“Rigging is best when invisible and hence it is the least noticed”
Day 3 at CG Overdrive…
As one walks through the lush greenery that strews the path to the Art, Design & Media campus at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, one can sense and see a lot of fresh ideas being communicated visually, on the walls, on the floors, all around.
The program for the day includes a panel discussion on new approaches to Animation Production and two (six hour long) CG Master Classes, one on modeling and the other on rigging.
At Six P.M in the evening, after giving an intensive master class on rigging to keen students, Hyperbolic Enterprises CEO Paul Hormis who is a die hard Animation and Gaming lover was gracious and forthcoming to grant a 90 minute interview to Animation Xpress.com Managing Editor Anand Gurnani.
Excerpts…
Your comments on CG Overdrive
CG Overdrive I think is very well organized. I really liked the involvement that the artists attending the master class had. There were very good interactions between us, they really wanted to learn what I wanted to teach them.
What fundamental skills are needed to be good at rigging?
I think that the three essential elements or qualities for being a successful rigging artist are Communication Skills, Problem Solving Ability and knowledge of tools and software.
Communication and dialogue between modeling ‘ rigging ‘ animation is very important and the rigging artist is the key link between modeling and animation. He/She has to understand exactly what is needed in terms of character articulation and how the rigs are going to be used, in order to deliver exactly what‘s needed.
After that comes problem solving ability. Every challenge and problem has several solutions. As a rigging artist one ought to have the ability to analytically select the best solution and then use his/her knowledge of software and tools to solve the problem.
I think those three are the key skills and abilities. Rest is all technical procedure and can be learnt quickly.
Your comments on generalists and specialization.
I think it is better to be a generalist who specializes in a particular discipline rather than just being a super specialist who knows nothing about the rest. And I come from the perspective of being in the industry for 25 years. I have done particles, rigging, modeling, texturing, but I have highly specialized skills in rigging, programming and max scripting.
You have to start as a generalist; you should know how every thing works. You can‘t just model not knowing how it‘s going to be lit or textured. The idea is to have knowledge of the whole and to specialize in some things. Eventually after you have been around for a while, you might want to move to different domains within the whole cycle and keep evolving.
Which have been the favorite projects you have worked on?
I have been around in the industry for years. The first 3D software I worked on was 3D Studio D.O.S 1 which I believe was the first 3D software available at large. It has been a long journey from then to now.
In terms of favorites, amongst all that I worked on, that‘s a tough one, I have worked on so much good stuff. I think that the ‘World of Warcraft‘ trailer was fun to work on. I enjoyed my stint at Blur Studios, then Disney‘s ‘Twice upon a Christmas‘ was great for me as I had a chance to rig all the main characters and that was cool, to be able to rig a classic icon in 3d for the first time was amazing.
How was the Master Class that you gave at CG Overdrive?
The students took it real well and they were very keenly involved. I wanted them to walk away with an understanding of rigging, not only where to apply what, but also why. It‘s the kind of stuff you get from years and years of trial and error.
I didn‘t talk about the tools as much as I spoke about the fundamentals and theory. The first thing you do when you talk about rigging is talk about joint placements, about how you are going to deform your objects, about why you approach one thing in a specific way and another thing differently. The idea was to share with the class how to think and approach the subject rather than having them follow me blindly on one text bookish example.
What trends do you observe?
In the technical aspect, I see our jobs will be easier in the future and at the same time harder too because the development of tools means that you will be able to achieve tasks quicker and in an easier manner, but once you achieve that, the production and next generation demands will want to push the envelope further. For e.g I am sure we will have hyper realistic hair dynamics, right now it is hard, it takes serious processing power, but at some point you will have enough processing capacity to have high density hair that moves correctly in real time.
Artistically, the community is maturing and it is showing in our work. There are a lot of experienced seniors that have matured over the years and they are bringing into their work, layers of story telling, depth and subtlety. The works aren‘t just a simple ball bouncing around the room, there‘s back-story, deeper. It‘s an evolving art form. Considering that most of the arts like singing and writing and painting have been around for thousands of years, 20 years isn‘t really that long for 3D and I think it is evolving fantastically.
Ditto for Games. A lot is happening in games that people weren‘t expecting. Games is an art form which has a lot of story, it‘s no longer just about killing from point A to point B, games are open ended and you are making decisions and living out the story and characters of the game. Just like animation, and 3D, Gaming too is an art form and an extremely potent and exciting one at that.
You seem to have a soft spot for rigging.
I have a soft spot for animation, the entire thing. I love animation, I love gaming. I really couldn‘t see myself doing anything else. I have been here for so long and being able to share my knowledge has been a dream for me, at first I doubted my own self, I never gave myself credit for the knowledge I had, because I never got feedback.
You know what? If a rigger does his job right then nobody should even know about it, if wrong then everyone knows instantly. Rigging is like the little black box of the industry. Animation is performance art, animators get the glory because they animate and its right in front of you, modelers get recognition instantly when the model looks good, texture guys make the skin and surface look right, lighters light it, but the rigger is the one who gets overlooked, because as vital as it is, rigging is best when invisible and hence it is the least noticed.
Earlier I had seen a lot of studios who did not have specialist riggers and TDs, now however things are much more evolved and no production can function without specialist riggers.
What are your views on things like Motion Capture?
Sometimes people just get carried away with technology and make absurd statements. Especially with motion capture and facial capture where people claim that they can do without animators. You just can‘t record motion and apply it to 3D models and think its going to work. Be it simple or complex, all mo-cap has to be cleaned by animators and has to go through a long process. And even then it can never even come close to the magic of key-frame animation.
The number of Animated features being announced globally have gone up by 10x.. How do you read this trend?
Personally, I think that the more animation features made, the better. But also when you have more, there are more that are good and more that are bad. If you have 10 features a year, you will have 3 good and 7 bad, keeping the same average when you have 100 features of which 70 are bad, it may seem that things are getting mediocre, but the averages remain the same, in fact you have more variety and exploration which is good for the medium.
I got into animation because of Sleeping Beauty. There was one specific scene, watching her dress, twirling around and I was looking at the dress and the way it moved looked perfect and that‘s what made me feel I want to do that and I want to be an animator. Then there‘s A Bug‘s Life, I can watch it over and over again and always enjoy it. The animation just really stood out.
I also think that Surfs Up will do great, it has caught my attention and I want to see it. Also another movie which was laden with VFX and digital art was 300 which successfully sucked me in and the visuals drove the story. This was one movie which I found so powerful that I watched it as a viewer and not as an animation artist.
Most times being an animation artist, takes away from the movie watching experience as a bad elbow or deforming shoulder in 3D CGI is enough to put me off the movie. That‘s a negative aspect of being in this industry you can‘t enjoy the animated movie watching experience like others can.
What about Photo Realistic and stylized animation. Do you think people are getting more into photorealism these days?
In terms of photo realism, I think Narnia… looked great, though it was not just photorealistic but stylized photo real. I think that using the term photo real is very difficult and sets a very tough goal for the studio involved. At the end of the day, Black and White or Color, Photo Real or stylized, who cares? People care about the story and whatever‘s best for it to be told.
Social Networking and user generated content are the buzz words in gaming these days. Dot they excite you?
I think it is neat though I prefer to go out and meet people rather than network socially on the net or through a game. But that‘s me, for many it is an escape. I play games to escape and enter another world for challenge and fun. RTS is my thing, I am more into team playing. In Non RTS my favorite games are Counter Strike and Desert Combat those two games were great, they were really focused on team work, I remember playing with buddies at Blur as teams of five vs five, that was a blast, we worked together and played together.
Animation and Gaming creation are becoming global.
I think that diversity is good. As long as we don‘t have to sacrifice quality for quantity, things are fine.
We still have four more days at CG Overdrive. What are you looking forward to at the festival?
I am looking forward to sharing knowledge and breaking barriers between all of us. I am especially excited about and am looking forward to meeting the Asian artist community. I have great respect for animation and great respect for Asians and I want to see the freshness of approach that Asian Animators bring to this field.