Over almost 25 years, Phil Miller has helped bring products such as 3ds Max, Combustion, Dreamweaver, and NVIDIA’s commercial rendering solutions to market — and dabbled in his own software and his original vocation of architecture. Now, Phil has brought his wealth of experience and knowledge to Chaos Group where he serves as vice president of product management.

This podcast is a treasure trove of long-lost computing terms like Pentium processors, MS-DOS and ISDN lines. Phil gives a potted history of the ups and downs of technology, including the ingenious method he used to give plotted architectural illustrations a hand-drawn look, the success of his books on 3D Studio and 3ds Max, and how Chaos Group shook up the rendering industry with V-Ray RT.

Phil is always a few years ahead of his time, and the podcast concludes with his thoughts on the future of CG, real-time rendering via Project Lavina and why speed increases are only part of the battle.

Artificial intelligence has gone from sci-fi subject matter to part of our day-to-day lives via assistant services such as Apple’s Siri and machine learning which helps 3D artists create better work more quickly. But is this merely another technological leap forwards, like photography or computer-aided design, or a genuine threat to lives and livelihoods?

That’s the question Chris posed to an expert panel at this year’s THU festival. Among his guests were Daimler futurologists Sabine Engelhardt and Alexander Mankowsky, CG supervisor-turned-Google technical director Jeff Kember, anatomy specialist Scott Eaton and Lenovo’s head of media and entertainment Rob Hoffmann.

This entertaining, informative and occasionally heated debate tackles everything from the intricacies of neural networks and image learning, to the science and psychology of scents, and the way Netflix and Hulu stats help create entertainment precisely calibrated for certain audiences.

Virginie Bourdin’s astonishing career whisked her from a small town in France to art director on blockbusters including X-Men: Days of Future Past, Harry Potter movies, and the upcoming Captain Marvel. In this podcast, recorded at the THU festival, Virginie explains how she’s become one of the most sought-after art directors in the VFX industry.

Virginie talks about her work on the otherworldly villains of Wrath of the Titans and Edge of Tomorrow, how she uses mood boards and the importance of keeping everything loose and fluid. She goes into detail on her French origins and the reasons behind its supercritical national stereotypes.

Virginie is a tour de force, and you'll come away from this podcast with lots of inspiration on how to generate great ideas.

Few people have seen the rise of VFX like Kelly Port and Matt Butler. Over the course of 25 years, they’ve risen from digital artists to VFX supervisors at effects powerhouse Digital Domain. The watershed moment for both was their work on Titanic, and they discuss the million-dollar computers used to generate the 2TB of effects in the film.

Of course, software and hardware have moved on a great deal since Jack and Rose's perilous adventure. Kelly talks about the groundbreaking technology and performance capture which made Avengers: Infinity War’s CG supervillain Thanos a reality, and Matt discusses his input on Ender’s Game and Ready Player One. They also muse about what makes Digital Domain a great place to work and their tactics for avoiding conflict and nurturing talent.

Kelly and Matt have great chemistry with one another and Chris, and you’ll hear about their experiences of working with actors Dan Stevens and Josh Brolin, and directors Steven Spielberg and Gavin Hood. Plus, there’s a bonus pearl of wisdom from none other than Ron Howard.

Games have compelling narratives worthy of Hollywood movies — so it should come as no surprise that cinematic talent is swapping cameras for controllers. Joining Chris this week are two men who've made the leap and now work on EA's blockbuster Madden sports franchise.

Producer Robin Cowie went from Nickelodeon idents to box office phenomenon The Blair Witch Project, which taught him how to tell a first-person narrative on a tight budget. Animation director Tony Stanley cut his teeth on Disney classics The Lion King, Lilo and Stitch, and Mulan, the latter of which has just turned 20 — and had an enduring legacy in the Chinese animation industry.

The pair tell Chris how they created Madden NFL 18: Longshot and Madden NFL 19: Longshot Homecoming campaigns, which seamlessly mix dramatic player-driven branching stories with action from the gridiron. You’ll find out about the technology and techniques Robin and Tony use to create and edit in-game cinematics, how they fashion game design documents into scripts and why motion capture has become a vital part of the realism of modern games.

This is the 200th CG Garage Podcast — and the first Martini Giant spinoff episode. To commemorate reaching this huge milestone, Chris, Dan and Erick look at films about reaching huge stones: Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Peter Hyams’ sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

The first is a true masterpiece of cinema, with Kubrick employing then state-of-the-art visual effects, smart set design and clever editing to tell a prophetical story about the dehumanizing effects of technology. The trio compare and contrast this with Hyams’ vision of a leathery Roy Schieder fixing a giant hinge in the sequel.

In typical Martini Giant fashion there are many hilarious tangents, from Lionel Richie’s relationship with 2001, to The Abyss and Chris’ wedding ring, to Dan’s nostalgia for a time when all we had to worry about was being nuked by Russia.

Just as Kubrick’s movie depicts the birth of a new form of human, this episode includes the birth of a new form of podcast: a dedicated spin-off series of Martini Giant podcasts. They talk about some of the subjects they’d like to discuss in future episodes — and you’re invited to let them know your ideas in the comments.

Here’s to another 200 CG Garage podcasts. Cheers!

One of the best things about THU is having so many world-class experts in one place — something Chris took advantage of when he assembled this panel for a discussion on digital humans. The superstar lineup consisted of digital Rembrandt Ian Spriggs, CG pioneer Paul Debevec, ILM’s chief re-animator Hal Hickel, acclaimed anatomy artist Scott Eaton, and Naughty Dog lead character artist Frank Tzeng.

This debate tracks the evolution of digital characters through movies such as Spider-Man 2, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Wall-E, and The Incredibles. Chris and his guests tackle the challenges of building realistic digital humans, the shortcuts games take to present convincing characters on limited hardware, and how subtle artistic decisions can help inject personality and story. They also talk about the ethical conundrums of creating virtual people, and how the film stars of tomorrow might be AI-driven algorithms.

You may not have heard of Donna Smith — but she’s one of the most important players behind the scenes in Hollywood. Over the course of almost 40 years, she’s been instrumental in the production of 157 movies, including Raging Bull, The Terminator, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List and The Matrix. She’s also the first woman to serve as President of Physical Production and Post Production at Universal Pictures.

Despite her enviable career and powerful position, Donna is down-to-earth and affable in this podcast. She offers invaluable advice for anyone looking to get ahead in the film industry, including who you should get to know, the importance of the “business” in show business, and getting started in the seven-year process from script to screen.

This is a must-listen for movie fans, and Donna’s tales of working with Marty (Scorsese), Bobby (DeNiro) and Sly (Stallone) are every bit as inspirational as the films she’s helped bring to the silver screen.

Recorded at THU, this week’s podcast guest is ILM Animation Director Hal Hickel. Inspired by Star Wars and Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion work on King Kong, Hal became an animator on hugely successful California Raisins advertisements of the 1980s. Despite initial reservations, Hal switched clay for computers on Pixar’s breakthrough CG movie Toy Story, then moved to ILM for the Star Wars prequels, A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Rango.

Thanks to his wealth of experience in character animation, Hal has become an expert on digital humans. He goes into detail on how ILM created a CG Grand Moff Tarkin for Rogue One and explains why, in this case, there were no ethical issues with digitally recreating the late Peter Cushing. He also talks about the tiny tweaks his team made to make the character look as real as possible and the dangers of getting stuck in the swamp of opinions at the bottom of the uncanny valley.

This podcast serves as a concise guide to how digital characters have evolved — and where they’re headed next.

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 the development process, some of the subtle cues he uses to guide participants around VR experiences, and the pros and cons of cutting-edge augmented reality gear such as the Microsoft Hololens and Magic Leap One. It concludes with an impassioned geek-out on favorite architects and dream VR architecture, as well as Alex's plans for XR Dads, a podcast on parenthood in the virtual age.