The Gnomon Workshop is pleased to announce the release of "Sculpting a Dragon with ZBrush" with Maarten Verhoeven.

In this lecture, Maarten Verhoeven demonstrates how to create a highly detailed dragon in ZBrush. The entire process is thoroughly discussed from the initial block-in to final rendering. Beginning with ZSpheres, Maarten blocks out the major forms of the creature’s primary shapes including additional subtools for elements like horns, teeth, claws and wings. Then with the overall shapes in place, he retopologizes the dragon in preparation of sculpting the finer details. Various techniques are shared that accelerate the process of sculpting these details through the use of stencils and alphas. A detailed rock base is then created and the creature is put into its final pose using Transpose Master. In conclusion, Maarten sends the dragon to Keyshot for the final rendering of his finished digital sculpt. Artists of any level, interested in learning from a master ZBrush sculptor, will learn myriad techniques both in technical workflows and informed design strategies.

The Gnomon Workshop is pleased to announce the release of "Environment Modeling and Sculpting for Game Production" with Nate Stephens, lead environment artist at Sony Santa Monica Studios.

In this title, Nate will demonstrate how to model and sculpt assets to be assembled into a 3D environment. Starting with reference photography, Nate locks in on a concept for his environment before blocking in his scene layout in Maya and building reference objects that will be further refined and detailed in ZBrush. He then imports the various assets into ZBrush for detail sculpting using GoZ where he Polygroups the different pieces and defines the crease levels of the different parts of the model. Next, Nate begins roughing in his sculpt using Dynamesh in ZBrush.

In this lecture, Wayne Hollingsworth demonstrates how to create dynamic storm cloud simulations in Maya through the creation of a production quality animated sequence. Wayne thoroughly addresses the various technical challenges, and solutions, as a space cruiser passes through storm clouds that must realistically react to its shape while being illuminated by lightning strikes. Reference is evaluated is order to ensure believable results as the lesson goes in-depth on how to effectively control fluid simulations with custom velocities, fields, and particle simulations.

In this title, Wayne Hollingsworth demonstrates effective techniques for the creation of dynamic cumulus and stratus clouds with Maya fluids. The workflow begins by discussing and executing different types of particle emission for the cloud shapes. This includes the nDynamic particle system, caching, and how to utilize the Trax editor to take advantage of re-timing and offsetting for the cloud simulation sequences. Wayne's methodology provides precise control over the shape of the clouds while offering a flexible workflow for various applications.