Join us for episode 6 of CGCast as we dive deep into the world of computer graphics with Leigh Van Der Byl, a seasoned visual effects artist and moderator of CG Talk. Leigh shares her journey from a young gamer in South Africa to working on high-profile
films like The Aviator and
Sin City. She discusses her unique work methods, including her recent embrace of ZBrush for texturing, and offers candid advice on navigating the CG industry, emphasizing the importance of realistic self-assessment and continuous learning.
Leigh also opens up about her experiences moving to the U.S., moderating CG Talk, and the future of the platform. With a blend of personal anecdotes and professional insights, this episode promises to inspire and inform aspiring artists and industry
veterans alike.
Welcome everybody to the 6th episode of CGCast. Today is
the 8th of October and today I have a special guest with me
, Leigh Van Derbyl.
Today I'll do a quick interview with her to find out what
it's like working in the CG industry and how it is moder
ating CG talk.
Leigh, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Well, there isn't much to really say. I'm originally from
South Africa, and I moved to the States at the beginning of
this year. And I work in feature films, doing visual
effects, mostly as a texturing artist, but I also sometimes
do some other things as well.
And yeah, and I run CG Talk.
I think that's where most people kind of know me from.
That's a good and a bad thing.
But yeah, that's pretty much who I am.
Okay.
How did you get into CG?
I was like a real geek when I was a kid.
And I got my first computer when I was six years old.
And I just got really into the old Sierra computer games
and that.
And that got me really into computer graphics.
I was using software like Telepaint, like painting in four
colors.
So I kind of grew up doing a lot of graphic work on the
computer.
When I was about 11, I decided that I wanted to work in
digital animation.
So I went and studied fine arts.
Then I studied graphic design and animation.
I've been working in the industry ever since I graduated,
pretty much.
That was nearly six years ago, I think.
Wow. That's pretty cool.
Yeah. It's been an interesting ride.
Yeah. It's a cool industry to work in, but it's not always
very easy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What's your favorite part of CG?
I like to strictly, I like to paint textures or create
textures, photographs.
I don't really like dealing with the shading and that, but
I still have to do it sometimes.
And I'm getting into lighting now.
I've actually decided that I really like lighting a lot.
And so I'm starting at work.
I'm sort of trying to help out a bit with that now,
get more into it.
With mental ray, I'm sort of learning a lot about that kind
of stuff
and getting quite into it.
So I hate animating.
It's the one thing that I really flat out refuse to do.
I've never even been able to do a walk cycle in my entire
life.
I'm terrible at it.
so I can model
and sometimes do model at work
and like at home I'll sometimes model
but I try
to avoid modeling as much as possible
Modelies
I kind of enjoy modeling
I don't know
why I don't like it as much
as other stuff but to me
modeling is very much a means to an end
it's like to get something that I can then texture
alive
and a lot at work sometimes
they'll need a model made for something
and I'll volunteer my services
if nobody else has time
to model it. But I do try and avoid it.
Perfect.
Do you do any 2D drawing
or painting? Yeah, I mean
I studied that stuff.
I was one of those
kids that when I was
in grade school and everyone was like
oh, look, she's strong.
So my whole family
we can all draw very well.
My parents encouraged it from a young age.
So, yeah, I pretty much grew up drawing and painting and
all that kind of stuff.
There's a lot of fine arts and calligraphy that I've been
trained to do.
And then I went to art school for two years and studied
fine arts.
We did sculpture there, but we did a lot of life drawing
and oil painting
and that kind of thing and printing and that kind of stuff.
So I've got a very solid traditional background that I come
from,
Although I don't do that kind of stuff all that much
anymore.
I haven't painted in years.
And I still occasionally draw, though, but not very often.
Well, okay.
Do you think the art school was helpful in any way for CG?
Yes.
I always...
People like...
Yeah, because I've got like a thread on CG Talk about
schools,
I find myself getting a lot of emails about it.
People emailing me asking for more information or
recommendations and stuff.
And I always recommend, almost always,
recommend going to art school
instead of going to a digital school
because I just find that those skills,
where anyone can learn to use software,
but I think that studying traditional art
forces you to become really disciplined
in proportions of colour, particularly colour.
I mean, I found teaching predominantly
with texturing and lighting and that.
You have to be able to have a really good eye
for color, to mix color.
And having studied oil painting and painting,
all kinds of things,
and actually when you have to mix colors by hand,
I can look at any color.
I don't have problems replicating color on the computer.
And yes, I've seen when I've taught classes and that,
because I've taught in the past,
and people, they don't have that background.
They don't know how to mix colors.
Like you show them an object that's a certain color,
you say, well, make it something better.
They just can't.
So yeah, I definitely would recommend that.
And sculpture as well, learning how to sculpt and play is
good practice with 3D.
Okay, so good.
Art school is very important.
Yeah, I would recommend it to anyone wanting to get into
this field.
Of all your work, which piece is your personal favorite and
why?
I'm actually one of those people that I really end up
hating all my work.
I'm terrible with that.
Now I've got these tons of half-finished models on the
computer
because I work on them and then just spontaneously decide I
absolutely hate them.
But of the films and that that I've worked on,
I'd say I think the two films that I've worked on that I
most enjoyed
and was most proud of the work was The Aviator,
which was the first film I worked on.
The aeroplane that I worked on, that was on the front cover
of Cinefix.
That was very cool.
And then Sin City was just cool.
It was such a cool film to work.
up and I was really proud of the way the work that we did
at the studio turned out.
I saw both movies they were excellent you guys did a good
job.
Oh wow thanks.
It's not very often that you get to work on a film that's
like really fun and I found
that Sin City particularly everyone just had a really
good time working on that one
because it was kind of like everyone's you know most
artists we like to make sort of
gritty, dirty stuff.
And that film, it needed that.
It had to have that.
And the stark sort of stylization of it
made it really interesting as well.
It was an interesting process.
Making things that would look really good
after that sort of contrasted
and look that they would apply post to it.
It was just really cool.
I'm really proud of that film, the way it came out.
Yeah, it was awesome.
What was a typical day for you?
I usually start the day quite badly.
I almost always oversleep.
And there's a couple of people at work that tend to tease
me about it.
Because I always kind of show up at work with a seed stool
in my hair and a vest.
Sort of in a rush because I work up at 9 o'clock when I'm
supposed to be at work.
And then in the morning, because we often have dailies,
where we look at all the shots from the day before and
speak with the supervisors and all that.
So you start off the day kind of looking at what everyone's
done
and just maybe showing what's on the same page.
And then I go back to my desk and then I just get on with
whatever task
is what I'm needed to do that day.
So I tend to do a lot of Photoshop and ZBrush work
when I'm painting textures.
And when I'm doing my 3D artwork, I use Maya.
So yeah, I'm sitting UV mapping a lot.
sometimes
I end up
uni mapping
for weeks
on end
which drives me
to work
but yeah
typically
on an average
day I work
from 9 o'clock
until 7 o'clock
every day
with like
an hour's lunch
break
in the middle
obviously
and it's just
quite a long day
but it's
always good
I mean
I always find
work challenging
working in films
I find to be
really challenging
and I enjoy that
because it keeps
me interested
cool
Oh, alright. Are you working on any projects now?
Yeah.
I'm actually working on two films at the moment.
I don't know if I can actually say what they are,
but I can't really give information about it.
One of them has got a whole lot of digital snakes,
which I'm working on some snakes.
I'm not actually sure if I can even say who the director is
,
but it's a well-known director.
and it's a very cool kind of dark fantasy film creatures.
Ah, see.
Yeah, it's coming out.
We're still going to be working on it for quite a long time
,
but that movie is awesome to work on.
It's very challenging,
but really pushing everyone's skills of work to the limit
because it has to be totally for the realist characters.
Ah, cool.
So what are your goals in life?
To travel the world, actually.
at the moment
I'm really enjoying
working at CG
but
I know that
I'll get bored of it
eventually
because I
just like that
I get bored of things
always
I'm not completely
carrying on working
at CG
for another
sort of 5 to 10 years
but I think after that
I want to just like
pack up
and just travel
around the world
because that's my
favourite thing
I'd like to travel
okay
how many countries
have you visited so far?
actual
but not nearly
as many as
I would like because I always
kind of saw myself travelling once I
finished school but then
after school I went to do college
and immediately after graduating I just
got stuck working and so I've
never really had much of a chance but
I've been to, I mean I've obviously come from Africa
and then I've been to Europe and I've been
to America now
next year I'd like to go back to Europe
for a little while, just for a short holiday
because I really like it all in Europe
but yeah
in terms of my career
I'm really happy
with the moment
so I really like
working on films
so
yeah
I hopefully
will carry on
working on films
for quite a few years
because it's not a part
of that
and it's just
cool work
it never loses
its edge
you know
when you go to the cinema
you see
trailers for things
that you worked on
it never loses
its thrill
you always want to
like stand up
to go
oh I worked on that
so
yeah
and like these days
it seems like
whenever I go to
I seem to be seeing trailers of things that are worth time.
That's just really cool.
I mean, I'm not going to be all modest stuff about it.
I mean, it is cool.
A lot of people probably envy you right now.
Yeah.
Yeah, I get a lot of people asking, emailing me, asking
advice,
like how do you get into the film industry and all that.
It's just like, you know, people, I think people often are
too afraid
to apply for jobs when they probably are actually, you know
,
qualified enough for them.
There are studios out there that will take people that don
't have a lot of experience,
like print internships and stuff.
Once you get into the industry, it actually becomes quite
easy to get new work
if your work is good and you don't piss people off.
And yeah, it's actually, people do envy you,
but they don't realize that if they work hard, they can
actually get inside the industry too.
All right.
So, where do you see yourself in 10 years' time?
Well, like I said, travelling the world, but I don't know
where I'll be.
It's really difficult for me to say that right now.
I really have no idea right now.
Where would you like to be in 10 years' time, Viv?
I don't really know either.
I've always been a very impulsive person and I don't like
to plan things.
So, yeah, I haven't really given it much thought, to be
honest.
Yeah.
All right. Who inspired you artistically?
I don't know. I don't really have a lot of favorite artists
.
I've always been more inspired by music.
I know maybe that sounds a bit strange, but music is
actually my biggest passion.
It always has been.
And for me, when I want to feel inspired, I usually listen
to music,
particularly classical or ethnic music.
I'm really into traditional music from countries.
and I usually
I find myself
like I get a lot
of imagery
from music
and I find that
really inspires me a lot
but I mean
there's also a lot
of film stuff
that I really love
you know like
Lord of the Ring
movies like that
that have really
influenced me
over the years
and inspired me
to like work hard
and be
you know be a better
artist than what I do
but I mean
there are a lot
of cool artists
out there
I mean like a lot
of the moderators
talk are doing
cool work
and there's a lot
of I mean
so much good work on CG Talk
being posted all the time.
What really
sort of freaks me out is the way
a lot of these people are kids.
I mean, these 18-year-olds
and stuff, they're posting work
that's so much better than my own
work.
It's quite
humbling to see how much talent is coming
out these days because these kids
are starting at quite a young age
now.
I can't really name
not many specific artists whose work I really like
because there's just so many artists whose work I like.
So that's something about yourself that most people don't
know?
I think most people don't know how to pronounce my name.
I'm guilty.
Just for anyone listening, it's pronounced, yeah,
it's pronounced Leigh Van Der Byl.
So if you ever meet at SIGGRAPH or something,
you can pronounce my name right.
It's not really a big deal,
It's a source of amusement to me, especially here in
America.
People are just not familiar with the way my surname is
pronounced.
And so when you pay for things in the store and they see
your name come up on your card,
I've heard some really interesting variations of my name.
It's always amused me.
But apart from that, actually, there's a lot of things
people don't know about me
because I'm a very secretive person.
But people on CG Talk probably don't realize that I'm not
this sort of uptight Nazi witch,
whether a lot of people seem to think I am.
Yeah, I think, unfortunately, my position as administrator
on that site, on CD Talk,
has kind of made people think that I'm some sort of
authoritarian.
But I'm actually
certainly sort of
a little good-humored person
that sits and talks crap
all day at work.
And there's totally
down-to-earth person.
Yeah, not at all
the Nazi that I get
accused of being.
I've never seen anybody accuse you of being a Nazi.
That's because they usually
email me.
Yeah,
that's something that's actually
it sort of mildly bothered me over here
but uh
so I'll set the record straight
saying that I'm not like a hero
in real life
I just have to sometimes be a bit strict
on the world
you know actually
I actually know exactly what that advice is
and that's that
it's the thing that I encounter the most
I think that people have a problem with
is having a good sense of
self-criticism. People often have
an unrealistic view of their skills
and this may sound a little bit cruel
to say, but people need to have a realistic
view of
exactly what it is that they can do
because
I guess a lot of show reels and stuff, people
often email me
or post work on CG Talk,
especially demo reels. You see a lot of demo reels
of people that really
should, they're not quite
at a level that they should be looking for work yet.
And unfortunately, the problem with that is that they don't
then get work
and it discourages them.
And I think people just need to be a little bit more aware
of the current expectations of the industry.
And all they need to do is look online.
Just get at the bearing of the quality of work that people
are posting
and then just make sure your work is – you see so much
work.
People, they put on demo reels.
They put filler stuff because they think they need to have
a demo reel that's two minutes long
when, in fact, 30 seconds of just really good work would
suffice.
So, yeah, people just need to know what full-quality work
is.
They know when to sort of cut out the fluff and just have
the really good stuff there
and to know exactly what standard is required of them,
which is quite easy information to find out.
And I firmly believe that anyone that truly, you know, they
're really passionate about it,
you know, if you've got the right mindset, you can do the
work.
It's just a matter of tailoring your skills and your demo
reel,
the work that you're showing to make sure that the work you
're showing is really good.
So, yeah, basically what it comes down to is just having a
good sense of self-criticism,
to be able to look at your own work and sort of know what
sort of potential problems there are with it,
make sure that your work really looks the best that it can
be.
Scrituration.
Just stuff.
Yeah, I mean, there is a fine line between being overly
critical
because it becomes like a confidence issue.
And people, they must be critical of their work,
but in a way that they're not losing confidence about it
because if somebody applies for a job
and they don't really have confidence in their skills,
it really shows.
Like, you can tell somebody doesn't have confidence in
their skills.
and studios, they don't want people
that aren't sure of themselves.
So people think, yeah,
there's very much a difference
between being self-critical
and actually having no faith in your own ability.
So you need to find that good balance
of knowing that you can get things done
but being at the same time,
being able to understand
where your shortcomings are in your work
and being able to work harder
to be able to find solutions to those problems.
We know that you got to get a job in the States from Africa
.
How was that?
How did you manage to get the visa and all of that?
Was it hard?
It wasn't too hard because the studio did a lot of the
paperwork for me.
It's funny.
I actually turned the studio down initially because I just
thought,
I don't want to go live that far with my family and
everything.
And then eventually I actually came to visit the States and
I thought,
oh my, this place is so cool.
I have to come stay.
and then we got the paperwork
so they started the paperwork and it only took about
two months to get all the paperwork done
and the studio
I work for has a lot of people
from around the world so they've got a lot of experience
with it and a very good immigration
attorney, I mean like
about half the staff at the studio
are from other countries, we've got every continent
representative at the studio, we've got people
from Asia, from Europe, from Africa
from the States and from South America
and Australia at one point as well
so yeah
so they've got a lot of experience
so luckily he got the paperwork done
it's quite expensive but the studio
usually covers that cost
and then yeah
it's been kind of weird
and a bit difficult moving to another country
but I do recommend it
it's a cool experience
it's taken me a long time
to kind of settle into the States though
because the culture is quite different
but yeah the people at work are all very understanding
no one's been really nice
Yeah, I found it to be a relatively easy process, but it
was very daunting at first.
Like looking at all the forms that had to be filled in, all
the information you had to give.
And it was quite brief.
But yeah, we overcame.
And now I'm here.
Wasn't there a snippet between South Africa and LA?
Well, I don't live quite in LA.
I live a little north of it in quite a small town.
So luckily it's quite different to LA.
LA, I actually can't stand.
But the biggest difference, I'd say, in terms of California
or America, perhaps,
and where I come from, is that, well, I think the biggest
difference is
in South Africa we have 11 national languages,
whereas in America, well, here it's sort of mostly English,
and I've got a Spanish course here in California.
And I find it quite weird how everyone here kind of speaks
the same accent,
because where I come from, I'm used to hearing lots of
different accents
and lots of different languages.
That's been quite strange.
but there is a huge
divide between the two countries because
South Africa is technically still a third world
country whereas
here in the States it's a first world country
you've got lots of technology
and technology comes at a much
cheaper price than it does back home
so I really like that
you know it's like back home
Amazon and stuff we don't really have
access to good online
shopping and computer equipment
is very expensive
and much more expensive back
over and even just phone
calls and internet and all that is so much more
expensive in South Africa and
so much cheaper here. So I find
that the standard of living
here is much higher
which is very cool. California
is quite expensive though. I mean like our rent
stuff here is pretty expensive
but I don't really mind.
How did you get to be a moderator
at CG Talk?
You know what? I actually
joined. It's funny because I actually
I actually joined for the sole purpose of causing trouble,
which is quite ironic.
There was this guy that was from a local studio back home,
and I was under the impression that he caused some trouble
with the studio I was at at the time.
I saw him posting work, and I immediately registered
and started flaming him.
And I got into trouble with the moderator.
Kind of funny.
But then a couple of months after that,
the challenges were being run at that point.
I think we were in the second or third challenge at the
time.
Actually, probably the second challenge when I joined.
I really liked the idea of it,
and I started posting a lot in the challenges.
I didn't have time to participate myself at the time,
but I was just providing a lot of advice,
posting quotes and support.
While doing that, I think I just somehow got to know
some of the moderators at the time.
It was like Lil Dragon and them that were running the place
.
And after a couple of months, they just made me a moderator
.
First, initially, I was a challenge moderator.
And then, yeah, for a couple of years, I was a moderator
and then like a super moderator.
And then eventually, I became an administrator, which
involves a bit more work.
But it's cool.
It takes a couple of hours out of my day every day, like
answering all the webmaster emails
and making sure the forum is running properly and just
conversing with the people in Australia
with ballistic publishing
is headed. And just, you know,
keeping in contact and making sure everything's working.
It's quite a bit of work.
Especially since the forum's kind of got
insanely large. But
I do enjoy it. I mean, it frustrates
me as well, because you've got to deal
with a lot of problematic
stuff.
I sort of wish to you
rather colourful emails, those of the
rituals of Elevina Macy's.
But at the same time, it's really
rewarding, because I know a lot of people get a lot
out of cg talk and so in light of that for me i've always
been the kind of person that
i really i really want people to have access to the right
information to get into this industry
um which is why like i've always written articles my own
websites of you know text
articles that to try and help people so i'm just i'm that
kind of person and so i i a lot of my
time that i give to cg talk is like time given off love but
it's like i just i really i think
it's very cool for people i think it's great that that
these days you've got sites i see talk with
people can have the opportunity to speak with people who
are actually working in the php because
when i was learning 3d initially i didn't have internet
access so there weren't sites i got
around anyway and you know i had to learn all on my own
whereas now here nowadays it's like it's
so cool i think for people students particularly to be able
to come and talk with people from
ILM and all these sites and people
that hang around with CGTalk. I just think it's really
cool because they're getting a world
education. They're
being able to get opinions from people
all over the world about their work and
advice and all that. So yeah, that's
really cool. That's what I like about CGTalk
and that's why I continue to
help. For example,
what don't you like about CGTalk?
For example, everybody's favorite question,
what software should I use?
Is there anything
you'd like to say to people so they can
make CG talk a better place?
I wish
people would learn to use the search
function a bit more because
I do get a mildly
annoyed question for really redundant
threads like
what software must I use?
It's like the old chess mat
and it always comes up.
I think
the biggest problem with CG is not so much
that. I mean, they're mildly
annoying, but they're not major problems.
the major problems are the sort of
weirdos that hang out on CGTalk.
You know, the internet is kind of full
of strange people, and there are
a couple. CGTalk certainly
has a share of them. To me, that's
the biggest problem. I just think people need to chill out
a bit more.
I don't see, I don't
understand how people can start hating
people online. I just find that
a little bit wildly disturbing.
And I think people just need
to, like, relax. It's a forum.
You know, just chill out.
That to me is like the biggest problem.
Especially since I have to deal with all the issues
that come up with the poor people hating each other and
stuff.
I just think that people just need to relax a bit.
There have been fights on CG Talk.
I've not really seen anybody hating.
You know, it's not...
We've learned to deal with it certain ways.
We made lots of mistakes over the years of moderating.
These days, we try to take a more relaxed approach to moder
ating.
like you know people become problematic then instead of ban
ning them we tend to just like
start make sure like we check their posts to make sure they
're not causing problems or we try and
email them and try and sort out you know like what is the
problem you know can we help you to solve
whatever this problem is that you're having like it's
causing you to fight with people on the forum
and stuff like that i try to to solve problems um you know
mostly i think fights are totally
unnecessary on the form. They usually come about
because when you're reading
people's words, it's so very different
to actually speaking to them in person.
And things can therefore be so
easily misconstrued.
A person can make a comment that
they say in a totally normal way, but
somebody just reads it in the wrong
way and they think that they're being aggressive
or whatever. And I think
that's the root of most fights
on the form, what I just misunderstand.
So people need to learn
to use the smileys a bit more.
I select
Shutter Smiley
I tend to use Smiley
quite a lot because I've got
kind of a nasty sense of humour
I think people sometimes don't realise
that I'm making jokes
so I've learnt to use Smiley
to convey that
I think Smiley really do help to
show people
exactly what actor
you're actually saying
so yeah, that's definitely the biggest
cause of violence. It's just the side effects.
Do you think the language issues
have anything to do with it?
Like, people that don't know one language
so well?
No, I don't think so.
I've never seen any evidence of what's just...
Most people who can't speak
to talk seem to have a pretty good
grasp of English. I don't think
it's a language barrier. I think it's just
an attitude
thing. You know, you read it
and you just read it in the wrong attitude.
Because they just
they're just words on the screen, they're not
tones of voices or gestures
which are really important
So what's the future of CGTalk?
Any tips?
There are a couple of things
in the works but
I think the owners would kill me if I
said anything about that
But yeah
CGTalk's goals is just keep
providing the
best place on the web for artists
to come and showcase their work
soon we're going to start bringing out new things
that are going to make showcasing work
and that kind of thing a bit easier
we're constantly
making improvements to the gallery system
and everything because we want it to be easy
for people to get their work up
and to get feedback and all that kind of thing
and the forum is just growing
and growing at exponential rate
it's getting really big, a lot of users now
the challengers, we've got some big
challenge fans to the works
and obviously more books are coming out
So the ballistic books are really cool.
I don't know if you've gone here, but they're awesome.
Yeah, so hopefully just keep on bringing clouds in.
Keep on sharing our cool books.
So there'll be cooler and cooler challenges happening.
And I kind of just carry on growing as a big community.
Okay, sounds fun.
Can't wait.
Yeah, it's cool.
Okay, we know that Autodesk just bought Alias.
So what's your opinion on that?
Well, yeah, at work, everyone is kind of starting to be
shocked.
Some of the rather shocked emails went around for about
three hours
the other day when the news was announced.
I don't know.
I'm not really sure entirely what to think about it
because, you know, press releases, when they come out,
I'm not one to really trust press releases, to be honest.
It's going to take a couple of years, I think,
for us to actually notice anything changing.
But as somebody that uses Vy, I mean, I'm a little appreh
ensive about the whole, I really don't like Max.
Although it was funnily enough the first program I ever
learned to use.
But I just, yeah, I would be upset if somehow Vy became all
Max-like.
I wouldn't be very much.
But that really remains to be seen.
I just, yeah.
I also hope that this won't delay a bug fix release for B
ioserver
because I'm sort of looking forward to a...
They need a point release soon, I think, to fix some issues
.
That's my... At the moment, it's my main concern
because we're really busy on...
Well, not with Bioserver.
Hoping for a bug fix release.
Wow. So, it's not good for the studios.
Well, you know, upgrade software is never easy at a studio.
You know, like, especially like we had to get,
we've got a lot of proprietary tools like most studios have
.
And, you know, we've got to all check to make sure
they're going to work with a new version of Maya and all
that.
And just, you know, we've got to keep it working.
But then, you know, software, because I think Maya is
fantastic.
But we are having some issues.
Any new release of software is always mildly problematic.
And you've got those initial team problems.
And they're like our render managers have to make sure
we have problems getting all the scripts working again
on the red department and all that kind of stuff.
All the delights of
a version of software.
So yeah, it's never easy, but
it's, you know, my seven hats are
cool new tools that we just really wanted to
get our hands on. So we upgraded as soon as
possible. How do you keep yourself
motivated? Yeah, I don't really find that I
need to keep myself motivated. I'm like,
you know, I really enjoy what I do
actually. And for me, I
just, I consider myself very lucky to be
somebody that actually has a
career doing something they really like.
because most of my friends back home,
they don't really love their day jobs.
They've got jobs that they're satisfied with,
but working as a CG artist,
it's just very cool to be able to go to work every day
and just make cool stuff.
I don't have a problem with feeling motivated at all.
I don't feel like I need to keep myself motivated
because I am always motivated for whatever I'm doing.
I do consider myself very lucky in that regard.
could explain some of your work methods well something that
i've got really into in the last
sort of six months or so is zbrush um i never i used zbrush
before i've always used it a little
bit but i've really started i've got a really cool method
and workflow now with zbrush and
for texturing which i just find it's such a gold tech i don
't know if you know chris costa he's
called Atropus on CG talk he always wins the challenges and
uh he's taught us at work he's
a colleague of mine and he taught us all like some really
cool tricks in zbrush and now a whole lot
of us are using it at work and it's just really cool man i
find that's a really intuitive way
to get your especially if you work in photographic textures
to get your textures onto your model
it's so like you get used i do my uni mapping always in
fire because i'm kind of old school
that i like to get quite clean uni maps i don't i'm still
not totally happy with the auto mapping
and stuff like you get.
So I like to spend some time
and admire UV mapping.
I've actually got a really cool
UV mapping workflow.
I'm actually going to write
a article about it soon as well.
That's just a really efficient way
to get UV maps done
for complex organic models.
And then it's very much like
taking the model into ZBrush,
dropping textures off,
and then going into Photoshop
and cleaning things up.
Pixelogic have a new plugin that they're about to release
for Photoshop and ZBrush that really helps a lot
because you're able to basically drop a snapshot of your
canvas
from ZBrush into Photoshop
and basically use all Photoshop's tools to paint onto your
bubble,
which is very cool.
So that's really my workflow these days.
It's my ZBrush Photoshop order.
Can you, the method you were talking about,
is there any way you could explain it?
for UV mapping?
No, for the ZBrush thing.
For ZBrush?
Oh, well, like,
I can't talk to you,
I don't know if I can talk
very much about the new plugin
that they brought out,
but for me,
what I like to do is,
you know,
just type my model in
and I've got all my UV map
set up.
And then,
when you're going to,
do you know ZBrush at all?
Yes.
Okay, so when you're going
to Projection Master,
I find that you,
you know,
you then use like,
there's like a 2D
or like a 3D play tool
that makes like a plane
in 3D space. And you assign
your texture to that.
And I projected the
textures using that method
onto the model. So you draw the plane in each space
in a position where you're wanting it on the model.
You pick it back up. The texture's
not. It'd be just a very cool way
to project those textures on instead of trying
to paint something onto the
union directly.
And then go back in.
It's cool. There's cloning tools and stuff that you can
start covering up seams. I find
ZBrush is incredibly useful for covering UV seams,
especially with these very complex organic models
that I've been working with lately
that tend to have seams all over the place.
And so, yeah, I'm sitting using cloning tools and that.
So it's mostly projecting images, cloning a lot.
And yeah, that's pretty much what I do.
Doesn't that get tedious for you?
My colleagues at work have probably noticed
So when I'm sitting working in ZBrush, I've always got a
big grin on my face.
That software a lot.
It's just the only problem I have with it is that it's
limited to 4K texture maps.
So you can't make them larger than that.
So sometimes I have to do it in pieces or pieces by piece.
Yeah, so I hope that ZBrush in the future can use higher
res than 4K.
But other than that, I just love painting in that part of
the world.
It's such a cool software.
with okay so everybody zbrush is cool yeah zbrush rules it
only does well i think it's almost the
end of the show is there any comments you'd like to give
any plugs not really yeah just say hello
to everyone out there and uh keep rendering and uh yeah
just keep on filling tiki talk with cool
stuff to put on the front page i think that's about it good
night everybody
