CG Garage

Corey Rubadue and Chris Nichols talk to Dominic Albanese about the diverse and creative world of 3D scanning. From architecture, VFX, Art (both in preservation and creation), to medical; 3D scanning is a very diverse field, and Direct Dimensions has been in this field for nearly 20 years.

Eric Barba sits down with Christopher Nichols and Stephen Parker to discuss his career that ultimately led him to his new position as Creative Director at ILM in Vancouver. We discuss his background at Art Center in transportation design, his nearly 20 years at Digital Domain, which included a longtime creative partnership with David Fincher and Joe Konsinksi, and an Oscar for his work on The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons.

While hanging out in Sofia, Chris decided sit down with Vlado to talk about what Chaos Group has been up to. Since we just released the VRscans service, we figured it was a good time to talk about it. We also talk about what is coming soon in the new service pack for V-Ray for Maya, as well as a host of other subjects including VR, realtime, and a video game he created in high school.

Corey Rubadue and Christopher Nichols talk to Shane Scranton about the work of VR in Architecture design. We talk about the work that is being done at IrisVR, a company that he help co-found. We also discuss how VR will change the design process and that different flavors of VR serve different needs of the design and presentation process.

Starting a new CG Garage series, Dan Thron and Christopher Nichols discuss movies. We start with an in depth look at the Star Wars saga. We discuss why we each think that Empire is the best of all present 7 movies. Daniel also tells us his version of that Episode 6 should have been and why they have been trying to correct from their "mistake" ever since. We hope to do many more of these.

Curious as to what goes on in our Baltimore office? We talk to Brian Russell, Fernando Rentas, and Ted Vitale about the many ways that V-Ray has helped the design market: from Architecture design, building information modeling (BIM), industrial and product design, and more.

We chat with Hristo Velev and Martin Naydenski from Bottleship VFX about theyir company based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Coming with a history of visual effects work, they founded the company with an expertise in FX work. They have a strong understanding of fluid dynamics which we discuss along with starting a small VFX company in Eastern Europe.

Joy and Devon are both environment artists and designers that work in the gaming industry. We talk to them about the challenges and rewards of that area of CG. We also talk about THU, being a student at Gnomon, Devon's recent Gnomon video, the challenges of being a woman in games, both as an artist as well as a gamer, as well as balancing and complimenting each others work as a couple.

Brandon Davis stops by the CG Garage to talk about his very diverse careers. Having worked in CG for nearly two decades, he also happened to be part of Special Forces in the United States Army at the same times that he was making visual effects. Having worked at major facilities like Digital Domain and Weta, he has worked on Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Godzilla, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and much much more.

Daniel Lay, also known as VFX Soldier, stopped by the CG Garage to talk to his old friends, Christopher Nichols and Stephen Parker, about what is going in his life. We talked about his career, what happened when he was VFX Soldier, why he left the industry, and what he is doing now.

Emauele Lecchi, better known as Lele, is a new member of the Chaos Group team, but also a very long time V-Ray user. He was instrumental in the testing and benchmarking the newest service pack of V-Ray. This is such a huge update that Lele and Chris felt it deserved it’s own podcast as the features are something that the users need to be aware of, since it could change their entire workflow.

With the podcast being just over a year old, it seemed like a good idea to take a look back at 2015 and see what had happened at Chaos Group. In this very casual chat, Lon, David, and Chris discuss a lot of the events we have attended, our Partners in Art, Chaos Group Labs project, Virtual Reality, the number of new products that we have released, as well as the many updated we have done. We hope that your 2015 was as fun and fulfilling as ours, and that everyone has a great 2016.

Having known and been friends with David Stripinis for a very long time, this was the first time that I actually met David in person. Having worked on many major feature films including Avatar, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, and Man of Steel, David is a long time VFX industry veteran, having focused a lot of his attention on virtual production, motion capture, and animation, while still reaching outside to lighting as well. He talks about his career, as well as give us his opinion on where he feels the industry needs to change.

Doug Roble has been at Digital Domain longer than anyone else as he was one of the first hires. He is the Creative Director of Software, and has helped develop many major tools over his career there. Having won both a Technical Achievement Award and a Science and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he has now joined the Science and Technology Council. We talk about his career and influences, as well as what he envisions to be the future of computer graphics and Visual Effects.

Had an amazing opportunity to be a part of the 3D Symposium panel in Cancun hosted by Jeff Mottle from CG Architect. They agreed to let me record the panel and make it a Podcast. It is a great opportunity for all of you to hear some of the great conversations and discussions that are happening in ArchViz these days. Even if you are not part of that specific industry, you will mind many familiar themes across the different industries.

This week we speak to Tim Hanson of Max Depth. Tim’s background started in the early days of the web and has gone through many incarnations, from web designer, to editor, and visual effect supervisor. He has learned to adapt to his changing career quickly. Based on some of his own frustrations with learning tools, he has created his own resources through his website.

Our final episode from Trojan Horse was a Unicorn features Scott Ross and surprise guest Allen Bolden. We talk about how much THU means to us, and about our vision of the industry. We also talk about how we feel we need to preserve the energy we have at THU and preserve it in a special way.

Last week we spoke to Norman Seeff about his response to our discussion on the Uncanny Valley. This week, we spoke to Oleg Alexander, a member of the Digital Human League about his work at the Institute of Creative Technology and his response and feelings on Norman's point of view of the subject. We are also joined by Stephen Parker who is also a member of the Digital Human League.

There are those moments in your life where you feel lucky to have met someone special. I got a chance to sit down with Norman Seeff one on one for over an hour which was was one of those moments for me. While many people may not know his name, everyone knows his work. He has made his fame through the most honest and real photographs he took of celebrities over the last several decades. He managed to capture so much life in each photograph that I felt compelled to ask him about the Uncanny Valley. His very diverse careers made him the perfect person to explore what is missing in the valley. The short answer is: consciousness.

Alex Alvarez started the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, Games + Animation in 1997 when the industry itself had few resources to find talent. His motivation came from his own frustration of the current education system in the United States, and its lack of support for the arts, or art education. Today, Gnomon continues to be one of the leading schools for Visual Effects by keeping its enrollment small and selective, making sure that they can sustain the demands of a selective industry.

Kevin and Snow Mack are both fine artist that met at Art Center. Kevin has a very long family history in animation and the VFX world where his mother and father both worked at Disney. Kevin, the self claimed reluctant VFX Supervisor, won an Oscar in 1999 for What Dreams May Come. Snow is an amazing and prolific artist that used her skills as a digital matte painter and many major feature films. These days, Kevin has focused his art in the medium that he always dreamed of: Virtual Reality. Together with Snow they have created Shapespace, an abstract, virtual reality, experience that defies description.

An old friend of Dariush Derakhshani, Nozawa Tetsuya is the CEO of Guncy in Japan, a new company focused on bringing tool sets to a Japanese workflow and pipeline. The interview was translated so that it could work for both English and Japanese speaking audiences. We find out a great deal about his past, as well as the the kind of projects and work people can expect as a CG artists in Japan.

Our second podcast from THU 2105 features two great artists. Jose Alves da Silva and Andrew Hickinbottom. Both have a love of character, have an amazing sense of humor, are great friends, but live in very different styles. We talk about their inspirations, and about our love for THU where we all became great friends.

Lon Grohs and I talk to Kim Baumann Larsen, a licensed Architect and 3D artist for 20 years from Norway, about his experience in Virtual Reality. Kim has been working in the VR space since the early 90s. So when the new wave of VR happened a few years ago, he was ready. With all three of us coming from architecture we decided to talk about where we see how VR fits in the architecture world. We talk about all the challenges, different flavors, pitfalls, of this new medium..

David Prescott will kick off the first off a series off conversations we had at Trojan Horse was a Unicorn this year in Troia, Portugal. I first met David 13 years ago when we both worked at Digital Domain. We talk about his journey from South Africa to DD and Dreamworks. As a seasoned veteran, David has a great ability to balance logic, perception, reality, and inspiration. These ideas are what led to his talk at THU called: "Perception, Problem Solving, and Finding Inspiration in the Default World."

Blur Studio has always been a good friend of Chaos Group, but we were still lucky to be able to get Tim Miller, one of the founders of Blur, on the podcast. Tim is in the middle of directing the upcoming film Deadpool, due out in 2016. We talk about what it is like to get your first big feature film directing gig at age 50. We also have a very honest talk about running a studio like Blur, a very unique and creative place. Tim has a very different philosophy about how to run a studio which for the most part has been a huge advantage for them. But he is also honest about the mistakes he has made and owns up to them.

My first real job out of Architecture School was at Gensler back in 1997. This year Gensler is celebrating it's 50th anniversary. I have very fond memories of my time there. This year, while at Siggraph, I ran into Scott DeWoody and Alan Robles who are now looking at a lot of new technology within the company. I figured it would be a great time to see what they are doing and help me see what has changed at Gensler since I left 14 years ago. We discuss VR, cloud rendering, real time raytracing, and a lot more.

Wes Ball is best known as the Director of The Maze Runner and the upcoming sequel The Scorch Trials coming out September 18th 2015. After letting us know that he enjoys the CG Garage Podcast on Twitter, I invited Wes to be a guest. He agreed right away and sat down with us in the garage in Culver City. As a big Lightwave and Modo user, he loves CG and has used it for many of his own projects. We discuss how his career started right out of film school and how he had one of the most amazing weeks anyone in Hollywood could every hope for.

While at Siggraph we sat down with Kevin Baillie from Atomic Fiction. We speak about his interesting career starting on the Skywalker ranch, which, after a few extra stops along the way, led him to start Atomic Fiction with his childhood friend Ryan Tudhope. Kevin and his company are not shy of trying new things. While most people think that eventually people will possibly be rendering on the cloud, they have already been doing it for 5 years. He talks about how the company led over 600 shots on Robert Zemeckis's The Walk rendering on the cloud and with V-Ray for Katana.

We sit down at Siggraph 2015 to talk to Senior Compositor Shahin Toosi about how he has spent the last 2 years pushing V-Ray for Nuke. Based on his self admitted addiction with the product, he explains how having that level of rendering power inside of a composting package opens the doors things to people may not realize is possible.

Based on a request on Twitter, I asked Fausto to come on the podcast. His interesting background coming from São Paulo Brazil to working at Blizzard eventually led him to be a concept artist, now working at Lightstorm Entertainment. We follow his interesting and inspiring story.

Legend 3D is well known for it's work in stereo conversion. Over the years, they have brought this to a new level that has enabled them to expand into the realm of VR. That is where Justin entered the picture. He explains why a stereo conversion house has a unique ability that allows for greater flexibility in creating VR content. Through several projects, he explains their learning process and the evolution on how their workflow is enabling them to create content from advertising to cinematic experiences.

Kirk and Christopher from A52 chat about their work at A52. We learn about the history of the company as well as some of the amazing work, including the Daredevil main title and Nissan #WithDad spots which got them nominated for Emmys this year. They are an extremely creative company which plays of their expertise in Directing, editing, and VFX.

Erik's background in Effects started way back as a director of photography in miniatures. Having done 8 seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Deep Space 9, he claims that he has done more shots of space ships then anyone else. His experience as a DP is what most inspires the people that work with him as a Visual Effect Supervisor today. In doing so, he has earned 3 Oscar nominations for I Robot, Real Steel, and Iron Man 3.

Director Ruairi Robinson recently made the news when Fox picked up Leviathan, based on the teaser that he put out on the internet. Ruairi, a member of our Digital Film League, has a long history in filmmaking and CG. He was nominated for an Oscar for his short Fifty Percent Gray in 2002 and has produced several other great pieces such as his short Blinky.

Rob Nederhorst is a veteran of the VFX industry. He has deep knowledge in compositing, lighting, 3D, 2D, as a supervisor, and even in programming. On top of that, he is also a teacher at University of Southern California. All this led him to his new venture Live Mentor. We talk about his history in the industry, and about his ideas behind the new project.

Dariush has recently joined Chaos Group as part of our education and documentation teams. I have known Dariush for a short time, but we quickly became great friends. He teaches at University of Southern California, and has written several books on Maya and Max. We talk about his past, how he stepped into teaching, and about the education in general.

With Dan Roarty in Los Angeles for E3, we took the opportunity to meet up, have lunch, and record a podcast. Dan, who now works for Microsoft's Game division, has been working in the game industry for most of his career. He is also well known for personal work of CG portraiture. It is because of his work in this area that we invited him to be one of the original members of the Digital Human League, and work on the Wikihuman project.

Craig Shimahara, owns a fantastic Architectural Illustration company called Shimahara Illustration. We talk about his background and how he started at Gensler, and what has also led him to start to become a fimmaker. We discuss the idea of style and story telling, and spend a bit of time talking about new mediums such as VR.

While at FMX, I had the opportunity to visit Luxx Studios, an interesting small studio that does some really great Visual Effects work. I sat down with Andrea Block and Christian Haas in their very warm and inviting studio to talk about their work. Besides the work on White House Down and Grand Budapest Hotel, we also talked about the feature animation that they are producing called Manou the Swift. They talk about their inspiration in making the film, as well as what it takes to get something like this to happen.

Paul Debevec's contributions to the CG field are well known. As the Chief Visual Officer at University of Southern California's Institute of Creative Technology, he has broken ground with technology in many different ways for over 18 years. He may in fact be the godfather of Image Based Lighting, and probably the person that enabled HDR environment lighting to be as essential as most people consider it to be today. In doing so, his team help create a variety of Light stages, which over time also became high res facial scanners. They even used this technology to scan the President of the United States. He is also a member of the Digital Human League, which is why ICT helped provide us with the data that we needed to get our Wikihuman project started.

We recorded this podcast while at FMX in Stuttgart. We had a great conversation with Jörn Großhans a VFX Supervisor and Christian Zilliken a CG Supervisor at Mackevision. They talk about what it was like to start a VFX department there and all the amazing work they did on Game Of Thrones Season 4 and 5. You will also hear a bit from Kian Saemian who is the Business Development Manager.

Allan and I both started our podcasts around the same time. And while he and I have similar audiences, history, and friends, we were inspired by different motivations. At the age of 33, Allan has been doing visual effects professionally for 20 years. Besides his strong drive, he feels a strong need to give back to the community through his new mentorship program. I had a great time talking to Allan, and I have a strong feeling that we will be joining forces a lot more when it comes to supporting our community.

This week we talk to Ben West, a Creative Director at Framestore, and Director. His unique and interesting upbringing, combined with his strong creative education in both Architecture and Film School, led him to create interesting projects such as Fugu and Tako. Based on it's success, Ben has launched a kickstarter project to expand the story into a graphic novel form. He tells us about his past work, his passion for CG and VFX, and his creative process.

Most people that work in Visual Effects have a story about a person that helped get them in. For me, that person is Eric Hanson. In fact, for a long time he helped a number of people make the transition from Architecture to VFX. He has a long history in VFX, and continues to be a strong advocate in it's education as an associate professor of practice at University of Southern California. Greg Downing and Eric founded xRez in 2006, which has taken extremely high resolution photography and applied it to a myriad of uses. We discuss his career history and find out about some of the very interesting projects that he has been involved in recently.

Scott Ross is an extremely important person in the world of Visual Effects. He was the general manager at ILM when they started to go digital. He also founded Digital Domain with James Cameron and Stan Winston. He later made great efforts to be an advocate for the visual effects industry based on his strong knowledge of how the business is run. Most recently, he has become an ambassador for Trojan Horse was a Unicorn, bringing world class speakers to that event. We speak about his long and fascinating history, as well as what we each think is wrong with and how to fix the issues surrounding the world of VFX today.

Jonathan Litt has a long history in the world of VFX. We cover a large number of subjects in the podcast with Jon. From his first job at ILM, his work on the Matrix series, digital humans at Digital Domain, we even dive into his new passion for virtual reality. Jon offers insight into every part of the process.

How often to you hear people say: "It was so much better in the old days of special effects, now it is just all done on computers." There is a perception that VFX is easy, and that we, the artists, simply push a few buttons and it is all done. One of the places I often hear this is a place I actually have a huge respect for: the Nerdist podcast. I'd like to call on our listeners to listen to this podcast, then help us let Nerdist know, as follow nerds, we need their help to teach the world to #RespectVFX.

We recorded this podcast while in San Jose California during the GPU Technology Conference. Sponsored by NVIDIA, the conference is made for developers that are advancing development on the GPU with CUDA. From Deep Learning to Raytracing, the conference covers a lot of different subjects. I went there with several of our developers from our main office in Sofia, including Vlado and Boris, who I did this podcast with. While you probably know who Vlado is, Boris is our product manager in charge of V-Ray Cloud and V-Ray App SDK. We spent the podcast talking GPU development, V-Ray in Motionbuilder, Kevin Margo's CONSTRUCT, Cloud rendering, and other technology.

Jeff Mottle, the founder of CGarchitect.com , has been a very strong voice for the ArchViz and Digital Design community since 2001. He also happens to be a good friend who I have known for years. While at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose this last week, we ran into each other. As I started to ask him about what technology he thinks pushes the ArchViz and Digital Design community, we decided to record a podcast about it. Jeff also took the opportunity to tell us about his new the CGarchitect Visualization Conference, which he is running through kickstarter. He explains more about it as well.