Life as a 3D Modeler in the Film Industry - VFX

you [Music] hey guys heading immortan here from flip normals and in today's video we are going to talk about VFX modeling specifically sort of like the life of a modeler within the effects it's it's very much from our point of view you know the experiences that we have is not gonna apply to gaming it could apply to commercials as well I used to work in commercials so some of these do apply but this is mostly focused around me effects yeah so both of us we work and have them work for last four years now in in high-end VFX in London so I would work in a couple of the major studios here and we currently are we're still doing that and so Morton is full-time modeling I'm doing modeling and texturing as well so that's essentially our perspective on this so come into the video with that in mind this is not - this is not a gaming video now so just some of the different topics we're gonna go through we we're gonna talk about different kinds of modelers that exist within V effects the tools that we generally use the sort of progress that you go through in terms of getting your model and you know the whole hierarchy we're talking about outsourcing different topics there and we're also gonna talk about how do we review how we review work yeah at work and what steps are there as well like what is what what are you giving us model or who you pass your model on to so with that said let's let's get into it so the first thing is a quick disclaimer we're just want to get that out there not everything is about sculpting monsters I very specifically about that as nodes yes so I think I think a lot of people who get into modeling get into modeling because they want to do characters I see that a lot there's definitely also hard surface but I would say that the majority wants to get into characters or creatures and specifically here see brush sculpting yeah concepts sculpting monsters they don't necessarily want to do the whole production side of them of modeling they just want to do sculpting and that's that's gonna be very hard for you yeah so first off let's talk about different kind of modelers so the first one we have here is environment modeling environment modeling is interesting because I feel like the tools that they use for environment modeling can vary you know sometimes we have maya sometimes maybe someone will generate something in SpeedTree yeah yeah there's a lot of different software's being used so I feel like an environment modeler is a very distinct branch of modeling it's not I mean they're still doing modeling but it just is a different profession within modeling itself I think the cool thing about an but about doing environments is that your work is in screen like a lot it's something I've been talking to people like they want to do they want to own the characters but I'm just trying to open them up to the possibility of doing environments because environments are just as cool they covered the majority screen like if you're doing if you're watching a movies a lot of the characters are tiny like they might be a little like cute little fluffy creature here well the environment is everything yeah the environment covers everything if you see like breakdowns from big studios sometimes you'll you'll see that I mean most of the time it's still just on some set and environment modeling is most of what you see look at Jungle Book I mean that's all CG it's not a live-action movie or you know one of the classics that I worked on gods of Egypt of Egypt this size is indeed a classic where I was an environment modeler well it's more like a generalist modeler but I mostly did rocks did very nice rocks rocks for six months so you I mean and for that so that lets take that as an example that was all it was all Maya Ossie brush just populated around the sort of them the main thing there was used a lot of alphas we generated our own sort of 3d alphas you know based on some see depth passes and stuff like that so it's it's very much how can we hack this all together I've actually seen a lot of cool stuff come out of substance as well for that you can generate some procedural noises to give things detail use that as an LFO something like that but I said it's still I mean it's not like a lesser modular profession by any means like in this it's on screen all the time so then we move on to characters and creatures so this is I guess the sexy one most people this is this is what this is what we do this is this is what we spend all our time doing so I guess our official title is a character modelers character artists something like that yeah and it's it's a it's an interesting one because there are a lot of different smaller branches within creatures and characters you know we have digital's for example which is something I think a lot of people maybe they don't talk about as much when they talk about oh yeah I want to do characters and creatures they don't realize that the majority of what you see on screen for characters and creatures are just replicants of the actors that were there yeah exactly like this just to specify what a digital is is like if you if you have tim cruising a movie you could turns out you can't really blow them up so what to do then they put a stunt double in but turns out you also can't blow up a stunt double and we need to blow him up a lot of his own stunts but they're just some can't do so so we just we get them in first scan and the day they post up first we scan them using something like a photograph a tree like photo scan or lidar and then we just replicate them in 3d yeah and that is a very different role from or very different different tasks from doing something like creature because this one isn't this is not in any way creative per se cuz in this one you're replicating reality you can't just be let's make his nose a bit bigger no look crews need to look like Tom Cruise here so there is no free there is no artistic freedom here whatsoever but now that's not a bad thing that just means that you have the whole making matching reality making that as close to possible as you possibly can versus creative freedom in this one this is where you're really pushing the effects you're missing the effects as hard as you can in terms of fooling your eyes that what you're seeing is it's real and when it comes to digital tools you know everyone knows if there is something wrong with a human like we see them all the time so did your doubles have to be as tight as they possibly can be so this is what a lot of people like to do they just really like to push the boundaries of VFX one of the issues with with digital BOCES sometimes you there can be some creative elements in it I think where sometimes you get a bad scamp oh yes sometimes maybe they didn't do photo session right maybe they did they did like a laser scan I worked in a film like that and the faces were kind of obscured so we had to from reference sort of figure things out so when you get into that that gets a little more tricky you have to interpret a lot of things yeah and images from the internet oh yeah that's that's not a lot of fun but then but then you have something like creatures where oftentimes you're either handed a concept or you're refining a concept that someone else in another specific concepts to do made perhaps where then it's now up to you to interpret what they did and what the director wants you'll probably be a lot more involved in some dailies and some sessions with maybe art directors or the effects supervisors just to get their idea across and at that point you might be given like to talk how rough these guys these models are they like it might be a concept artists has had to toss to that concepts called tours I had to turn out like thirty of these in a day it's you know something he spent an hour on each thing it's a million Polly's I didn't have to have a close-up shot of his toe like there is a lot of interpretation here so it's not that you're just interpreting some lines here and there you're essentially doing redoing the concept you're looking at every single element of it and you are refining and defining what everything is going to look like I think it's interesting with something that you get from constant things like Z so if you look at a concept model that you're you've been handed from someone else you look at that and think oh boy oh why do they have a job but it's actually really hard like any sense if you have to turn out thirty a day or 20 or whatever how many is you just have to turn stuff out that has general shape general form it's not gonna look pretty no it's just gonna be some terrible alphas tile across somewhere just to get the feeling across and then maybe it's up to you as the creature model are there to refine it further yeah this is a really fun fun thing to do as well though and sometimes you'll do your own concepts that's what that's what I've been doing a fabulous well you're starting with like maybe there's a pencil drawing and that is that is a crazy hard task to do because now you have to interpret everything yeah and as a creature modeler you're not just talking about does this look cool you're also thinking about is this functional if you just make some cool some cool shapes or something your rigor will hate you like you to the point that you know you can't move the shoulders up you can't move the head all these kind of things so that's that's one of the major things we we have to do is what we have to work with rigging yeah particularly when you're doing creative characters if you're doing a digital that's less important because you most likely know that Tom Cruise and indeed move his head but if you're doing something kind of crazy creature with massive spikes or something like he might get skewed by his own spike plays on spikes so maybe has six arms and you have to figure out like it I like the function aspects of getting concept modeling because there's a lot more there's a lot of thinking involved like just you know figuring out how do we make up this kind of anatomy - excellent make it fit which is I think is a very interesting part of it it's a really fun job and sort of like as a as a subset to the character modeling thing we have face shape modelers yeah so face shape modelers are usually their own thing on the last film I worked on I had the opportunity to do face shapes and this is the first time I ever did face shapes so that was very interesting not for me mmm but you know I've tried it and I don't enjoy it a lot no no not really but it's very I would definitely say that's also a very creative task it's a different kind of creativity because you are again you are replicating something one to one mmm but it's not necessarily you're replicating what the actor day is like you replicate if it's like maybe it's a creature right and you have to replicate how the face would move but on something that doesn't have human or even general animal Anatomy it can differ a lot but then you also have the other side of that where you have an actor who comes in for something called a fact session where every single record like every single expression is recorded and stored and scanned and scanned so you have then you just have 120 scans this is like 128 different expressions and these all have to be translated back into your model yeah so it's very it's very different whether you're doing face shapes for creatures or humans like if it's an actor you have a match a very specific actor they come in sometimes you don't have that session though and then you have to figure all that out so just talk about the big things up back for face shapes what what is it why do we care what is why is that a specific job it's like you can see this lot in games like you know when people open their mouth it's just an open mouth like there is no there is no definition whatsoever if they if they close their eyes it's just the eyelids are now closed yeah but all how this works like if you if you if you were to film yourself doing so facial expression IQ if you if you were to do a sneer you know you can see you're sure your mouth might move but who knows that eyes everything is connected here so this is just how to get some really good performance into our words I mean that's what it all relies and there are so many micro expressions that if you would have just do it by hand you probably wouldn't think about unless you're specialised in face shape modeling it's a very it's a hard field it's a very high level position to have and it's adorbs of people who only do that I mean if you're if you're good if you're a good face shape modeler then you're probably guaranteed a job yeah there's only one reason we're talking about it's because nobody knows about this yeah they know that maybe you do maybe you've been in school you do like some face ships once in a while but this is an actual job now very very interesting and a very hard thing to do with much respect yeah mad props to those people who can do that speaking of props now we have props oh that was stupid so from modeling is another facet of modeling right so this is probably the thing that I would say before most people started out with there are you know some props do you get outsourced nowadays we'll get to that later but it's it's a very outside very beginning thing beginner thing to do because it's like you get maybe most the time you get a scan yeah now you're gonna hear and match the scan there it's a telescope you know and you just have to match it proper modeling itself is usually I would say easier I mean sometimes you get some crazy props you have to make a guess I'm saying hard surface things surface yes yeah but in general like like if we're looking at our table right my like there's a pen it's like Ventura cylinders I know like their interest they're pair of binoculars you know like it's no it's super hard bunch of cylinders bunch of basic shapes but then you get something like in this one I guess something like a car would also fit in as well and like all these kind of things here like hard surface general hard surface so there is definitely a range here like yeah if you're looking at if you're looking at most things in real world are fairly simple to model because they are just a combination off of basic shapes yeah but then you definitely get some super high level things here as well but like for props here we are generally talking about about simpler it's like in this one we're not talking about we're not saying that if you design spaceship for Star Wars but that's a simple one no that's like that's a whole separate thing like mad mad props on that because I for hard-surface advanced hard-surface let's say robots spaceships you know transformers that kind of stuff I I'm terrible yeah like I can I can do it you know if it forget a task if we get a concept here model this up I could definitely do it but it's not something that I'm specialized you know I don't have all the right tools so we'll just take me a lot longer yeah so the people that do some hardcore hard surface they are some crazy people too it's very impressive with props the wolf we specifically mean this yeah it's like model um Apple and and this is often a very entry-level thing and the reason it's good to do that is because you know it's not a terribly hard thing to do but it's hard enough production because like when you get started I remember when I started I started frame store if couple years ago no four five years ago four years ago and we just did a lot of props so Paddington and it's like each prop was not hard to do but what's hard is I never used Linux before because you know it's all Studios used to use Linux as far as I know no exceptions that so that's a whole new operating system to learn it's a whole new pipeline to learn it's just how do you submit your work to review you know who's who's reviewing it you have to know get to know a bunch of new people so the prop itself is necessarily hard to do in the beginning but it is getting used to an overall VFX pipeline I guess all the work around it yeah exactly so a lot of people start off with doing props and that's also one of reasons when I'm recommending recommending people to build a portfolio is don't just say we have simple props like if you only have a pair of binoculars in your and you're real you know that's not super useful but but show that you can do hard service even if you're a character artist because you do that that's a very common way to get into if you become a lot more hireable yeah you do I give you I mean there are there are of course things to be said for your super hotshot organic modeler who can sculpt replicate whatever then you know there's definitely a market for that but having a more most people aren't like that it's really not straighter that's cool so having a more general portfolio where you do display a bunch of different skills that let's say you can match the scan scan to a face a scan of a property yeah you can do with some environments like mix it up a little bit that's definitely very desirable that's what I had in my reel when I get started I had a head photogrammetry we matched a real-world set like a miniature that even had a hard surface a model like a 1930s rolls-royce because that was a weird and hard shape to do and then I have some original characters as well just I was definitely more specialized in two creatures and that's what I wanted to do but when when you want to get your first job who cares what yeah what's the thing even so right still didn't start off doing no characters no I didn't I started off with first two I started off carat is very early on converting a lot of people I did it out after two months but the first two months was pure props yeah like nothing else that real like shaped me up for for the rest of it and when it comes to when it comes to like being specialized or not one thing we have to talk about here is I feel there is like a range here from like super hardcore see brush cowboy you can do organic stuff really really well yeah and then there is the other side which you can do you can do hard surface really really well and I was just talking about topology I'm talking about you can design your own thing and you can take this through from start to finish you can be given a spaceship and you can you can concept it model it up even map it bash it up ZBrush afterwards and all that you can deliver that on the other side it's the whole you can concept something up when it comes to a creature you can make sure you know what key can move it's not gonna get stabbed by its own spike you can do topology UVs and you can pass this on to a texture artist yeah this is an either end of this if you if you get too specialized into this that can also get very hard to get a job you want to make sure that at least in the beginning that you don't specialize too hard on on either side here I would definitely recommend being more general that you can do a bit of everything if you want to be only hard surface guy totally fine but I would recommend that you have a basic understanding of off of C brush you know you can do some more things here yeah cuz I mean there there are definitely also spots in the pipeline for just generalists like generally smaller maps will cover the entire I mean oftentimes they're probably not as strong in the organic or the hard surface as someone who specialized but most the time that's not what you need you you only have a handful of hero things for film right you only have a handful of hero characters or handful of hero like spaceships or whatever most of the stuff is the in-between stuff which makes you I would I would say more hireable yeah I would say so for sure it's like if you were to model a couch and which is generally maybe a hard surface thing but it but has some pillows on it yeah you know then you have to be able to sculpt some pillows you have to be able to do that if you're doing a spaceship and it has soft seats and you're like sorry we need to see Bruce Carter sculpt yes that's insane yeah so I would definitely say regardless of which end you are at like more tonight we're way more towards to character side of it but we can do hard surface we just don't enjoy it as much no but it's definitely a foundation we have yeah yeah I mean I did like a helmet thing for one of the tutorials I mean the thing wasn't about the helmet people been asking about that you only spend a month doing that yeah that's the thing it's such a long time doing is just a silly helmet right just because I don't I'm not specialized in that so you know I'm less horrible it for that yeah and and one of the last things I want to talk about is shot sculpting yeah now shot sculpting is an interesting thing some studios use modelers for it some studios just use people as cannon fodder they just throw people at shot sculpting and there's definitely a place for such I don't know if you could be like a dedicated shuttle because you're having a no you have the at the end of the pipeline and stuff but let's just talk about what your sculpting is for now so shot sculpting on its own is you have something that's already in shot it's already been rigged it's pretty good for almost delivery but maybe you have to do some tweaks maybe the way the muscle sim is is working in this shot is weird it's all over the place so you would sort of sculpt that back into place to sculpt sort of frame by frame yeah you could do from frame 10 to 20 you could you could say okay in these frames the the muscle is here and in the next frames it's here so it's it's very much a fixing position I mean I was I was locked into that for two months just because that was what was left on the show so and some other stuff is is fairly used to do like you could just be like the deformation is broken doesn't fix it like it's actually just the shoulder has just gone crazy like something is just act it's actually broken but then you also have some stuff that you need high level and and not me not yet for it like you you did shot sculpting for face yeah I did actually the facial performance with shot scope yeah which is terrible yeah don't do that I mean it's it's you ideally you never want to do that because your face shape should really be up to up to snuff yeah but on this particular show that wasn't a lot of time so ended up doing shot sculpting on the face it's like the last line of defense yeah like it because often times well it what often times is not just that or something broke here it's also like pure economics let's say a character in shots for he's in 20 shots and you can let's say you just do a quick rig for him and then you fix it in shots that could actually be cheaper than doing a crazy good rig which can do everything I mean that's crazy that sounds theorem if something is only in a select few shots I mean you know the maximum amount of shots is gonna be in it this is no we're not talking games here which he's in 60 FPS 360 or like 24 hours you're talking that maybe he has 30 seconds of screen time and then just scope those 30 seconds yeah or maybe only 10 yeah you know it's it's it's definitely worth considering also from a production point of view like what's the most cost-effective way to get this out yeah and sometimes shots called this just the way it's not an elegant solution but it works yeah and you for this too we we often have proprietary shot sculpting software out there there is there is one tool made by a guy called brave rabbit it's called called shapes I believe it just released shapes 5 which is a maya plugin now which i used for our project home recently and so that's similar so you can use something like that if you let's say you do a short movie or something and shapes is a fantastic tool just for that but we we all have proprietary tools for that yeah so speaking of the tools man we are smooth today yes Graham pretty good we we just want to emphasize in the effects now I can see commercials some commercial studios use different things but most of the effects houses bigger be effects I'll just use my yeah as this is the fact for modeling from work for modeling yes there is definitely other software involved as well but Maya is the big cheese in this equation here so you know if you want to be a modeler VFX learn my yeah we had we had some comments on the video Cola what's the best 3d software we're good were talking about like doesn't really matter what's offering you is because all big studios use don't proprietary software that is that is just flat-out a lie like that is that is untrue like it's most of those do not use proprietary software for it so just for modeling most people use Maya for that I've same for rigging an animation as well and therefore lighting they would use something like katana and then for effects is Houdini yeah you sure we use our own flavor of it is you can customize but I mean even the way we may customizing it is not it's not bad crazy like if you if you know how to use Molly you can jump into pretty much anyone at the major studios and start working day one there's mean hype on things but exactly but it's all very vanilla Maya you mean you'd be surprised by how vanilla mine actually is for that often times especially as a modeler all you have access to is maybe just proprietary tools yeah maybe to make your life as a modeler easier you can flip over some UV UV scaling ratios that kind of stuff so cool scripts for sure yeah which helps us but I mean most of the tools we have available and most of the Swiss Army knife I'm using as a modeler is all available commercially online now with sure we have some stuff which speeds up to work but you can do the exact I could do the exact same job at home which I can at at the studio yeah so doctor said Maya is is the main software here that small modeling is done in Maya most I would say old modeling Oh sculpting is done in see brush Mudbox really isn't being used today it's like it's it's so for what I've used multiples for whenever Evans come I primarily you see but I only use you pretty much money I hate what it's like it's just this feeling of Mudbox it's like you're you feel like 50% more terrible yeah when you try to sculpt in mud at least that's my experience the feeling of it just bothers me so my box is not being used but I will say though in Mudbox is defense you can import cameras for lineups yes when you're doing matching a face or whatever I did that actually a couple years ago I was doing a sculpture of my grandfather I took some reference pictures I lined up the model roughly to some reference pictures that I took so I could sort of figure out in 3d where was and tweak it Maya does have some sculpting tools as well now but again I mean they're from yeah so you can probably do that there so maybe Mudbugs is even more obsolete yeah anyway yeah it's you see brush Seaworth most of the way so for UVs as well some people have used different software like UV layout which is the craziest software control it's like you've allowed is like the most brilliant software in the world comes TVs but it's designed by a person who has literally no knowledge of UI and UX design at all it's purely hotkey based pretty crazy if you don't use it for like a week you've forgotten everything about it we can also do crazy stuff but this is from an era where Maya didn't really have unit tools I mean Maya has essentially only had good Yui tools for like three years now or so before that I used I used see brush me use i unfolded everything in see brush but now since Maya has acquired unfold 3d you can now unfold your v's yeah so Maya is is actually good for that yeah they've gotten some good symmetry tools they've got some good cutting tools the layout tools for you know your work this is really good yeah I mean we use my yeah I use me yeah I used Maya for for most of my used to use moto as well before but I mean why you know just stick to one software hmm and another more specialized software that we use so this is this is mostly for DT doubles yeah it's a solver called rep 3 or rep X depending on which one you use but allistic with rep 3 for now it's manners and ingenious I believe it's like made by a Russian guy probably crazy Russian you know they just make awesome some absolutely fantastic software yeah it's you just I mean you have a scan you have a predefined model that has all the topology these could be your generic model you have your you know in house you just define points so let's say you click a point on the nose you click a point on the mouth the corners of the eyes you click the same points on the out of the other model and it just sort of well wraps it to it yeah and then now you don't have to tweak your topology absolutely fantastic tool this is we get to this a bit later as well this is one of these scary tools this is this kills jobs but more on that later I mean there's also so just to differentiate as well with rap 3 and rap X so they're both rap they don't the both rap but with that Beck's you have the freedom to do Python scripting so you can automate things I've been in the studio before where we used it to do all the facial expressions like we mentioned before the fax session for actors that come in and do all the facial expressions we just had a script we aligned the points on the model it based it I think on the textures on the model so I knew there you can tell the lighting information so we would only click the points once and it went through you know a hundred different facial expressions export them out sure there's some tweaking you have to do but you just save like 20 days that's insane it's super crazy yeah so very powerful software very scary for the future yeah and so if you're if you're a student or something I wouldn't necessarily look into rapper like that's a production tool you need a scan for that to work most likely you're not gonna have it crazy good scan available but is super easy to learn yeah it takes five minutes yeah it takes five minutes people also use Marvelous Designer a lot and this is also like if you're doing clothing we're not gonna sculpt the clothing I mean I like that there is just there was just no reason you should sculpt clothing at I think maybe you know maybe like three or four years ago marvellous wasn't that used in in effects we fix it was Oh mostly games yeah but in the last couple years it's really seen a big rise like most of studios I know they use they use marvelous now I use marvelous a lot and before that was it's just a great costumes it's just super easy yeah I can do one thing and he can do one thing really well and that is clothing in fabric if you need to do anything like that you need to use that it's one of these things that when we we did what's the best 3d software video a lot of people were talking about like it's all about the artist it's one of our tool I would say you actually not like I've been sculpting a fair bit of clothing and sculpting clothing is extremely hard to do it's just a really really tricky thing to do if I can avoid sculpting clothing like I will in order to sculpt clothing you need to have perfect reference perfectly scan and even then it's hard so so I'm a fairly experienced sculptor now I'm used to see furs for like 12 years it's crazy but I can't sculpt clothing that well yeah so some junior artists can come in and whose be using wrap for no subs marble designer for a day and he will make 10 times better clothing and what I can in this case it's not just all the artists it is very much the tool as well yeah I mean a bit digression here but I just want to I just don't mentioned that the tools are very much important for sure to what you do and they're like just a great suit I don't think we a great she didn't even plan to talk more marvellous but no it's good it's a good software if you so here's the dilemma with with marvellous most of the time my experience we don't get the actual patterns so I'm talking about the fabric patterns the ones that are actually cut out for the costumes so you have to guess so which is a problem but if you're working in a really nice production and that's very kind to send over maybe the original costume I've had the original costumes for something before that's amazing I mean one thing is you get to actually hold the costume see the costumes that the actors or the virtual characters be wearing yeah it's a tiny one that's like wood related I don't know and it's super cool to see the fabrics from the actual tailors James I think it's tailors yeah yeah I think seamstress is is I've read about that at some point there was a good there's a different different if it's different for men and women okay at least it used to be like oh yeah anyway marvellous is amazing yeah Marvel is amazing so next time let's talk about what are the actual steps in in the modeling pipeline here so generally this is before you start with anything somebody has been on set to to take photo shoot slash photo scans sessions off well whatever it is you need to do it like if this is not just for people like if you if you have 30 props they're gonna scan them for you because it's so much easier to model something if you have a scan if you just have a reference image then you have a hole does it match doesn't it match if you have asked and boom it matches it's twice as fast 10 times faster model and they definitely will provide you with wit scans I've worked with a guy before who somehow couldn't match scans yeah he was fired yeah scan sorry I don't know how you don't match scan so so capture is to will capture like just general data like essentially photos and photos and and scans ofand which means you know you you know get a cameras and you can just in my just align this perfectly this is also this is also what I use when I'm a texture artist they will just take like polarized photos cross polarized photos all that kind of crazy stuff and then we go skin projected texturing did your doubles it's pretty easy when it comes to that yeah you have a ready camera and you have a cross polarized photo and you just project it on the crazy thing about the polarized and course polarized photos people probably haven't seen them before me but you have a you have a special lens that's 50 whether like I don't know how to explain it like the way it lets in light when you rotate the lens itself like the filter outside of the lens will block light from a certain angle yeah so you have those pictures combined together all of a sudden you have a you have a reference image without any speck on it you have pure lighting information well pure basically pure diffuse information you will see some shadows here and there but it's kind of crazy yeah so they will lights in your most neutral way they can and then they will they were polarized it lights and they will polarize the lens and then you just get yeah there is no there is no speck whatsoever I just realized how much Spectre is this is when you realize that everything has speck but we digress once you once you once you got your reference then well this depends because if you if you're modeling a proper this job will tell you to start modeling this right away if you are doing something creative instead of getting stuff from the set you'll do concept ink or you'll get concepts from art parchment or some sketches from a director or whatever yeah and then you just work on that for a long time it's a bit tricky like we're does constantly end a modeling start that's that just depends really yeah I mean so the artist you have and time frame and all that very different sometimes you'll get a model that is 50% done yeah and but and then maybe it'll they'll maybe the dude or dudette in the art department who's done the thing if it's not working anymore there on other tests that are okay you I guess you've got to do it now so you take over and then you start refining it maybe you get a completely finished one you stray head straight into modeling yeah well so it also very much depends on what you're comfortable with and what the studio wants to give you so they're not gonna give you creature concepting if you're not comfortable one reasons why that's that's such a high level task is I mean same with seven any higher level tasks there say whenever you're doing high eleven environment so on is because this is on screen so much yeah like it's so important so important for performance so they will only give you two that if you are comfortable with that definitely and then once constantly is done this is when you do your reach apology off your model or if you provide air scan for this then you just model it up yeah or you use an existing topology and use wrap yeah it's like about before so it's it's um yeah it's a it very much depends maybe it's it's a with the hard surface stuff you know the environment we talked about before maybe there isn't even a concept maybe you are concepting as you are modeling maybe the whatever you're doing the rocks that you're doing rocks or trees for that matter are just you know you're kind of consoling trees and rocks at the same time so the it very much depends on the task there's a lot of overlap with some departments here and there yeah and there's also a lot of packet force that we consider modeling this is something you should never do because once you do once you're done with consulting then you have a retail model with tons of UV sets and it might have face shapes and then they're like can you change it and then you go do you think you're month to do but I you can but most likely you will have to go back and and reshape some stuff at some point hopefully you want but it always happened it always happens so try to work as none destructibility can which you can't work non-destructively because you're not you're not working procedurally here because you are doing one specific thing but trying to work it's not a circularly as possible like most of the time they'll try to lock down topology as early as possible because topology is one of those things that messes everything up in the pipeline if your topology is locked you can do most things down the pipeline you can always go back and tweak things like you can tweak the shape of a model to a certain extent you can not drag out one vert to be three spikes for example you would need more topology for that which would mess everything up down the line but I mean this is not always up to you and it's never on you as a modeler whether they want to change something there so it's just some people mind I suppose and then once you once we're done with the modelling at this one we'll assume that your apologists lock down your retopo is done your model your spaceship all this kind of stuff then you then it's time for UVs so v's is more complicated than people assume what most people are at least from the students is they assume you visas just only a 2d representation of your 3d model you know you just chuck it in there use UV master achieve a mask and boom you're done but you v's are used for a lot more things than purely than pure texturing so in we haven't we had a video about what is youtubes so how do you use YouTube's and in that one we showing one part of it which is a selection sets like if you're sculpting ZBrush you can split your model up based on your D udimm you don't have to put camp is used for selection sets in Mari and it's generally used for a lot of different things where comes to selections different departments require different duties as well so like if you're doing hair you most likely can't have YouTube's so you need to do separate movies for the hair yeah you have a groom UV set with this all one tile and yeah I mean it doesn't even it doesn't have to be nice just has to be non-overlapping because it's just their representation of where to attach the hairs yeah so you're doing like a peach fuzz kind of thing everywhere in the model then you have something like effects as well effects will generally have their own sort of utility UV pass doesn't that some other departments can use as well absolutely this could be for you know you're you're you you want an effects thing to go across the surface of a model yeah they probably bind that to the two UVs like some veins growing or something yeah or something like that so there's there there's definitely a lot of back-and-forth with different departments it also depends on if it's narak if it's the generic topology that already has predefined you reason if it's a completely new model then you're probably gonna be the link between those departments and sometimes this is one thing that I've I found interesting as the whole working together with texturing because texturing is kind of like the next one in the line yeah after you so talking to your texture artists if you are doing the UVs is the def is the most important thing yeah when you're doing the UVs modeler because first of you make their lives easier if they it doesn't really matter to you what the UVs look like no your personal feelings towards you these are completely irrelevant because you want to use do the make the texture artists life as easy as possible because if it's easy for them it's faster to get out yeah and that's I mean that's something we've experienced as well wouldn't because we've sort of the last film we worked on we work together and we sort of talked a lot to Henning and we sort of tried to figure out how can we speed this up as best as possible yeah so the primer used for you is is definitely texturing so so texture I would say you've ease is the first step in texturing so if you if you do bad UVs you just can make their life so much harder for it let's say you were um you doing teeth for it for example if you can layout to use in a way that you can just do one tooth set up a nuke script which and then you just replicate this tooth on to all the other teeth you're gonna save so much time you only have to sculpt one you can transfer the displacement map you only do you only do one in general and you can just transfer it across this is this is true for like anything which is replicated so if you are smart achieving you will make texturing significantly faster and just more enjoyable for everyone mm-hm and some companies the the texture artist actually does the UV yeah weather is the model or the texture artist that does the UVs I don't know I don't really have an answer for that no depends it depends on the studio but either way if you are the model talk to your text yards yeah it's also it's also good in general to know some basics of texture you don't have to be a Mario master but know what is the process of texturing because then you then you know then you have a better idea what you require it's like the whole if your hard surface modeler it's good to know organic stuff as well just so you know yeah then you can consult people and you have a general idea yeah so that was a lot of talk about so the last probably the last step in in getting a model out is gonna be the final detailing yeah this usually involves sculpting so we take our model into ZBrush and we just sculpt it up this could be for hard surface maybe it's brake detail breakup you know you have lots of damage for something yeah yeah exactly on the on the corners or maybe it's a creature that has I don't know a scar I wouldn't do them it could be anything but just the super fine detail that you obviously can't model yeah but this again there's an overlap yeah and this is something that we've experienced as well where I there are definitely some things I think where it makes sense that modeling just takes it through to a certain point in terms of sculpting because they're already sitting with the model they're gonna be exporting the maps and such but then you have the more granular stuff like you have pores ring that holes that kind of stuff don't do it in ZBrush there's no hole dude and Mari yeah like it it my mind was blown when I first saw the results that you can get from actually it's called sculpting in air quotation or sculpting in Mari sculpting in Mari is actually possible yeah it's a good we'll do tutorials on that in the future yeah we'll do tons of that but it's actually it's a very interesting topic there with the whole detailing now because again there's a lot of overlap and I think people have to start being open to the fact that you can do a lot of things and texturing and it can actually speed up the workflow significantly yeah like imagine you're doing pores for a face you would have to subdivide your model up to crazy amount to get the good resolution I just have to split your face up as well as different parts it's crazy and then even if when you generate your map because you're generating generating bait based on the topology that's there maybe you'll get some of whereas if you paint it or you're just tile it in Nuuk I'm it's so much less destructive as well one of the reasons as well it's a bit hard to figure where this modelling start to stop and texturing where you wait yet where this modelling stop and texturing begins here because let's say you're sculpting a displacement map in see brush you're technically outputting this as a map a 2d map a 2d map is by definition the job of the texture artist needs a map but it's also moving polygons around because you're sculpting yeah so this is a real tricky one so there isn't really a really good answer here like is sculpting a texturing task or is it a modeling task this is actually how we're going to how I became a texture artist because I was supposed to do some wrinkle wrinkles on a character and they were like you need to sculpt this up and I said no texturing task is clear that expertise because he gets so much more resolution I had predefined maps here and text doing this in Mari was just objectively better was faster and produce better results so this is how I got into it just because I I was the bridge between modeling and texturing so this is also why a wire person I recommend having some knowledge of texturing because then you know when should you stop if you don't you will just sculpt everything in see brush yeah and your goal as a modeler is not to do the best model possible in ZBrush the but your goal is to give a framework so that it can look the best as possible in the final frame of the movie no one cares if you sculpted wrinkles in ZBrush no or if if they were done in Mari does it look good on screen in the end if you if you provide something which looks super cool and see brush but it ultimately slows everyone down you know that's not cool yeah so I'm moving on to no smooth segue this time though we're moving on to our next topic is it's outsourcing this is a topic we have to talk about yeah just because this is it's not become it's not necessarily a problem because it's you know somebody's games somebody's lost but it means that a lot of the studios today I would say most of the studios will have an apartment overseas in something like India or China where they're putting more and more work there which is why we talked in the beginning when we props that this is something you used to do yeah today most props are not done in the major studios in London or in wherever Coover or ever is in wherever you might be great source they're mostly outsourced to yeah is it yeah it's like if outsourcing is divided workers do not provide it to a third party company they usually like just the main studios Department in some other come yeah they set up a company in the city in that crime yeah so it's not true outsourcing but it just it's but practically it's still the same thing it means to that that a lot of work is now being done in in India which is fantastic if you're in India yeah sure I mean because that just means a lot of work that's what I'm saying it's not a it's not a pure loss because it's just done in a different country that said if you are in London and you know your job might be online due to this yeah so I mean one of them I guess one of the positives if you are in London Vancouver wherever that might be Studios is that oftentimes though they'll keep the creative tasks here so the people that are here usually will get the creative tests so I guess that is a nice thing but it also means that some more entry-level positions are starting to go so it can get tricky to to get your foot in the door what I would I would notice if I recommend going from straight from uni today straight from university or college to a big VFX to do because the the route we've before boys more you you know you do some props and then you get started over there but just in the last three four years that has changed to the point now that essentially anything which is not a creator task is being fairly aggressively pushed out off of London because it's just way cheaper so it's something that it's not just a start like what tasks it is specifically is or organic or is a hard surface it's anything which is repetitive and fairly simple to do but just takes time to do yeah an example here is route apology we topology is necessarily terribly hard to do it just takes a lot of time like what we're talking about in our we topology video is is now we put up some good podcasts almost tutorials in the background you know all that stuff and you're just kind of relaxing doing it the studio goes is relaxing doing that that's a complete waste of money we can pay somebody far less to do this task so and also someone that's highly specialized yes perhaps the people the people that are doing it let's say in India that's all they do they only do read topology so you're really good at it no like I can't compete with our India studio no there it comes to read they're so fast because you know we do read to polled your once in a while here because we Sui most was better days sculpting and that kind of stuff but if if you do read topology all day every day you become extremely good at that so what I would highly recommend doing to to combat outsourcing is either work on your very technical skills such as programming or work on your testicles such as sculpting or designing or something lat if you are in the Middle where you can only we can only model something which older exists like it's a prop based on a scan it's a digital based on a perfect scan and some of the scans were getting today a really good yeah right there it's to the point that like Morton said before you use wrap through you define a couple of points and then it's cleaned up yeah that's that's an easy test to ship off yeah cheaper company somewhere so just be aware of this I would sourcing today is again I'm not gonna say a threat because it does benefit people elsewhere in the world but it means that if you personally can only do non creative work or non-technical work then you will have a really hard time getting into this field and but technical work I mean that I mean programming and scripting and and essentially developing tools for people because you know that you're not gonna throw that off somewhere else you want that in-house not for now at least not for now I never know what the future holds so certain Studios are fairly aggressive pushing it out as well no just like we topology but they're pushing out I mean the simple stuff to push out is like a road tour matchmove they've already done it for years like certain studios with ten years but they're also taking out some some of their simple comp fork a lot of lighting is being thrown out some basic animation even rigging is now being pushed out by certain studios that is is not necessarily scary and like I said it's just you just have to be aware of this that you have to know about this and you have to take you have to take measures to make sure that you are not irrelevant where some lend some crazy software yeah I could in your substance or something yeah something that makes you hire balls in the future I guess and learn artistic skills learn core out Art Foundation is if you're a character artist and you can only do read apology yeah you've been in trouble I would say learned you know learned proper sculpting learned figures go and become valuable learn character designs maybe going to texturing depending if you want to do that or not so we're not gonna talk too much about more buts outsourcing here but just it's it's just one to cover it we just want to cover it be aware of what's actually happening here so the next one is we're just gonna go through the general hierarchy yeah this I mean this applies to not just modeling but it also it also is modeling so we talked we talked about it so obviously the first sort of entry role that you would have is junior as a junior modeler and junior modelers are generally given more simple tasks but that's the thing they're given a task they are here we need to go from A to B but you will be given one of the steps in between A to B yeah so do the thing here then you do the thing and you report back and now you've done that thing now you're gonna do the next thing so this might be like you have a again you have a whole character or a spaceship or something and the overall the overall thing here is make this character but the task might be hey can you sculpt the teeth of this guy I mean you're often a very highly skilled artist as a tutor I mean sure this is not a this is not you're terrible artist it's just you know it's very hard to get this job as well it's just that you don't have an as much experience you might be a fantastic sculptor but you might be sculpting somebody like the claws of a character or you know if he's doing the spaceship my paneling or something like that it's just to get you started into the VFX pipeline like I mentioned before it's really hard when you're starting out to do something if you if you were to be thrown into a major thing where I do this full-on character like you don't even know where to get started you don't even know how to how to operate Linux oh I'm sorry you're not a very good production artist yet yeah like you might be a great artist but you haven't worked in a production those are some very separate things yeah and that's how you end up with the ZBrush Cowboys yeah it's being a production artist especially I think that's what you learn as a junior you and things that you haven't learnt it is what what comes with the territory like how do you submit to dailies the stress of having a delivery all this kind of stuff is something that you what standards they have to adhere to what how should you do topology what are you dance you know generally all this kind of stuff so you know a junior will oftentimes ask more questions and you should as a junior okay here's actually a piece of advice this is the worst piece of advice I've ever heard from you I'm not gonna name any names okay but I work with a guy who's a rigger and he was told to stop asking so many questions because it's it made him seem less senior now that is the worst piece of advice I have ever heard I don't care if your supervisor you're like the top dog in the company you ask questions yeah like if there's something you don't know let's say your senior modeler or something and there's something you don't know about juvies or how the company does you v's ask the question because you don't want to risk messing it up for the next people down the pine around pipeline so just yeah even if it's embarrassing like it doesn't matter who you are how much you know there are always something you don't know laughs just because of the rate of the technology is accelerating you know there is a new version of Maya coming out turns out people don't know how to use this version anymore and maybe you've been behind for a few versions there are just gonna be a lot of things you don't know yeah so just ask questions this is like Morgan said regardless of what level you have but particularly as a junior if somebody tells you stop asking questions that's generally the difference between a junior and a senior in a way that you give a junior more of a task well give it given more somebody with more senior you give them a general goal if a junior you might tell them specifically what tools to use what tech news techniques use discuss they don't necessarily know how to do it they might be a fantastic artist they just don't know how to use it a production well a senior is more given my goal like nobody tells me specifically how to texture or how to model they just like make this thing you know here is a basic concept make this awesome yeah and you're just figuring how to do it like you if you figure out to the pole you figure out you Bailey all the general things you figure out to look for it and I mean independence and sort of responsibility I guess that's one of the things that comes with seniority yeah which is also why you know if you up it's on you yeah whereas a junior if you up it's most probably not on you yeah I maybe you were yeah it's it's but I don't think it's more stressful really because you get used to it yeah and you kind of know what to do that's why you're a senior yeah because you've been through it and you've been through the stress of having deadlines deliveries going to different companies picking up different proprietary tools that they use and such you know Linux yeah so you general just a more just again not necessarily a better artist just a better production artist I've seen junior artists be far better artists and some of the seniors yeah but not in a production like the senior can just smoke the junior in terms of actually getting job done and some things it's something you might also do as a senior is that you might sort of sup delegate tasks from your lead yeah so you might have some tasks that you know you don't have to do all of these there are juniors below you or there's a mid that you work with whatever it is that you can then work with to do these tasks it's not like you're not not doing work but it's just to help everyone in the production yeah the way I like to think about a hierarchy here is I really despise the notion of a hierarchy like it's like oh you're above this person you like a senior is more important than a junior or a lead is more important than a senior like the way I see this we're all just people and you just have different levels of responsibility like we're all trying to finish the film yeah you're all just yeah you have the same goal here and you know we can talk about lead now in the middle here but he just has a different responsibility compared to a junior art this is not a it's not better like stop stop idolizing people in a higher position it's crazy I've seen that a lot of actually a friend of mine who was a lead at a previous company I worked at it was super super sad like he told me that once he became lead people kind of stopped talking to him because like all of a sudden all of a sudden he was on this pedestal where an hour need and now you can't ask questions and you can't you can't correct them on certain things because now he's a lead yeah I mean that's just that's just terrible yeah it's I I think and this goes again when you're talking doesn't matter if you're talking to a supervisor or tongue to the leader your junior whatever if you had some good piece of feedback just say it yeah I find a lot of people are very afraid of of talking to their supervisors or leads or whatnot even if they know that they are wrong I mean if you're like I said you're just a human if you're a VFX soup or whatever yeah you just happen to have a different job if you are a modeler you hopefully know more about modeling than you VFX you probably because he might come from lighting or comp or something else here so you hopefully have some expertise which he doesn't have and he relies on you for the expertise the way I see it it this it goes from the bottom to the top where everyone on the bottom uses their expertise and it flows upwards where if you're a supervisor you know you want that expertise yeah but if if you assume that the soup knows everything that's I think that's wrong we were going about it I've rarely come across a supervisor who didn't want to listen to the advice oh yeah the people that they work with because they we are the people in the trenches every day we know about the thing that we work yeah so it's it's very it's very collaborative effort it really is like don't stop stop seeing this is just such a rigid hierarchy you're all in the same boat just you just have different responsibilities the captain of the ship relies on a country ship metaphors here but he relies on the person scrubbing the floors you know I mean you might get paid more but yeah but is all a very collaborative efforts stop seeing in us as people fighting yours it's not a game here you know I think it's a good way of putting it like it's just different levels of responsibility which of course are compensated according to like obviously if you are least yeah obviously you make more money as a lead than you do as a junior artist because you have more responsibility depending on the company that's a general rule but then we do have leads and leads in general will do less actual modeling lighting whatever whatever it is than you are in your mostly responsible for for delegating the tasks to the senior mids and juniors there will be some some leads that also part take more in the work yeah you know it depends on the the show the company the kind of lead that they are but in general it's a more sort of production heavy kind of modeler yeah you do you're dealing more with supervisors you do dealing more with meetings and by production with me paperwork yeah paperwork you're dealing more with people than work yeah exactly so some people really like that you know some people really want to just go up there just to be able to go into management and some people really hate that like if you're a very art artistic person here going into a lead role is not better than a senior role here at all it's just a very different role you have far more responsibility and you do far less actual work the workload is bigger yeah most the time absolutely put in more hours and absolutely so so that it's just it's just a just a different what do you personally wanted to do a lead artist is most likely not a better artist than a senior artist like at all a lead artist might wanna feel if he's been leading for a few years maybe hasn't actually doing production workers proper sculpting for a few years yeah so this is I wouldn't say this is a higher precision than the senior I mean on a hierarchy it is it's just in my mind it's just a different role here yeah where you just have more responsibility so I would say that that lead is like it's like a blend yeah it's a blend between management and artists and it's like the first here into a more management role in a company and then at the end of that whole thing we have supervisors so supervisors are the ones that make the final call you have different levels of supervisor definitely in that that you know have the final say maybe you have you have certain supervisors for certain departments you have the supervisor for the entire show itself depending on if supervisor that's in-house a supervisor that's on the set with the director they all have different roles but these are the people that just sit in dailies yeah eight hours a day and that's most of what they do yeah so it's in this case you you you wouldn't necessarily have a multi-link supervisor so you would do to have that on bigger shows like you didn't have a crazy crazy show you wouldn't most likely have that but on most shows I find that there is a build supervisor and the build supervisor he will be responsible for stuff like modeling texturing groom lucrative or shading supervisory I won't ask the supervisor yeah so it's just a responsible for all these things here and and at that point you do very little actual work you're more responsible for making sure that all tasks are completed that your bidding days aren't being burned up and some crazy inferno and generally is way more management yeah and you you most of time you would probably I will not accept the standard but you know talk with the leads and seniors about the standards that are gonna be on the show I'll say specifically for the NASA supervisor you know how do we get these assets out like what's the resolution for the textures what's the poly count gonna be like all these things overall workflows as well like it's if it's a crazy if it's a crazy character you there isn't necessarily straight for waste not just all you just concept in the modeling text right specifically how do you go about this is making sure all the partners talk to each other and that the work is just done in a in an efficient way yeah and then the variable very last point we're going to talk about is how is the work being reviewed so there are essentially two ways of the work being reviewed the first one is you submit your work to dailies we have mentioned the word dailies beforehand and we realize this is a term a lot of people don't necessarily know what means essentially this is a gathering of people who review this on a projector in a room every day every day that's why dailies yeah even though dailies is like I mean they do take place every day yeah when I submit to dailies is like twice a week yeah maybe so special this is you you submit this through the pipeline or this goes into a playlist and you have in here you have your supervisor and and they will use feedback your work and this is a good way to for everyone just through everyone on the film just to you know see what's up what's currently happening here and for people just to give their feedback on it and it's also a way for the supervisor just to instead of have to run around the building like crazy and you might have different buildings different different countries different time zones it's just one way is just a really efficient way of supervisor to in theory look through the work and be like yeah this doesn't improve this make this better fix that just a collective us a centralized place for feedback but I think this is also where you have to not be afraid to discuss things yes I think people often I can see why people get intimidated by this maybe you're in a room with 20 different people there are three kinds of supervisors they're critiquing the work and I see a lot of people most people actually just sit there and then did they just take it you know sir no sir yeah depend no matter what the feedback is maybe you disagree with the feedback maybe you have a better way for the workflow to be whatever it might be this is the time to say it they like that I think we should do this in this and you say well I've tried this before and this didn't quite work here what if we do like this because hopefully you have expertise here there's a reason you are in the job you have I mean let's say you're new and you're starting out NOLA and you're super unsure like there's a whole impostor syndrome thing on my worth this well there's a reason you got a job somebody clearly believes that you can do the job so you know and I mean I'm from my experience supervisors actually welcome conversation absolutely I had a supervisor once where I didn't hear anyone speak up in a daily except for me and he was actually nice having a conversation with him because he would just lash out feedback he was pretty harsh like we got to do that I've got to do this I'm like but what if we do it like this instead of like Oh someone's talking and then you know we had a conversation about the assets and I think it helps in general really though like if you're just souping all the time and you're just saying the things all the time you become kind of blind probably if no one ever challenges you oh no things what you say and then you go back to your desk afterwards you didn't say anything you knew it was wrong and now you do the stupid change we should new is wrong and in two weeks everyone is gonna figure out there was wrong suddenly you turns out this character is indeed spiking himself through the head and you didn't say anything and I dude like why didn't you tell anything say anything here I didn't want to upset you order of things that's just rude the order of things you know like I said well everyone has the same goal here the supervisor want this to be done on time and to look awesome in the end if you if you delay that just because you don't want to disrupt your order you're not on the same page anymore you know suddenly you're just making it a lot harder for everyone you hate your life everyone has a life and the poor animator has to work overtime in three months because of your estate and like the last part of this whole review stuff would be something like desk reviews yes so when there's not a lot of stuff being submitted to dailies maybe there's only one or two submissions maybe there the people are even sitting in the same room the supervisors probably come to the room they'll just have a look at your computer screen to see what's going on there and just give you the feedback straight away that's by far my favorite I don't do anything because then you don't have to spend an hour's putting everything up you just you just you just sculpting right Wilder their real-time feedback yeah by far my favorite way cuz that's that's just so efficient on the last film worked on we had that with the art director we just sat down at two of us and we just sculpt it like crazy you know it was just so efficient so what Aldous said this is this has been an overall review of essentially life as a model I realize it's been over an hour enough but disease yeah time flies when having fun flip normal strain so we really hope this has been useful and if you have questions about the life of a modeler that feel free to to shout out or to give us a comment here yeah other parts of the pipeline yeah we can we can answer a lot of questions about other parts of the pipeline as well it's not just for model no absolutely and keep in mind that our focus here is the effects as visual effects for film and this is based purely on our own experiences here a lot of this is its Monica it's the ultimate truth of everything it's our experience hopefully fairly balanced yeah experience but yeah take it as such so thank you guys so much for watching and if you want to see more or your more content like this in the future make sure to LIKE comment and subscribe thank you you

Channel: FlippedNormals

Views: 159,271

Keywords: 3d, sculpting, zbrush, concept, maya, tutorial, autodesk, film, vfx, animation, twitch, mjthehunter, flippednormals, henning, morten, creature, character, modeller

Id: _DHZCoLtrt4

Length: 66min 26sec (3986 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 26 2018