This week's artist of the week is Johannes Matsson. Check out the amazing textures created and rendered with C4D's Physical Render Engine. We did a Q&A as well. All answered after the video.
Where do you work? Or are you a freelancer? Do you like it? Does being an employee or contracted have advantages/disadvantages to being the other?
I've gone a bit back and forth between being employed and freelance. Right now I'm doing the latter. I think the obvious perk for being your own man is that you can choose clients and projects in a whole different way, the freedom to say "no" to something basically. I'm also interested in the business side of things and I'd like to start my own studio someday, so this is good training for me I think. I think there's a lot of value in the continuity of being employed, in that you can grow as a team and inspire each other. But I think I just haven't found the right place for me to do that just yet.
What render engine to you use? Standard? Octane? VRAY?
I'm using the built-in physical engine, but I began tinkering with the Octane demo just last week. I think I'll buy it very soon, really liking it so far.
What was your process for building? Was it linear or non-linear? In other words, did you go back and forth between a compositing program or wait until the end?
My process for my projects are almost always linear, with clients it obviously goes a bit back and forth because of feedback, but with my own projects I think the line is pretty straight from start to finish. This intro started as a sketch, which turned into a model, which turned into a rigged character, which turned into the final animation. So not too exciting I guess. For me it's really important that my personal projects don't drag out for too long, because then there's a big chance I won't finish it. I have to many 80% done projects lying around on my HD.
Did you use any scripts or xpresso or was it all keyframes by hand?
I don't usually use scripts, haven't gotten into that part of C4D yet. But I use a lot of Xpresso in my rigs, mainly connecting objects with a little math and so on so I don't need to animate too many parameters. I'm a big fan of systems with as little keyframes as possible.
What technique did you use for the clouds?
The clouds are actually just clouds pictures with an alpha, set up in a tunnel that the barrel can fall through. I did tests with pyrocluster but the render times just weren't worth it.
What were your render times like?
I'm not really sure actually. We got a farm with 12ish computers at my office, so I don't really consider render times at all anymore. But it's safe to say they weren't very long per frame, probably 4-8min.
How do you go about building your textures? Do you have a library? Do you use something like CG textures?
I do use CG textures a lot, and I keep quite the library of different stuff. I'm a big fan of the C4D layer options in the material, so I use that quite a lot to layer things on top of eachother.
What percentage of time do you usually spend in post?
I'd say on a two-week project I'd spend 2 days in post for most of the projects that are in my reel. So I guess around 20% of the time :)
Do you use any mocap when you animate characters or is it all by hand?
No mocap, all FK and IK animation. It can be a bit tedious at times but I feel it's very rewarding.
Your steam and fog effects are great. Do you custom build them with particles or use stock footage and comp into the scenes?
It's a lot of stock, and usually some particular thrown in there. I usually comp this kind of stuff with the Depth pass as well to fake a bit of realness. Actually I just love the depth pass for any kind of comping. I almost never do any fog or so in the actual 3D scene, all AE magic.
Thanks again for taking the time to answer!
Thanks a lot for reaching out to me, and I hope I could be of help for your podcast. I'll make sure to listen in often!
Cheers!