Editorial
Welcome to the July issue of 3DCreative! This month we continue some of our great tutorials, as well as starting an exciting new one. With this selection of inspiring tutorials, a fascinating interview, and another skillful Making Of, you won’t know where to start.

Let’s kick things off with the brilliant cover image, which is part of our building droids series. We provided Victoria Passariello with a 2D concept and technical drawings and she shows us how to build an accurate 3D model of her very useful repair droid.

Continuing our tutorial series covering FX, Particles and Dynamics, Matt Chandler and Mike Zugschwert demonstrate how to create an atmospheric snowfall. With Matt working in 3ds Max, he shows us how to achieve this by using particle flow and a number of standard space warp modifiers, whilst Mike shows us how simple making snow can be with Maya particles, by demonstrating the use of nParticles with a volume axis field and a 3D fluid container.

As we progress further into our character production series, which focuses on the modeling of an old man’s head, things are really being to take shape. So far our talented artists have covered concept creation, detailing and all the necessary preparations for texturing and shading. This time around Rodrigue Pralier and Anto Juricic move on to the actual texturing and shading, and look at using Displacement maps and photographic referencing to create realistic skin, Rodrigue using 3ds Max and Anto using Maya.

Our armored beasts series sadly came to a close last month, but do not fear, we have replaced the void with an exciting new series on creating a submarine interior level for the Unreal Games Engine! Andrew Finch will guide us through this series using programs such as 3ds Max, Photoshop and UDK, and in chapter one he starts by looking at concept sketches, before moving on to building a "white box" version of the level.

We also bring you an interview with talented character artist Paul Nelson, who has a career in the industry that spans over 10 years. Paul talks to us about the leading titles he has worked on, his route into 3D, and approach to character modeling.