DISCOVERING BODYPAINT 3D R2 AND R2.5 WITH 3D KIWI Reviewed by Dan Ginavan

Let me first say that this is a biased review. I am a regular user of MAXON™ products and am a big fan of the entire bundle of plug-ins and the work flow of the application. That said if someone who didn't know what they were about, made a tutorial DVD for a MAXON product, I wouldn't automatically rave about it. It would have to actually be good.

In the case of Nigel Doyle's BodyPaint 3D™ tutorial, the raving will commence below. Not because I love MAXON, but because this is a superb tutorial.

First a warning. You will spend a minimum of 30 hours on this if you do it as fast as you can. If you move at a more deliberate rate, or repeat sections, you can spend days working through all the information provided on this disc. I think this is a good thing, but I wanted you to be prepared. This is an intensive learning experience both for the knowledge within and the time investment necessary to impart that knowledge.

A little about me and pedagogy: (it's a good word, look it up)

I came to the world of 3D animation as an already trained filmmaker. I went to film school when film was fading, but video was not yet what it is today. I learned on an early Avid system, but I also cut film. I scraped film, I glued it, I taped it together ten minutes before it was due, only to have it break in the projector. Would I ever work on a project today using film? Yes. But I would have it switched over to video after processing and edit it on a computer.

What's the point of this bio sketch of personal celluloid history? The point is I edit on a computer, but because I've actually glued a 16mm movie together I have a deeper appreciation and understanding of what I'm doing on my nonlinear system.

This tutorial is that experience for you. It is approximately 16 hours in actual length. It is thorough, it is expansive, and it is comprehensive. Did I just say three words that mean the same thing? Sure but I want you to understand this tutorial is an investment in your 3D education. One that will pay off for you after you invest the time.

The first chapter is something you could skip in the interest of moving on quickly however I found Nigel's introduction and his explanation of some language idioms to be charming and brief.

From there the tutorial builds from project to project, chapter by chapter, until you are painting an excellent WWII era spitfire. You paint it to be factory fresh, and then rough it up a bit to look like a grizzled veteran of the air campaigns its real world counterparts experienced.

How the tutorial is structured:

Rather than going chapter by chapter I'm going to go project by project in the interest of saving space. The first project is simply getting on your feet in the BodyPaint environment. Basic UVs and painting methods are covered as you acquire skills that make the rest of the projects much more profitable and fun.

The second project, an experimental 3D image is where this bird gets off the ground. Please don't think that you can jump straight to this project, you have to walk before you can paint the UVs of a spitfire, or something like that. Put in your prep time and your experience with each project becomes more and more rewarding.

The disc continues for several chapters at this point walking you through the tools available in BodyPaint. Not just the painting tools, which work enough like most paint/photo manipulation programs as to be intuitive to most users, but also preparing the models to be painted. Nigel does an excellent job teaching you how to map your models for painting in these chapters. The results of this mapping work are very encouraging because of the ease with which the well mapped models are realistically painted.

The Sting Ray is the final warm up before the spitfire project. Doing the Stingray prior to the Spitfire may seem redundant, but as with all things in 3D animation there are several ways to accomplish a certain goal, and Nigel is continuing to ground those following along in the essential basics. I keep coming back to the methodology Nigel uses almost to the point that I am harping on it. However this is simply the way teaching should be done.

A great example of this thoroughness is the chapter on the paint setup wizard. Nigel takes the time to walk you through this feature, even though, after mastering BodyPaint you may not need to use it again for most projects. This is how I was reminded of physically cutting film. I recognized that I was learning something that once mastered, I would not use much anymore. But my abilities would be richer because of it.

Finally we arrive at the concluding chapters and the spitfire. Honestly, after painting the spitfire I wanted to go find one to compare with mine. I felt I knew the plane. The tutorial actually has the RAF paint tones included. They came from a British modeling source that provides the true colors for people who make scale replicas.

This is a tutorial, any colors would work. But Nigel found the actual colors for these planes and made them available. This is my final testament to the quality of this project. Adding the RAF paint pallet when many tutorials would simply have you estimate the color is a symbol for the thoroughness of the entire enterprise.

Conclusion and release 2.5:

As Nigel was finishing the tutorial DVD MAXON released BodyPaint 2.5. The version I used as I tested the tutorial. The DVD was postponed and a last chapter was added with a look at the new features of Bodypaint 2.5. It is 30 minutes in length and is a quick breeze through these features. I took some days off between the spitfire and the final chapter and what I remember most is thinking how comprehensive the tutorial was even though it was designed for an earlier version of the software. To me, that was more valuable than the added chapter. With or without the brief look at the new features, the tutorial remains a very strong educational tool for MAXON's BodyPaint 2.5.

Dan Ginavan is an Animator with a specialty in Medical Animation and resides in the Kansas City Metro area.