The program was focused on the Unreal Engine 5 workflow and presented a two-month prep process for the sixth edition of the CGA conference – particularly for its online edition. All of the four environments created at the Lab were used in the conference livestream production. It is interesting to note that one of them was simulating a level in a video game, the other a movie set, another one a broadcast studio, and there was an atmospheric “general environment” as we like to call it, too.

Here’s how they all turned out… 

This was the CGA’s very first summer program aimed at students and enter-level artists, yet most importantly, it was an exciting opportunity to create such unique projects with the local CG community.

We filmed the entire ordeal in front of the green screen in the studio of our dear collaborators from Atomic Visual Support, while the magnificent Dane Blačić, CGA’s Technical Director, ensured the smooth experience.

The Lab’s art direction was guided by Dimitrije Miljuš andr Stefan Knežević designed the key visuals. To read more about the program, its mentors and guest lecturers, please visit the Lab’s dedicated page.

Or simply take a final look at our little adventure in its official aftermovie. Enjoy!

The environments premiered on September 23rd, 2022, during the streaming of the conference online program. Almost all the sessions will be available for replay at the CGA’s YouTube channel.

Virtual Environments Lab was organized by Crater Training Center and supported by our friends and sponsors from 3Lateral (Epic Games), Mad Head Games, Case3D Proptech Solutions, Crater Studio, Ubisoft Belgrade, UNA TV.

Milan Ličina is a new media designer and creative technologist from Belgrade. Apart from being hired as a docent on the Faculty of Digital Arts at the Metropolitan University, he is also a part of the innovative collective of Galerija 12. He started his career as a CGI generalist and today celebrates his anniversary of work in the industry. It is for these reasons that it is a huge honor that Milan joined Crater’s assembly hall this spring in a role of a lecturer on a course that explores the possibilities of a powerful tool that is Unreal Engine..

You are most likely to find Milan on long walks with his dog around Belgrade, at an interesting exposition, or in a tight crowd of a concert, especially if you love post-black metal (with a slice of the Doom gaze). And it is without a doubt that you will, in any aforementioned situations, find a common topic to talk about for ages. This is exactly what we have done, marking the end of the summer semester at Crater.

– I graduated in the design of industrial products and graphic design from Belgrade Polytechnic. I chose interactive media as my major above all else because I wanted to specialize in design and technology, which was becoming more and more interesting to me when I was a student. At that time a few relevant festivals have been popping up, such as Resonate, that were frequently visited by artists that were connecting technology and computer sciences with art. It wasn’t long before I followed in their footsteps because, as an industrial designer, I was taught to design the form and function of a product that is first and foremost useful, as well as highly esthetic. Graphic design has taught me to visually communicate my ideas, and then somehow combine them into product design, resulting in interactivity. I’ve always had a nick for mashing things together to see what happens, just like Rocket Raccoon said: “We could just get it first and improvise”.

– Creative technologist is a designer that has mastered the technical-technological aspects of the industry in which he can create and participate in both processes – art and technical. Or, it is a programmer with high visual sensibility. In the world of new media, this is a title that combines Technical Design and Technical Art positions, which is especially common in the industry of video games and visual effects, but it also brings with itself certain creative and art decisions.

– For years I have been a part of the content creation team at Galerija 12, where I was working as a generalist. But as my interests were leaning towards experimentation in technology development, testing the boundaries of what technology has to offer, and using that to create those unique scene-visual experiences of ours. With this, my role was changing accordingly. Today I am a part of the research and development process, as well as integration, where the usage of a gaming engine is more than useful. Transitioning to real-time graphics was the next logical step.

– Unity was my native engine, but at that moment when Unreal Engine 4 became available to everybody, getting familiar with that kind of technology was a no-brainer for me. Contrary to popular opinion, for me, the same set of rules applies for both of them, because for me as an artist it is key to work modularly and to have an insight into the scalability of the project, which is something both engines provide. Unreal Engine, even though free, comes with a certain set of rules that not every client is ready to comply with. Unity is however directed at a completely different angle and that engine is much easier to optimize. I would say that the creators of these two tools realized that they can’t go against each other, and instead opted for aiming for filling in two different needs in the market.

– Blueprints, without a doubt! The specificity of this course is that the students got a chance to talk to somebody who does visual and interactive programming firsthand. With that said, I use engines for the necessity of creating an interactive design, in other words, I am not developing video games, but rather activations. When I manage to show that you don’t necessarily have to build a shooter game in the engine, but rather activate anything and everything in your virtual set, people are quite pleased. Even though my making is not focused on gaming, the logic and mechanic used in games is absolutely the same as the activation logic that I use in my professional work, having just a different output. Whether you are working on an exhibition or a video game, the mechanics that are utilized on the project are identical. 

– The students had very positive feedback on the procedural design as well. I’ve shown them how to generate terrain and texture it automatically by parameterization of certain values because the outcome of the course has been set in a way that by completing the course, students can become generalists, which I regard as a big advantage considering that I have worked as a CGI generalist for plenty of years.

– The energy of the group was really good. We had students with almost no prior experience, as well as trained professionals who have been working in the industry for 15 to 20 years, and they all had a common goal of expanding their knowledge and wanting to hear what a fellow colleague in the industry has to say on their native tongue. They all knew how to create something, and how to model, but they were interested in how an experienced professional approaches obstacles because we are not all starting from the same position when beginning a new project. I was blown away by the fact that there were no feelings of being lesser than others in the group when it was to happen that a student isn’t familiar with something. They were all supporting one another, and have insisted that every term gets a further explanation even if it is not directly tied to Unreal Engine, but plays an important role in the process.

– People with the least experience that arrived like tabula rasa have shown to be the most diligent by the middle of the course. They improved significantly faster because they have invested time between classes to further educate themselves. The width of the knowledge they have received has further surpassed the reason they enrolled in the first place because they got my 10 years of experience condensed, which is something I can say with zero prepotencys.

– I think that the biggest challenge was to get them adjusted to my tempo. This is not regarding speed, but the fact that Unreal Engine Essentials is not a project-orientated course. It was created with the goal of helping students understand how the tool operates, and all that it offers so they can ask further questions, give it purpose and create their own challenges. There were a few people that came to the course to create their own pipelines for their studios, one student that works in the army had amazing questions regarding optimization, and we had one teenager that was connecting the dots rather impressively. One student, an archaeologist, enrolled intending to create a visualization of a monastery that he had 3D scanned because he sees amazing potential in applying real-time graphics for materializing the worlds that once existed – which is somewhat in line with what I do. They all actually came here so their careers would benefit from Unreal, but somewhere along the way, they realized that they can advance on a personal level too, make some of their ideas come true, and it was beautiful to witness that.

– Whatever job they are doing today, we have come to a point where there is no stagnation. If you want to be up-to-date, and fair to yourself, you will always follow trends. Never should you stop studying, only switch the aspect of what you are studying, but you cannot allow yourself to not be up to date in your field, whether that would be CGI or something else. In this day and age with the internet, it’s possible to connect with people that are doing similar things or ones you see as high-quality coworkers or influencers. 

– In our industry, you ought to keep up to date with metahumans technology because that’s a very interesting way of speeding up and automatizing certain things. I am under the impression that locally we are the least “suppled” when it comes to animation and rigging – purely because we don’t have enough specialists in these fields. On the other hand, we have a local product that supplies them. MetaHuman, a tool developed by 3Lateral, a team that recently joined the Epic family, is not just a success story, but a story about the fact that we have a local team that developed globally successful software for motion capture/ facial animation capture that needs to be studied from. One should keep an eye for their next product because they obviously are masters at their craft.

– If we are talking about formal education, I am still at the precipice of a doctorate degree, only having left the doctorate exhibition and dissertation 🙂

– The first big project that I participated in was the world tournament in drone racing, World Drone Prix 2016 when this whole industry was expanding. All of our exhibitions that are currently active, and by that I mostly refer to our section at the Museum of the Future in Dubai, represent the crown of our collective creative and productional strain.

– We are always trying to achieve the next level of visual quality on these projects, and the fundamental goal is what we actually want to achieve with a creative concept. Probably the biggest satisfaction of this job is to see the attendees truly believe they are there at those places due to the credibility of production and the quality of the narrative. When that resonates with them, they display emotions just like when they attend a theater play or a concert, which means that, above all else, they learned something new about themselves.

– I was blown away by a recently held exhibition of needlepoint at the Ethnographic museum. When you take a look at how someone used media like sewing and puncturing as a means of creating highly complex compositions, it’s fascinating. When it comes to interactive exhibitions, I really liked the Saudi Arabia Pavilion and Switzerland at the Dubai Expo. Both states have demonstrated their heirloom intellectually, with a lesser usage of technology. The swiss received an award as a state with the most innovations, and they presented this highly simplistic through the motive of drops – because for them ideas are dropping everywhere. The Saudi Arabia Pavillion is, on the other hand, completely high-tech, but was based on an intelligent concept. They used ornaments that are present in their folklore, but the final impression was that we are entering the vision of Saudi Arabia itself like it’s some sort of introspective exhibition, which was a breath of fresh air.

Last Friday we held a mini celebration in our classrooms where we launched Virtual Environments Lab, the first in a long line of programs that will enrich what this year’s CGA conference can offer.

We are talking about an educative program that will give young digital artists a chance to get familiar with different aspects of creating an environment on three different digital sets in Unreal Engine 5. All of these created environments during the summer in Crater are planned to be used in the conference’s production, simulating a level in a video game, movie set, and TV studio (there is a high chance we will come up with a few more exciting additions).

Through these processes, the participants will be led by a team of mentors made up of experienced 3D/ Level artists that come to us from companies like Mad Head Games, Ubisoft Belgrade, Case 3D Proptech Solutions, Una TV and others alike. The project will be led by Dane Blačić, the Technical Director of this year’s CGA program, and the art direction will be done by Dimitrije Miljuš.

We have received numerous applications, and some of the participants arrived directly from courses: Environment Art, 3D Essentials and Unreal Engine Essentials. The chosen twelve were divided into 4 teams that have, by the time of writing this, already long started working on their designated projects. Each team consists of a 3D Modeler, Level Artist, as well as a Materials & Textures Artist. Three candidates that have especially blown us away with their applications, will be aiding the team in their work as mentoring assistants.

On Monday the participants started working on their environments, here is what Bojana Simić our program coordinator, had to say about all of this:

“The first week of Virtual Environments Lab is off to a great start and we are already seeing initial results. The participants entered this project more than ready and we firmly believe that, together with Dane and fellow mentors from the industry, they will successfully manage to create environments that will find their purpose in the upcoming CGA conference. We owe a big thank you to our industry partners that responded to our call, and we can’t wait to delve into their upcoming lectures. The fact that our participants will have a chance to find their future employers through this program makes us that much happier. Reinforcing the ecosystem and taking care of the industry’s talent is one of our main missions!”

The complete list of lecturers and mentors who will support our small virtual construction site with their expertise can be found here. We will keep you updated during the summer about the progress of this project, so make sure to stay tuned.

More information on the CGA conference coming soon!

We launched the initiative with the aim of training 30 professionals from the regional 3D scene to work in the most progressive tool for creating interactive content, supported by our partners from Unreal Engine Educations and 3Lateral (Epic Games).

Thanks to them, for this occasion we lowered the final price of the training from 530 to only 70 euros!

The training is primarily intended for professionals who are actively working in visual arts with at least two years of work experience. To participate, you will have to go through a selection process based on your technical experience, the quality of previous work, and your motivation.

The competition for participation in the training lasts until midnight on August 31 and is open to professionals from Serbia and the region.

Classes will be held during October and November in our classrooms, and students outside of Belgrade will follow them online.

After the official part of the training, this exceptional experience will be enriched by specialized lectures by industry experts who will bring the work processes in their studios closer to the participants.

The training is intended for Serbian-speakers only, so read about it HERE.

If there is any course of ours that caught your eye and you would like to talk about all of this in person, feel free to contact us to schedule a consultation.

Marija Rakić-Lovrić & Bojana Simić, Coordinators @ Crater Training Center

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.

Modular education in our school is designed to follow current trends in the creative industries in every aspect. The programs are created as a combination of specific courses that meet the requirements of the current labor market and prepare students for attractive positions in the film and video game industry, but also in advertising, architecture, and other creative fields.

As of this year, our educational offer includes two programs accredited by the Ministry’s Agency for Qualifications.

Through a variety of courses, the 3D Character and Organic Modeling teaches students to design three-dimensional characters and other living creatures. Thanks to this program, participants will learn the secrets of this highly regarded digital craft.

Another accredited program, Technical Art in Unreal Engine, trains students to work in one of the most attractive software for creating interactive content. Since our school has supported and organized several educational initiatives in Unreal Engine, the accreditation of this program seemed like a logical step forward.

The course present in most educational programs is 3D Essentials, a course that certainly stands out as a fan favorite. This course offers an excellent base for further specializations in the field of computer graphics, and in addition to technical skills, participants are given detailed insight and first-hand advice from seniors in the computer graphics industry. After completing the 3D Essentials course, our students usually opt to further specialize for jobs in video game art and post-production. On the other hand, some of them turn to video design. Precisely for these reasons, we have expanded our offerings by several new courses, but also through career counseling programs, mentoring, internships, and special education initiatives.

Of course, we will not stop here. 2022 should bring us more accredited programs and exciting educational initiatives. For more information on the course schedule and enrollment, click here or contact our coordinators at school@craterstudio.com.

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