Max Creation Graph or MCG has been introduced into 3ds max. MCG is a node based visual programming environment that you can use to create your own tools and modifiers. 3ds Max is an ultimate package for creating professional looking 3d content. This appliction is available for Windows (7, 8.0, 8.1, 10) operating system.

   Download Here

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3. Cinema4d

   This great software is developed by Maxon company and has so many innovative features that help artists create stunning 3d art. It has a fully customizable user interface that you can rearrange according to your comfort. Its modeling toolset includes Knife tool for slicing geometry with multiple cutting styles.

   

   Through its Polygon Pen, you can easily create polygons, draw poly rows, create extrusions, rotate & snap edges together and perform other mesh operations easily. You can also use splines and Generator tool for modeling complex 3d models.

   Cinema4d’s awesome sculpting toolset has tons of great tools for creating highly detailed sculptures. Sculpting details can be organized with the help of sculpt layers. The Xpresso tool allows user create cool looking procedural animations. It has number of presets that you can look into.

   You can also create your own animation libraries, blend, re-time, loop them and apply them to different characters and objects. CMotion adds cyclic motion to any parameter of the rig and can be used for creating parametric walk cycles. Custom walk cycles or presets can be easily applied to a character rig.

   Through Pose morph animators can declare the different states of character animation and blend between various types of animation data. MoGraph, a parametric tool can be used for creating stunning motion graphics. Cinema4d offers variety of lights for creating complex lighting setups. There are lots of light parameters that you can play with such as density, color, brightness, lens reflexes and other light properties to create a realistic setup for your 3d scenes.

   You can also create 2d, 3d and stereoscopic images. You can render different render passes within cinema4d and export the directly to the different compositing applications like After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Fusion, Nuke etc. Cinema4d is available for Windows (7, 8, 8.1, 10) 64 bit and Mac OS X 10.9.5 or higher with 64-bit processor running on Intel-based Apple Macintosh.

   Download Here

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4. Lightwave

   Lightwave is yet another solution that provides tons of handy tools for vfx, games and films. It has intuitive modeling tools that allow users model complex geometries in less time. It offers two types of surfacing systems – Layer based system and Node based system. Layer based is quick and can be used for concept visualization. On the other hand, Node based system is more detailed and flexible system that can be used to achieve complex results.

   

   Lightwave has an automatic joint influence fall off system through which you can automatically weight map the geometry in no time. It contains powerful procedural, nodal and keyframing tools for animating complicated scenes.
   Its Viewport Preview renderer allows users to preview the scene with textures, volumes and lights directly in the viewport. It also supports stereoscopic rendering.

   You can develop tools and automate lengthy tasks inside of Lightwave through Python scripting. Its interactive flocking system can be used to simulate flock of birds, school of fish and herd of animals with different crowd behaviors. Powerful HyperVoxels can be used to simulate cool looking explosions, flames, liquids and other volumetric effects.

   It has Bullet physics engine for simulating explosions and other destruction effects. For creating cool looking hair and fur stuff, FibreFx is here. It includes pretty amazing tools that are just perfect for creating furs, feathers and hair. LightWave is available for Windows (64 & 32 Bit) and Mac OS (UB)

   Download Here

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5. Houdini

   Houdini is a wonderful 3d application developed by Side effects software. It’s a complete package for modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, lighting and compositing tasks. This awesome software allows you to work procedurally with its node based workflow. With this awesome feature, you can easily create complex 3d models procedurally without jumping back and forth into history states.

   

   It offers Cloud FX for creating great volumetric effects and an inbuilt renderer Mantra to render volumes.
   Its node based compositor is pretty easy to use and you can test out render passes before processing them into some other compositing application. It provides some great animator’s friendly tool like channel editor and dope sheet and some more advanced motion editing tools through which you can create compelling animations.
   Houdini’s rigging toolset contains some awesome tools that are perfect for creating high quality rigs for movies and games.

   You can create packages of your character, procedural props and effect, materials, lighting rigs with the help of Digital Asset so that other people can also use them without any problem. If you are more into creating particles effects and vfx you can upgrade to HoudiniFX. This software is available for Windows – 7 SP1, 8, 8.1, 10 (64 bit), Max OS X, Linux (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (64 bit), Debian 7.0+, RHEL 6+, Fedora 16+, Open SUSE 12.1+, Cent OS 6+, Mint 13+) (64 bit)

   Download Here

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6. Modo

   Modo is one of the simplest and easy to use applications with wonderful toolset for artists. Its Mesh Fusion Boolean tools allow user to perform complex Boolean operations. It offers flexible modeling and sculpting toolset tightly integrated with the UV system so that you can easily work with UVs and make changes to the geometry any time without worrying about the UV layout.

   

   Through Modo’s texture painting tools such as pressure-sensitive brushes, image-based stencils, curve snapping and masking tools, artists can now easily paint textures over 3d models just like in other sculpting and texturing applications. You can easily review and tweak your textures during the texture baking process. You can save the bake related attributes and reuse them with any model that you want.

   It allows artists render stunning and lifelike images with the help of Modo’s physically-based renderer. Its nondestructive and node-based rigging toolset is ideal for creating complex production quality rigs. The animation toolset includes many useful key framing and curve tools that make a complex and time consuming process like animation much easier.

   Modo has rule-based particles, rigid and soft body simulation system and procedural shattering that can be used to simulate breathtaking particle effects, cloth & soft bodies and destruction effects. Modo allows artists to manipulate hair, fur, grass and other fibre-based stuff as actual geometry that can be sculpted, shaded and rendered directly in the scene. This app is available for Windows 7, 8 and 10 (64 bit), Max OS X (10.9x, 10.10x, 10.11x) and Linux 64-bit OS (RHEL 5.4+)

   Download Here

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7. Blender

   If you can’t afford other expensive applications, I would highly recommend Blender as it is free-open source 3d app. Blender is a magnificent app that you can use to get your creative journey started. In my opinion, it has everything an artist would want in a 3d application.

   

   It has a wide variety of tools that you can use to create awesome 3d art for games and films. Its node based rendering engine is perfect for creating complex shaders like transparent glass and SSS. Its Open Shading Language (OSL) allows user to code unique shaders.

   Blender’s rigging tools support automatic skinning, easy weight painting and mirror functionality. User can easily organize the skeleton and controls using Bone Layers and Colored Groups feature. Its animation tool set includes Character animation pose editor, non-linear animation for independent animation, sound synchronization. You can also automate walk cycles along the paths with the help of these handy tools.

   Blender also offers sculpting tool set with 20 different types of brushes and supports multi-res sculpting like other major sculpting software applications like Zbrush and Mudbox. Its Dynamic Topology sculpting feature automatically tessellates the geometry as you go.

   You can render stunning art through its rendering engine Cycles. Cycles engine supports GPU & CPU rendering with realtime viewport preview. Blender also has an in-built game engine that you can use to create your own games with the help of Python scripting API. It supports OpenGL dynamic lighting, toon shading, animated materials, normal mapping and parallax mapping. You can easily playback your game without any pre-processing or compiling.

   Moreover, Blender also has video editing and compositing capabilities so that you can easily edit and composite your animation within this amazing program. Blender is available for Windows (Vista,7,8,10), Linux & Mac OS X 10.6+

   Download Here

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8. MayaLT

   

   Maya LT is a mini version of the Maya with limited set of tools specifically made for the Indie game developers. Some of the features like paint effects, PSD file support, transfer maps, unlimited animation layers, ATOM animation file save and load, constraints (scale, geometry, normal and tangent), Maya muscle system, Deformers (wrinkle, wrap, sculpt, soft modification, cluster, wire and jiggle), camera sequencer, Arnold renderer, render setup, vector renderer, hardware renderer window, Interactive photorealistic renderer(IPR), toon shader, third-party viewport renderer override, Bifrost, XGen, Maya Fluids, Fur, nHair, nCloth, nParticles, rigid and soft body dynamics, Bullet physics etc. are absent in MayaLT. This software is available for Windows and Mac OS X.

   Download Here

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9. Cheetah3d

   Cheetah3d has some great tools for polygon, subdivision surface and spline modeling. Its animation system gives you freedom to animate almost every property of the object. It offers powerful Bullet physics engine for creating accurate rigid and soft body simulations.

   

   With its node based material system and flexible UV editor you can easily unwrap and paint textures for your 3d characters. You can push the limits of this awesome application through javascript API. Cheetah3d is available for Max OS x 10.6 and Above.

   Download Here

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10. MessiahStudio

    MessiahStudio is an amazing animation & rendering package with promising production quality. It has been used in many feature films, commercials, games and music videos. It has a powerful render and shader system with dynamic rendering support. It offers some great animation tools and scripts that allow your characters interact with other scene objects.

    

    Its amazing deformers act in real-time so that users can easily get the updated feedback on playback. Messiah Point Animation tool allows users to tweak the pose of the character on any frame with the help of some cool sculpting brushes. MessiahStudio has awesome hair creation tools with real-time dynamics support.

    Its Auto Rig feature can be used to create professional rigs within no time. It also offers some handy display modes such as Stereoscopic 3d and silhouette that you can use anytime. You can automate the several tasks with the help of Messiah SDK that allows you to access every node of the application. This application is available for Windows and Mac OS.

    Download Here

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11. Strata Design 3D CX 7.5

    Another powerful and easy to learn 3d software with powerful abilities to model, texture and animate 3d stuff. The new version has got some cool features and improvements such as defining seam for flattening UV textures. It offers tight integration with Adobe Photoshop so that you can work more efficiently with PSD files.

    

    You can now define the seams before unwrapping the model. Its Least Squares Conformal Maps help reduce the texture distortion during the texturing process. It offers an ultimate, award winning rendering system for rendering life like images. Strata Design 3D CX 7.5 now has ability to import CAD models and export STL files for 3d printing.

    Textures, edge and vertex hardness, UV seams and face sets can be retained during the conversion of poly meshes. You can easily reduce the number of polygons in a high density mesh using Decimate feature.

    Download Here

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12. Silo3d

    Silo3d is simple yet so powerful application used by artists for creating 3d models. It provides a great uncluttered environment with its focused 3d modeling tools that are suitable for sculpting organic models and hard surface objects.

    

    It has a wonderful set of retopology tools for artists that mostly work with high poly geometries. You can easily draw polygons over the high density mesh and the snap function makes the polygons correctly sit over the high res geometry. Silo Supports import for .obj, .3ds, .dfx, .sia, .sib, and .fac and export for .stl, .pov and .rib.
    Silo offers multiple types of unwrapping styles such as LSCM, planar, per face, by neighbors etc. Silo has the ability to preserve UVs so whenever you make any changes to your model, you don’t have to go through the unwrapping process again. You can easily edit UVs of an object with the help of tools like Merge, Break, Tweak, Slide and Soft Selection. It has sticky key function is a big time saver and helps speeding up the workflow during modeling and UV editing. This Software is available for Windows 7 or newer, Mac OS 10.8 or newer 64-bit and Linux CentOS 6+, Fedora 16+ orUbuntu 14.04+

    Download Here

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13. Rhino3d

    Rhino3d offers robust tools for creating wonderful 3d assets. It is compatible with design, engineering, analysis, CAM, rendering and illustration software applications you use.

    

    Rhino3d can easily read and repair meshes & IGES files and unlike other super heavy 3d apps, Rhino3d is so fast that you can run it on a normal machine with no special memory need.
    Rhino renderer allows users to preview the render in real time and supports many common file formats used by different renderers. It also offers support for rendering plugin (windows only). Rhino3d is compatible with many different CAD, CAM, CAE, animation and rendering applications. Rhino3d is available for Windows And Mac OS

    Download Here

I hope you’ve enjoyed the list and if you think I missed something that should be in the list, feel free to comment it down below. Thanks!

The post 10+ Best 3d Software Applications for Artists appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> http://makeitcg.com/fox-renderfarm/5112/ Wed, 07 Sep 2016 16:39:02 +0000 http://makeitcg.com/?p=5112 A short review of FoxRenderfarm services discussing its features and why a render artist should choose it.

The post FoxRenderFarm: A Review appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> If you are an artist you are well aware of the fact that creating an art takes a good amount of time and patience. Be it a concept art, a professional logo, or a finished 3d artwork; we artist follow the standard way i.e. from concept or an idea to blocking out the idea, and finally to the finished masterpiece.

Being a 3d artist, this lengthy process doesn’t bother me at all, what really upsets me is the rendering part.
Rendering becomes a real pain when you are working with a heavy scene and it gets even worse when the scene contains lighting setups, particles, and animated elements.

If you ever tried to render these types of scenes with a regular PC, you might have experienced the crashes during rendering. Not to mention the time it takes to render a single frame. Not a good idea when you have a tight deadline to meet. A living nightmare for an artist, isn’t it? Thanks to Renderfarm technology that rendering such heavy scenes is now a matter of few minutes.

What is a RenderFarm?

A renderfarm is a network of high-end machines that are capable of doing rendering process efficiently and in much lesser time than the normal PCs. Today, you can find number of renderfarms on the internet, perhaps countless but the one I prefer the most is – FoxRenderFarm.

Why FoxRenderFarm?



The reason is that it is one of the most prestigious renderfarms in the industry, started by the Rayvision Technology which is a global technology company specialized in cloud computing services.

Rayvision has a talented team of professionals with over 20 years of experience in the CG industry that serve world’s best animation studios and VFX Companies from over 50 countries. This team includes professionals from many well-known studios like Dreamworks, Disney, Sony etc.

Features of FoxRenderFarm

-Renderdesk App

Through this application you can easily submit your files for rendering just by dragging and dropping. It supports automatic upload and download of scene and image files. It is much easier to locate and analyze any errors with this application.

-Around the clock service

It has a brilliant technical service team that is always there for you.

-Security

FoxRenderfarm’s security model is based on the MPAA security standards. It has a highly secured production area and data center with professional hardware firewall.

-High Performance Transmission System

The FoxRenderfarm client utilizes a high performance transmission engine, Aspera for datum transmission. You can use the client to automatically upload and download the files. Aspera engine also encrypts the data during transmission process to ensure the datum security.

It uses cluster-based advanced storage system, so simultaneously loading files into the hundreds of render servers doesn’t have any effect on the performance / loading speed.

It’s Dispatching engine easily handles millions of render jobs and thousands of render nodes. This engine also identifies the plugins in the user files and matches the corresponding nodes automatically.

-Compatibility

It automatically detects plugins in your scene and compatible with the industry standard software programs, rendering engines and plugins such as 3ds Max, Maya, Houdini, V-ray, Arnold, RenderMan etc.

There are even more features that you would love to check on their official website. If you are a rendering artist, small studio or a free group of CG artists, I would highly recommend using their service. Register now and you will get 20$ free trial. Thanks!

The post FoxRenderFarm: A Review appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> http://makeitcg.com/3dsmax-maxscript-linking/5082/ Tue, 15 Mar 2016 17:04:25 +0000 http://makeitcg.com/?p=5082 A detailed tutorial guide that demonstrates how to automate linking process in 3ds max and link multiple objects with the help of Maxscript.

The post How to: Automate Linking process using MaxScript appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> In this short tutorial I will be showing you a great trick that you can use to automate the linking process in 3ds max with the help of Maxscript.

You can, however, link objects together with the help of Select and Link tool but it would be real pain if you want to create a hierarchy of, let’s say, 50 objects.

No worries, we can easily link multiple objects through Maxscript. Let’s go ahead and learn how to do it.

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Step 1



Here, I have 5 boxes and I want to link them together. Linking of the boxes will go like:

Box01 > Box02 > Box03 > Box04 > Box05

where Box01 being the leaf and Box05 being the root in the hierarchy.

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Step 2

The resulting hierarchy will be based on the selection order so we have to be careful while selecting the objects. Let’s take a look at this example to understand how exactly selection order can affect the linking.

Select these objects following an order (5,3,2,4,1) then go to Maxscript Listener and write Print Selection. Press Shift + Enter key on your keyboard to execute the command.



Notice that we got the objects printed in the same order that we have used during selection. 3ds max remembers the selection order of the objects so, whenever we execute a Maxscript, it goes through each object as per the selection order.

Since we are using Maxscript for the linking, the selection order will affect the resulting hierarchy. I would recommend using Paint Selection Region tool for selection purpose.

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Step 3

Now, let’s go ahead and select all the 5 boxes with the help of Paint Selection Region tool. Once we have our selection, the only thing we have to do is to write a simple script to automate the linking process.

Go to Scripting menu and choose Maxscript Editor… from the menu. Now, write the script given below.

for i=1 to selection.count do
(
	$[i].parent = $[i+1]
)

Press Ctrl + E to evaluate the script and we are done. This script will link the current object to the object that comes next in the selection and create a parent-child relationship between them.

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Step 4

To check the linking you can select and move the individual object or just go to Graph Editors > New Schematic View…. There you can easily see that the objects have been correctly linked together.



I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and learn something new and useful. If you have any questions or suggestions just comment them below or send them to me via email. Thanks!

The post How to: Automate Linking process using MaxScript appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> http://makeitcg.com/multipage-pdf-illustrator/5057/ Mon, 19 Oct 2015 18:15:00 +0000 http://makeitcg.com/?p=5057 A detailed tutorial guide to show how to create multipage PDF documents using Adobe Illustrator.

The post How to: Create MultiPage PDF files using Illustrator appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to create a multi-page PDF document using Adobe Illustrator. PDF files are very useful and widely used for eBooks, print / prepress and document distribution purposes. Let’s go ahead and get into the process.

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Step 1



Press Ctrl+N and set up the dimensions and other settings of the artboard. Here, I am using an A4 size document / artboard with portrait orientation.

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Step 2

Let’s go to Window and click on Artboards to bring up the Artboards panel. This panel makes the process very easy. Now, we don’t have to go through page tiling settings as we used to do in earlier versions of Illustrator.



Click on the New Artboard button at the bottom of the panel to create a new artboard. You can create as many artboards as you want. I’ve made 4 for the demonstration.

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Step 3



Now, place your storyboards, concepts or other artwork that you want to be included in your PDF file. I have placed some text on each of the artboards according to their index.

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Step 4



Go to File > Save As… or simply press Shift+Ctrl+S hotkey on your keyboard to bring up the Save As dialog. Provide a name to your file and choose Adobe PDF (*.PDF) from the Save as type drop-down.

You also have a choice to either save all the artboards or just the range of your choice. Hit the Save button when you are done.

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Step 5



Inside Save Adobe PDF dialog, you can select any of the available presets depending upon the type of content you have in your file.

Since all of the artboards contain plain text objects, I don’t have to select any standard preset. Illustrator Default preset would work fine here.

You can access image sampling, fonts options, color conversion and other settings through the side panel. Click on Save PDF button when you are done.

If you are preparing a PDF for prepress/printing purposes then be careful while choosing the presets.

---

Step 6



Here is the PDF file with multiple pages that we have created using Illustrator. I hope you enjoyed this short tutorial and learned something new from it. See you soon with another great tutorial. Thanks!

The post How to: Create MultiPage PDF files using Illustrator appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> http://makeitcg.com/mosaic-effect-illustrator/5040/ Thu, 24 Sep 2015 12:01:11 +0000 http://makeitcg.com/?p=5040 A detailed tutorial guide to show how to create dotted image or mosaic effect in Adobe Illustrator. Ideal technique for creating patterned artworks.

The post How to create Dotted Image/Mosaic effect in Illustrator appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to create dotted image or mosaic effect in Adobe Illustrator within few easy steps. This tutorial involves breaking down the vector objects into mosaic tiles, removing unwanted tiles and changing the shape of mosaic tiles.

With the help of this technique you can convert your creations into cool looking patterned artwork. Let’s get into it.

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Step 1



Here, I have a world map vector object that I am going to use in this tutorial. However, you don’t have to use a vector graphic as this technique works with raster graphics but in case you are using a vector graphic like me you have to convert it into raster first.

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Step 2



To convert a vector graphic into a raster graphic, first select the vector object, in this case the map, go to Object menu and select Rasterize…. In Rasterize dialog, set the resolution to High and click OK to commit the conversion.

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Step 3

Now, our map object has been converted into a raster. With the map object selected, go to Object and select Create Object Mosaic….



In Create Object Mosaic dialog, set the Tile Spacing to 1px for both Width and Height parameters.

Inside Number of Tiles group, I have Width set to 100 px. For Height, we can’t just use any number else we will end up with an effect with wrong scale.

We don’t have to do any calculation to obtain a correct Height value. Clicking the Use Ratio button will automatically set the Height value according to the ratio of our image. Hit OK button to create the mosaic.

---

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Step 4



Now, we can see that our map object has been converted into a cool looking mosaic art. However, some unwanted white colored tiles are also there. This is due to the background of the raster image we used in the process.

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Step 5



Select one of the white tiles, go to Select > Same and select Appearance from the list to get all the similar tiles as selection. Hit Delete key on your keyboard to get rid of the selected tiles.

Note: You can also use ‘Select Similar’ button on the Control Palette to select the similar tiles.

---

Step 6

All the unwanted tiles are gone now. Select all the tiles and assign a fill color of your choice. You can also change the shape of the tiles pretty easily. To change the shape of the mosaic tiles, select the tiles, go to Effect > Convert to Shape and select Ellipse… from the list.



Inside Shape Options dialog, set the Extra Width and Extra Height parameters to 0 px and hit OK button to convert the tiles into a circle/ellipse.



You can use Illustrator’s powerful tools to make your tiles look more interesting and unique.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and learned something new from it. I will see you soon with another useful tutorial. Thanks!

The post How to create Dotted Image/Mosaic effect in Illustrator appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> http://makeitcg.com/best-art-portfolio-websites/5020/ Sat, 25 Jul 2015 16:01:41 +0000 http://makeitcg.com/?p=5020 A list of best websites to create art portfolio where artists can upload their artwork, read art related articles and join creative & technical discussions.

The post 10+ Best Websites for Art Portfolios appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> You may have noticed that artists related to different fields like graphic design, photography, comic drawings, sketching and illustrations, have a portfolio file to showcase their best pieces of art.

As an artist, it is very important for you to have a portfolio file as it saves you from the mess of turning on the laptop and browsing folders to show your work during an interview.

However, we can’t show our portfolio file to anyone who connects with us via internet. Many people have websites and blogs as their online portfolio but not everyone prefer having them as it’s a bit complex to manage them and it also costs money in maintenance and renewals.

Many people send their portfolios in emails as attachments but the problem with that is you can send only few images or the archive size could get heavy. Secondly, recipient has to download the archive first in order to view your portfolio. This is something that most of the people avoid.

You don’t have to worry anymore as there are lots of websites where you can register for free to create your profile, upload your artwork, talk to other artists and get their opinions about your artwork.

Many of these communities have forums where you can get into creative discussions or post your questions & queries. You can give your portfolio URL to anyone who is interested in watching your work. You can also use it in your resume and email signature.

These are the best websites for art portfolios where graphic and web designers, photographers, illustrators, comic artists, digital artists, painters and sculptors can upload their work.

1. DeviantART

   

   DevianART was founded in year 2000 and now it has become one of the biggest art communities for artists. It is like a social network for artists where you can upload their artwork and get tips and critics from other fellow artists.

   You can comment and favorite artwork by other artists and even follow them to get their updates. You can chat with other artists by joining available chatrooms or you can create your own.

   This great site offers free as well as premium membership. Premium members can enjoy some great features and privileges such as changing their usernames, scheduling deviations, having access to the Sta.sh storage, administrate more than 3 groups, access to premium widgets and much more.

   Visit Website

2. CGSociety

   

   CGSociety is another popular art website that people love to visit most. This website has some great portfolios of digital and 3d artists that you would love to watch.

   You can enjoy browsing great artwork by visiting Galleries section of the CGSociety, take part in different art challenges and read latest CG related news, articles and trends. Through CGTalk forums, you can get involved in the different art discussions and post your questions regarding anything related to art.

   If you are looking for a job, CGSociety can help you find a job. You can do a quick job search through its Jobs section which allows you to search a job based on country, state, occupation and the industry of your choice.
   Other than that, this website offers great workshops and video trainings as an ultimate learning material for CG artists.

   Visit Website

3. Artstation

   

   This is one of those websites that I love to visit more often. Artstation came to the existence after a well-known CG website CGHub was shut down by its owners. This site has a clean layout with a top row showing sponsored stories.
   Gallery thumbnails are arranged as a grid pattern displaying the artwork of different artists.

   This website allows you to filter the artwork as Trending, Latest and Picks. You can even choose the media type (digital 2d or 3d, traditional 2d or 3d) and subject matter (Animation, Concept art, Game art etc.)

   A bigger version of the artwork can be viewed by clicking on the thumbnail. The page with bigger version of the artwork has a sidebar that contains artist’s information and comments. You can click on the artist’s name to see more of his/her works.

   You can read the Artstation magazine for latest CG news and articles. Artstation also has “Jobs” section where you can find job of your choice.

   Visit Website

4. Zbrushcentral

   

   Zbrush Central is a great community for Zbrush artists or Zbrushers. You can take a look at some amazing digital sculptures by visiting the Gallery. You can browse different sketchbooks created by different people to see their completed and WIP sculptures.

   It is a great place to develop your sculpting skills and get critics from professional sculptors. You can read interviews of some great artists.

   Learners can visit ZClassroom section for videos covering basics to advanced techniques on different topics such as sculpting, texturing, rendering and posing inside of Zbrush. Zbrushcentral has a tutorials forum where members can share their tricks and tutorials.

   Visit Website

5. GameArtisans

   

   GameArtisans is a great community for those who love to create game art. You can have a look at awesome 3d artwork from different artists, browse different art pages, and take part in art challenges and ongoing art discussions.

   This site has a clean layout which allows you to navigate easily through the different categories. It has tutorials section covering major 2d and 3d software programs.

   You can look for the job of your choice Inside Jobs section and go through other categories to read more of CG news and articles.

   Visit Website

6. Behance

   

   Behance is nice and professional looking website for the artists. You can find pretty much every type of art on this website. You can look at creative finished projects and work in progress.

   People who are looking for artists to hire can post their jobs in the job section. This website lets you browse through different categories like Architecture, Graphic Design and Illustration.

   Behance makes it easy to filter the search by location, featured, most popular, most recent, most viewed and most followed so that you can easily find the artwork you are looking for. Behance is one of the greatest websites for art portfolios.

   Visit Website

7. Conceptart.org

   

   ConceptArt, as the name suggests, is a community dedicated to concept artists. People can browse sketchbooks of different artists by visiting ConceptArt forums and ask art related questions. This website allows artists to search and post jobs.

   This website offers some awesome workshops covering basics and advanced aspects of digital art. This is a great websites for people who are interested in learning concept art.

   Visit Website

8. Visualart

   

   Another great site where you can upload your artwork, take part in creative challenges and get comments & critics from other artists. You can visit Visualart forums to join art discussions related to 3d, graphic design, photography and web design etc. You can visit Visualart blog to read CG related articles and learn more about events and challenges.

   Visit Website

9. Vfxartportal

   

   This awesome site features artworks and videos including demo reels, 2d & 3d tutorials, behind the scene videos, vfx breakdowns and so on and so forth.

   Vfxartportal has a gallery grid on the homepage which can be sorted as Latest, Popular and Featured etc.
   You can also browse some awesome and high quality stock images including trees, metals, landscapes, rocks and many more.

   In their Store section they have some great stuff like Photoshop brushes, actions, painting tutorials for newbies and art learners.

   Visit Website

10. Coroflot

    

    Coroflot is a great website that offers unlimited storage to its users for free. You can completely personalize your portfolio and track how many people followed, viewed and added your work to favorites.

    This website has a nice and clean layout with masonry styled gallery on the homepage which can be sorted as Most Recent, Most Viewed, Staff Picks or You can choose from the Specialties sidebar to display images belong to a particular category. Inside “Job Board” section you can post a job or look out for a job of your choice.

    Visit Website

11. Artician

    

    Artician has a variety of portfolios that you would like to browse. On this website, you can find artists with skills like Graphic Design, Digital Art, Photography, Web design and Animation.

    Artician forums allow you to join discussions related to different topics. You can also visit Artician Magazine and enjoy reading news and articles on different art topics.

    This website also offers a Pro account with some additional features like browsing without ads, more exposure to users with pro account, Pro users can upload their resume on their page and much more.

    Visit Website

I hope you enjoyed the list. If you think I have missed something, feel free to let me know in your comments below. Thanks!

The post 10+ Best Websites for Art Portfolios appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> http://makeitcg.com/display-data-viewport-maxscript/4997/ Wed, 15 Jul 2015 10:02:35 +0000 http://makeitcg.com/?p=4997 A detailed tutorial guide to show how to display information like object name, coordinates and vertex index directly in the viewports using MaxScript.

The post How to: Display Data in viewport using MaxScript in 3ds max appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> In this tutorial, you will be learning how to display the object information or data directly in the viewport with the help of MaxScript.

This tutorial covers how to display simple things like object’s name, coordinates and lastly the vertex index of an editable poly object with proper explanation of code. Let’s get started.

---

Step 1



Let’s open up the Maxscript Editor and write the code given below.

fn  ViewportTextDisplay =
(
gw.setTransform (Matrix3 1)
for obj in objects where obj.isselected == true do
(
gw.text obj.pos (obj.name as string) color:Yellow
)
)
gw.UpdateScreen()

Explanation:

gw.setTransform (Matrix3 1)

sets the viewport transformation matrix of the viewport’s graphic window as identity matrix.

for obj in objects where obj.isselected == true do

This is the For loop that checks for the selected objects. Here, obj is a for loop index variable which can be anything besides the keywords reserved by MaxScript.

gw.text function is to create the text. I am using obj.pos as the text position since I want the text to hold the same space as the selected object.

obj.name is the name of the selected object that I want to display in the viewport and gw.UpdateScreen() function is to update the viewports.

All of this code is inside a function called ViewportTextDisplay.

---

Step 2



Now, we have to register register our function ViewportTextDisplay using 3ds max callbacks. Let’s go ahead and add one more line at the end of the script.

RegisterRedrawViewsCallback ViewportTextDisplay

This line registers the RedrawViews Callback with the function ViewportTextDisplay. Now, the function ViewportTextDisplay will be called every time 3dsmax redraws viewports.

Let’s create few objects and evaluate the script by pressing Ctrl + E hotkey. You can notice that the selected object now has a text with its name as string.

---

Step 3



Let’s say we want to display object’s coordinates instead of object’s name then we can simply do it by replacing obj.name with obj.pos in the script.

Now, evaluate the script again and notice that we have object’s position data displaying in the viewport BUT the previous text with object’s name is still there causing the overlapping.

---

Step 4

In order to fix the overlapping texts, we have to first unregister the function to clear all the previous data or information.



To unregister a function, we have to write a simple line of code UnregisterRedrawViewsCallback ViewportTextDisplay at the beginning of the script.

---

Step 5



Displaying vertex index would be even more useful. Let’s learn how to do that. Let’s replace everything below
gw.setTransform(Matrix3 1)

for obj in objects where obj.isselected ==true and (classof obj == Editable_Poly) do
(
for vert in (polyop.getvertselection $) do 
(
	gw.text (polyop.getvert $ vert ) (vert as string) color:Yellow
)
)

Explanation:

for obj in objects where obj.isselected ==true and (classof obj == Editable_Poly) do

This code checks for the selected objects and if any object is selected then it will check whether it is an Editable Poly object or not.

Inside the first For loop we have another for loop,

for vert in (polyop.getvertselection $) do

where vert is the index variable and polyop.getvertselection $ is to get the array of the selected vertices as sequence.

gw.text, as we know, is to create the text. I want the text to possess the same position as the vertex so we have to collect the position data of the selected vertices to place the text. polyop.getvert $ vert gives the position of the selected vertices.

vert as string is to display the vertex index as text string.

Now, Evaluate the script and you are done. You can easily modify this script to display the information you want.



I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and learned something useful from it. Stay updated for new tutorials. Thanks!

The post How to: Display Data in viewport using MaxScript in 3ds max appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> http://makeitcg.com/thumbnail-view-photoshop/4977/ Fri, 03 Jul 2015 08:24:20 +0000 http://makeitcg.com/?p=4977 A tutorial demonstrating two ways on how to get a thumbnail view of a document in Photoshop. A handy tip for digital Painters and Illustrators.

The post Get Thumbnail view of a Document in Photoshop appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]> In this tutorial, I will be showing you two ways to get a thumbnail view of a document or canvas in Photoshop. This is one handy tip that digital painters and illustrators can use during drawing and painting process.

You can change the zoom level of the thumbnail window and even paint on it. The advantage of using the thumbnail is that it gives you the idea how your painting looks like when you zoom or shrink it. Let’s get started.

---

Step 1



Since, this tip is specifically for digital painters so, I will be using a quick and basic painting of an axe/hatchet for demonstrating the process.

---

Step 2



Let’s go to Window > Arrange and choose New window for Hatchet.psd where Hatchet is the name of the file. This will create another window of the current document.

Let’s resize the new window to a desired size and set the zoom levels according to the dimensions of the window. Now, we have a thumbnail view of our painting that updates every time we paint on the original document.

---

The Navigator Panel

We can also use Navigator panel as the document thumbnail but there are some limitations with it like, we can’t paint inside Navigator window and it has a View Box as a marking of the visible area.

I don’t like the view box in the Navigator panel so I recommend using the first way.



There is no way we can turn the Navigator’s view box completely off but We can get rid of it to some extent by using the same color as background for view box’s border but this will only work with solid backgrounds. Let’s do it in the next step.

---

Changing the View Box color

To change the view box’s color, click on the Panel Menu button on the top right corner and select Panel Options… from the list.



From the Panel Options pop up box you can choose any color but in this case we are going to use a custom color. Let’s click on the color box and pick up the background color.

Since, the view box and the background now have the same color which makes it hard to see but you can notice that this doesn’t work when view box and the painting overlap.
That’s it. I hope you enjoyed this short tip. Stay tuned for more tutorials. Thanks!

The post Get Thumbnail view of a Document in Photoshop appeared first on MakeItCG.

]]>