3 ms·

Just an observation and a point of discussion regarding the big studios. Disclaimer, I am not in this space professionally, but I listen to a LOT of podcasts ab

Just an observation and a point of discussion regarding the big studios. Disclaimer, I am not in this space professionally, but I listen to a LOT of podcasts about VR/AR which spills into all of these topics. Do you see a push away from Maya and 3DS max for a more platform agnostic modeling environment? Blender seems to be mentioned all over the place for beginners. From what I am hearing on podcasts, Unreal Game engine is making a big push into film/animation production in addition to its impressive game credits. As long as you can export an FBX file UE4/5 should be a great pipeline, or do I have it wrong?

gmueckl 6y ago
The problem with UE4 in film/animation is about the the place it should occupy in the pipeline. Being a game engine at its core, it's fundamentally designed to ingest models and render images. So its natural place is at the end of the pipeline. There's no really good roundtrip capabilties that let you e.g. export a scene that was created in UE for use in other tools. So despite the interactivity that would let you e.g. block out a scene with awesome real time feedback, there's no good way to get the data out into a different animation or lighting tool for final touchups before it goes to an offline renderer. This is why some big animiation studios have invested a lot of effort into in-house realtime preview renderers that attach to their tool pipelines with less friction.
- ravenstine 6y ago
  That's an excellent point about why they would rather write their own in-house software. Of course they then get saddled with having to support all of that software and may struggle to do so, which is another problem in itself.
ravenstine 6y ago
I'm not in the field myself, though animation was my original career and I know people who work in feature animation. To answer your question, the field has been sloooowly diversifying in some ways, as you say with Unreal (particularly since Unreal's engine is fast and good for real-time previews), but I don't see a huge push for moving away from does-it-all packages like Maya or 3DS Max. The economic incentive isn't there. Studios have figured out how to make their money and are comfortable with the pipelines that they already have. This isn't to say their pipelines are good. In fact, many of you would be shocked at just how bad most animation pipelines are at big studios. Not only are they way too vendor-locked (as is kind of the case with Maya), but they don't want to pay an adequate salary for qualified software engineers who can build better pipelines and write more software that's agnostic. Of course, I'm making sweeping generalizations, but this is the kind of story I've heard more often than not. Pixar is known for having good practices and they write (and sell) their own software, but I don't closely know anyone who has worked there. It's going to take a decline in the field of animation before studios realize that they're basically stuck in 2006 in terms of how their artists are working to make their content. I won't mention them here, but people at certain major studios have been trying to get things like Unreal for 10+ years and never get approval to receive licenses for it and they never do because higher ups don't believe they'd see a monetary return on investment. Their content is so profitable that the people in charge don't really give a fuck. In case I didn't make it clear, I'm pretty much an outsider at this point, so I'm sure there may be some more relevant viewpoints here that would contradict mine. I don't intend to be authoritative.
- lattalayta 6y ago
  In my opinion, most of the 3D software and renderers are starting to align in their workflows and set up. If you've spent enough time in a 3D package and have your fundamentals down, then a reasonably experienced 3D artist could make something look good in Maya, Blender, Cinema 4D, UE4, 3ds Max, Modo, or slightly more specialized programs like Katana, Mari, Nuke, etc. Most of the "learning curve" is just finding out what a particular program calls one tool or another. I think this video starts to illustrate what I mean https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkvRBvKHFek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkvRBvKHFek Also, at studios, you tend to hear about the "main" pipeline where the majority of the work flows through. There are often secondary, smaller pipelines where they evaluate new tools and workflows before committing to entire rewrites. I would agree that small to medium sized studios don't have the resources or luxury to do as much exploration
  - nuclearsugar 6y ago
    Every CGI toolset has its strengths and weaknesses depending on the project. Also while the knowledge transfers between each software, they each have their own unique implementations for just about everything. It's hell to learn a new CGI toolset. For work and also hobby I create 3D animations and experiment with all sorts of things in Maya. A recent turning point was using Redshift to render everything and suddenly I can do overnight GPU renders at high quality. Here are some of my projects released using a CC license - https://www.jasonfletcher.info/vjloops https://www.jasonfletcher.info/vjloops
- ethbr0 6y ago
  > Their content is so profitable that the people in charge don't really give a fuck. This is usually a general technology smell. Consistent, profitable revenue is the technological equivalent of the resource curse [0]. I haven't figured out if it's because people never get fired (thus new ideas are extremely slow to penetrate and propagate) or because management can afford to be extremely conservative (no pressure, resistance to change). Put the most charitably, it's because there's no need to be more efficient, and stability & consistency is more valuable than improvement. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

gmueckl 6y ago

The problem with UE4 in film/animation is about the the place it should occupy in the pipeline. Being a game engine at its core, it's fundamentally designed to ingest models and render images. So its natural place is at the end of the pipeline. There's no really good roundtrip capabilties that let you e.g. export a scene that was created in UE for use in other tools. So despite the interactivity that would let you e.g. block out a scene with awesome real time feedback, there's no good way to get the data out into a different animation or lighting tool for final touchups before it goes to an offline renderer. This is why some big animiation studios have invested a lot of effort into in-house realtime preview renderers that attach to their tool pipelines with less friction.

ravenstine 6y ago
That's an excellent point about why they would rather write their own in-house software. Of course they then get saddled with having to support all of that software and may struggle to do so, which is another problem in itself.

ravenstine 6y ago

I'm not in the field myself, though animation was my original career and I know people who work in feature animation. To answer your question, the field has been sloooowly diversifying in some ways, as you say with Unreal (particularly since Unreal's engine is fast and good for real-time previews), but I don't see a huge push for moving away from does-it-all packages like Maya or 3DS Max. The economic incentive isn't there. Studios have figured out how to make their money and are comfortable with the pipelines that they already have. This isn't to say their pipelines are good. In fact, many of you would be shocked at just how bad most animation pipelines are at big studios. Not only are they way too vendor-locked (as is kind of the case with Maya), but they don't want to pay an adequate salary for qualified software engineers who can build better pipelines and write more software that's agnostic. Of course, I'm making sweeping generalizations, but this is the kind of story I've heard more often than not. Pixar is known for having good practices and they write (and sell) their own software, but I don't closely know anyone who has worked there. It's going to take a decline in the field of animation before studios realize that they're basically stuck in 2006 in terms of how their artists are working to make their content. I won't mention them here, but people at certain major studios have been trying to get things like Unreal for 10+ years and never get approval to receive licenses for it and they never do because higher ups don't believe they'd see a monetary return on investment. Their content is so profitable that the people in charge don't really give a fuck. In case I didn't make it clear, I'm pretty much an outsider at this point, so I'm sure there may be some more relevant viewpoints here that would contradict mine. I don't intend to be authoritative.

lattalayta 6y ago
In my opinion, most of the 3D software and renderers are starting to align in their workflows and set up. If you've spent enough time in a 3D package and have your fundamentals down, then a reasonably experienced 3D artist could make something look good in Maya, Blender, Cinema 4D, UE4, 3ds Max, Modo, or slightly more specialized programs like Katana, Mari, Nuke, etc. Most of the "learning curve" is just finding out what a particular program calls one tool or another. I think this video starts to illustrate what I mean https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkvRBvKHFek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkvRBvKHFek Also, at studios, you tend to hear about the "main" pipeline where the majority of the work flows through. There are often secondary, smaller pipelines where they evaluate new tools and workflows before committing to entire rewrites. I would agree that small to medium sized studios don't have the resources or luxury to do as much exploration
- nuclearsugar 6y ago
  Every CGI toolset has its strengths and weaknesses depending on the project. Also while the knowledge transfers between each software, they each have their own unique implementations for just about everything. It's hell to learn a new CGI toolset. For work and also hobby I create 3D animations and experiment with all sorts of things in Maya. A recent turning point was using Redshift to render everything and suddenly I can do overnight GPU renders at high quality. Here are some of my projects released using a CC license - https://www.jasonfletcher.info/vjloops https://www.jasonfletcher.info/vjloops
ethbr0 6y ago
> Their content is so profitable that the people in charge don't really give a fuck. This is usually a general technology smell. Consistent, profitable revenue is the technological equivalent of the resource curse [0]. I haven't figured out if it's because people never get fired (thus new ideas are extremely slow to penetrate and propagate) or because management can afford to be extremely conservative (no pressure, resistance to change). Put the most charitably, it's because there's no need to be more efficient, and stability & consistency is more valuable than improvement. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse