Editor’s observe: This put up is a part of our weekly Within the NVIDIA Studio collection, which celebrates featured artists, gives artistic suggestions and tips and demonstrates how NVIDIA Studio know-how improves artistic workflows.
In terms of changing 2D ideas into 3D masterpieces, self-taught visible growth artist Alex Treviño has confidence within the potential of all aspiring creators.
“You could suppose it’s an advanced course of, however belief me, it’s simpler than you suppose,” he mentioned.
The featured content material creator of this week’s Within the NVIDIA Studio installment, Treviño is the founding father of AENDOM, a challenge with the mission of making paintings rooted in storytelling parts and sharing artistic processes to coach and encourage the subsequent technology of artists.
From this initiative, the Lunar Rover assortment was born.
Taking pictures for the Moon
The story behind the Lunar Rover assortment comes from an exploration of grief and impressed by the work of artist Mattias Adolfsson.
Nevertheless, Treviño wished to translate Adolfsson’s detailed and playful caricature model into his personal 3D design.

Treviño began gathering reference imagery and creating temper boards with the standalone program PureRef, which allowed him to play with totally different views and types whereas within the conceptual part.
“I wished the character to discover a desolate panorama the place it’s clear that, regardless of loneliness and abandonment, he continues to discover in allusion to the feelings of grief,” Treviño mentioned.

He then formed and sculpted fashions in his most popular 3D app, Blender. Utilizing its Cycles’ RTX-accelerated OptiX ray tracing within the viewport, powered by his GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU-equipped PC, Treviño unlocked interactive, photorealistic modeling with clean motion within the viewport.
“NVIDIA GPUs have a variety of help and highly effective efficiency, which ensures that I can depend on my GPU to work appropriately and render photographs sooner and with increased high quality,” mentioned Treviño.
Subsequent, Treviño utilized UV mapping to his fashions, which allowed him to texture them in Adobe Substance 3D Painter to create life like, detailed textures.

RTX-accelerated mild and ambient occlusion baking optimized belongings in mere moments.

“My GeForce RTX GPU’s capabilities have been important whereas texturing,” Treviño mentioned. “Motion with out lag and the flexibility to make speedy materials adjustments effortlessly have been particularly useful whereas swapping seems.”
Treviño moved to Adobe Illustrator to create alphas — coloration parts that symbolize levels of transparency or opacity of colours — in addition to masks and patterns.
“GPU acceleration and AI-enabled options are important instruments, as they permit me to work extra effectively and produce higher-quality outcomes,” mentioned Treviño.
He returned to Blender, profiting from RTX-accelerated OptiX ray tracing in Blender Cycles for the quickest final-frame render.
Lastly, Treviño imported the challenge into Adobe Photoshop for postproduction work, together with adjusting coloration grading, sharpness, noise and chromatic aberration, and utilizing look-up tables for retouching — just some of the 30+ GPU-accelerated options at his disposal.

The tip outcome achieved Treviño’s aim of making a desolate panorama and alluding to the feelings of grief.

For a extra detailed have a look at Treviño’s artistic course of, try his five-part tutorial collection, Creating 3D Lunar Rover w/ Alex Treviño, dwell on the NVIDIA Studio YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?record=PL4w6jm6S2lzvy-mfeIHJiAmqN6ARz-DJt
Uncover unique step-by-step tutorials from industry-leading artists, inspiring group showcases and extra, powered by NVIDIA Studio {hardware} and software program.
Lunar Classes Realized
Treviño has three monumental items of recommendation for aspiring artists:
- Be taught the fundamentals of your complete pipeline course of. Study modeling, texturing, rendering, post-production, advertising and marketing and promotion. Experience throughout the board isn’t required however normal understanding of every step is.
- Don’t be afraid to experiment. One of the simplest ways to be taught is by doing. Attempt new issues and experiment with totally different strategies. Errors will result in progress and advanced artistry.
- Discover a group of like-minded artists. Join in a number of communities to be taught from others, share work and get beneficial suggestions.

Take a look at Treviño’s portfolio on Instagram.
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