3D World issue 97

IN THE MAGAZINE

Special issue: 3D skills for games
17 pages of themed tips and tutorials aimed at game artists and modders, covering all aspects of 3D work. Contents include:

From concept art to hi-res sculpt
Alessandro Baldasseroni reveals the trade secrets of our cover model: the Hunter from Hellgate London

Professional games texturing tips
Six leading artists reveal their tricks for creating better, less memory-hungry textures

Rig a Quake 4-style biomech
First of a two-part beginner‘s guide to rigging hybrid organic/mechanical characters

Animate props for Half-Life 2
We show you how to animate a custom clown character and bring him into the Half-Life 2 engine

3D printing bureaus on test
Online 3D printing services turn your meshes into physical models… for a fee. As prices tumble, we tested out six of the leading agencies

Better simulations in Blender
Brush up your procedural animation skills with this month‘s four-page project: animating a bullet shattering a pane of glass

Affordable performance capture
On show at Siggraph this year, Organic Motion‘s markerless capture system aims to bring the technology to smaller studios. We investigate

Your technical questions answered
Other applications covered this issue include 3ds Max, Bryce, Cinema 4D, DAZ Studio, LightWave 3D, Maya, MotionBuilder, Silo and XSI

On test this issue
New consumer graphics cards go head-to-head in our group test. Also reviewed: modo 301, XSI 6.5 Essentials, form.Z 6.5 RenderZone Plus, boujou bullet SD, RPS 3D PDF 2.0, Ozone 3.0

ON THE CD

XSI 6 Mod Tool plus Noesis Interactive video tutorial
ModelUP architectural models: as sold for $345
drUtilSuite (collection of mental ray shaders and Fusion plug-ins)
Runtime DNA Poser characters and clothes (Katelyn for Miki 2, Sci-Fi Costume for Victoria 3): as sold for $26