One of the unique visual effects courses on offer in the April term here at fxphd is VFX301 – Tornado Destruction Project, Part 1. It’s the first part of a two-part curriculum aiming to deconstruct the making of a complex VFX scene – from plates all the way through matchmoving, animation, effects, rendering, lighting and final comp.
Serving as VFX supervisor for the course is artist Ludovic Iochem, who leads our digital matte painting curriculum. Joining him are a slate of talented artists – Benoit Terminet Schuppon, Alban Orlhiac, Charles Chorein and Lukas Niemczyk – each teaching a part of the shot. To give you a taste of the course, watch the full first class for free and then read on to find out from some of the profs about their own careers and what to expect from this exciting course.
fxphd: Ludo, this is such a great looking course – how were the artists assembled for it?
Ludovic Iochem (VFX supervisor): The idea for this course was to show how to do a proper shot from the plate to final comp and going through different techniques. What I really wanted to have is people with already a lot of experience who could explain the kind of problem we can face and how to solve them. That’s why I went for senior/lead here at Dneg, mostly people I was also used to working with, who could show a lot of good techniques, tips and tricks.
fxphd: Can you talk about what an fxphd member is likely to get out of the course?
Iochem: I think a member taking this course could have the opportunity to follow closely all the steps involved in a destruction shot like the one we proposed, from the matchmove to the compositing, through the FX, Lighting, Lookdev, DMP. It’s a good way to understand how everyone is working together. The shot is working at the end because everyone paid attention to the next step. In VFX, you don’t work alone, on your side, you need to make sure the artist picking up your work will have everything they need to make their part in the best conditions. That’s the key for me of a successful shot, and that’s what we’ll try to show here in this course.
fxphd: What are some of the things, as a vfx supervisor and someone with incredible matte painting experience, you would be looking out for in overseeing a shot like the tornado shot?
Ludovic Iochem: Coming from a matte painting background, I’m more interested in the realism than in the spectacular. What I would expect of a shot like this is that people really think it’s a real tornado which went through a village. That’s why instead of trying to destroy all the houses from the village, we’ll try to focus our work on a major asset. It’s better to have the time to do less, but better, than doing a lot in a hurry. I’ll focus on the integration of the tornado with the sky and the environment, on the lighting which has to perfectly match the plate. The rest will follow naturally. When you have scale, dynamic and lighting working really well, the rest looks good. It’s believable.
fxphd: Benoit, can you talk about how you got into vfx and particularly into matchmoving as an art form?
Benoit Terminet Schuppon (matchmoving): I studied CG Animation at LISAA Paris. After several internships I got an offer from Double Negative as a matchmove artist in 2012. The way things are in the London VFX industry is that fresh-out-of-school juniors are hired into matchmove or roto positions depending if they were interested in 3D or 2D roles. This is because they’re technical roles that get you acquainted with the workflows and pipelines of big companies like Dneg but keep you away from the stress of constantly changing client notes. The brief is simple: make the camera or object or body match what was shot.
That’s how I went from studying animation to working in matchmove! I’m passionate about film making in general so it was a great opportunity for me to learn about cameras and lenses and how things work on set and in post. Luckily I got good at it and supervised matchmove teams on a few films, but now I’m transitioning out of matchmove into a more generalist role.
fxphd: What are you go-to tools?
Schuppon: I’d recommend everyone to keep themselves informed about their industry as a whole, not just their craft or specialization. For matchmove, books like The American Cinematographer Manual are a great start for camera knowledge, but being pro-active and following the latest hardware and software advances and industry trends, being curious and watching films will make you relevant when working and networking, throughout your career! And fxguide is a good source for all that.
fxphd: Alban, what are some of the memorable projects you’ve worked on in terms of modeling and texturing work?
Alban Orlhiac (modeling and texturing): There are two movies that were both challenging and extremely fun to work on. The first was John Carter of Mars, on which I was Lead Texture Artist. Our challenge on that show was to create an impressive collection of characters, ranging from four-armed, green-skinned aliens to giant white apes, various alien animals and a wide choice of human digital double. The biggest challenge was first to make the aliens look as if they could exist in real life. This alone took quite some time before we could present to the client some good looking green skin tests, and details that could hold up to camera coming very close to their face, framing out eyes only, or a few square inches of skin where it gets attention (such as when Sola is being punished and gets iron branded). The next big thing on that show was to keep all the elements created consistent.
We had about 12 hero characters, twice the same amount of hero animals and generic agents, all declined to at least 2 variations per character, with sometimes even more for the Warhoons in order to create enough variety for the close-up fight between them and John Carter. This ended with hundreds of characters, costume bits and props that all had to look like they were all living in the same world, as well as having to hold up against filmed actors and on-set props and elements.
My second choice would go to the latest Total Recall movie. I was a Senior Generalist on it and I had the great opportunity to be given a whole environment to design from scratch and integrate with one of the most important assets for the show: this was all the immediate surroundings of the Fall (the huge elevator connecting both sides of the Earth) on the New Asia side. There weren’t many concepts for this bit and I had to come up with my own ideas for the two tall towers on either side of the Fall (which was entirely done by a whole dedicated team), a train station, rail tracks and the aerial suspending system, slightly smaller buildings, dressing then the environment with existing procedural smaller suspended houses, and finally close-up skyscrapers.
This was a huge task that took a couple of months but the challenge, although stressful at times, was very rewarding. I modelled, textured and look-dev’d the whole of this by myself and I was so glad when I saw the final result on screen. It’s not very often that an artist get a chance to have so much control and creativity with such a big task and I really wanted to appreciate it, as I eventually did.
fxphd: What considerations do you think artists should make in terms of modeling/texturing while working collaboratively?
Orlhiac: Team spirit if of the essence. Always be connected with people working both before and after you. Communication and perfect understanding between people that are passing an asset or a shot to each other is really an important determining factor when it comes to create something that will look exceptional at the end of the day, and that includes accepting to work with all the constraints imposed by the client and the supervisors, which can make things always more challenging, and it is not always easy to accept other’s choices and decisions, but this is what makes a good artist to stick out of the lot when he knows how to take whatever is thrown at him, and turn it into something that looks right for the client and looks possibly the best as possible.
fxphd: Charles, can you discuss look development – what are some of the important things in look dev that visual effects artists should take consideration of do you think? What’s your toolset for the course?
Charles Chorein (look development): Eyes and understanding how the real world works are the most important things in lookdev to reproduce the reality in computer graphics. In this course we’ll cover Houdini/Mantra for the tornado and Maya/Arnold for the village. Switching between different toolsets in production is quite famous especially when you have an important FX from Houdini like a tornado.
fxphd: Lukas, you’re concentrating on effects, what was your own career path in terms of effects work in VFX?
Lukas Niemczyk (effects): I started my career as a very motivated trainee in a very small studio in Germany 11 years ago dreaming of working on the big stuff. Back then I was planning to study animation, but at some point I was offered a job on a full CG feature animation film which was a huge project back then. Very soon during production I jumped from a generalist position to a more specialized hair grooming job and finally fx which attracted me for many reasons.
I am currently employed by Double Negative as an FX TD.
fxphd: Can you talk about Houdini and any main tips you have for Houdini users – something you go to every time to save you time?
Niemczyk: The software packages I was using during my 11 year long career were 3D Max and
Maya but since the last couple of years I was noticing that there is a big switch happening towards Houdini. Mainly in the specialized field of fx. The level of control you gain out of the box is enormous. It costs some effort to switch and give up the security of a tool you are familiar with but at some point your efforts will pay out and you will think “how could I have ever done this job without Houdini?”.
If you have worked with Maya or a different software package before or are in the process of transition I can only encourage you to watch tutorials and contribute in forums like odforce, sidefx (etc.) and of course study the help. For many nodes you are able to load little examples into your scene. A lot of functions are organized in shelf tools which you can study. Never be too proud to ask questions. Be open minded for critics and ask your friends and co-workers for inputs. Be interested in the world and phenomenons surrounding you. Ideally make notes of anything that captured your attention. Try to stay organized. The internet and cloud services are your friends. Houdini’s node based concepts are very unique and it takes some time to adopt work flows, therefore make notes, save example files or do screen shots. This is what made my life a lot easier.
Head over to our courses page to find out more about VFX301 – Tornado Destruction Project, Part 1.