Category: News

Graham explores the latest Autodesk Maya2023​ release, including the new Bifrost USD​ integration, and Arnold updates.

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What’s in the Arnold toolset 

Flexible and extensible API
Integrate Arnold into external applications and create custom shaders, cameras, light filters, and output drivers.

Universal Scene Description (USD) support
Maximize the power of USD with Arnold in production scenarios.

Imagers
Use Bloom, Light Mixer, Noice, and OptiX denoiser imagers to control lighting effects and automatically denoise after each render.

Stand-alone command-line renderer
Arnold has a native scene description format stored in human-readable text files. Easily edit, read, and write these files via the C/Python API.

Standard Surface shader
Produce a wide range of materials and looks with this energy-saving, physically-based uber shader.

Standard Hair shader
Render hair and fur with this physically based shader, based on the d’Eon and Zinke models for specular and diffuse shading.

Alembic procedural
Render Alembic files directly without any translation with a native procedural.

Profiling API and structured statistics
Identify performance issues and optimize rendering processes more easily with an extensive set of tools.

Material assignments and overrides
With operators, override any part of a scene at render time and enable support for open standard frameworks such as MaterialX.

Built-in Cryptomatte
Create ID mattes automatically with support for motion blur, transparency, and depth of field.

Integrated OpenColorIO v2
Take advantage of OpenColorIO v2 for state-of-the-art colour management.

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3D Modelling

Enhanced Retopology tools
Automatically reconstruct polygonal mesh data as clean quad-based topology with uncompromising accuracy. These tools can be used to reduce complex and high-resolution assets and enhance generative designs and traditional modelling work inside of 3ds Max.

Enhanced Smart Extrude
Interactively extrude faces on 3D objects using flexible Smart Extrude operations like cut-through and overlap. Rebuild and stitch adjacent faces automatically without needing to manually repair hidden faces or geometric data.

Mesh and surface modelling
Create parametric and organic objects with polygon, subdivision surface and spline-based modelling features.

Modifier stack workflow
Quickly conceptualise, iterate and explore design ideas using a range of unique modifiers.

Spline workflows
Create and animate geometry in several intuitive ways with spline tools.

Texturing and Shading

Open Shading Language (OSL) support
Generate high-quality textures that display accurately in the viewport using new or pre-existing OSL maps with any supported renderer.

Baking to texture
Experience a streamlined, intuitive and fully scriptable texture baking experience with support for PBR (physically based rendering) materials, overrides and OSL workflows.

Material editor
Add material finishes, change textures and use vibrant colours to create photorealistic designs.

Lighting
Illuminate and enhance your scenes using photometric lights and standard lights.

3D Rendering

Integrated Arnold renderer
Use the Arnold GPU renderer to view scene changes in real-time, including lighting, materials and camera.

Interactive viewports
Reduce design iteration with render-quality viewport previews, displaying PBR (physically based rendering) materials and camera effects directly.

ActiveShade viewport
With an interactive rendering experience, see your scene in a near-final rendering quality as you’re working.

Physical camera
Simulate real-life camera settings such as shutter speed, aperture, depth of field and exposure.

Scene converter
Seamlessly and consistently change materials, lights, cameras and renderers from one to another.

Animation and effects

Character animation tools
Create procedural character animations and rigs with CAT (character animation toolkit), biped and crowd tools.

Motion paths
Preview and adjust animation paths directly in the viewport.

3ds Max fluids
Create realistic liquid behaviours, such as water, oil and lava, as well as replicate gravity and collision effects.

Particle flow effects
Create sophisticated particle effects such as water, fire, spray and snow.

Extensive plug-in library
Access hundreds of industry-leading third-party plug-ins from our extensive community.

Workflow pipeline

Enhanced Software security
Use Safe Scene Script Execution to protect your work against malicious scripts that could be part of scene files and the Malware Removal functionality, which detects and removes known malicious scripts from scene files and startup scripts.

Python 3
Get tighter pipeline integration with support for Python 3.

Enhanced Pipeline integration support
Easily customise 3ds Max to fit your production pipeline needs.

Modern UI and workspaces
Create your own customised workspaces with a more modern, responsive, high-DPI-ready user interface.

New GL Transmission Format (glTF) support
Publish assets from your 3ds Max scene to glTF 3D content for use in web applications, online shops, browser games and other online plug sockets.

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The price is right.

Small agile teams are born out of the necessity to develop new tools and applications. The pioneering work in visual effects is often the starting point for innovation. Every few years, new digital content creation tools bridge a productivity gap, reimagine a VFX workflow, or forge ever more efficient ways to work more collaboratively to achieve and deliver ever-increasingly more complex shots.

Almost any application in the VFX space will have had a beginning with a similar story behind them. There is an overwhelming expectation to find commercial validity to support product longevity and increase market presence; otherwise, their competitors will take over. However, when done correctly, positive transformations in productivity and praise for innovation are recognised and rewarded by a loyal user base. Commercial success is practically secured. When enough noise is made, smaller firms are a target for acquisition by larger corporate giants looking to increase their market presence.

Over the last 20 years, the tools used for digital content creation, especially in the world of visual effects, have seen a lot of merging and consolidation due in no small part to acquisition.

Acquisition can happen in various ways and while it may be in the form of some type of capital investment, what is of more obvious concern to us in visual effects and content creation is the acquisition or merging of brands and what impact that has on the end-user experience over time.

For others, the worry is more about any adaptation or evolution of tools they had implemented into their pipeline. Would the new owner develop the tools into something that didn’t fit with what the artist or studio had initially bought them for, or could they be ended entirely?

The answers to these questions are varied and each case has a different outcome and can change over time.

Sometimes, one developer acquires a business or tool to gain access to part of the technology or to embed technology that is simply lacking in their own product offering, which is often the most common reason. Whether that technology is sequestered by another that the new owner already has or if it is run as before but under the new leadership is another matter and can go both ways.

Autodesk continues its recent acquisitions to bolster its industry advancement and competitive edge; recent examples include its acquisition of Tangent Labs and Moxion, facilitating its well-known strategy of becoming a true platform provider. Maxon’s recent purchase of Pixologic is a similar example.

Whichever process, evolution and outcome happens, the key to this from an end-user perspective, is to understand the impact on your own work, your business costs and forward planning.

Open to all

Of course, there is a totally different aspect to the consolidation of VFX technologies and it is certainly a bigger one, with far-reaching impact for everybody involved in this industry and one which has largely positive outcomes for all.

Having technologies that can fit into as many different pipelines as possible is a good thing for studios and artists alike, as it means that assets are more easily utilised in different ways, the talent pool becomes more dynamic, training needs are far fewer and the costs to the business are (hopefully) reduced.

What we are talking about here is the move to cross-platform technologies. By this, I don’t mean which OS a studio might use but the way certain elements of the VFX workflow have been and are being increasingly developed.

Although there are limitations, things like the OBJ and FBX file format meant that assets created in one tool could be used in another. The benefits here are clear, however, there have been other moves in the industry that take this well beyond the simple sharing of a model.

Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) is one such development and has seen rapid uptake, not just by studios and artists, but by other developers who are keen to support the open-source tools. This move makes it easier, more efficient and effective for teams to contribute to a project, from different locations, software suits and pipelines.

Epic’s Unreal Engine has become a huge tool, not just for game development but for all manner of use cases, from architecture to virtual production. Support for Unreal Engine has broadened too, not just in terms of the user base but other developers. SideFX and Chaos amongst others have developed tools for Unreal Engine integration and going back to acquisition, Epic now owns Quixel and rapidly added Megascans to the Unreal ecosystem.

And let’s not forget “collaboration”, as this often binds competitive products together, allowing the end-user to create effortlessly and optimise their pipeline; it’s natural that Maya (Autodesk) works seamlessly with Nuke (The Foundry) and Photoshop (Adobe) with 3ds Max (Autodesk), for example.

How do I know what’s best?

This is where we come in. Here at Bluegfx we understand your production needs and can help inform your decisions, not just in where to invest, but how you can build a pipeline and workflow, so it provides you the best solution for staging effective and efficient processes.

We have a dedicated team of technical and workflow specialists that keep up to date on all aspects of the industry and the wider community, so they can guide you through the process of initiating or developing your tech needs.

Whether you need guidance on your existing pipeline, or simply want to chat about best practices or what tools you can integrate to best support your production workflow, or if you are looking to start something new, we can guide you through the process.

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What have you got to lose? Schedule a call with our Tech Team.

We’d love to hear from you – please call 01483 410370 or email tech@bluegfx.com.

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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Bifrost makes it possible for 3D artists and TDs to create serious effects in Maya quickly and easily using a new visual programming environment.

Ready-to-Use Graphs 

From dust motes and volumetric clouds to fire and explosions, artists can explore a library of pre-built Bifrost graphs in the new Bifrost Browser to create great looking effects fast. Graphs can also be used as a starting point for creating custom effects from scratch. Users can then publish their own graphs to the Browser for other artists to easily find and re-use.

One Graph

In a single visual programming graph called the Bifrost Graph Editor, technical artists and TDs can mix nodes ranging from math operations, to file IO, particles, volumes, mesh or surface operations, and even simulations.

Realistic Previews

With Arnold integrated in Maya, artists can see exactly what their effects will look like after lighting and rendering, right in the Arnold Viewport. They can also see near-final previews of their effects in Viewport 2.0.

Not only do accurate previews reduce the potential for last minute iterations later on in production, they also provide artists with a more creatively engaging experience by making it easier to see the results of changes they make at interactive rates.

Detailed Smoke, Fire, and Explosions

New solvers for aerodynamics (Aero) and combustion make it easy for artists to create deceptively natural-looking smoke, fire, and explosions.

Simple artistic controls let artists adjust boundary conditions for effects to create more physically-accurate interactions with the surrounding scene and set up adaptivity to automatically add or remove detail depending on characteristics such as velocity, turbulence, and smoke density.

The combustion solver performs computational chemistry and thermodynamics to simulate the physical reactions of fire, flames, and explosions.

Artists can choose from an array of realworld fuels like methane and butane, and the solver automatically generates realistic outputs such as (digital) carbon monoxide and water vapor.

The Material Point Method

The Material Point Method (MPM) was made famous by its use as a snow solver in Disney’s Frozen. Autodesk teamed up with Jixie Effects, founded by members of the original research team, to develop a production-ready MPM solver. One of the key advantages of MPM is that the behavior of simulations remains consistent as resolution increases. While the original MPM work focused on granular simulation of snow, Jixie Effects has extended the Bifrost MPM solver to now tackle other phenomena, including:

• MPM Granular – Simulates granular materials such as sand and mud, as well as snow
• MPM Cloth – Simulates dynamic thin shells and cloth such as textiles, aluminum, and plastics
• MPM Fibers – Simulates dynamics of each fiber (or strand) individually

High-Performance Particle System

Using particles to drive aerodynamic and combustion simulations is a common and effective workflow. Entirely crafted using visual programming, the new particle system in Bifrost adds even more power to what was previously possible with particles in Maya with the ability to now break open and customize the system as needed.

Artistic Effects with Volumes

To create a desired effect, artists often need to convert between meshes, points and volumes, and process volumes for artistic effects. Bifrost comes loaded with a number of nodes for these purposes including converting meshes, points, and particles to volumes; converting volumes back to meshes; smoothing volumes; sampling properties of volumes; and scattering points inside volumes.

Technical artists can also use visual programming to artistically process volumes including advecting volumes with noise and adding noise to a volume.

Flexible Instancing

Bifrost introduces high performance, render-oriented instancing empowering users to create enormous complexity in their scenes without having to worry about overloading memory or slowing performance. At the heart of instancing is point-based geometry.

Artists can create instances with any number of procedural and artist-driven techniques, and then apply them to scattered points, particle systems such as the MPM solver, and vertices of any other geometry. Instance shapes are flexible and can be easily adjusted using a simple selection mechanism that can select between multiple layers of variation.

For example, one layer might distinguish between grass and flowers, and another might drill down to select variations of each.

Tightly integrated with Arnold instancing and Viewport 2.0, artists can instance any renderable Bifrost geometry including meshes, volumes, strands or points, as well as fully renderable assets in the form of render archives, such as Arnold .ass files.

Detailed Hair, Fur, and Fuzz

The world is full of fibres. From hair and fur to fuzz, clothing, grass, and even dust, artists frequently need to model things consisting of multiple fibres (or strands). Bifrost makes it simple for artists to do so procedurally.

• Using colored strands, artists can draw flowlines, vectors, and links between different elements to better understand data.
• It’s easy to alter the way strands look with controls for adjusting thickness, color, and orientation.
• Strands can be rendered using Arnold as either ribbons for hair shaders or cylinders for all other Arnold curve rendering options.

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Chaos Corona 8 for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D adds many powerful tools to allow artists to create their 3D worlds faster and with more detail than ever.

Below is a quick overview of just some of the biggest new features:

For more information or to purchase Chaos Corona please don’t hesitate to get in touch with a member of our sales team or visit our product page below.

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Buy Chaos Corona

To purchase visit the product page here.

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Get in touch

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This release includes support for Python 3, developer-focused improvements and workflow enhancements to help improve daily work for animators and developers.

Python 3 Support

Python 3 is now available for MotionBuilder providing performance, security, and dev-centric language enhancements, while support for PIP delivers instant access to the latest libraries and tools. Python 3 is the new default on Windows and Linux, but Motion Builder can still be launched in Python 2 mode by setting an environment variable or with a command line flag.

Developer-Focused Improvements

More powerful MotionBuilder Command Line:
The Motion Builder Python Command Line tool has been significantly improved. mobupy.exe can be used to call the MotionBuilder Python SOK. This opens the door to new capabilities like file processing and rendering from the Command Line.

Python/ APT:
The Motion Builder API has been expanded and improved to include additional capabilities based on common feedback from developers.

Python Editor Updates:
The Python Editor now displays an ‘X’ button on each script tab, providing a quick way to close scripts and allowing users to manage multiple script tabs more efficiently.

Customizable Splash Screen:
Tool developers can now modify the MotionBuilder splash screen with custom imagery, defined by a new environment variable named MOTIONBUILDER_ICON_PATH. This enables artists and studios to customize the startup experience to differentiate between different projects or tool versions.

Workflow Enhancements

Quaternions in the FCurve Editor:
Animators can now visualize real Quaternion Rotation properties within the FCurve Editor that match evaluation values, instead of displaying them as normal FCurves. “Real Quaternion Rotations”, a new checkable menu item, is now available in the contextual menu of the FCurve Editor. “Showing Real Quaternion Rotations” is now displayed in the FCurve Editor to help users know if the mode is enabled or not.

Character Extension Improvements:
The new “Add to Body Part” property enables artists to key a character extension when selecting the body part containing a reference object of that character extension. This simplifies the key framing process for character extensions by allowing users to animate them in conjunction with an associated body part.

Auxiliary Effector Usability:
When working with Character Controls, animators can control whether the auxiliary pivots/effectors should be automatically shown or not by using “Automatically Expand Auxiliaries”, a new preference added in the Character section. This saves time for animators by reducing the number of actions required to expand IK auxiliaries each time they select individual effectors in the Character Controls.

Relation Constraint Updates:
Artists can include relation constraints in an animation layer, while also controlling layer weight, improving the visibility of the layer relationships within the Navigator. Users can add an animation layer in a relation constraint to control the weight of the layer. The layers are now shown and parented to their respective takes in the Navigator.

Camera Plate Offset and Scale:
Users now have more precise control over the transformation of camera plates. New Offset X/Y and Scale X/Y options have been added to the camera back and front plates. These new options are enabled when the “Fit” option is unchecked and work in conjunction with the existing “Center” and “Maintain Ratio” settings. When the “Maintain Ratio” option is enabled, the new Scale Y value/animation is ignored, and Scale Xis used for both.

Group/ Set Enhancements:
New options in the Groups/Sets Tool are available to preserve the Show/Pick/Trs state of Groups/Sets when toggling a parent node. If toggling on the Group while the option is enabled, all nested groups will be turned on. If toggling on the Group while the option is disabled, only the nested groups that are already checked will be checked again.

Heads Up Display Enhancements:
The Navigator now supports drag and drop parenting of HUDs. The resulting HUD hierarchies can then be easily attached to cameras and rendered in the Viewer, making it easier to associate things like HUD style rig control setups with cameras.

Better Audio Display:
Similar to the FCurve Editor, the Camera Switcher now has the ability to display an audio waveform from an audio clip or a Story audio track, allowing animators to stay in context while using audio in the Camera Switcher. Previously, they would have to switch back to the FCurve Editor to see the audio waveform.

New Undo Window:
A new Undo window has been added to enable display and modification of a detailed view of the command history. This new feature allows users to see and update the current level within the undo stack.

Faster Image Loading:
When loading a scene file, images contained in the file can be now be loaded in parallel to speed up the loading process, giving users a significant speed boost when opening files with numerous, large images. This is especially important when working with scenes with image-based reference footage.

C3D Import Improvements:
The new “Up Axis Used” in File option allows users to specify that the up-axis embedded in the C3D file should be used on import, giving them more control over which axis is up in relation to HIK. In previous versions, users did not have access to the up-axis setting stored in a C3D file.

Viewport Selection Accuracy:
Several updates have been made to improve selection accuracy for objects in the Viewport allowing users to interactively select objects such as cameras and locators more predictably in the Viewport.

Story Tool Improvements:
Animators will experience workflow improvements and increased stability when working in the Story tool, based on feedback from power users.

Buy MotionBuilder here.

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With recent technical developments, compounded by the covid pandemic, the industry is now shifting more than ever to different working methods.

With many studios evolving and adopting various remote working scenarios, hardware and software management has become more of a logistical problem.

This can leave some uncertainties for many to manage and resolve. 

How many of the workforce will return to the office full time? How many want more flexible options? How to manage distribution and deployment of hardware and software, and maintain a working pipeline? Can I use my existing in-house technology to operate a hybrid workflow?

For existing facilities wondering whether the workforce should and could return to the office and in which kind of timeframe, is now the time to adopt new working practices or introduce additional capabilities, while retaining the benefits of existing tools, until they near their end of life?

The solutions?

Virtualisation can be the fix for all these concerns in one simple, scalable package. 

More people in the community have become aware of and are using cloud services such as rendering, virtual workstations, storage and archiving. However, this is but a tiny part of what is available, with not everyone realising there is a lot more on offer that can really benefit studios of any size.

However, there are many different options available and not all of them will work for every company, depending on your existing set up, your current working practices and what investment you want or can afford to put in. So, let’s look at some of the various options available for virtualisation and how a hybrid environment could work for you.

Setting up a fully virtual working environment is possible, and AWS recently introduced Nimble Studio, an all-in-one solution providing access to virtual workstations, high-speed storage, and scalable rendering across AWS’s global infrastructure.

This demonstrates the perfect example of what virtualisation can do for you. It makes it easy to set up your team, with the tools they need, all with scalability, controlled by an easy-to-use front end. Aligning these new intuitive tools helps to generate increased capabilities for your output, without the need to move premises, meaning existing infrastructure and hardware can remain providing a great hybrid solution.

If, when existing hardware nears its upgrade time, you decide to switch to full virtualisation, then the change of scale is a simple thing to do. If you decide that a physical premise, with the benefits that entails, is still an integral part of how you see the future, you can dovetail the two for as long as it needs, with virtualisation taking up the challenge on an ‘as needed’ basis.

Let’s use an example of a studio with 50 creatives of various disciplines, all needing workstation access, and the software they need to complete their work.

What about those who are fully remote or are only in the studio on certain days of the week? When the workforce becomes spread out, as is increasingly the case, the management of assets is infinitely more of a challenge.

What if a creative could log on to a virtualised workstation environment using a simple, cost-effective front end, that they can manage themselves, which is centrally monitored by the HQ, providing usage data and budget control. 

The virtual workstations would have all the software people needed, all controlled with specific images to suit the role and requirement, that could be easily updated and deployed with Nimble Studio.

If some people needed to change work and tools, Nimble can handle this too. Nimble can efficiently deploy new tools to the virtual workstations, delivering access to the right tools at the right time, with processing power scaled to keep them creative, eliminating the need for swapping out GPUs, or installing extra RAM or storage. 

Of course, the physical and cost benefits of virtualisation are clear and easily quantified but there are other elements to keep in mind. Virtualisation opens a business up to a global talent pool.

Not only are there opportunities to work with the best workforce available but you save on associated overheads like relocation packages and for some, a change of location might not be a possibility. Virtualisation instantly negates those hurdles.

An added benefit of this type of environment is that it not only helps you manage your current setup, but it can also scale up your requirements, allowing you to access additional resources when required.

These different perspectives on working practice need not be an either-or situation, as they can work seamlessly together, with part of the team being in the studio, other team members working remotely or on location using a virtual workstation, all sharing cloud-based file storage, retaining ease of project management and the collaborative nature that is paramount in the creative industry.

Similarly, all your data is secure in the cloud, perhaps even more so than your current in-house set-up.

What about the final image?

Rendering is a computationally-intensive process and while the render farms out there are gaining in traction, many studios prefer to use their own and while this gives ultimate control it comes at the cost of inevitable upgrades and associated costs.

Using virtual processing eliminates the need for all of this. Just scale the virtual tools for the shot at hand. No cooling issues, power fluctuation problems, or bottlenecks caused by files hitting the farm at once. 

AWS Deadline allows for this with ease. You choose the tools, control access, and get the shots back. It’s a fantastic solution for managing render projects, no matter which field you are in, from creative to engineering.

But what about my files?

The growing demand for higher quality content combined with the adoption of deep images and compositing has resulted in increased file sizes and challenging demands for storage.

Using cloud services such as Nimble or SimpleCloud is the best way to stay on top of this. Many of us are used to the cloud, with our photo apps on our phones, or lower-level options like Dropbox but where services such as Simplecloud excels is scalability and suitability for your projects.

There’s no need to buy hardware storage that is futureproofed anymore. In fact, with the rate of development currently seen, you’d need mystical levels or prophetic vision to know what will be required in even a year or two.

Cloud based systems leave the guesswork behind. Simplecloud, for example, scales as needed, maintaining suitable overheads for the needs of the day. On top of that is total control over deployment and access for the workforce.

You dictate who can access what, even to the extent that you define who can save files locally or who works totally virtually.

Is it secure?

Absolutely yes. In some ways, a virtual studio is more secure than having your own studio. Not only are there multiple redundancies to keep your files accessible but your files are safe from local risks like fire and flood damage and even theft.

Protecting your assets and IP are fundamental requirements and Simplecloud and AWS allow you to control this easily and from anywhere.

How do you use a virtual workstation?

This is possibly the best bit of all. Because this is a web-based system, anybody you offer access to can use any client machine that suits both your and their needs, in fact, an existing home computer or a tablet would both do the trick.

You can even have them working on a machine with one operating system but have the virtual workstation running another, which makes for exceptional additional opportunities for the established studio.

If a creative needs to work elsewhere, say on set or at a different facility, all their familiar tools will be available to them, just as if they were sitting at their usual desk on premises.

On top of this, it is a fantastic method of managing boosted news of your business at peak times. Let’s go back to our 50 strong workforce.

Say they were working on a movie, and all was going well when the VFX supervisor offered you another set of shots to produce.

If your studio is at physical capacity, it’s very easy to simply add extra team members virtually, just for the length of time needed for the work to be delivered. No need to buy in hardware that may lie dormant for much of the time.

In a nutshell?

Virtualisation is all about giving you the power to manage a scalable workforce that runs securely, efficiently and in concert with the needs of your business, reducing inactivity and offering you the power to move with the times.

You can maintain your existing setup for as long as you need but secure in the knowledge that you can stay agile, adapting to a changing industry and confident that you can scale to meet new opportunities. 

We suggest:

AWS Nimble services

Simplecloud

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Contact Us

Contact us on 01483 410370 or email sales@bluegfx.com.

This is the time of year when much of the population takes stock, often deciding to make big changes to their lives, work or passions. In visual effects this is no different, so trying to find new, better, or just different ways of working is pretty common.

On top of that, there is the age-old debate around whether it is better to specialise or generalise. No matter what side of the coin you land on, the resulting actions are the same. It’s time to look at your existing skills to see what you need to learn next. This is the same if you are looking to supplement your current skill set, or change tack and discover new pipelines to fit into.

The problem here is knowing where to start.

Do you need to go back to school?

Buy a few books, or subscribe to an online course?

Well, BlueGFX can help out there. As well as the excellent products they also have in-house product specialists, whose years of experience in the industry can help and guide any upskilling needs you may have.

Rather than presenting a list of options here, we thought it might be more interesting and helpful to talk to one of the team’s veterans themselves, to get their take on the industry, skill sets and how to increase your expertise, so we sat down with Graham Bell, who shares his thoughts, followed by some free resources, to whet your appetite:

Tell us a bit about yourself, where did you start in CG and what’s been your journey?

I started as a traditional illustrator for a small studio in Bromley. We started using CG in the mid-90s just as it seemed to be taking off. I then moved into video games by joining Psygnosis where I cut my teeth in games, before eventually joining EA/Bullfrog. At EA I did a lot of mocap work and took those skills into VFX at MPC in London. Went back into games briefly at Codemasters and Climax until eventually joined Softimage and then Autodesk. That was followed by a spell in automotive visualisation, then back at MPC, and now with Bluegfx.

Are there any key projects that have shaped the way you think about CG? What were they and how have they helped you evolve?

Hard to call out anything in particular. But when I started in games in the PS1 era, there wasn’t much room to play with in terms of model and textures budget, so I had to be creative at times to make things work and be disciplined. These attributes and approaches are something that I’ve perhaps subconsciously carried forwards into other projects. 

Technology and software now is incredible, and capable of many things but some aspects can make you lazy, and it can be too easy to overcomplicate things. So being simple to begin with can be a good starting point.

Where do you stand on software elitism? Every package has its followers and fanboys but is there any benefit to that, or should you go for a more holistic approach?

People will always be passionate or protective about a software package. It could be the first one they learnt, or they just feel more comfortable using it. I’ve used many different softwares, some I like, some I don’t. It can be hard to break out of this mindset, but it’s important to be objective.

Everything has its strengths and weaknesses, and you should be open and willing to adapt and change. I know it’s a cliché, but the software is only one tool from a toolbox.

And it’s not those tools that make us good but rather how we employ them. And if we fail, it’s too easy to simply blame the tool used rather than how they were employed.

For people wanting to start 3D do you think they should take a general approach or specialise?

Good question and one that perhaps doesn’t have a definitive answer. I’ve heard points for both. Being a generalist gives you a broad set of skills, but you could be a jack of all trades and a master of none. And I think it’s very hard to be good at everything.

Starting out, having general skills is a good starting point, but with time you will naturally gravitate towards one particular area and that will help you focus. In a studio environment, you will have to collaborate with different areas and disciplines, so it’s important to have some understanding. 

People learn in different ways but can you suggest a surefire way to kickstart the process?

Be patient. With so much stuff out there, I can see how many, especially those just starting out, are keen to get moving quickly.

Though people can let their impatience with the lack of progress get the better of them and they try and dive straight into something.

However, they quickly get stuck and then maybe start to lose heart. So, the key is to be more diligent in your learning and consider being more pragmatic in your approach to improve your understanding.

Can you recommend a good launch point for people at the beginning of their CG journey?

There are so many resources available to people, it can be hard to know where to start. I would always start with the software vendors themselves. It’s easy to overlook the official resources, documentation and tutorials they provide.

Granted there’s a mixture of quality but it’s a good place to start before moving on. If a vendor can’t always provide materials, they will use their user communities.

More recently I’ve seen vendors sponsor known users to create tutorials on certain topics. There’s some very good stuff out there, so it’s worth checking out.

Some of these resources can be found below and make a fantastic start to the journey of complementing your existing skillset, allowing you to increase your knowledge base, for either enhancing your existing workflow or transitioning to a new one.

Resources to help learn graphic design:

• William Faucher – very good Unreal tutorials. Great guy, comes across very well and explains a lot.

• Very good tutorials from Henning Sanden and Morten Jaeger, 2 senior character artists who have worked in VFX on some big shows
  • The main site has paid content, but their YouTube page has some good free content
  • They cover a variety of software, from Maya to Blender and Mari, etc

• Mathias Røyrvik – Rigging TD who has worked in VFX. His YouTube site – has some great Maya/rigging tutorials and deeper content around math and Maya/Bifrost

• Phil Radford – excellent Maya tutorials and has started doing more content on Maya/Bifrost on his YouTube site 

• Ryan Manning – experienced user with some excellent Unreal tutorials on this channel

• An online school specifically for character rigging and technical art. Paid and free courses.

Exploring the best settings that reduce Maya from crashing and also improve your workflow.