Editor’s notice: This submit is a part of our weekly Within the NVIDIA Studio collection, which celebrates featured artists, provides inventive suggestions and tips, and demonstrates how NVIDIA Studio expertise improves inventive workflows.
Principal NVIDIA artist and 3D professional Michael Johnson creates extremely detailed artwork that’s each technically spectacular and emotionally resonant. It’s evident in his newest piece, Father-Son Collaboration, which pulls on inspiration from the vivid creativeness of his son and is highlighted this week Within the NVIDIA Studio.
“I like how artwork can convey pleasure and nice recollections to others — nice work makes me really feel particular to be a human and an artist,” mentioned Johnson. “Artwork can flip individuals’s views and make them really feel one thing fully totally different.”
“The story behind this piece is that I merely needed to encourage my son and train him how issues will be perceived — how individuals will be impressed by others’ artwork,” mentioned Johnson, who might inform that his son — a doodler himself — typically thought of his personal art work not adequate.
“I needed to point out him what I noticed in his artwork and the way it impressed me,” Johnson mentioned.
By way of this venture, Johnson additionally aimed to show the NVIDIA Studio-powered workflows of artwork studios and idea artists internationally.
NVIDIA RTX GPU expertise performs a pivotal function in accelerating Johnson’s creativity. “As an artist, I care about fast suggestions and stability,” he mentioned. “My NVIDIA A6000 RTX graphics card hastens the rendering course of so I can shortly iterate.”
For Father-Son Collaboration, Johnson first opened Autodesk Maya to mannequin the creature’s fundamental 3D shapes. His GPU-accelerated viewport enabled quick, interactive 3D modeling.
Subsequent, he imported fashions into ZBrush for additional sculpting, freestyling and particulars. “After I had my last sculpt down, I took the mannequin into Rizom-Lab IV software program to put out the UVs,” Johnson mentioned. UV mapping is the method of projecting a 3D mannequin’s floor to a 2D picture for texture mapping. It makes the mannequin simpler to texture and shade later within the inventive workflow.
Johnson then used Adobe Substance 3D Painter to use commonplace and customized textures and shaders on the character.
“Substance 3D Painter is de facto nice as a result of it shows the ultimate look of the textures with out bringing it into an exterior renderer,” mentioned Johnson.
His GPU unlocked RTX-accelerated gentle and ambient occlusion baking, optimizing property in mere seconds.
With the textures full, Johnson imported his fashions again into Autodesk Maya for hair, grooming, lighting and rendering. For the hair and fur, the artist used XGen, Autodesk Maya’s built-in instancing software. Autodesk Maya additionally provides third-party help of GPU-accelerated renderers equivalent to Chaos V-Ray, OTOY OctaneRender and Maxon Redshift.
“Redshift is nice — and having a fantastic GPU makes renders actually fast,” Johnson added. Redshift’s RTX-accelerated final-frame rendering with AI-powered OptiX denoising exported information with loads of time to spare.
Johnson put the ultimate touches on Father-Son Collaboration in Adobe Photoshop. With entry to over 30 GPU-accelerated options, equivalent to blur gallery, object choice, perspective warp and extra, he utilized the background and added minor touch-ups to finish the piece.
The enjoyment, awe and wonderment he’d hoped to invoke in his son got here to fruition when Johnson lastly shared the piece.
“Artwork is without doubt one of the uncommon issues in life that basically has no finish purpose — because it’s actually concerning the course of, fairly than the outcome,” Johnson mentioned. “Each day, you study one thing new, develop and see issues in numerous methods.”
Try Johnson’s portfolio on Instagram.
Comply with NVIDIA Studio on Instagram, Twitter and Fb. Entry tutorials on the Studio YouTube channel and get updates immediately in your inbox by subscribing to the Studio e-newsletter.
Study concerning the newest with OpenUSD and Omniverse at SIGGRAPH, operating August 6-10. Make the most of showfloor experiences like hands-on labs, particular occasions and demo cubicles — and don’t miss NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote handle on Tuesday, Aug. 8, at 8 a.m. PT.
