chaos group: interview with niklas jacobson, vfx supervisor & co-founder of ilp

December 2012

Customer Success Story

Copyright © 2012 Chaos Software Ltd. All rights reserved. All brand names, product names, or trademarks belong totheir respective holders.

Chaos [email protected] www.chaosgroup.com

Client: Important Looking PiratesIndustry: Film and Visual Effects Products: V-Ray for Maya

ThE SToRyTELLERSRead about the journey Yafei Wu and Niklas Jacobson have embarked upon by creating Important Looking Pirates.

TEaM WoRk and InSPIRaTIonFind out how ILP’s people have created a unique team spirit that allows them to collaborate in the most efficient way and enjoy their work.

ThE backSTagE ExPERIEncELearn about the production challenges in Kon-tiki and take a sneak peak at what’s currently cooking at ILP.

cuSToMER bEnEFITSFind out why ILP decided to use V-Ray as their main renderer.

2346

In the production of Kon-tiki we used all of V-Ray’s advanced features such as GI, caustics, camera motion blur/depth of field, fog, volume caustics, render elements etc. and it worked really great!

Interview with:

niklas Jacobson, Visual Effects Supervisor & Co-founder of ILP

http://chaosgroup.com/en/2/index.html




hoW IT aLL STaRTEd…

My colleague Yafei Wu and I worked together in the VFX commercial industry in Stockholm for a few years. In 2003 we decided to move to get in on the action of the blooming industry in London. Yafei continued with commercials work at Glassworks, and I joined Double Negative to work on such films as Batman Begins and Harry Potter. We stayed in London for two years and as I headed home to my girlfriend, Yafei moved to Los Angeles to start a 3D department at the Santa Monica based post production company Brickyards VFX. During the summer of 2007 we met up in Stockholm and talked about doing something together. We both had gained so much experience during our time abroad and were so inspired by how developed the industry was in USA and England that wanted to do the same thing but in our home town.

From that point everything went really fast. In October 2007 we founded Important Looking Pirates with the vision to one day be able to compete with the best international studios. Our motto became “Passion, perfection and development” and from day one we put a lot of time and effort into research and development and pipeline work, something that we felt had been lacking in the local VFX industry. Since we came from the artist side of things our focus for the company has always been on quality of the work and the tools, hardware and work environment necessary to accomplish such work. We started with 4 employees but grew relatively quickly and are now 20 fulltime employees that we believe are amongst the most passionate artists, technicians, producers and support personnel in the industry.

2 > Chaos Group customer Success Story / 2012

Client: Important Looking Pirates

Highlights In October 2007 we founded Important Looking Pirates with the vision to one day be able to compete with the best international studios. Our motto became “Passion, perfection and development”.





2346





WhaT IS ThE TyPIcaL PRoFILE oF ThE PEoPLE WoRkIng aT ILP? hoW WouLd you dEScRIbE youR TEaM?

The passion for what we do is our key driver. We have a very encouraging and informal work environment. We strive to help each other and we are continuously trying to develop our skills. Another thing we have in common is that we are mostly generalists. I believe that in order to think outside the box and become really good at what you do, you need to have a good understanding of the entire process.

hoW abouT youR cREaTIVE PRocESS? hoW doES ThE cLIEnT bRIEF TuRn InTo ThE FInaL PRoJEcTS you RELEaSE?

This varies very much depending on the project and client. When we work directly with agencies, which we often do when working on full CG commercials, we tend toto have more input on the creative process.We can help out with storyboards and concepts and be more involved on the creative side.



Highlights The passion for what we do is our key driver. We have a very encouraging and informal work environment.

The process looks a bit different when you work with live-action as there is often a production company and a director that has a clearer view of what they want to achieve. In those cases our creative work is more about developing a certain effect or creative problem solving in how achieve a certain visual effect and how to incorporate that into the live-action in the most efficient way.





2346





For our underwater shots, however, it was essential to use the render elements in order to be able to dial the fog effects and caustic intensities by our compositors.



TELL uS MoRE abouT youR WoRk on ThE EPIc FEaTuRE kon-TIkI.

Kon-tiki was an extraordinary exciting and challenging project for us. V-Ray was definitely an important factor and a fantastic tool that made our job easier. We switched from our previous renderer to V-Ray two years ago. We spent some time figuring out nice preset settings that worked for a wide range of scenes and scales. Today the time we spend on look development has heavily decreased which leaves more time for the artist to actually make a shot look beautiful. In the production of Kon-tiki we used all of V-Ray’s advanced features such as GI, caustics, camera motion blur/depth of field, fog, volume caustics, render elements etc. and it worked really great! We put a lot of effort in the modeling and texturing of our CG creatures. We carefully balanced our shaders during the look development process. Then when we stuck the HDRI domes we shot on set, the look was pretty much there.

Highlights Kon-tiki was an extraordinary exciting and challenging project for us. V-Ray was definitely an important factor and a fantastic tool that made our job easier.

We are using V-Ray’s Render Elements for a lot of things. It is a very nice and simple way of getting the additional passes you need for a particular shot. However, I am still a big fan of beauty renders. As soon as you start doing shots with GI, atmospheric effects, caustics, reflections and refractions, everything s so integrated that it becomes complex to extract elements and reconstruct them back in comp. I believe in leaving the shader balancing to the 3D artist whose daily job is to analyze materials and lightingconditions. That way our compositors can focus on the images as a whole.





2346







PLEaSE ShaRE MoRE abouT youR LaTEST PRoJEcTS.

I would love to share a sneak peak on another very exciting project that we are working on. It is an animated short film directed by a very talented friend of mine, Nicklas Andersson.

It is a little story about a factory worker from the “dark side” who struggles and dreams of a life on “the other side”.

I met Nicklas when I was living in London. Nicklas has been working as an animation supervisor at Framestore for many years and during his spare time he has been developing and animating a very interesting animated short. Now Important Looking Pirates is producing this short film together with Nicklas.

We are very excited to be a part of this project. I think it is a very common dream among CG artists to be able to create a short film and put all your experience and knowledge into a personal project that you are really passionate about. We feel that this is our chance to excel and to reallycreate something special.

All the concepts and animation are almost complete and we now work on look development and effects work. We really want to go nuts on this project and make it visually astonishing. We are about 40-50% complete, but a project like this takes time since we don’t have any external funding. This leaves us really being able to work on it only in between our regular projects. I am looking forward to sharing this with you in the future!

Highlights I think it is a very common dream among CG artists to be able to create a short film and put all your experience and knowledge into a personal project that you are really passionate about.





2346






Copyright © 2012. All Rights Reserved. All images Courtesy of ILP http://ilpvfx.com/work/view/showreel2012/

Why dId you dEcIdE To uSE V-Ray FoR ThE VISuaLIzaTIon oF youR cREaTIVE PRoJEcTS?

We had multiple reasons for switching to V-Ray as our main render engine. First and foremost, as mentioned earlier, it makes the look development process extremely efficient. V-Ray has a lot of ways to get very fast feedback while keeping all the fancy features like GI. You can get a quick read on how your lighting will look and when you are satisfied, you can increase the settings

with a very predictable result. Two other good reasons are the pricing and the excellent support.

We have still not gotten around looking into RT. I am really looking forward to take a deeper look into that. I feel that has great potential in speeding up look development process even further.


Highlights V-Ray has a lot of ways to get very fast feedback while keeping all the fancy features like GI. You can get a quick read on how your lighting will look and when you are satisfied, you can increase the settings with a very predictable result.





2346


http://ilpvfx.com/work/view/showreel2012/

chaos group: interview with niklas jacobson, vfx supervisor & co-founder of ilp

Technology