Mark My Words

This module excited me as I always had an idea of the maker-doer that I wanted to be, but wasn’t sure how to brand and market myself to potential employers.

I wanted my CV to have a design aesthetic which supplemented the content. I felt having Glenda Martin talk about how to construct a CV and what areas I should bring across really influenced how I approached the CV in terms of language and points which sold myself well. The other speakers also inspired me a lot in terms of the similar risks they took in applying for jobs and the hunger they had for their careers, throwing themselves into learning new softwares etc.

In terms of showreels, I was inspired by my contemporaries in international universities creating reels that allowed their emerging talent to shine through. I personally preferred minimalist showreels arranged by project. I hope to update my own by the end of the coming summer with a lot more of my personal work.

I spent a large portion of my time on the website as I really feel a well crafted site is the key to catching employers attention in the new digital age. My current site is full of content which sells my strengths, however, I need to work on streamlining this into a simpler format, so information can be processed easier.

I focused on international companies for potential placement, particularly in London and Canada. Tendril Motion Design Studio in Toronto is currently where I aspire to join, under their opportunity mentorship programme. I’m carefully considering the financial implications of living and working abroad for a year, however, and deciding whether Ireland would be a better fit for my current means.

I geared my cover letter towards Tendril, balancing it first as a summarised “about me” then focusing a lot on their current projects and the general energy they bring to the work they create. I feel it genuinely shows my interest and appreciation of the companies work.

My mock interview went really well, as Alec gave me feedback that my content was all sound and that Paula Campbell was very impressed with me. My years of experience of performance exams with interview questioning gives me a natural flair in interviews, as well as a relaxed demeanour and confidence in answering questions.

+RehabStudio (Creative Intern Placement)

DESCRIPTION

We love the enthusiasm, passion, drive, naivety, stupidity, fresh thinking, free thinking, curiosity, and tea making ability of youth.

So if you have all of that, we’d love to see some of your work, thinking or ideas. There’s no rules as to what to show us (or how you show it to us), but have a look at what we do to get an idea of what might make us go “That’s cool, can we just rip it off?”.

And what will you get? You’ll get to experience life in +rehabstudio, and leave knowing a whole lot more than you did when you arrived. We promise not to stick you in the corner and forget about you or make you take Borris the office dog for his walk.

RULES

A placement runs for 3 months

We will pay you £300 per week

You need to have a portfolio (We like looking at them)

We do look at everyone who says hello, but we don’t always get a chance to say hello back. Sorry ) :

REQUIREMENTS

No shrinking violets

A love of creativity

A love of technology

Hungry to learn

A sense of humor

DESIRABLE SKILLS

Be able to communicate your ideas through sketching and writing

Be confident presenting your ideas

A working knowledge of some tools e.g Photoshop

A genuine passion for creative technology

BENEFITS

Payment

Training

Mentoring

Mainframe Studio

Mainframe is a creative production studio working with forward thinking brands to create innovative commercials and branded content. A 15 year heritage in motion graphics and animation has evolved into a 360º offering including production, direction, animation, post-production and VFX. Working directly with brands such as Dyson, Mtv, Virgin and Harrods we have created an efficient working model allowing the client contact with all levels of production. Mainframe's directors and creatives are regular contributors to industry press and top awards judging panels.

They seem to be a very progressive company, always creating work that moves with shifting technology. And this open format approach to their work is shown again in their hiring process, simply posting this open call to applications:

Tendril

Tendril are my forerunning company in Canada for applying to for placement. Their Opportunity Mentorship programme sounds perfect for a placement year type set up.

“The first step to great work is working with people you admire and respect. We take the challenges you bring us, reflect, brainstorm and bring back thoughtful, beautiful, often crazy ideas, opening up a dialogue and iterative process. The door to our studio is always open. Call on us to pitch, write scripts, plan out story beats, dive into visual development, storyboard, and design characters. Think of us as an elite creative development team for hire.”

“Whether it’s character animation, live action, motion graphics, a channel re-brand, or photoreal 3D animation: we want it to be beautiful, exceptional, and make people feel something. With a thirst for high production value honed by years working for a wide range of international clients and our own program of experimental works, we are equally comfortable behind a camera directing live action as we are hunched over our sketchbooks, designing, writing, or delving into complex 3D graphics or visual effects.”

I've been following the studio's motion graphics and animated work for a while now and I am blown away by the wide variety of mediums in which they convey a narrative. The focus on not only storytelling but the experience really appeals to me as I have come to believe that well crafted narrative and carefully considered design can create truly immersive outputs. 

Image Engine

Image Engine’s passion for filmmaking, flair for visual storytelling and technical wizardry feeds into all our previs projects. Our dedicated team supports filmmakers with creative shot planning, problem solving and budgeting, as well as the crucial visuals required for turning great ideas into stunning reality.

These are the current job openings at Image Engine. I like their general attitude to taking on new talent as they state their belief in building careers. 

“With our mission to always seek challenging projects, and with a supportive management structure that likes to nurture growth and recognize talented individuals, Image Engine is a great place to work on your resume.”

ICON Creative

ICON Creative Studio is a high end visual effects and animation studio located in Gastown Vancouver, Canada, housing over 130 modeling, animation, lighting, visual effects and compositing artists along with full service production, design, creative and management teams. 

Why work here? At ICON we constantly invest in raising the bar of our productions and fostering our people. If you are a passionate artist capable of sharing success with others, we'd like to hear from you.

These are just a few of the reviews employees have give of working at the studio. and these are the job listings for the studio at the moment:

http://www.designyourway.net/blog/inspiration/motion-graphics/34-of-the-best-motion-graphics-studios-and-their-work/

I found this great article for the top motion graphics studios from the international scene, scope for any country of the world I could want to go to for placement. However, the price of living and working abroad varies drastically from living and working in Belfast.

https://the-dots.com/companies/Animation-VFX

I found this great little indie site which advertises smaller sized companies in the design for animation and VFX sectors as well as the big name studios. Its the most comprehensive list of what studios exist out there and most importantly which are hiring.

http://vfxjobs.com/

This is a direct forum where you can see recent VFX jobs from around the world posted, however, may be beyond the scope of an undergraduate student at the minute.

Big Leagues

Double Negative

“Dneg’s Feature Animation Division was launched led by ex-Dreamworks Associate Producer, Tom Jacomb.

Our new division’s intent is to create an integrated front end / back end pipeline to work in tandem with IP creators and filmmakers in the creation of high end animated features. Here at Double Negative, we have the infrastructure, pipeline and talent to provide unparalleled support for our new division and are currently working to augment our core team of animators and artists with additional artists specifically focussed on Animated features (based out of our London HQ).”

Pixar offer season internships. They also offer longterm residencies for recent graduates:

“Residencies are typically offered in Technical Direction or Studio Tools. 

Residents: • Work alongside Pixar employees as full members of the team • Are recent graduates from a Bachelor's, Master's, or Ph.D. program • Work for a 1-year term starting in winter or summer, coinciding with school graduation dates

Pixar Technical Undergraduate Program participants:

• Take a 10-week summer course in Technical Direction • Receive direct mentorship and training in a hands-on classroom environment • Are typically undergraduates at the early stages of their career

Class Task: Possible Interview Q’s 

(Natasha and Abigail) 

What can you do for us that other candidates can't? 

If a conflict arose in a group project, how would you deal with it? 

How would a job at this company fit into your future career path? 

How comfortable would you be in a leadership role? 

What current personal projects are you working on? 

Questions to ask them 

What is the mobility of the position within the company? 

Where do you want to see the employee you hire in this position in five years?

Interview Points

Tell us a little about yourself

Student of Animation

Background of art, design and performance

Huge interest in hearing and crafting stories from a young age

Huge interest in the experience design sector of industry, i see myself first and foremost as a multi platform designer.

Founder of a social society of Creatives

Why should you get the job?

If you hire me you’re making an investment in an individual who will dedicate themselves completely to each and every project that comes my way, who is hungry to experience new platforms and mediums and ways of telling a narrative or crafting an experience. My current company project demonstrates my willingness to dive into a new project and new technology through my ongoing creation of a VR experience to accompany children’s storybooks, and learning the new VR language to tell a story.

Why do you want a job here?

I've been following your studio's motion graphics and animated work for a while now and I am blown away by the wide variety of mediums in which you convey a narrative. Your focus on not only storytelling but the experience really appeals to me as I have come to believe that well crafted narrative and carefully considered design can create truly immersive outputs.

What are your strengths?

I’m a social driver, a real people person. I’ve been told by one lecturer that other students have had peaked performances when working on projects with me due to the way i manage projects and people in motivating them to create their best work.

I also have a keen drive and hunger to try new things and learn how to tell narratives through new mediums, which from what I’ve learnt from your company is how you approach many projects to push the limits of new technologies.

Weaknesses?

I would say that the weakness that i’ve learnt from the most over the course of my studies is time management. Studying on a full time course alongside working part time in a restaurant and founding and chairing a new university society left me with a lot on my plate, teaching me how i really needed to improve on how i balanced my time, which I feel i have accomplished well.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Tendril, the company in Toronto, Canada that I am applying to, shared this post on their social media. It was a gift they received from a prospective employee who personalised graphic designs to the company, including their logo and setting of Toronto, and sent them framed. The clever side of this, aside from winning over the affection of the studio, was to include the designers QR code in the designs in order to make his website directly linkable from his gift.

I really liked this guys header for his website, showing his place of work and the tools he uses to create his content. Similar to how the website design in a previous post used CGI animation incorporated with the logo to show off their skill set, I think a CGI scene similar to the above would be a real eye catching image to greet someone visiting my site, and show off a little personal touch through the objects/scenarios I include.

This was a social media marketing storm, as Lindsay Blackwell started a campaign to get herself hired as the first Social Media Director of the University of Michigan. he created the site with the “dear lisa rudgers,” with the content to the right of this changing depending on the tab, but lining up perfectly with the logo to make an online cover letter. Even the video matched perfectly.

This create step in making a cover letter and getting her name out there earned Lindsay an interview for the position and multiple job offers, ultimately offering her a better position. She kept fans and followers of the process engaged with a live update page on the site, highlighting just how keen a social marketer she could be and the fresh mindset she brings to selling herself for a job.

Graeme Anthony, a PR practitioner looking for a job, uploaded his professional information toYouTube rather than creating a traditional cover letter and resume. Anthony's interactive video application included a breakdown of his skills and timeline for potential employers. It showed his video-producing and editing knowledge as well as his ability to use online resources, and gave an insight to his personality and creative flair.

In the end, it helped him land a job at Manc Frank.

Alec Brownstein decided to buy ads that would appear when specific people searched for creative directors' names, or more importantly, when said directors Googled themselves.

Compositing Reel:

I really liked this as a reel as it showed the nature of the breakdown shots incredibly well at points, conveying well in a short space of time how the compositor’s process works in creating a piece, and the wide range of content he has produced. He scrambled some shots from the same short over the course of the video to break it up but I would have maybe kept maybe one or two together in order to make the reel feel less repetitive. 

It also came across how proficient Miguel was in using After Effects to create the reel.

Generalist Reel:

I really like the simplicity of this reel, its clear from the very non-intrusive caption which elements they were responsible for. However, my critiques would be that the shots maybe change too quickly before I have time to read what responsibilities Kristin had, and process the content accordingly. I would also make the contact details at the end of the video slightly larger and easier to read for video format.

Lighting and Compositing Reel:

As this reel was composed by project it made it easier to process what the responsibilities were as well as the shots generally being longer. The inclusion of a brief breakdown at the end highlights that Masha understands the process well and including softwares used throughout shows her wide range of proficiency in multiple platforms alongside her ability to execute certain elements of a CGI piece of work.

Animation Reel:

As animation reel is included directly in the title, it informs me from the start what elements of the reel to focus on. I also enjoyed the structure of the reel going by project as it highlighted Jacob’s ability to transfer animation skills between different character rigs within the one scene, and how he considers actions and reactions as a dialogue in how he animates.

He focuses clearly on complex animations as well as smaller facial reactions showing his consideration to all elements of detail in his process. He also used his last shot well to transition to his contact details, showing his consideration for narrative of the reel.

Kalu Yala

I loved how any links to Kalu Yala’s website bring you first to their /whatiskaluyala page, which was a grid of images which when hovered over revealed a certain element of the Kalu Yala experience. It is a new village community set about building a new way of life, and so each time you clicked the grid it brought you to either a video/blog post/link which demonstrated the captioned word in action! The first photo links to the main site, and I thought it was a very personal way of marketing their self view and what they want to promise.

I am Grigo

This guys website branding was on point! He had a CG animated character version of himself which moved on each page, which really sold that he knows how to animate, and he knows how to incorporate it well into a design. I felt it was a really personal touch reflecting on his skills.

Robin Littlewood

I didn’t really like how Ryan’s website openeed with an image of himself. I think putting his work as the primary focus would have been a better move.

I like how Ryan included a page on his personal interests and activities as it brought his online presence more to life and gave me an insight to who he is as a person. I think showing the other passions that you have is a large influence in showing the person behind the work.

Matt’s website design was so clean and simple. He included everything he needed to and laid out his work simply and in a way that was easy for the viewer to just flick through the site and get a general sense of his style and interests. His branding in general was quite tight and he comes across as a realised designer/animator - very professional appearing.

James put his CV into his About Me in an unformatted babble of text. Although the rest of his site and his work is great this just didn’t work at all as I didn’t feel I could skim through all the detail quickly, absorbing the key points, as there was no apparent structure to sign post where to look for info.

Tyrone included his CV as image files on his sight, which due to the website design were very small and not that easily made out or accessible to read. 

I prefer the trend of opening your site with your showreel, as it makes it clear from the start whether or not you’re the type of candidate an employer wants to learn more about. Combining pages such as this and your brief introduction would cut down a lot on unnecessary page tabs in the menu bar.

Discussing two events - One on directing for animation, the other for the VR short “Pearl” (Premiering 17th April)

“Preparing a project for pitch VS What actually happens”

Beginning:

Was a figurative painter - Loves 3 hr life painting sessions

Worked on Polar Express as part of the motion capture team

Followed this with Surf’s Up, Bolt, Tangled with Glen Keane

Liked worked in 3D animation that looked crafted - Design and Colour with an illustrator aesthetic

Next:

Paperman came from month long programmes with Disney were you are paid your normally salary to work on your own project for a month. The success of Paperman meant that this programme grew.

Has a patent for the software that allows the illustrative overlay over the CG elements in a scene

Feast:

Filmed one second of dinner every day of 2012 - wanted the life of the human as the background setting for the short

If you’re making a short - make a poster. This makes the project a live thing, and as people feel more passionate about it, it begins to move forward.

Graphic colour shapes, chunky edges of Feast all went against the clean Pixar style.

Design in animation - pitch the project to the best person you know.

Had a puppy day, created lots of concept art for a lived in feel, with lots of variation of character clothing etc.

Used 2D animations as trials for the animations

Doesn’t like raw toon shader so made a geometry based lighting system by making masks in 3D and learning a lot about lighting design.

He storyboarded Feast approx. 6 times

There are currently 17 directors ahead of him for the next Disney feature

Pearl:

Tried to get aesthetic in VR

Used the car as a vehicle for change. The camera is set in the car and the environments surrounding change as well as the growth of characters

VR is like Theatre - we can direct the viewers gaze but a lot more is going on inside the experience

Framing devices in VR are important - here he used the windows

Getting the experience onto the device ASAP is the best way to determine if things are going to work

“Designing moments” - let go of rigid composition and view the scene as more of a theatre set.

Storytelling:

Start with a core idea that means something to you

Story vs technology: lots of compromise, its about learning to do what you can do with the limitations of the technology. You need to be relentless about asking for more and thats how you will achieve something.

Artistry vs commercialism is the line of compromise we have to take.

Pitching process:

Depends on who you’re pitching to.

Some creative people want a skeletal pitch they can start having conversations about and contribute and feel ownership over.

Has a dropbox folder of pitch ideas he can call on if the situation requires

Question I asked:

With the future of VR heading towards complete interaction, what are the strengths of user driven narrative vs storyboarded film?

Niall Carlin (Doublejump)

Niall is after setting up his own Motion Graphics company Doublejump, hiring some of our own second year class for placement. Previous to this he was the Head of Digital Media at Whitenoise studios, with daily duties including managing the workloads of the team, time management, quotation of jobs, client presentations and production of all digital content.

Learnt software for showreel in two weeks

Learn the hard shit: Colour, Typography, Composition, Animation, Design Theory

Strong advocate of After Effects

Learn the skills that can’t be taught in tutorials

Compare your work with others

Criticism is good

It’s all learning!

There is no right answer to a creative brief

Deadlines rule your creative life

Time is money

Michael Keane (Rockstar Games)

Did an Hons Design degree - generalised, not very digital.

CGI of 90s started to catch on

Went to USA due to recession, got a list of names for getting pint with from Greg and went from there.

If you don’t have a hard line you won’t demand enough of yourself.

Used life savings on his own start up venture, which failed.

Karin Cooper

Karin is a Creature Supervisor at ILM with the following film credits:

February 2003 – Present (13 years 4 months)

Tomorrowland (2015) - Creature Supervisor Noah (2014)- Creature TD Star Trek: Into The Darkness (2013) - Creature Supervisor The Avengers (2012) - Creature TD Cowboy & Aliens (2011) - Creature Supervisor Rango (2010) - Lead Creature Simulation Avatar (2009) - Creature Supervisor Star Trek (2009) - Creature Supervisor Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - Creature TD The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008) - Creature TD Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) - Lead Creature TD Eragon (2006) Lead Creature TD Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) - Lead Creature TD The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) - Creature TD The Island (2005) - Creature TD Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) - Creature TD Van Helsing (2004) - Creature TD Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) - Creature TD

Recommends internships

Went to the USA and got a job selling hardware/software

Made cloth simulations for pirates alongside Greg

You have to be patient and open to feedback

The industry is global - we can go anywhere

There aren’t many girls in the industry, especially in 3D. Girls should prepare to be underestimated. But girls communicate better.

80% of the time, people are talking hot air. Don’t listen to tech talk and be intimidated by it.

Start in London as its the easiest way to get to the states

You can cross into anything as long as you’re given the chance

“You gotta raise your voice” - if you want something, go after it.

Gavin Moran

Gavin graudated from Dun Laoghaire. He has worked with the likes of Walt Disney Animation Studio, Dreamworks, Sony and now Epic Games where we serves as part of the animation team. His recent short “The Kite” created for Unreal Engine 4 features a diverse and beautifully realised 100 square mile landscape. Everything you see was generated in real-time by Unreal Engine 4 at 30fps and includes fully dynamic lighting, cinematic post effects and procedurally placed trees and foliage. 

Short term employment - they don’t care, as long as you get the job done. This hiring process is skill based.

For project based work, they hire people who they think they will get on with

Long term work employment is if they see you being able to stick with them for a few years.

Push yourself or you’ll fade into the background

Things are always changing, so keep up!

Gerard Dunleavy

Gerard was a masters student on this course, winning the Internation CG Student of the Year 2012. He is a professional concept artist and matte painter, now currently working in London for the Film, Advertising and Game industries. After his masters degree he spent several years working as a VFX Generalist and Technical Director and now combines his ”skills and experience in Art, Design and VFX techniques to create stunning images that tell stories.” His film credits include Assassins Creed, Thor: The Dark World and Godzilla as well as many commercial clients including Nike, Honda, BMW and Guinness.

Has worked with: HBC, The Mill, DNeg, Primary Focus, Etc, Framestore, Invisable

Likes commercial work as he likes the quick paced nature of the process

Freelance worker dealing in film and advertising. Film works differently to advertising, film is restricting, things can get cut, you spend months on one or two shots and generally takes a longer time and is slower paced work. Advertising works in a few weeks to 2 months at most, you tend to have more creative input and try new things. However, once you move to the film side of things, you never really go back.

If something gets cut in a film, you can’t include it in your showreel. However, you can keep a copy on your laptop to show at interviews, your “secret showreel”. One out of every five shots may get cut.

It’s all about getting your foot in the door, and you need to stand out.

Make what you are passionate about, something simple but done well.

The industry is all about word of mouth and past projects, recruiters talk and your employment record on your CV is taken heavily into consideration.

Laura Livingstone

Laura is a producer with 15 years experience in live action and post production for episodic television, feature films, commercials, documentaries, apps and game cinematics, specializing in animation and visual effects.

She is a founder of The Irish VFX & Animation Summit Ltd as well as serving as a Project Manager for Cinemagic and NI Screen.

From Armagh (YEO)

Studied in Dublin. She was the ‘go to’ producer on her course. She stayed in Dublin for a few years then moved to Germany to work for a few years.

Moved to LA as an intern doing development work. Had to support herself doing this by getting a bar job in San Francisco (eek)

Applied for positions at Pixar and ILM

Got her big break as post production on Iron Man, her first feature film.

Left for a while to work at a start up company

Eventually moved back to LA as that was where the work was, and got a job as a VFX Producer working with CGI.

Everything is happening in Canada and Asia

Be easy going, communication is key.

Put your best foot forward all the time

Fit in as a person, stand out as a worker

Showreel:

2 - 3 mins max, put your best stuff first. Keep it simple but done well.

Cut out anything not up to scratch.

Always keep a copy on your phone

Modelling: turntable, texture, wire and UVs

Animation: Short cylcles, to and from idle

Coding: Your code in action (Github)

Lighting: environments, characters, shading

Rigging: character, examples of motion

Breakdown: what exactly you did for the project

Don’t let music/sound distract distract from your work

Don’t be repetitive with work

Include contact details always

CV:

Keep it clear and relevant

Chronological order, most recent jobs at top, with a brief description of what you did

Include contact info

Save it as PDF from text file so the ext will be searchable.

Cover Letter

Personalise it to each company

Dear…, I love your work on … I like doing this … I would be fit for your company because …

No more than one page

Website

Include showreel

Make it clear and relevant, with experience, an About Me and a Professional Name.

Get a custom domain

Add social media links

Interactivity to keep person engaged?

Make a Vimeo page

Interview

Arrive early

Bring sketchbooks

Have a confident body langauge

Bring laptop/iPad

Bring hard copies of everything

Don’t wear a suit

Expect the internet to break

Networking

Online and Face to Face

Get business cards

Have a copy of reel on your phone always

The Job

DON’T BE A DICK

Take direction

Keep showreel up to date

Keep networking/learning and better job opportunities

Blog/Journal everything

Alembic is a new file format that was introduced just a few years ago by Sony Pictures Imageworks and Lucasfilm. It is quickly being adopted by every major application used in production today. Even though this format is being adopted, software developers still choose what type of data is to be written or read from the alembic files. So just because Maya stores the camera information doesn’t mean that an application like RealFlow will import that camera information.

The way this format differs from FBX and COLLDA is that you have to bake the animated data to send it to other applications. Meaning you no longer have the full capabilities to edit the animation. You might use this format once you have decided what you want your final animation to look like.

This format also takes up a minimal amount of disk space compared to FBX and COLLADA, and that file becomes optimized for read/write speeds once it is exported into the Alembic format. This format uses an .abc file extension.

The way you might use this format is to animate your final scene and export it as an Alembic file. Now with the smaller file size you can send it to a lighting and rendering artist or maybe you need to add dynamic simulations to the scene. The smaller file size is a benefit to other parts of the pipeline because they do not need the ability to modify the animation. All they need is the final result with quick read/write speeds to the file which alembic can provide.

Alec, O Alec, where should I begin,

On this long and treacherous confession of sin?

I haven’t really got much application of theory,

A fact that I know probably makes you quite teary.

But as you can see, I have done my research,

So that now, dare I say, I could UV unwrap a church.

So while I know that this all may make you quite sad,

I really do hope that you won’t go mad.

For, to be frank, I enjoyed my Christmas a lot,

Which probably explains why my work ain’t too hot?

But I’ll have you assured, I haven’t drank in a week,

And have embarked on, what I call, a working streak.

I’ve stayed up every night, until early morn,

And will continue to do so, until my showreel is born.

So if you give me a while, just wait and see,

We begin with our high poly, high resolution model. Normally in game engines etc we want great looking models but with low resolution to save on real time rendering. Therefore, we use baking to have the textures easily applied to the low poly model yet maintaining a similar aesthetic.

We use the Turtle Bake Layer editor to set up which model we want to act as our source and which as our target for the bake.

Our baked textured will be saved in the Turtle directory of our project folder. We simply load this texture file into the colour output of our low poly model.

We can use the Texture Baking Setting windows to set up our Bakes for a variety of options.

This is what the outcome of baking our basic texturing and applying it to our low poly model. We can see how we lack the all important detail and definition that we had in the high resolution model. For this we will need to bake a bump map of the definition in our high poly model.

When it comes to our Baking settings we can modify the channels for our baked textured, however, for geometry that will be moving it is better to stick with the automatic Tangent Space attribute, whereas static objects may work better with an Object Space attribute.

Once we load the bump map we baked into our shader for the low poly model, we begin to see more of a likeness to the original high resolution model.

When we compare the high and low resolution models we can see just how good a likeness we can achieve with a lot fewer polygons and two simple baked textures being input to our shader.

Wireframe reveals just how little the low poly models geometry actually applies to the details our model despite them looking great in our renders.

We can even bake Ambient Occlusion for additional details in shadow contrast of our model. We simply create a new output and plugin an Occlusion Sampler Shader in our baking settings.

To bring the Ambient Occlusion together with the Colour texture file we load both into Photoshop and make both Multiply layers so that the shaded areas of our ambient occlusion essentially shade the baked texture file we have created for our model.

If we are working with static objects we can even bake the lighting to our textures and save computational time on rendering how light affects a model in real time on a game engine.

When we set up a scene it is best if we begin as we mean to go on and work in a Linear workflow. In order to do so we swap the input and output profiles of the scene after disabling the lens cap on our physical sun and sky.

In the real world a lot of the light that you see is the direct result of indirect illumination (e.g., light that isn’t coming directly from a source like a light bulb). This is the light that bounces off other surfaces to illuminate your surroundings. Final Gather is a prominent feature in most rendering engines.

Final Gather is often rendered along with something like global illumination, although it typically takes a much shorter amount of time to render than global illumination. Global illumination uses photons to calculate and bounce around light, whereas Final Gather uses points that are set out randomly in the scene. These points then send out individual rays that sample their surroundings and bring that information back to that point. Final gather is not as physically accurate as global illumination, but it makes up for it because your render results will often times come back much faster.

We can create leaf shapes by using Alpha channels and plugging them into our cutout shapes attribute. Therefore any areas of the reference image that are black or white won’t appear in the scene itself.

If we have begun to work in a Linear work flow we must remember to adapt the colour profile of our textures accordingly, so they will not render with an almost washed out appearance.

The scene has gamma correction being acted out through the colour management of the scene, and so certain textures that don’t need corrected will need a plugged in gamma correct node which will counteract the colour management of our render engine, for a balanced colour in the render.

We can plug in a RGB to HSV node to change the colours of any of our precreated textures, it gives us the ability to alter our reference images directly in Maya without having to alter them in another piece of software.

By turning on Ambient Occlusion in all of our shaders it can give our scenes a lot more realism by really drawing out particular details in our models and showing contact shadows between geometry in the scene. Ambient occlusion simulates the soft shadows that occur in the cracks and along edges of your 3D objects when indirect lighting is active in the scene, so works well with Final Gathering to enhance the render images.

We must remember to bump up our Raytracing values when rendering a scene that will have multiple reflections and refractions otherwise we can find tiny errors in areas, such as interiors appearing darker than they should from outside, or weird halo’s around cutout shapes such as the leaves, which are actually being refracted.

We can use the Attribute Spread Sheet to quickly select and edit multiple attributes values across shaders at one time rather than individually, really handy when we want to turn on something like Ambient Occlusion on all of our shaders.

The Ray Trace Depth should be at least the sum of the Reflection and Refraction values when we are setting up our render and lighting settings.

When rendering the format, if we are rendering a HDR image or image that will be 4K or above, we need to ensure this value is reflected in the Framebuffer attributes in our Render Settings window, and changed to a 32 bit value.

First we export as an OBJ file so that the file can be read by the 3D tool in Photoshop.

Photoshops 3D function allows us to paint directly on the model as well as on 2D flat versions of the textures using the UV maps, basically it has stepped up its game to match competition from competitors such as MARI.

We can use photo reference images to build up texture just like compositing images into any other artwork created in Photoshop.