Over twenty years ago, I did a postgrad in animation and had a mentor who owned an animation company that did a lot of work in advertising. He told me that he put in mistakes on purpose, so that all these various "important" people could focus on the mistake and be satisfied that they earned their living whilst the rest got the job done. Now, that is a true magic trick! 😝
Yea, it works the same in any creative commercial field. I used to design trade show exhibits and would get similar requests. I figured out that I could just leave it on my desk until the end of the day, run a new blueprint without making any changes and it would pass without question. Ego is expensive to an org.
Yep. It's an old, well known trick that experienced hands use to their advantage. It is a deliberate strategy that studios use when presenting work to the client.
Sounds similar to a trick we used when it came to designs. Offer one good design and four obviously bad ones to guide the client. The one take away I had from doing this is, sometimes the client will then choose one of the bad designs and then you have to deal with it for the rest of production. You can always count on clients to do the wrong thing.
True story: i was in advertising for many years as a production artist and graphic designer. while working on projects, an annual report or a poster or magazine advertisement, the head art director would often stand behind us watching closely and tell us to move something a little up or a little to the right (one art director called the amount of movement a “CH”. i can’t say here what that means). one day this got to be so annoying i couldn’t stand it. the designer kept saying move it a little then “too far too far a tiny bit back! now up!” i got so annoyed i stopped hitting the arrow keys and just clicked the key that did nothing but make the screen flash as if something happened. i did this for another TEN MINUTES to many items and finally he said “that’s it it’s perfect! quick save it don’t change anything!” after he left i told the others in the room watching and also annoyed this new trick i discovered. he did not know or care at all what was changed. it was all in his head.
@@jco7551 Hahahahahaha!!! Oh my GOD that's exactly what it was like every day! That image is kind of fitting. Someone gave that partner/owner of the company a nickname. He knew what it was and why got it, we didn't hide it. We called him "the fly", because he was a tiny little guy and would buzz around, stop randomly and annoy people with these changes like a fly on... well you get the idea. Oh... uh... he was also color blind. So not only would he ask us to move stuff around he would also ask what color everything was.
I flew in helicopters on the military. CH was the term the Instructor Pilots used to describe how little you needed to move the flight controls. Now I do VFX and there it is again!
Long back, we worked on a Ironman animated show. Whiplash character needed whips to fight with Ironman. Art director told us to make a high res model, with high res textures, and a highly complicated rig to animate it. We spent months on it rigging, animating, and rendering, And finally when we saw the finished show, the whole whip was painted over with electric lightnings in aftereffects.
@@sanaksanandan I just looked at an example clip and you weren't kidding! You can't even see the whip it might as well not be there and just be a pure lightning whip lol.
Glad to see a VFX veteran talking about this, I work mainly with advertising/motion graphics but it's the same situation with art directors. The amount of times I've been asked to match lighting and shadows of quick Photoshop mockups that don't make any sense for realistic lighting is just too damn high :(
Oh yeah! I get asked to move lights to the left to cast shadows on the right (makes sense). I ask if the highlights on what I've done have been approved for left side of the product, they answer "yes we only want you to move the shadow over". Did I mention it's an animation?🤦♂️ Everything ends up in compositing.
I explained the same term to a coworker the other day. The best ones are when you’re using procedurally generated assets. There was a particular pilot episode with huge crowd sims where the vfx supe wanted individual shirt colors changed from aerial shots. These all had to be roto’d. They also wanted specific emergency vehicle flashing light sequences, ‘correct’ police helicopter tail numbers, and a variety of other crazy details. The show was canceled.
Well once you have a bunch of different things you can proceduredurrally change them so it isn't an absurd request depending on the budget, for example if you do a grayscale texture you can change the color using a "multiply" node or similar
@@gnsf Making a change to a single instance of a procedural asset can be quite difficult without changing other instances too, e.g. in a particle system or crowd sim
Reminds me of a story a friend told me about his work in the very early days of computer graphic game design, back in the 8-bit tiny screen days. He was one of the artists converting a major title to play on a less capable system than it's original release platform. The scale reduction meant that his assignment was to reanimate a flying bat, but, he only had 4 pixels of screen space in which to do it. He did his best and put it in front of the powers that be. They didn't like it and told him to redo it. He waited a week and gave them the same file again. They still didn't like it and told him to redo it again. He waited another week and gave them the exact same file again. This time they were so close to deadline that they said, "That'll do," and used it in the game. They never noticed it was the exact same animation every time. I thought his solution was brilliant. I always remember the 4-pixel bat story whenever I'm asked to make changes to something that won't matter in the end.
This also happens time and time again in graphic design, web design, and even software development. Does it make it easier to use? Will the end user even notice? No? Then we should definitely spend two weeks arguing about it and driving a dozen people insane with irrelevant changes. Thank you for sharing.
Damn, this is like every agency job. 40 people in a room taking notes for a job that can be done in a few days by a small team working directly with the director... All 40 people need to have their names on all email threads too.
Same in advertising. Whenever we presented a campaign to an international client, we always had a version we named "the fart": This was riddled with small errors which provided plenty of opportunity for the product assistants, marketing/brand manager and other decision-makers to comment and hence a reason for collecting a paycheck. Working for large corporations and brands is almost never about creating art or even something that serves the brand the best way possible. It´s about creating a political patchwork where every single stakeholder gets a say in order to feel relevant. If you want to have fun and make an actual impact working in any artistic field, consider working for companies with very few decision-makers who care more about results than politics.
Happens at ILM too, I remember working on a shot for weeks and in the end it only appeared for a split second and honestly I don't think anyone can notice any mistakes unless they can freeze frame and pixel peep or like they way you say it Pixel F#$%! Your last points hits the nail and all pipeline sups should make it their mantra!
I have to say that this goes for me personally as well as big studios etc. If there's one thing I'd change looking back at my life. It's wasting time fiddling with details and making things "perfect". So many personal projects that I never finished because of this. I'd so much more want to have 300 non perfect FINISHED projects than 1 perfect masterpiece.
I've lamented about this behavior for years, and as I've moved up the production leadership ladder at my small company, I've made sure leverage my authority to overrule the people in the process who do this. I've always described it as inconsequential changes that don't actually make the image any "better" ....they just made it "different" and created a whole lot of work and aggravation for someone else.... justifying their existence or looking to be praised for having a "good eye".
Yes. I mentioned in another comment that I can't help but think that some feel their job security is on the line, when they approve something that works without changes.
Good video, so relatable.. My experience is people that have the power to change things keep changing things until time runs out. I think it's also because they feel a bit insecure at times, so they want to have the feeling that "they've done everything they can".
It's like the million-dollar screwdriver cliche, usually applied to governments and government organizations. Our 3D instructor in college always reminded students that if you don't see it, don't model it. The video instructor had another saying, always keep your projects K.I.S.S. "Keep It Simple Stupid" (He like goth bands), he also talked about scope-creep and the Cost/Quality/Speed triangle a lot too. Good advice
That "if you don't see it, don't model it" part needs a bit of context. Most of the time makes perfect sense. As a rigger, when characters are involved I prefer to work on characters with the whole body modeled, even if it has only one set of clothes. It is really annoying to do the weight painting on pieces not connected to each other. If I have the body I can paint that and transfer the weights to everywhere else. So what is the needed amount of detail depends a lot on other people involved.
@@LeonardLeon Very true, with a lot of stuff it is good to model internal parts, like characters and clothing. Then there are a lot of scenarios where it's best not to. Couple of examples for clarity, If you need to model trees for a forest scene, modelling the roots on every tree is a waste of time and resources. Similarly if you need to model a motorbike/vehicle and just need it for a driving down the road shot, going to the trouble of modelling all the engine internals with engineering accuracy would be folly as well. If you need to build a city skyline seen only from a distance, modelling the interiors of distant buildings with furniture, people working, elevators, etc would also be overkill.
- After looking for the best integrated colour I choose RED. - My client says BLUE, so I do the job in BLUE. - His supervisor says I think it will be better in RED, so I redo again in RED. - His boss says mmm BLUE. - The person between my client and the produccion company says show it in RED but with a little BLUEish touch, that's what director will love! - I redo it again on RED with a touch of BLUE. - The director shows to the advertise agency creative team and they all say different colours (every colour in an infinite palette), finally decides to go for a ORANGEBLUEish with a 1.5% of GREEN colour... the client will be amazed with that! - I redo it again, sigh... - Creative director, the only one opinion valid in the entire agency creative team) says "What shit is this colour? I said BLUE, this is not BLUE!". - But then account manager says ... client logo isn't BLUE, it is GREEN, change it all to GREEN right now! we show the campaign in 5 minutes! - After some more opinions from the advertiser own creative department we show the final product to who really pays the f¡^`+ing bill and she says ... "Terrific!, colour is not ok, it should be RED, but who cares, leave it like that, it's nice... but I'm not sure if the whole campaign idea should be this, maybe we should rethink the whole campaign again ...
13 years ago I was writing the music for a Discovery Channel documentary-series called "Human Body: Pushing the limits" and it had that exact clip by Richard Wiseman in it. (Thought it seemed familiar).. I probably watched it more than anyone in the world except Richard himself, because I had to scrub it back and forth to make the background music fit or something... must have seen it 100-150 times. Anyway, I still didnt notice the changing colors-part :)
You think that's just in the VFX industry? I'm a DOP for commercials, I'll never forget that one guy from the creative agency that asked to pan a box of cereals. In a supermarket. In the background. Out of focus. Clearly invisible...in the monitor RIGHT BEFORE HIS EYES! (you know...we have realtime rendering on set :D) Some people just have to justify their presence... Ah and of course you have to be wary of allowing anybody to look at your monitor with the raw channel! Even if you tell them that it'll not be the final look, that you're just showing them something, like the blocking...they'll state all worried "it's ok, but change the look!" (the poor vtr operator has to set up one hell of a videovillage sometimes!) :D :D
The best stories leave something to the imagination. The same is true for images. Blender address this in a round-about way with the idea behind 'adaptive subdivision'; details too small to be seen clearly aren't given much time or effort. The more pixels an object needs, the more resources are devoted to the object. The fussy little details become less distinct, more of a suggestion.
Everything should be created in context and the context should be set in stone at the storyboard and previz stage. If you don't see it in previz it should not be part of the asset budget. Directors should be completely at ease with previzualisation and shake hands with production on it: "This is the movie I want you guys to create for me. Stop sending turntables. Send me shots."
Iv’e stopped doing turntables precisely for this reason. It focuses the eye on the wrong thing. On the other hand, for personal projects, I tweak things all the time😂
Brilliant mate, so good to hear someone in our industry complaining about the same things I have been banging on about for 20 years. Everyone seems to keep their heads down and not speak up, which gives these so-called supervisors more control. I worked with a knucklehead supervisor who had me make changes on things behind the camera coz they weren't technically correct.
I'm just getting started with Blender and found out about Blender Bob from Blender Guru. And I've got to say that this guy is so damn entertaining to watch that had I stumbled across his channel and had no interest in his channel's subject matter I'd still subscribe. There are thousands of channels on this platform and it's relatively rare to find one that's actually entertaining. This is one of those rare channels. Looking forward to your next post BB!
I'm the same when I supervise and every job I sup is finished early and the client loves it. You do NOT need to justify your existence by making changes that aren't needed!
I once made a visualization of a planned wind powerplant nearby. Started off by digging two hours for a model of a windmill not finding one with acceptable license terms, or one which I did like enough. So I ended up digging up some technical materials about the planned type of windmill to find some key parameters such as roto size etc. and did some really coarse modeling - the propeller blades are actually brick-shaped. The actual modeling ended up taking 15 minutes and I bet nobodyseeing that animation did notice: My goal was to provide decent visualization and had I started not aiming for uber-Hollywood quality right I way I would have ended with something very decent of near-Hollywood quality within the hour.
The interesting thing is that this behavior would be unacceptable on set. Probably because the overhead costs and limited availability of actors makes everybody poop their pants
So many things that would be unthinkable in production seem to be the standard in post production. I guess that's why post time has ballooned so much for everything over the last few decades.
It is the same everywhere. Nobody feels important enough unless they get someone else to do something. I have seen book editors tell authors to change character names, or professions or hair color just "Because".
@@user-gq1ij no, composition is an artistic thing. its about the layout of the image and basic principles. compositing is about combining multiple separate elements and combining them. which is what he was talking about
This video keeps on giving! I hear you have the same frustration with big studios/productions. Same here! I love working on indie’s so much more! They have more sense about cost benefit analysis than big studios and Productions. Plus you have far more creative freedom.
So much fun that you showed this! I was a performing mentalist/stage hypnotist at the time and I noticed it. Just because there were weird camera choices that you wouldn’t normally see in such a performance. So obviously I started to look where the camera wasn’t pointing at. Us magicians are harder to misdirect. A fun fact, I got to work as a technical consultant creating mentalism effects and hardware for a TV show. Through that I consulted in several other shows. And that’s how I fell into VFX. I worked at a production house that just worked on their first feature and during lunch I just happened to speak to their VFX supervisor. My full time job is as and IT consultant where I did a lot of graphics programming and vision systems. And even during my internship camera tracking on a shape to track a solar telescope to a specific area. So when he told me they used tools that could do that without coding (early version of Nuke) I was all in. And I spend my Friday’s there as an intern. They taught me the compositing and digital matte painting. And I automated their pipeline, by just getting the render passes, making a slap comp setup and already dialing in the black and the white level. So that the compositors could focus more on the artistic part and not the boring importing and merging tender layers. Unfortunately the last 3 years I haven’t been very busy in VFX, because work was slow and then covid happened and pretty much all work could be done by the two main studios here. And I also found that business wise IT consulting paid more per hour, and I had normal work hours :)
Glad to see this, for once, clearly explained without tears of pain 😂 It is just about the same in almost every creative industry.... This should be seen by every computer graphists really! Thanks 👍
Identifying acceptable corners to cut is certainly one of those things that requires experience and awareness of context. My area of 3D is designing and sculpting collectibles, toys, miniatures - manufacturable stuff. I'm that eagle-eyed supv. (but also still a hands-on designer) and I realise that some of our freelance contributors, sometimes arriving from videogames and VFX, initially think I'm the pickiest so-and-so alive. That request for an extra 0.2mm of geometry thickness, adding a chamfer/bevel to a sharp edge, nudging this-or-that over half-a-millimetre, changing the draft angle by another 1 or 2 degrees - it can get on a person's nerves. But, in our area, it's not just about what is seen or not, but what is reliably manufacturable, in large volume, with minimal chance of breakage or defect leading to customer service issues... so, in this context, these tiny considerations do matter, especially when added up. Tooling is very expensive, and product revisions become a logistics nightmare, so there is a lot of pressure to get it right the first time. On the other hand, as with any business, we can't spend forever developing each product, so time efficiency is very much a consideration. Where can you take the faster path, where must you slow down and work with precision, and where might these differ with context? Such a challenge, and it just takes a lot of time and practice (years) to work it all out. I think certain areas of 3D may favour the more OCD amongst us...
In manufacturing, yeah, you need exact precision. In CG movies, you can't afford all these changes. Especially when it's something like the car flasher. It's not a real car. It's not inspired by a really car. Nobody has ever seen that car before, so if the flasher is a little bit off, only the designer will know.
Wow, just mind blowing and true😯Even when I'm working on my own pieces I always makes change because I think people will notice some imperfections or something. But from your own experience to work with big industry, it's just crazy. The question of details makes me think twice now. I love the vid, good job BOB 🙂
oh lord this hits close to home. Worked with a VFX sup and he would go through frame by frame and in each colour channel too. Constantly flicking back and forth between frames, constantly switch to the R, G and B components. He would also do this last thing in the day and you'd have to "fix" his changes before you could go home
True but there is also another factor which is making things conspicuous, by making your movie with so much attention to detail you are creating a chasm that other companies with less money can't breach. There is a lot of money and there are not so many good opportunities to invest it. It's not a question of money, the problem is figuring out places where you can create added value. Like covering a book with gold leaf.
been in the industry for 20+ years and when you said "pixel fc^ng" I knew where this was going. we've all lived through it. sometimes I wished I could scream it from the roof tops "PLEASE! why are we zooming in on the specular color of the eyeball highlight from the 30th character n the back row in the shadows!! NOBODY is going to tell that the RGB value needs another 15 in the G!! the heinous amount of money, stress and time spent on these ludicrous things are another reason I quit the big houses as well. its a sin what's going on. and nobody will fire anyone because that means they have to admit they made a mistake when they hired them. better off to fire the artist right? I have a zillion stories like this. its a dam shame. thanks for the vid
Never ask your floor manager in a meeting why the fuck you are doing roto for six weeks when the entire show is being roto’d for stereoscopy in India anyway. You’ll get eye daggers.
Really good point... Just hope that the people who actually need this advice get to see it and are able to "take it to heart"... I actually experienced the "exact opposite" when making a number of CG clips for television... During that job did a couple of (in my opinion) big "mistakes/blunders". But when the producer looked at it he basically told me... You see it because You made it AND You have an exact image in Your head of what it "should look like", but NO ONE in the audience is in that position... This is good enough.... Best regards P.S. I actually think You ""failed"" in Your attempt to make a clip "that no one cares about" ;) D.S.
wow i am so thankful that i found this today. truly respectful that instead of bragging, you tell us whats important. 90% would spend 5min talking about what great movie or cartoon they worked on. yet you just go right through them and explain the important things. Awesome! Now i have to see the rest of the channel videos :D - hopefully those wont change this view haha.
So true. Had so many times when I have to explain the same to a client and yet they still want those changes or details. Industry suffers from people in charge who don't understand what r they doing.
Thanks for this video - as someone who hasn't been in the VFX industry, this is really interesting. Plus there's a bunch of really interesting stories in the comments as well!
I agree completely! But this is also a metaphor for other time wasting. But I didn't see until you presented it. Thank you, now let me return to pixel... she is calling.
Some people let a bit of power go to their head, then request dozens of changes simply because they can. If one looks into it, one will probably find a low self esteem at the core.
I just wanted to say I found your videos recently, and have found them extremely interesting. I've been playing around with Blender since about March 2020 or so, and just having some videos to watch from an industry veteran as I pass some time making silly little animations is really nice at times like these. Thanks so much for making these videos!
Make me think about something. I noticed that some new movies have models that are probably overproduced. There is so many details visible that it is not realistic anymore. One example of this is Jurasic world. There is so many things sculpted and painted on the skin and it is so glossy and exaggerated that it looks like a layer of puke.
I work in archviz and this is where we seem to spend the majority of our time. We can build an entire interior scene in one day and then spend a week fiddling with a bunch of tiny details that will have no impact on whether or not anyone is going to buy the property.
Yes, you just described my life for over 20 years. It's frustrating to be a slave to the whims of those calling the shots when they just lack the confidence to move forwards. I try to not be the person asking for useless changes myself. I think job security is another factor. Approving things too quickly would sometimes raise eyebrows (like I'm not doing my job), so I could imagine I'm not the only one who has felt this way. I did a CG bag of "something" a few months back (for an unnamed 75 billion dollar chemical company), and the client had it for three weeks before they decided they liked it. Oddly no changes. They just couldn't bring themselves to say yes right away, like it was a life or death decision.
lol I do this real bad. But at least I do it for reusable shaders and such where the miniscule details stand a decent chance of being useful some day. Very occasionally I blow my own mind and the details bring everything together. It's a struggle but for an individual bespoke single shot there's a time to let go.
Haha, this is so brilliant, absolutely spot on in my experience of CG and illustration - except that sole freelancers often can't charge for all the micro changes. Hilarious and infuriating in equal measure! 😆
I'm a hobby Blender user and I have the same problem too. Spending so much time fucking with little details only to realize none of it really mattered.
I agree. But regarding modeling details, you don't always know what the lighting situations are going to be, let alone if they decide to do a day for night or night for day, or hell even a new sequence featuring that asset. If you under-model something like that Delorean, and it goes through rigging, FX, etc, and then it's required to be fixed and holds up all those other depts. Obviously proper story boarding and animatics should drive things, and we only do the detail we need, but that is not how the industry works anymore. It's all based on the Director's whim, or the Supe to a degree. So while I totally agree with you, the above example of under-modeling a prop that can have gone through complicated rigging, then be used in FX, then if there are decent enough details that differ, you will have holdout issues and all manner of re-renders. I don't know how we fix this issue, as you are correct, it wastes a lot of money and people's time. You can have the same issues in FX, why have super detailed smoke simulations when they are going to be sitting at mid-depth, or defocused? Because if they decide to pull those elements closer to camera the lack of resolution will fall apart, and require a much longer re-sim, adding even more delay compared to hedging your bets with doing something a bit higher res. Modeling is for sure one area where the use of polys is insane, when modelers are making 3000 vert screws that go on Zepplins seen at 0.25 of a pixel, weighing down the entire process for each downstream dept a lot. So the time wasting is in multiple areas, and can be a tricky thing to balance detail Vs reality when scripts seem to be written as we are working! In the end, this is the reality of working at a certain level, it just is. We could trim a lot of fat off these things for sure, but the forces in play are big. Not sure how we solve it. District 9 and Chappie were done very cheaply as Neil is a VFX Artist first, so he knew exactly what to focus on, and what was a total waste of time/money. He's a great case study of economy. Great Video!
We need to start an CGI Union that can be a third party to tell clients when they're absolutely insane for wasting so much time and money on some of the changes they want. So that we don't have to be the bad guys :)
I have been in VFX for over 20 years now, and I agree with most of what you point out about where our attention is focused. A lot of the changes have more to do with ego than most other things, but also keep in mind, that people are always trying to get the most out of what they hire people to make, and no matter what changes happen along the way, the content being produced needs to be able to survive those changes. Also keep in mind, that when we work on films or TV shows (I have worked on a few very popular TV shows, and am currently working on a film that people will re-watch and nitpick details) I spent over a year on a film, people likely will never see, and the director was constantly changing (getting him to pay real money for the changes was really my main point of contention, but I digress) virtually every shot I worked on went through all manner of changes, including time of day and weather, snow, etc, rather than working all of that out in the animatic when it was cheap to make changes. The film was in a constant state of change, they did an animatic, then proceeded to change virtually everything about in when it came for me to do the actual shots, first I was told, no snow we did not shoot on days when there was snow on the ground, (it was a castle like structure on a mountain top), then it was ohh btw we want snow, it is on a mountain you fool! Then there was a great wave of back and forth on how much snow, then yes snow, but not on the roof tops because ohh yeah we did not have snow on the days of the shoot. Anyway you get the point, even though everyone seemed happy with my work, I walked away feeling it was some of my worst work in my career, because I was unable to really make the shots look as good as I could have, due to the constant amount of change, all of this which should have been worked out more or less in the animatic, we were changing time of day or the weather, right up until the end. Moral of the story is, it's less about Pixel F&@$-ing, and more about having a plan, and sticking to that plan, having a pipeline, and sticking to that pipeline. I was told very late in the process that we had live action shots, where the CG mode (which was just originally supposed to be for establishing wide shots) had to closely match footage, where there were no measurements, and very poor details captured on set, like texture reference forcing changes to all the shots, keep in mind that I had been on this film for over a year at this point, and never was told, or provided materials to make this happen earlier in the process. (I have a lot more complaints about the whole experience but you get the point) I honestly would have welcomed the kinds of changes you talk about. (I would have built both the correct bullets, and with full beveling, and thickness from the beginning btw, you never really actually know when those details might be used, better to have more detail in the beginning than needing to make changes later on because you didn't do that.) Details matter, and how you expect something to be used, is not always how it will be used. It is also about the stuff not so much seen as felt. When you see a VFX film where ILM was the main house, more often than not, you can tell that it was an ILM film (though this is less true today, due to the expansive nature of the work, and how it is both spread out among various houses, but also because of that pipelines and standards have merged so that content can be more freely shared), and the reason for that is that ILM has always had that extra attention to the minute details. Yes that kind of thing can get wiped away from motion blur or depth of field, there were shots in star wars that instead of using models for ships or asteroids, they used a tennis shoe, and a potato. However when CGI became the norm, ILM almost always went that extra mile, and getting things correct, is often better, then doing too little, and getting sloppy over time as you convince yourself more and more that you can get away with being less and less detail oriented.
Well, you can consider yourself lucky if the client was paying for the changes because in the big shop, it's all based on a flat fee. So if you have a 500k budget but at the end it cost 1.5M, the VFX company just lost a million dollar. I was the modeling supervisor on both examples in my clip and as supervisor, I have deadlines and budgets to respect. I can't let artists put all the details they would like to. It has to be done according to the importance of the prop, the distance, the lighting, the motion blue etc. But when someone over me makes all the bad calls...
@@BlenderBob Yes and no, Change Orders are still a thing, though it depends on your relationship with a given studio or producer. I have done a show where we were an inhouse VFX team, so the studio paid for their endless changes until the exec producer got fired, and then the next producer came in and fired us and hired an external company who they could better abuse without having to pay for it, though we did most of the modeling work by then, as well as most of the animatics work. Only reason why I am not bitter about that gig, was because I was on it 2x the time I was originally scheduled for, and the pay was good. The constant changes were frustrating, but all the checks cleared, and now there are toys out there which were mostly modeled by me, and partially designed by me, which was a career first. In the case of the project I mentioned, this was a small indie director, so change orders were just a part of the contract, and should be, if you can manage it. My issue was that the change order money did not really cover my pay for the time I ended up putting in, so I did not get much over my initial fee, so I ended up making less than half what I should have for my time, and I would have made out fine if they had just been better at planning, and respecting a typical film pipeline. It is all well and good to get new ideas along the way, I as an artist have been lucky to have been able to work my own ideas into TV shows where those ideas made it to air. However, when those "ideas" cost an artist money, especially during a Pandemic when work is harder to come by because so many productions shut down, I had no option to leave, though if I had, I would not be on my current gig, so in the wacky way this industry works, taking to the nuts on that gig, allowed me have a gig I otherwise would not have had later. So I end up being somewhat philosophical about it now. This is also why we should have unionized a long time ago, no matter where any of us comes down on the political spectrum, Unions would have helped us all a lot in this industry, and probably would have actually helped make better movies and shows in the process.
this is so interesting to watch, I remember when blender guru first mentioned this channel but I thought the videos here will be for the hardcore artist, however the topics are very intriguing even for a novice like me. Here to your 15k+ subs, well deserved!
The problem is that the VFX world work on a flat fee so the client doesn't pay more money for all the changes. And if the VFX sup makes the calls, then the VFX company loses money.
@@BlenderBob Oh, my bad. I am not an industry expert and I thought such costs are taken into consideration when the contract is made, or perhaps the client is warned that additional changes will require more money. But I agree that it's definitely better to spend resources(time, money) on the stuff that matter rather than some blurred props in the dark. Personally it made me think about the times when I've spend a lot of time on things that didn't matter that much. Thank you!
i would love to see this talk at the next bcon, so funny. I would just give the cartridge texture more glossiness and add a bit of blur and then you also have more motion blur effect, I think. That's okay if they spend enough money to pay CG artists, as long as they are blender artists :-)
This happens in every creative media. Ran into the same problem in corporate media work. Project lead had me make numerous changes based on the assertion, "[THAT] is 10 pixels too far to the left." Ultimately, this required bringing in supervisors to mediate and fortunately they agreed on my take. Moving or altering an object in an animation must be justified quantitively. Will we sell more units by moving [THAT] 10 pixels? Will we get more clicks or traffic flow to the website from this? Show me your data that supports the creative change. Otherwise, move on to more important matters.
I agree with most of this, maaaybe I would complain about the chair too depends on the context, if is on eye level, and someone can slightly see that curve is not positioned right, would give the impression is too weak, or out of balance, but I don't know the context, maybe is not on the frame that much.. who knows. But in general , eeeeevery art director, supervisor, director, etc want to go up and up with their work, specially when they are re watching the same stuff 1000 s times, and want to rub their work on other people s faces. That is how the industry work, a huge ego lifting for a lot of parties...
I sense it also comes from the feeling it will stay like that if you just leave it, forever… so “now it’s the time to fix everything”… we all love how Jurassic park VFXs are still great today while other movies of the time feel so dated.
YES! I do comp and experience this. I had a shot on A Series of Unfortunate Events at DD and it kepts getting kicked back because there was a couple pixels that were a little green when you cranked saturation to 20. WHY WOULD YOU EVER DO THAT??? Eventually my sup had to tell them to stop.
Very funny video and great methodology Bob, did you know your hair and shirt etc. changed colour on my monitor and the sound went funny too?..... I'll have to take it to the repair shop sometime... ;-)
"Company 1" made a 14" stop motion puppet for "Company 2". 'Company 2' wanted a three foot tall version of said puppet. Company 2 complained the eyes were proportionally .004" too small.( or was it to big...cant quite remember ha ha.) For those unfamiliar with measuring stuff .004" is about a human hair.
This happens everywhere and I think it's often down to too many cooks in the kitchen. You have one artist who creates an asset, and then you have, like, three people above him- some of whom perhaps don't even have an art background- and they all want to 'contribute', which really means they just create extra hoops for the artist to jump through so they can pretend they helped create it. It's no more than an ego trip and adds zero value to the final result. Even worse, often one of these pr*cks will take credit for the whole thing even though all he really did was make it take longer than it needed to.
I blame Stanley Kubrick. His attention to detail was legendary and you see so little of it on screen. Look at the labels on the equipment in 2001. No Lorem Ipsum for him. Did it help him make better films? No! Anyway. This is why IT departments I encountered used to specify crappy Windows machines and hated us Mac users back in the day, and why QA departments keep coming up with ever more processes to follow in universities. They have to justify their presence and their salary by making work for themselves and they do that by making work for others, none of which actually makes things better (and arguably makes them worse). None of those people in the room you described cared that the change was costing money or had no artistic merit. They cared that there was a reason for them to be in the room. However the people affected by the anal attention to detail (in this case, VFX artists, in my case, teachers) get more and more disaffected because they’re not being creative and being creative is why they thought they were there.
What a great moment of objective truth. But most people in the graphics industry are not as objective as they should be. Many think they are "artists" so make their living on subjective thought. I call "pixel f%$#*&%g" "client appropriation". A bit like cats pissing to mark territory, everybody feels the need to impose their idea, therefore justify their salary. Invariably the more inexperienced, insecure or just incompetent an "artist"' is, the more they need to appropriate things. In some of my clients, it is a narcissistic power trip, but for most it is an obsession that is locked into their brains. As a great chef once told me, it is very difficult to cook the perfect dish when everyone tastes things differently, but it is very easy to screw up a dish by concentrating on the details and not on the whole.
This is one thing I want to avoid as I become an artist. I absolutely LOVE adding details, but I'm trying to teach myself what people will and won't notice in my models and art.
That's how most of the Big Movie industry works. (Even the filming part). And you know why it keep this way ? Because in the end, it always works "no matter at what suffering and pain cost"... The big vfx industry works always on BRUTE FORCE mode. (I totally agree with you).
There was a saying particularly common with advertising commercial production, back in the days of CRT televisions - "Nobody will see in on a 9 inch Sony." It must be a nightmare working on commercials today, for which the common target display is a 4k 70 inch flatscreen.
Sometimes is extreme but it is part of your duty (and you are paid for it) to realize the vision of an artist. If you don't like it change job. Many people go out of big prod. company for this "factory line" style of production... you could do the same. Some young people would take your position in matter of seconds and surely will not complain about it. Thanks for your inshight of the industry anyway, I appreciate it anyway because not many are doing it. Cheers
There’s something I failed to mention in the clip. I was the modeling supervisor on these shows. I have a budget and a deadline to respect. Marwen went three times over budget in modeling. So if you have 500k but it cost 1,5 M at the end, the VFX company just lost one million dollars. And it was like this in every departments. Welcome to Marwen killed Atomic Fiction. It was a great company but after that they had to sell to Method. And Method was not as great as Atomic Fiction. So I left because it was the same BS. Sausage factory totally out of control.
The story about the delorean is really sad. I thought the first thing you learn about 3d production is that you always present your assets under the same or similar lighting conditions as they are gonna appear in the movie
No, generally, the people paying for something, want to know they are getting the most out of their money when it comes to content, they want to know that it can survive any changes make to given shots, including lighting changes. You can hide a lot with lighting.
@@BookmansBlues really? I can imagine what you are saying being the case when you want to sell an asset because you don’t know what people use that for but in a production you should have a clear shot list and a general idea of your scenes isn’t that right?
@@kolupsy It really depends on the production. Generally when I build a model, there is a default scene that everyone has to use to show progress, that way there is a consistent output from all the artists. It used to just be a scene with a dull gradient as an environment, though more common today for me has been a HDRI. An HDRI allows you to check your work against reality, especially in a PBR workflow, so that no matter what shot it ends up in, it should just look real. Making changes per-shot is not that uncommon though, but that should be the last step in any process.
Over twenty years ago, I did a postgrad in animation and had a mentor who owned an animation company that did a lot of work in advertising. He told me that he put in mistakes on purpose, so that all these various "important" people could focus on the mistake and be satisfied that they earned their living whilst the rest got the job done. Now, that is a true magic trick! 😝
LOL, that is brilliant! I've learned a very valuable lesson today, thanks man! :-)
As a mobile app designer, I use this trick all the time when reviewing designs with stakeholders that are too picky about all the wrong things.
Yea, it works the same in any creative commercial field. I used to design trade show exhibits and would get similar requests. I figured out that I could just leave it on my desk until the end of the day, run a new blueprint without making any changes and it would pass without question. Ego is expensive to an org.
Yep. It's an old, well known trick that experienced hands use to their advantage. It is a deliberate strategy that studios use when presenting work to the client.
Sounds similar to a trick we used when it came to designs. Offer one good design and four obviously bad ones to guide the client. The one take away I had from doing this is, sometimes the client will then choose one of the bad designs and then you have to deal with it for the rest of production. You can always count on clients to do the wrong thing.
True story:
i was in advertising for many years as a production artist and graphic designer. while working on projects, an annual report or a poster or magazine advertisement, the head art director would often stand behind us watching closely and tell us to move something a little up or a little to the right (one art director called the amount of movement a “CH”. i can’t say here what that means).
one day this got to be so annoying i couldn’t stand it. the designer kept saying move it a little then “too far too far a tiny bit back! now up!” i got so annoyed i stopped hitting the arrow keys and just clicked the key that did nothing but make the screen flash as if something happened. i did this for another TEN MINUTES to many items and finally he said “that’s it it’s perfect! quick save it don’t change anything!”
after he left i told the others in the room watching and also annoyed this new trick i discovered. he did not know or care at all what was changed. it was all in his head.
Wohahahahahah!!!!
@@jco7551 Hahahahahaha!!! Oh my GOD that's exactly what it was like every day! That image is kind of fitting. Someone gave that partner/owner of the company a nickname. He knew what it was and why got it, we didn't hide it. We called him "the fly", because he was a tiny little guy and would buzz around, stop randomly and annoy people with these changes like a fly on... well you get the idea. Oh... uh... he was also color blind. So not only would he ask us to move stuff around he would also ask what color everything was.
I flew in helicopters on the military. CH was the term the Instructor Pilots used to describe how little you needed to move the flight controls. Now I do VFX and there it is again!
Long back, we worked on a Ironman animated show. Whiplash character needed whips to fight with Ironman. Art director told us to make a high res model, with high res textures, and a highly complicated rig to animate it. We spent months on it rigging, animating, and rendering, And finally when we saw the finished show, the whole whip was painted over with electric lightnings in aftereffects.
aaaAAARRG ! ~lol, I think you win ~
I think it was Ironman armoured adventures, right?
@@nikshakya7389 Yes
@@sanaksanandan I just looked at an example clip and you weren't kidding! You can't even see the whip it might as well not be there and just be a pure lightning whip lol.
@@TheOnlyDamien And It was a production nightmare for 6 months.
Glad to see a VFX veteran talking about this, I work mainly with advertising/motion graphics but it's the same situation with art directors. The amount of times I've been asked to match lighting and shadows of quick Photoshop mockups that don't make any sense for realistic lighting is just too damn high :(
Oh yeah! I get asked to move lights to the left to cast shadows on the right (makes sense). I ask if the highlights on what I've done have been approved for left side of the product, they answer "yes we only want you to move the shadow over". Did I mention it's an animation?🤦♂️ Everything ends up in compositing.
I explained the same term to a coworker the other day. The best ones are when you’re using procedurally generated assets. There was a particular pilot episode with huge crowd sims where the vfx supe wanted individual shirt colors changed from aerial shots. These all had to be roto’d. They also wanted specific emergency vehicle flashing light sequences, ‘correct’ police helicopter tail numbers, and a variety of other crazy details. The show was canceled.
Well, if you had accurately modelled the individual fibres of the shirts of each crowd member, the show might not have been cancelled
Well once you have a bunch of different things you can proceduredurrally change them so it isn't an absurd request depending on the budget, for example if you do a grayscale texture you can change the color using a "multiply" node or similar
@Chandan Acharya I’m sure we were single-handedly responsible for the production’s demise 😂
@@gnsf Making a change to a single instance of a procedural asset can be quite difficult without changing other instances too, e.g. in a particle system or crowd sim
Reminds me of a story a friend told me about his work in the very early days of computer graphic game design, back in the 8-bit tiny screen days. He was one of the artists converting a major title to play on a less capable system than it's original release platform. The scale reduction meant that his assignment was to reanimate a flying bat, but, he only had 4 pixels of screen space in which to do it. He did his best and put it in front of the powers that be. They didn't like it and told him to redo it. He waited a week and gave them the same file again. They still didn't like it and told him to redo it again. He waited another week and gave them the exact same file again. This time they were so close to deadline that they said, "That'll do," and used it in the game. They never noticed it was the exact same animation every time. I thought his solution was brilliant. I always remember the 4-pixel bat story whenever I'm asked to make changes to something that won't matter in the end.
This also happens time and time again in graphic design, web design, and even software development. Does it make it easier to use? Will the end user even notice? No? Then we should definitely spend two weeks arguing about it and driving a dozen people insane with irrelevant changes. Thank you for sharing.
Damn, this is like every agency job. 40 people in a room taking notes for a job that can be done in a few days by a small team working directly with the director... All 40 people need to have their names on all email threads too.
Lol, that is so true! 😂
Same in advertising. Whenever we presented a campaign to an international client, we always had a version we named "the fart": This was riddled with small errors which provided plenty of opportunity for the product assistants, marketing/brand manager and other decision-makers to comment and hence a reason for collecting a paycheck.
Working for large corporations and brands is almost never about creating art or even something that serves the brand the best way possible. It´s about creating a political patchwork where every single stakeholder gets a say in order to feel relevant.
If you want to have fun and make an actual impact working in any artistic field, consider working for companies with very few decision-makers who care more about results than politics.
Happens at ILM too, I remember working on a shot for weeks and in the end it only appeared for a split second and honestly I don't think anyone can notice any mistakes unless they can freeze frame and pixel peep or like they way you say it Pixel F#$%! Your last points hits the nail and all pipeline sups should make it their mantra!
Hallo mr. I love your plane tutorial
I have to say that this goes for me personally as well as big studios etc. If there's one thing I'd change looking back at my life. It's wasting time fiddling with details and making things "perfect". So many personal projects that I never finished because of this. I'd so much more want to have 300 non perfect FINISHED projects than 1 perfect masterpiece.
I've lamented about this behavior for years, and as I've moved up the production leadership ladder at my small company, I've made sure leverage my authority to overrule the people in the process who do this. I've always described it as inconsequential changes that don't actually make the image any "better" ....they just made it "different" and created a whole lot of work and aggravation for someone else.... justifying their existence or looking to be praised for having a "good eye".
Yes. I mentioned in another comment that I can't help but think that some feel their job security is on the line, when they approve something that works without changes.
Amazing comment!!!! That's it!!
Something i definitely need to think about more! Cant remember how many times i did this to my own solo projects too. Thank you!
Good video, so relatable..
My experience is people that have the power to change things keep changing things until time runs out. I think it's also because they feel a bit insecure at times, so they want to have the feeling that "they've done everything they can".
It's like the million-dollar screwdriver cliche, usually applied to governments and government organizations.
Our 3D instructor in college always reminded students that if you don't see it, don't model it.
The video instructor had another saying, always keep your projects K.I.S.S. "Keep It Simple Stupid" (He like goth bands), he also talked about scope-creep and the Cost/Quality/Speed triangle a lot too.
Good advice
K.I.S.S. is actually well known concept
“It’s like the million-dollar screwdriver cliche”
Do tell- what goes into making a drill for use in space, for example?
That "if you don't see it, don't model it" part needs a bit of context. Most of the time makes perfect sense. As a rigger, when characters are involved I prefer to work on characters with the whole body modeled, even if it has only one set of clothes. It is really annoying to do the weight painting on pieces not connected to each other. If I have the body I can paint that and transfer the weights to everywhere else.
So what is the needed amount of detail depends a lot on other people involved.
@@LeonardLeon Very true, with a lot of stuff it is good to model internal parts, like characters and clothing. Then there are a lot of scenarios where it's best not to. Couple of examples for clarity, If you need to model trees for a forest scene, modelling the roots on every tree is a waste of time and resources. Similarly if you need to model a motorbike/vehicle and just need it for a driving down the road shot, going to the trouble of modelling all the engine internals with engineering accuracy would be folly as well. If you need to build a city skyline seen only from a distance, modelling the interiors of distant buildings with furniture, people working, elevators, etc would also be overkill.
- After looking for the best integrated colour I choose RED.
- My client says BLUE, so I do the job in BLUE.
- His supervisor says I think it will be better in RED, so I redo again in RED.
- His boss says mmm BLUE.
- The person between my client and the produccion company says show it in RED but with a little BLUEish touch, that's what director will love!
- I redo it again on RED with a touch of BLUE.
- The director shows to the advertise agency creative team and they all say different colours (every colour in an infinite palette), finally decides to go for a ORANGEBLUEish with a 1.5% of GREEN colour... the client will be amazed with that!
- I redo it again, sigh...
- Creative director, the only one opinion valid in the entire agency creative team) says "What shit is this colour? I said BLUE, this is not BLUE!".
- But then account manager says ... client logo isn't BLUE, it is GREEN, change it all to GREEN right now! we show the campaign in 5 minutes!
- After some more opinions from the advertiser own creative department we show the final product to who really pays the f¡^`+ing bill and she says ... "Terrific!, colour is not ok, it should be RED, but who cares, leave it like that, it's nice... but I'm not sure if the whole campaign idea should be this, maybe we should rethink the whole campaign again ...
13 years ago I was writing the music for a Discovery Channel documentary-series called "Human Body: Pushing the limits" and it had that exact clip by Richard Wiseman in it. (Thought it seemed familiar).. I probably watched it more than anyone in the world except Richard himself, because I had to scrub it back and forth to make the background music fit or something... must have seen it 100-150 times.
Anyway, I still didnt notice the changing colors-part :)
It feels very nice to hear this from someone who has so much real, practical industry experience.
You think that's just in the VFX industry? I'm a DOP for commercials, I'll never forget that one guy from the creative agency that asked to pan a box of cereals. In a supermarket. In the background. Out of focus. Clearly invisible...in the monitor RIGHT BEFORE HIS EYES! (you know...we have realtime rendering on set :D) Some people just have to justify their presence... Ah and of course you have to be wary of allowing anybody to look at your monitor with the raw channel! Even if you tell them that it'll not be the final look, that you're just showing them something, like the blocking...they'll state all worried "it's ok, but change the look!" (the poor vtr operator has to set up one hell of a videovillage sometimes!) :D :D
The best stories leave something to the imagination.
The same is true for images.
Blender address this in a round-about way with the idea behind 'adaptive subdivision'; details too small to be seen clearly aren't given much time or effort.
The more pixels an object needs, the more resources are devoted to the object.
The fussy little details become less distinct, more of a suggestion.
Everything should be created in context and the context should be set in stone at the storyboard and previz stage. If you don't see it in previz it should not be part of the asset budget. Directors should be completely at ease with previzualisation and shake hands with production on it: "This is the movie I want you guys to create for me. Stop sending turntables. Send me shots."
And to never change the details during production.
Iv’e stopped doing turntables precisely for this reason. It focuses the eye on the wrong thing. On the other hand, for personal projects, I tweak things all the time😂
Well I think this video was a great lesson on tiny details. They are unneeded, especially if motion blur is at play.
Brilliant mate, so good to hear someone in our industry complaining about the same things I have been banging on about for 20 years. Everyone seems to keep their heads down and not speak up, which gives these so-called supervisors more control. I worked with a knucklehead supervisor who had me make changes on things behind the camera coz they weren't technically correct.
Everyone needs to have their fingerprint on the final output. Even if their fingerprint is senseless.
I'm just getting started with Blender and found out about Blender Bob from Blender Guru. And I've got to say that this guy is so damn entertaining to watch that had I stumbled across his channel and had no interest in his channel's subject matter I'd still subscribe. There are thousands of channels on this platform and it's relatively rare to find one that's actually entertaining. This is one of those rare channels. Looking forward to your next post BB!
You seem like a guy that needs some Ian Hubert in your life.
Blender Bob is like the old movie star Buster Keaton - he knows (and does) everything by himself!
Actually, I don't. I'm a CG sup now. I delegate to jobs to my team while I do R&D and support. :-)
@@qu765 Thanks for the recommendation. Checked out his channel and really like it.
I'm the same when I supervise and every job I sup is finished early and the client loves it. You do NOT need to justify your existence by making changes that aren't needed!
I once made a visualization of a planned wind powerplant nearby. Started off by digging two hours for a model of a windmill not finding one with acceptable license terms, or one which I did like enough. So I ended up digging up some technical materials about the planned type of windmill to find some key parameters such as roto size etc. and did some really coarse modeling - the propeller blades are actually brick-shaped. The actual modeling ended up taking 15 minutes and I bet nobodyseeing that animation did notice:
My goal was to provide decent visualization and had I started not aiming for uber-Hollywood quality right I way I would have ended with something very decent of near-Hollywood quality within the hour.
The interesting thing is that this behavior would be unacceptable on set. Probably because the overhead costs and limited availability of actors makes everybody poop their pants
So many things that would be unthinkable in production seem to be the standard in post production. I guess that's why post time has ballooned so much for everything over the last few decades.
best advice best. I don't work in a big industry but even for my own short projects these tips will save lots of time and effort .
It is the same everywhere. Nobody feels important enough unless they get someone else to do something. I have seen book editors tell authors to change character names, or professions or hair color just "Because".
Laughed so hard at your comment about the big shops. "They're crazy, they're insane!" So true though....
It's my wife's birthday and I did a Blender Bob... can you believe that? (Ok, she was gone all day...)
Happy Birthday for your wife Mr.
Bob..
15k suscribers you have got, now its time for a composition video
@@user-gq1ij compositing*
@@dyfx9788 The process of compositing is called composition, isn't it
@@user-gq1ij no, composition is an artistic thing. its about the layout of the image and basic principles.
compositing is about combining multiple separate elements and combining them.
which is what he was talking about
This video keeps on giving! I hear you have the same frustration with big studios/productions.
Same here! I love working on indie’s so much more! They have more sense about cost benefit analysis than big studios and Productions. Plus you have far more creative freedom.
Cool clip. Watch closely, Its very subtle but i think his hair changes a little. Loved it.
No, I shaved...
@@BlenderBob classic
So much fun that you showed this! I was a performing mentalist/stage hypnotist at the time and I noticed it. Just because there were weird camera choices that you wouldn’t normally see in such a performance. So obviously I started to look where the camera wasn’t pointing at. Us magicians are harder to misdirect.
A fun fact, I got to work as a technical consultant creating mentalism effects and hardware for a TV show. Through that I consulted in several other shows. And that’s how I fell into VFX. I worked at a production house that just worked on their first feature and during lunch I just happened to speak to their VFX supervisor. My full time job is as and IT consultant where I did a lot of graphics programming and vision systems. And even during my internship camera tracking on a shape to track a solar telescope to a specific area. So when he told me they used tools that could do that without coding (early version of Nuke) I was all in. And I spend my Friday’s there as an intern. They taught me the compositing and digital matte painting. And I automated their pipeline, by just getting the render passes, making a slap comp setup and already dialing in the black and the white level. So that the compositors could focus more on the artistic part and not the boring importing and merging tender layers.
Unfortunately the last 3 years I haven’t been very busy in VFX, because work was slow and then covid happened and pretty much all work could be done by the two main studios here. And I also found that business wise IT consulting paid more per hour, and I had normal work hours :)
Glad to see this, for once, clearly explained without tears of pain 😂 It is just about the same in almost every creative industry.... This should be seen by every computer graphists really! Thanks 👍
Identifying acceptable corners to cut is certainly one of those things that requires experience and awareness of context. My area of 3D is designing and sculpting collectibles, toys, miniatures - manufacturable stuff. I'm that eagle-eyed supv. (but also still a hands-on designer) and I realise that some of our freelance contributors, sometimes arriving from videogames and VFX, initially think I'm the pickiest so-and-so alive. That request for an extra 0.2mm of geometry thickness, adding a chamfer/bevel to a sharp edge, nudging this-or-that over half-a-millimetre, changing the draft angle by another 1 or 2 degrees - it can get on a person's nerves. But, in our area, it's not just about what is seen or not, but what is reliably manufacturable, in large volume, with minimal chance of breakage or defect leading to customer service issues... so, in this context, these tiny considerations do matter, especially when added up. Tooling is very expensive, and product revisions become a logistics nightmare, so there is a lot of pressure to get it right the first time. On the other hand, as with any business, we can't spend forever developing each product, so time efficiency is very much a consideration. Where can you take the faster path, where must you slow down and work with precision, and where might these differ with context? Such a challenge, and it just takes a lot of time and practice (years) to work it all out. I think certain areas of 3D may favour the more OCD amongst us...
In manufacturing, yeah, you need exact precision. In CG movies, you can't afford all these changes. Especially when it's something like the car flasher. It's not a real car. It's not inspired by a really car. Nobody has ever seen that car before, so if the flasher is a little bit off, only the designer will know.
Wow, just mind blowing and true😯Even when I'm working on my own pieces I always makes change because I think people will notice some imperfections or something. But from your own experience to work with big industry, it's just crazy. The question of details makes me think twice now. I love the vid, good job BOB 🙂
oh lord this hits close to home. Worked with a VFX sup and he would go through frame by frame and in each colour channel too. Constantly flicking back and forth between frames, constantly switch to the R, G and B components. He would also do this last thing in the day and you'd have to "fix" his changes before you could go home
True but there is also another factor which is making things conspicuous, by making your movie with so much attention to detail you are creating a chasm that other companies with less money can't breach. There is a lot of money and there are not so many good opportunities to invest it. It's not a question of money, the problem is figuring out places where you can create added value. Like covering a book with gold leaf.
Awesome video. I will definitely be adding this idea to my thought processing toolkit about making renders and animations
been in the industry for 20+ years and when you said "pixel fc^ng" I knew where this was going. we've all lived through it. sometimes I wished I could scream it from the roof tops "PLEASE! why are we zooming in on the specular color of the eyeball highlight from the 30th character n the back row in the shadows!! NOBODY is going to tell that the RGB value needs another 15 in the G!! the heinous amount of money, stress and time spent on these ludicrous things are another reason I quit the big houses as well. its a sin what's going on. and nobody will fire anyone because that means they have to admit they made a mistake when they hired them. better off to fire the artist right? I have a zillion stories like this. its a dam shame. thanks for the vid
Never ask your floor manager in a meeting why the fuck you are doing roto for six weeks when the entire show is being roto’d for stereoscopy in India anyway. You’ll get eye daggers.
@@Miniweet9167 pff ha ha ha!! oh man..
Really good point... Just hope that the people who actually need this advice get to see it and are able to "take it to heart"...
I actually experienced the "exact opposite" when making a number of CG clips for television... During that job did a couple of (in my opinion) big "mistakes/blunders". But when the producer looked at it he basically told me... You see it because You made it AND You have an exact image in Your head of what it "should look like", but NO ONE in the audience is in that position... This is good enough....
Best regards
P.S.
I actually think You ""failed"" in Your attempt to make a clip "that no one cares about" ;)
D.S.
At least the producer believed in you!
wow i am so thankful that i found this today.
truly respectful that instead of bragging, you tell us whats important.
90% would spend 5min talking about what great movie or cartoon they worked on. yet you just go right through them and explain the important things.
Awesome!
Now i have to see the rest of the channel videos :D - hopefully those wont change this view haha.
So true. Had so many times when I have to explain the same to a client and yet they still want those changes or details. Industry suffers from people in charge who don't understand what r they doing.
this is incredibly valuable, thanks for this lesson Bob
Thanks for this video - as someone who hasn't been in the VFX industry, this is really interesting. Plus there's a bunch of really interesting stories in the comments as well!
Richard did a talk for us a few years back and I’ve been using his stuff in my own lectures ever since 😹
I agree completely! But this is also a metaphor for other time wasting. But I didn't see until you presented it. Thank you, now let me return to pixel... she is calling.
Some people let a bit of power go to their head, then request dozens of changes simply because they can. If one looks into it, one will probably find a low self esteem at the core.
I will not confirm or deny the low self esteem ;-)
I just wanted to say I found your videos recently, and have found them extremely interesting. I've been playing around with Blender since about March 2020 or so, and just having some videos to watch from an industry veteran as I pass some time making silly little animations is really nice at times like these.
Thanks so much for making these videos!
No wonder Godzilla Minus one could do it in such a low budget with literal Oscar level quality
Make me think about something. I noticed that some new movies have models that are probably overproduced. There is so many details visible that it is not realistic anymore. One example of this is Jurasic world. There is so many things sculpted and painted on the skin and it is so glossy and exaggerated that it looks like a layer of puke.
I work in archviz and this is where we seem to spend the majority of our time. We can build an entire interior scene in one day and then spend a week fiddling with a bunch of tiny details that will have no impact on whether or not anyone is going to buy the property.
Yes, you just described my life for over 20 years. It's frustrating to be a slave to the whims of those calling the shots when they just lack the confidence to move forwards. I try to not be the person asking for useless changes myself. I think job security is another factor. Approving things too quickly would sometimes raise eyebrows (like I'm not doing my job), so I could imagine I'm not the only one who has felt this way. I did a CG bag of "something" a few months back (for an unnamed 75 billion dollar chemical company), and the client had it for three weeks before they decided they liked it. Oddly no changes. They just couldn't bring themselves to say yes right away, like it was a life or death decision.
I work in the theme park industry and they do stupid crap like this too. And then they cut the budget on things that matter. Frustrating.
lol I do this real bad. But at least I do it for reusable shaders and such where the miniscule details stand a decent chance of being useful some day.
Very occasionally I blow my own mind and the details bring everything together.
It's a struggle but for an individual bespoke single shot there's a time to let go.
Amazing video! Also, what a wig collection you have. Thanks for putting some common sense, mental wellness out there for artists.
Haha, this is so brilliant, absolutely spot on in my experience of CG and illustration - except that sole freelancers often can't charge for all the micro changes. Hilarious and infuriating in equal measure! 😆
I'm a hobby Blender user and I have the same problem too. Spending so much time fucking with little details only to realize none of it really mattered.
I agree. But regarding modeling details, you don't always know what the lighting situations are going to be, let alone if they decide to do a day for night or night for day, or hell even a new sequence featuring that asset. If you under-model something like that Delorean, and it goes through rigging, FX, etc, and then it's required to be fixed
and holds up all those other depts. Obviously proper story boarding and animatics should drive things, and we only do the detail we need, but that is not
how the industry works anymore. It's all based on the Director's whim, or the Supe to a degree. So while I totally agree with you, the above example
of under-modeling a prop that can have gone through complicated rigging, then be used in FX, then if there are decent enough details that differ, you will have holdout issues
and all manner of re-renders.
I don't know how we fix this issue, as you are correct, it wastes a lot of money and people's time.
You can have the same issues in FX, why have super detailed smoke simulations when they are going to be sitting at mid-depth, or defocused? Because if they decide
to pull those elements closer to camera the lack of resolution will fall apart, and require a much longer re-sim, adding even more delay compared to hedging your bets with doing something a bit higher res.
Modeling is for sure one area where the use of polys is insane, when modelers are making 3000 vert screws that go on Zepplins seen at 0.25 of a pixel, weighing down the
entire process for each downstream dept a lot. So the time wasting is in multiple areas, and can be a tricky thing to balance detail Vs reality when scripts seem to be
written as we are working!
In the end, this is the reality of working at a certain level, it just is. We could trim a lot of fat off these things for sure, but the forces in play are big.
Not sure how we solve it. District 9 and Chappie were done very cheaply as Neil is a VFX Artist first, so he knew exactly what to focus on, and what was a total waste
of time/money. He's a great case study of economy.
Great Video!
We need to start an CGI Union that can be a third party to tell clients when they're absolutely insane for wasting so much time and money on some of the changes they want. So that we don't have to be the bad guys :)
Imo this video is much more interesting than something about compositing :P
i like it even more when the clinet or project lead says ....'' make something for a client that is like this ...and make it look good ''
I didn't even notice the changes on the card trick video!
man you are only one who is showing real cg industry stuff.. wish u luck for 5M subs 💗
I have been in VFX for over 20 years now, and I agree with most of what you point out about where our attention is focused. A lot of the changes have more to do with ego than most other things, but also keep in mind, that people are always trying to get the most out of what they hire people to make, and no matter what changes happen along the way, the content being produced needs to be able to survive those changes. Also keep in mind, that when we work on films or TV shows (I have worked on a few very popular TV shows, and am currently working on a film that people will re-watch and nitpick details)
I spent over a year on a film, people likely will never see, and the director was constantly changing (getting him to pay real money for the changes was really my main point of contention, but I digress) virtually every shot I worked on went through all manner of changes, including time of day and weather, snow, etc, rather than working all of that out in the animatic when it was cheap to make changes. The film was in a constant state of change, they did an animatic, then proceeded to change virtually everything about in when it came for me to do the actual shots, first I was told, no snow we did not shoot on days when there was snow on the ground, (it was a castle like structure on a mountain top), then it was ohh btw we want snow, it is on a mountain you fool! Then there was a great wave of back and forth on how much snow, then yes snow, but not on the roof tops because ohh yeah we did not have snow on the days of the shoot. Anyway you get the point, even though everyone seemed happy with my work, I walked away feeling it was some of my worst work in my career, because I was unable to really make the shots look as good as I could have, due to the constant amount of change, all of this which should have been worked out more or less in the animatic, we were changing time of day or the weather, right up until the end.
Moral of the story is, it's less about Pixel F&@$-ing, and more about having a plan, and sticking to that plan, having a pipeline, and sticking to that pipeline. I was told very late in the process that we had live action shots, where the CG mode (which was just originally supposed to be for establishing wide shots) had to closely match footage, where there were no measurements, and very poor details captured on set, like texture reference forcing changes to all the shots, keep in mind that I had been on this film for over a year at this point, and never was told, or provided materials to make this happen earlier in the process. (I have a lot more complaints about the whole experience but you get the point)
I honestly would have welcomed the kinds of changes you talk about. (I would have built both the correct bullets, and with full beveling, and thickness from the beginning btw, you never really actually know when those details might be used, better to have more detail in the beginning than needing to make changes later on because you didn't do that.) Details matter, and how you expect something to be used, is not always how it will be used. It is also about the stuff not so much seen as felt. When you see a VFX film where ILM was the main house, more often than not, you can tell that it was an ILM film (though this is less true today, due to the expansive nature of the work, and how it is both spread out among various houses, but also because of that pipelines and standards have merged so that content can be more freely shared), and the reason for that is that ILM has always had that extra attention to the minute details. Yes that kind of thing can get wiped away from motion blur or depth of field, there were shots in star wars that instead of using models for ships or asteroids, they used a tennis shoe, and a potato. However when CGI became the norm, ILM almost always went that extra mile, and getting things correct, is often better, then doing too little, and getting sloppy over time as you convince yourself more and more that you can get away with being less and less detail oriented.
Well, you can consider yourself lucky if the client was paying for the changes because in the big shop, it's all based on a flat fee. So if you have a 500k budget but at the end it cost 1.5M, the VFX company just lost a million dollar. I was the modeling supervisor on both examples in my clip and as supervisor, I have deadlines and budgets to respect. I can't let artists put all the details they would like to. It has to be done according to the importance of the prop, the distance, the lighting, the motion blue etc. But when someone over me makes all the bad calls...
@@BlenderBob Yes and no, Change Orders are still a thing, though it depends on your relationship with a given studio or producer.
I have done a show where we were an inhouse VFX team, so the studio paid for their endless changes until the exec producer got fired, and then the next producer came in and fired us and hired an external company who they could better abuse without having to pay for it, though we did most of the modeling work by then, as well as most of the animatics work. Only reason why I am not bitter about that gig, was because I was on it 2x the time I was originally scheduled for, and the pay was good. The constant changes were frustrating, but all the checks cleared, and now there are toys out there which were mostly modeled by me, and partially designed by me, which was a career first.
In the case of the project I mentioned, this was a small indie director, so change orders were just a part of the contract, and should be, if you can manage it. My issue was that the change order money did not really cover my pay for the time I ended up putting in, so I did not get much over my initial fee, so I ended up making less than half what I should have for my time, and I would have made out fine if they had just been better at planning, and respecting a typical film pipeline. It is all well and good to get new ideas along the way, I as an artist have been lucky to have been able to work my own ideas into TV shows where those ideas made it to air. However, when those "ideas" cost an artist money, especially during a Pandemic when work is harder to come by because so many productions shut down, I had no option to leave, though if I had, I would not be on my current gig, so in the wacky way this industry works, taking to the nuts on that gig, allowed me have a gig I otherwise would not have had later. So I end up being somewhat philosophical about it now.
This is also why we should have unionized a long time ago, no matter where any of us comes down on the political spectrum, Unions would have helped us all a lot in this industry, and probably would have actually helped make better movies and shows in the process.
Rockstar Games: Now, I have a reason to explain why GTA VI is taking 50 years to come out!
And then they run out of CG budget and you get the Scorpion King...
Excellent video with lots of examples proving your case!
this is so interesting to watch, I remember when blender guru first mentioned this channel but I thought the videos here will be for the hardcore artist, however the topics are very intriguing even for a novice like me. Here to your 15k+ subs, well deserved!
Perfection is a curse that every artist suffers from, but other than that if more money are being poured into the industry the better if you ask me!
The problem is that the VFX world work on a flat fee so the client doesn't pay more money for all the changes. And if the VFX sup makes the calls, then the VFX company loses money.
@@BlenderBob Oh, my bad. I am not an industry expert and I thought such costs are taken into consideration when the contract is made, or perhaps the client is warned that additional changes will require more money.
But I agree that it's definitely better to spend resources(time, money) on the stuff that matter rather than some blurred props in the dark. Personally it made me think about the times when I've spend a lot of time on things that didn't matter that much. Thank you!
Oh, so true. The 'suits' are taking all the art out of movies these days.
i would love to see this talk at the next bcon, so funny.
I would just give the cartridge texture more glossiness and add a bit of blur and then you also have more motion blur effect, I think.
That's okay if they spend enough money to pay CG artists, as long as they are blender artists :-)
This happens in every creative media. Ran into the same problem in corporate media work. Project lead had me make numerous changes based on the assertion, "[THAT] is 10 pixels too far to the left." Ultimately, this required bringing in supervisors to mediate and fortunately they agreed on my take. Moving or altering an object in an animation must be justified quantitively. Will we sell more units by moving [THAT] 10 pixels? Will we get more clicks or traffic flow to the website from this? Show me your data that supports the creative change. Otherwise, move on to more important matters.
I agree with most of this, maaaybe I would complain about the chair too depends on the context, if is on eye level, and someone can slightly see that curve is not positioned right, would give the impression is too weak, or out of balance, but I don't know the context, maybe is not on the frame that much.. who knows. But in general , eeeeevery art director, supervisor, director, etc want to go up and up with their work, specially when they are re watching the same stuff 1000 s times, and want to rub their work on other people s faces. That is how the industry work, a huge ego lifting for a lot of parties...
I sense it also comes from the feeling it will stay like that if you just leave it, forever… so “now it’s the time to fix everything”… we all love how Jurassic park VFXs are still great today while other movies of the time feel so dated.
YES! I do comp and experience this. I had a shot on A Series of Unfortunate Events at DD and it kepts getting kicked back because there was a couple pixels that were a little green when you cranked saturation to 20. WHY WOULD YOU EVER DO THAT??? Eventually my sup had to tell them to stop.
Very funny video and great methodology Bob, did you know your hair and shirt etc. changed colour on my monitor and the sound went funny too?..... I'll have to take it to the repair shop sometime... ;-)
Man, this is SO TRUE, even in pro level production.
Thanks for your insights!
"Company 1" made a 14" stop motion puppet for "Company 2". 'Company 2' wanted a three foot tall version of said puppet. Company 2 complained the eyes were proportionally .004" too small.( or was it to big...cant quite remember ha ha.) For those unfamiliar with measuring stuff .004" is about a human hair.
Wow Bob you're getting really popular, I'm really proud of you, you deserve it and so much more!
This happens everywhere and I think it's often down to too many cooks in the kitchen. You have one artist who creates an asset, and then you have, like, three people above him- some of whom perhaps don't even have an art background- and they all want to 'contribute', which really means they just create extra hoops for the artist to jump through so they can pretend they helped create it. It's no more than an ego trip and adds zero value to the final result. Even worse, often one of these pr*cks will take credit for the whole thing even though all he really did was make it take longer than it needed to.
This isa actually as educational as your blender tutorials. Hope you'll have some similar ones as time progresses.
Great clip. I needed to hear this. Often gets stuck on tiny details
I blame Stanley Kubrick. His attention to detail was legendary and you see so little of it on screen. Look at the labels on the equipment in 2001. No Lorem Ipsum for him. Did it help him make better films? No!
Anyway. This is why IT departments I encountered used to specify crappy Windows machines and hated us Mac users back in the day, and why QA departments keep coming up with ever more processes to follow in universities. They have to justify their presence and their salary by making work for themselves and they do that by making work for others, none of which actually makes things better (and arguably makes them worse). None of those people in the room you described cared that the change was costing money or had no artistic merit. They cared that there was a reason for them to be in the room.
However the people affected by the anal attention to detail (in this case, VFX artists, in my case, teachers) get more and more disaffected because they’re not being creative and being creative is why they thought they were there.
Bonjour
Quelle agréable concordance des couleurs ....( shirt, plants, outside light ... ) !
I remember the Airplane you told about in an old video, you didnt make it accurate because there was gonna be motion blur and no one would notice it
I do hope that I can „just do“ in these cases that don’t make much sense… Sometimes I tend to ask the right questions at the wrong time 😅
What a great moment of objective truth. But most people in the graphics industry are not as objective as they should be. Many think they are "artists" so make their living on subjective thought. I call "pixel f%$#*&%g" "client appropriation". A bit like cats pissing to mark territory, everybody feels the need to impose their idea, therefore justify their salary. Invariably the more inexperienced, insecure or just incompetent an "artist"' is, the more they need to appropriate things. In some of my clients, it is a narcissistic power trip, but for most it is an obsession that is locked into their brains. As a great chef once told me, it is very difficult to cook the perfect dish when everyone tastes things differently, but it is very easy to screw up a dish by concentrating on the details and not on the whole.
This is one thing I want to avoid as I become an artist. I absolutely LOVE adding details, but I'm trying to teach myself what people will and won't notice in my models and art.
This "rant" (sorry to call it that) was so entertaining!
That's how most of the Big Movie industry works. (Even the filming part). And you know why it keep this way ? Because in the end, it always works "no matter at what suffering and pain cost"... The big vfx industry works always on BRUTE FORCE mode. (I totally agree with you).
Well said. I'm in the art dept/set design... the same stuff happens all the time.
There was a saying particularly common with advertising commercial production, back in the days of CRT televisions - "Nobody will see in on a 9 inch Sony."
It must be a nightmare working on commercials today, for which the common target display is a 4k 70 inch flatscreen.
Imagine on a 120 feet theather screen...
Sometimes is extreme but it is part of your duty (and you are paid for it) to realize the vision of an artist. If you don't like it change job. Many people go out of big prod. company for this "factory line" style of production... you could do the same. Some young people would take your position in matter of seconds and surely will not complain about it. Thanks for your inshight of the industry anyway, I appreciate it anyway because not many are doing it. Cheers
There’s something I failed to mention in the clip. I was the modeling supervisor on these shows. I have a budget and a deadline to respect. Marwen went three times over budget in modeling. So if you have 500k but it cost 1,5 M at the end, the VFX company just lost one million dollars. And it was like this in every departments. Welcome to Marwen killed Atomic Fiction. It was a great company but after that they had to sell to Method. And Method was not as great as Atomic Fiction. So I left because it was the same BS. Sausage factory totally out of control.
The VFX industry works on a flat fee. We can’t charge the client for all the changes.
The story about the delorean is really sad. I thought the first thing you learn about 3d production is that you always present your assets under the same or similar lighting conditions as they are gonna appear in the movie
No, generally, the people paying for something, want to know they are getting the most out of their money when it comes to content, they want to know that it can survive any changes make to given shots, including lighting changes. You can hide a lot with lighting.
@@BookmansBlues really? I can imagine what you are saying being the case when you want to sell an asset because you don’t know what people use that for but in a production you should have a clear shot list and a general idea of your scenes isn’t that right?
@@kolupsy It really depends on the production. Generally when I build a model, there is a default scene that everyone has to use to show progress, that way there is a consistent output from all the artists. It used to just be a scene with a dull gradient as an environment, though more common today for me has been a HDRI. An HDRI allows you to check your work against reality, especially in a PBR workflow, so that no matter what shot it ends up in, it should just look real.
Making changes per-shot is not that uncommon though, but that should be the last step in any process.
ahahahahahh amazing content! gonna share this to EVERYONE
You want 15K subscribers? Sir, I believe you deserve 1000x much more.
NAHHHH THE CHARACTER CHANGES WAS VERY FUNNY