Interview with Faraz Mobin
Could you please tell us about yourself a bit? How did you get into the world of CG?
 Hi, my name is Faraz Mohammad Mobin, I live and work in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) but am originally from Delhi (India). My main specialization is characters, although I do a little bit of all for my job. My motivation has always been games ever since I played the first Deus Ex. After high school (2001), I was a bit confused as I couldn't get people around me to see this as a career, at least in India at that time. There weren't many institutes that taught this well, so I took up Physics Hons (Jamia Millia Islamia) for the time being. After that I moved to Vancouver (Canada) for about a year and half, for my Game Development Course (College of Interactive Arts).
Please tell us where you are working and what is the nature of your job?
I am currently working at Dubai Police General Head Quarters in the Virtual Training Section as a 3D Modeler/Specialist. My work involves making 3d models (all sorts), setting up environments in the game engine and sometimes working on simple scripts. This gives me a chance to work in most of the steps during the development of Serious Games. I also get to work close to some of the other departments in the police like CSI (Crime Scene Investigation), TAI (Traffic Accident Investigation), Airport/Customs and SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics).
How you entered in the Dubai Police and in such an environment from where you get the inspiration?
Got a good offer from Dubai Police after one of my models(Terminator) was front paged, I always wanted to get involved in making PC games, which are more realistic, like military simulations. The police here have a great reputation of being a modern and forward thinking Arab Police Force, so I knew they would provide me with their complete support. Currently, we are the first in the region to come up with Virtual Training for Traffic Accidents and Crime Scene Investigation, both of which have already been included in the diploma, we recently ended up two exhibitions in Dubai (Dubai Game Expo 2010, and Intersec 2010) and got really good feedback from a lot of companies( gaming and others) and most importantly police forces from around the globe.
Also I have spent my childhood in Sultana of Oman, so Dubai wasn't too different, other than having the biggest of that, tallest of this and some crazy artificial islands.
Have you ever tried to work for any big studio, may be as a freelancer?
I had received some offers from other studios, but had to take some serious thought at what I was aiming for as I only had a year of experience, and taking a step in either direction was going to matter in the future. In the end, glad I stuck to this one.
I always wanted to work in a studio environment, but guess help making one is also an experience. Never been a fan of the idea of freelancing, especially when you have just a year of experience in the industry.
What software are you using for your CG work and what’s the main reason of choosing them?
I use 3dsmax, Zbrush, Photoshop, Body Paint and XNormal.
3dsmax - this is what I got familiar with when I started with CG. It has a real easy workflow for modeling and rendering. Good for making base meshes, hard surface models, Baking AO and rendering of the final models, it’s an essential.
ZBrush - this was software that really changed a lot of my methods and made it easy for me to add details that I never imagined I could add to my models. At first I didn’t like it, but next time when I worked on it with a tablet, my opinion was different. ZBrush helps me give my models details that can separate them to categories of cloth, skin, rubber, etc. with traditional modeling it’s always difficult to differentiate between them, and mostly give a metal, or plastic look to all the surfaces. Recently I’ve been trying some hard surface in ZBrush too. it easy to get good forms and shapes in ZBrush, later you can take it and retopo it in max if you want it to be metal, or leave it in ZBrush and try to clean it up even more, kind of what I did for the batman, gives it a more rubber/carbon fiber look.
Photoshop- same like ZBrush, I didn’t see the need of it until I came to know about UVs, and so it became another important tool. Easy to use, compatible with tablets, that’s all I needed. It’s an essential like 3dsmax
Body Paint. - great for painting textures directly onto the mesh, also great for final touch up like seam paintings and cleaning normal maps.
Xnormal - Easy and Robust tool to bake normal maps bakes really high poly meshes form zbrush without breaking a sweat.
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