One year after his lively appearance on Episode #190, Shader Wizard Zap Andersson is back — and this time he’s talking all things Open Shader Language (OSL). Now a fully integrated part of 3ds Max’s viewport, this open-source language makes it quick and easy to use shaders across multiple rendering platforms, and tweak and develop your own. Zap discusses the development of OSL and how he put it to use via a 3D fractal, as well as revealing some neat 3ds Max tricks.

That’s not all. Zap also tells Chris about his experiences at this year’s SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles, including his thoughts on facial animation and how machine learning could help us cross the uncanny valley. He also discusses his meetings with renowned VFX YouTubers Corridor Digital, how he’s developing his Android app Slightly Annoyed Rodents — and even arm wrestling Chaos Group’s Co-founder, Vlado Koylazov.

Back in 1999, a short film called “Pepe” introduced the ray-tracing renderer that would become Arnold. Joining Chris for this podcast is Marcos Fajardo, the guy who built the software and helped make the short film after studying SIGGRAPH papers and shareware software. 

Chris shares some questions from Vlado, and gets a fascinating history of Arnold, as Marcos breaks down the renderer’s development, how it got its name, Sony’s investment in the software for animated feature film Monster House, the role it played in bringing Gravity to the big screen, and its recent acquisition by Autodesk.

Marcos comes across as humble but focused, and he’s happy to discuss his strengths and weaknesses, as well as the debt he racked up through developing Arnold. He also discusses the ray tracing of tomorrow and the promises of quantum computing.

Caustics are everywhere. Defined as concentrations of light refracted or reflected off a specular surface, common examples include the patterns you see on the bottom of a pool and the bright curves of light in a wine glass’s shadow. But they also affect the way you see through windows and the reflections cast by any shiny surface. Turning on caustics in ray traced renders can add subtle levels of realism, but their high computational expense means they are usually omitted.

That is until now. The latest release of the Corona Renderer includes a vastly improved caustics solver — which minimizes resource-intensive overheads. In this podcast, Corona’s Founding Partner and Main Developer Ondřej Karlik, and R&D Partner Jaroslav Křivánek tell Chris why caustics are so hard to compute. They also discuss the approach they took to make them work, their vision for the future of caustics — and whether the new solver will make its way to V-Ray.

Craig “Xray” Halperin has worked on everything. His career began at the tender age of 13 when he contributed graphics to the TV show The Fall Guy, and as he grew up he became accustomed to projection mapping, motion graphics and non-linear video editing techniques. His big break in VFX came courtesy of a desperate Stan Winston who needed him to digitally improve Brad Pitt’s face for Interview with the Vampire, and he went on to work on Apollo 13, Hollow Man and Kung Fu Panda.

Today, Xray helps create immersive gaming experiences for Insomniac Games. In this podcast, he discusses how the company managed to create a living, breathing interactive Manhattan with 60fps 4K HDR globally illuminated graphics for Marvel’s Spider-Man on the PlayStation 4. He also tells Chris about his occasional work in education, including helping Paul Debevec with his Parthenon project. The podcast concludes with Xray’s vision of the future in real-time and new game engines.

This year’s Total Chaos conference brought together three of the biggest names in the art and science of CG: 3D portrait artist Ian Spriggs, lighting pioneer turned light field specialist Paul Debevec, and anatomy expert and AI exploratory artist Scott Eaton. Each presented compelling talks on the Total Chaos stages, before heading to Chris's mobile booth to record this podcast.

What emerges is a thorough examination of how rapid technological changes are revolutionizing the way CG and digital humans are created. Ian talks about his meticulous portrait of Scott and how GPU technology has sped up his workflows, Paul goes into detail on bringing Scott's giant head into VR via light field technology, and Scott himself discusses his experiments with machine learning to create surreal imagery based on his anatomical database.

The trio offers their thoughts on how the convergence of this technology may change the role of the artist — and how this isn't necessarily anything new. Ian also gives some insight into his upcoming portrait of Chris himself.

Victor and Chris first met at the THU festival a few years ago, and at Chaos Group’s Total Chaos event earlier this year they were finally able to sit down and record this podcast. What follows is a retelling of Victor’s journey from humble 3ds Max user to one of the most revered and distinctive 3D character artists on the planet.

There’s lots of sound advice for artists here, including how Victor has overcome his fears of talking on stage and being interviewed by big companies, how he’s learned from criticism, and taking the first bold steps to become a freelance artist full-time. He also talks about how his dream job didn’t quite meet his expectations and his most recent work on Love, Death & Robots.

The CG industry is on the cusp of a dramatic shift. While ray tracing has always been the best way to achieve lifelike CG visuals, hardware and software advances are making it feasible for architects, arch viz artists and designers to use real-time engines to create astonishing imagery and VR experiences.

In this podcast, Chris is joined by Chaos Group’s Vice President of Product Management Phil Miller and V-Ray for Unreal Product Manager Simeon Balabanov. The pair discuss the history of rasterized graphics, how they compare with ray-traced imagery and some of the myths around real-time. You’ll also learn how Chaos Group is making it easier to take ray-traced workflows into real-time with products such as V-Ray for Unreal and Project Lavina.

This week, Chris is joined by energetic and super smart developer Kat Harris. Kat studied Computer Science Engineering at the University of Virginia, where she also went from pixel artist to vice president of the Student Game Developers club. She integrated numerous technologies into the Unity game engine in her role as Technical and Gaming Evangelist at Microsoft and became the world’s first female Unity Certified Developer. Now, Kat works at pioneering visual development company Magnopus, where she now focuses on mixed reality inside the entertainment world of virtual production.

Kat discusses what it’s like to work and play in male-dominated fields, from experiences with Magic: The Gathering at middle school to the offices of big tech firms. There are also numerous side-tracks into the fields of the internet of things, how sci-fi ideas are shaping the tech and gaming industries, Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One and her newfound love of Dungeons and Dragons.

This week, Chris goes behind the scenes at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects. Founded in 1997, this Hollywood-based establishment has grown to a thriving and crucial part of the effects industry, with over 400 students picking up the skills which will land them hot jobs on games and movies.

In this podcast, Chris is joined by Eric Miller, the school’s Chief Technology Officer. His job is to ensure Gnomon is always ahead of industry trends in both hardware and software, managing a vast array of technology and 135 different software packages. Eric also talks about some of the teaching methods Gnomon employs to get students ready for the tough world of visual effects or games, and he offers some great advice on how to prepare for a course at Gnomon.

Digital Giant is using new technology to make it easier and faster to create photorealistic digital content. Joining Chris this week are the company’s Operative Dallas Carroll and VFX Supervisor/Partner Felix Urquiza, who go in depth on the way the company has been set up, and how it’s doing things differently.

CG car work is notoriously finicky. The challenge of making vehicles look real — as well as keeping up with every detail of the car design — increases year on year. Digital Giant has taken years of experience and found new ways to keep their process accurate and efficient, combining both real-time technologies along with offline rendering and making sure everything is synced up.

It’s a fascinating discussion of an area of CG which is at the forefront of the industry, and one which is experiencing sweeping changes thanks to social media and new technology.