Blender Workflow for Feature Films - Jama Jurabaev

I hope you drink well it's last day unfortunately I missed two amazing days but I had a chance to see like a couple of demos before me they were all awesome so yeah let me quickly introduce myself my name is John Dhirubhai I work as a freelancer concept artist at Lucasfilm do you guys know Lucasfilm we do this little Star Wars movie sometimes like once in two years yeah it's a good question yeah I'm originally I'm from Tajikistan have you heard about Tajikistan come on don't try to be polite guys okay I'll explain where Tajikistan is then yeah I know you know earth right there round one and then you have rhinos and then elephants and the other chick is telling somewhere that anyway it's like a really little X Soviet republic I really like sometimes feel it's good to mention this because for me it was a long ride to where I am right now because like I'm coming from I wouldn't hide it it's like a very like we had Civil War we had all those problems but what's great news about today is internet right you can go on internet and that's especially what does blender very special it's a free software like when I was a student when I was back at my home I couldn't afford any software I mean I was obviously using illegally everything I was using you're gonna cut this one right yeah and now these days we have blender obviously I discovered blender like a few years ago and this is probably will be a good moment to move on yeah like a very quick credits like some movies I worked on like the most recent one was ready player one Jurassic world and Star Wars which is coming like somewhere soon right yeah and I'm gonna start with just like a quick recap because I think like I'm not saying I'm very special here at the conference but I came from a very different route like I used to do like engineering first like aerospace engineer which is almost like a rocket science I'm not saying that to fit to you to think that I'm smart I barely graduated but I never enjoyed like really heavy math heavy stuff so that's why I liked when I restarted my career as an artist I felt like 2d is great because today is simple right I can just open a canvas take a best Photoshop brush on earth and just make like this amazing paintings put them on my get thousands like on Facebook get very happy right but I always felt like you know especially when I entered professional industry like doing 2d art you get you hit this limitation when 2d is great when you just begin like creating these ideas you know you can just go up on a flat canvas it's just no menu so you can just sketch out something and then sell this idea to our director or to director whoever whoever you're working with but you know we all know that moment when I mean I don't know I'm not sure how many of you guys do 2d here but you know when you're doing 2d the client comes in and goes oh yeah I like this picture it's a good start and you go like damn I already finish it what do you mean it's a good start right and then guy goes like oh could you like I like this image could you just change the camera and you start cursing he's like relatives and everyone involved in this right because it's so difficult you know it's gonna be redoing stuff and this is where I think people kind of Miss misunderstand the conception of concept art they think all concept artists are these are the guys who draw like they do like this beautiful brushstrokes now we always curse because we always have to change something right because it's always more about the concept part of things and this is where like personally myself I felt like okay I need to go back to 3d because I used to use 3d but it was more like engineering based heavy 3d I had to go back to 3d and obviously the choice was like all those evil softwares like my 3d max right so I had to use them but but what's great about 3d you can set up in the scene and then whenever art director comes in and he goes well could you change in angle oh yeah sure mate I can do it like for some I did this scene and I can just rotate the camera boom take a screenshot boom of course it's not that easy like there's some paint over on top but at least 3d gives me this perspective for free the lighting for free texture for free and all that stuff but I always felt this is gonna be really hard to save without offending anyone here 3d most of the time feels very sterile very stiff as well you know especially if you like me myself working as a concept guy like my turnaround is super fast right the client comes in and he they go like oh we need like five photo-real versions by in the end of the day right and if you start texturing rigging you're just gonna fail right you're gonna not enjoy what are you doing basically so that's why I would always mix those two worlds right 2d is great fast you can do thy brushstrokes get a lot of likes on Facebook 3ds boring difficult but still you're kind of getting there right and I started implementing this workflow every on every project I worked and unfortunately of course there are a lot of projects that are still coming out like I cannot show you but the response specific moment that I wanted to share with you which was in Jurassic world 2 so basically for Jurassic world I was involved like again like whenever you start the project the turn are the super quick dates they ask you like oh we want some like ideas they don't care if the rendering is great if the textures are right they all they care about like is the speed right so they would give me this kind of like way out and do something there's no way I can do it all in 3d right and I always start with sketches right just like quick gestural things just to show the motion like the action and stuff like that and this is for example if you've seen the movie it's on torrents by the way already yeah I mean it's super expensive in Netherlands I don't know how you guys saving money like you should watch torrents yeah so these are like super super quick stuff just to show different ideas some of them are sketchy some of photo - but rarely like any 3d at this stage where you need just knock out like as much as possible right yeah that was great and most of them they kind of just to inspire you know that's the other problem with Freedy when you go to detailed in the first presentation to your client or whatever you dink it always has the result the chance that create that there will be it's sort of computer right if you're Freedy is not well done they will go oh you're metal doesn't look like metal and you go goddamn don't look at the metal just look at the overall picture right you know all this situations so that's why whenever like it as it comes to the artist I'm presenting stuff I'm trying to keep it very vague at the first stage I just want to present this idea right and most of these also they are very rough because you want to leave a room for other 3d artists right like Oh other I would say be effects artists right because they also want to bring some like extra and usually not usually I would say most of the time like the VFX guys they take this the my concept so concept artists stuff to the next level by build rebuilding the models retexture so concept are is that inspire that's why usually you keep it very vac as you can see it's very like sketchy then when you saw the movie it's all animated it's so beautiful right but also like Derek you think about too deep especially when it comes to character designer design like you know these days you go on ZBrush you activate symmetry and then you do amazing detail designs right but I always felt like especially with dinosaur so super super cool because whenever you do like you know it's the simplest way to do a dinosaur a creature you turn on the symmetry you do the dinosaur but if you don't believe me go on YouTube or Google check what t-rex looks like in t-post and I mean I can show you it's very stupid right it's like it doesn't look real and it's only visually not very satisfying to look at but also it's you can make your decisions right it's like imagine you go on dating and the guys like this it just doesn't make sense you need to see a character so that's why I like I think 3d is awesome for what it is and slowly I move on and I actually tell you how I like executed it and I did it in blender so first I did this very rough sketch which is just to deplane like 5-10 minutes an hour whatever it takes but it was super fast director was like oh yeah I liked it I liked the idea long front arms and stuff like that and then obviously from there they start complicating things right they go oh could you post like put like a scales on top of the guy and you go like to Photoshop and try to find a scale brush and there's no you go on deviantART you try to find a scale brush there's no it just takes so much time and then you go our damn I need to do 3d right and I took the same guy I did them but I redid him in 3d and that's how he looks like right now very stupid like I I don't believe like the director would buy this if I showed him this version right so I knew I had to do an action pose which I did it's this is the same guy right so this is the t-post looks stupid this is the action pose directly like this one but as always he was like oh it's a good start let's move on us damn it's already done like I spent thousands of hours and wrinkles you know like he goes by it's a good start but I see what they mean he goes how could we change the head could we change the proportions a little bit and this one I was doing manually you know like I went through this ZBrush stage you know whoever did the posing in ZBrush they usually look like five years older than other people because it's so terrible so difficult to do right so basically my idea was I want to sculpt in T pose as a design mode I just want to see the proportions but the way the moment I present I wanted the creature to have action pose right and I went to my guys they started like there was this guy he would explain me for half an hour that is impossible because of the way paints and I was like damn what I telling me I'm from Tajikistan I can do anything right I used to do like sculptures from mud when I was a kid so I spent like a weekly chili on set next to directors doing my R&D trying to figure out how to do this I couldn't do it in my er I noticed it's possibly me like if I go to Autodesk convert convention they're gonna kill me but I couldn't do it like I would paint a wait map and then one pixel will go one polygon will fall off a stuff like that would happen and then I went on YouTube and I was like how to rig the dinosaur in blender it was this guy ten minutes I watched it and what's great about blender you watch it you do it and you get exactly the same result so I basically wreaked one of this dinosaur so just some modifiers like I would switch off my week whenever I had to design mode in whenever I had to design and when I had to present it I would just turn on the reek and I would have different animation poses and yeah this is just like the same guy and then obviously they asked me to freely print it and then textures yeah it's a good start but but now I have 3d model I can do whatever I want right I put some texture drop them in key shot or something like that and then obviously from there I could do like action bits like what they call keep keyframes right this is like one of the scenes that was cut from the movie but anyway and this is the final design so 3d is great to have what I mean for texturing for lighting it's all for free but in the beginning it's always like we're very intimidating when you need to tweak things anyway at just as I predicted they were like oh yeah it's a good start we have ten more dinosaurs at least I have the ballclub sorted out now I was like okay I would open blender so this is the second guy at it was which was Baryonyx and as you can see like in Teeples he look like looks like an inflated balloon right like it's impossible it's impossible to sell this idea especially to people who don't understand art and there are a lot of them in the industry right the producers they would go all but this too it doesn't look right this is just the T poles from my design like you don't have a chance to explain them you need to make sure they see what they see is what they get right so yeah and same like I would just turn off the weak boom it's not perfect like I mean I think I yeah you see on the leg there is like a bit of weight distortion but you know I I can just put like a couple of strokes in Photoshop and it's all done right and then when yeah there are different pose and then when I present I would present I would have them free in the row just first one to see the proportions and then data to just action poses and then the life is easy from there just rotate your camera and then texturing no problem sir just drop some textures 3d and then set design and then here they just kept coming like do another one okay okay I just I would do them yeah I mean I would say sculpting tools are not like super amazing if someone could take a note here about thunder but it's enough for me you know I like blender for what it is and we will go there I really love to have some extra things but for now it's pretty much enough for me especially with that like posing and reposing think it's super amazing so yeah yeah I did like 10 of those was amazing I did this guy as well this guy this one was the only t-post wonder to get approved very quickly dad yeah and I was also responsible for the saddest scene on the planet so when Baron takes the Brachiosaurus died I cried like a baby okay so now there is this concept you know like I explained to you like 2d and 3d worlds right I always try to marry them because I know I'm super fast in 2d and 3d brings a lot of like things for free like perspective materials lighting and stuff like that so I always and also you know in movies it's amazing like I often hear this from cinematic artists they go long and I designed this beautiful landscape all in 3d but those come guys they just covered everything with smoke right you don't see anything wider then did you model all the stones in the background just the texture right so they complain but then they realized like they were wrong in terms of the decision-making right so that's like very important for me because when I do the artwork I need to make sure I'm gonna put a lot of smoke a lot of cinematic effects like and I'm not talking about chromatic aberration but the lighting the fog and all that stuff so for example here like I made the scene in 3d but I knew I don't need it doesn't need to be perfect because I know I can paint over I can use my artistic skill to our direct everything and this is like a Terminator 6 homage that I did that's basically like a bunch of scenes it's all done in blender and now this is how the scene looks like you see as you can see like I don't mind going very dirty like I don't need to simulate anything I just wanted to build modifier just like boom boom randomize just scroll the slider just cut what I need and like for cables it was all grease pencil drawing just convert it to Gio because like I know that for me like rendering part is only like in-between step I always put some extra Photoshop work on top and that's why I don't need to like to make everything look perfect and as you can see like all those cables they look like tubes and stuff like that and this is another best thing whoever did this Fink I want to thank you fullscreen and blender is the best thing ever I don't want to seal I don't want to buy another monitor I see people like buying a bigger monitor and then they go bigger and still have menus right so I just want to have fullscreen all my shortcuts I just want to be creative it's like rule of thumb for me the last technically I am the more creative I am and that's why I like fullscreen is the best place the best way to do it because you just can't you can just concentrate on what matters and in my case it's the design yeah and I made this one and yeah you can see all everything is like super rough but when you go back and look at the frames I did they look quite cinematic and most of the stuff like on the ground as you textures I just used the lifelike its flow most of it is fake really yeah I'm gonna play a couple of videos like for example with 2.8 this is the way I approach right now I'm sorry they're a little bit fast but we don't have time anyways so I just do the first sketch increase pencil then I do like a a cleaner past with just more solid strokes and then I basically just offset them and very quickly I can take this one convert into geometry and that's what get an EVA it's really cool and then people on YouTube go oh you skip some part you did some part of course I did some part in between right so basically what I did was just exporting that to ZBrush to dynamesh it so if guys you hear me we would love to have dynamesh inking in blender I mean maybe there is already I don't know about it so yeah you see like oh I was concentrated on and this is like Allosaurus like like 1 to 1 but if I even if I was like creating this imaginary creature I will still sketch you know I will not go into modeling mode because I know whenever I show the model I need to put the texture pass on it just takes longer and every time they address any feedback I'm gonna be complaining because I'm not enjoying it anymore another way for example with Chris pencil again like very primitive sculpt just a random dude and you see the armor design I'm not modeling it I'm not going into sub D for low poly modeling or any kind of that stuff I just draw it because I know graphically it needs to look good and once it looks good graphically I just converted to Geo inflated slightly in ZBrush and that's it and with a V it looks awesome and then and then obviously with Eevee you just put that fog that compositors life to put on and everything you don't see half of the details yeah yeah grease pencil to point a whoever is responsible we should pray we should put like little statues grease pencil guy like zebras cows pray to them why it's awesome it's just amazing because like I said that's why I tried to start my presentation from like showing just the variety of work I do because it's really important for me to stay very fast and grease pencil is just perfect to do that and yeah for example this is a full yeah there is a bit of Photoshop work on that on top this is a grease pencil and the work flow I use there there is a video later so I'll show it to you same here same with this guy like anything hard surface like here it's great to go and keep Bosch stuff but it's much faster just to do see well just to generate some kind of idea of how this thing looks like and then instead of drawing it manually in Photoshop by using perspective and it's very difficult especially for people who are not very good at drawing like in grease pencil that helps me a lot because everything is already in 3d I mean there's a little video it makes sense so this is like one of the rules you can have a primitive jail just paint and then start refining this is another example of a Spencer storyboard artists will kill it like you because you can frame your picture just sketch it and then [Music] and that's how I did the guys I took and mix in the model because I did the pincers and instead of reading things II just in 2.78 you have like view responses and and this is obviously the decided the profile just repeated [Music] [Applause] so yeah oh there's another one yeah that's 2.8 that's even more impressive where you can draw and then you can start because there are instances mirroring so you can start extruding stuff and then and they're all I need is just [Music] and also like you can use grease pencil sketches to randomize them to play this it's like design possibilities Anderson because it's a mind roll it succinctly [Music] [Music] thank you very much and this is another experiment I did which which I thought was very interesting it's all grease pencil there's no just I mean there are boxes to hide it [Music] and it's only just moving the mouse [Music] pretending that it's a camera motion but I don't I don't really know animation in blender like if I have trying to make two keyframes I failed so I just like you and sometimes you can see my mouths like moving so it's cool just let the good music you can do anything yeah it's great a big disclaimer here usually like people when they like let's say both my camera does something they go oh man you didn't tell me you need to draw how to use it come on so obvious the grease pencil doesn't draw for you right there's like there is no like when you go to blender there's no like button how to draw yeah that's like I found the meth of thing you know but the good news you don't need to be that's what what great about designing these days you know some people consider that designing is all about drawing and do it ya know it's all about having right tools and that's exactly why I'm kind of working on this workflow because as a designer you don't want to think about perspective which perspective is like a simple skill it's like almost like when you're cooking food you don't think about how we're gonna be why you're gonna make light right you have match you have gas or something right so we want to take away all those unnecessary very important tools I'm not saying it's not important but all we need to do is actually concentrate on cooking like cooking the design that we're working on that's why I think blender is super helpful yeah and as you can see I was able to do this pictures like super quickly oh and obviously Adams gasps you are awesome whoever is doing Adams and their kitchens like that those guys awesome like I use Aaron's all the time and like for me like I do a lot of hard surface modeling and I'm not paid to do this by the way it's just like I like this guy the guys like the box cutter hard ups add-ons they're freaking awesome yeah I was able to do all this and just a quick video to show you how the way I approach things like I rarely model in the perfect sense of modeling I don't do like how could I say like I always use like cutting to psychotic extrude I like I like like almost like drawing type of modeling slash suggestive modeling [Music] [Music] [Music] and just drawing for geometry that's what I was always granted that's great frying pan [Music] oh cool and the next step next year when I come over we're gonna do some vr stuff right because I tried it once that's the only thing missing you know like I always complain about 3d being like I mean you probably will confirm this but 70% of my time as a 3d guy is consumed by rotating my camera right like you move your cube and you go oh yeah that's in the right place and then you move your camera it's like miles away right so and then you go and you try to adjust in VR that is eliminated completely because you can take a cube you can put it here right so that's the only thing missing right now and even with grease pencil like when I'm off setting my geometry I it's manual work like take orthographic orthographic with VR it's gonna be awesome and blender is gonna be master of universe but obviously someone needs to do it for free right and that's that's another challenge yeah but yeah I'm super excited because like we are we to said that blender has like which is modeling grease pencil animation tools just like having a view and I think with Eevee blender is the closest one to having like a proper VR mode like Maya and all those guys they're super late to kind of integrate those into the pipeline they have and that's why I'm hoping like at some point they will integrate it and yeah hopefully next year we'll see some of your stuff and if you're curious like I do a lot of VR stuff but not in blender I use like gravity education or other things you can just go or here and subscribe and follow me and thank you very much awesome thank you guys

Channel: Blender

Views: 214,719

Rating: 4.9741163 out of 5

Keywords: conference, b3d, bcon18, blender, eevee, presentation, amsterdam, cycles, 2d, lightning talk, animation, addon, suzanne awards, grease pencil, Blender Conference, render, de balie, blender 3d

Id: UpcKPJTmqSI

Length: 25min 49sec (1549 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 04 2018