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Ccs posted:Well, it finally happened. The largest vfx studio announced to us the other day that they are gonna move 90% of the work to India starting in August 2024, at a gradual pace over the next 3 years. MPC has been heading that direction for years. (Not sure why you aren't naming them?). It has kinda always been their MO. Even before moving stuff to India, each department was based on having a few seniors, a couple of under-paid mids and then an army of disposable juniors. Seniors would make and maintain templates to hand out to the juniors and then the mids would handle the more bespoke shots. Meanwhile, Sony and ILM are still going strong in Canada, so there's still plenty of work around.
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Oct 13, 2023 19:13
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Ccs posted:but rather that those would become "template" studios that produce the most important shots in every sequence, and that these would then be the shots that the India studios (they just opened a second one) would use to gauge their quality against. Would this be the equivalent of keyframers vs inbetweeners for 2D animation or like a set # of frames and important shots?
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Oct 13, 2023 20:50
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Sorta. Except MPC's pipeline is inflexible as hell. Their whole fx/light/comp template pipeline relies heavily on fixed naming conventions/AOV's etc and then the Supe will ask for something non-standard and you have to start breaking poo poo and you end up spending 2 days adding in an additional AOV, because it'll break the Q&A templates and you can't publish. Or, the lighter/comper who only knows how to light/comp stuff that comes with the template and is clueless when it comes to actually lighting/comping stuff. At the other end of the scale , you then have Sony & ILM. ILM I had compers pick up renders that I hadn't even reviewed yet, submit them to dailies and get the shot approved before I was even aware that they had picked it up. Similar with Sony. You can hand them something half broken and go "I'm still trying to make this work, but this is what I got for now" and they'd run with it and you'd at least get an idea of where to go. That's what it takes to make good movies. MPC tries from time to time, but after '1917', which, while they did win the Oscar, also cost them so much money, so they're now clearly just going for volume. What this will do, is to make it harder to enter the industry. One of the better things about MPC, was their willingness to take on juniors, get them their 1-2 credits, which would be enough that other studios would look at them. It sucked as a lead/supe, as you would just get them trained up to be good and they would leave. I fully understood why, but it still sucked.
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Oct 14, 2023 04:46
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I’ve been wondering about how juniors can even really break in anymore. Runners don’t seem to be a thing now, and at most of the studios I’ve been at we’re always trying to hire people with a core level of competency that most real juniors probably don’t have. I was very lucky to start at a small studio that was fully remote long before the pandemic, and had gigs in VFX, games, theme parks, advertising, medical devices, VR/AR, music videos, and commercials. I got a shitton of experience and got to see how the finances and business side worked, and that gave me the biggest leg up when I was branching out to new places. I was also 30 when I joined, had a couple careers in totally unrelated industries prior, and had a pretty good idea how things would be from obsessing over CG since 1996. Like, what does some 21 year old do when they have some college portfolio pieces that are decent but not outstanding, and no industry contacts? This is more rhetorical, but I’ve done a bunch of talks at colleges and I’m wondering how those students are faring in this modern world. Side note, holy poo poo things are brutal now lmao. Every dept supe, me included, is mostly working on shots/assets since there’s not enough work to afford full teams, and when this last spurt of work dries up it’s going to be a bloodbath.
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Oct 14, 2023 20:47
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Is there any kind of file format or intermediary software that lets you exchange materials from from program to another? I know they all handle materials in different ways but the basics are the same, and it seems like I would be wasting time reassigning diffuse, normal and roughness maps when I move something from 3DS Max to a game engine or blender or whatever.
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Oct 14, 2023 22:55
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.USD is supposed to exist for that sort of stuff, I think? Universal scene description. I haven't looked at it much because so much of the ecosystem around it is drowned out by Metaverse/omniverse poo poo/noise. Doesn't hurt to look it up for 5 min and see how the import/export profiles work.
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Oct 14, 2023 23:06
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SubNat posted:.USD is supposed to exist for that sort of stuff, I think? Universal scene description. No USD doesn't do that. Material X does but its nowhere near universally supported and you will have to author your materials in MATx for it to work. There is no way around reassigning materials in your target package (you can probably script it pretty easily though if you keep your naming conventions tight).
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Oct 16, 2023 00:02
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Slothful Bong posted:Like, what does some 21 year old do when they have some college portfolio pieces that are decent but not outstanding, and no industry contacts? Fire demo reels at places and hope to catch someone's eye or go to a class/program where your peers and friends get jobs and refer you. It was always hard to get a foot in the door. Re: MPC, I don't think they're going to end up saving that much money in the end. They'll have to go nuts and hire more talent. I've seen first hand with R+H trying to make India work for a decade and it wasn't smooth. The good and great Indian artists move up fast on the pay scale, provided they don't go to North America or Europe. I know back in 09 or so when I last dealt with R+H outsourcing, the wage range for Indian artists was about $2,000/year to $80,000/year. There weren't enough of the $80k/year guys and too many of the $2k/year guys that did work that had to be redone. These days I deal with a small bit of game outsourcing for assets and trailers and even on the high-end big budget stuff with the best vendors, it's time-consuming to hold hands to get the vision / execution right with a huge budget, never mind trying to do it to cut costs. It's amazing to watch vendor tests where their task is to match a style and just recreate a few props/assets and they completely fail at it. I'm guessing MPC is just being hopeful internally, figuring worst case, they just hire everyone back wherever in the future. Given the non-existent operating income for film visual effects companies, I'm surprised mass layoffs are taking this long to occur. It's depressing the amount of work and talent that is needed to execute VFX work skillfully and how little stability there is for it. Not to mention low pay. One big reason I bounced over to games. Big K of Justice fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Oct 18, 2023 |
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Oct 18, 2023 08:03
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Big K of Justice posted:
It's less "hopeful" and more "grinning through the pain" as their financial position is extremely shaky right now. Their narrative to investors is that they'll send it to India to get better margins and make up for the last few years of bleeding money, and now they're communicating that plan to the artists (at a time when even their best artists are just happy to still have a job.) But if they succeed it will surely impact the other studios as they will enlarge their India sites and poach in the search for equally good margins/ability to bid competitively.
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Oct 19, 2023 03:37
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Slothful Bong posted:Like, what does some 21 year old do when they have some college portfolio pieces that are decent but not outstanding, and no industry contacts? I graduated in 2020 and most of the people in my class don't work in the industry. Nowadays a portfolio fresh out of college isn't enough for most people to find work. From the feedback I got fresh out of college, I needed a lot more work on my portfolio and I needed to practice. So I did a lot of personal projects. I think the advice I would give to graduates now is to find a niche (like biomedical visualization for example) and build your portfolio around it. It's a lot harder to get a job as a "generalist" with one character and a low-poly axe on your Artstation. Personally I went into toy design and just got really good at ZBrush, so I do that now. That was probably a dumb decision on my part (way less jobs, obviously competitive) but it ended up working out for me and I'm happy where I am.
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Oct 23, 2023 13:26
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Swamp posted:I graduated in 2020 and most of the people in my class don't work in the industry. Nowadays a portfolio fresh out of college isn't enough for most people to find work. From the feedback I got fresh out of college, I needed a lot more work on my portfolio and I needed to practice. So I did a lot of personal projects. curious what do they do now
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Oct 23, 2023 13:33
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You kinda need to go to the right course, or dedicated film school (If you want to go into VFX) The program at Bournemouth university is highly rated or use film schools like The Lost Boys/Vancouver Film School. Not sure if there's any US equivalents.
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Oct 23, 2023 15:38
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Most Americans I met went to SCAD, a ridiculously expensive school but good at preparing students.
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Oct 23, 2023 19:16
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Alan Smithee posted:curious what do they do now I haven't spoken to most of them in a while, so I checked LInkedIn. From the people I have added that were in my class: - Car dealership photographer - Grad student - Freelance illustrator - Video editor/motion designer - Junior animator, games - Cashier at a liquor store - 3D artist, games - Video producer - "Creative consultant" - Grad student - Production manager (volunteer) - Multimedia designer - Associate animation producer - Motion capture technical artist So it seems like most of them are at least doing something in the creative field, but not working at Pixar or a big VFX studio like they hoped.
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Oct 23, 2023 21:06
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That is a loving impressive rate of creative employment for a graduation class dude
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Oct 23, 2023 23:03
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Neon Noodle posted:That is a loving impressive rate of creative employment for a graduation class dude It is, now that I went and looked. I just remember it being dismal a full year after graduation when we were all still looking for work and couldn't find anything. I hadn't checked on anybody in a while. I'm glad a decent amount of them found good work. I don't know anyone from my class that works in VFX specifically, though, and it's disappointing. I know that's what a lot of my classmates really wanted to do, and I think our professors kind of overstated how many jobs there are in that field.
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Oct 23, 2023 23:41
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This reminds me how good Sheridan's placement rate is, everyone i graduated with found jobs within 6 months and are still in the industry. A number of us working on big vfx or feature films, others all now leads or supervisors in tv.
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Oct 27, 2023 17:06
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I am looking for some good game dev / 3d modelling memes that I can print out and hang in my classroom. They need to be appropriate to hang up. I have a few good ones like buzz saying to woody "ngons ngons everywhere"
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Oct 27, 2023 18:32
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Hot off the presses, extra crunchy for that good old 'reshared a dozen times' feel. noncrunchy: https://i.imgur.com/fLXsfzG.jpg
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Oct 27, 2023 21:12
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Alterian posted:I am looking for some good game dev / 3d modelling memes that I can print out and hang in my classroom. They need to be appropriate to hang up. I have a few good ones like buzz saying to woody "ngons ngons everywhere" For gamedev, pick a few of your favorite roles from The Door Problem.
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Oct 27, 2023 21:40
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do any of you sell things online, either asset stores or sketchfab/cgtrader etc? i'll be doing a course for the next couple of years in 3D and i'm just wondering if that's something which would be worth my time thinking about.
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Oct 28, 2023 04:44
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I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this but I'm an absolute beginner at Blender/cg in general and I've done the most basic tutorials but I'm trying to get better at modelling from a 2d picture. For some reason this is breaking my brain, is there anything in particular y'all would recommend looking at specifically about modelling off of photos?
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Nov 4, 2023 02:09
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DreamingofRoses posted:I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this but I'm an absolute beginner at Blender/cg in general and I've done the most basic tutorials but I'm trying to get better at modelling from a 2d picture. For some reason this is breaking my brain, is there anything in particular y'all would recommend looking at specifically about modelling off of photos? Have multiple angles. If modeling a character check out the old Joan of Arc tutorial for very basic box modeling and edge modeling techniques. It's insanely old but gives you an idea of modeling from front and side view. Use good referencehttps://avatars.mds.yandex.net/i?id=d8012813126fbfe8186fee47c2044ebf70e5d313-8185861-images-thumbs&n=13
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Nov 4, 2023 03:24
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Good old Joan. RE working from photos specifically, check the focal length of your photos, especially portrait shots. Focal length can drastically change the appearance of a face. floofyscorp fucked around with this message at 10:42 on Nov 4, 2023 |
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Nov 4, 2023 10:37
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Thanks y'all, I'll check out the Joan of Arc one. I'm trying to model a necklace but it's got some fiddly bits (like being able to open and close, and having holes in it) that may be me biting off more than I can chew right now.
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Nov 4, 2023 13:08
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Strikes over tentatively.... And on that note, DNEG Vancouver is unionizing with IATSE, this was way overdue. quote:
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Nov 10, 2023 12:02
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If I wanted to get something to run Nomad Sculpt on Android, what would be my best choice for price/performance? I haven't kept up with mobile devices. Some sort of Galaxy tablet?
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Nov 11, 2023 00:29
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Listerine posted:If I wanted to get something to run Nomad Sculpt on Android, what would be my best choice for price/performance? I haven't kept up with mobile devices. Some sort of Galaxy tablet? Just get an iPad. There’s something about Nomad on a Samsung with the stylus that makes it annoying to use. The developer is unable to fix the issue because it’s the way the Samsung stylus communicates with the screen. Besides that, you’ll have the pick of the very best software for creatives. Apple absolutely dominates this area for portable devices. tango alpha delta fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Nov 11, 2023 |
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Nov 11, 2023 13:06
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Question for those of you who do character modeling: Is it common to keep the head / body in separate meshes? It seems like so much more resolution is needed for the head and face details than the rest of the body. Remeshing at a super high resolution for the head seems like overkill for the body, and kind of bogs down my machine. I'm learning character sculpting in Blender, and was just curious about actual best practices.
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Nov 15, 2023 06:16
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Is there an equivalent blender donut tutorial series for Fusion 360? I see there are a lot of Fusion 360 for beginners videos on youtube and was wondering if there was a particular channel that was recommended.
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Nov 15, 2023 15:23
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Been wanting to post this for a minute. Started this in December of last year. This one was really close to me - I pitched and directed it, and did about 80% of the CG. The development was pretty early on - the interior designer was still in the mood board phase, just pulling references of textures and details they'd like to incorporate. Really loose ideas. Client came to us and asked if there's anything we can produce for them to use as a teaser, some way of presenting the project in a way that announces it, but doesnt commit too hard to showing what's going on. Initially, we said probably not, but we'd have a think. Then we took a closer look at the mood boards from the interior designer, and I started to see how many of the details and objects could incorporate movement - so we put together a pitch within a few days for the client based around doing a piece that exclusively focuses on the details, using placeholder music. A big part of the pitch was that we'd follow the same order of a traditional arch film - location/architecture, lobby, amenities, residences, then the brand story. We will eventually turn each 10-second segment of movement into the title cards of a longer film, so we incorporate wider shots showing the full design once we've done the stills. That was a big draw for the client - that it would tie back into the materials beyond being a one-off teaser. Then they loved the pitch, and I had a major panic attack wondering how the gently caress we'd pull it off.... now we had to build scenes from scratch just to test ideas to get them in an edit to see if they work to then build the scenes for real. it's not often we start with such a blank canvas, even though we had a lot of mood boards to pull from. The music was a loving dream - I reached out to AEPH who does a lot of the music for ash thorps projects, pitched it to him, and the timing worked out where he could take it on. We spent the whole time working super closely together - us sending rough max viewport previews over, him doing some sound design experiments, us using those as inspiration to refine things further. The whole process was really exciting and a lot of fun! Anyway here it is. 10 weeks total from 'oh poo poo we have an idea we can pitch' to delivery. https://vimeo.com/dboxglobal/fairmontphoenix?share=copy I got lots more videos I could share too - every single client meeting was done via a rough edit, so I have videos showing weekly progress all the way from the initial pitch to the final. I think we even met twice a week in mid-December just to make sure we could queue up a ton of rendering over Christmas.
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Nov 17, 2023 20:03
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cubicle gangster posted:Been wanting to post this for a minute. Veryyyy nice! Always love a process montage so you got my vote for that
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Nov 17, 2023 20:58
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lord funk posted:Question for those of you who do character modeling: Heads are often separate objects because that way they have more texture space, being a separate. This isn't always the cse for lowpoly characters, but usually is.
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Nov 18, 2023 10:38
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I've been subcontracted to model in 3d an AI generated abstract design so it can be fabricated and hung on a wall as a piece of art. Makes me die inside but the fabrication client mostly sends me interesting animals and stuff for museums so I'm doing it, also money. It's literally something that someone spat out from a prompt, probably took 5 minutes but translating it to 3d by hand takes ages. Something about it is insulting.
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Nov 20, 2023 10:03
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I worked with someone who to me has complete charlatain vibes, but they can somehow schmooze other people into thinking they are cool and good. They were trying to convince a mutual aquaintance to let them work on a project with them because they are a programmer now since they can just ask chat gpt to write code for them.
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Nov 20, 2023 14:58
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BonoMan posted:Veryyyy nice! Always love a process montage so you got my vote for that Thanks! i'm going to skip a bunch as some only had very minor changes between exports. This was 2 weeks in - 11th of november https://vimeo.com/794955613/dc4bae1863?share=copy That's got the 'pitch edit' at the start, which we did in a couple days at the start of November. That's the interior design mood boards cut to placeholder music. This video contains that to remind them what was approved, then after that it's got the 2 weeks worth of motion studies. some brickwork studies that got cut, the chandelier studies which got locked, lobby ceiling stuff that got cut, some unrefined fabric & wood wall studies, a rough look at the ballroom ceiling, etc. Looking again there's a surprising amount of this that got locked early and moved into refinement. 22nd of nov - getting motion into the edit, still using placeholder music https://vimeo.com/794955468/fa29f175f0?share=copy 30th of nov - first draft of the music and a cut to it https://vimeo.com/776718076/c1fdb011b3?share=copy Skipping a few, but here's where we were mid-December, 6 weeks in. https://vimeo.com/781883602/5abfd37ce4?share=copy And early January, 8 weeks in. At this point, it's feature complete but a lot of shots need another render, and the whisky shot near the end still hadnt been cut. we got the request to switch it to poolside champagne after this meeting, then it was a straight shot to final. https://vimeo.com/785847872/eb3aedb3ca?share=copy Final was delivered to them on the 19th, but the week after I tweaked the color grading a ton and updated it again.
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Nov 20, 2023 19:57
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cubicle gangster posted:Thanks! i'm going to skip a bunch as some only had very minor changes between exports. Awesome thanks for sharing! I gotta say I love the white button tile recess animation in the earlier draft that didn't make it to the finish! Hate that it got cut yeah overally great work.
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Nov 20, 2023 21:14
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EoinCannon posted:I've been subcontracted to model in 3d an AI generated abstract design so it can be fabricated and hung on a wall as a piece of art. Makes me die inside but the fabrication client mostly sends me interesting animals and stuff for museums so I'm doing it, also money. It's literally something that someone spat out from a prompt, probably took 5 minutes but translating it to 3d by hand takes ages. Something about it is insulting. Doing the same thing now but just wait until "AI driven 3d" produces usuable results for a base mesh. Right now it's kinda bad and usually creates triangle soup. Kaedim might be the exception but I haven't tried it. Also - a good result in AI in 5 minutes is usually not a thing. Even iterating can take hours and photoshopping that (with or without AI) could take hours more. I know painters who use AI to generate their reference now and that drastically speeds up workflow. If you are not ready for the automation that AI offers, sorry... it's already here and isn't going anywhere. Adapt and overcome. It's coming to Maya and is already used widely in Blender. Maybe Zbrush too soon, since I doubt Maxon isn't sleeping on this. sigma 6 fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Nov 20, 2023 |
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Nov 20, 2023 21:31
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sigma 6 posted:Doing the same thing now but just wait until "AI driven 3d" produces usuable results for a base mesh. Right now it's kinda bad and usually creates triangle soup. Kaedim might be the exception but I haven't tried it. Also - a good result in AI in 5 minutes is usually not a thing. Even iterating can take hours and photoshopping that (with or without AI) could take hours more. I know painters who use AI to generate their reference now and that drastically speeds up workflow. If you are not ready for the automation that AI offers, sorry... it's already here and isn't going anywhere. Adapt and overcome. It's coming to Maya and is already used widely in Blender. Maybe Zbrush too soon, since I doubt Maxon isn't sleeping on this. Awesome, can't wait
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Nov 20, 2023 21:38
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i've been poking around with AI tools to generate texture maps and it's uhhhhhh surprisingly good at it. the resolution isn't quite there yet, but it's usable for many purposes like i was putting together a kitchen scene and i wanted a hand-painted enamel gilded art nouveau plate. "art nouveau pattern, vines, green and gold, gilded, circular outline"  erase the background, a little processing to crisp it up and make the metallic and bump maps out of that, and baby you got a stew goin. it's the world now. parts of it really suck but it isn't going away. gotta figure out how to use it well rather than just going all crunchy and living in the woods. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Nov 20, 2023 |
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Nov 20, 2023 21:40
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