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.

Zaha Hadid Architects has always embraced technology to stay ahead of the game — even the late Zaha Hadid was herself using computers to design buildings back in the 90s. Today, the company makes use of software including Revit, Maya, V-Ray, Rhino and Grasshopper to create its iconic parametric designs, as well as lots of bespoke tools to create VR experiences and model human interactions.

In this podcast, recorded at Total Chaos, Lead Designer/VR Developer Jose Pareja Gomez and Designer Marko Margeta offer a comprehensive breakdown of what happens behind-the-scenes at ZHA and how they get many different pieces of technology to play together nicely. They also talk about how they use scripts to make their lives easier and the ways in which real-time ray tracing promises to change workflows in the near future.

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.

A lot has changed since Darin Grant last appeared on the CG Garage podcast back in September 2016. The VFX industry has overcome its cloud-computing fears and embraced it wholesale, making it faster and cheaper to create imagery for Hollywood movies. Darin, meanwhile, left Solid Angle to consult for various companies and is now CTO for creative digital studio Animal Logic, the company behind The Lego Movie 2, The Matrix and Happy Feet.

In this podcast, Darin offers an overview of the recent history and near future of CG, including why acquisitions of small companies by big ones aren’t necessarily bad, and the pros and cons of software subscription models. He also talks about his ongoing work for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and ACM SIGGRAPH.

Few people have such comprehensive knowledge and foresight of the VFX industry as Darin, making this vital listening for everyone from junior VFX artists to head honchos at major studios.