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3DTotal: Can you tell us a little about yourself and how you came to be involved with 3D?
Zoltan: Well, first I graduated from art college, then I graduated from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design as a Designer in Visual Communication Arts.
Besides the ‘conventional’ types of applied graphics (e.g. illustration, typography) I do other kinds of art, like etching and oil painting. I got involved in 3D |
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in the nineties when I started to work in the games industry. Since then I’ve worked for many games developers as a concept artist, 3d graphic artist or mattepainter.
3DTotal: Can you tell us about the games you have worked on, and in what capacity, and the nature of your mattepainting?
Zoltan: The first game I worked on was an FPS, titled ‘Seed’, for which I created level textures. I drew characters and backgrounds for online games with marketing purposes, for Jack Daniel’s or Tchibo.
As a freelancer I did mattepaintings for cut-scenes, e.g. for ‘Armies of Exigo’, for which I painted realistic landscapes fitting the levels, but I also drew backgrounds for the Mr Bean cartoon. Recently I worked on ‘Warhammer: Mark of Chaos’ as a 3D artist. Currently I’m creating content for nextgen games. |
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3DTotal: I can see from your gallery of images that you are a keen user of Modo as well as ZBrush. As someone who uses both, how do you think the two compare?
Zoltan: Around 2000 I got a trial version of ZBrush from a demo CD and I found it an efficient tool for creating illustrations. I bought it and my wife and I (who is also a designer) have been using it ever since. I first found out about Modo in 2005, and found it to be a very good tool for subdivision modelling.
ZBrush is a 2.5D software package, but it’s not only usable in a workflow with other |
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software, it can be used to create 3D stills or paintings with 3D elements. Despite the vast amount of polygons it can handle, it runs quite well on a machine with a weaker VGA.
Modo is a complex 3D program that only lacks several additional animation tools. From modelling / sculpting through texture painting to rendering; everything can be done in Modo, and only post processing might require you to use other software (I used it in game development for creating models and textures).
But to be able to use it’s capabilities of Advanced OpenGL display (needed for sculpting), a better OpenGL VGA is needed. From the aspect of sculpting, in ZBrush you can sculpt a high res model, then generate a Displacement Map for the low res model. In Modo, however, you can paint the Displacement map itself onto the model, and use a Vector Displacement Map, which has the great advantage over Displacement Maps in that you are able to create geometry overlapping itself. |
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3DTotal: Both have been championed by numerous artists and seem to have set a precedent in terms of what can now be achieved within the realm of organic modelling. Where do you see the further development within the software?
Zoltan: I think software will become even more complex, because the increasing performance of newer hardware makes it possible for them to have every solution needed for a given task.
The tools of Modo and ZBrush are also made more useable by the special plug-ins and scripts that have been created by the community. |
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