CG Garage

Alex's early career combined his passion for architecture with his love of theater, but an early experience with an Oculus Rift inspired him to move into the virtual arena. His company, Agile Lens, produces everything from quick virtual sketches to immersive photorealistic visualizations for the AEC industry. In this podcast, Alex tells Chris why it's important to fasten your headset early on in t...

THU festival is a wonderful place filled with inspiring things; among them this year was this deep-dive panel discussion on the relationship between artists and their tools. The superstar participants include famed traditional-leaning Visual Artist Phil Hale, visionary Gnomon School Founder Alex Alvarez, and prestigious Hollywood Concept Artist and Production Designer Dylan Cole. Representing the...

Geoffrey Baumann's career has propelled him around the world on some of Hollywood's biggest movies, including his most recent role as VFX supervisor on Marvel's record-breaking Black Panther . Having spent time in Europe and America as a child, Geoffrey majored in public relations before becoming a PA at Digital Domain. His linguistic skills landed him a job in on-set survey and digital integratio...

At Google's Cloud Next '18 event in San Francisco earlier this year, a small team of CG artists and Google technicians took part in an audacious experiment: to create a Hollywood-quality animated short film in just three days. Fortunately, the team had a little help from Google's Cloud Platform, a scalable and versatile system which gave them a huge amount of remote computing power. In this enligh...

For a short film, Construct's production has taken a long time. But, as Director Kevin Margo explains there have been many good reasons for the delays. Conceived as a way to push the boundaries of ray tracing and virtual production, Construct become a perfect test subject for cutting-edge VFX techniques. It's been cloud rendered via an NVIDIA cluster some 500 miles away, rejigged as a VR experienc...

This week, Chris, Dan, and Erick finally get round to discussing Alien . It's one of the most-requested topics for the podcast, and it's not hard to see why: Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is still terrifying today, and it gave birth to one of the silver screen's most memorable monsters. But Alien also gave us Ripley, the plucky, punky feminist hero who rises up against both the xenomorph and the patri...

Recorded at SIGGRAPH in Vancouver, this podcast features self-taught rendering expert Zap Andersson. Zap's career in CG began early, with the modification of a Swedish ABC 80 computer so it supported higher resolutions, ray tracing, gaming, and even image editing and music sampling. His passion for computing propelled him into a career in CAD, then back into ray tracing, where he earned his "Shade...

Our host Chris Nichols is joined by his name twin Chris Nichols from Digital Domain. After reminiscing about working at DD at the same time (and accidently getting each other's emails and phone calls), they dive into Chris's role in the look development of Thanos on Avengers: Infinity Wars. The Chris' discuss the detail and thought that went into Thanos, and how Chris had to imagine so much of his...

Fresh off a tour of America, INK Founder Dave Macey joins Chris and Lon to talk about how two unemployed arch viz artists started one of the UK's most distinctive creative studios. As well as working with everyone from BMW to Wired to Asics, the company has created side projects which range from the beautiful (stark Le Mans sportscars) to the bizarre (inflating 1970s vehicles). While its Workshop...

Joining Chris for this podcast are Brick's CEO András Káldos, Chief Development Officer Attila Cselovszki, Product Development Specialist Péter Sárhidai — and a bottle of Pálinka, Hungary's favorite fruit brandy. As András explains, Brick Visual was founded in Budapest in 2012, among the perfect storm of a financial crisis which resulted in a surplus of unemployed architects. The company was able...

V-Ray for Houdini made a spectacular debut last year — via the music video for Taylor Swift's Look What You Made Me Do. Behind the visual effects of the video — and most of Swift's promos — is Ingenuity Studios, and its Creative Director Grant Miller. In this podcast, Grant talks with Lon and Chris about how Ingenuity has embraced V-Ray for Houdini, from its early days as a GitHub project to full...

Softly-spoken VFX supervisor Bill Spradlin currently works at Zoic Studios on TV shows such as Arrow, Iron Fist, and Legends of Tomorrow, and his previous credits include Oblivion (with Chris), Transformers, and Iron Man 3. In this podcast, he talks about how his childhood fascination with Star Trek helped him choose his career path, as well as his early ventures in computing and MMOs. He highligh...

In this podcast, Chris is joined by Neoscape's Evan Buxton and Bryan Holmes, as well as former Neoscaper - and now Chaos Group CCO - Lon Grohs. The innovative Boston-based studio has been on the podcast wishlist for some time, and it's peppered with amusing anecdotes about when Evan, Bryan, and Lon worked together. The podcast also features some great advice on running a modern arch viz company, i...

Creative studio Squint/Opera has many talents: as well as creating playful, story-driven arch viz films it has produced kids TV series Messy Goes to Okido, and it even runs a bar in south-east London. Recorded at Total Chaos, this podcast features three of the company's 3D artists: Michelle Obayda, Camille Lymer, and Zlatina Pancheva Drawing from their experience working with Bjarke Ingels (BIG) o...

This podcast features Aaron Kupferman, an expert on the intertwined fields of CGI and photography. He's served as compositor on movies such as Avengers: Infinity War, Alice in Wonderland, and upcoming Statham vs. Shark film The Meg. But he's also an unbelievably talented photographer, effortlessly shifting between shiny automobiles, expansive land and cityscapes, and dwarfing time-lapse photos of...

It's not hard to see why Karim Mousa has become one of the world's most respected arch viz artists. His renders and animations for Zaha Hadid, KPF and MVRDV are cinematic, realistic, and spectacular. In this podcast, recorded at Total Chaos, Karim tells Chris how he's carved out a career among some of the best in the business. Karim and Chris have a lot in common: both have lived in the vibrant ci...

On the verge of his 50th birthday, Chris's former colleague Ken Ibrahim looks back at an incredible career in which his childhood dreams came spectacularly true. Ken's interest in visual effects began at the age of nine, when he and his brother were inspired by Star Wars and Star Trek to create Super 8 films, complete with hand-drawn visual effects. He was introduced to computers at high school, a...

At Total Chaos, Ian Spriggs unveiled Portrait of Cassidy, the latest lifelike portrait from the digital Rembrandt. It's such a striking image that it graced the cover of 3D World magazine, alongside the tag "This is not a photo!" In this podcast, Ian reveals the painstaking and lengthy process of creating Cassidy and his other portraits. He tells Chris about how he makes his subjects feel at ease,...

Andre Matos is something of a hero at Chaos Group. He's a proponent of V-Ray GPU and VRscans, which are part of the toolset he uses to create enormous eye-catching renders for sports car company Porsche. As a special guest at the Total Chaos conference in Sofia, he delivered a keynote speech, a masterclass on motor vehicle renders, and recorded this podcast with Chris. Andre and Chris share some s...

Under their Studio Niskota moniker, Dean Niskota and Hrvoje Čop have become renowned around the world for their remarkable arch viz images and videos. At Total Chaos - where this podcast was recorded - the pair announced Polymachine, a new venture in a new office, which will transform them from arch viz specialists into a fully fledged creative agency. Dean and Hrvoje tell Chris about their journe...

Our pals from Corona played a big part at Total Chaos, delivering a keynote speech and numerous presentations. Founding partner and main developer Ondřej Karlík, and research and development partner Jaroslav Křivánek, also sat down with Chris to talk about what's changed in the nine months since the partnership was announced. Corona and V-Ray developers working together as a happy family has broug...

Dan Thron joins Chris for another epic discussion of a groundbreaking movie — with special guest star Erick Schiele. Steven Spielberg's Jaws marked a turning point when it was released in 1975, blending believable characters and a relatable setting with an unstoppable monster. It built on movies of the time, like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Godfather and Bonnie and Clyde, and heralded a new era...

Avengers: Infinity War is full of wonderful things, but a particular highlight is Thanos, the movie's purple antagonist. In this week's podcast, Digital Domain's Darren Hendler and Ron Miller join Chris to explain how they turned actor Josh Brolin's nuanced performance into one of the most impressive digital characters ever to hit the big screen. Darren and Ron break down the steps of creating Tha...

Steve Blakey has been in visual effects since 1989, beginning with animated logos and commercials in New York, and then moving to Los Angeles to work on movies. He and Chris first met at Digital Domain, where they worked on disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow. Recorded over a bottle of whisky, this podcast covers everything from the megabucks contracts digital artists could command in the early...

Jesse James Chisholm's illustrious movie career has spanned work from The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons to upcoming Marvel blockbuster Ant-Man and the Wasp. Along the way, he's done everything from sweeping set floors, to supervising effects shots alongside legendary directors David Fincher, Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg. In this candid podcast, Jesse reveals all about the pressures of wo...