Out of the Box

The box contents are, refreshingly, complete. The Kamvas 13 (Gen 3) arrives with everything you’d expect — and a few nice surprises: the display itself, a foldable ST300 stand, the PW600L pen, ten replacement nibs, a 3-in-1 cable. No accessory hunting required, except for a Thunderbolt capable US-C-toUSB-C. Build quality leaves a good impression. The casing feels sturdy, doesn’t creak, and at 865 grams it’s light enough to throw into a backpack. It feels more “tool” than “toy,” which is a good start.

The Kamwas 13 Display

Huion advertises the Kamvas 13 (Gen 3) as factory-calibrated to ΔE < 1.5 … our unit, however, came in at ΔE 2.5 (Adobe RGB, Measured with our Datacolor Spyder Pro). Not bad, but not “color-critical.” You’ll want to calibrate it yourself if you work on anything that depends on color accuracy, and big grading jobs or Onset-Livegrading are not recommended. Why we are saying that? For that price, you’d think you could just put it onto your DIT-Cart. You can, but you wil lhave to check the colors more often.

That said, the anti-glare surface deserves genuine praise. It’s the nicest we’ve seen so far: it kills reflections without dulling the image or killing contrast, and it feels wonderfully smooth, like a high-quality matte paper, not sandpaper. The screen itself is Full HD (1920 × 1080), which is perfectly fine for a 13-inch panel. It’s not a retina display, but at typical viewing distances it looks crisp enough for painting, layout work, or even quick note-taking.

Pen & Performance

The PW600L pen uses Huion’s PenTech 4.0 system, and it’s battery-free, a small victory in an age of rechargeable everything. During testing across Rebelle 8, Photoshop and Microsoft Ink, the pen behaved as expected: accurate tracking, no real lag, and pressure sensitivity that feels natural once you fine-tune it.

That “once” matters. Out of the box, the settings we made were too hard, and we initially thought the pressure curve was off. Turns out the issue was “idiot user”, not “hardware”. The Huion driver lets you adjust the curve quite precisely, well worth the five minutes of tinkering before judging it. After six weeks of daily sketching and note-taking, the original nib still showed no wear. The replacement nibs included should last a good long while unless you’re carving marble in Krita.

From the Left

As some of you know, one of our key ergonomics features is that we can actually use the device. And yes, I’m a Southpaw. A leftie. If you’ve ever wondered why some hardware never makes it into Digital Production, that’s the reason (Well, one of the reasons). If it’s not usable for us and the other 10% of humanity, it doesn’t get tested. Simple rule.

The Huion Kamvas 13 (Gen 3) passes this test with flying colors. In the driver software, flipping the orientation is literally one click, rotate, mirror, turn it upside down if you feel like it. There’s no directionality to the chassis and the ports, no fixed edge, angle or cable trap that dictates how you have to work. So if you’re one of us, this tablet won’t force you to contort your wrist or flip your brain to right-handed mode. And for the others: Did you recognize that the featured image above this article is a leftie drawing? No? I thought so.

Ergonomics & Workflow

The left edge holds two mechanical dials and five customizable buttons. They’re easy to reach and satisfyingly quiet. Macro assignment is limited, you can’t yet chain multiple actions (like “new layer + color switch”) but the basics are there.

Switching between monitors took a few days to get used to. In our dual-screen setup, toggling the pen focus from the Kamvas to the main monitor isn’t instant muscle memory. After a while, though, it becomes second nature. Mirroring the main display didn’t quite work in our configuration, but that’s likely a Windows quirk or a driver limitation. For most use cases, drawing, annotation, or light compositing, extending the desktop is the better option anyway.

As for Thunderbolt, a word of warning: not all cards are equal. We discovered that Thunderbolt expansion cards vary wildly between workstation manufacturers. Mixing an (Random example) Asus add-in card with a Lenovo board, for instance, another random example, is an exercise in frustration (see XKCD’s “Standards” comic). Not Huion’s fault, but worth noting if you’re planning a clean single-cable setup. Make sure your USB-C ports are Thunderbolt-capable!

Everyday Use

Once configured, the Kamvas 13 (Gen 3) simply behaves. It works as a secondary screen, a sketchpad, or a small presentation monitor. For productivity use, it’s perfectly fine: crisp enough for text, light enough for travel. The anti-glare glass remains a highlight: even after hours of drawing, the surface stays clean and non-sticky, with minimal fingerprint buildup. And because the tablet has no fan, it’s completely silent and stays cool.

One disclaimer, though: as with every tablet, it will not make you a good artist. You’ll still have to bring the talent yourself. If you’re wondering why we didn’t warn you earlier: we thought it was obvious, until we tried proving otherwise. For evidence, please refer to our attempt at a one-line house drawing. Don’t laugh — we’re mouse users by habit, idiots on top of that and it took eight failed tries to get that one semi-straight roof. There’s a reason this magazine focuses on tech, not concept art.

Verdict of the Kamwas 13

After a solid six weeks with the Kamvas 13 (Gen 3), we can confidently say this: it’s a sensible tablet. The display might not be colorist-grade, but it’s bright, balanced, and consistent. The pen feels natural, the build is solid, and the included accessories make it a ready-to-go package straight from the box. If you’re looking for a mobile, lightweight pen display that doesn’t break the bank, the Kamvas 13 (Gen 3) is easy to recommend.

Software quirks aside, it’s an ideal entry point for new artists, or a travel companion for experienced ones who don’t want to risk their main display in a backpack. We were genuinely surprised by how much performance you can get for €239 on Huion’s official store. And since our test went so well: should we ask Huion for one of their Android tablets next? Let us know, we’re curious ourselves.

The post Huion Kamvas 13 (Gen 3): Welcome to Sensible Pen Tablets first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Mini-City

3D artist and animator Byron Slaybaugh shared his whimsical project. The colourful artwork, which resembles a Lego city, was created using Houdini and Redshift.

3D stuff with Lego

If you can’t get enough of 3D stuff with a Lego look, it’s also worth checking out Pascal Beeckman’s Procedural Legolizer in Houdini and Paul Hatton’s Blender tutorial Iron Man made from Lego. Happy creating!

The post Mini-City | Artwork first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

The big Foundry Live event in the summer edition is coming up: An online programme will start for you next week. In addition to lots of news about Nuke 12.2, a number of VFX professors, experts, artists and devs will be present to inform you about various areas of the industry – with a focus on Foundry Tools, of course. You must register for the individual events in advance free of charge.

What you can expect at Foundry Live

Eudation, Lookdev, Nuke and Modo – you can register for the following online sessions focussing on these topics.(Click on the title to register)

Nuke 12.2 release (21 July)

The next version of the compositing tool is just around the corner: After the last 12.0 and Nuke 12.1 release, it will continue with some useful features. Updates for the entire Nuke family are expected, from support for new 2D and 3D formats to the new SyncReview functions in Nuke Studio, Hiero and HieroPlayer.

Education Summit (16 July)

From the classroom to the studio: VFX professors and industry experts will introduce Foundry’s Education Collective and impart important know-how. You will learn concepts to prepare you for your first job.

Look Development & Lighting (20 July)

What about Mari and Katana? – This session is all about look development and lighting of the present and future. Some experts will show you practical workflows, tips and tricks. Among others, Nathan Rusch(Senior Developer, Luma Pictures), Cristian Camraoschi(CG Supervisor, Mr X) and Jens Kafitz(Texture Artist and Mari Extension Pack Dev) will be there.

Modelling for VFX with Modo (23 July)

In the last session Roo MacNeill will give an overview of how the VFX world has changed. He will highlight modern requirements and technologies and discuss his personal journey to becoming a VFX mentor and modeller at Framestore.

Further information: To the Foundry Live / Virutal Events website

The post Foundry Live: Summer Edition startet bald first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

This article by Anna Huber originally appeared in DP 02 : 2014.

In this still, a lively metal panther catches the viewer’s eye. With its emerald green eyes and filigree decorations, the animal looks like a piece of jewellery. The animago submission for the still category 2O13 was created by 3D artist Anna Huber.

The image was originally created for a 3D contest on PSD-Tutorials on the subject of “Steampunk”. My idea was to transform a real living creature into a machine. The mechanical creature was to have the characteristic features of the animal and the typical steampunk elements. I decided on a panther – an elegant creature, light-footed and fluid in its movements. And filigree in a certain way. A steampunk panther should not be made of heavy metal parts, which would make it appear heavy and clumsy. Instead, thin plates were important, which defined the body in ornate ornaments and also gave the viewer a view into or through the body. The ornaments and decorations were not chosen at random, but reflect the panther’s area of distribution and thus the cultural patterns of the population in Africa. I used Cinema 4D as the software and V-Ray as the renderer. Photoshop was used for post-production.

Light / Rendering / Camera

The first step was to set the global illumination in the V-Ray render settings. I created the basic lighting using an HDRI light. The nice thing about HDRIs is that they create a general and – depending on the setting – realistic basic brightness with a certain colour mood. This gives you an initial overview of the lighting mood. In the next step, I loaded the HDRI motif into the V-Ray Area Light and changed the Area-Type to “Dome”. “Enable Shadows” and “Invisible” were activated. To ensure that the lighting conditions of the background texture and the scene match later on, the area light was aligned so that the “sun” of the HDRI comes from the same direction as the “light” on the background texture later on.Finally, I added another light source directly behind the panther to intensify the overexposed sun of the background image by casting a shadow on the panther. The camera was fitted with a 50 mm lens, the aperture was set to 2.8 and 1/100 second was selected as the exposure time. A beauty pass and the corresponding multipass layers were rendered.

Materials

All materials were created in V-Ray. The metal material was generated first. To do this, a photo of a metal plate, which had previously been colour-adjusted in Photoshop, was loaded into Diffuse Layer 1. To adjust the final details of the colour directly in Cinema 4D, I also loaded a filter shader into diffuse layer 1. In this, the saturation was set to 51 per cent and the gamma value to 1.4. In the Bump Channel, the same photo of the metal plate was loaded only in black and white and Bump Amount was set to 1 cm. Specular Layer 2 was responsible for the highlights. In addition to the general settings, I entered -0.5 for Anisotropy. Specular Layer 3 was used for the specular reflection. I also activated Fresnel and set its IOR to 2.43. The Reflection Glossiness was set to 0.8 and the Glossiness Subdivs were increased to 12 to avoid too much grain. I realised the concrete and stone material with the help of suitable textures and it has a similar structure to the metal materials.

Modelling

First of all, I roughly outlined the panther so that I could later adapt the shapes of the individual plates to the skeleton better. The skeleton should be visible through the plates and decorations and was modelled true to life. I replaced the bones with bent iron rods and the joints with cogwheels, cadre joints and metal joints. The plates were then modelled and adapted piece by piece. For the plates with the spirals, I mainly used Bezier and helix splines, which were subordinated to sweep nurbs together with a rectangle spline. First, the plates with the decorations had to be modelled flat and then brought into the correct shape using deformers. The pure metal plates were modelled poly by poly. The “Edge selection to spline” tool was used to create a spline for the border. This was then subordinated to a sweep nurbs together with a rectangle spline. Finally, I had to connect the panels both to the skeleton and to each other.

Rigging

The rigging was built in parallel with the modelling to ensure that the individual parts interlocked perfectly. Due to the mobility of the outer shell and the skeleton, I had to make sure that the axes of the joints were congruent with the axes of the modelled joints or that they overlapped. This ensured that the movement of the plates was synchronised with the joints and that the axes of the joints always rotated around their centre point. IK chains were used for the legs. There were additional controllers with an Xpresso setup for the claws. The face was also realised using an Xpresso setup. For this, I created user data in a null object and connected it in an Xpresso tag with the angle of the jaw, the ears and the visor using a range converter. Finally, all modelled parts were subordinated to the corresponding joints. In order to keep the whole thing a little clearer and to be able to quickly show and hide individual areas of the panther, layers were assigned to all objects.

Problems

The main problem with the panther was that everything had to fit together well, but the panels could not collide with each other during posing and animation. The solution was to build the rig in parallel with the modelling and to test it again and again right from the start. The scene was very polygon-heavy and slowed down my work in the editor. For this reason, I worked a lot with the layer manager and set the detail level of the editor to “low”, especially when texturing and posing. This made it possible to easily show and hide or render individual parts of the panther.

References

Visual and textual references about appearance, movement and behaviour are essential for a realistic representation of the object. In addition to various panther reference images for a correct skeleton and muscle structure, I was inspired by steampunk elements, armour, metal decorations and ornaments.

Post-production

I used Photoshop for the post-production. To achieve a stronger metallic effect, I enhanced the highlight and the reflection using the corresponding multipass layers. The background texture was colour-matched to the panther, creating a warm, unnatural mood.

The post Steampunk Panther first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.