Interview with Francisco A. Cortina
Mudbox or ZBrush and why? Any specific thing like to change/updated in upcoming versions?
I’ve used both in production environments and really enjoy using them. I must admit, however, that they each have a couple of very frustrating flaws. If I had to choose one over the other at this time, I would say ZBrush because of its silky smooth brushes and sheer speed in handling very dense meshes. On the other hand, while Mudbox doesn’t have the absolute speed and robust brushes, it does have a significant advantage in having a pipeline friendly subdivision algorithm and excellent geometry and paint layering/editing system.
If I had two things that I could improve on in each I would say that:
• Zbrush needs the ability to easily replace/re-target the base cage of a sculpt with another cage that has a completely different topology. In most cases, using the re-topologize technique or applying an old sculpt’s displacement map on a new cage is just not feasible.
• Zbrush needs a fix to their subdivision algorithm so that when a mesh is divided, its base cage does not “shrink”. For most meshes, simply re-importing the original cage at the lowest level causes severe exaggerations and pinching at the higher levels which is quite undesirable. The docs state that it uses the Catmull-clark subdivision scheme, however, many other applications also use a variant of this and they don’t suffer from this side effect.
• Mudbox can handle a very large amount of poly data, but the complaint that most have is that it needs to be faster during actual interactive sculpting, levels switching and undo/redo.
• Mudbox could also use improvements in how some of its brushes work. For example, the stencil brush is currently less intuitive and interactive than it could be, i.e., like ZBrush’s.
In the end, both apps have some incredible features and I’m confident that as they get updated over time, many of their flaws will be fixed. I give kudos to both Pixologic and Autodesk for really pushing some great advancements in the latest versions of their software.
Your portfolio shows your experience with big companies like Digital Domain, Dreamworks, Square… so what’s the secret mantra and how you cracked the job?
There is no magic bullet, but to students and young artists I say: Stay focused, driven and on the path which works for you and you’ll succeed. I’ve met some people who felt that getting a job at one of the prestigious companies was their dream goal and that if they were to be rejected they would be devastated. This is the wrong approach to take because many times perception and reality of those jobs and places are completely different things. If they stick to what they really love doing, the “job” opportunities will happen on their own.
Do you believe in ‘talent’ or just daily practice and understanding concepts will help?
I absolutely believe that talent plays a critical role, but talent alone is never enough for someone to be successful or the best at what they do. Experience, hard work and “daily practice”, as you say, play a very important role in excelling at something. In sports, for example, the athletes with the most talent are not always the best athletes. Many times, it’s those that have talent and the incredible drive and work ethic that are the really the most successful and brilliant. In our field, although anyone can learn how to use software and be technically proficient at it, I believe talent is the intangible which separates the ordinary from the extraordinary.
In your portfolio we can mostly see lots of male and female heads, so which you like to model most and why?
After working on Final Fantasy, I gained a great appreciation for the difficulties in trying to emulate and reinterpret the human form, especially the face. Even as a young artist in school I was always interested in drawing and sculpting the human figure. Although I’ve done many more complete “full body” characters in recent years, many consider the face to be the most difficult thing to replicate. As a result, many of my clients have no doubt been interested in pushing the realism of the characters in their games and projects.
On which projects you are working these days, and which project you enjoying the most.
I just recently finished working with the team at MOVA|OnLive™, helping them create a completely digital character to showcase and demo their next generation OnLive™ console. At the moment, I’m working with a game company based in Los Angeles, developing a highly detailed character for their next-generation game.
Which 5 modeling tips and advice you like to give the upcoming artists, how they can create realistic models, what is necessary to generate photorealistic characters?
Tip #1: Reference - Try and prepare your reference images beforehand so that they line up with each other. Use Photoshop guides to line up the key proportions so that when you add those images as background image planes in your 3d app, they will easily line up and you won’t have a difficult time aligning your models to them.
Tip #2: The edge flow of your meshes should always follow the logical anatomy and structure of the object you are creating. If you are creating a t-shirt, for example, build the seams and structure the edge flows just like you would in real life. Form should always follow function.
Tip #3: Whether using Deeppaint, Bodypaint, Photoshop or even Mudbox/ZBrush to paint texture layers, remember to preview and paint the textures with a flat “surface” shader that doesn’t contain any diffuse shading. Shading often hides problems which can later show up in rendering.
Tip #4: When working in ZBrush or Mudbox to create the bump or displacement passes, try to keep the broad sculptural changes in a separate layer from the fine “high frequency” level sculpting details. I usually postpone the very fine level of detail sculpting until the general color map is done so that the small wrinkles, grooves and blemishes can be matched up properly.
Tip #5: “Less is more”. It sounds easy to do, but I’ve seen many 3D artists and animators work scenes that become too large and very slow to work with because there is so much useless junk in them. Keeping only the essentials in your scenes is critical not only for productivity, but also for efficiency.
Q. Anything you like to add? It is your chance now to state your opinion about anything!
Sometimes it is hard to know where one’s path lies. It may sound cliché, but following one’s dream is the most important thing. Many of us are lucky to do what we truly love for a living and for students or young professionals, it is important to think about this and pursue your goals with your heart and not just for monetary reasons.
Website - www.cortinadigital.com
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