Date of the podcast: 2020 / 12 / 20
Podcast link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwxZdHJSAgU
One mic accuracy as the podcast is close to 3 hours long.
Show notes:
Transcript:
Richard Hurrey 0:19
decade in the system where I never had to think about any of it, I was able to just rig and make shapes. And so coming out of there and then having to like, Oh crap, I have to solve like a twist extraction of the shoulder now, and I haven't had to think about this in so long. And how hard that is, you know, you're just like, that is not as simple problems. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm fighting with now is like having to go Oh, right. Right, it hurts more. When you don't have a pipeline. I have a compression. Yes, this does. Just in the day before, we did the new
Miquel Campos 0:59
solar foreign gear that is like a matrix constraint thing that to remove a bunch of nodes, connections from the joints. And I had to change the logic of something. And I spent like, half of last week is struggling to remember how we neutralise this joint rotation thing and so on. I was like, I don't remember anything and just testing my code. And I finally figure out yesterday, I didn't fix it yet, but I No, no, it was horrible. Because I did it like, first time a few years ago, like maybe four years ago or something. I didn't touch that logic until now. And it was like, Oh, my God, was this. Yeah. Was there was no neutralising way, way, way, way. And then it just took me
Brad Clark 1:46
like this once. I remember something. I don't remember how I did it. And then I go in search, and I posted the answer somewhere. Yeah. And you
Normally I'm like, Oh, that's how I did it. Right. Thanks, Google.
Miquel Campos 2:01
Yeah, in my case, is the gold itself. But yeah, it's like the Back to the Future when a dog hits his head and knows how to make the I don't know how it's in English. They flew dogs capacitor. Yeah. And then he hits again and forgotten how to do it again. Yes, similar thing all the time.
Unknown Speaker 2:20
Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 2:20
I like the code. Yeah,
Alicia Carvalho 2:23
I'm very I'm very kind of like, verbose with my code, but it's more like a little tip for me to use to like my future self.
Unknown Speaker 2:30
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 2:32
Especially if it's like, I have time to fix this now. And then you have no idea when you're gonna look at it again. And yeah. Oh, yeah,
Izzy Cheng 2:39
I could I comment my code like crazy, just because I want to look back and like, read my
Unknown Speaker 2:43
own comments and,
Alicia Carvalho 2:45
and not have to decipher what you did. Yeah. Yeah. Like,
Unknown Speaker 2:50
I like a like a journal home like, I've been on the front. Yes. Well, I've done this four times, and none of it worked. And this is the last try to look out for months. And you go back, you're like, what did I Why didn't that work for Oh, right. Because I already tried that. Oh, yeah. This is there's no way around this, I guess. Okay, that's what I worked out.
Miquel Campos 3:13
Yeah, I always store I have like a private snippet repository. And I store everything there. Like all the garbage all the quick.
Everything is there. And the first thing I tried to put like a reasonable name into that because it's the only like, sorting thing and I searched like literally with Windows Explorer, like the first search like, I let these songs about one of your favourite tools being a renamer because I'm right there with you. So weird. Like sounds like a bad tool to mention. It's like renaming it's like so simple. That came up so often. Like how do I why naming things?
Like surface one poly surface two pi surface 570.
Unknown Speaker 4:00
Like when you make choices like Joy, joy, joy, joy,
Unknown Speaker 4:05
I need to remove every other letter and uppercase two of these and do in a text editor in 30 seconds is impossible in software.
Izzy Cheng 4:14
Like renaming tool, it's like
Miquel Campos 4:19
yeah, well naming conventions is a whole world of things. I remember being a studio that we didn't barely had. I mean, it wasn't 2000 or yeah 2001 it was not not pipeline at all. It was Yes, this is the folder you save it with his name. And I remember these the final final to final review 782 and and some of my colleagues is there. Real final, for real final turbo
Unknown Speaker 4:49
turbo.
Unknown Speaker 4:51
Wow.
Unknown Speaker 4:53
We'll have like
Izzy Cheng 4:55
my work and we get into naming convention and
Unknown Speaker 4:57
I'm just like
Izzy Cheng 5:01
Cuz everyone has everyone has like their own like naming convention that they like or an opinion. And so like when we when you get try to get like 20 riggers to agree on their naming convention it's like LD F or lt or like how do we what do you guys do with these capital? Or do you want to use all lowercase or? Or?
Brad Clark 5:22
c again, that's the problem that like the curse of Maya is that there's like, Well, how do you want to do it? You can you can back yourself into any corner you want. Yeah, I feel that unreal.
Unreal, feels that way, too. It's like, well, you can pick multiple ways, but only one of them is going to be optimised if you scale and everything else will work until it doesn't, which is like how I feel like half the rigging is it's like it works until it doesn't. Yeah, oh, this will work until your character does this. And then like, the arm explodes, you're like, well, but I need the wrist to keep, you know. Yeah, I don't know. And I feel like I've been fixing the past year has been fixing those kind of problems over and over and over again, like it's a Groundhog's Day for the same problems. And it's it's not even joint oriented anymore. Although it was like, two years ago, everyone came to me with the same problem like, hey, my mocap doesn't solve to the rig correctly and it breaks downstream. I'm like, yeah, let me see your elbow, oh, the elbows on three axes, your joint orients or bad, yell at your riggers. And then like someone else comes up, and they're like, Hey, we can't get this thing to work. And it's like, okay, right. Well, let me see your scales. And oh, it's an acclaimed format. And it's looking at the Unreal skeleton, and then there is scouts and legs are broken and the knees are bent. And they're just like, yeah.
Okay, I'm not actually doing any rigging. I'm just like an Excel, Excel spreadsheet, transform function. And I'm just like, mapping one word to the other and access and coming out the other end going. Yeah, I think you need to fix this, but
okay, you know, we'll just work back backwards through the maze and find our way to the start. And every one of those problems is like, well, this wasn't a problem at first. It's a problem now because you want to do something else and no one knew that you want to you know, you you kind of organically end up where we're like, well, we need to do this thing now. You're like, Yeah, yes. Here's a question related that Alicia Isabella at the interview done any consulting we were going into another studio and and tried to help them solve problems.
Unknown Speaker 7:26
Not only thing
Unknown Speaker 7:30
just my own.
Alicia Carvalho 7:32
Yeah, I've only ever inherited rakes from from previous people or previous productions and then had to
Unknown Speaker 7:42
break things.
Unknown Speaker 7:43
So how much of that I mean, you're, you're on the render side a little more, right. Like the for the like, my partner Chad for a long time. Like they're the reading group that was
Brad Clark 7:55
on on a lot of big game projects that have been around for a long time you inherit those problems, but you can't fix anything either. Because it's legacy assets that are still being used for 10 years so you can't just change something.
Unknown Speaker 8:10
Your lip I love the lip Isabel
Unknown Speaker 8:13
describing my life right now.
Unknown Speaker 8:14
I know
Unknown Speaker 8:18
why I steered it that way a little but yeah, like I'm just curious for a lot of it feels like for commercial stuff and for for a lot of projects. Like as soon as the rigs done if there's a new project like it gets redone anyway, a little bit. There's not much like to see carryover, but for game stuff that goes longer. I don't know. What do you what do you how do you feel about like your current situation with managing assets from the past? Anybody
Miquel Campos 8:51
trying to be quiet, not stomp on everybody?
Alicia Carvalho 8:56
I recently know but like, I have worked with studios where we either we partner with other studio, and we inherit rings from them. And sometimes I'm sure Isabelle it's the same for you. You're like, but I want to I can't but I want to. Oh, so I feel like that's part of the struggle. Um, yeah, so I there's just a lot of cursing and swearing and trying to either write stuff that so it will work properly. inaya kind of on top. And yeah, a lot of cursing and swearing.
Unknown Speaker 9:37
Is there is there a specific area or something that is consistently like, you wish it was done in a different way or something that you've had to fix more of than you felt like you should have? Like, why do people still do this?
Unknown Speaker 9:50
Um
Unknown Speaker 9:52
Oh, and I don't want to go into a rant.
Unknown Speaker 9:55
I What do you mean the
Miquel Campos 9:58
wrong one.
Unknown Speaker 10:01
If you can message me and I'll rant for you
Unknown Speaker 10:03
know, the rant away,
Izzy Cheng 10:07
unless you complain, like a rant, I got a rant.
Brad Clark 10:12
You hire a plumber, electrician, they're always going to tell you that the previous person did it wrong, no matter what you do for your house, right? They come in, like who wired this? Well, you know, and then like, the next day, someone else comes in who wired this? And it's like, well, you did? I don't know. No. It's not even that it's it's not even has to be ran. But just if, you know, I'm curious if it's something specific to you and Justin stuff to your pipeline, or if it's just a general thing that you guys don't do anymore, maybe that other people are or, you know, just some guidance for the general public.
Unknown Speaker 10:45
I feel this is this rant, rant rant.
Unknown Speaker 10:51
I find that a lot of
Alicia Carvalho 10:55
start a thing. Um, I feel like a lot of people think that rigging has to be complex, or complicated. Right? And so you're not a lot of the times just sometimes I can't I can't, I received good stuff. But like, you're looking at stuff and you're like, Hi. Yeah, why did you cuz you're looking at this like thing. And you're like, but that could have just been this. Yeah. And so that's, that's what I see a lot of them. And I don't know why, but I don't know if like, we feel as though in order for it to be a good rake, it needs to be complicated. Or if it's more that,
because we don't think things through which I can experience, then you can even sometimes you can actually see where somebody has painted themselves into a corner. Yeah, you know, um, so yeah, it's, it's for me, it's really just like, over complicated. Okay. Great. Is, is it over complicated in in that not necessarily complexity of the rig itself, but just it doesn't allow you to simplify easy? Like, if you don't need that complication? Is it that you can't extract it away from it easily? Or is it like, you know what I'm saying like, is it complicated and intertwine in a way that you're like, you can see the iteration to the point where they didn't plan it through? Or is it just, this is a tangled mess and complicated, like, I can't just get rid of this and leave it to control? Right?
Unknown Speaker 12:32
I saw I've seen, I'm
Alicia Carvalho 12:37
the best example I can, I can say, I've seen a lot with like, kind of doing like a set driven key kind of break, right? Where you can just see where, like someone, they there's like a layer and this connects this and this connects this and this connects this. And then usually what happens is that there's a pop, right? And so when you're trying to like figure out, and you can just kind of see where they added these layers to fix it. And all they did was like, narrow down where the pop happens, but the plot is still there.
Unknown Speaker 13:08
Hey, push it down here and it pops up.
Unknown Speaker 13:11
Yeah, yeah. So like, the
Miquel Campos 13:14
keys with hard lines. Like they don't extend it. You know, we can never go over 90, right?
Izzy Cheng 13:21
Yes, yes. Alicia, do you find that? Um, I'd never worked in film or like, honestly, I've never rendered a thing. Like, I missed too much. You're just rendering it at 30 frames a second, you're rendering.
Okay. Yeah, sure. It's your territory. But do you think that like the over complication you find is specific to film and like commercial or anime? Like, yeah, Feature Animation?
Or do you think it's just general?
Um, or, like, one specific area think like, oh, like these rates get complicated, because
Miquel Campos 14:00
no, I'm gonna read after leashes done.
Unknown Speaker 14:01
I got I got it. I know, you've got something.
Unknown Speaker 14:04
Good enough. Stop.
Alicia Carvalho 14:05
You're reading I've seen it. Um, so I've been on a show where we were doing like, the game engine stuff that we do. And I've been on shows where it's pre rendered. And it's a lot of the times I think that things are done because maybe it's something that's cool like, Oh, this is a cool thing. And like there's a lot of like, excitement about that thing. But it's like yeah, but that thing is like super slow do
Izzy Cheng 14:42
like feature like your feature creeping?
Unknown Speaker 14:45
That's it right there.
Unknown Speaker 14:47
Yes. Yeah, I've
Unknown Speaker 14:48
had this problem for years teaching rigging right like and I you know, I appreciate you is about saying like you liked how I taught but you know, some people for years.
Brad Clark 15:00
We would get requests, hey, I want to learn advanced rigging. And it's like, what if that doesn't mean anything, and you can you want to learn. If I translate that it means you want to learn complicated things, so that you can show off. You don't want to learn good rigging. And, and it's, and that's not a, that in itself is not a problem. There are all kinds of fun complicated things, to try and explore and to actually use to learn with, to learn how to manage complex connections, or to try and emulate something like the surface pickers from from DreamWorks, or whatever it is, right. Like, there are a lot of cool demo examples to show off.
Like ego stroking a little bit, but also just like, it's fun to work on as a challenge. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to learn it as a part of your process for production. And also, it also usually comes with the same thing like, Well, you know, why do you want to learn that? It's like, well, an animator saw a feature somewhere, and I don't know what to do with it. And it's like, oh, yeah, my rant list something. I know, I keep it. You know, I'd had the same issue the past few years with different studios, both animation side and because I end up sitting between the motion capture side and animation and rigging side. You know, I see the,
the animators who just want like the ends of in wrath, like they just want the control to do exactly what they want. And they don't want to do anything else. And they will animate. And I joke about a ringless rig and animators actually doing their job right, their job is to animate with quit asking for complicated Rube Goldberg mousetraps to set a key, like just do your job. You want a fast rig, and then you want 20 attributes to slow it down. And then you don't use those attributes. And you complain that the rig slow, right? Like your job is to just set keys and move on,
Richard Hurrey 17:02
we had a script that would run and look at it at a movie. And look at all the rig controls and what percentage of them were actually animated.
Unknown Speaker 17:12
That
Unknown Speaker 17:17
we have
Miquel Campos 17:18
1000 controls, right guess how many were actually used.
Unknown Speaker 17:25
That's the sort
Izzy Cheng 17:27
of rate that was like land use. You thought it was like a rig that had one purpose. And then it was like, they added a feature. And now it's like more purposes, but then it's like layers and layers and layers. So now it's like Multi Purpose is I would have
Richard Hurrey 17:43
in my opinion, there's there's two things, right? There's one where I don't want to have to move two controls to get my answer, I want to move one or I don't want three I want to use one which is which is often terrible. Because it's now you've got to try to balance weird things to get your result. And and the other is I have a special look I want I've got the special thing that I want. Yeah, and and like so you create a special custom control. And and both are problematic.
Brad Clark 18:11
Yeah. And like close without comments, no one else, or even the animator who animated with that control. When they go back to that shot. It's just baked keys anyway, right? Like a final animation is almost mocap, or Sim, it's frames on everything. They don't remember what they did, they're just gonna delete it and start over. And for years, I was like, use other methods. And because I'm a techie nerd on top of like having to do with motion, like, I don't care, I can keep track of what the rig layer is doing. But just like a script, you're like, I don't remember. What is what what is the the special sauce of spice mix to create this pose? Yeah, I just want to start over zero everything and rebuild it, because that's faster than trying to figure it out. And there's no codes and there's no comment in the frame. The post doesn't tell you how it was created. It's just there. So for me, I didn't care about that, because I could always just push it to an animation layer and get rid of it. And anyone who's worked in motion builder, remote cap, we all have this, like, at whatever, it doesn't matter. I'm not I'm not making precious frames, right. Like it's like someone who do did a drawing and it's like, that drawing is precious. No, it's, it's, it's you're already done with it. Move on. And that's the way I feel about animation poses. Like, who cares? It's it's already it's changeable. It's on the other side of that wherever every every every pose is precious, and every curve and all your handles and I'm like, yeah, move on, right, who cares, but it never had, if you don't have the tools in place, and you don't have the experience, then you get very tied into like, well, I spent all this time and I've layered all this stuff. And I've created this app and it's very it. The iteration instantly drops because you've created this, that you've sunk so much effort and time.
into fixing and shaping something that then to redo it, it's like, ah, like it's crushing. And on the flip side of that, if you know that that's the process, and you you build rigs and tools that are fast to iterate with, and you don't care, like, I'm just gonna bake it and move on. And I've seen this with
different different ways, right? Like, I just watched a video on
animating a prop. And I'm not gonna say who did it, but it was very, it was a mix of like, constraints and attributes and tools and trying to explain like, which thing controls what. And in the end, you're like, hmm, like all of this would be simpler if you just baked it to the prop once. And, and then just use that as the source, right? Like you can you think through the process one time, instead of juggling, which attribute has to turn on when, yeah, and all of that is having to be I've used this a lot lately, like the idea of technical debt. The rig is creating tech debt for the artists, every frame they create creates more and more stuff to manage over time. And every switch and every attribute, you blend and every kind of thing that you you accumulate by the time your animation is done his tech debt. And so the iteration time starts to, it's like those monster trucks that pull the sled and the sled, the weight gets heavier and heavier. By the end of the shot, the weight is sitting there, and you're just bogged down and you're like, ah, I don't want to touch this. Yeah, they want me to redo it. And well, I'm this, I'm just gonna delete stuff. And now I need more time. And you know, in games, you guys,
Richard Hurrey 21:36
Can you guys use layers?
Izzy Cheng 21:37
Oh, my animators hate layers.
Why? Because they don't they hate them. How? I don't I don't know why I use them in my last studio. Um, I don't know why they don't like them. I think it just gets confusing, maybe. Because when you may because what you were saying were
like, one person will animate one way. And it'll be like stacks and stacks of effort and like using animation layers, and then you hand it off to somebody else. And they open it. They can't follow. I guess they can't you know, that's like my guess. Yeah, it does.
Yeah, it becomes a little disorganised off the bat when you open the file, and you don't know how, like how that pose was made? And then you see like five animation layers? You're like, Oh, no,
Richard Hurrey 22:26
because none at Pixar would use any layers. There's no animation layers.
Brad Clark 22:30
Yeah, and DreamWorks added some tools that let you It's like the Source engine, if you've ever seen the like, the the Valve cinematic source machine where you could basically kind of read graph samples, like you could, you could like an animation layer, but it was deforming the actual animation keys instead of instead of creating an actual layer, it was like, you could re sweep he could kind of like, like soft mobd or, you know, read the form the animation into a different shape, the same way layer is doing but without the actual stack. So you know, those kind of tools are really powerful. But you don't get the interactivity. And the the hit you don't have the history of that change. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think people that get bogged down with layers create too many, and then they're trying to manage all those. And that's not the point. And again, this is to me, that is a workflow and a training issue. It and a little bit of like, the TD doesn't want to deal with a bunch of layers for their expert.
Unknown Speaker 23:28
Because
Richard Hurrey 23:29
it's directly related to what Alicia was saying about complexity, right? It's Yes, yeah. complexity. And yes, believe that. You know, it seems like the advanced rigging is make it simple. Oh, my God, less is more. Right. And I struggled. I struggled with that. I mean, I remember spending all this time making hips autocentre. Between feet, you're like, Man, this is great. Until the animator uses it says, rip this out.
Unknown Speaker 23:56
Like, is off.
Richard Hurrey 23:59
Right. So like learning that lesson is a hard one, I think.
Brad Clark 24:04
Yeah, I think the complexity issue to be is is manageable. The difference with a rig complexity animation layers is the animation layers at any point, I can collapse the complexity and go back to zero. And a rig you can't you if you rip the controls out. You're breaking stuff you don't know. Yeah. And in trying to like go well, I think I'm you know what, I don't know what all these attributes do. I'm just going to use this one control, and I'm going to counter animate it. Like I'm gonna I'm going to add 20 more keys to this control, because I don't know what these other attributes are doing. And I don't have time to worry about it. I'm just gonna move this control for animation layer to me, I, I can stack as many as I want. And then I'm done. And I get rid of them.
Izzy Cheng 24:42
I think for me, like, when I work with an animator and I'm building a rig,
I and I hear the word counter animate to me. That tells me like, I need to take a step back and like look at what I'm actually building. Like, why why is it
Because counter anime, like, that kind of tells me that something is broken. And, and so it. It's not about like what Alicia was saying it's not about like solving the problem by like digging digging deep, deep, deep trying to get like that edge case. It's like looking at the big picture and seeing like, Okay, what is actually like, the thing that's not working for them? And is there a case where I can cover? Like all the animation cases that they want to cover? Yeah. Do you make sense? Yeah, no, it doesn't.
Brad Clark 25:31
I'm curious with both of you, since I mean, you is you're just kind of still getting your, your ground, like figuring things out. But like, and because I'm curious about you've because I'm here standardised, right, you have a little bit more of a structure, so that you the anybody using the rig kind of knows what to expect. But how do you handle
animation requests when they don't actually tell you what's wrong? Like, how do you discover issues when they won't actually tell you the issue? And they just they hate this thing? Yeah, this is it's I'm just curious, like how much when you get the feedback of like, hey, something's broken. What is your discovery process for figuring out? Is it my rig? Is it their workflow? Or is it? Where's the activity? Do? I mean, like, yeah, I need to do to get to that problem. Yeah. Okay. The first thing I got this ritual at 500. Negative 50.
Miquel Campos 26:27
Well, in the case of Maya, the first thing I ask if you have a child compensation activated, Oh, my gosh, this fixed 80% of the issue is normally
Unknown Speaker 26:39
the rig how,
Miquel Campos 26:40
yeah, that rig is broken. Okay.
Here's a question.
And later, depends, it depends.
Alicia Carvalho 26:50
I don't know. I have an answer for your Brad. Yes. Um, so the rig is broken to me is not an acceptable.
Izzy Cheng 27:01
Yes, supervisor. Yes. Thank you, supervisor. Lay down the law!
Miquel Campos 27:09
This is not going to fly here.
Unknown Speaker 27:11
It's not acceptable.
Miquel Campos 27:12
Yeah. Well, the best
in my machine works. Or no supervisor, right? Yeah, yeah.
Alicia Carvalho 27:21
For me, like, the rig is broken, I'm like,
what version? Are you?
What usually is, first, what version are you using? Because sometimes the answer is just like you need to update, right?
And then it's like, Can you give me like, Can you give me the scene? Can you like, I just need more information? Right? Because what I don't want to have to do is I don't want to have to open up your file to figure out what happened. Right? Like, that's like, I will, cuz that's my job. But like, yeah, that is like, the last third last resort. Yeah, right. Um, and because a lot of times, what we'll do is all I'll, I'll take your animation, we'll throw it on my rig. And a lot of the times I don't have that problem.
Brad Clark 28:11
That's a good, that's a good trick, right? Take Take just the curves and say, let me see what the what the motion looks like, not your file. That's a good trick. I kind of asked this partly because I'm sorry.
If you've still got more, I just was gonna say because because, you know, this is something that, you know, both Miguel and Rich deal with as tool creators to the public to some degree, right. So you and me and, Izzy to some degree, we have a closed environment for our troubleshooting to some I have a little bit wider range of stuff just because both student and consulting but like, Miguel and Rich now have public facing tools. So how do you get people to communicate? And and how do you what is the what's the fastest way to give them an answer that isn't like, I don't know, let me look. And I'll figure it out. Like, how you pull out the answer you need from those people is good.
Richard Hurrey 29:08
Like good pay to testing, though, right? Yeah, you know, it's like and like as a as a rigger? I don't want to hear the word broken. Right? Because it doesn't mean it might not be broken, it might just not be doing what you want. And animator doesn't want me to come and say the rig is done. Right? That they don't want to hear that they don't have time to give me more feedback. I don't want to hear that my work is broken, because it's not broken. Right? it you know, and it's like learning how to speak that language and translate. So that is the big broken. No, it's not. But what is it not doing that you want it to do? And that's a different discussion.
Alicia Carvalho 29:40
Feeling that might be a nerve Rich. Oh, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 29:44
You might find his list of rants.
Unknown Speaker 29:48
It's like, Don't tell me it's broken, because it's not broken. Yeah, drive
Miquel Campos 29:52
the control to 1000 it's not broken, you know? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 29:56
Yeah. Why did they do it? 2000.
Richard Hurrey 29:58
Well, that's the real question is what
What are you trying to do? That's exactly what is he said, like what you're counteracting, which means I've done something that's causing, there's something that's not doing what you want. Yeah, yeah, could it's not. But it's not I've done something. It's that I didn't have enough information.
Miquel Campos 30:15
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, if I can say something in the, I have to like to two parts here on to, like, in the studio, I'm also like working on assets and projects and like more like a user of my tools, let's say. So that's the more regular rigger work. And then as a developer, I have the input from my my studio, the my colleagues, and also the the mGear. community. And normally the
you can see from everything Normally, the people ask, yell first doesn't work, what doesn't work? Can you give, we ask like standards, like if we go on the on the gear for you will see some of the support that almost all the traits are support request. And it starts the same thing. And in many situations, if we ask, can you give us the the log error? And no, there is no error? Okay. Or in some situations, it depends. He normally it's Chris. It's the person who is taking care of more of these parts, but I try to help also. Yeah, yes, yes. Yes. And
he's the community manager is to say, Thank you, Chris. He's awesome. Yeah, it's awesome. You're awesome. Yes. And well, but everybody tries to help like, all the mGear, dev team tries to help so. And normally, it's, you can see a kind of pattern there. And ultimately, we ask for these scenes, if there is something that we think that it's really like, because it's not like it's specific to help one person when they ask, it's if this person brought brings up some, like, general issue. We want to check. Yeah, so it's good for everybody for us. So we asked for the scene if they can share stuff for the guides and things like that. And yeah, it's it's not like, clear path. It's more like pinpoint, but some situations, yeah, you can see when they have something like, oh, try this or try that. Or, like, lately, I had a few people
saying that the rigs are very slow, or, or, or things like that. And I have 30 rigs on the scene, and it's very slow.
Okay, 100 characters in the scene? Why is it moving? And, and, and, and when the aim is advanced rigging, and it was like, a, not only one person, but some people say like, oh, the first frame is it your mGear, the first frame, it is slow, and then it goes smoother and say it's not in mGear, it's Maya parallel, the, the evalution manager that needs to graph your scene. And if you have many rigs, it will take longer to evaluate that. So it's how Maya works so
even when they say use slow sometimes if now some I asked, Do you have redshift loaded? Really? Yeah, if they, if you render, I have a video on my other channel talking about that. But if you have redshift, I use it for my personal projects. And the first time before wasn't a way to on like the activity dad. But now the first time you you render, do a preview, it launches a bunch of script jobs to update all his data.
And then after you do the first render, everything is super slow. And you have like, huge, huge chunk of dirty evaluation like one line. And then. So when I see that in the graph, the first thing is if you have ratio, because it's 99% is the people hazard ratio. And then you can deactivate that. But still some I mean, you can they the other some commands to delete that. But they still remain, you have some script job that cannot get rid of that after you render the first time. So the only way to get rid of that is save your scene. reopen. And it's
interesting. Yeah, and yeah.
Richard Hurrey 34:24
And there's no rig outside world with a million different variables versus a closed pipeline where Yes, you can walk through, like, everything's named the same. Everything uses the same we have the same video cards and all of our machines are like, yeah, the variables are cut out. Yeah. Again, I'm, I'm I've lost that consistency. So now there's all these variables, you know, texting, oh, yeah. vironment? Yeah. Gosh,
sorry. He's going to like I sort of felt like you were in a nest where you know, it's windy outside, but I'm not feeling the wind and, you know, it's all good. And then you, you jump out you're like, holy crap.
Unknown Speaker 35:01
I got a flap my wings going on.
Miquel Campos 35:03
Yeah. and now you need to ask even if you have these render or the I mean, why the render, it should be affecting the rig. But still, like, it's if you think about that it's not. I mean,
Brad Clark 35:15
yeah, yeah, I think the, I mean, that's kind of why I liked for the most part working with motion builder stuff for a while because it itself was was a little bit isolated, you didn't have a whole lot of stuff just like coming into the scene like Maya can carry all kinds of stuff. But I've been finding, like, Blender has been interesting because you can, you can get all kinds of add ons and scripts, but they're, they're like sitting between a plugin and a script. So it loads it start and it's sitting there in the background is doing stuff and, and you're like, go check the console, and there's a bunch of errors, you're like, Oh, is that I wonder if that's affecting my stuff. And it's been interesting learning how to troubleshoot a different software with a different language. And I don't know how to do it in Houdini yet. But it's been a, it's been a process of just discovering, like, where does the information go? And where do I go to find it if there's something wrong? And I think that the, the thing that is consistent his cycles, right? If you create a loop or a cycle in your rig somewhere, like no matter what software you're in, it's going to cause problems. And people don't know to look for it. Or they just go and it seems okay. And they they you know, they move on.
Let it out, let it out. Come on, have something to say about that.
Alicia Carvalho 36:32
The number times, like I'm
in my capacity. I've been in someone's rig and I because I always have a script editor open and I see the cycle go up. I'm like, you have a cycle. Oh, yeah. But doesn't do anything? I'm like, No.
Because? Because we've all been there where we've done that. And you're like, it's fine. Yeah. And then and then it's like, it'll be like, Friday, at like, 530 the animators have a delivery and you get a package to be like, oh, something's happening. And you're like,
Unknown Speaker 37:16
every time I came back to bite me in the butt, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 37:19
I can't undo all of a sudden, or every time I click the control moves away.
Miquel Campos 37:25
Yeah. I think that we are going to ramblings
Alicia Carvalho 37:32
that it just keeps on happening.
Unknown Speaker 37:33
Yeah. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 37:35
yeah. And so I think Finally, I wish that information was,
Brad Clark 37:39
I mean, I think it's another one of those things where the experiences like that is a warning sign, something has gone wrong. But the number of times I've seen people create those situations, and not know that one not know to look for it, not know where to look for it and not know why it's a problem is fairly high. And usually lately it's been with animators have been helping try to deal with like,
constraint switches and prop management. And just like, this seems very obvious, if you constrain something back to itself, it's going to freak out. So this is a temporary state, and yet, they don't understand it. And it's not their fault. It's just like, the software allows you to do it. And it doesn't do anything about it, it just goes sure you want to do this ridiculous thing. I'm just gonna freak out behind the scenes and good luck to you.
Izzy Cheng 38:36
I think going back to like, um, like the problem solving thing and getting feedback.
I there is something to be said about
risk, like receiving feedback from an animator or rigger whoever your like client is, but there's also like skills and giving, like, your problem, like let's say I were to, like give feedback to Miguel about mGear or something like there is a methodology and skill to do that. It's not just a, my rig is broken. Like, I'm not gonna just say to you, my rig is broken. There's also like that skill developed. And like giving context like, Okay, this is see, like, the way that I present like, if I have a problem, I'll be like, Hello, this is what I did. This is what I'm trying to do. This is what I tried to do to fix it. I looked in the script editor. I didn't see anything. I think it was this, this and that problem. I don't think it is. What so I'm like giving all this context
to get the best tools in order to help me. Like it's like you're a professional? Yes.
Miquel Campos 39:40
Well, it's not I see. I think I commented in in one or a few episodes on the podcast already, but I don't know if somebody follows F1 the race, the car race thing. So know it well enough. In f1. There is many teams that they have the the official pilot's licence
Those that go the race, and they have the test pilots today. The test pilots are not the fastest, but they're really good fine tuning the car. Right. And normally the Anim buddy, the animator that knows how the rig works. Yeah. Right. So like I will get notes on when I put these two controls together, I don't get a shape by expect, which is my issue. I'm not providing the controls in the right way. So yeah, I'm with you. Yeah. Like and and very well, kind of understands the tech behind the rig to give Yes, notes isn't. And I can say,
depends of which animator or supervisor I work in my race are better or worse.
Brad Clark 40:41
Yeah, absolutely. And do you do any of you work to educate the animation team to give you feedback in a way that is better? We went
Richard Hurrey 40:51
what's interesting. So there we had this Anim buddy, that's what we called it a Pixar and you'd have an animator with a with a rigging TD, and you were working on bringing a character to life. And and yeah, there was this constant cycle of experienced rigger who's been through it, working with a new animator that wants to be a tester and vice versa. So when the animator starts giving your notes, and I'm like, you know, me, because you know, the beginning of my career there I was the other side, like I had an experience. And that was helping me learn the language, that of what they expect. And then the other side, right, you know, before I left, I was teaching animators to say, Hey, here's how this is supposed to work. And here's what the art This is This. is the result supposed to happen. In that context? Do you like what the jaw is pivoting from or whatever was teaching them how to kind of what's happening, not the technical, necessarily, but just these things come together. And so that was always where we were. And if you got too inexperienced people in that relationship, it was a mess. It's like having two people that don't know how to dance going out on the dance floor. Right? Like, it's just, it's just an absolute mess. So that's my experience with it.
Unknown Speaker 41:55
Yeah.
Alicia Carvalho 41:58
Yeah. So I, I entered a studio where there's not great communication. And kind of like, What is he saying? It's really, as far as like, hey, if you have an issue, like, this is the context, I need exactly what you're saying. Is he like, help me help you? Yeah. And I think I have to say that, like, the one thing that I find people don't grasp right away, it's like, just say, please.
You're saying be nice. No. demanding and panicked. Yeah. You know, just patience with me. Yeah. Or like, or just like, um, I suggest it, even like remodelling notes, right? Like, cuz we were talking about like rigging animation, but it's also like, rigging modelling. Right, right. Yeah. Like, like, Hey, I'm looking at the model. Um, there's, this is, and this is actually a problem for me, because I need this, this and this.
And not, uh, hey, the model does this. I need this. This is crappy. Because
Miquel Campos 43:10
this is broken. fix it.
Unknown Speaker 43:11
This model is garbage.
Izzy Cheng 43:15
I'm, like, you know, please, thank you, you know, like, yeah, how that just helps so much. Yeah. Especially over like Slack or something where you're not, you don't have the inflection of your voice. It's like such a small thing. I think, like working remotely. I've just been like, overly polite over slack just so smiley, smiley. Nice. Nice.
Miquel Campos 43:37
Yeah, I love those emojis. Yeah, they help a lot, I think to give you and it's
Brad Clark 43:43
when it's people you know, already, right? Like, if I'm working with a friend remote, and I just send off a message like, Hey, your models garbage, like the elbows, brown, whatever. Like, they we know each other and we know what that context is. But yeah, if it's like a group of people, and you know, there's like a supervisor on the thread, you don't want to just, like, shove someone out into trash. You know, like, you don't want to throw them under the bus because, like, need something from them to do your job better. You have to, you need to request exactly like what you need based on your problem so that they can help you solve it versus even just telling them, hey, I want this. It's like, right, I have this problem. The arms, you know, hey, everything's hanging down and I can't get the arm down. You're like, you know, can you fix this? Like, do you have what's your solution? Even? It's not even, like, you know, please do this. It's like, hey, please help me figure this out. And yeah, usually get a dialogue and yeah, right. Because you both want a good character. In the end. It's not Yeah, you know, you want the animator going, Hey, your rig is junk. It's like, Hey, I'm trying to get this pose. Oh, you know what I have this control here versus like, your rigs broken your models Jones? Yeah, I think yeah, I think it can go down like debate boil down to the question.
Miquel Campos 45:00
I like good communication and what I mean good communication is not talking a lot, but each other, listen the other one, and acknowledge and try to find a balance between the needs and there is all like, and the what we can be do the authentic time constraints, there is a many,
like, points to the situation, then you need to acknowledge and like I agree with,
Richard Hurrey 45:28
honestly, in in more than I mean all the consulting jobs that I've done, it's almost always a communication thing first, it's just like, you guys need to be talking to each other. You're struggling and you're frustrated, but it's because you're not communicating.
Brad Clark 45:41
Well, you know, you and I have had that conversation a lot since we started since you went out into the world. Yeah, it's like,
Richard Hurrey 45:50
well, it's been interesting, like consulting, for me has been very interesting, because I have a very different perspective on like, how to solve some of these problems. So when I go into these studios, I go, why are you doing it that way? It's always a question of honestly, like, I don't understand. And then you realise, oh, they haven't thought about these other things, or they haven't put these two dots together.
Brad Clark 46:08
Yeah. And I think that's the for me. And for, you know, you and I have these conversations about consulting and how you approach again, if I'm coming in from the outside to work with someone or to teach someone I, I don't need, I didn't need to, like,
undo or fix or change things just so I feel good. Like I was a value, I need to discover what's going on. I need to discover what the actual problems are. Is it a, is it a technique issue? Is it a technology issue? Is it a communication issue? Right? Are the animators just not telling the tech that they've been working around these problems every day for months? And you're like, hey, you're down the hall, go talk to them? And they're like, no, this is just the way it is, you're like, no, I see that. That's the problem. Let's go fix it. And you go down, and the tech guys are like, I didn't know that no one told me. So you know, it's the communication, but it's also the discovery of having the time to do it. And I think
the problem of you know, legacy assets, as we talked about before, is, you know, you may get an asset that you're like, why was it rigged this way? I don't know, this is frustrating, but it's also the context. And the situation that led to that state is rarely with the, you know, it doesn't travel with it, there are no comments. And in the code, it's like, well, I don't know what constraints on time, or budget or resources or experience led to this final asset, but this is what I have to work with. And so you know, you can complain about it advance, or you can just, you know, see if there's a way to solve it. And the same thing for consulting, you can go into a company and go well, okay, we should do all this stuff. And it's like, well, you have one person that's not a coder, that is rigging and doing their best. And the animator is, you know, looking at cool stuff and wishing they could, you know, and you're like, you have to figure out what you have as resources and raw materials and then meet them in the arts would make it better,
Richard Hurrey 48:01
And you go into these situations where everybody is incredibly talented and smart. Like everybody. Yeah, there's no slackers in here. It's it. There's but there's something out of sync, and you're like, what, how can I help bring things back into sync?
Brad Clark 48:13
How can I in production time very rarely allow self reflection?
Unknown Speaker 48:17
games especially is like, why aren't you done with this asset and Character Pack? We are shipping something. And commercial work is like, Well, they've this thing, it's got a marketing deadline. And, you know, Pixar is like, well, we're just doing whatever, whenever he's gonna release the movie sometime in the summer, you know,
Miquel Campos 48:35
get it get the timeframes certainly are different. Yeah.
Izzy Cheng 48:39
Do you think that? Do you think that people when they are missing that like puzzle piece, and you come in, you're like, you're missing this piece? And they're like, they don't connect the dots? Do you think that happens? Because like, they're in like, their world, but their problems and they don't like? They see. They see like, it's almost like tunnel vision. But accidental?
Miquel Campos 49:01
Yeah, well, also, there's a cultural, there's, there's a cultural thing to the last couple of places, I've been our visual effects studios that were going into animation. So there was there's like this embedded mindset of when you're and Brad alluded to, it's like, I've got this rig, it's only going to be around for two weeks or two months. It doesn't matter what kind of duct tape and baling wire recipe,
you don't care. There's no there's no common naming. There's no normalised values for controls. There's like, you're never worried about this thing, leaving this one thing and if I have to fix it, you know, frame by frame at the end, who cares? And and then you're like, well, now you've got 15 characters in 1800 shots and 100 animators stuck in to work this way. You might see consistency, you need to make sure you know and it's like it's it's a mindset shift and also the last one I've been in, because they came from visual standpoint, they would sit quietly and not offer ideas, right? Because Because in a place where you're getting paid by the hour, you don't you don't offer up or do anything extra because that's something you build client. So there's this idea that I'm not going to speak up even though you've got a better answer, I'm not going to explore a better solution. Because if I do that I get in trouble because I can't build that to the client
Unknown Speaker 50:13
that's like that.
Miquel Campos 50:15
dangling that idea of you are now part of a big mission. And and you're making things better actually helps you and your studio and your product. Yeah, because it's your product now. And and like that, that that's a mind shift. It's like a, it's just they don't know how to think about it. And yeah, you have to kind of break that.
Izzy Cheng 50:36
Yeah, I see. I see that. I'm at my studio, when people come from VFX. They come in my studio, and they're like, it's a breath of fresh air that I can like, go and talk to my animator, like right here. Yeah, like they couldn't talk to their animator before because they had to talk to their supervisor. And then the supervisor talks about rendering animations. And like, they're like, it actually, he feels. My one co worker, he's, he was telling me like, it's just like, it is a change of mindset. But it's like, for him, it was nice, because like, he didn't have to, he had like more job security because he was like a riot. And, yeah, he like the goal. The goal was to make a good product. It wasn't to like for him to be in the bubble, not give away any secrets that he knows. It's to like, share, like, collaborate, and then it all like funnels into one product. And like, it becomes more collaborative. And for me, that's like, super fun. Like, that's like the environment that I like, personally.
Unknown Speaker 51:41
Yeah, we're the culturally, the studio culture kind of it builds on itself and creates its own problems. It's like its own its own little weather system. Yeah.
Miquel Campos 51:57
That's why your job though, is you can help make the culture right. You got people talking to each other. I love listening to you talk about peer review. And it's like, like, you can make your toe Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 52:09
that was really cool. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 52:10
I loved it. Yeah, absolutely. Right.
Alicia Carvalho 52:13
Thank you. Um, it's, um, it's interesting. It's like you say, it's really sad to hear that, you know, like someone, whoever VFX background like not being able to, like speaking and not being able to, not even not being able to, but not wanting to, like not feeling so vague, right? Yeah, it's kind of sad. It
Izzy Cheng 52:34
was like it, I guess it was like a protocol thing. Yeah. Like, it's the culture.
Unknown Speaker 52:41
It's the culture can be just through one person, right? Like, you can have a supervisor doesn't feel like they want to interact with the other teams and or they, they don't feel like I've never had a problem with this.
Brad Clark 52:57
of going into a studio and just getting answers, right. Like I when I worked at the, when I worked wherever I'm like, Okay, the first person I'm going to make friends with IS IT department or person? Because they are the ones that are the keys to the castle? Do I have computer drive software? Like it is first? I want software, I need stuff installed, I need scripts deployed, like they are the the that's who is my best friend first. And then everyone beyond that, my supervisor, whatever, if there's someone that I need an answer from, I don't want to step on the hierarchy toes, but I also just, I've never been afraid to go I how do I get this answer? And again, it's not like I need this answer. I do. But also how do how do we make this better for everybody? Yeah, no. And how do we how do I communicate this? Because if I'm asking and same way with teaching online, right, like if one student asks a question and messages me, it's like, we have three other people have that problem. But you're not you're you're embarrassed to ask it. And no, we're all idiots, right? We're all we're all fumbling around trying to get the answer. And if I share it, or I asked the question,
yeah, I'm, I don't know, I'm new here, or I've been here forever. And I don't know why we do it this way. Right. So just having the being brave enough to go ask the question and find out who has the answer, and who can answer it is important. And if you're at a culture where the boss or the leadership says, you know, you guys need to stay in your silos and go through hierarchy, that's fine. But, you know, before COVID, you still had lunches right, you could still go to lunch with the animation and go go outside of the chain of command and, and shop talk through issues that come back. And I think that's, that's one of the harder things with remote work. Is those moments of interaction between departments that aren't through proper channels. Yeah, yeah. The problem with that is when that happens, though, things don't get fixed beyond that one time. So that you know you the animator asked the TV one time and they fix their problem, but for other animators
Or another team somewhere has the same issue and they don't have that solution. So, you know, I think the, the encouraging that kind of environment makes sense to make sure people are talking to each other. But you have to, again, it comes back to do it constructively. Yeah.
Miquel Campos 55:15
Do you think this, do you think the, the culture, it's attached to certain type of like places like, I always felt like, for instance, VFX, I always try to avoid the effects studios, while apart of all the, like, all these news that pops from time to time, and all these fights on the budget seems like the, you know, horrible news from time, I never see like, really, really great. And then the other I will say, side of the spectrum will be the studios like Pixar, or that they create or riot that they create his own IP. So the goal is not offer cheaper, faster, better, but it's, there is another values and other goals. And in between, I always say that in between, I don't think I've ever been in a while, maybe. But like, in between there is all this spectrum that can vary depending of the studio, the culture inside the studio. What do you think this is? I mean, it's like that the thing is like that, or that can be as end of the spectrum, let's say that VFX. But it's depends on the place can be very open and very, a lot like this kind of synergies or in the other side, very close plays that they do. He's on staff, but nobody say anything. It's like, yeah,
Richard Hurrey 56:34
I think it's complicated. I you know, I mean, I've horror stories of people working in animation studios with plenty of money, and it's still terrible and political places, and visual effects where they feel comfortable in their jam, and they're listening to music out loud and loving every second of it. You know, it's like, I think leadership is a big, big part of it. You know, I grew up with my dad, being an entrepreneur, like, I grew up watching my dad build businesses, and I worked for him and you start you start learning, it's like, these guys are in their money, like, you know, when you think about how hard I watched him work to keep business. Yeah, you know, work in the business. So I really interesting perspective in that. And so, to me, when I go to a place like you, I looked at the top, and you go who's in charge, because that really does their sensibility the way they treat people, the the idea it percolates down, and then, you know, like, it's do not sell and, and that early part of the conversation, right? Just because you're a great artist, doesn't mean you're a great leader. And and like, you know, this idea of you should have managers and supervisors that are good with people, and then have an understanding of the process and like, so it's complicated, right? There's, I mean, I worked at a place, which was a fun place, but my supervisor was terrible. And I left, because I didn't like the way I was treated. But everyone else had a great time. Like, it was right. So I was in a small department that was poorly managed, you know, so
Brad Clark 57:57
I think one of the things that for me, like, I think there's a difference in why VFX may be in general just kind of get singled out a little bit. But it's, it's, um, you have a large group of people that assemble for a service, right? You, you, you take a bunch of people that are moving nomadically, from one project to, that don't really have any loyalties to the studio, or to the co workers there with necessarily like, it's not that you and not in a bad way, it's just that, you know, you may have a supervisor the work with you like, and he hires you for the next project. But a lot of those studios are basically built on demand, right, you have the core group, but everyone else comes in from all over with different issues and different experiences, relationships and friendships. And, and then six months later, they're gone. Right? So it's, you don't even have time to build that kind of cohesive network. And like a culture at the studio. So you just come into whatever is expected from you. And so, you know, the, your, your coworker may have worked at a studio where they kept it siloed, so that they could manage and keep track of the pods of people, they pull in and let go easily, right? You don't, you don't want to muddy the waters, if one person is going to be there for two months, and then gone, like, you just need to be able to replace those people. But everything else needs to be tracked and managed in the hierarchy and stay clean. So yeah, you know, I think it varies like whether when I went down there for the mocap stuff, I was like, in a different building and sidelined off from like warehouses, and I came in at a time when it was just a rush of people. So even if I i mean i made again, I walked over and went Where's everybody I want to go meet people and find people. And I just went over and started looking at stuff and that's when I start realising like where our data was getting thrown out. And, you know, and you're just like, you know, all these people are doing a lot of work for that rig setting to just turn that off. And, you know, again, it wasn't malice or
Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
It was it was just like they had a problem, they fixed it, but it never made it back up the chain or across the building or to the other, you know, so everyone's working really hard at the top of their game. And then you see in compositing a blur, a smile, you know, and then it's all covered up, and you're just like,
Izzy Cheng 1:00:15
I always hear, like, animator, work on something. And then I'm like, how's it going? And they're like, it's okay. I but I have this one problem. And I'm like, why didn't you? Yeah, they're like, we don't want to bother you. Like,
Unknown Speaker 1:00:27
right. And, and yeah, it just it starts starts to feed on itself. And one little problem, not a big deal, but like, you know, a year into something long term, and all the rigs have this problem. That's a bigger deal. Yeah. So I think I think for for me, it's, you have this like, nomadic culture problem of like, people just coming in and out all the time. So you don't have like a Pixar that you're there for life, right? Like, you know, it's or even just a three year project, or, you know, a longer term thing. It's just, we need 100 people on this now, and then next week, they're gone. And they'll go run over somewhere else. And, you know, like a cartoon pile of like, termites just eating eating wood, right? They just go here. And then next. But but it's, you know, those relationships among people go between the projects, but the studio culture, it's harder to create kind of a cohesive team that way. So, you know, game studios are kind of almost that same way for Austin, like, everybody worked at the same studio at different times. And when one studio would go under, they'd all pop back up and reform a new team, like Voltron lions, or something like game studio again. And they all know each other, and then the studio would would disappear after the project, or, you know, part of it would break off and form a new group, and then they kind of migrate people over. So you ended up with the same people over and over again, with slightly different managers and groups, but it like it was it was a cohesive culture to Austin. Like that, because people didn't want to leave. So again, I think I think the it you know, it's complicated, right, everyone has a different route. But But I think there are some more systemic reasons why just because the way that the service industry is versus an IP Yeah, company versus like a short film, you know, they all have their own his own culture, because of the style project.
Alicia Carvalho 1:02:19
I've worked at places where like, it was our own IP, which sometimes can be good. And some times can be bad, right? Yeah, it's magic. And I've worked at places where, like, Luke was, that was a client and whatever the client wanted, that's, that's what it was. And then you have clients that are more flexible. Just cool. So yeah, I've just learned over time that it's especially like your own IP, like, you could assume that with your own IP, it's company's money, you know, they, it's, it's, it's more easy, I guess. And that's what I'm sure you guys have experienced this, too. It's not always the case. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:04
Budgets are still budgets.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:06
Yeah. And personalities and political. You know, I think I think that with IP, can you have the, the creator vision thing becomes a little bit tricky if there if it gets a little too, like, well, this is my vision. And it's supposed to be a certain way. But I mean, that's, that's kind of anything, right? Like any kind of artistic project you need, you need constraints, and you need creative drive and vision, but you also need the flexibility to like, trust the other people that are helping you make it and I think for the game industry for a long time, the publishing publishers studio relationship was really terrible for a lot of places and, and everyone treated the other, like, it was just never mutual respect. It was always like, hey, you're supposed to make this thing for us. You know, it's like giving feedback for the big you're just supposed to make a rig and I'm an anime you're just supposed to make a game you know, like that's not it's it's so much work and so many people have to come together that if you don't trust those people to actually do the work, and kind of micromanage from like, another country, another town, another city, about the creative process, it becomes really hard and and flipside of that is the people on the receiving end of that, get scared to say anything. They're like, Oh, no, they've got the money. They said, do this. This is just what we're doing. We're working all weekend for five weeks. Like why? Well, I can't I don't want to see anything. Well, no, just you know, what's, what are you doing? Suddenly?
Miquel Campos 1:04:40
You know, kind of what we were talking about beforehand on lines like now we're seeing this convergence because I'm new to games. Like that is that is a new thing for me, if not counting the 90s when I was doing stuff with das games. Yeah, before video cards. But like To me, this is a new world, right like I'm now there's this convergence. Were the tools that that I'm building for visual effects and film are being used in games now like that's where we are. The game engines are for final rendering. Like I'm supporting two different Netflix series that are rendering in Unreal, but rigging in Maya and so like for me now there's this weird messy awesome because it's interesting convergence of these two worlds and I wonder how the publisher game studio films like it's all this we're an exciting times and every couple of decades you get this like bomb go off Yeah, where all of a sudden now the rules are different. And so it's it's an interesting time for sure.
Yeah. I'm very interested to talk about this this topic with you guys because yeah, for me it's it's now like yeah, this like inflection point in time like where it I think from now on it's gonna be changes on on the corrector rigging or tech art for characters process because the the there is new players come in to these like field like in this case like I will name unreal and unity basically. And right i think well Blender was always there but I think it's also getting traction now. But each one of these let's say platforms, they have some way to do the rigging and they are bringing new concepts to the table some old concepts of new concepts also my is getting really I mean it's evolving a lot and we have also Houdini they have this new King effects thing that I'm very excited also because it I think there is real like before like any like say any advantage it's worth to change to something like before was like Yeah, a little bit I'm just but again my blender does these Maya does that it's worth to to learn another package all the what investment time it's needed just for its are a little a little thing. But now it's Yeah, like you say exploding like it's it's like everything that there's explosions, people are picking up parts all over the place. And the Chinese figure out how they want to do it.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:14
Yeah, at the same time, all this stuff is moving into the engine itself, right? I Oh, you can you can build the constraints on the rig in unity and stack the constraints and have order operations and layers and twist bones and then give that control to the code so that they can run all those controls. We're in Unreal, the control rig now, right? Yeah, yes,
Miquel Campos 1:07:33
yeah. 2.4 point x it two seconds. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:38
He has the same NLA capability motion builder, you can bake animation to the rig and basically rig animation back to the skeleton, you can sequence it, you can expose the rig to real time manipulation. You know, if you've got a character interacting on a set, now you've got full control of them, you don't have to wait and offline it through motion builder and then come back, the director can, you know, go I like this monster and then lift his arm up, right? Like you can throw a VR helmet on and manipulate the character in context. And you're not a animator rigger. You're the director, you want to see the vision. So it's, it's spreading out the decision making, but it's also removing or it's, it's, it's starting to move around where the decisions can be made. And when he had some good deformers. Yeah. And then at the time of the former's and rendering there, and you don't have to, you don't have to scan everything to bone. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, if you haven't seen ozone stuff, yet, it's worth checking out. But I think you know, that the same this kind of loops back when I started looking at blender, it had some of the same ideas, right? You're like, Oh, my has the same concepts as all this, like, they all kind of generically seem the same. Yeah. And then you actually dig in and go, nope, this, they didn't understand what they were doing with this tool. It doesn't. Having the feature checked, having the advanced rig feature checked, doesn't mean it's useful to the animator doesn't mean that the feature works, and what I really liked, because you know, full disclosure, I worked a consultant with Houdini guys, on the kenefick stuff I've been, I found the random collection of Blender developers that were working to make add ons and improve the core code, and I basically just harassed them a little bit nicely. I'm like, hey, you're right, let me help you. Let me help you understand how to actually make this time a value, right. So now that blender, nonlinear animation tools are starting to function in the way that you'd expect and be usable. And you see the same stuff and you're like, Okay, well now now, you really do have the same ideas, the time editor, nonlinear animation, motion capture sources, and all this stuff is starting to basically feel the same now no matter what software and now we're, once that happens, you're back at a level of education for the Creator. You can make whatever rig you want. And if they only use the one foot control, because that's That's what they know. And that's what they trust, you're never going to expand your functionality that like, even if your rig is your advanced rig is, you know, it gives you really cool deformation functionality, but they don't trust it. Right? You can't make fragile tools. Yeah, then they won't use them.
Miquel Campos 1:10:18
I have a question on this topic. I think it's, um, right now we are in this, I think, like new brave war of transition, or where we are in between, I know, every, I mean. Now, for instance, all these new pipelines were has been for a few years now, like you do the rigging and animation in Maya you bring to unreal or unity to render. Now there are adding these new rigging corrector, like nonlinear animation tools and things. So right now, we still in this process of transitioning or to move in from one to another. Now it comes with the new with the skin effects, that opens a tonne of possibilities, I think, for many, many points of view. So do you think now we are in a transition where we move from one like way to do the things to another meet? Like probably move into full for one application? Or do you think we will keep like, for this ecosystem, where the unification of pipeline like with you as the biggest, VX or whatever it comes, will be? questions from you, Miguel?
Unknown Speaker 1:11:32
The one word answer to all of that is,
Unknown Speaker 1:11:35
yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:11:36
the creators will stay where they want and are comfortable. So yeah, we are rigging and rigging and animation are still going to get crushed under rendering and modelling and, and assembly. Mm. Right. No one's going to assemble a giant virtual scene in Maya, when you can build it in Unreal with Giga scans and walk around in it. And you're over in Maya, like, I hope I don't crash, it's just not going to happen. But are you going to get an animator who's animated Maya and has legacy history of using those tools for 20 years to jump into unreal, probably not. into Blender? No. And the same thing with you know, people using Studio Max like by pedis an inferior product all around. And yet, it still is faster and better to jump into that and use Studio Max bipeds than it is to try to spend four days hooking up an animator in Maya to barely get the same functionality. Yeah, I was gonna just go back to my fit.
Izzy Cheng 1:12:29
I was gonna say, I'm, like, our entire pipeline is based on Maya and our proprietary engine that we're now adding, like, we didn't have engine programmers for a bit. And we are now like, trying to try to update our engine. And it's not even it's not even unreal, like it doesn't have real like stuff. So the the, like, Titanic task of even thinking about shifting, right? Like our software to something else, when we already have, like, so much pipeline built that, like, it is in our game, and our game doesn't end. That's the thing, like,
Unknown Speaker 1:13:13
legacy for years. Yeah, it's
Izzy Cheng 1:13:15
not like we're gonna like, stop. Like, we have to, like, keep our game going. So
Unknown Speaker 1:13:20
it'll be different for don't take not used to it, right?
Izzy Cheng 1:13:24
Yeah, I think I think it'll, it'll have to take like, what I'm imagining in games is it'll take like an indie developer who's like getting into games or like something and he finds like, the new resources with new tools, and he or she, or whatever, like, they start playing around with those tools, and they build something awesome. And then it becomes successful, and then everybody jumps on that thing.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:45
So yeah,
Izzy Cheng 1:13:46
it's not gonna come from like Riot wherever like,
Unknown Speaker 1:13:50
Yeah,
Miquel Campos 1:13:51
well, also, it seems like now more people are more willing to use specialised tools for specialised tasks. That that, that it seemed like everybody wanted the Uber app. And then now it's like, you can go into ZBrush and get amazing sculpt, and you can go into, you know, UV tools that are the best tools out there for that, it seems at least looking here. It's like there's more willingness to jump into something for a specialised task and come back out.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:17
I can't the differences. Sorry to cut you off. I think the difference is that we're, you're gonna see less people getting stuck, right? Let's, you know, it's not that you. It's not that you're like, Oh, you know, what, only my I can do this. And I have to go back there to do this stuff. It's like, well, you're not, you're not cutting off iteration. Once you leave the software anymore. If you go, you're like, Oh, you know what, I need to feed all this animation to Houdini for crowds. Well, okay. If the animation team on Maya has moved on, and you've got all this asset data, you don't have to then go dig up my hat and figure out how to do something with it. You have the tools where you are. And I think that that used to be a big problem. And I think that's the change is that if I'm an indie developer I've paid for a bunch of mocap and edited and I have the stuff in my game engine. And I really just want to change some stuff, I can have an animator, fix it in Unreal, or I can play with it in Unreal. And I'm not having to start the iteration loop all the way back at the beginning. And I think that's the big change. And I think any of the teams will will still have a core software, but rendering and modelling for the long time, they don't, you know, you're not stuck in Maya, they're into brushing, giving you stuff and rendering your rendering wherever you want, you will lm back out or you cache it or you know, whatever, it goes to whatever rendering engine the content creation was still stuck in its you know, you have em gear rigged Maya rig. And that's where you have to go back to, if you want to fix the animation. You don't you can load it in Houdini if you have a Houdini guy that can fix the stuff or bake it to the control rig in Unreal and fix it and animate it and you know, change it a little bit because you have a different character model that you're isolating where the creativity can continue.
Miquel Campos 1:16:04
Yeah, I think so. And it like this kind of like you will choose the right tool. And it will be not the right tool for for instance, I think animation, but it depends which kind of change or you want to do, probably you will stay on a reel do certain thing. Or it's more complex, maybe you want to bring back or go back to for instance Maya or blender where you have more probably complex. So Greek and tools to support the rig like animation tools I'm
talking where you can do more easily this edit, and bring it back. So it depends where is your battle, you will choose your field, it should be really interesting to see how this evolves, because it almost feels like eventually you're going to be able to live in one big replace again. Like Like, it's it'll be interesting to see the little people that literally will go into say unreal or unity and just do all their work. They're like I can see a future where that's that's the case. And that
Unknown Speaker 1:16:59
should be valid. And if that's if that's where they're comfortable and fastest and have to leave their creative environment. That's awesome. But if you want to scale a team to 100 Do you want a bunch of people trying to all load up unreal and animate in context, maybe not, you know, you need to feet you need to create a bunch of assets that are are constrained in some way or, you know, standardised like, you know, you're not going to you're not going to have the time to cross train 100 animators to animate and Houdini. But the one guy sitting in motion builder that was doing all the work that no one knew about can now expand that to maybe the other three Houdini effects guys go, Hey, can you run this batch on, you know, all these motion clips? Or, you know, hey, there's a bunch of Blender animators that are awesome, but they've never used Maya, well, I can now use them because I, I trust that I can get an FBX x in and out of the tool and they can use the same, you know, they can rig it however they want. But I get a skeleton back or, you know, there. I'm not stuck in motion builder. I mean, really, my, my last 10 years, probably now, I guess it's been like, well, Autodesk doesn't support motion builder in a way that I trust. And I've worked directly with them to try to move away from it. And it didn't work, right. They haven't moved enough into Maya to make that software go away. And so I was like, Okay, wait, what? Well, it still doesn't have support. So where do I go? And I like to me, that's, that's where I see when I talk about like not being limited where you can create, like, if I'm stuck in MotionBuilder, because it's still the only tool that does the thing I need, then that is a really rough place to be because it's getting less and less support. And it is specialised, and it's powerful. And it's still used everywhere. But I can't get more people to help me if I can't even trust that the software is going to work. Well, you know, but now I've done enough in blender. I'm like, Hey, you know what, for people in Blender that I can teach how to do some motion editing, I can get them working now. And I'm not stuck. So you know, or Houdini, right? I can now like I don't need to worry that I can't process to 300 moves and retargeted and edited and worried that I have to wait on Maya to open up 400 hours of my life to just watch it file open and bake. You know, like I don't need that. But Houdini can just burn through it now and so could motion builder and you know, it's it's removing me feeling trapped in a content tool. Hmm. I think that's a really powerful thing to see what people are going to do with that when they are no longer feeling stuck like they have to commit to you have to commit to a software because it's so expensive and safe takes so long to learn. And then you don't feel secure in leaving it. But now if it's if it's close enough in engine in context to lighting and what my game is doing, I don't feel so bad, right? I'm not I'm not making this time precious. You know, I can, I can throw away that time and go, yeah, that was a schedule that was good enough. It gave me the techniques I need. And now I'm going to play here in Unreal or in unity or wherever. So, you know, I think the same thing, Rich's done with ozone, he took all the stuff he has been doing and playing with it and moved it to a new new playground that is expandable and your own. And it's Yeah. And you're not tied to like the, the one place that you could do it before. You're like, hey, I want to share this with everybody. Let's take this idea that stuck in modo or stuck in Pixar and go, hey, let's play with this. This process of layering deformers in a new way, and everyone can play.
Miquel Campos 1:20:38
Yeah. No, it's interesting to see how everything and where it's going. And it really feels like now two years later, for me that unreal is the 10,000 pound gorilla. In the industry right now. It's like everybody is is exploring it in some way or using it in some way. And it's been very interesting. And we're doing our own projects, to just testing and playing and kind of make our own little shorts with it. And it's like, I'm getting amazing results out of this thing. You're like, it's winning for a reason. You know, it's like, it's, it's crazy. But it does feel like a big bag of options where you can do whatever you want, including destroy yourself in the process of turning cities on and off. So there's a lot of and there's not a lot of great education for the nuts and bolts stuff. Like we're like find out like, yeah, are john Morris, who's doing all of our lighting and shading. And as a cinematographer, he's up in Toronto. He's having to deconstruct his render man knowledge, and convert that into how he's doing shaders and unreal, and it was a, it took him like six months, but then I saw the light go on, all of a sudden, amazing work shows up and it was kind of this whole tech debt of how do I translate my 20 years experience into this new way? And now it's like he's off to the races, but it's it's definitely not super easy to get there.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:01
Yeah, yeah.
Alicia Carvalho 1:22:03
I have a question. Sure. As far as, because I only have experience with unreal. And I know, some of you guys do. Um, it was interesting for me, like going to SIGGRAPH. I think three years ago, or five years ago, there's nothing about unreal, there is nothing about game engines. It was really just like, pre rendered solutions. And then I would say three years ago, you kind of saw a little bit, unreal and unity. And I'm saying two years ago, it was like, I came back and I was like, there's an arms race going on between Unity and Unreal. Oh, yes. You know, like, cuz it was just it was like two specific hallways, and they were like, the talks. And yeah, and so for me, I my only experience with Unity is like, last year, I did like a one hour like, Oh, this is how I rigger like, little course. But like, I don't know, if you guys have experienced with Unity, like I would like to hear your
Miquel Campos 1:23:06
opinion, well, I can share mine. I don't have really any game experience at all. So for me, it's new. And we got to make a grant. So we've stayed in the Unreal space. I'm like, not that there any strings, but I'm like, you know what, I think we're gonna, we're gonna focus on unreal. But we have some clients now that are like, Yeah, we do everything in in unity. So now I'm having to get like, Okay, I've got a, we got to import this thing over. And it feels sort of like, how to describe it. From my point of view. I'll use the Moto Maya one. For me, that's a personal one, right? Where you get into this tool is sort of designed for an individual artist. That's kind of everything kind of sort of works. But you always hit like 80%. And getting that last 20 hurts a lot. And that's sort of where most if that was me, right, which is like, I didn't have to think about a lot of stuff. Everything kind of worked for the way I needed. Where Maya was like, man, I don't even know how to make the basic stuff work. But it's unlimited. I never, I never was unable to hit 100. And I feel like Unity and Unreal are like that, to me like unity feels like you get a lot
Unknown Speaker 1:24:02
of stuff just sort of works.
Miquel Campos 1:24:04
But but the pain threshold of getting all the way to where you need is much higher, were unreal. It's like it's kind of the Wild West and everything all over the place. But I know I'm on I can get anything I want on it. So that's kind of my point of view or feeling is like it's sort of like they have a different target almost, you know, individual game developer two or three people versus a team of however many.
Izzy Cheng 1:24:26
What Yeah, and so unity like when it originally started its target audience for the Indies, indie game developers and it was like, you know, one person to five people big. And I believe the last time I use unity was like five years ago, but I think unity is not open source. Is that still true? Well, you can't open their their source code and like Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:24:53
yes,
Unknown Speaker 1:24:54
and it really is the same level. Yeah, unreal is
Izzy Cheng 1:24:57
Yeah, so that's that was like the biggest difference for me. Is that like, when I was working at a uni, a studio with Unity, we were kind of limited to what we can edit. And like, I mean, unity gave us tools. And that's it. And if you found, like, plugins, that's great, but like sometimes they're not supported and whatever. Whereas like, I worked at a studio with unreal, and we would have engineers, like literally edit the engine specifically for a game. So it was just more power to us. Even though we were indie. So like, so unity came into seed, and they were geared to Indies, and that was before unreal, I think you can correct me if I'm wrong before unreal, made their engine available to the public.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:45
It was I don't remember exactly. They were so close in memory. Plus, it was an arms race like, Oh, hey, yeah, this and it felt like very much like maximise, before that, when it was so alien, Autodesk, where it's like, they were fighting about who could model the spaceship faster. And then, you know, it was like, well, the modelling tools are contextual. And you can do so much as an individual artist, but you can't file reference or share stuff in Max, you know, or, you know, my you get my you wouldn't hit a limit, you limit, you'd hit the limit of what you could do of your own ability faster than you'd hit maybe the software not letting you do something. And in Max, you would hit that wall and need to plug in early. Now. It's a little obviously, like both of them again, it's back to like, whatever you want to do, pretty much. Yeah, yeah. But for the most part, I think, for me, watching the Unreal unity stuff, and most of the game engine stuff I had ever done was proprietary. So, you know, much like the right engine, it's like, this engine does exactly what I need. Yeah. And it's exactly for the type of game we need. And we don't want to carry the overhead of an unlimited type of environment, which is unreal, right? unreal, is like, do whatever you want. And it provides a platform for a wide variety of games. I feel like, you know, what's weird is on the motion side of things, I know, unity took most of the motion builder people like they're the way that their their their mecanim animation retargeting. Oh yeah, is like my friend that was writing the control rig for motion builder, like, that's where his software went. And so then they pulled a bunch of people from motion builder, like all the people working on the new constraints in real time rigging like day behind from Bungie. And, you know, all these really like, animation, programming tech artists, people went to unity, and the Autodesk people went to unreal. So you see, like, a lot of people in Unreal on that side of things that were like driving the giant behemoth of Autodesk to consume software. And you see that I also think to bring up software to expand unreal, but also they opened it up more than Autodesk corporate would let them It felt like I think when Kim libreria whenever there to, like, all of a sudden, a huge cinematic mindset drop,
Miquel Campos 1:28:06
yes, unreal, too, because then all of a sudden, you're like, Okay, now, like, you've got camera settings, like you're a cinematographer on a set, you know, so I think some of of where we are in pushing into this visual effects using unreal for that is all because of that move on.
Brad Clark 1:28:22
Yeah. And I worked on one of the moves. I worked on project early on that was trying to use unreal to render stuff. And it was like, you know, everyone, a bunch of VFX people were like, I don't know how to rig and only export joints. It's like, Oh, yeah, like, it's a game, you know.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:39
I knew about some of the pain because of our mutual friend Sergio. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:28:44
so you know, it was like, early on, it was like, you know, how do I end I felt the same way. When I was working with a bunch of people that like didn't know motion builder, how do you get rigging over to it? Well, you know, luckily, Maya talks to but it's still you have to treat it like a game engine, you're not going to get a bunch of surface. deformers. So, you know, you you but your real time. 20 years ago, your real time they've been real time all the time. So, you know, there's a reason that it's limited. But you know, I, I still have, yeah, you get a nice rig and Maya might play fast. And I'm my 10 year old laptop MotionBuilder still has real time and I can hit play and hit 60 frames a second. So you know, you you trade that stuff off. But I think in that same trade off, like that's why I think the appeal to work in Unreal is interesting because it is real time. And it's in context. And it's what makes I'm working on short film in blender and my discussion with my my artists who's kind of assembling the look of the shots. It's like, right, I don't want to do animation until lighting and you have the lighting based on it like we know that the shot is lighting dependent. I'm not going to do a bunch of animation in flat shaded and then see it covered up by shadow. Like that's ridiculous. That's a waste of time. So we're going to like the shot and we're going to proxy it up and set it up and get the final look and then we'll We'll do some animation to it. And because it's real time in viewport, it's definitely sexual. Yeah,
Miquel Campos 1:30:05
it really seems like that's the big push for the visual effects studios, right? Like, getting to see your shot in context, in real time is huge for money Savers, right? Like, well, that
Unknown Speaker 1:30:16
was pictures pitch, right? presto and Primo both like DreamWorks and Pixar both like, hey, real time lighting in the viewport shadows like,
Richard Hurrey 1:30:24
Oh, you know, it's funny, though, is like, I felt like the watching the industry do all these really interesting advances. You know, and and like, getting just textures in the viewport. And presto, you're like, it's like it took so long. It's kind of reason Hydra exists, right. But it's like, in some ways, so advanced. And so ahead and other ways way behind, like, like, because well, this is just the way we did it. And animators were fine. And you know, we'd have to worry about it. But I just yeah,
Miquel Campos 1:30:54
it's really interesting, though, like that. But this this real time, real time filmmaking Yeah, really is affecting all of us in a really interesting way. Like I and I think like, this is where the innovation everything's happening now in this space. So it's fun to be a part of it, too. But it's also scary. You know, we we engaged our first real game client, and I'm like, how, how many milliseconds do I
Izzy Cheng 1:31:21
like, from a game perspective? I'm like, I'm like, I see like, the VFX people like coming into like games and stuff. I'm like, I see you. I see what you're trying to do.
Miquel Campos 1:31:37
On the other hand, though, like we're solving a problem and like, I can go into my and get like, real time, like really complex stuff running in real time. Because it's fine for visual effects and not mine for for games yet. So it's, uh,
Unknown Speaker 1:31:48
yeah. And I think you know, that it's a balance because I think, you know, you you it's not just final rendering though, right? Like if you know how many studios came out with VR projects with their film like when it came out with the smog experience and you're like looking at the dragon but they're like, Okay, well we have we have this like incredible dragon that is the most complex realistic thing and now we need to look at it in VR and not have it look like Ralph baksheesh version
Miquel Campos 1:32:18
drawn in the you know, the you know, these the The Maze Runner director, Bob Yeah, yeah. Do you know him that he was working on these mice movie that was cancelled or something they they posted some like, behind the scenes. He put like some I think he lives I listen him in a podcast I don't know what I saw it on the internet there is there is there there was doing the all these previs with unreal with all BR and I think the worse like he posted a video like saying goodbye to all environmental the development thing and so show some stuff but
Unknown Speaker 1:32:56
but that's what you can do at home with a with a VR headset that like wet a setup for Peter Jackson on the First Lord of the Rings, right? Like he was, you know, the first capable scene was so groundbreaking because it was like, Oh, your mo capping a camera. But he's filming his own CG characters in the environment that know the scale is correct. And he's making the camera decisions as the director referencing that stuff. And now all of this could do it with a Sony PlayStation, right? Like you can, you know, you can you can make that same thing. And then when DreamWorks was like, starting to use mocap for cameras, it's like oh, your camera moves feel so much better or Sony did for for Surf's up right like they started doing these like handheld cam action mocap kilometres up. It was so good. Like I still love it that that whole that whole film was amazing. But like you start to start to realise that like stuff that they were it was only accessible to the top studios with unlimited budgets to do this simple like oh hand cam and now you can get like an app for my for your iPhone and and do the same thing at home. Yeah, it's incredible. I think that's the other part of this is that you see more creative possibilities at all levels instead of just just the you know, flying to New Zealand and deepening
Miquel Campos 1:34:09
either you also see a lot more bad stuff, right? Sure. People have the dual that they can just make bad art to
Unknown Speaker 1:34:15
but I horseplay that's part of the process. I
Miquel Campos 1:34:18
think this is like maybe I'm wrong but trying to guess for the future. You remember like back in I think in the 80s and 90s was this like high spec scripts that you can get the movie down with a nice screen presentation and crazy thing and then there's this thing went away and at some point in the early 2000s there was these people does this a nice like, like concept trailers for a movie and some of them were peak it and I don't know if everybody was developed, but it was like a trend a few years ago where some people was doing super nice, like trailers. Yeah, and and The jailers these trailers and the company was like, just getting the rights because it was so viral the trailer they didn't some went and didn't. didn't make it and some didn't. But there was there. Ah, I feel like Deadpool. Yeah. Well, it was a little different thing leaked. Yeah. Like,
Unknown Speaker 1:35:20
yeah, but, but like, that's how
Miquel Campos 1:35:23
but the boot camp it did with district nine. I think it is. I live in Japan. Yeah. And I think the next wave will be people when the full movie real time thing not with the like, like, top quality but something that you can go. And pitch. This is the movie final movie. anything good? Okay, let's address. Yeah, like,
Unknown Speaker 1:35:48
it's animatic. But like finished shots.
Miquel Campos 1:35:51
Yeah, finish. Like, this is the montage. Because if you have this, and you Okay, you like it or not made probably you don't need to, I mean, in the amount of money that can go just replace these shorts by the high res version of this. And I think we'll be away from that in the future. I
Unknown Speaker 1:36:11
think we're like everyone making bad stuff, right? But the difference is that you can, you know, if you're an artist now and you, you go grab a box of crayons and make art, you haven't committed to 12 years of learning to mix pigments, yet, right. The barrier
Miquel Campos 1:36:26
to entry is playful.
Unknown Speaker 1:36:28
Yeah, but it's but it's, but people will be able to experiment with that stuff. Without caught without, without having a giant barrier to entry. And so there's going to be a lot of junk. In general, just because that's part of the process, right? There's 1000 bad drawings to get to the good one. But those barriers of entry are my son at age 10, sitting down in blender and drawing a three minute hand animation with grease pencil, and it's like a cohesive story. And he did it in a weekend, right? Like, it's like, cool, you know, I I didn't at that age, I couldn't finish a project. And you know, he's got procreate on iPad, and he's able to do like art designs and do like the, it's, I don't have to spend like time teaching him how to save files on Windows and learn Photoshop and manage, like, you know, all of the junk that comes with just drawing something, because the iPad removes that barrier. And the software just lets you create something and then you put it on internet and sell it or whatever it is, right. So I think, you know, the next 10 years, because it's going to be slower than you actually want it to be. But you know, I think just like your your gear rig showing up and Roomba, right? Like it's gonna it's a shared, shared experiences, you're going to want to animate something. And instead of having to go man, I really wish I learned now I have to sit down and learn Maya, you just grab whatever is available, and just do something. And in the weekend, the weekend shortfilm camp that used to just be an, you know, a 24 hour Film Fest on a Sony high a camcorder is now going to be like real time, you know, full immersive thing that you can share. Yeah, and it's got all pulled together. And yeah, I mean, it's, yeah,
Miquel Campos 1:38:16
it definitely will allow people to tell stories without technical chops, which is
Unknown Speaker 1:38:21
Yeah, yeah. And, and it's not going to be the same as like a finished product that you go spend, you know, time in the theatre with, but it's not going to be so rough. And so, you know, I mean, but you look at the early stuff that like for us, anytime you go to the Alamo Drafthouse you see the like early trailers and stuff of people like working on things, and then it's like, oh, Thor Ragnarok, right. Like, you're like, oh, the same guy did this, like weird, indie short, and now he's like, the man, you know, and doing Mandalorian episodes. And like, all of that, it's that that that pathway is continually removing barriers for people to be creative. And the same, that and it wasn't that way. 10 years ago, you're still investing a huge amount in just getting started. And if you fail, then you have a huge investment already. And so it just stopped people, right, like you, I've got to have an expensive computer. You know, when I started, like, I want to do computer animation. Well, you have an Amiga and Lightwave or $30,000 for alias, and $20,000 for an SGI that's barely powerful enough to run it. And good name $95,000 Pentium 90. Yeah, yeah. And that was it. Right? And now, you know, you can go get a free computer from like, you know, goodwill and run Blender on it and make a film. It's, you know, that's, that's the difference where we are and I think you'll see that more and more with with rigged assets and files, right, like, you know, we, earlier on there's the discussion of like, you know, after read this thing, I need to do affirmations, like you know, how many Do we need to read the same set of hands? And the same people? Yeah, modellers don't do this stuff. They have their library of stuff, they pull it up and they start with a scan or whatever. They're not. They're not starting from scratch every pixel. And yet our rigs are constantly starting from scratch. Even if we have auto rigging tools, skinning and starting from scratch, because the scans don't give us exactly, you know, you can you can look at Ziva and reuse the deformation system and reuse their puppet. And if it doesn't fit exactly right, it's still a huge investment of time to make it work. And all those barriers are still there, technically, but, you know, I think, if you have a good enough asset, it's close enough, people aren't gonna care, they're gonna assemble the stuff, they're gonna make the lighting nice, they're gonna communicate well with their film or their idea. No one's gonna care. It's gonna be like, Oh, this was awesome. Are
Miquel Campos 1:40:48
you saying that our jobs gonna go away?
Unknown Speaker 1:40:50
No, I'm saying that our job should have gone away years ago. Kind of hearing. For the low level nonsense that we're still fighting all the time, that should have gone away 10 years ago, but it's just barely starting to. It's starting to erode so that you can focus on nice looking characters or, you know, you're like, Oh, you know what, maybe I don't need a PhD in facial muscle facial muscles to make a character smile well, and hand that off to an animator to create something with it, right? Like, you still need the translation, you still need someone making the paints and the brushes, you still need pigment and canvases, and you still need the technical tools of the trade that we shouldn't have to mind the or
Unknown Speaker 1:41:33
Hmm.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:34
And I don't need to go out and hunt down expensive cobalt to grind it up and make a pigment for someone. You know,
Miquel Campos 1:41:42
yeah. And I think here, this is a good point, also to the other topic that we wanted to talk before, like, the art versus tech were these techniques, these are bended advances, it will blend between the technical vs the artistic and how we, we I think we are in the middle, like really in the middle of these two, with the technical word. It's artistic, because at art can be very technical. If you think about that. And tech tech, what we consider tech can be very artistic, I think it's a creativity. It's, I mean, you define creativity. It's, it's, it's not like only a draw only a picture only, I'm sorry, it can be many things for a DVD there. So yeah, that's a very, very interesting thing for me, like, how I mean, if you want to create digital characters, let's say and move it and create life in games, or pre render whatever you decide to use as a medium. How do you do you think how is it important for you guys on this on this balance?
Unknown Speaker 1:42:52
What audience
Miquel Campos 1:42:54
was the audience? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:42:57
you know, what I mean? Like their their YouTube animations for kids that were, technically are 25 years ago level of rigging and nonsense, and it's their millionaires, right? Like, the baby no baby watching that doesn't owe each one. There's there's so many now, there's so many horrifying,
Unknown Speaker 1:43:18
yeah. But they are, they are target audience appropriate, right? They, the one year old does not care about deformations, or timing, they just see a character talking with bright colours. And that's it. You know, we, we spend three years and millions of dollars and all this investment to make a character that looks slightly better than the Maya viewport to run around in and, and people get tired of that game in six months. But you've spent all this time right. Obviously, your projects different is because it's a legacy project. It's a it's a living ecosystem that you're continually feeding and growing like a garden, right? It's not just a one time you publish to disk, and then it's gone. But, you know, I think, to me, the art and tech stuff, people get hung up on it the same way you say advanced rigging in that if you come to me, or, you know, if I asked you guys to build an amazing character rig, and I have no time and no budget, and my audience is a bunch of 12 to 12 year old and under, you know, their expectations of like Roblox, and, you know, Minecraft is going to set what the end product can be, versus a bunch of jaded old people like, you know, me and rich,
Miquel Campos 1:44:30
right? I'm in the
Unknown Speaker 1:44:34
people that you expect a certain level of stuff. And you look back at films even from 10 years ago, and you're like, oh, the composite, like the compositors weren't the blacks and matching more and like whatever, you know, like there's just a bunch of stuff that aged poorly because, yeah, it didn't matter at the time.
Alicia Carvalho 1:44:49
And I think it's interesting because you talk about these audience, right, like you're talking about these
horrifying animations on YouTube. I have no Nephew. So as soon as he's a certain age, I was like, what do you what?
Izzy Cheng 1:45:03
Are they? Like also, like made through an AI? I've heard? Like there's, I have heard Yes, it depends.
Unknown Speaker 1:45:12
Yeah. But again, like if you have a library of stuff, who cares? Like, doesn't matter, like you can buy a set of assets that are nice enough and be done and generate content for years.
Alicia Carvalho 1:45:23
They think the thing is, is that like, it's very interesting when you talk about like, who the audiences, right? Because when you're talking about, like, let's say, a high end film,
Unknown Speaker 1:45:32
yeah. It's
Alicia Carvalho 1:45:34
like your art director is not 12 years old. Right, right. Like everybody who's like, these kind of films, and this kind of product is not, it's for kids. Yeah, from marketing point of view. Right. But like, it's really, sometimes they feel like it's for, like us, like it's for it's, it's for other industry people. Yes. You know, because like, you want to, like, oh, look how much we like, push the lighting and like, like, Oh, this was so realistic, that we actually had to, like, bring it back. Like it's, it's not really it is for children, or is for the general public, but it kind of isn't the same time like, and
Richard Hurrey 1:46:12
I love that though. It's like, what do you want to be doing? I
Unknown Speaker 1:46:15
just
Richard Hurrey 1:46:16
just did a podcast thing this week, and it was talking about rigging. And we were talking about how the mechanical side, like building the motion rig versus doing the deformation rig. And the response was, well, a simple skin way, you know, you can just quick bind, and you're done. And that's totally good enough. And I'm just like dying inside. Because I'm like, you're like, Ah, well, it's
like, the thing is, is
that like, you're right, like, for that audience it is. And there are certainly many, many real economic reasons for that. But it's like, that's not the space I want to play in. Like, that's not what that's not the level I want to work with. I want to bring at highest quality, I want it to be beautiful. And sometimes that can be beautiful with constraints. But to your point, Alicia, it's like that's just not the space I want to play in like
Unknown Speaker 1:46:59
to use that space missed the target. Like, oh, that is beautiful and terrible to watch. Like,
Izzy Cheng 1:47:05
there's something to be said about, like young kids who like, yeah, like, you can give them something that's not amazing and beautiful. And that's fine. But there's also I mean, kids Also remember, like pretty things that they see. Like, I still remember the Disney movies when I was little, I don't know. But that's, I don't know what I'm looking at. I don't know, like the amazing thing that I've seen. I just know, it's amazing. And when you go back and watch it, you're like, what I know, like poker, or like Lion King or watch,
Alicia Carvalho 1:47:37
watch Little Mermaid. I was watching Little Mermaid because I was watching Little Mermaid and she's like, in her cave. Sing her song.
Unknown Speaker 1:47:43
Yeah.
Miquel Campos 1:47:44
And I'm just like, whoo, you're watching it eyes change, since
we could just see the space between the
eyes, like not sticking you're just
Unknown Speaker 1:48:01
digital, though. Like, I wonder how much of that like broke in the process of not seeing it on film. But I have the same issue where it's like, when you remember, you're like, I'm gonna watch this thing. And you're like, like watching
Unknown Speaker 1:48:11
old episodes of nightrider.
Unknown Speaker 1:48:12
Yeah. But again, like your context changes. And so I think in the in that same way, like you have to temper the effect. And I just, I was working with someone about retargeting motion. And I think I may have posted this on Twitter, but it's like, you know, that the end result is does it feel right? And if it feels right and looks good and connects with the audience, then you've done your job, you don't need an extra, like, you may feel better that knowing that every vertex doesn't clip and everything, like muscle is accurate. And you've spent all this time and it's you know, one second on screen, you know, like the budget balance the end result the time like, you make a rig that's amazing but slow and the animator doesn't iterate and the animation is less than right, it's you You are responsible for balancing the tools you can't make a camera for photographer that takes amazing pictures if they don't move and if they have perfect lighting that's unreasonable. And yet that's the iPhone first camera everyone's like you can take amazing pictures just don't move and be in full sun and you're and it was good enough right everyone's like I have a camera now in my pocket good enough Well, I think that is our companies were like oh my god I cannot see enough camera anymore.
Richard Hurrey 1:49:33
So what is that good good enough is that's an interesting thing right? Good good enough is is a is an interesting target because it is different. It is different for every endeavour and it can be a financial good enough it can be an artistic good enough it can be does it tell the story? You know and I think and now with games and film kind of converging like good enough is a weird mix of who knows what how
Miquel Campos 1:49:56
Yeah. And I think other thing on the on the like qualities and what is this standard, like high and low and be like, from like few years ago or many years ago until now, like, ultra realistic was the like, high end thing, the most complex and stylized was the cheap thing the, let's say quotes era. No, I think it's it's almost the opposite side and it's not now it's gonna be in a few, like very short that they
Unknown Speaker 1:50:30
really broke everybody right? Yeah, what's
Miquel Campos 1:50:32
realistic is the cheese mine was just blown like,
Unknown Speaker 1:50:36
visor was the Wrigley revised
Miquel Campos 1:50:39
and the good
Izzy Cheng 1:50:42
and the other movie with him and I got all the
Miquel Campos 1:50:44
Oh, we need to do another podcast we never do.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:51
Oh no.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:53
Yeah we go right like it was like we gotta make this more real, more real more real and,
Miquel Campos 1:50:58
and and the other the other thing that I wanted to comment it's like, I think I'm very like comics fan like and you know, if you think like what is a good comic? It depends. It's if you go to European comic, the art it's crazy in some of the our books, it's crazy. That takes years to do one one like, book, then you have the American comic that has his own language and his own style, you have the manga style, kind of, like, let's say schools, I don't know how to say. And then you have this indie comic for others that I personally i love i for many years, I was taking like this draw and this thing the quality but now like I think especially I when I was in Montreal, there is a really nice bookstore there for indie on, I think it's an in Milan at the end. I don't remember the name. But they have. Yeah. It's very small one, I think. And they do editorial and, and I discover many comic books, they're from, like, artists like Indian artists that I really love it and you think the drawers, the drawers are, by far, you can see kind of like knife draws some of the big stories and, and I really enjoyed that. So I think, like you were saying like the target audience, which is the target audience before was this kind of like, this is the little This is the child and this is the quality and this is the quality and blah, blah, blah. Now I think it's more about what you trying to convey with the whole as a unit if it's a game, if it's a story, sexual story, a movie, whatever. And the target. And yeah, we will see more with the ease of the technology. Following that. I think I feel
Unknown Speaker 1:52:48
like that's, that's, oh, it's definitely broadened, right. Like when I was looking for when I was learning animation back in, you know, whenever I mean, I've, I've known what I wanted to do for a long time, and I didn't know how to do it, or how to get there, or if it was even possible, but I was like, you know, I, I knew the direction I wanted to go at a fairly young age. And by the time I graduated high school, I had been watching like every behind the scenes thing and like making up and what you know, like whatever I could find, but it was still a very, it felt very removed from my reality. And so, you know, when I started going to college and looking at stuff, you'd go to like an indie, like, animation festival, and you'd see like one thing that was incredible, or like the early, the early mind's eye videos where most of it was just like spheres and things. And then there'd be like, some little amazing blip of animation from like, PDI or something. Right? Like, you know, it was so hard to find, but you see it and you're like, That is amazing. And now, it feels like that kind of stuff is everywhere. Yeah. And it's it's but it's it's context based, right? Like you go to an indie bookstore, and you pick up a magazine, you don't expect it to be like an x men comic, but you're like, I bet this story is really cool. And it's gritty, and it's like you can feel the creator in the story and in the in the, in what you're looking for. It's exactly what you want. Yeah, but if you're if you're looking at Spider Man and your distribution audiences owe a huge amount of people and they they've The context is they expect a certain look and style and story that that has got legacy asset, right? Like you have you It started off, you can kind of do whatever and then it becomes it has to have a standard. And I feel like the same thing happens now with digital storytelling tools, right? Yeah, you can make a game that is super high concept, and it's really cool. But if you're wanting to play a really awesome quake like game, that's not going to satisfy you. Right, but you can appreciate both but they don't have to be the same thing. And for a while, I felt like all games tried to be the same thing. Whatever was popular Grand Theft Auto was great. Let's rip that off. And I think like a copy of To get on that bandwagon, but now it feels like everyone can be creative in their own way and still find a voice and be inspired and interesting. And you can you can support that CREATIVITY WITHOUT like making an Avenger. So I think I love them.
Izzy Cheng 1:55:14
Definitely games. Like that's definitely true. I think maybe because the barrier of entry is lower, like finding a game engine that first of all does 3d and is free. Like, that's insane. That didn't exist when I was little. Yeah, like you'd have to write your own engine maybe. Are all the engines are proprietary, like if you were to do like a World of Warcraft, or Starcraft mod, then you
Unknown Speaker 1:55:41
right? Yeah, you were just doing mods in that man? Yeah,
Izzy Cheng 1:55:43
yeah. So the barrier of entry of an artist or game designer is lower now. And that's, I'm introducing just like so many types of ideas. And like, that's what actually excites me the most about, like games right now is like, I'm excited about the indie games. I'm excited that like somebody in their apartment had an idea. And they took unity and just made a game. And now it's like insanely popular. Something like that. Like,
Unknown Speaker 1:56:09
I'd be bird. Yeah.
Miquel Campos 1:56:16
Sorry.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:17
It's almost too sad to like, let
Unknown Speaker 1:56:18
you down there. Sorry. Sorry. I did.
Unknown Speaker 1:56:23
Such a good story.
Miquel Campos 1:56:24
Yeah. But no, I mean, it's, it's cool. Because, you know, to your point, Miguel, like, the case for photo realism reached a certain point. And I can imagine people going, Yeah, but then we have to make everything photo real. Like you got to like, how, how expensive is that? versus if I take the stylized route. I can be really creative and also production minded. And it feels
Unknown Speaker 1:56:44
so expensive. Yeah, it can
Miquel Campos 1:56:47
still be expensive, but
but the point is, you can you can push things, and I do think at a certain point, everybody's kind of tired to reality, right? It's like, All right, cool, but show me something different. Yeah, that's where spider verse for me was, yeah, I'm seeing something different. And it was awesome. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:57:02
and exciting. Yeah,
Izzy Cheng 1:57:04
I think my boss would hate me, but I'm just gonna say it anyway. He was like, taking a risk with that, though.
Miquel Campos 1:57:10
Yeah, of course. He
Unknown Speaker 1:57:10
was what everybody did. But I think now now you see it show up in games, right? The new Spider Man, PlayStation game, it's got that feel. They're like, yeah, we want to make this feel like it is a game and there's a I'm gonna I'm gonna do a quick plug. Because rap fans man. Richard lycra. and I are going to do a talk for annum state, we got our talk approved. Oh, so the three of us are going to do an hour roundtable on animation, ephemeral animation, discussion. You know, we're, I joke that I'm just there to break things and make things sad. But like, you know, the, we come back to this idea that, you know, it's a risk, because the expectations are, this is going to be hard to do, and we don't know how to do it. But the more you remove that barrier from the tools, like, Oh, I can only get this rig in Maya, I can only animate in this software, I can only get that look out of unreal. You know, you start to remove all that. And now it's like, I have this idea. I want to see a movie that looks like a stippled, Lichtenstein drawing, and it's like, will that even work? I don't know. But we can get that rendered and done and it feels right. And you decide like in a 15 minute shot, like, Ah, this is amazing. Let's spend three years making it versus spending three years making the game six years making a movie, or that was a flop Hey, we're not gonna market it. Forget it. And you're, you know,
Miquel Campos 1:58:33
yeah, and,
Unknown Speaker 1:58:34
yeah, sorry. It's just it flips it around. But the
Miquel Campos 1:58:36
thing it's like the audience now it's also more like willing to receive this and before I think the the big, like I remember before, was all 2d, and Pixar released a toy story and was a game changer. But it was also a lot of rejection that people like it looks like whatever. But that changed the thread that and then it goes from better better yet, but what I mean is like, now the T shirt table good enough. But the thing is, like, I think now that people is used to all these digital creation, and out to the law to these coming back, digital, it's spreading from the Canon that was originally like Pixar style that make the Canon for cartoon like style, a stylized animation for animation features. And then was the photorealistic Jurassic Park line that was the photorealistic and I think these lines established the Canon for many years. And now with the like this openness. I think there is audiences
Izzy Cheng 1:59:44
ready.
Unknown Speaker 1:59:45
Yes, exactly. It's a watch so many terrible little cartoons on you.
Miquel Campos 1:59:50
Yeah, that. Yeah, my little a war. No, but
everybody certainly as an audience is more sophisticated now than they were 20 years. ago I but
Unknown Speaker 2:00:00
that's what I'm saying. Like, if you look at Toy Story now, right? It, it holds up because the story was really good and the animation there about those characters, but it's like you can tell the difference. And it, you know, and then you Yeah, you look at Toy Story four and you're like that doesn't feel at all like the first movie but the first movie was like we'd never seen it before, right like it was the it was the Conquistadores coming over and ships and the native tribes going, I don't know what I'm looking at what Star Wars in the 70s having exactly like you the context and the expectation at this moment in time is going to be good enough. And then four years down the line after everyone's gotten used to it, then the next version of that has to be better. But it should be better because you've taken all that information to get there and build on it. And I think I really, to me, I think that's still the problem of balancing it as an independent artist or as a creator or, you know, as a person inside the studio, the expectation of the client and your own team and what they want to do and what is reasonable within the time limit. Like for management, like that's a nightmare, because you're like, well, I want it to look like Hulk and you're like, well, you have the scanning budget to scan a person and do you know, like, you know, what's reasonable? Is muscle Sim, what's not reasonable is an actor and four weeks of scanning and processing and 100 people to get it to that point. And then then you start the process of making a move. And you're like, Okay, well now, you know, like, at each stage, it all has to hold up together. And this was early on, this was the same argument I'd have with animators mocap, like all mocap, the producer thinks it's going to solve our problem and be super fast. And my first response always was like, Nope, it's more work. It's just up front. What it gives you is a standard platform to build from instead of a bunch of individual pieces that are all out of sync, and then they finish close enough, right, you go to a capture, you spent weeks planning the shoot, you get everything prepped, you scan everything, right, you capture all the data, you have everything at the same level. Now everyone, regardless of skill level can build from that and you never go below unless you really mess it up. But you have a starting point that is organised and, and not finished at the end. And hopefully everything is the same level. And you want animations not great one animations amazing. Like everyone had to manage who was the better animator? No, you start at the front. And and now everything is at the baseline of here's real, make it fit your character, make it look right on the character enhance it, but you always are at a standard point. And so I think with rigging, we're still not there at that standard point. Like you can get like a das character that's basically skinned and has clothing or whatever. But you know, it doesn't. It's not going to sim the same way we don't you can get a muscles character from Ziva and it's a baseline rig and deformation system and then you can enhance it. But you know, if a character modeller wants to model some crazy alien, like, it's not, we don't have a baseline that motion capture or taking a picture gives us and that's where we're still missing the mark rigging was we you know, the AI rig net, right? Like you can feed it information and get a rig that's similar based on what you feed it the information system rich, you've built a library that you're having to fit manually, or that can be repurposed, because it's really powerful. But we're still we're still under the ledge where we have each TDs ability is whether or not you can push it and the budget and all this stuff instead of just going yeah, here's the baseline rig that can be purposed and fit, and it's gonna sim and looks great, and the flexes and all that stuff. That's where we're still missing a huge chunk. And I don't know how far away We are from getting to that level. But I'm, I'm I know, yeah,
Miquel Campos 2:03:56
I've watched all kinds of auto rig efforts come up with great fanfare and fail and and like, just
Unknown Speaker 2:04:05
still out there.
Unknown Speaker 2:04:06
Yeah, well,
Miquel Campos 2:04:06
I just mean, like, you know, we're gonna make this so that we can reuse this stuff over and over again, and it'll just automatically work, you know, and, and I've been involved, like, passionately trying to make it work and you end up at the end of the day, you're like, you know, someday I think the reality you want will exist. I mean, it has to, I think but right now, if we can get to 80 or 90% really, really fast we can spend the last 10% just making the art right making things pretty making. I think that's that's the that is the thing I am chasing right now, which is how can I make 80% happen instantaneously? Yeah, and and then spend the last 20% just art directing and bringing sensibilities and stylizing and whatever. So, personally, that's that is that is the path I'm on. I'm not I'm not trying to build an automatic automatic magic system.
Unknown Speaker 2:04:57
I just wanted to
Izzy Cheng 2:04:59
it's also a We're always at the whim of technology and how fast technology can.
Unknown Speaker 2:05:04
Yeah, yeah. And
Unknown Speaker 2:05:05
how it's, and will the animators use it. And to some degree, like the control side, the UI side is different, right? And this is the thing that I still struggle with. It's like, I know, I built it. So I know what it's capable of, and how I can use it to the best advantage. But if I hand that off, without like, a day of training, do they understand that and, you know, the defamation side is the final look of it. But the defamation is only as good as the motion driving it. So, you know, if they've refused to use a clavicle control, and the arms just break, you know, like,
Unknown Speaker 2:05:42
your reaction aleesha? Like, why is your arm breaking, because you're breaking the arm.
Unknown Speaker 2:05:50
Like, each has to go together, right? The modelling has to support the deformation, the motion rig has to support the movement in a way that makes the defamation feel right. And then all has to be at the same level, like Avengers works, because everyone worked together to the same level. And everywhere else, it's, it's still jumbled you you are at the whim of like, well, I got this one good model, and I bought this other one from a scan store. And this rig is like, just okay, I used em gear, but I don't have good information or I have a Ziva rig that I the enemy to run this extra control on. I have no idea how to do it, I can't integrate it. So it each stage there's still this this, like, fight to just get to good enough.
Miquel Campos 2:06:32
And I wonder what what that will look like, you know, I I feel like someday we will get there where there's some standardisation and stuff. But it's it's really hard because it just seems like our variables in the rigging space are so all over the map. Like Like we're animators, they, you know, they want they animation is is the that performance, which is almost standardised in a way, like you're trying to make appealing motions. But like, I feel like every couple of years, I'm trying to figure out how to do the same thing over again better, or or there's a slight difference in something and then you know, it's not going to work the same way or get a different art director that wants to see shapes moving in a different way. Or it's like, good
Unknown Speaker 2:07:11
dude before?
Unknown Speaker 2:07:12
Yeah, well, I
Miquel Campos 2:07:13
mean, it's well, I don't know how many how often I've solved. You guys mentioned earlier, like you solve a problem, and then you forget that you solved it, and then you go find your own solution. Oh,
yeah. But yeah, I
Unknown Speaker 2:07:23
mean, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 2:07:24
I would love for that. Yeah,
Miquel Campos 2:07:26
I would, I would love for there to be some kind of standard, but it's like, it just feels like we're not close to that yet. Like,
Unknown Speaker 2:07:35
I feel like we're moving
Alicia Carvalho 2:07:36
further and further away from it. To be honest. We talked about like, um, it seems like as you see that the new trend is that you have like, specialised software for different things, right. So like, for me, I'm, I'm at a point now where I kind of go into my production bubble and I pop my head up and I'm like, okay, I want to improve myself as an artist. What's next? And I look at right, so like for me, okay. It's um, I have my Maya skills great. furthering unreal Sproles. Awesome. Maya now has by frost, okay. Houdini has has their tools. But like, so it's kind of like, what do I focus on? Right? Like, what, what is what basket do I put my eggs in? So that and because for me, it's it's a very, like, we're talking all these large, high level things. It's very low level thing of like, for me as an artist, which I put my eggs, what basket to put my eggs in so that I can have longevity in my career. And I feel like this happens, like, like you say, rich, every two or three years is a new thing. And you're like, Oh, I gotta I have to jump on that. And, you know, yeah,
Izzy Cheng 2:08:50
I think that like goes back to what Brad was saying in his interview. That like, a good tech artist needs to be resilient and, like, not be afraid of making mistakes and like being wrong and like, learning new things like that is the whole thing about being a tech artist is we're not static, like we don't just, it's funny is I'm learning like to draw and to do traditional art from concept artists. And when I talk to them, they're like, Oh, I learned stuff from like, 1000 years ago, and like, the skills are the same. I have no idea what you do, because you do like cutting edge stuff like that is like the reality of our job is like
Unknown Speaker 2:09:34
we did the wrong colours mix doesn't suddenly change.
Izzy Cheng 2:09:37
Yeah, exactly. Like the human anatomy is not that much different than like,
Miquel Campos 2:09:43
yeah, so
Izzy Cheng 2:09:44
yeah, that's the reality of Yeah.
Miquel Campos 2:09:47
And and like being willing to go where do you I watched people like basically fall out of the industry because they were unwilling to change. And you go, okay, because there is a point when you go, I'm honing. I'm honing. I'm refining and refining, I'm getting better, I'm getting better. And then you go, you know, you poke your head out, because at least when you go, the Unreal freight train is coming show. So like,
Unknown Speaker 2:10:09
yeah, better hop on that.
Miquel Campos 2:10:12
I got to figure out how I'm gonna, how I'm gonna go. And you know, ZBrush was a big one, right? Like, how? Now, what's interesting about that particular one is when interns come in and doing modelling work, and they're all using ZBrush, like I, you know, for me, that's certainly not where I got my start. And so their topology is crap.
Unknown Speaker 2:10:30
Oh, yes. Like, like, it's like, I don't even know how to.
Unknown Speaker 2:10:36
You know, it's like, oh, guys,
Unknown Speaker 2:10:38
carrying right, like, they don't care. Why should we still care? Because we're still back in the dark ages manually worried about points weighing? Right? Like, right, so
Miquel Campos 2:10:46
we're still out of seeing what we got to figure out how to get because thing is, I still don't know how to resolve the problem of how do I pull and push and make shapes happen? In a directable? way? It isn't just sculpting at every frame. Yeah, because that's not practical either. Right?
Izzy Cheng 2:11:05
Technology also has to like advance because like, right, because like, computers, just, I mean, for games, it just can't handle like all the stuff you're showing in modo like that. That was pretty awesome. But like that a game engine is not a game. I'm just working with bones and skins right now. I'm waiting for like,
Unknown Speaker 2:11:25
a game, like the game engines to run in his system will allow that to a degree. But as soon as I put that on a Madden with a full football team, you're
Unknown Speaker 2:11:35
gonna hate Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 2:11:37
Right. Like, you know, and again, this is like, how do we, that for me, I, I've struggled learning things for a while, as far as just, you know, in general, like, you know, his he could out code me no matter what, like, even at her worst coding, it's still better than what I've got, Miguel's got a better auto rig tool than I've ever written. Rich's got amazing deformations, stuff and years of deformation experience that I won't have. And, you know, Alicia, your, your personal skills and management qualities and on top of the technical stuff are well beyond what I have the mental capacity to just do, right? Like it doesn't, I'm not going to be that kind of leader ever. But how I continue to learn is to come back to focusing on the foundation principles of what I'm trying to do. And for me, if I want to work on better defamation, there will be two to 10 new Pixar level papers about new defamation models. But I need to go back and look at, okay, how does the bone interact with the skin right? Like I go back to the foundation reference, when when you look at animators that are stuck trying to get better, they're looking at animation, they need to be looking at what the Masters looked at. And that's, that's something that comes up over and over again. It's like, don't look to the Masters look at what they looked at. So when you pop up at a production, like oh my god, there's new unreal, and Houdini and all this stuff. It's like, what is the problem I want to solve? Or, you know, you focus on a new area to learn. I want to learn blender. Well, I can't learn Blender outside of my realm I'm going to work on does it have a nonlinear animation tool? Yes. Oh, it's broken. Well, who hate? Hey, everybody, I'm trying to learn this. What are these tools? And then it's crickets and
Unknown Speaker 2:13:30
good enough.
Unknown Speaker 2:13:34
Theme Song.
Unknown Speaker 2:13:36
Hey, I'm trying to figure this out. Someone? Oh, no one has figured it out. Okay, well, I'm just gonna click around and break stuff. And go back to what I know, which is what I've what I've drawn on from these other sources. I know that I need to blend motion. How do I try it? Right? So, you know, I always try to come back to a very focused thing to try to learn with and not Yeah, not give myself to me options. I don't need to learn Unreal, I just need to learn how to get my character in there. And from there, I'll discover things. And that's my process is like, I just need I need a little chunk of I need an entry point. And then I need some breathing room to play and break stuff. And then I can look around and go, Oh, someone's doing that. Well, I understand that relating to you're
Miquel Campos 2:14:19
still innovating, you're still you're still going and looking at new things to readapt your knowledge base. And that was kind of
Unknown Speaker 2:14:26
Yes. We're
Miquel Campos 2:14:28
willing to go to
Unknown Speaker 2:14:29
can be Yeah, it's like arable, you're approaching
Izzy Cheng 2:14:31
it like a project based thing, which is also how I learned to like, I don't learn by like diving into a book I like try to make something that I want to make and find the tools to make it and then go from there.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:44
Yeah. And then I try and I try as quickly as possible to find all the people that are doing something with it. Because they've the point now of us not having to send things by by carrier pigeon, and by waiting for five weeks for boat to cross the ocean is that I can go you can Hey, you just did this cool thing. I saw like, you know,
Richard Hurrey 2:15:01
hat.
Unknown Speaker 2:15:02
Where did you figure that out? How did you do that? And I can, you know, we can draw on the collective much faster. And not not to try to skip a process, but just to have a new understanding of it in a way that is using your time wisely, right? Because I'm like, I don't want to start from scratch. Learning how to make paint. If I made an awesome paint. I'm like, Oh, you mix these things and found this great. Let's all build on that. Yeah, instead of starting from scratch.
Miquel Campos 2:15:30
Yeah, we write in the show. Liverpudlians. That's, yeah, you can remember that. And also, I think, like, all these technology coming on all these new things, it's all great. And as for me, I it creates kind of anxiety on the time, like, sign or learn all these and what I think my like my, like, my, go do it. Like the any advantage, it's worth the investment. Yeah, if you can reply that, yes, this is something I really cannot do it with my actual tool set. Right? I will add it if it's just it's gonna be here a little better. Here is just know. So that so at the end is a trade off. I will not invest my time because at the end is the time what it's the most important. We're using it to like, at the end of the day, it's all about shapes in motion.
Right? Like everything that we do is like
Unknown Speaker 2:16:28
it is it is getting on
Unknown Speaker 2:16:30
time. That's different. Yeah,
Richard Hurrey 2:16:33
I have shapes in motion. Right?
Miquel Campos 2:16:35
I have a script that put one controla per vertex perfect, great, complete control.
absolute control. That's good.
Unknown Speaker 2:16:45
That's great. You
Unknown Speaker 2:16:46
ever that's the way it should be. That's That's exactly right. animators should animate and raking.
Miquel Campos 2:16:51
If they can give them a treat freelance Freelancer script this
Unknown Speaker 2:16:57
just model it right? That never works. The animator doesn't want to hear just open up ZBrush and sculpt. But yeah, I think that's like what Ralph's doing with him. Yeah, yeah. Right. But there are the tools that have done that have done. So from a point of view of, hey, I've made a tool that lets you do this, instead of an animator going, I want to do this. Yeah, I need the tool. And you see the development of some really nice rigging technology or tools that come out of an animator coming from that point of view, right. And you, you see other areas where that the animator just refuses to be stopped by the tool, meaning they're not, you know, all the VR animation, right? Like, that stuff's incredible. But it's basically frame by frame sculpting stop motion people, it's, it's still frame by frame. To some degree, they're still stuck. And you look at Raph with the ephemeral rigging, and you're like, you know, he initially said, This rigging style only works for animation. And, you know, it's it doesn't really apply for VFX. Or, you know, it doesn't work beyond that context. And I said, Look, this is how motion has been done forever, I don't know why you've you limited to this one, your style, it's not it's a, it's a, it's an interaction mode. It's not, it's not that the rig has to behave this way all the time it does for him, because that's the way he animates. But, you know, instead of building a rig that is slowed down by every feature, the tooling removes that all you have to do is decide do I interpolate or not, and when, and then what tools are built around those poses, and everything else is just pose processing. If I create a bunch of frames, those frames shouldn't interact and rely on each other unless I want them to Yeah, they, right now, we're always forced to have interpolation, you set a key, you set a key you move, and they have relationships over time. rasterization rig is I pose it and when I let go, there is no I don't know where I was
Richard Hurrey 2:19:00
basically digital stop mode, man what your
Unknown Speaker 2:19:03
except except that you have the ability to and you know, Raph wants the ability to manipulate across frames and time and you look at Houdini taking the concept of a frame and pushing it to geometry and splitting it out as physical points and lines over time that are disconnected, you suddenly can lattice deform an entire animation as geometry, you're no longer sinking, you're no longer linking one post the next through a bunch of attribute values. You're You're just creating snapshots that relate as postures, and when you decide you want to interpolate it again, then you can you can reassess and you're
Richard Hurrey 2:19:44
gonna have to figure this all out, teach us so that we can, but I think that
Unknown Speaker 2:19:48
that's a it's a rigged style. It's not a but but both things have to come up you have to have the rigging tools and the animators have to play with it and be comfortable with it and and those things have to go up together. The tools, the animation, the technology, and then the deformation side still has to look good in the end. But, you know, we have the problem. The other problem for me is that there's it's not just learning one thing, it's like, one person can focus on motion systems, one person can focus on deformation. another person's focusing on tooling and pipeline and interaction. And they're all separate disciplines under the one model of like, oh, you're just rigging a character.
Unknown Speaker 2:20:24
Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 2:20:24
this rig a character. It's fine. Oh, my gosh.
Unknown Speaker 2:20:27
Oh, my gosh. Yes.
Unknown Speaker 2:20:29
This is picking just just rigging just right. Yeah. Sure. Is rigging? No, yeah. I'm looking forward to when that when that normalises a little bit?
Richard Hurrey 2:20:41
We'll we'll see if we should do these every so often. And see, are we there yet?
Miquel Campos 2:20:44
No. Yeah, check back in 10 years. Yeah, maybe we can do it. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think it is a good point. If for a wrap here. I don't know guys, if you feel like we are running on two hours 20 my timer here and a little more. But I think this conversation can go on. I mean, I will be happy to continue over some hours on this and definitely we we should repeat his Yeah, every not every year but maybe every every few months. Maybe we can repeat and like, because I really enjoyed this and yeah, a lot of super nice information. I think like verify stuff and yeah, I was also I didn't talk too much. I was just listening like, first listener on the on this episode like Brad's gonna win the talk the most in the pot. You know?
Brad Clark 2:21:41
I don't I don't have a problem with that.
Unknown Speaker 2:21:44
Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 2:21:45
I try. I tried to hold it back.
Unknown Speaker 2:21:46
I just I was like, I'm
Unknown Speaker 2:21:47
gonna be passionate. I'm gonna be
Izzy Cheng 2:21:49
the lecture that's his thing. You know,
Unknown Speaker 2:21:52
I don't mean to
Miquel Campos 2:21:55
it's great. Yeah, I think Yeah, it's definitely I will like to invite Ralph Anzovin Yeah. Also to one of these and open this up and just kind of Kenya
I mean, what's neat is the different perspectives and point of views Yeah,
I think it's great to everybody like have this like, like wisdom together today. It's a it's a really great and yeah, thank you so much. I cannot express my gratitude for all you having the time to come together and and have this passion share and go deep down the rabbit hole of this because I mean, this I mean, this probably is I think is the first time ever I had this opportunity. Like do i mean normally is one to one colleague or you know, to max but we never go like this. And we were able we saw
different perspectives we can all be in the same room. We got to.
I would love to I never been in secret. I'm not ashamed to come first. Even here when he was in tailgates it will make it happen somehow.
Unknown Speaker 2:23:03
Did you ticket make it make a make a rigging buddies? SIGGRAPH. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 2:23:11
oh, yeah.
Izzy Cheng 2:23:14
We amazing like hearing everyone's perspective and background. I mean, I always feel like, Oh, my story is not that special. Like everybody knows that, like my experience and blah, blah, blah. But then I hear
Unknown Speaker 2:23:29
no, I like Yeah.
Izzy Cheng 2:23:32
Every I listened to like, everybody's different. interview and like, we all have different, like, perspectives and experiences that we we all like bring to the table and it's Yeah, it's so fun meeting new tech artists. Like we're all so different. It's insane.
Miquel Campos 2:23:49
Yeah, I always say like, I learn every from every single episode of the podcast, I learned something. Always and yeah, and sometimes it's something like open my mind on different aspects like from like, management like when I when I did the one with Elisa, it was like, it wasn't for me was like, oh, like a lot of learning because I'm also like supervising so I realised how much I have to learn and and for many of you guys like in everybody that is not here today like they always have like some very interesting insights even the people like you saying like, doesn't feel they are it's not so special or but yeah, just sharing that thing that did you think it's not a special it's it's something very special for and there is always something that you can I mean, if you willing to learn there's always something that you can you can learn from, from each person. And that's Yeah, for me the most amazing thing of the podcast up to now like,
Unknown Speaker 2:24:52
I appreciate you running and having so many people on and doing it consistently because I guess yeah, you've been learning But each one of them is so great to hear. And then it doesn't feel like you know, there there are a lot of voices for animation and other disciplines. Yeah. Tech art tends to have fewer. Are you an
Miquel Campos 2:25:13
animator? Yeah, I quickly, animator anonymous. That's the nice thing about
Unknown Speaker 2:25:20
the stories of each of this, you know, our end goal is the same. And our process ends up kind of being the same but through different paths. Yeah, and I think that's what's kind of neat about it is that there's space for all of those in the same job like that the job itself is so open and flexible that all of those all the ways to get there are still valid, and each one brings something better or different or expands the
Miquel Campos 2:25:48
reason we don't have a clear name for our title. Right? is it's Tech animator, Rigger, character TD, i don't know this
Unknown Speaker 2:25:58
part is
Unknown Speaker 2:25:59
yeah
Unknown Speaker 2:26:03
yeah, regen RC is a catch all like what it's doing. So to
Miquel Campos 2:26:07
come up with it. Yeah, we'll do
Unknown Speaker 2:26:10
it like That's it.
Izzy Cheng 2:26:12
That's it. Perforce fixer
Richard Hurrey 2:26:18
upper force pretty good rigger.
Miquel Campos 2:26:22
I mean, like brute force rigger,
Unknown Speaker 2:26:25
you mean Excel spreadsheet? formula fixer?
Unknown Speaker 2:26:28
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 2:26:30
We're just we're character parents. Right. We have to fix all the
Izzy Cheng 2:26:34
doctors.
Unknown Speaker 2:26:36
We're the little
Unknown Speaker 2:26:41
Altru
Miquel Campos 2:26:43
I Graham crumbling eight or something like,
Unknown Speaker 2:26:51
enable laters Yeah, that's Yeah, we can't hear. Yeah, we can't. It was awesome. Thank you for letting me talk too much.
Miquel Campos 2:26:59
Oh, pleasure to listen, you and every scrape. Thank you so much, guys. Do you want to say something closer?
It was great. Awesome. Great to meet everybody and look forward to doing the scan. It'd be fun.
Izzy Cheng 2:27:12
Yeah, very cool. Everybody.
Miquel Campos 2:27:14
Yeah. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks. Rich for the idea, actually.
Unknown Speaker 2:27:21
Yeah.
Miquel Campos 2:27:23
I'm an extrovert. So anytime I can talk to people. I'm happy
Unknown Speaker 2:27:27
as you're in your black room, and
Miquel Campos 2:27:30
wait, wait, wait,
Unknown Speaker 2:27:31
I'm in my garage.
Miquel Campos 2:27:35
I was about to guard this bar. But now I'm keeping it. Now we think you guys. That's the one that we want. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:27:44
Good to see you guys.
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