The art of environments
3D World gathers masters of CG environment work to discuss what they do and how they do it
Experts in the field of CG environments discuss their work
Building environments has become a cornerstone of 3D art. From home interiors and city skylines to dense forests, mountain ranges and alien worlds, the technology now available allows for limitless creation and photorealism on an epic scale. But in such a diverse and unrestrained discipline, are there any artistic principles? What do environment artists have in common? How do they work? And, perhaps most importantly, how can you create your own jaw-dropping 3D environments? 3D World has gathered a diverse selection of environment artists, with decades of collective experience across the CG industry, to answer all these questions and more.
RECREATING THE WORLD
Veteran VFX matte painter and CEO of Mattepaint.com, Conrad Allan, was drawn to environment work when he discovered Vue (a world generation tool by E-on software) whilst studying game animation in his native Australia. After sinking countless hours into the software, Allan connected with Dax Pandhi, CG veteran and Quadspinner co-founder, who was a master of Vue at the time. “He was a major factor in springboarding my understanding,” Allan tells 3D World. “I’m a firm believer in finding a mentor. It’s like having a one-on-one teacher on a semi-regular basis. That said, most of how I got started was just due to the fact that I’d play around with sliders for hours, continuously hitting the render button to see the different results.”
Allan has always been fascinated by the visual aspects of the world around him. “When I was a kid I’d stare out the window looking at clouds,” he recalls. “I love the formations and colours. When I discovered I could actually create environments, that fascination was the driving force pushing me to recreate reality in 3D.
The kicker comes when you show someone some of your work and they think it’s just a photo.”
Photorealism is a key aspect of great environment work for Allan. “I guess that’s a little restricted because it excludes stylised work, so composition and interest would be second to that,” he acknowledges. “When I talk about photorealism with the artists I mentor, I explain to them that it’s contextual,” Allan continues. “For instance, when working on The Lego Movie 2, we had to create photorealistic matte paintings and environments, but that didn’t mean the same thing as photorealism working on Game Of Thrones.”
Whilst Allan’s environment workflow used to be entirely 3D, he transitioned away from this when he got started in VFX. He ended up specialising in the Photoshop and Nuke stage of the pipeline. “Essentially that meant I was doing photoreal matte paintings and then projecting them in Nuke so they were in the right depth, scale, and so on. For artists out there wanting to follow my steps, you should primarily know Photoshop, Nuke and Maya. There are others which are good to know, but these are the critical 3D packages,” he adds.
As someone without a traditional artist skillset, “I can’t draw to save my life,” Allan admits. He made up for it by developing a deep understanding of the software he uses and how he could get the most out of them. Allan always begins a new project by gathering useful references. “Don’t just find five or ten,” he suggests, “find a hundred and have them ready in a folder to drag into Photoshop. It’ll be a much easier process to try different things if you have everything gathered.”
Due to his deep understanding of Nuke, Allan was often tasked with sequence-based projections throughout his VFX career. “This means a 360-degree image that is placed in the background of one hundred to two hundred plus shots,” he explains. “This presents unique challenges like understanding the minimum requirements for resolution, perspectives and where the shots are looking. Because of my
knowledge of Nuke, I’ve been able to create tools for myself to work out a lot of these things and automatically set up two hundred shots for review.” This approach saves a huge amount of time when working on CG environments.
These days, Allan is the CEO of Mattepaint, an industry-leading provider of reference photography for the VFX, games and archviz industries. The idea came to him when he broke into the industry: “Finding reference was really hard,” he says, “either it wasn’t high enough resolution, had bad clamping or noise, or wasn’t quite the right angle.” Allan realised he already had several high-quality shots and could continue to get more as he travelled.
Conrad Allan, CEO of Mattepaint.com
AN INFINITE CANVAS
Mexico City-based CG architect and Fibrha Studio founder Oscar Juárez has been building interior and exterior environments since 2010. After graduating from Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in 2005, Juárez worked in the architectural industry, where he created CG renders alongside his day to day tasks, always being told that it simply wasn’t necessary. Then, in 2008 a friend asked Juárez to help out with some renders for a college final project, and after seeing the results several more of his friends followed suit. “One day I saw 3D World magazine in a store close to home. I bought it and I saw what was happening around the globe. I was amazed and decided two
“I’D PLAY AROUND WITH SLIDERS FOR HOURS, CONTINUOUSLY HITTING THE RENDER BUTTON TO SEE THE RESULTS”
Oscar Juárez, CG architect and Fibrha Studio founder
things: to reach the level of those artists, and that this was the field I wanted to work in,” he recalls.
In the days before Youtube tutorials, Gnomon, Udemy or Domestika, finding online resources was quite the undertaking. “I had to scour the internet for tutorials to gather some knowledge,” Juárez adds. “It was tough but it was the way it was. Nowadays we have tons of places to find the stuff we want.”
“CG environments are an infinite canvas,” Juárez continues, telling 3D World exactly what appeals to him about the discipline. “Each time a new project begins and I open my empty file, ideas start coming. Once the model is done more ideas come and once in post-production the ideas grow. It’s an amazing process that allows you to create a mood, an idea, and a story. Each process allows you to change the course of an image. That’s why I love CG environments; the ideas are limitless.” Limitless until the deadline arrives, he hastens to add.
Simple and efficient are perhaps the best words to describe Juárez’s usual environment workflow. He starts with a CAD file, cleaning it up so that it contains all the necessary information for the project. “Here’s a small tip,” he adds, “once you’ve imported the CAD info, select it all and make a group so once the model is ready you can select it and remove it.” He then begins modelling, only working on what will be seen by the viewer. With the model complete Juárez adds a main light and starts frame tests.
“The most challenging aspect of creating a CG environment for me is working with the light,” he admits. “Light can give you a mood, an emotion. We all have in our minds how light comes through a window, how light comes out from behind a cloud, but most of us have it wrong. It’s not always how we remember, that’s why having references is crucial. I always have references for lighting so I can have a map to follow and give the final image the feeling I want.”
“LEARN, PRACTISE, AND BE HUMBLE – THOSE ARE THE KEY FEATURES OF EVERY GREAT ARTIST”
Once everything is in place, Juárez begins adding detail wherever necessary before moving on to post-production and the final touches. He often uses two Wacom tablets, favouring more affordable options to the most expensive on the market. “I also have lots of Logitech stuff, which I find great for the way I work. Setting shortcuts to mouse buttons and also different profiles to my keyboard allows me to do stuff faster,” he explains.
3ds Max and Corona Renderer are Juárez’s software of choice. He favours the former for modelling from the ground up, as importing from other software can cause issues. “I don’t like when people say Corona is easier,” he says, discussing his preferred renderer, “because it’s not. Corona is a friendly renderer, each person has to find a way to use it and make stuff in a shorter time. When needed I also use Marvelous Designer and Unreal Engine. I’m a true believer that all software is amazing and the magic depends on the user.”
How can artists realise that magic? To Juárez the answer is simple, keep on learning. “No matter how busy you are, always make time to learn that thing you want to learn,” he says. “Learn something new every day, no matter how small it may seem. Want to make amazing fog? Okay, take some time to learn. Want to make realistic grass? Spend time practising. Remember, we all started from zero and we can all help others. Learn, practise, and be humble – those are the key features of every great artist.”
EVOLVING ENVIRONMENTS
Dominic Daigle, head of Rodeo FX’S environment department, got his start before environment departments were a fixture of the CG industry. “We were all generalists,” he recalls, “and back then there were no long courses on all aspects of VFX work like today. People had a technical or artistic background, sometimes both, you learned the software and here you go, do this shot. I guess learning to adapt to new problems or situations early in my career prepared me well for environment work.”
Creating environments for film and television is a diverse field, with challenges and considerations that are unique to each kind of environment. “When they ask you to do a garden you kind of have to become a gardener for a bit in your head,” Daigle explains. “How they build it, how it will look, what they put in it, what kind of trees grow in that country, what kind of plants grow near a certain thing. You have to research all that.” Despite its eclecticism, Daigle maintains that image composition is always key to creating a successful CG environment. “You also need tons of references. Finding references seems easy when you say it, but finding the right ones can be tricky and time consuming. It’s a crucial part of the work.”
Rodeo FX, a VFX studio founded in Montreal, Canada and specialising in hyper-realistic visuals for film, television and advertising, made its name as a studio specialising in environments, before branching out to become a full CG facility. “At some point the environment department was really a matte painting department doing big vistas and complex projections,” Daigle explains. As the demand
for entirely CG environments grew, Rodeo’s CG artists began to take care of the assets and set dressings needed for huge environments. Thus, matte painting started to become a thing of the past.
Moving elements became an ever-present part of CG environments for film and television, from complex camera movements to weather conditions and whatever the project requires. “We had to reinvent the environment department so it could become a full CG department, and move away from the 2.5D world,” says Daigle. “We’ve done just that in the past couple of years and are successful in creating environments with millions, even billions of objects in it that we can pass along to the next department for the rest of the magic to happen.”
The quality of high-end VFX provides an ever-ascending bar for
“WE CREATE ENVIRONMENTS WITH MILLIONS, EVEN BILLIONS OF OBJECTS IN IT THAT WE CAN PASS ALONG FOR THE REST OF THE MAGIC TO HAPPEN” Dominic Daigle, head of Environment, Rodeo FX
environment artists like Daigle and his team to jump over. “There is not that much difference between film and television now,” adds Daigle. “I think the spectators are used to the quality they see in big Hollywood blockbusters, and if you do anything less it gets noticed and can affect the storytelling, because it takes them out of the imaginary and back to the real world, which is not ideal.” He goes on to explain that anything people see every day can be incredibly difficult to render in CG, making trees and hedges as much of a challenge as space stations and alien worlds.
When it comes to creating your own environments in CG, Daigle asserts that there’s simply no substitute for hard work. “Listen to what others have to share about their past work and experience,” he adds, “and be your toughest critic. Always wonder if your work could be better while staying within the time limit you were given. Teamwork is also essential, don’t try to do it all on your own when you start your career.”