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Over the past two years, there has been an explosion in interest surrounding VR and AR technologies. The latest big thing in experimental design, AR has also arrived on the web, but with this new technology comes new skills, and right now it feels like the Wild West with no major standards to follow. The ability to display 3D on the web is nothing new, but if you’ve been avoiding it, then you need to jump into technologies like three.js or A-Frame (take a look at our roundup of AR tools to try for a full list). Whatever skill level you are at, it won’t make much difference if you don’t have some decent content. Think about appropriate use cases for AR before jumping in. In this article, we’ll show you how to create a multi-marker AR experience. By using multiple markers, it’s possible to show different stages of a process or any unique content based on that marker. In this example, our app will explore the water cycle. Jump to page 3 to learn how to create a custom AR marker. 01. Get started Open the start folder in your IDE and inside the index.html page find the script tags. All the code in the tutorial will go inside these. To test the app you will need to have a server and if you want to test on a phone you will need to host the files on a HTTPS server. Add the initial variables in the script tags: 02. Load the model Use the icon in the top right to enlarge the image To make the AR scene work, a model will be loaded. You will see that once loaded it is stored in the variable model1. This is then scaled and cloned twice for the three steps. Rather than load three different models, all the adjustments to one model will be done in code to make it load quickly on mobile. 03. Set up the tweening On the first model, the cloud is going to be found in the scene and this will be tweened to a new position so that the cloud rises out of the sea. This is set to repeat forever and it will take eight seconds for the tween to animate up and show a cloud forming. 04. Scale it up The cloud is scaled down to be almost invisible. Another tween is added to the cloud and this scales the cloud up to its normal size. With the movement and the scaling, it will give the illusion that the cloud is rising and forming out of the sea as the first step in the process of the water cycle. 05. Set up the second cloud A second cloud will sit above the mountain The next cloud from the second model needs to be positioned where the first cloud finished its animation as a formed cloud in the sky. This is given a tweened movement to position itself over the land, rising slightly above the mountain. This will take 12 seconds to animate as it’s a bigger move. 06. Make it rain The key to making this illusion work is allowing the cloud to rain. The water cycle has the cloud rain as it moves higher over land. To get the effect, a particle system will be used. Here the amount of particles and the particle material is created, using a rain drop image. 07. Create raindrops Using a for loop, 1500 raindrops can be created with a random x, y, z position that will be between the cloud and the ground. Each raindrop is given its own random velocity to make the rain look more natural. The particle is pushed into the correct vertex of the geometry. 08. Work on the particle system Now the particle system is created out of the geometry and the material. The particles are set to be sorted so that the z-order is correct and then the rain particles are made a child of the second cloud. Anywhere the cloud is tweened, the rain also follows, so no need to animate the rain following the cloud! 09. Set the final model positions In the final model, the cloud is repositioned to the ending spot of the second cloud animation cycle. This new cloud is just going to sit in the sky and not animate. Instead the river is going to animate, so the river model is stored in a variable, ready to add the tween to it. 10. Fill up the river Water levels in the river need to rise In the third step of the water cycle the water runs off the hills, filling rivers and lakes as it returns to the sea. This is the most subtle movement as it will just entail moving the height of the river so that it appears to fill up. Everything is preloaded now, so the init function is called. Next page: Add AR functionality and markers 11. Initialise the AR scene The init function is mainly about setting up the Three.JS scene and then making that scene respond to the position of the marker detected in AR. In this case the renderer is set up and the various attributes set. It’s positioned in the top left of the browser screen. 12. Add the camera The renderer is appended into the HTML document and then a new array is created that will contain all the elements that need to be updated in the scene for animation – more on this later. A 3D scene is created and a camera added to the scene which will be from the position of the user’s camera. 13. Add AR functionality The source to track for AR markers is set up now and you can see in this code that it is set to track the webcam. This will be a phone or tablet’s camera if on those devices. If for any reason the window resizes, the onResize function is called and this is also called at the start. 14. Resize the screen Now the code creates the onResize function that is called from the previous step. This ensures the webcam image is set to be resized to fit inside the renderer. If you inspect your page, the renderer is actually a HTML5 Canvas element. 15. Add the first marker The next few steps all take a similar approach. A new variable is created and this becomes a group. Inside this group the marker is told to respond to a ‘pattern’ marker and the type of pattern is defined in an external file. For more information on how this was created see the separate tutorial. 16. Add the second marker Now the second marker is created with a different variable name. This references a different pattern so it will respond to a different marker held in front of the camera. This way holding up different markers will trigger different responses. 17. Add the final marker and models Each variable needs the correct marker added to it Once more, another variable is declared for the last marker and it references another pattern file. After this you will see that each marker variable group gets the correct model added to it that we set up in the first 10 steps. These will display when the marker is placed in front of the camera. 18. Update the particles The rain particles need to change every frame You may have forgotten about the rain particles created earlier, but they need updating every frame. So here a for loop moves through each particle in the array and updates its position, resetting it if it moves below the ground. This totally makes the rain effect work. 19. Remove the preloader This needs to disappear when the scene is ready While all of this set up has been going on, there has been a message over the screen that is asking the user to wait patiently for the content to load. Here that content is removed and the scene is rendered through the camera. 20. Continuously update The requestAnimationFrame is the browser’s built-in loop that tries to run as close to 60 frames per second that it can. Here the frame rate is worked out so that the animation is divided by 60 frames per second to work out the interval, to create a delta of time that has passed. Mobile CPUs will run at a different speed so frame rate will not be an accurate time counter. 21. Finish up Now the tween engine is updated and every element added to the onRenderFct array that will be updated at the correct speed. Save the file and make sure you look at this on a server, it must be HTTPS if you want to serve to mobile devices. Place the markers supplied in the project files folder in front of the camera to see the different stages. Next page: How to create a custom marker When creating your own AR experience, you will probably want the marker that you are using to either be branded to a client logo or customised in some way to reflect the nature of what your user is doing with the AR application. This is very easy to do. The main part to make this work is downloading the pattern file, placing this within your project folder structure and referencing this in your JavaScript code. Here's a quick step-by-step guide. 01. Make the pattern First create your marker's design In your image editing application make a square image and ensure the background is set to white. Now create a custom shape on the screen. Make sure this is black as this is the easiest to be read. Save the file as a PNG as this will be uploaded to a website to convert into the pattern code. 02. Upload and download Upload the design into AR.js Go to the pattern marker training page and click the upload button. Your marker will appear on the screen. Click the download marker button to get the marker file for your code. Click the appropriate download PDF button to get a printable marker. 03. Place it in the code Add the file to the data folder Place the downloaded pattern-marker.patt in the data folder. You can name it anything you like. Look in your code and change the line shown below to be the name of the pattern that you have downloaded. Now hold the PDF up to the camera to trigger the AR content to appear. This article was originally published in creative web design magazine Web Designer. Buy issue 274 or subscribe. Read more: 5 future web design job titles The future of design: AR will be bigger than the internet AR.js is bringing augmented reality to the web View the full article

It’s not just beginners who need to take web design courses; in this profession, you’re always learning. Firstly, new techniques and technologies are emerging constantly, and so it’s important to keep up. And secondly, the more general your skillbase becomes, the more in demand you’ll be. So even if you’re a JavaScript wonderkid, adding another string to your bow, such as user experience or web VR, will really help you get that dream job or freelance client. Overall, in our view, the best provider of web design courses is Treehouse. That's because they offer high-quality video training, as well as clever touches to keep you motivated and actually finish your course. And, perhaps most importantly, in a rapidly changing environment, their classes are always kept super up-to-date with the latest techniques and technologies. 7 things they don’t tell you about the web industry But there may be other course providers who may suit your specific needs better, whether that's in terms of your budget, preferred teaching methods or subject areas. So in this post, we’ve brought together the best of the best. (Note that we're focusing here on services that provide a wide range of web design training; if, however, you just want to learn a specific language, you may prefer our list of online coding courses. ) 01. Treehouse Best all-rounder: Treehouse is known for constantly updating its video-based lessons, so you're never left behind PROS: Up-to-the-minute training. Sole focus on web design and development. CONS: Subscription may not suit. Videos only downloadable on pricier plans. Founded in 2011 by well-known web designer Ryan Carson, Treehouse offers more than 300 video-based training courses in web design, web development, mobile development and game development, from beginner to advanced levels. These are professionally shot, the quality of instruction is first-class, and everything is constantly updated to take newly emerging technologies into account (new content is released weekly). While online training lets you learn at your own pace, that often makes it difficult to motivate yourself to finish the course. Treehouse, however, has found a clever way to square this particular circle. That’s because after watching its videos, you then take interactive quizzes and challenges to test that you’ve understood it correctly. Once you complete these, you’re awarded badges, which get displayed on your profile. These ‘rewards’ might sound a little cheesy, but they really do help spur you on to keep going (anyone who’s ever sat up all night playing a game trying to get to the next level, or binge-watching a Netflix show to reach the end of a season, will understand this instinctively). Also note that many companies now actively recruit new employees via Treehouse based on the number of badges they have. You won't need any special hardware or operating system (other than a Mac if you’re learning iOS), and you can even write code inside the Treehouse App using a feature called Workspaces. Subscriptions, which offer you access to all the training courses on the site, start at £20/month, and there’s a seven-day free trial if you want to check out the training first. Also note that there are special organisation rates for companies, non-profits, schools, organisations and businesses. 02. LinkedIn Learning (previously Lynda.com) LinkedIn Learning offers high quality video training within a career networking environment PROS: High quality training. Videos are downloadable. CONS: Categorisation could be better. Not much here for advanced levels. Lynda.com could be described as the godfather (or perhaps godmother?) of training on the web. Founded in 1995 by Lynda Weinman, it’s been running high quality courses in software, creative, and business skills for decades. And if anything its purchase by, and integration into, LinkedIn in 2015 has made it even more focused on helping you improve your career prospects. For example, when you're logged into LinkedIn, you’ll find training content that’s relevant to your needs will automatically surface. Plus when you learn new skills, the system makes it super-easy to highlight these on your LinkedIn profile. There are currently more than 500 courses in web design and web development to choose from, largely focused on beginner to intermediate levels, and taking in everything from PHP and React to more nuanced topics like ‘Moodboards for web designers’. So unless you’re looking for something very niche or advanced, you’re likely to find the exact training you’re looking for. However, you’ll have to do a bit of searching, as the courses are not particularly well categorised on the website. And there doesn’t seem to be the same concerted effort made by Treehouse to ensure students progress from course to course to slowly but surely build their skills; there’s more of a ‘pick and mix’ feel to this learning environment. All the courses are available on a subscription, which costs £19.99 per month on an annual plan or £24.98 on a monthly basis. A month-long free trial is also available. 03. Udemy Udemy offers a wide range of courses, although quality may vary PROS: Subscription-free. Lots for beginners. CONS: Variable quality. Can be costly if you take lots of courses. If you’re not keen on taking out a subscription, then Udemy might be a better bet for your online web design training, as you only pay per course. Note, though, that while Treehouse and LinkedIn Learning carefully curate their courses, Udemy is basically a marketplace where anyone can post a course and try their luck at turning a profit. That means that unlike the latter, employers are unlikely to see you completing a course on Udemy as a ‘proper’ qualification. That doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t some excellent courses on this site. While Udemy courses are less likely to be as professionally shot as those on Treehouse or Lynda, that can make them more authentic and relatable. The website handily includes customer reviews so you can see which ones are hitting the right notes with students. And with courses starting at £11.99, you could save a fair amount of money as a result. You can download Udemy's videos for offline viewing via the mobile app, and there are a large range of web design topics covered, with a particularly strong emphasis on WordPress, HTML, CSS and Photoshop. Note, though, that most of these courses are beginner level. 04. Bloc Bloc promises to take you from a beginner to job-ready web developer. PROS: Career-focused. Help from mentors. CONS: Expensive. Serious time commitment. Launched in 2012, Bloc describes itself as an “online coding bootcamp” that aims to take you from being a beginner to job-ready web developer. Learning materials are a combination of written and video lessons, but Bloc’s special sauce is an apprenticeship model that pairs you with an experienced mentor, who provides support and guidance throughout the course via 14 hours of live Q&A per day. There are also weekly group discussions and daily group critiques. They don’t sugar-coat it: in their view “learning to code requires a lot of hard work. You can’t learn by osmosis, you have to build. You have to bang your head against problems and work your way out.” In other words, these structured learning programs are not for the faint-hearted, but aimed squarely at highly-motivated students who are determined to carve out a career in web design and development. Courses are full time and start at $7,500 for eight months’ instruction. You’ll need a webcam because with each module you’ll face an assessment by a person who’s not your mentor; this will be similar to a real-world technical interview. You’ll find a great personal account by Kasey Markham of his experiences taking a Bloc course here. 05. Udacity Learn high-end skills through Udacity's vocational courses for professionals PROS: Cutting-edge training. Tech industry involvement. CONS: Expensive. No use for beginners. Founded in 2011, Udacity was originally focused on offering university style courses, but now focuses more on vocational courses for professionals, which it calls 'Nano Degrees'. These courses typically walk you through building a project, and then you apply what you’ve learned to a project of your own. These are long-term courses and there are set times for lessons. To give you a flavour of how that works in practice, Bilal Tahir has written an excellent account of the React Nano Degree he took here. Aimed at “lifelong learners” rather than beginners, Udacity is firmly focused on teaching specialised skills to help people in the tech industry get to the next level of their career. Courses are focused on high-end topics such as autonomous systems, AI, machine learning and full-stack web development, and are built in partnership with Google, AT&T, and Facebook. You pay per course and as you might expect, it’s not cheap; this September’s Blockchain Fundamentals course, for example, costs £799. 06. Launch School Launch School offers a way of learning web design based on first principles PROS: Based on fundamentals, not software. Follow at your own pace. CONS: Expensive. Huge time commitment. If the full-on, intensive pace of a bootcamp scares the pants of you, then Launch School offers the very opposite: in its words, “The Slow Path for Studious Beginners to a Career in Software Development”. There are two main courses: Core Curriculum and Capstone. The first teaches you the fundamentals of software development; so it’s not about learning how to use a specific language, such as React or Rails, but about slowly building up your understanding of basic principles, so you get how higher level abstractions work from the bottom up. It takes approximately 1,200-1,800 hours (8-16+ months) to complete and costs $199 a month. After that, there’s an admissions-based course focused on helping students acquire career-launching opportunities. This involves a three months’ full-time study and, intriguingly, an Income Sharing Agreement where you only pay after you get a job offer. 07. Pluralsight Pluralsight sets you a special test to help you choose the right web design course for you PROS: Huge number of courses. IQ test helps you choose the right one. CONS: Subscription model may not suit. Not specifically focused on web design and development. Founded in 2004, Pluralsight offers a variety of quality video training courses by IT specialists. Web development is well covered here, with courses in CSS, JavaScript, Angular, React and HTML5 and more, ranging from beginner to advanced levels. Most notably, Pluralsight has an innovative way to check that the course is right for you: the ‘Pluralsight IQ’ test, which promises to test your skill level in just five minutes. The service also offers 24/7 support, you can download courses for offline viewing, and subscriptions start at $35 per month or $229 per year. 08. Skillshare Skillshare has lots of decent web design courses at low cost PROS: Cheap. Wide range of topics. CONS: Quality of training varies. Videos can be quite short. Like Udemy, Skillshare is an online marketplace for video-based courses of all kinds, including web design courses, mainly for beginner and intermediate levels. While the quality may vary, it’s all cheap and cheerful, although it may be stretching things a little to call them ‘courses’ when some videos are less than an hour long. Still, there’s a wide range of topics on offer, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, UX/UI design, responsive web design, web development and WordPress. And so if you need to plug a specific knowledge gap, this might be a good place to come. You can unlock unlimited access to thousands of classes from just £7 per month for an annual subscription. Read more: 12 inspiring ecommerce website designs The 29 best iPhone apps for designers Which is the best CSS preprocessor? View the full article

Whether you're a freelance designer or a fully-fledged creative studio, you wouldn't have a business without your clients. Sometimes there can be hurdles to overcome, however, in order to maintain a smooth, mutually beneficial relationship. Managing difficult situations with clients can be one of the most challenging parts of life as a designer. Whether it’s chasing up overdue invoices, dealing with lots of amends or just good old-fashioned creative differences, it can get frustrating at times – but fear not, there are ways to smooth over even the rockiest terrain and keep everyone happy. So read on for five common hurdles that you may face when dealing with clients as a designer, and how to overcome them... 01. You need to chase late invoices Hopefully your client’s Accounts department isn't like this This happens more than you'd expect, and everyone’s heard the horror stories of chasing invoices months or even years after their due date. But putting the right framework in place from the outset can work wonders. For a start, you're within your rights to ask for a deposit upfront – ideally 50 per cent. For big, long-term projects, get a schedule in place for staged payments, so everyone knows what’s expected when. People are busy, and sometimes things fall through the cracks. Rather than panicking and chasing on (or after) the due date, drop a friendly reminder a week or so beforehand to make sure things are on track. Over time it becomes easier to spot the early warning signs from late-paying clients, such as requests for additional time, elaborate excuses, and promises of the money coming 'soon'. But remember, not all unpaid fees are the work of invoice-dodgers. You might have a great relationship with a client who always pays on time, but if they run into financial difficulties, you may feel the knock-on impact. If a client can't pay you, arrange a meeting to try and resolve things before doing any more work. 02. Your job falls through last-minute Before you shoot ahead, check the foundations are firm Winning a big new project is exciting, but don’t abandon other prospects until things are set in stone. If you clear your schedule to make way for work that hasn't been confirmed with a written contract, you could end up out of pocket if it falls through. Things can change at a moment's notice in this business, and it’s not always the client’s fault – they’re probably just as frustrated as you are, if not more so. Face-to-face meetings are a great way to build stronger relationships and are much more personal than an email or phone call. If a prospective client is reluctant to let you visit them in person, or confirm anything in writing, that could be a warning sign. Likewise, if there's a high turnover of people and your point of contact keeps changing, that’s an alarm bell too. Trust your intuition: if something doesn't add up, don't be afraid to ask questions. Stay in constant communication with your potential client, and make it clear that while you’ve pencilled the time in for them, you’ll have to keep your options open until the work is officially booked in. They should understand, and may also respect you more for it. 03. You have too many amends to deal with Sometimes a list of client amends can feel overwhelming No two clients are the same. Some are very hands-on and want to be involved at all stages of a project; others prefer to give you a brief and let you get on with it. It's important to get a sense, early on in a job, which kind of relationship is going to work best. Hands-on clients can be great if it's a healthy, two-way collaboration – but if they struggle to communicate what they want, it can be counterproductive. You may have encountered clients who keep contradicting themselves with their tweaks and amends, or even change the brief entirely. That can delay the project, which affects both of you, and may have a knock-on effect on your other clients too. But before you get angry, remember they may be out of their comfort zone. You can help manage this process from the outset before it gets out of hand. Take the time to explain the creative process to the client – don’t just assume they know what the different stages are. The more transparent and understanding you can be, the better, as it’s put your client at ease and make them feel more involved. Decent T&Cs can help manage the time you spend on amends, as well as your client’s expectations from the outset. These could include, for example, restricting how many rounds of amends you include before charging extra. If a last-minute amend comes through too late, however, it pays to be using digital print and design company moo.com for your print work. According to the MOO Promise, if there's any kind of mistake – even if it's your fault – they'll fix it for free. 04. You struggle to maintain boundaries If you’re taking client calls in bed, something has to give To a reasonable degree, it's important that you're available when your clients need you. You should respond to queries promptly, and make time for meetings and conference calls. By involving your clients at all stages of the project, and talking them through your workflow, you'll strengthen any studio-client relationship and avoid any nasty surprises. But there's a fine line between being flexible and sacrificing your personal life. It’s not a healthy client relationship if they call you at every hour of the day, and you drop whatever you're doing to cater to their needs immediately. Don't be afraid to calmly explain your normal working hours if you feel your work ethic is giving your client unreasonable expectations. Keep it friendly, rather than confrontational. Even if it's a mutually beneficial relationship and you love working on the project, if one client accounts for a high percentage of your business or time, you're on shaky ground if that falls through. Generating new business should be an ongoing process, regardless of how well things are going – never let the demands of one client stop you seeking new ones. 05. You start to get complacent Don’t just put your feet up and expect the work to come to you If you can prove yourself indispensable, and become an integral part of your client's business model, you should be rewarded with a constant stream of business. Investing in a strong client relationship means long-term security, right? Well, possibly. But don’t get complacent and just assume repeat business. Even if a project has gone brilliantly, both you and the client are happy and it was completed on time and under budget, more work is never an absolute certainty. Make it clear how you can continue to help their business moving forward, and look to establish yourself as the first port of call for design projects big or small. There isn't a studio in the world that hasn't lost a client along the way. Your contact might leave, a rival studio may undercut you, or your differences may prove unresolvable despite your efforts. Don't be disheartened. Take what you can from the project and move on. But if you take the above advice on board and invest time and energy in fostering a strong, healthy client relationship, it should pay off. Even the strongest client relationships have to start somewhere – so get your business cards out and spread the word. Digital print and design company moo.com can help you make a great first impression, and they've even provided some advice to improve your client relationships on their blog – so pop over and take a look. Related articles: 10 steps to go freelance this year Pro's guide to creating memorable business cards How to project your work onto the global stage 6 sure-fire ways to build your creative network Nail the art of networking and get more from events 4 brilliant personal logos – and why they work 3 tips for crafting stunning print promo materials Create better business cards in less than 5 minutes 5 ways to earn more as a freelancer View the full article

Searching for the best graphics card? We can help. Whether you prefer the grunt power of Nvidia or the driver stability of AMD, in this list we’ve selected the very best graphics cards right now – for all budgets. Right now, we think the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti is the best graphics card you can get, offering the best balance of power, cost and support for a wide variety of tasks. At a touch over £400, it still offers great all-round performance, and with 8GB ram, 2432 cores and running at 1607ghz, it's powerful enough for intensive tasks, including VR. But it's worth pointing out that the RTX 2080 is on the way. And don't forget that the right graphics card for you depends on what you want to use it for. Jump straight to: How to choose the best graphics card In recent years, the search for increased computer power has moved away from the central processing unit (CPU) and towards the graphics processing unit (GPU), located on plug-in graphics cards. Graphics cards were traditionally used for powering your display. And while that's still the case, now – even with multiple 4K monitors – GPUs can also be used to render realtime raytracing, run physics simulations, work with huge files in Photoshop CC or After Effects CC, and more. Capable of doing all the heavy lifting in record speed, a GPU is a vital asset to artists and designers. Here are the 10 best graphics cards around right now... The 1070 ti is not the newest card on this list but it still packs a punch, with 2432 cuda cores, 8GB on board ram and a base clock speed of 1607Mhz (some versions can be overclocked to 1683Mhz with additional cooling). This card is a favourite among digital artists who like to stack them for economical extra power, which works well for rendering super-fast with software like Octane. The 1070 ti is also a solid GPU for those users looking to get started with VR as it will work well with both the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. This card is the best all-rounder, balancing cost with power and functionality, and is perfect for creatives using heavy duty software. Although mostly aimed at gamers, this card also has a large following among 3D designers and video enthusiasts. If your budget is limited, the best bet for you to get the most bang for your buck is the 1050 ti. The little sibling to our best overall still has a to to offer and will happily play full HD games with it’s 3GB ram, 768 cores and clock speed of 1392Mhz. You won’t be able to run a VR rig with this card, but you should get frame rates around 50-60fps, rivalling that found in the latest consoles. This card is best for budget conscious artists and gamers who can sacrifice total power to make a saving. You may need to pull back on the highest games settings and real-time shaders in 3D work to get the best frame rates in software like Battlefront or Maya. If money is no object and you want the best that’s on offer, then look to AMD and its best performing GPU ever. The Vega 64 is a hugely capable GPU, with 8GB ram, 4096 cores and a speed of 1546. On paper this is pretty close to NVIDIA’s 1080 Ti, but the AMD pips it to the post with excellent 4K gaming support, offering close to 60fps. It also has plenty of power for running multiple displays, even if they are ultra wide 21:9 monitors, with HDMI and three display ports. While the 1080 might just edge past in some areas, or for some games, the Vega 64 offers superb results. The impending arrival of Nvidia’s RTX 2080 might shake things up again but we can revisit this list when they are available. Whether you are playing the latest triple A-game, or crunching billions of polygons in Clarisse, you will find this card caters to all your creative needs. The Quadro line has long been at the top of the pile for high-end workstations and the P6000 is the best of the bunch (at least until the RTX version comes out in late 2018). With a huge 24GB of super-fast RAM on board and a total of 3840 cores, this 384-bit GPU is fit to take on any digital content creation task you might throw at it, from photorealistic retraced rendering to 4k video editing. There's also a DVI and four display ports, so you can power multiple 4k monitors and your VR rig all at once. You will need to spend a small fortune to get hold of this graphics card, but considering the power on offer and the market it’s aimed at the price seems justified. This card offers blisteringly fast performance for creative content creators. If you are looking for a graphics card specifically for gaming, then a good bet comes in the form of the 8GB AMD RX580. At just under £300, this graphics card offers better than average performance, courtesy of the 2304 cores and clock speed of 1257. You will also get frame rates of 50+ even in 1440p mode. The DVI, HDMI and driven by 6.2 TFLOPS of power make for a versatile card that could suit many gaming rigs. How to choose the best graphics card When hunting for your next graphics card, start by thinking about its purpose. For example, if you're a graphic designer wanting to boost the performance of Photoshop, you're going to have very different GPU requirements to a hardcore gamer wanting to work with extremely high-resolution or multiple displays. Key things to consider when you're choosing a graphics cards include: - Cores: the higher the number of cores, typically the faster performance overall. For intensive graphics tasks, 1500 cores and above will stand you in good stead. - Monitor and motherboard compatibility: Since graphics cards attach directly to a monitor, it's important to know that not all monitors and video cards have matching ports. You also need to check that the motherboard in your PC supports the graphics card you've chosen before parting with your hard-earned cash. - Power supply: make sure that your power supply has the correct wattage to support your chosen graphics card. - RAM: While more RAM is better, don't necessarily let this affect your decision on graphic card choice as having more RAM than the software can use does not yield much (if any) performance advantages. - Clock (or memory) speed: The speed of the graphics card's RAM is typically reported in MHz, the number indicating how fast the card can access the data that is stored on the RAM. So the quicker the data can be accessed, the less time you have to wait. In short, the faster the clock (or memory) speed the better. One thing to note is that you’ll often see two speeds quoted, so check to see if your choice can be boosted or over clocked, which can give you a little extra performance. View the full article

Knowing how to build an app is only half the battle in app design. If your creation doesn't stand out in the app store, it doesn't matter how good it is; no one's going to buy it. A beautiful, identifiable and memorable app icon can have a huge impact on the popularity and success of an app. But creating that one, singular piece of design that users will interact with first each time they see your product can be an intimidating task. So how exactly does one make a 'good' app icon? What does that even mean? Fear not, I've put together some tips and advice to help answer these questions, and guide you on your way to great app icon design. There's also a video to accompany this tutorial, which you'll find below too. What is an app icon? The first things you need to understand when setting out to create your icon is what exactly an app icon is and what job it has to perform. An app icon is a visual anchor for your product. You can think of it as a tiny piece of branding that not only needs to look attractive and stand out, but ideally also communicate the core essence of your application. The word 'logo' is thrown around carelessly these days. Icon design and logo design are not the same thing. While they certainly share branding-like qualities, app icons are under a lot of different restrictions. While they certainly share branding-like qualities, app icons are not the same as logos It's an important distinction for the designer to make: logos are scalable vector pieces of branding designed for letterheads and billboards. Icons are most often raster-based outputs customised to look good within a square canvas, at specific sizes and in specific contexts. The approach, the tools, the job and therefore the criteria for success are different. From a practical standpoint, what you are creating when you're making an app icon is a set of PNG files in multiple sizes – ranging from 29 x 29px all the way through to 1024 x 1024px – that needs to be bundled with your app. This set of carefully crafted designs will be used in the many contexts of the OS where users encounter your application – including the App Store or Google Play, Settings panel, search results and your home screen. App icons can essentially be made in any application capable of producing raster files, but common choices are Photoshop, Illustrator and Sketch. Free tools like appicontemplate.com offer clever PSD templates that can help you get off the ground quickly. Now let's take a look at some of the best practices of app icon design. 01. Make it scalable An app icon needs to retain the legibility across a range of sizes One of the most important aspects of an icon is scalability. Because the icon is going to be shown in several places throughout the platform, and at several sizes, it's important your creation maintains its legibility and uniqueness. It needs to look good on the App Store, on Retina devices and even in the Settings panel. Overly complicated icons that try to cram too much onto the canvas often fall victim to bad scalability. A very big part of the conceptual stages of app icon design should be dedicated to thinking about if any given design scales gracefully. Working on a 1024 x 1024px canvas can be deceptive – make sure you try out your design on the device and in multiple contexts and sizes Embrace simplicity and focus on a single object, preferably a unique shape or element that retains its contours and qualities when scaled Make sure the app icon looks good against a variety of backgrounds 02. Make it recognisable An app icon is like a little song, and being able to identify it easily in amongst all the noise of the store or your homescreen is a key component in great icon design. Like the verse of a song needs to resonate with the listener, so do the shapes, colours and ideas of an app icon. The design needs to craft a sense of memory and connection on both a functional and an emotional level. Your icon will be vying for attention amongst thousands of other icons, all of which have the same 1024px canvas to make their impact and secure their connection with the viewer. While scalability is a huge part of recognisability, so is novelty. The search for a balance between these qualities is the very crux of the discipline. Bland, overly complicated icons are the enemy of recognisability. Try removing details from your icon until the concept starts to deteriorate. Does this improve recognisability? Try out several variations on your design. Line them up in a grid and try to glance over them, seeing what aspects of the designs catch your eye Try to deconstruct your favourite app icons and figure out why you like them and what methods they use to stand out 03. Keep it consistent There's something to be said for creating consistency between the experience of interacting with your app icon and interacting with the app it represents. I feel like good icon design is an extension of what the app is all about. Making sure the two support each other will create a more memorable encounter. Shaping a sleek, unified image of your app in your users' minds increases product satisfaction, retention and virality. In short: making sure your icon works harmoniously with the essence, functionality and design of your application is a big win. One way to ensure consistency between app and icon is to keep the colour palette of your interface and icon in line, and use a similar and consistent design language – a green interface reinforced by a green app icon, for example Although it's not always possible, one way to tighten the connection between your app and your icon is for the symbolism of the icon to directly relate to the functionality of the app 04. Aim for uniqueness Icons can be detailed or simplistic, just make sure that they’re creative, interesting and accurately convey your intentions This almost goes without saying, but try to make something unique. Mimicking a style or a trend is perfectly fine, but make it your own. Your app icon is constantly competing with other icons for the users' attention, and standing out can be a perfectly valid argument for a design. Uniqueness is a tricky part of design, because it not only relies on your skills but also on the choices of others who are trying to tackle a similar task. Consider what everyone else is doing in your space, then try a different direction. Always do your research – the world doesn't need another checkmark icon A singular glyph on a one-colour background can be a tricky route to go down if you want to stay unique. Play around with different colours and compositions, and challenge yourself to find new and clever metaphors Colour is a great and often overlooked way of repositioning a concept 05. Don't use words This is one of my all-time top pet peeves. Only in the rarest of occasions is it OK to use words in app icons. If you have to retreat to another tool of abstraction – the written word – I'd say that you're not using the full force of your pictorial arsenal. Words and pictures are separate representational tools, and mixing them in what is supposed to be a graphical representation often leads to a cluttered and unfocused experience, which is harder to decode. Is there really no better way to visualise the application than with dry words? Whenever I see words in app icons, I feel like the designer missed an opportunity to more clearly convey their intentions. There's no need to include the app name in the icon – it will most often be accompanying the icon in the interface. Instead, spend your time coming up with a cool pictorial concept "But Facebook has the 'f' in its app icon", I hear you say. If you're using a singular letter and you feel like it's a good (and unique) fit, then the letter loses its 'wordy' qualities and becomes iconic by itself. However, this is more often the exception than the rule Your company logo and name in a square is never a good solution. Do you have a mark or a glyph that works well within the constraints? If not, you're probably best off coming up with something new. Remember, icons and logos are not the same, and shouldn't be forced into the same context 06. Make it stand out On the App Store and on Google Play, there are many examples of bland and unopinionated icon designs. Your icon is the strongest connection you'll have with your user. It is what they'll see first when they meet you in the App Store. It's what they'll interact with every single time they use your app. It is what they'll think of when they think of your app. Anything short of a well thought-out, fitting and attractive solution is a failure to utilise your greatest visual asset. Your app icon should not be an afterthought, it should be a working part of the process. App icons are tiny little pieces of concentrated design, and there's something really appealing about that process of creating one. Whether they're detailed or simplistic, conventional or creative, these icons have one unifying property: they all grasp for people's attention within the same limited amount of space, on a completely level playing field. It's a specific challenge, and the answer is always within those same pixels. There's no doubt it can be intimidating to crown your application with a singular piece of graphic design, but I hope the tips I've outlined here will make you more confident in taking on the challenge. Now go forth and make a fantastic app icon! This article was originally published in net, the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Subscribe here. Read more: How to name your app Create sets of product icons in Illustrator 33 stunning iOS app icon designs View the full article

With a smartphone in your pocket, you have a great camera with you at all times (and there are some really great camera phones for creatives on the market). Smartphone photography is becoming more and more impressive – and is sometimes indistinguishable from photography taken on professional-grade DSLRs. However, if you want to move beyond selfies and random snaps, you'll need a bit of training. With The Quick Guide To Smartphone Photography & Video, you'll learn how to take better pictures – everything from sprawling landscapes to meaningful portraits. Plus, you'll learn everything straight from the horse's mouth; Chase Jarvis is a successful, award-winning photographer who will teach you everything from posing to lighting techniques. Check out The Quick Guide To Smartphone Photography & Video for only $9. Read more: Is iPhone XS the best camera phone for designers? Photography cheat sheet helps you take better photos 45 best photo apps and photo editing software View the full article

The launch of the D&AD Annual is always an exciting event. Creatives get to discover who designed the prestigious book and how they have put their spin on the annual, and also see all the winners of the year's D&AD Awards collected in one beautiful volume. The annual is always a masterclass in how to design a book, but at last night's launch party D&AD revealed that its 56th Annual contains something extra special. This year's Annual was designed to not only celebrate Pencil-worthy work from across design and advertising, but also create something that would stimulate and inspire young creative talent. Who designed 2018's D&AD Annual? Step in Magpie Studio, who designed this year's Annual. Known for its playful spirit, award-winning London agency Magpie Studio experimented with the format of the Annual, and cut the front cover in half to make space for a new addition: the Manual. The Manual is detachable from the main Annual, and is aimed at young designers and creatives who are just entering the industry. It features creative tasks, such as reimagining a doughnut or cutting out and rearranging a series of flags, as well as nuggets of inspiration and wisdom from industry heavyweights such as Michael Johnson (Johnson Banks), Bjorn Stahl (INGO Stockholm) and Alice Tonge (4creative). The Manual describes itself as a "guide for the dreamers and the idea-havers", and the front page encourages Annual owners to detach their Manual and pass it on to "someone with big ideas". It uses the same typeface as the Annual, Timmons NY, in order to give the titling impact in a modern and utilitarian way. An inspiring Annual/Manual for budding creatives “Ever since college, the Annual has been a hallowed source of inspiration for me," says Magpie Studio's creative partner Ben Christie. "Whilst other awards schemes come and go, D&AD has always been the best of the best. Year on year it’s by far the greatest collection of creative work in the industry. It’s a vital way to spread the word of creativity and hopefully the Manual will help take that reach wider.” "There have been so many beautiful and interesting Annual designs over the years that I thought this year we use the book to give a bit more back to people just starting out," explains outgoing D&AD President Steve Vranakis. "One of my predecessors, Andy Sandoz, was actually the first to introduce the idea of the D&AD Annual acting as a 'manual' for creativity and I thought what better way to deliver against my manifesto of opening up the creative industry to more people especially those coming from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds than to revive this.” The Annual is available to buy now from D&AD. Related articles: How to win a D&AD award D&AD offers free night classes to young creatives 8 up-and-coming designers to watch from D&AD New Blood View the full article

You're reading Google Announces a New Governance Model for AMP, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Just a few days after adding ads scenarios to AMP attracting a new wave of critiques, Google dropped the bomb and announced the transition to an open governance model. “[…]we want to move to a model that explicitly gives a … View the full article

So you're looking for the best Canon EOS 800D deals? (Or Canon EOS Rebel T7i deals, if you're in the US.) We've searched the world's most reputable retailers to find the cheapest Canon EOS 800D price possible. Scroll down for today's best offers... The best camera in 2018 The Canon EOS Rebel T7i / EOS 800D is a great pick for any budding photographer, thanks to its great range of features for shooting both photos and video. The 24.2 megapixel sensor combined with a super-sharp 45 autofocus points makes for remarkably impressive pictures that belie the entry-level price-tag. With considerably more cross-points than the likes of Nikon's D5600, many photographers are heading over to the Canon camp. We're big fans of the live-view autofocus and image stabilisation, which is particularly useful when shooting video footage and trying to refocus on new elements. There's no 4K shooting on the EOS 800D, but that helps keep the price down. You do get 1080p recording at a silky smooth 60 frames-per-second though. There are multiple image transfer options available on this entry-level DSLR, with Wi-Fi, NFC and Bluetooth all on call to get your files onto a mobile device or laptop – anything that keeps those pesky USB cables at bay works for us. Most users shouldn't have a problem getting a full day's use out of the Canon EOS 800D as the battery is good for around 600 captures. We're quite surprised to see a handy vari-angle screen on this DSLR too. This is an incredibly accomplished and user-friendly beginner's DSLR camera. Scroll down for more of today's best Canon EOS 800D prices. Read more: The best camera for photography The 10 best point-and-shoot cameras The best camera phones in 2018 View the full article

Looking for the cheapest Nikon D850 price? We're here to help. Our team is constantly searching for the best Nikon D850 deals possible – and we've collated our findings below. Scroll down for today's lowest Nikon D850 prices... The best camera for photography The Nikon D850 is a professional camera – as you'd expect given its price. Unlike many of its rivals though, this DSLR doesn't compromise on resolution or shooting speed: you get excellent performance from both here. You can shoot incredible 45.7 megapixel images at a slick seven frames per second. And if you need a little more, then a battery grip will boost that to nine frames per second. You won't find any other cameras offering such high performance levels for this price. In fact, these Nikon D850 deals make the camera considerably cheaper than the likes of the Nikon D5 – but it comes with the same 153-point autofocus, making it even more tempting. We’re actually struggling to find any cut corners to explain how Nikon is achieving this at this price. You’ll get an incredible 1840 shots from a single charge on the Nikon D850 to ensure plenty of time and images before heading back to the studio. You won’t find another Nikon DSLR with a viewfinder capable of such a high level of magnification either. This excellent camera can handle pretty much anything you might throw at it, including the elements as there’s a sturdy weather-resistant shell. The secondary LCD screen on the top of the camera also illuminates, making it great for shooting in darker conditions. This is one of the best professional cameras suited to multiple disciplines in the field – and you'll find more of today's best Nikon D850 prices below. Related articles: The best camera for photography The 10 best point-and-shoot cameras The best camera phones in 2018 View the full article

There are some fantastic Nikon D5600 deals to be found right now. One of the best cameras a beginner can invest in, the Nikon D5600 is a feature-rich and extremely capable entry-level DSLR – and it does a little bit more than the D3400, so it'll grow with you as your photography skills improve. Here are the lowest Nikon D5600 prices out there right now... These days, entry-level DSLR cameras are incredibly user-friendly. Indeed, the Nikon D5600 could be considered close to enthusiast level, given its excellent image quality and extra features. With a 39-point autofocus system and 24.2 megapixels, image quality is high – and even more so when you consider it's nowhere near four-figure territory in terms of pricing. The stand-out feature of the Nikon D5600 is its intuitive vari-angle touchscreen. We’re simply not used to seeing them on cameras around this price. Not that we’re complaining: the adjustable screen angles make shooting in various conditions and positions much easier. Budding photographers will also appreciate being able to tap the area of the screen where they’d like images to focus, too. Nikon’s SnapBridge feature is a handy (if not always particularly smooth) process where you can transfer images directly to your phone or tablet via a Bluetooth connection. From there, you’re free to upload your images to social media, cloud storage and so on without having to get the laptop out and dig out your USB cable. With images this good and an incredibly helpful touchscreen, this really is a fantastic value DSLR camera. You'll find more of the latest deals and the lowest Nikon D5600 prices below. Related articles: The best camera for photography The 10 best point-and-shoot cameras The best camera phones in 2018 View the full article

Searching for the lowest Nikon D3400 price? Our team is continually searching the internet to dig out the very best Nikon D3400 deals – and you'll find today's best offers right here. The excellent entry-level Nikon D3400 is one of the best cameras you can buy if you're just starting out. Read on to find the most competitive Nikon D3400 prices there are right now... The Nikon D3400 is one of our favourite entry-level DSLR cameras. It’s more than capable of taking a great picture, but comes without the huge price tag many rival cameras wear. We’d go for this model over the older ones thanks to the D3400's excellent battery and SnapBridge. The Nikon D3400 will last for a few days from a solitary charge for most users, with the capacity to take up to 1,200 shots before needing topping up. SnapBridge is a neat system that enables you to transfer images via Bluetooth to your mobile phone – making it a lot easier to back your pictures up on a secondary device and enabling you to upload them to social media before you get home and transfer them to your laptop. With these Nikon D3400 deals, you get some impressive specs for your cash. You can shoot 24 megapixel images at five frames per second, and this small camera is an excellent video recorder too. As you would expect at this price, there’s no 4K recording, but 1080p recording remains of excellent quality for most entry-level users. If you’re just getting into photography and the world of DSLRs, then you’ll appreciate the Nikon D3400’s built-in guide and user-friendly controls. This is one of your best options if you’re serious about taking pictures but can’t justify splashing four figures on a camera. Here are the lowest Nikon D3400 prices out there right now... Related articles: The best camera for photography The 10 best point-and-shoot cameras The best camera phones in 2018 View the full article

Adobe has been releasing teasers of the most exciting changes you'll find in the upcoming release of Illustrator CC, and here's one we're particularly excited about: soon designers will be able to customise their toolbars. 60 amazing Illustrator tutorials With over 80 tools on offer, finding the ones you want hasn't always been easy. And let's face it, your most-used tools often differ from project to project. Thankfully, there's a clever new way to manage your tools coming your way in the next major Illustrator update. Adobe has created a new tools menu, accessible from the bottom of the Illustrator toolbar, in which all available tools are grouped logically by function. Designers will be able to drag and drop the tools they need into their main toolbar, and the ones they don't out of the main toolbar and into the complete menu. See it in action in the short video below. Users will also be able to create different custom toolbars for different projects. It's a fairly simple update that promises to have a big impact on workflow, making Illustrator much more user-friendly. You can read more on the Adobe Blog. Read more: Create sets of product icons in Illustrator The illustrator hotlist 2018 How to create repeat patterns in Illustrator View the full article

Vulnerability allowed an unauthenticated remote attacker to log in to a device at the time the system initially boots up. View the full article

With a quarter of US malls predicted to close by 2022, many retailers are wondering how they can survive the approaching apocalypse occurring in the commercial world. While the value proposition of retail destinations has become obsolete, physical shopping is far from dead. In fact, behind the doom-laden headlines and against all odds, stores are continuing to open, innovate and succeed. 12 inspiring ecommerce website designs In the US, retailers announced more than 3,000 store openings in the first three quarters of 2017, and between 2014 and 2018, surveys showed that the percentage of consumers shopping at brick-and-mortar stores weekly increased from 36 to 44 per cent. But in order to continue evolving, physical stores must embrace technologies that have helped their online counterparts succeed. At present, many retailers only think of a physical store as hardware – the architecture, the layout, the products within – but it's crucial that they combine this with an invisible layer of technology: the software. The biggest mistake most traditional retailers make is treating e-commerce as a separate channel, in turn creating siloed experiences. The Storefront Salvation Game places users in the shoes of a new British high street brand's managing director As they break down these silos, retailers need to rectify the metrics they use for defining a store’s success. Metrics such as sales per square foot and year-on-year sales are from a pre-Amazon era. In the future, measures such as impact on brand impression, digital purchase intent, inspiration per square foot, return on friction, convenience for associates and customer experience will play a much more crucial role. The Future Laboratory believes that future stores will not simply be experiential hubs without products, nor will they be screen-filled fulfilment centres. They will be the best of both worlds and catalyse a relationship with the consumer that transcends the store. In the game, you are tasked with making the many crucial decisions that brands of the future will need to make in order to stay afloat To accompany The Future Laboratory's recent Storefront Salvation report, we created a free game to put the public in the shoes of future brand managers, so they can experience what decisions need to be made to help stores survive the so-called retail apocalypse. Have a go now. Will you go bust, break even or break the bank? After you’ve played, share your score @TheFutureLab on Twitter. Good luck! This article originally appeared in issue 284 of Computer Arts, the world's leading graphic design magazine. Buy issue 284 or subscribe here. Related articles: 8 business tips for selling design goods How to succeed as a designer-maker The future of branded cities View the full article

There are some exciting web design tools out this month. September's picks include an AR reality system for Shopify, a huge UI wireframing kit, a collection of sounds for your apps and some great colour tools. Read on to find out more... 01. Microcopy Inspirations These examples of great microcopy will hopefully inspire you to write better copy on your own site Hitting the right tone with your microcopy makes a huge difference to how people feel about you and what you’re offering. To help you strike the right note, Sridhar Rajendran has curated this online collection of good bits of copy that demonstrate how to communicate well while adding some personality to your site. They’re divided into helpful categories such as 404 pages, cookie consent, newsletters, error messages and so on, and will hopefully serve as inspiration for writing your own entertaining and engaging copy. 02. Picular You can try typing in things that aren't colours, such as 'pig', to get some typical pig hues Here’s an alternative way to get started on your colour schemes: Picular is a search engine for colours. Just enter any colour and get a range of swatches. It’s useful because we’ve all got a slightly different idea of what we mean by ‘fuchsia’, ‘vermilion’, ‘dusky lavender’ and so on, so Picular helps to get everyone on your team speaking the same language. The swatches come up with hex values that you can click to send to the clipboard. 03. Scale Use the sliders to adjust light and dark colours separately This is another really great tool for making colour palettes. Unlike other palette tools, this one is focused on making palettes out of colour scales. The RGB values at the top control the overall colour theme, and once you’ve set that you can further tweak things using the sliders underneath. The palette is divided into light and dark colours, so you can play with either end of the scale without affecting the whole thing. You can use this to create scales that go from very dark to very light, or stick to a middle range. 04. Shopify Augmented Reality It's now easy to give your customers a 360-degree view of your products One advantage that bricks-and-mortar shops will always have over online retailers is that they give customers direct access to products for close inspection. Now Shopify is closing the gap a little with Shopify AR, which enables retailers to easily create augmented reality experiences for customers using Safari in iOS 12. This gives users a chance to closely examine products from every angle and get a much better sense of what they’re buying. Check out Shopify's blog to see what some online shops have already done with it. 05. Dense Discovery Kai Brach, publisher of Offscreen magazine, curates a weekly collection of the best web design things Don’t miss out on this one: it’s a wonderful newsletter put together by Kai Brach, publisher of Offscreen magazine, which contains an excellent selection of useful tools, apps and sites, as well as the most interesting and inspiring design-related podcast episodes, articles and conversations. If you’re trying to wean yourself off Twitter a bit, you can use newsletters like this one to reduce FOMO – all the best bits are in here so you don’t need to worry about missing out on something by reducing the time you spend on social media. 06. Ship 2.0 Get your product off the ground with this suite of tools Product Hunt has released a major update to its Ship tool, which is a toolkit to help you with all the things you need to do to get your digital product off the ground. There are tools for making a landing page, building an email list to stay in touch with your users, conduct surveys, A/B test your website and much more. The new version has improved customisation features, as well as the capability to add a chat room to your homepage. 07. Image Performance by Mat Marquis Top advice for optimising images and speeding up your site No matter how much effort you’ve put into the design, if your site is slow it’s going to be a frustrating experience for your users – so speed should always be a priority. Image optimisation is a low-hanging fruit in this situation. Mat Marquis is chair of the Responsive Issues Community Group, so he’s an expert on these matters. In this e-book, he guides you through everything you need to know to get your images up to scratch. 08. PDFShift Get a PDF from an HTML document with minimal fuss Sometimes the simplest tasks can be frustratingly difficult to accomplish, and converting HTML documents to PDFs surely fits into that category. PDFShift offers a decent solution to this problem: with a single POST request it will generate a PDF of the required HTML document, and it provides plenty of options for customising the output – you can add a header/footer, a watermark and customise the CSS. There’s a free option which gives you 250 conversions per month, or you can pay to get more. 09. UI Sound Kit 2 This is a great collection of UI sounds from composer and sound designer Roman Zimarev, which you can use to give a nice tone to your app or website. The sounds are arranged into categories for notifications, alerts, complete and success, cancel and errors, and miscellaneous – but of course you can make your own judgement about which sound goes where. There are 130 sounds and it’s $38 for the lot – not bad for a good library you can use for multiple projects. 10. iOS Wireframing Kit Drawing interface screens from scratch probably isn’t worth your time; this kit has over 240 fully customisable screens for Sketch that you can use to put your app together at top speed. All the common purposes are there such as registration, user profiles, settings and so on, and the designs are divided into categories so you can find what you’re looking for easily. It’s easy to adjust colours and typography to put your own spin on the designs and avoid a cookie-cutter look. The library is $39, which sounds like a good deal to us. Related articles: 7 game-changing web design tools for 2018 10 fantastic web design tools for July 2018 The 6 pillars of great UX View the full article

A pastel is a stick of pigment that you hold in your hand, and apply directly to the surface. Like trying to choose the best pencils, it can be confusing knowing which pastels to buy, with different brands available, all with different grades of hardness and varying prices. However, after a little bit of experimentation, artists often find that they use a few different types, according to their subject matter, type of mark making, and the size of their work. How to draw: the best drawing tutorials Artist-quality pastels tend to have a colour range that includes deep darks, bright lights, and a range of saturated and neutral colours. So if your paintings are looking a little flat, and lacking in depth, it may be that you need to invest in some better quality pastels. But don't let price put you off. You don’t need to buy a whole set to find which pastels suit you. You can get some of each type and experiment with different subject matter, sketching or painting, rough textures or soft blending. Remember, price usually reflects quality. Hard pastels and pastel pencils Hard pastels and pastel pencils are great for sketching and underpainting Hard pastels and pastel pencils are great for sketching and underpainting. They tend to be squarer in section with a high proportion of binder. Conté crayons are very hard, wonderfully versatile, and have sharp edges to give a variety of marks. Inscribe pastels are cheap, ideal for beginners, but are not lightfast. Faber-Castell Pitt Pastel Pencils produce fine, delicate detail. Soft pastels Medium-softness pastels have more pigment than the harder varieties Medium-softness pastels, such as Royal Talens Rembrandt and SAA Artists Soft Pastels, have more pigment than the harder varieties. They are useful for work that requires good coverage and the pigment is not too soft, and are ideal for crisp mark-making for subjects such as animals, where fine lines and textures are needed. They tend to be round, but narrower than very soft pastels. Professional-quality pastels Professional-quality pastels are made with rich, high-quality pigments Professional-quality pastels are made with rich, high-quality pigments, and less binder. This results in wonderful creamy textures, with a huge range of saturated colours and subtle hues. Brands include PanPastels, which are applied with sponges and tools, Sennelier and Schmincke Pastels, and Unison Pastels, which are handmade in the UK. Professional pastels cost more but are excellent value for money. Read more: The best office stationery for working from home 10 sketching tips to help you make your first marks How to draw a wolf View the full article

The research team said it has shared its findings with law enforcement and victims are being notified. View the full article

Cinema 4D is one of those 3D applications that has grown over the years to cater to users of all different kinds, from shader builders and texture artists to motion graphics and simulation experts, character modellers and animators. 14 essential Cinema 4D plugins It's a vast and capable tool, but that comes with a learning curve and although it's one of the friendlier applications, you'll need to put some time in – and study some Cinema 4D tutorials – to master all it offers. With that in mind, we talked to members of Cinema 4D's large, thriving community to discover the best ways to get the most out of the software. Read on for advice that will hopefully give you a leg up the learning ladder, boost your skills and make you more productive so you can concentrate on being creative. 01. Access anything "As a Cinema 4D user myself I'll kick things off with my favourite top tip for any situation," says 3D World's editor, Rob Redman. "Cinema 4D has a multitude of options, menus, tools and tags. Memorising them all is a big task, so while you get working on that there is a simple way to access just about anything in Cinema 4D. Hold shift and C. A little pop-up input field will appear at your cursor. Start typing the command you want and anything that has the characters you typed will appear in a list. Select it and hit enter. You're done." 02. Consolidate takes Use the Object Manager to consolidate your takes "Takes are a great way of quickly working through look development in one scene file," says 3D motion designer Jason Poley. "Being able to change a model's position, materials and visibility on a take-by-take basis to iterate ideas is extremely handy. I'll often end up with five to seven takes as I work through ideas and looks. "To consolidate all these takes down once a look's approved, select the take you want, then select everything in the Object Manager. Right-click and select Remove from All Takes. This moves all the changes in that take to the main take. Delete your other takes to tidy up a move into production." 03. Organise with layers Use layers to stop things getting over-complicated "Layers are great for keeping your Object Manager under control in larger scenes. Having a system from the start of a project will help if things get complicated later," adds Poley. "Create a layer in the Layer Manager or right-click with objects selected and select Add to New Layer. Drag from the Object Manager to add to layers or hold down ctrl/cmd to add an object and all its children. "Having the ability to lock, solo or hide different aspects of your scene can make working smoother and faster. The usual layer configuration is: Camera, Lighting, Hero Geo, BG Geo and Sims/Particles," he explains. 04. Shrink wrap retop A quick retop can save you a lot of modelling time Glen Southern, of digital design studio SouthernGFX, says that one of the main ways to create stunning models these days is to sculpt the initial form in programs like ZBrush or Mudbox and then retopologise the sculpt. "This is the process for creating new geometry that is more animation friendly, more predictable with contiguous edge loops and much lower in polygon count, making it more efficient. You can of course do this in Cinema with tools like the PolyPen," he explains. "To make it even better," he continues, "you can download scripts like the HB Modelling Bundle that make Cinema 4D into a perfect retopology solution, enabling you to draw new geometry right onto your sculpt." 05. Use sculpt tools when modelling Cinema 4D's sculpt tools are ideal for perfecting your models "With Maxon developing a huge range of sculpting features for Cinema it would be silly not to utilise the toolset wherever you can," says Southern. "When you are modelling and you want to tweak an area with great accuracy, you used to have the Magnet tool and a Soft Selection falloff. Now you simply switch to the Sculpting mode, increase the subdivision levels and use the Grab and Pull tools. This is a dream for organic modellers and can be just as useful for hard-surface work. "Add to that tools like Inflate, Knife (scoring the surface) and Flatten and you have a pretty comprehensive set of tools to adjust a mesh once you have created the underlying geometry." 06. UV unwrap everything Separate your model into good UV sets and you'll thank yourself later Southern also recommends UV unwrapping a model. "Most people think a UV unwrap is just to allow you to map textures onto your mesh. This is of course true, but there are lots of scenarios where having a good set of UV coordinates helps. "Normal maps are used in most modern games, and of course you need UVs for those. There may be lots of times where you'll need to give selection sets to be used in composition further down the line. Having a model separated into good UV sets enables you to more easily select the areas you want, and not just in Cinema 4D. For example, you may need to take a model into ZBrush and polygroup it. If you have UVs you can do this with a single click. The UV tools in BodyPaint are pretty comprehensive and you can even pelt map. 07. Quads, triangles and n-gons Ditch the n-gons and Booleans for a smoother workflow "One of the big problems we have is that we often get asked to work with models that have been made in Cinema 4D, and they just don't work well subdivided or in VR programs," says Southern. "It is all too easy to just model something to look good and forget about the underlying technical requirements. Get into the habit of making things out of quads and triangles. "N-gons (polygons with more than four sides) aren't as big of a problem as they used to be, but you are still better to clean them out of your models. "Booleans (meshing two models together) leave bad edges that don't deform. Get into the habit of retopologising these areas and make them good for the whole pipeline." 08. Start with a basic idea If you're planning a headshot, don't bother modelling the rest of the body "I wanted to create a very fast doodle character concept, along the lines of a flamethrower zombie soldier trooper," recalls industrial and concept designer Michael Tschernjajew. "I started by researching older projects and picked out some geometry parts that I could reuse for building and filling up the body parts. "At the start it's good if you have an initial 'layout' so model some very raw upper body parts, just for layout purposes. If your plan is to do a headshot, don't waste time modelling anything below chest level." 09. Bash together Make your life easier with some creative recycling "After setting my character layout, I start to fill out the upper body with bash parts. I do some additional modelling as well, for the spine parts and also some hydraulics for the neck," explains Tschernjajew. "You can use anything from older projects that look interesting, as long as you arrange it together in an interesting way. But don't exaggerate it – the parts should have a function on the character when you think of it in real life." 10. Detailing Weld on some extra geometry to make your model a bit more interesting "For the skull, I used a model that I had purchased for some medical stuff I did in the past. To make it more interesting I cut the skull into three parts and added a bit of geometry to the forehead," says Tschernjajew. "This was done very quickly by welding geometry together. Thinking of the final image, I decided to put some additional stuff behind the character to gain more depth. As I knew that I wanted to use depth of field in the rendering, the weapon did not need to be super high-detailed, as it would be out of focus in the final image." 11. Post-production Add extra labels and textures in Photoshop "Post-production was done very quickly, continues Tschernjajew. "The labels and some textures were completed afterwards in Photoshop. I do this very often because it's fast and also allows for flexibility. Of course this works only when you've fixed your perspective. "I used some decal textures and overlaid them onto specific parts of the model. You don't even need masks, just blend them together with a soft brush. "In the end I added some smoke using stock smoke PNG images, and used a Z-buffer to blend it together in Photoshop. "An additional ambient occlusion map was used to contrast up some parts. Don't use the ambient occlusion layer on lights or anything that glows, because it will eat up any glow or light effect. You can mask these areas out, or just use a white brush and paint it over. Use the Multiply blend mode, but never use it at 100% – I mostly use 20-25 per cent." 12. Make use of the Polypen tool The PolyPen tool's great for a retop once you've switched on some extra options "The PolyPen tool makes it possible to do a quick retopology," says digital artist Alina Makarenko. "For this, you need to enable additional options: Quad Strip Mode, Auto Weld, Reproject Result and Create N-gons." 13. Apply Subdivision Surface Weights Use this technique to get lovely smooth shapes "The Subdivision Surface Weights tag and Subdivision Surface helps create a clean, smoothed shape with a good grid," explains Makarenko. "To do this, you need to place the final retopo mesh in the Subdivision Surface on the third subdivision editor, Loop Selection the edges and apply Subdivision Surface Weights. Moving left to right easily controlled the width of the chamfer." 14. Detail hair strands The Edge Slide tool is great for detailing hair "Use the Edge Slide tool with Shift pressed on the selected edge, and move left to right to create a groove in the geometry. It is important to work with the converts object after Subdivision Surface. This enables you to detail large strands of hair," says Makarenko. 15. Base splines on a mesh Create hair strands quickly with the Pen tool in the spline "Using the Pen tool in the spline helps to quickly create thin strands of hair," continues Makarenko. "Enabling the snap to polygons option makes it possible to build the necessary splines on the base mesh of hair. Disable Snap and Pen in free mode in order to edit the splines. Work with this tool under the Sweep Nurbs. It is a very easy and fast method." This article was originally published in issue 237 of 3D World, the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists. Subscribe to 3D World here. Related articles: How to model concept art in Cinema 4D Make realistic plants in Cinema 4D 31 brilliant Blender tutorials View the full article

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You're reading Adobe Updates XD with Responsive Resize, Timed Transitions and more, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! The latest update to Adobe XD brings new tools to streamline design workflows with improved support for multiple devices and resolutions. Additionally, the September update introduces timed transition elements for prototyping scenarios, an enhanced full-screen viewer and spell check functionality. … View the full article

If you're looking for the best Canon EOS 5D Mark IV deals, you're in the right place. We've searched the world's most reputable retailers to find today's best Canon EOS 5D Mark IV prices, and we've got them right here. While it still isn't cheap, the good news is that this is one of the best cameras you can get. Critics have heaped enormous praise on the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV: it's more than capable of shooting in a wide range of disciplines, and an essential item in any serious photographer's setup. If you're tired of taking multiple cameras out on a job, it's probably time to invest and consolidate your setup with the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, arguably the most well-rounded DSLR camera on the market right now. The full-frame sensor shoots 30.4 megapixels through 61 autofocus points, 41 of which double down with cross-type AF too. And seeing as you can shoot at 6fps, you're more than ready to take on fast-moving subjects. The best camera phones in 2018 The improved 1,620,000 dot always-on display looks better than ever and is especially useful when shooting video, which is now available in glorious 4K. If 1080p still works for you, you can film at 120fps – excellent for super smooth slow-motion filming. As you'd probably expect for a DSLR of this quality, you're also getting built-in Wi-Fi and NFC connectivity for transferring images. There's a dual slot for SD and Compact Flash cards too for more options away from the studio. A single battery charge will keep you going for 900 shots too. Even at these prices, some cameras struggle to cover as many disciplines with such confidence. The Canon EOS 5D Mark IV provides immaculate capture of fast-moving sports, wildlife and scenic landscapes – and you'll find today's best Canon EOS 5D Mark IV prices below, via our continually updating price comparison engine. Related articles: The best camera for photography The 10 best point-and-shoot cameras The best camera phones in 2018 View the full article

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There are a number of CSS preprocessors on the market. You’ve probably heard of Less and Sass (if not, take a look at our article on what is Sass?), but there are a number of other options that might be better suited to your needs. Here, we take a closer look at all the different preprocessor around, and the pros and cons of each one. Use the quick links on the right to jump to a particular section. A word of caution first. Back in 2007 Jon Christopher wrote a blog post entitled Please do not use CSS frameworks, and a lot of his comments stand true today. “A big problem with frameworks is when up-and-coming developers attach themselves to a framework as opposed to the underlying code itself. The knowledge gained in this case surrounds a specific framework, which severely limits the developer.” While preprocessors can undoubtedly make your life easier, there is always a danger that relying on a framework will reduce your understanding of the core language underneath. 01. Sass “Sass is the most mature, stable, and powerful professional grade CSS extension language in the world”. That comes from the makers, but it’s pretty hard to contest. For over 11 years, the team behind Sass have worked diligently to build a preprocessor that is feature-rich, has a large community to support, and develop it and its users, and has been adopted by some of the biggest names in the industry. It offers by far the most engaged community, with forums, dedicated sites, and tutorials on every major teaching platform for code – take a look at The Sass Way in particular. Sass is built on Ruby and offers two different syntax types depending on the user’s preference. Sass doesn’t use braces around selectors or semi-colons at the end of rules, but feature-wise is identical to SCSS (Sassy CSS), which still uses both of those. SCSS is the most common language choice, mainly because it doesn’t differ syntactically from plain CSS, which makes it really easy to adopt the basic principles. Additionally, every major task runner has a module to use with Sass. There is also a C/C++ port of the Sass precompiler called LibSass that decouples Sass from Ruby. It’s fast, portable and easy to build, and integrates with a variety of platforms and language. Pros Lowest barrier to entry – you can harness some of the most powerful features by simply learning a couple of new symbols New collaborators should have no trouble picking it up. LibSass (which decouples Sass from Ruby) is fast, portable and easy to build By far the most engaged community, with plenty of support and resources Cons As with any framework, there’s a danger you’ll become reliant on this approach, and not fully grasp the underlying language 02. Less Less is stylistically very similar to Sass in its feature set, and so anyone that has used one will feel right at home with the other. Its popularity got a big boost after it was used in the source Twitter Bootstrap. It has since moved to Sass in Bootstrap 5, but it has left a lot of people comfortable using its syntax. The fact it is so similar to Sass makes it difficult to advocate when Sass is more widely used, actively developed, and feature-rich – indeed this feature would be comparing the two (as many have before) if there were more differences and unique selling points about Less. It still remains a popular and strong preprocessor though. Pros Written in JavaScript, which makes setup easy GUI apps can watch and compile code for you (Crunch, SimpLESS, WinLess, Koala, CodeKit, LiveReload or Prepros) Very detailed documentation and a very active community Easy to find help or previous examples IDEs such as VS Code, Visual Studio and WebStorm support Less either natively or through plugins Cons Uses @ to declare variables, but in CSS, @ already has meaning (it's used to declare @media queries and @keyframes) which can cause confusion Time might be better spent learning Sass, due to wider use Relies entirely on mixins rather than allowing you to use functions that can return a value, which can result in slightly restricted use cases 03. Stylus Stylus was created by TJ Holowaychuk – a former programmer for Node.js and the creator of the Luna language. Its initial design was influenced by Sass and Less but it offers a wider range of features, a super-fast Node.js system under the hood, and gives users the most freedom in how they write their CSS. This freedom has a downside though. As Declan de Wet says: “It supplies the developer with no definitive direction…once you’re ingrained in variables, mixins and functions not requiring a prepended dollar sign ($) or ‘at’ symbol (@), you’ll soon start to realise that you can no longer tell the difference between them. This makes for very confusing code”. Mozilla used Stylus to redesign its developer network, and it offers most of what’s covered in the Sass section, but with a few minor differences in syntax. Pros Hugely powerful built-in functions Can do much more computing and ‘heavy-lifting’ inside your styles Written in Node.js, which is fast and fits neatly with a 2018 JavaScript stack ‘Pythonic’ syntax looks a lot cleaner and requires fewer characters Cons Too forgiving, which can lead to confusion Doesn’t seem to be in very active development 04. PostCSS Based on its approach, PostCSS is one of the biggest ‘alternatives’ to Sass, Less and Stylus when it comes to preprocessing: it leverages a modular plugin system that allows the user to customise their feature set and compilation as much as they want. This means that rather than just adopting a library in its entirety, you get to choose what it’s made of. Unlike many other preprocessors, PostCSS makes no assumptions about the features or stack you’re using. Instead, you simply add the plugins you would like based on the features you want to use. You can add plugins to give it the exact same features as a library like Sass. This modular approach means you can even use plugins completely by themselves, such as auto-prefixing and minification, rather than building a full library. Pros Un-opinionated, modular approach – can be heavily customised Written in pure CSS, so developers don’t need to learn a new syntax Speed (if you only use a few plugins) Cons Speed (again) – If mimicking another setup, PostCCS lacks the performance benefit a dedicated, optimised tool will offer Generally, more effort to install and maintain than a conventional preprocessor, because you’re relying on different plugins maintained by different people 05. Pleeease Pleeease takes a slightly different approach to preprocessing in that it tries to tackle some of the more practical issues with CSS rather than focusing purely on its syntax or layout. Its website explains: “A Node.js application that can easily process your CSS. It simplifies the use of preprocessors and combines them with the best of post-processors. It helps create clean stylesheets, support older browsers and offers better maintainability”. Pleeease provides fallbacks to common issues with older browsers out of the box, including pixel fallbacks for when you’re using rems as your measurement of choice, and filter fallbacks for IE8 when using opacity. It even has a feature to allow you to use the syntax of your favourite preprocessor like Sass or Less within Pleeease’s setup (as well as pure CSS), although this is experimental at this point. Pros Built-in autoprefixer adds vendor prefixes, using data from caniuse.com Generates source maps in which you can see the original code A tool rather than a syntax library, so you can use it with pure CSS or with another preprocessor Clear, practical uses for dealing with older browser quirks Cons Not very well known, which may make finding resources difficult The feature that allows for the inclusion of other preprocessors is completely experimental at this stage 06. CSS-Crush CSS-Crush is a standards-inspired preprocessor designed to enable a modern and uncluttered CSS workflow. It’s written in PHP and features a combination of the standard features you would expect in one of the more popular preprocessors (variables, nesting, mixins) along with some of the more tool-based approaches we’ve covered like Pleeease (vendor prefixing, minification). CSS-Crush’s PHP background means it can be used neatly in conjunction with popular PHP content management systems such as WordPress or Drupal. This is probably its biggest pro, because if you’re confined to what you can do inside a CMS, you can install it as a plugin and still benefit from some of the advantages of having a preprocessor. One bonus is that its vendor prefixes for properties, functions, @-rules and even full declarations are automatically generated. This means that you can maintain cross-browser support while keeping your source code clean. Pros Neat integration with popular PHP CMSs (WordPress, Drupal etc) Open source, so you could theoretically fix your own issues Useful plugins available, such as working with aria roles and HTML canvas Built-in autoprefixing for cross-browser styles Cons Despite a wide range of features, lacks popularity beyond the regular PHP programming community Lack of maintenance (at time of writing) 07. Garden This option is completely different to all the others because it pretty much does away with the conventional language of CSS as we know it. Garden is a library for rendering CSS in Clojure and ClojureScript. It uses vectors to represent rules and maps to represent declarations. It is designed for “stylesheet authors who are interested in what’s possible when you trade a preprocessor for a programming language.” As far as programming languages go, Clojure is known for its clean architecture and firm heritage. For CSS, this can mean great power. However, the syntax can be daunting. As an example, to set no font-weight on h1 and h2 tags, you would use: user=> (css [:h1 :h2 {:font-weight "none"}]). Pros Access to the core features of a powerful programming language in Clojure Unique opportunity to code a project entirely in the same language: Clojure for backend programming and Garden for CSS Garden Gnome plugin enables you to pipe style changes directly to the browser without reloading Cons You can't simply copy and paste CSS from elsewhere into your work – every snippet must be converted to the correct format Very different syntax to regular CSS or any other preprocessor, making it more difficult to read Learning curve for Garden is steeper than other options 08. Styled Components This last option is a pivot from conventional preprocessors. I only raise it in this context as it’s a way of writing your styles in a certain manner and layout and having it convert, alongside your component logic, as browser-ready CSS. Only the basics are covered here and its style handling. Styled Components is ‘CSS-in-JS for the CSS folk’ as Glen Maddern put it. It’s the latest attempt to make truly modular CSS by interweaving it into the JS components you write. It has a big advantage over inline React styling as you don’t have to camel case your attributes, and you declare each style block directly onto the name of the element you’ll be using it on. So for example, to create a title component that’ll render a <h1> tag with some styles, you would write this: Pros You can achieve total encapsulation of your components – every piece of markup, logic Large following, and active community and project owner Represents a fascinating shift in direction Preventing ‘append-only styles’. What are append-only styles? Cons You are back to writing plain CSS, which has its drawbacks Quite opinionated, as it’s built to work solely with the React JS library You have to handle cross-browser issues and fallbacks using other methods This article was originally published in creative web design magazine Web Designer. Buy issue 276 or subscribe. Read more: How to structure media queries in Sass 7 things they don’t tell you about the web industry How to set up site theming with CSS variables View the full article

Plenty of filmmakers are looking for ‘organic’ forms to represent alien worlds or magical moments in their movies. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that they would seek to embrace fractals. After all, fractals tend to look like naturally occurring and infinitely repeatable objects, yet can often be simulated with mathematics. And so it is that several recent 3D movies have adopted fractals – especially three-dimensional ones – to help tell their stories. And they’ve seen use in immersive projects too, where fractal simulations can help realise complex forms for users to explore. The team at 3D World recently asked the artists at Weta Digital – who were tasked with making complex fractals for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – how they went about tackling them. Fractals of the Galaxy Put simply, fractals are complex, which is exactly why Weta Digital looked to them as inspiration for the Planet Ego sequences in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The studio carried out some early tests embedding implicit functions into its proprietary Manuka path-trace renderer via plugins, with promising results. It matched the client concept art – which specifically featured 3D Apollonian gasket-like shapes – but soon realised that relying on purely mathematical functions could be limiting. How to make a Mandelbulb “A fractal is amazing in the sense that it’s just a tiny piece of simple code, but very small changes to the inputs of fractals tend to result in unpredictable, large-scale changes in the output,” outlines Weta Digital visual effects supervisor Kevin Smith. “They’re very chaotic. This was problematic for us as I couldn’t sit in a review with a client and ask them to give notes on a piece of code, much less one that’s completely unpredictable. We knew that whatever methodology we chose needed to be art directable.” Initial development for the fractal pieces went through Weta digital’s proprietary Manuka renderer So Weta Digital considered modelling by hand, but again abandoned this approach due to the infinite detail required (“Also, the models supervisor yelled at me when I brought it up,” says Smith). That left the studio with new requirements: defining an arbitrary shape that was art directable but could still match those gasket shapes, and achieving a digital environment that felt like it had infinite practical detail. The R&D team devised a method that let artists use curves to define an axis and a profile in Maya, and then code that would use a custom sphere-packing algorithm to boolean out spheres from the first shape, to give the appearance of an Apollonian fractal in a user-controlled volume. 15 Maya tutorials to try today “For the detail, instead of trying to add infinite fractal minutia, we used an in-house piece of software called Genesis to essentially spray-paint little instances of fractal geometry all over the resulting shapes produced by the first tool," explains Smith. "The layout department came up with Genesis brush presets that used combinations of the tiny instances with different scales to essentially make pseudo-fractals. This let us add a lot of detail without incurring an infinite cost. It also helped us age the main sections of the environment, since the Planet Ego in the film was very old.” Weta digital needed to match specific fractal-looking client concept art for the interior of Planet ego for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Then, a stumbling block. The Maya plugin could not quite achieve all the shapes in the concept art. Weta Digital needed a way to generate some of the more esoteric forms from the art that had originally come from Mandelbulb software, but attempts thus far had required prohibitive amounts of memory without the required resolution. The solution, devised by senior modeller Pascal Raimbault, was to generate a 4K turntable of the relevant areas in the Mandelbulb software – instead of geometry – and then feed those renders to Weta Digital’s photogrammetry software. “It totally worked,” exclaims Smith. “It produced sharper, cleaner, higher-resolution images than we were getting with voxelisation, and allowed us to build a library of shapes we could use to dress in detail that was not just close to the concept but exactly matched it.” “Visual effects for me has always been about the combination of art and science,” adds Smith, “and it was great to be able to take a purely mathematical concept like fractals and not only make something new and different, but to use it to help drive the narrative of an awesome movie like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.” This article originally appeared in 3D World issue 237; subscribe here. Read more: The best power bank in 2018: top portable chargers to power your devices Pose a character in ZBrush: 4 top tips Master ZBrush digital sculpting with 3D World View the full article