Jose: Hello everyone, my name is Jose Vega and I have been working in the animation industry at
Powerhouse Animation for the past couple of years as a lead supervisor for Frederators Castlevania
on Netflix along with some other projects. And I want to take some time today and explain
some of the benefits that 3D has in a production pipeline.
Now, this could benefit you if you work in the animation,
video game or movie industry where speed and time is crucial in the production. Personally,
I use Blender these days but the concept of using 3D is general it does not really
matter what software you use as long as the right mentality goes behind it.
The process of using 3D is very similar to when you're drawing. If you wanted to draw
a hand and try to understand it, I need to be able to see it in its most basic form.
From there, I can start adding medium shapes, small shapes and final details.
If you take the same concept and idea into our 3D,
we can practically do the same thing when we model. We look at our concept
or reference in its most basic form and we add our medium shapes, small shapes and details.
When designing, we want to think three-dimensionally, and inside this 3D world,
it allows us to edit, look around from various angles, add lights to see how the
form will be affected. We can add textures, colors etcetera. And we can do this in a much faster way
than if we were doing it in a traditional way with a pen and pencil or traditional paintings.
We can then take this basic model, pick our angle and continue our design process
in Photoshop. From here, we can decide multiple options based on our 3D base,
and once those designs are approved and finalized, we can then go back to the 3D and finish the model
if needed or simply just use this approved design in our paintings.
Now, let's take this a bit further and imagine we're working in an animated show and have this
location where our characters are gonna interact in the script. We have maybe 20 cuts in this
sequence and you're in charge of developing this area for production, from the visual development
to the final production paintings that are going to be used in the final animation.
So, let's start with visual developments, that's usually what comes first. We have
to conceptualize this area so we know what sort of designs we're going to have. We do not know
how it's going to look, so we have to turn inside development sketches to our director.
In pre-production, 3D allows us to visualize the area as a whole, where there is a room
or landscape in all these angles. Even with a very basic 3D model, we can move around,
get a feel for the space, maybe do some basic lighting, mood... And this is all important in
order for us to design the space for it to work with the sequence and the characters.
And this is crucial because we're not only doing this for just one painting and one angle,
we have to provide as much information as possible about this location.
So, not only you as an artist but everyone else working in the project
understand how this place works and we can really show everything with just one image.
Sometimes we have to make three, five, ten images to showcase just one location.
So, one of the main reasons why I think 3D is so valuable is consistency. And consistency
is key because we need to keep track of many elements in our location.
So, if we have an interior room, we have to keep track of the things like
how many books on the shelf, windows design, the lighting, the size of the carpet, etcetera.
And this is when 3D becomes very powerful.
Not only does it allow me to design the whole area at once, but it also allows
me to bypass a lot of technicalities and that way I can concentrate on the design.
Also, it allows me to provide way more information to the rest of the team
as well as cut down the time to showcase the area.
Now, let's take this even further and let's say we have a bigger location like a city,
a town, ruins or a dungeon. Well, we might spend a couple of episodes here during the show.
We can take the same concept and expand it even more, but now we're gonna make
an actual 3D kit. Now, this requires more time beforehand but in the long run, it will save
a lot of time. Because now we have a kit where we can pull from and pretty much play legos with it
where we can build anything that we need from that. And since it's all coming from the same kit,
it will maintain the same aesthetic, look and feel of the location.
This is when it really becomes super fun because you already did the heavy load of the work
and now you can concentrate on using the pieces to design the
space without worrying about any technicalities.
Now, let's say we get a new assignment, a location is going to build a dungeon and we as background
designers for animated show, we have to do 8 to 12 background paintings. So, let's say
we already have our 3D kit already designed, we have the models, it's already textured... And
as you can see, we have a lot of information here that we can use to build our location.
We're going to be doing a type of dungeon location and two of the characters are going
to interact. So, once we have this, then we can create something pretty elaborate here
and I’ll show you here what I have and I have this sort of like
area here. And once I have this, I can create maybe one or two concepts that
are for approval to sort of illustrate the mood, the color, what's happening in the scene.
Let's say we have this concept and we have another concept here.
But this is going to tell us a lot about the mood and the final look that we want to have
for the actual scene in terms of light, textures, lighting, color and everything related to that.
Once we have that approved then, if you're working in an animated show, we can use the
storyboards to pick our shots using our camera and render these out for the different scenes. And so,
I’ve created here a couple of cameras here and once you have this, you can do 1, 10,
20, as many as you need and this view here is pretty much what we're gonna get as a render.
To take this to a final painting, it won't really take that much if we were going to do
this from scratch. So, I have a couple of shots here, so let's say for example
we have the character coming in from the door and maybe there's like a pan down type of camera and
the character walks towards the camera, and then we see here that maybe the character sort of like
comes into the frame and turns around and looks into this prison cell here.
And so, as you can see this area is not - it's empty, so for this specifically shot, we can
use - go back to the 3D kit here and then add pieces here to sort of develop this empty area.
Maybe we have sort of like a side shot a pen camera and the character is walking from left to
right here. And then here we can see the actual character leaning into the door, maybe there's
some dialogue here from the inside of the cell in between the guard and the prisoner or something.
And then maybe like an over-the-shoulder shot here or maybe we can see some movement
inside the prison, the person inside the cell. Maybe the person is sitting on the floor here,
we can add the floor here and then we can see the light from the outside of the cell coming inside.
So as you can see, I can render all these shots here without the character,
but you can see that I get a lot of information from just a 3D here.
And then from here, we just take the render and then we can do our final paintings.
Now, in this painting, there's a lot a lot of things here that we won't be doing as background
designers for a show, like for example the rain coming in, the fire, some of the effects we won't
be doing because that's a post-production thing. This is more for like a proof-of-concept idea.
But from here to here, it really won't take as much time if I was gonna do this image completely
from a white canvas from scratch. Now, you can see how powerful this process could be.
Doing this, even though it may require some more prep work,
at the beginning, you will see how much time you can save later in the process.
And the less work we do for this part, the more we will have to do later on.
So, whether you're new to 3D or you are an experienced 3D artist,
I think 3D is a great tool for any artist to have. We are craftsmans and as artists
the better and the more tools that we have, the better we can do our own work.
Marshall: Thank you Jose. If you want to see more 2D and 3D art tips,
check out Jose's YouTube channel, Art of Jose Vega where he gives you his industry pro experience
and techniques in dozens of videos. You can find his work on Instagram at Art of Jose Vega and
on Art Station at Jose Vega. You can pick up his Blender basics course along with other tutorials.
Check out our links below to see more. You can also see Jose’s work on Netflix
in the hit animated show Castlevania. Thanks again Jose, we appreciate you.