In Part 1 of this post I wrote about how to get in to animation.
In Part 2 I wrote about the 2D disciplines in VFX.
In part 3 I want to close up with the 3D disciplines and some suggestions where you can start learning those skills by your self.
3D in Visual Effects
To create stunning visual effects you need a good team of great artists in a lot of very different disciplines. As a 3D artist, there are tasks that you can obviously point out while watching a movie, but also a lot of different tasks that most people are not aware of. Main 3D disciplines that come to mind are:
- Previs
- Match-move artist
- Layout
- Modeling
- Rigging/Skinning
- Animation
- FX/Muscles Systems/Fur Systems
- Shading
- Lighting/Rendering
Previs
These days there is no VFX heavy movie without previs! Previs stands for Pre-Visualisation. As a previs artist you generate a very rough version of every shot in the movie to define timing/cut-length and what needs to happen in every single shot. This previs will be used on set to plan out exactly how to shoot the sequence, and also from the VFX facilities, who will provide CGI for those sequence, as a guide for their work. The previs artist is the one who has the power to use his creativity to plan how to frame shots, create camera moves, deciding the paste of the shots and sequences he is working on, and he creates also the foundation for the timing of the animation that will follow later in production. He is like a mini director on its own. The director works very close with the previs department. If you want, you could call the Previs an animatic on steroids.
(Some previs done by The Third Floor)
Match-move artist
This is one of those jobs that will never be seen on the screen, but without it it is impossible to do Visual Effects. The job of a Match-move artist is to analyze the live action footage and generate an exact digital copy of the camera movement that happened on set. As soon as you have a virtual-digital camera that behaves exactly as the camera on set, you can position object in your 3D-scene and "film" them. Once you overlap the CGI, that was generated with this virtual-camera, over the live action footage, it will give the illusion that both things are moving in the same world. This technique was created and used the first time in "Jurassic Park". Without this technique it would not be possible to have a moving camera in shots where you need to add some CGI elements.
(Jurassic Park making -off. If you jump to 37min 30sec, they will explain why they needed this technique)
Layout
Once a shot was tracked by a match-move artist, the layout department will set-up a 3D scenes with this camera and start dressing in all the CG elements that are required for this particular shot. Environments, props an characters. They are responsible for the continuity of the shots in a sequence. They will pass on their layout to the animation/fx/lighting department so that they know where to animate, where to position their simulation and where to position lights in a scene.
Modeling
The modeling artist has to build and sculpt every CG object and character that will be visible in the movie. They will use conpept-art as a guide on how the character/prop is supposed to look like and try to translate the 2D image into a 3D form. While they are modeling these assets, they need to make sure that they construct every object in a way that later in the pipeline it is possible to apply animation/textures/shading on to them.
(3D-Model of a humanoid character)
Rigging/Skinning
When you have a 3D model it can look impressive by it self, but besides looking at it you can not really do much with it. If you want to animate it and bring it to life you need controls that give you the ability to move every single joint on that model. These controls are provided by the Rigger. He creates a 3D skeleton for that object/character with additional controls to be able to move everything around as you would expect it to behave. The process of binding the geometry to the skeleton is called Skinning. Everything needs to be balanced out so that the model looks good and natural even in the most extreme positions.
Animation
We discussed animation already in PART 1 of this post.
FX/Muscles Systems/Fur Systems
Fx stands for (you guessed it) Effects. This means they create everything that has to do with destruction/explosions/water/sand/dust/debris/tracer/plasma... you name it. Besides explosions there are other tasks where simulation is needed. As soon as you have a character-rig that mimics a living creature, you probably want to add a virtual muscles-system. By doing so you add another layer of realism that will make that character more believable. When he bends his arm the muscle flexes, when he stretches his arm the muscle relaxes. On top of that, usually most living being also have some amount of body-hair. This goes from human hair to animal fur for characters like Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy or Caesar from Planet of The Apes. This hair will be applied to the 3D-character with so called fur-systems/simulations.
(Example of Weta-Digitals creature work)
Shading
We talked in Part 2 about how texturing will give you the color information of a material. Shading is the step where you define how the material reacts to light. How shiny is the material? How much light gets diffused? Is the object self illuminating? How strong is the refraction of this glass? These materials can be generated using basic shaders provided by the 3D software or if a material is very sophisticated you have specialized shader-writer that will program a shader based on mathematical formulas to mimic the physics of light.
Lighting/Rendering
Now that we have our modeled/animated/simulated/textured and shaded 3D-scenes we need to mimic the light that was created on set during shooting, so that the final CG images that we will generate will fit with the live-action-footage. For this a Lighting TD (TD = Technical Director) can position virtual lights by hand or use information from a HDRI image, that was generated on set, to know exactly where all the lights on set where positioned and how intense they were. Once this is done we finally want to get an image out that we then can pass on to the compositing department. The process of calculating a 2D image based on a 3D scene is called rendering.
(This is a 100% CGI potrait of the Walter White character from the TV-Series Breaking-Bad. Here you see a combination of 3D-Modeling + Texturing + Shading + Rendering and probably some Compositing to fine tune things. Image by Riccardo Minervino)
Time to choose
So now that we know what type of tasks you can do as a 2D or 3D artist it is time to play around with a bit of every discipline to find out what you enjoy the most. Sometimes what we think that we would enjoy doing, can frustrate us, and sometimes tasks that we think would be boring and not challenging are the ones that we really enjoy the most. I would suggest that you start doing things that you feel confident with, and from there try out as many disciplines as possible. Sooner or later you will find exactly what you want to do.
Where to start?
I always encourage people to just start with random tutorials that you think could be interesting for you. There are tons of tutorials on Youtube and Vimeo and there are also tons of websites with free written/video tutorials like:
With a quick Google search I am sure you will find plenty more. There are also websites with subscription-fees where the quality of the tutorials usually is a bit higher:
If you are a total beginner I would start with pluralsight.com. They have tutorials for 3 main categories: Creative professionals, IT and Software Development. They have a 10-day free trial, so there is no harm in just loggin in and have a look. The Gnomon Workshop has some really nice tutorials with a very high quality in production value. They have 4 main categories: Digital Production, Entertainment Design, Software and Tattooing. Creatureartteacher.com is the web-site from Aaron Blaise who was a 2D-Disney animator for over 20 years and he loves drawing animals. On his website he has some amazing tutorials about character design, drawing in general, 2D animation, photoshop and many more.
Once you start getting confident with your skills, you should start your own projects and share them with the community. Start small and build from there. It is a good idea to post your work on web-sites like:
There you will get feedback from the community, can participate to contests and you will get tons of inspiration for your own work.
What else?
If you really want to succeed as a VFX artist, regardless if 2D or 3D, you really need to love what you are doing and you need passion for it. Take your time to build up skills. Never stop learning, because those who stop will be left behind. There will be always some frustration along the way, but this should not hold you up in pursuing your passion. You should really enjoy to work in a team because creating movies is a team effort, there is not much space for big egos. Just bare in mind that every single VFX shot you see in a movie was touched in average by 5-10 different departments. Everybody gives his best to create a stunning final product.
I hope this 3-part post helped you getting an idea on how to start to get into the VFX world.
In Part 1 of this post I wrote about how to get in to animation.
In Part 2 I wrote about the 2D disciplines in VFX.
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If you have any other suggestions/critique for future posts let me know in the comment section.