Texturing for film companies

[leigh]

Are you talking about texturing for CG features of visual effects?

I work in film VFX, and there is a huge difference between the textures we use and the textures a game company uses. The biggest difference is that the images are generally much larger, and consequently more detailed.

I don't deal with shaders and such myself at all, I simply do the painting side of it, and then work with the TD's to create all the necessary images, which often include ID maps and stuff, in addition to the regular colour, bump, spec, etc images. I wouldn't describe texturing as being particularly technical. The majority of work we do makes heavy use of photo editing and montages, with hand painting to fill in the gaps.

[rebekahlynn]

Leigh, thank you so much for your professional insight. My instructor confused me quite a bit with mis-information and I've had difficulty getting helpful answers on this topic.

Most specifically I am referring to cg animation houses, though texturing for vfx is certainly a possibility as well. Is there a big difference in job description for texture artists between these two fields?


What is your exact job title? Your job description (compositing/handpainting texture maps) is exactly what I want to be doing and would like to taylor my demo reel to that.


What would be most important to show on a reel for this kind of work?

[leigh]

To be honest, I don't know much about CG feature texturing, apart from the fact that it's more "painterly" most of the time. With VFX, we're usually always dealing with photos, whereas feature animation stuff is predominantly hand painted, since they don't need photorealism. It's more stylised and ultimately probably simpler, since with animated features, the focus is usually more on the look of the shaders as opposed to super detailed textures (Pixar's films are a good example of this - the textures are, for the most part, kept simple).

My exact job title is "texture painter".

For your reel, it's good to show a variety of texturing work (characters, environments, etc), and show your actual texture maps in addition to showing them rendered on the models. You should be able to demonstrate an understanding of how the different texture maps work (colour, bump, spec, etc), and should have good Photoshop skills and colour sense.

[soulburn3d]

whereas feature animation stuff is predominantly hand painted, since they don't need photorealism. It's more stylised and ultimately probably simpler, since with animated features, the focus is usually more on the look of the shaders as opposed to super detailed textures (Pixar's films are a good example of this - the textures are, for the most part, kept simple).

Actually, we use a lot of photo stuff over here at Pixar (as well as procedurals and hand painted materials), although the main focus with using photos is as a way to quickly provide us with texture, dirt, grime, etc, as opposed to VFX where the desired result is something that looks completely real. So while our goal is to produce stuff that's a bit simpler and stylized, we definately use a lot of photo textures to help us get there.

- Neil

[leigh]

That's interesting to hear, Neil. I assumed Pixar would use procedural solutions for dirt and such. I guessed that you'd be using photos in some capacity, but I wouldn't have thought you'd use them for grunge - probably because I tend to think of Pixar films as being relatively clean and stylised.

[soulburn3d]

That's interesting to hear, Neil. I assumed Pixar would use procedural solutions for dirt and such. I guessed that you'd be using photos in some capacity, but I wouldn't have thought you'd use them for grunge - probably because I tend to think of Pixar films as being relatively clean and stylised.

Well, the original Toy Story is certainly a cleaner film (with more procedurals used), but if you take a closer look our more recent films like Nemo or Cars or Rat, you'll see a lot of dirt and grime :) And a large portion of that is hand painted, or manipulated photos (In general I'd say any particular prop, environment or character has hand painted, photo AND procedural patterns to get the final look). We also frequently use manipulated photos to drive the location and pattern of procedural textures.

I personally think that the "cleaness" and stylization comes a lot from the lighting. As a shading person, we provide all the minute detail that the shots may need, and then the lighters choose how much of that detail to reveal or not to reveal depending on the point of the shot. That's something I really like about the way lighting is done here, the lighters are very good at directing the eye of the viewer to the story point, rather than overwealming the eye with way too much detail.

- Neil

[leigh]

Thanks for the insight, Neil. I don't really have much experience in animated content (as opposed to VFX), so it's always fascinating to hear about your field. I agree about your lighting - it's one of the aspects of Pixar's films that I've always enjoyed the most. Your lighters have a way of pulling the viewers attention to the main point of focus, while also ensuring that everything else in the scene looks fabulous, yet non-distracting.

[rebekahlynn]

Pixar using photos as a foundation? Very cool. Once again, my instructor was wrong :-P

I completely agree. Ratatouille has some of the most luminant, inviting lighting and texture I've ever seen in a CG film. It leads you through the story. It's definitely got me all inspired and vamped up to texture :-)


Neil, are texture artists responsible for writing shaders at Pixar?

[soulburn3d]

Your lighters have a way of pulling the viewers attention to the main point of focus, while also ensuring that everything else in the scene looks fabulous, yet non-distracting.

Yup. It's not just their skill, it's also due to the pixar tradition. Everything in our films should ideally be there to support the story. Same with the lighting. So as a lighter you are expected to ask "what's the point of this shot, and what can I do to help support that point". Other companies could do the exact same thing, I assume many don't because they choose not to or just don't think about lighting in this way, which I think is a shame.

- Neil

[soulburn3d]

Pixar using photos as a foundation?

We do a lot of the time, but not always.

Very cool. Once again, my instructor was wrong :-P

Well, unless your instructor is currently working at Pixar or has a friend who works for Pixar, it's tough to sometimes get up to date accurate info. Also it depends who you ask, some people use more photo stuff, some people prefer pure procedurals. So you're going to get some variety depending on who you speak to.

Neil, are texture artists responsible for writing shaders at Pixar?

Not sure how much more I can say, since I am not authorized to discuss our process beyond information that's already been released publically. But in general there are two groups of people, shading tds and painters. Painters paint textures for use in shaders. Shading tds make shaders using slim and some amount of hand coded SL, depending on the required task and preference of the td. Some people do a little of both.

- Neil

[rebekahlynn]

Neil, that is exactly what I was wanting to know concerning the role of the texture painter in your work environment. Very helpful.

My instructor is well meaning but she hasn't worked in the industry for 10 years and her knowledge is questionable. She insists cg animation studios are almost exclusively procedural. She confuses a lot of students :-S

[soulburn3d]

My instructor is well meaning but she hasn't worked in the industry for 10 years and her knowledge is questionable. She insists cg animation studios are almost exclusively procedural. She confuses a lot of students :-S

Well, that's a tough issue. Ideally, you'd want a teacher who's simulteneously working in the "industry", so you get current information. But there's some problems with that...

1) Having an industry job takes a lot of time, and so it's tough to find the time to teach.
2) Companies are so variable that even if you have current industry experience, you can't know everything about every aspect of the industry.
3) Just because you're an industry professional doesn't mean you're a good teacher. I know a lot of great industry people who do amazing work, but aren't good at explaining it to students.

In general, just take everybody's opinion (teachers, students, professionals) with a grain of salt. Not everyone is right about everything, and a lot of "truths" are just personal opinion, including my own :)

- Neil

[rebekahlynn]

Good point, Neil.

I think if I don't take all the advice with a grain of salt I'll drive myself crazy with confusion anyway ;-) I guess it's better to just focus on making my work the best I can and not obsess over the exact application of it.

[ExP]

Hey guys, very interesting topic.
Neil, thanks for all of your insights. I also come from the VFX world and your input was very helpful.

BTW I can't agree more with what you're saying about the importance of telling a story with everything we do in a film. It starts with the script, the acting, directing, but also color, shape, light or lack of it, blur vs focus etc.. all of these elements have to work in symbiosis to ultimately tell the story and communicate emotion.

Cheers

[Cameo]

I agree, some Very interesting insights in this thread both from neil and leigh. Can you explain
what an ID map is leigh? I've not heard that term before.

The thread title is of particular relevence to me as Im currently working on content for a new
reel to send out next year. How important is it to show things like SSS maps these days or is
it not strictly expected? I always find texturing reels are a hard thing to find info on,
the reels I usually see have a main focus in modelling with texturing a kind of bonus, I haven't
seen too many which have been wholly texturing-specific, which is what I am aiming to produce.

[soulburn3d]

Well, SSS is still a reasonably new thing. And every company has a slightly different pipeline for dealing with it. So Your SSS map may not look the same as another company's. But chances are your bump or color or spec map will. And it's sorta assumed if you can paint a good color map, you can probably paint a good SSS map. So I wouldn't worry about not including that sort of thing if you don't have examples immediately available.

- Neil

[stage-gr]

I agree, some Very interesting insights in this thread both from neil and leigh. Can you explain
what an ID map is leigh? I've not heard that term before.

An ID map is not showing on the final outcome....It is for the compositors to use and it helps them mask parts of the model easily.For example: applying a map on a human model where his arms have a bright red color, his torso is blue, his head is lime green,his legs are yellow and his feet are purple while his hands are cyan.

An ID map looks as ugly as this post
hope that helped :)

[Cameo]

Aha cool that makes sense! Thanks for the explanation stage-gr :thumbsup:

[MasonDoran]

Probably another big differance between game texturing and for films or vfx is that games quite often cannot afford to have complicated shader setups.

ie: for games, the texture has to have everything baked into a single texture. Next gen platforms use normal maps so can usually afford a spec map. But things like raytracing, blurry reflections, caustics, refraction....all have to be faked and hand painted.

Cg, of course can use many more kinds of textures, which also means things like a face texture cannot have any kind of baked lighting or highlights that are expected for game textures.

[Keithtron]

Very cool, I didn't realize that you used photos very heavily at Pixar. I know some full-CG places keep everything procedural largely for production pipeline efficiency. They don't want to deal with storing and keeping track of a billion image files and all. Avoiding the use of image-based maps for that reason seems so restrictive and seems like it would make things harder than they need to be.

From what I understand, Blue Sky keeps things procedural, partially for that reason. In Robots they had almost no image-based maps, except for a couple things like labels on guages and that sort of thing. I don't want to make assumptions though, I'm not sure if that has changed at all for Ice Age 2 or Horton. I love their work though. As much as it seems annoying to keep absolutely everything procedural, whatever they're doing is definitely working.

Does anyone know if Dreamworks uses photos or painted textures much at all? I can see that being a big issue for them since they use nurbs patch models, and having an image for every patch would get kinda out of control. Maybe all their proprietary stuff makes it easier though, I dunno. Maybe they don't even need separate images for the different patches.

[soulburn3d]

Very cool, I didn't realize that you used photos very heavily at Pixar. I know some full-CG places keep everything procedural largely for production pipeline efficiency. They don't want to deal with storing and keeping track of a billion image files and all. Avoiding the use of image-based maps for that reason seems so restrictive and seems like it would make things harder than they need to be.

Well, keep in mind, sometimes decisions are made like that because of the skills and knowledge of the people in charge. Like, if the sup of shading/painting is a traditional painter or comes from a games background, chances are there will be a lot of texture maps used. If the sup of shading/painting is a computer science major, chances are it's gonna be very procedural. It's like that old adage, if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem starts looking like a nail.

You also have to consider your team, if you have 20 programmers and 1 traditional painter, you may do more procedural stuff to take advantage of the crew you have available to you. ILM for example, does the opposite, they rely much more on textures, with very few procedurals used. It can also be an artistic choice, do you want simpler or more ornate textures for your film? It can also be a matter of tradition, the way things have always been done at a company is sometimes chosen out of habit.

Anyways, just wanted to say there are a lot of reasons why different companies choose different pipelines.

- Neil

[Cameo]

For the pro's in these forums, what systems/OS are you using at work? I've mainly used windows with a smattering of unix but I was wondering if macs are usually favoured for texturing in vfx studios? (I assume the lack of photoshop puts linux largely out of the running?)

[playmesumch00ns]

We really almost exclusively on photographic textures. Procedural's only get used when it would be impractical to paint the asset.

As for OS, it's all linux. Texture artists used to keep a second windows machine under the desk for photoshop and body paint, but now that workstations are getting more powerful we've switched to VMWare for running those apps.

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