The Gnomon Workshop is pleased to announce the release of "Look Development with V-Ray for Maya", with Stephen DeLalla.

Look development is the art of giving emotion to a model via textures, shaders, lighting, and even compositing. It is a very exciting time as you get to see your model take shape, and the story you are telling begins to fall into place. In this lecture, Stephen DeLalla will be covering his entire look development process with V-Ray for Maya. He begins with a newly modeled asset to discuss proper preparation. Since there is a need for consistency among shading work, Stephen explains how to create a look dev scene to use for all render tests. This same scene is used during our asset work, and also during an in-depth look at creating realistic shaders for cloth, metal, wood, glass, concrete, stone, and leather. After applying a set of base shaders to the asset, we take a render into Photoshop for a quick paint over to design the color palette of the asset.

Look development is an exploratory process, where there needs to be room for change as the artist is working. Substance Painter gives a lot of freedom in this sense, and will be used for creating our textures for the asset. During the texturing process there is discussion of the thought process behind the choices being made that leads us to our result. You will also be able to see how Photoshop (or any other painting package) can be used in combination with Substance Painter to get even better control. Once the asset is fully textured, the shaders are built in Maya with the exported files from Substance. Lastly, Stephen brings the completed asset into a small lighting scene, and finishes the lecture with the explanation of the lighting/rendering workflow and compositing in Nuke to really finalize our look. By the end of this lesson, artists should have a clear understanding of how to approach their own look development tasks both at home and in production.

The Gnomon Workshop is pleased to announce the release of “Figure Fundamentals Volume 4: Drawing The Male Head With Planes And Tones” with Van Arno.

Drawing the head can be the most challenging aspect of figure drawing. In this tutorial, Van Arno addresses common mistakes and provides tips to keep features in proportion. He demonstrates two methods of tackling facial symmetry in perspective, and works up to long poses using each of these methods. Along the way, Van also executes some quick poses of extreme facial expression. Successful head drawing is a great confidence builder for developing artists. Once competence in lighting and perspective are acquired, other issues of figure drawing are more easily addressed. Topics include male vs female proportions, facial construction from simple to detailed, the planes of the face, volume and perspective, light and shadow.

The Gnomon Workshop is pleased to announce the release of “Introduction to V-Ray“, with Stephen DeLalla.

In this lecture, CG Supervisor Stephen DeLalla gives a thorough introduction to V-Ray for Maya. All major aspects of V-Ray will be covered, starting with the fundamentals of how V-Ray integrates into Maya, linear workflow and color management, render settings, lights, materials, new features of vray 3 and 3.1, xgen integration, and more. There is also an in-depth discussion on general workflow techniques that will be useful for all levels of artists, and are directly related to how Stephen works in production. Topics include the V-Ray, Blend, Car Paint, Two-Sided, Hair, SSS and Skin Materials as well as Displacement, Global Illumination, Render Elements, Proxies, Physical Camera, and effective usage of the Adaptive DMC. There is also a making-of, discussing the techniques used with Maya, V-Ray, and Nuke to create the cover image. Stephen explains why certain decisions were made, what techniques were used, and how they relate to different chapters in the series. This lecture will provide artists with a wonderful foundation in V-ray, and enable them to push their work to a new level.

The Gnomon Workshop is pleased to announce the release of “Octane Render for Maya", with Eric Keller.

In this lecture, Eric Keller introduces the Octane Render plug in for Maya 2016 by Otoy. Octane is a GPU based rendering system that uses the advanced technology of the latest CUDA graphic cards to create physically based photo realistic rendering quickly and easily. Each chapter in this lecture is devoted to a different aspect of the software. Using a variety of Maya scenes Eric demonstrates how to use Octane’s toolset to create realistic shaders, lighting, textures, motion blur, and depth of field.

The Gnomon Workshop is pleased to announce the release of “Anatomy Workshop Volume Six: Structure and Anatomy of the Arm” with Charles Hu

This lecture demonstrates the structure and anatomy of the human arm. In a continuation of his previous lectures on human anatomy, figure artist Charles Hu begins this lecture with a review of the primary skeletal structures of the arm. After discussing the primary structures and proportions, Charles begins by breaking down the primary muscle groups. Starting with the shoulder and upper arm, he works his way down to the forearm’s muscle groups, explaining supination and pronation while also discussing the muscle connections and their action.

The Gnomon Workshop is pleased to announce the release of "Creating a Sci-Fi Alleyway, Detailed Environment Techniques with Devon Fay".

In this lecture, senior environment artist Devon Fay takes you through his process of creating complex and believable CG environments. He starts at the very beginning with the development of an idea with research, reference and exploration. Devon then discusses how to expand on your ideas with clear steps towards working efficiently and creatively. Topics include reference gathering, blocking-out scenes through effective layout techniques, modeling, lighting, texturing, painting, rendering and the exploration of new tools...