CG Garage

Daniel Lay, also known as VFX Soldier, stopped by the CG Garage to talk to his old friends, Christopher Nichols and Stephen Parker, about what is going in his life. We talked about his career, what happened when he was VFX Soldier, why he left the industry, and what he is doing now.

Emauele Lecchi, better known as Lele, is a new member of the Chaos Group team, but also a very long time V-Ray user. He was instrumental in the testing and benchmarking the newest service pack of V-Ray. This is such a huge update that Lele and Chris felt it deserved it’s own podcast as the features are something that the users need to be aware of, since it could change their entire workflow.

With the podcast being just over a year old, it seemed like a good idea to take a look back at 2015 and see what had happened at Chaos Group. In this very casual chat, Lon, David, and Chris discuss a lot of the events we have attended, our Partners in Art, Chaos Group Labs project, Virtual Reality, the number of new products that we have released, as well as the many updated we have done. We hope that your 2015 was as fun and fulfilling as ours, and that everyone has a great 2016.

Having known and been friends with David Stripinis for a very long time, this was the first time that I actually met David in person. Having worked on many major feature films including Avatar, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, and Man of Steel, David is a long time VFX industry veteran, having focused a lot of his attention on virtual production, motion capture, and animation, while still reaching outside to lighting as well. He talks about his career, as well as give us his opinion on where he feels the industry needs to change.

Doug Roble has been at Digital Domain longer than anyone else as he was one of the first hires. He is the Creative Director of Software, and has helped develop many major tools over his career there. Having won both a Technical Achievement Award and a Science and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, he has now joined the Science and Technology Council. We talk about his career and influences, as well as what he envisions to be the future of computer graphics and Visual Effects.

Had an amazing opportunity to be a part of the 3D Symposium panel in Cancun hosted by Jeff Mottle from CG Architect. They agreed to let me record the panel and make it a Podcast. It is a great opportunity for all of you to hear some of the great conversations and discussions that are happening in ArchViz these days. Even if you are not part of that specific industry, you will mind many familiar themes across the different industries.

This week we speak to Tim Hanson of Max Depth. Tim’s background started in the early days of the web and has gone through many incarnations, from web designer, to editor, and visual effect supervisor. He has learned to adapt to his changing career quickly. Based on some of his own frustrations with learning tools, he has created his own resources through his website.

Our final episode from Trojan Horse was a Unicorn features Scott Ross and surprise guest Allen Bolden. We talk about how much THU means to us, and about our vision of the industry. We also talk about how we feel we need to preserve the energy we have at THU and preserve it in a special way.

Last week we spoke to Norman Seeff about his response to our discussion on the Uncanny Valley. This week, we spoke to Oleg Alexander, a member of the Digital Human League about his work at the Institute of Creative Technology and his response and feelings on Norman's point of view of the subject. We are also joined by Stephen Parker who is also a member of the Digital Human League.

There are those moments in your life where you feel lucky to have met someone special. I got a chance to sit down with Norman Seeff one on one for over an hour which was was one of those moments for me. While many people may not know his name, everyone knows his work. He has made his fame through the most honest and real photographs he took of celebrities over the last several decades. He managed to capture so much life in each photograph that I felt compelled to ask him about the Uncanny Valley. His very diverse careers made him the perfect person to explore what is missing in the valley. The short answer is: consciousness.