CG Garage

As the dust settles on 2017, one question lingers on everyone's minds: was Star Wars: The Last Jedi a good movie? The critics have embraced indie auteur Rian Johnson's continuation of the new Star Wars universe, but the response from audiences and internet nerds has ranged from ecstatic, to meh, to Kylo Ren-like levels of rage. To dissect this divisive movie, Chris is joined by Star Wars revisioni...

Mobile games are big business — bigger, in fact, than their console counterparts. They're cheaper to make, require smaller teams, and they can generate huge amounts of money. In the first part of this podcast, Chris talks to John "Cip" Cipriani, senior artist at enormously successful mobile games company Supercell (Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Boom Beach). Of course, mobile games have their own c...

Maxx Burman was destined for a career in the film industry — but how he got there is surprising. His grandfather and parents were practical effects artists, creating the groundbreaking makeup for The Wolfman and The Planet of the Apes, respectively. Helping his parents out on all-nighters gave Maxx a strong worth ethic, and a hard-earned knowledge of what happens behind the scenes in Hollywood. Bu...

Summer 1993. Jurassic Park is about to be unleashed in theatres. Meanwhile, at the Rice School of Architecture in Houston, Texas, a young student named Chris Nichols is learning how to use AutoCAD, 3dstudio v2, and Wavefront. Overseeing Chris is Shisha van Horn, a paleontologist turned architecture student, then lecturer. Chris and Shisha are reunited for this trip down memory lane. Shisha talks a...

Chaos Group has been involved in The Ningyo for about four years now, and it's finally come to fruition. The ambitious 27-minute film tells the story of Professor Marlowe, an Indiana Jones-esque cryptozoologist, as he hunts for the titular aquatic creature from Japanese folklore. In this podcast, director Miguel Ortega tells Lon and Chris about the trials and tribulations of making his movie. He a...

For this THU double bill, Chris is joined by friends old and new. In the first part, he chats with VFX artist turned arch viz expert Keely Colcleugh, and CG Architect founder Jeff Mottle — both of whom have previously featured on podcasts. They're perfect examples of how this year's THU festival embraced architectural professionals and the crucial knowledge they can bring to concept art and charac...

In this podcast, Chris talks to Corey Harper and Ramy Hanna, the co-founders of Tiltpixel. This Houston-based arch viz company has gone from two people working from home, to a thriving office filled with the latest kit - and lots of LEGOs. Corey also serves as the 2017 president of the American Society of Architectural Illustrators (ASAI), a role which will be filled in 2018 by Chaos Group CCO Lon...

For this podcast, Chris is joined by a quartet of artists, directors and filmmakers at THU festival in Portugal. The first is Manny "MANu" Carrasco. This sweet and humble artist started out in traditional animation, before going 3D for the Turok video games, and then moving into concept art for movies such as Anastasia, Prince of Egypt and Space Jam. Throughout his career, Manny has always found s...

Some 20 years ago, Chris graduated with a master's in architecture from Rice University in Houston, Texas. His thesis advisor and dean at the time was Lars Lerup, himself an esteemed architectural professor, author, artist, and designer. For this podcast, Chris and Lars are reunited in the hallowed halls of Rice School of Architecture. As someone who's seen architecture and its students completely...

Here's another pair of podcasts Chris recorded at this year's THU festival in Portugal. Kevin the Dane: The first podcast features Kevin Gøhler, better known as Kevin the Dane to V-Ray fans thanks to the tutorials and reviews on his popular YouTube channel. He also works as technical director at architectural visualization company Dimension Design ApS, and he's currently designing his own VR video...

We're only just starting to tap into the power of VR for collaboration in architecture — but there are many, many hurdles along the way. For instance: How do you get everyone into the same shared space? How do you represent attendees? How do you point things out within this virtual space? And how do you get tech-phobic participants to embrace the medium without getting scared or frustrated? Entrep...

Chris recorded a lot of podcasts at THU — and this episode treats you to not one, but two 25-minute recordings. In the first, Chris chats with celebrated CG portrait artist Ian Spriggs, and digital anatomy expert Scott Eaton. They discuss the history of portraits, and how the fundamental idea of representing humans hasn't really changed from cave paintings, to paintings, to photographs, and now th...

Presentations are a surprisingly big challenge in the architecture community. It's easy to wow clients with stills and videos, but if they want changes architects and arch viz studios have to re-render shots and animations. Barcelona-based company CL3VER has created a clever solution to this issue - a browser-based system which can render realistic 3D models. In this podcast, Chris talks to CL3VER...

THU has become a staple for digital artists, and now the festival is increasingly welcoming members of the arch viz community. Syria-born Mahmoud Alkawadri has attended the event twice now – and he's a poster child for the transformative effects of THU. In this podcast with Chris, recorded at THU, Mahmoud discusses his experience in VFX and exhibitions in Syria and Germany, his current role as a f...

Visualization company ArcMedia has just reached its 15th birthday. To celebrate, Founder and Managing Director Brett Fisher and Creative Director Ben Bancroft joined Chris for a few beers at the D2 conference in Vienna. Naturally, Chaos Group's acquisition of Render Legion and Corona comes up, but Brett and Ben highlight an unexpected benefit of the move. They also talk about ArcMedia's beginnings...

Paul Nicholls is a third of the team behind Factory Fifteen, a London-based directing collective and arch viz and production studio. From a background in architecture, Paul has made a name for himself in creating ambitious short and feature-length films, music videos and VR experiences. In this podcast, recorded at the D2 Conference in Vienna, Paul talks about how Factory Fifteen was formed, the n...

Johnny Gibson has created ballistic missile detection software, worked on stealth bombers, and covertly filmed on the Russia/China border. These might sound like missions assigned to a secret agent, but Johnny's actually a VFX artist and supervisor, and in this podcast he discusses his incredible career with Chris. Having worked on over 30 feature films, including Fight Club, Transformers and thre...

The d2 Conference has grown from a humble meeting of 85 people to an indispensable event for arch viz studios and artists around the world. This year's event was of particular significance; the industry's leading lights celebrated Chaos Group's acquisition of Render Legion and Corona Renderer. In this short but sweet podcast, Chris talks to Fabio Palvelli and Jason Bergeron, the Italian and Americ...

Originally from South Africa, Darren Hendler has worked on movies such as The Grinch, I Robot, and Maleficent. At the same time he's become a key figure in the research and development of virtual humans at Digital Domain. Darren has a lot in common with the similarly digital human obsessed Chris, and this podcast poses many questions around digital humans, such as why is it easier to make an old B...

Chaos Group promised a big announcement at the D2 Conference in Vienna. Not only did they not disappoint, but they took the world by surprise. On Friday, August 25, they announced that Chaos Group has acquired Render Legion, the makers of the Corona renderer . Corona has become extremely popular in recent years, especially in the Architecture and ArchViz community. Just after the announcement, Chr...

One of the biggest and most well-received surprises at this year's SIGGRAPH was Epic Games' announcement that it's added V-Ray rendering to Unreal Engine. In this podcast, recorded at the conference, Chris sits down with Epic's Marc Petit and Ken Pimentel to discuss what this meeting of minds means. They talk about how the Unreal Engine has gone from a solid platform for game development to a mult...

Recorded live at V-Ray Days @ SIGGRAPH 2017, this podcast unites host Chris with previous guests, and Wikihuman members, Mike Seymour ( FXGuide ) and Jay Busch ( Google ). If you attended SIGGRAPH, you'll know that the virtual representation of Mike - aka Meet Mike - was a star of the convention, and this podcast delves into the trials and tribulations of his creation. Along the way, the team talk...

The worlds of videogames and VFX are colliding. Realtime rendering is changing the way movies are made, while blockbuster games borrow techniques and tech from Hollywood. No one knows this landscape better than Naughty Dog's Josh Scherr, who's worked his way from animator on PS2 flagship Jak and Daxter to co-writer of the epic Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. In this podcast, Josh gives Chris a compreh...

Established in London in 1990, visual effects and post-production company the Mill has grown with offices in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, with over 200 employees in the later. Among those who made the jump to the LA office are  Head of 2D/Creative Director Chris Knight, and Executive Creative Director Phil Crowe. As becomes apparent in this podcast, neither has lost their accent — or their...

Rendering is dead. Long live rendering. As computers become faster and more powerful, and 3D software becomes easier to use, rendering could be about to change dramatically. And it may even cease to exist as we know it today. In this podcast, Chris gazes into his crystal ball with Chaos Group's CCO Lon Grohs and Communications Director David Tracy. It's an animated discussion which raises some imp...