The masterclass is intended for digital artists with at least a basic understanding of Nuke or Blender. Join in by applying below and know there is no participation fee required.

APPLY HERE

KeenTools: Object and Face Tracking in Nuke with Ease will last up to two hours with Q&A. It starts as soon as November 7th (6 PM CEST), so be quick to apply here to save a seat in Crater.

For those unfamiliar with the tool, KeenTools is a set of tools for Nuke, Blender, and AfterEffects. At the masterclass, you’ll get to know it inside and out, starting from the simple static scene layout to complex facial tracking with capturing expressions and skin surface.

This is a unique opportunity to learn how to use a globally popular node that allows the creation of 3D models of human faces and whole heads based on photos from a guy who actually created it.

Roman Belov started KeenTools to bring the power of state-of-the-art approaches and algorithms to CG artists. He holds a degree in Software Development and Math and has vast experience in Compositing and VFX.

CGA’s first side-event with Tomskiy behind the wheel starts on September 23, 3 PM CEST at Crater Training Center (Knićaninova 3, Belgrade).

A master class on Camera Composition is designed as a practical lecture so that all the participants will be able to improve their cinematic skills. Tomskiy will dive deep into some of the golden rules of composition, such as, for instance, a “conflict rule” that helps artists create a perfect composition of the frame for any task.

Tomskiy will also talk about the editing process in films and games and share a few tips and tricks on camera animation in UE5. Save a seat in Crater’s classroom for the Camera Composition masterclass by applying via the form below.

Egor Tomskiy is the CEO of the Russia-based Watt Studio. As a former 3D animator, he makes sure that every project reaches high visual and technical levels. Besides nurturing his creative and managerial skills, he is also working as a professional lecturer on CG and 3D Animation at HSE Art and design school in Moscow. He prides himself on being ready to listen and learn from a passionate new generation of artists. Together with his team from Watt Studio he developed the highly praised game called One Day More.

All the reasons why we think he is the best man for the job of teaching you new skills at CGA!

A day after, live at mts Dvorana, Tomskiy will hold a talk on Switching a business to the game development studio in front of the crowd at CGA Belgrade 2022 conference.

Links:

Watt Studio.ru

One Day More (Game)

Life & Workflow of an Indie Studio @ 80LV

Serbia Film Commission and Crater Training Center are proud to announce that the acclaimed compositing guru and director Victor Perez is coming back to Belgrade for the most exciting CG weekend of the year..

On September 25, Perez will hold a 6-hour master class on the use of light in compositing. The event will be held in Crater Training Center starting  from 12:00 to 20:00. The maximum number of participants is 10, therefore, we encourage artists to apply for a chance to attend the master class. 

The selection will be based on the candidate’s professional experience and motivation to jump on board for this exclusive occasion. If chosen to attend the master class, you are obliged  to the participation fee of 70 EUR.

Attending the master class will give you an exclusive opportunity to win a year-long FREE NUKE™ LICENSE, officiated by our friends at Foundry. 

The day before, live at mts Dvorana, Perez will hold an inspiring session on Mind-Mapping Conceptualisation of Light in front of the crowd at CGA Belgrade 2022 conference.

Proceed below to read more about the class’ syllabus and concept.

The goal for the visual effects compositor: Photorealism, or the art of composite layers of images to look coherent using the physics of light at the service of an idea: storytelling. The art of compositing consists in merging two or more images making them look like they have been shot at the same time with the same camera and lenses, under the same lighting conditions. 

Applying the physics of light in a photorealistic environment could not always be artistically synthesized in simple formulas or fixed structures due to the complexity of the light phenomena but understanding the journey a ray of light has taken from its source to get to the screen could lead to a more scientific analysis of the image composition process to replicate and emulate the qualities and artifacts of light as the eye perceive it interpreted by the lens of the camera.

To log the events in the lifetime of a specific ray of light, Victor Perez proposes a Mind Mapping Analysis Structure to translate the physics of light into mathematical operations within Foundry® NUKE™ nodal-based compositor. An articulated system of observation to guide compositing artists in the fantastic odyssey into the invisible.

This course is divided into 2 blocks (3 hours each):

• Primary color transformation operators & decoding of the Characteristic Curve for a target image match
• Secondary overall color operators: understanding brightness, contrast, and saturation & CG
• compositing script structure for replicating lensing artifacts
• Multipass setups and narrative manipulation of light
• Elements of Light & Lighting Qualities Applied in NUKE™
• Integrating NUKE™ CG Relighting Workflow
• The Shadows Workflow

Victor Perez is a film director, creative and visual effects artist with more than 25 years of combined experience, and has worked on many Hollywood films, including The Dark Knight Rises, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, plus many more.

Considered a visual effects compositing guru, his breakthrough work in virtual cinematography on ‘Echo’ earned him a nomination at the Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards in 2019 (the first time in history a short film was considered in this category), in the same year that wins the Italian Academy Award for his work as VFX Supervisor on The Invisible Boy: Second Generation, Victor started his career in the film industry as a photographer and digital compositing artist. He then worked on collaborations as a 2D technical director and consultant where he developed a combination of both artistic and technical understanding of film post production and visual effects from a photorealistic point of view. Today, he designs and oversees the process creation of feature film visual effects as VFX Supervisor.

Crater’s summer internship represents a simulation of a working environment guided by the mentorship of our studio’s colleagues. This way interns will get a chance to get familiar with the dynamic work processes in post-production, as well as how the team operates being a part of a larger studio. Some of them have already met on Friday where Bogdan Amidžić our VFX Supervisor, presented a breakdown of a few hand-picked projects Crater Studio has worked on.

This time group consisted of seven modelers as well as an animator. The majority of them signed up for the internship directly from our courses, or they found out about this opportunity through their faculties.

“When it comes to this group I anticipate that they will be satisfied, that they learn as much as possible, and perhaps even get hired by our studio. In the past couple of years, all of our groups performed well, got well together, and joined forces to contribute greatly to our passion project. I believe that for all of them, just like it was for me, the internship was a priceless experience and that it helped them understand the world of visual effects and their place in it.”, says Marija Rakić-Lovrić, our school’s coordinator and a former student of the 3D Essentials course.

After having successfully completed the internship at Crater, the best participants often receive a job offer in local studios. The fields range from post-production, video game development, and design, to other creative and advertising agencies. However, having our former students and successful interns stay and work at Crater Studio is not an uncommon occurrence either.

May the rest of the internship unfold in an equally good atmosphere.

Even though big projects often arrive at Crater’s front door, things have been heating up due to the worldwide state pandemic. These unfortunate events put the spotlight on the creative content as their demand drastically increased. Joining the Trusted Partner Network (TPN) and implementing even higher security standards in the studio, has opened new doors towards new and more challenging projects for Crater that are yet to be revealed.

The increase of the workload has led to the increase in demand for new colleagues, as well as the necessity for training, especially for one of the most crucial, irreplaceable studio positions – the art of digital compositing. This is a fundamental role in post-production and film production in general that involves combining different film elements in a final shot, like in the example below (a snippet of Season 1 of A Series of Unfortunate Events) in which Crater worked on compositing.

Many of those familiar with history and film theory would claim that the oldest movies were actually the first complete VFX projects, considering the fact they were made on the same principles on which modern post-production lies, just with analog techniques.

French illusionist Georges Méliès, father of feature films, used techniques like time-lapse in his earliest works, as well as Multiple Exposures. Among these is the infamous film A Trip to the Moon which came up exactly 120 years ago.

The following year, on the other side of the planet, the first American feature film was made, The Great Train Robbery by Edwin S. Porter, which was also filled with visual effects.

However, since filming on the actual railroad was unavailable at that time, the footage of the train through the window was added later on, meaning this was one of the first and most famous film compositing examples.

The reasons why there is a need to fake something in a film are varied. Once, as it was with Porter’s railroad, the technology needed to capture complex or fast shots was still not available. Today it can be that the shot needed is physically unattainable on a certain location (due to it being too far away, too dangerous, too expensive, imaginary, or purely due to filming restrictions on certain locations). Even so, today’s most recent photo cameras are not all-powerful. To fully experience the film environment like we do in our everyday life, VFX artists during the decades had to come up with various solutions.

Initially, it was the yellow screen that replaced the practical tricks and matte painting (the technique of painting background elements on glass) which made it possible to combine different pictures into one. After this, the spotlight was overtaken by the blue screen which is still used today in some capacity. It was used to create some of the biggest films from the Golden Age in Hollywood. During the 1970s, the British and American television studios popularized the usage of the green screen, which is today considered an industry standard, as well as using mini-computers for post-production for the first time. The development of digital compositing started at the end of the 1990s.

Today, many films and TV shows are almost entirely made in front of either green or blue screens with the implementation of computer-generated images (CGI), which is the initial and fundamental reason why the search for compositing artists is at an all-time high.

Today in a production environment VFX techniques can be broadly separated into Modeling, Rigging, Animation, Simulation, Texturing, and Lighting.

Even though they are usually done by different teams, these assignments overlap with one another. Compositing comes at the very end when all the previously generated elements fit in. Various 3D models are being combined, footage on set has their backgrounds added in digitally, adjusting the lights and generating shadows, color corrections, as well as other interventions. All of this to achieve that infamous final shot, that, after traveling through the hands of compositors, is being watched by thousands, if not millions.

In our course, the art of digital compositing is being taught in Nuke, a node-based software created by a British company Foundry. To use Nuke, previous experience in one of the elementary software like Adobe Photoshop is a must, while some other studios prefer doing compositing in a video design software Adobe After Effects.

Foundry representatives have visited Belgrade and Crater a few times, with the last time being 2019 during the CGA conference.

As it has been stated at the beginning, in order to keep up with the workload increase, Crater Studio plans on hiring more Digital Compositing Artists. However this being one of the job positions in the biggest deficit on the market, the next logical step for Crater was conducting a scholarship that will help with expanding the team.

The chance to master the skills of digital compositing for film and video here at Crater Training Center will be granted to up to 10 candidates. Anyone keen on art, photography, film, recording, and video editing, and want to try out postproduction, is welcome to apply.

More about the scholarship’s requirements HERE.

Author: Branka Malenica

What sets our online class apart from the rest is that they are not pre recorded. This decision was made out of the desire to address the problems that arises during learning real time and to enable our teachers a direct contact with the students.

This means that online attendees follow the course at the same time as those who are in the classroom and can communicate with the teacher like they are there, physically, at the Crater Training Center.

Before the initial class, students receive a set of House Rules for online attendees. After that, teachers and students introduce themselves to one another so they could see each other face to face as soon as possible and tear down the barrier that students’ fear created, thinking that them being online will cause them to be less of a priority, which is never the case.

During class teachers regularly check if online students are following along, whether or not did the internet connection break or was there any other technical problems. Furthermore, after attendees finish the assigned task, teachers check whether they were successful, which at the same time reinforces the quality of the online class.

Our online attendees’ testimonials can confirm all of this:

Teacher Saša Živković has done an amazing job with the course this large in a short period of time. We went over very important details in regards to the software and have made a good fundament for further self development and learning. As an online student, I haven’t run into any problems with communication and work. In contrary actually, this method of learning was highly beneficial due to my other responsibilities and personal organization. This was not my first online course that I have attended at Crater Training Center and I would highly recommend anyone to give it a shot.

– says Teodora Černoh, our online student on the course 3ds Max.

However, in the end we had to look into the technical requirements that our potential attendees need to fulfill in order to apply for an online course:

• Computer (desktop PC or laptop) meeting at least the minimal requirements regarding the software in question. However we would recommend a stronger configuration (before starting class, detailed informations are given directly by our coordinators);
• A solid internet connection, around 8mb upload and 10mb download;
• 2 monitors (or a following combination: monitor + TV or monitor + tablet) in order to have one screen for following the teachers lecture and the other for student to work on;
• Mouse (touchpad is not an adequate stand-in);
• Headphones with a microphone.

In case you are interested in enrolling in a course at the Crater Training Center in this learning method you can contact our coordinators for more information at school@craterstudio.com  or calling +381 62 840 1100.

In this article, we will try to explain why feedback is valuable for personal and professional growth, how to give it, and when it might be a good time to seek another opinion on your work. We will take a closer look at real-life experiences and examine why feedback is of the utmost importance in the creative industries today – especially if you are working on projects consumed by millions of users. So, rest assured that feedback is not only good for you but necessary for you to progress.

What is feedback anyway?

The concept of providing and giving professional opinions originated in cybernetics. It is related to the process in which information is “returned to the beginning” to modify a certain behavior. This meaning is retained by the term feedback in the business environment. As such, it implies feedback that is focused on the behavior of an individual or a team aiming to improve their behavior.

During the premiere of the CGAcademy: Portfolio Reviews session, Marija Mitic, Learning & Development Specialist from Mad Head Games, pointed out: 

– There is positive, corrective, and no feedback. In addition to the feedback that gives you the boost (positive), and the one that makes you work harder (corrective), there is also non-existing feedback. This is problematic because when you know what’s wrong, you can always fix it, unlike when you don’t get feedback and don’t know if you need to change something at all or not, says Marija.

The process of giving and receiving feedback goes something like this: you adopt the information, test it, accept it and correct the original work (or not) and extract the information you have learned from the whole process. 

What is the meaning and purpose of feedback for young artists?

In the film and video game industry, the feedback you fear the most is the one you get after releasing a video game or movie in front of an audience. Then, even though the material has previously passed through numerous hands and eyes, you are still afraid of the first reaction and comments. However, a much more common example of the opinion exchange happens among employees or in a superior-employee relationship. Although Q&A teams review video games before they get released, up until one game gets out, there is always some apprehension about what the audience might see.

During the first independent Portfolio Reviews session, Vladimir Kuzevski, Character Artist from 3Lateral, explained how this process works in the video game industry, especially for 3D artists working on AAA titles.

– Let’s say you start creating a 3D model of a video game character, and after a few hours, you’re working on the creature’s facial expression. Due to you being focused on details, sometimes you miss the bigger picture and fail to notice other, perhaps more obvious flaws of the model. Therefore, whether you work in 2D or 3D, you should always have two pairs of eyes. That’s why there are teams of experts working in the same field because they can give more specific feedback on the work of their colleagues, concludes Vladimir.

And so we come to the next chapter, in which we explain why context is the key in giving feedback.

What is good feedback? What should you pay attention to when receiving or giving it?

When giving feedback, one must always pay attention to the context. Provide feedback only when you know the context and have good arguments. Otherwise, you will only distract your colleagues. 

Vladimir Janković, Art Lead at Nordeus, spoke from the role of team leader about the consequences of not respecting the context when providing feedback on the colleague’s work:

– The person you ask for review needs to understand the context in which you have created some of your work. Otherwise, the feedback will not be valid. Understanding the context helps the subject provide accurate feedback on someone’s work and thus provide valuable information, explains (the other) Vladimir.

In Discussing Design, authors Adam Connor and Aaron Irizarry offer a simple framework for giving feedback to designers. However, this feedback method is adaptable to all creative industries and consists of several key questions to ask yourself before providing feedback.

• Question 1: What is the goal of the design?
• Question 2: What design elements are related to the goal?
• Question 3: Are these elements effective in achieving the goal?
• Question 4: Why or why not?

These questions should help you take a few steps away from the project and observe what is not working. If something is wrong with a scene or design you must first understand its purpose. If you do not understand the goal of a particular project, there is no way to be sure if the scene works. So, break down the project into even smaller modules and ask yourself: What are the fundamental elements of this design, and do they work? Once you understand the goal, it should be fairly simple to determine whether the elements are working accordingly or not.

Another book on the art of feedback, set in the film industry, was written by Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar. In Creativity Inc., he writes about an in-house feedback group known as Braintrust. 

This group is not only responsible for the success of Pixar, but it also helped prevent more than a few disasters. Braintrust enrolled not only the employees of the studio but also people who are not directly involved in Pixar’s projects. Since these people are not emotionally attached to the production, they can give the most objective feedback possible.

The point of feedback is to adopt it, but you should also be careful when giving it. Giving good feedback is most certainly harder than accepting it. It is a discipline that takes a long time to master.

Feedback is there to help teams strengthen their design, products, and services, rather than being used to establish authority or push different agendas. 

Great feedback comes from people who care about the project because it is hard to fix something you do not care about. If you are being asked to provide feedback, try to find a way to connect with the project you are reviewing. Figure out its purpose. However, if you don’t feel any connection to the project, there is nothing wrong with acknowledging that you might not be the best person to give feedback.

A good note says what is wrong, what is missing, what isn’t clear, what makes no sense. A good note is offered at a timely moment, not too late to fix the problem. A good note doesn’t make demands; it doesn’t even have to include a proposed fix. But if it does, that fix is offered only to illustrate a potential solution, not to prescribe an answer. Most of all, though, a good note is specific. “I’m writing with boredom,” is not a good note.

– says Ed Cattmul on providing feedback (notes)

When is it OK to ask for feedback?

In the world of visual arts, it is common for everyone to have their particular perception, so when you apply for a job and send your portfolio, do not hesitate to ask for feedback for your work. Whatmore, a good employer will respect that move since it shows your enthusiasm and willingness to learn.

Our upcoming lecture on feedback is scheduled for November 19 as part of the Portfolio Reviews, an opening session on the second day of the CGA Belgrade online conference. On that occasion, in the CGAcademy’s virtual classroom, we will be joined by experienced 2D and 3D artists from Serbia’s leading game dev studios. Ivana Radović (PlayrixRS), Milica Mastelica (Playstudios), and Nenad Nešović (Nordeus) will be reviewing the audience portfolios’ live in-stream. If you wish to submit your work for review and  test how well you accept feedback, you can do it HERE.

Source:
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace (Random House, 2014)
Discussing Design: Improving Communication and Collaboration through Critique, Adam Connor, Aaron Irizarry (O’Reilly Media, 2015)

Author: Bosiljka Đikanović

Interviewed by Branka Malenica