3D for Illustration in Maya and Photoshop

What you'll learn

In this tutorial, we'll learn how to create a 3D illustration for use on a magazine cover. Over the tutorial, we will learn how to efficiently model by only modeling what we need and how to reuse basic base meshes as starting points. Then we will look at how to efficiently UV map, looking at techniques to quickly produce distortion free UVs. Then using Ambient Occlusion bakes as starting points for our textures we will look at a efficient and repeatable texturing process. We will then look at how to pose our characters, setup shaders to replicate advanced effects such as refraction and sub-surface scattering, before setting up render passes and layers for compositing. Finally we will bring it all together in Photoshop using our layers to composite and adjust our image before looking at some final techniques to complete our 3D Illustration. Software required: Maya 2011, Photoshop CS5.

Table of contents