Interview with Heiko Wenczel and John Wyland
Interview with Heiko Wenczel -
Mackevision’s EVP and Manager Digital Division 3D
Hello, could you please tell us about yourself a bit? How did you get into the world of CG and what’s your nature of job in Mackevision?
My background is in architecture. At the University of Stuttgart, I began studying the creation of conceptual and presentation work in the CAD world. As an intern at Siemens, I used these tools to visualize robots and assembly lines for the automotive industry. Realizing the potential, I then worked as a freelancer for architectural and industrial visualizations in 1996. After finishing my studies, I joined Mercedes as an architect and artist. From this experience I gained skills in software, such as Catia, for automotive construction. I applied my cross-knowledge in different tools and workflows to projects within simulation and virtual reality programs. I then joined a team focused on creating a next-generation configuration and visualization system for automotive clients. There, I researched and created a workflow for converting CAD data to visualization data for final use in real-time compositing systems on the Web.
I joined Mackevision to apply my knowledge and experience on a global scale. I set up our office in Detroit and we work to translate ideas of repurposing assets from automotive to any other industry. At Mackevision, I am responsible for the Detroit office together with John (Don’t forget to read the Interview with John Wyland on Page 3 - Mackevision’s Executive Vice President and Head of Production), who represents the live action production work. Additionally, I continue to evaluate the data preparation workflows and processes globally, to keep Mackevision efficient and at the quality level for which we are known.
Please tell our readers what is data conversion, data processing and data modeling. How this is different from normal 3D work?
When working with industrial design products that have a multitude of variations in material and geometry, it is important to have an exact representation of the products. These are typically created in CAD tools like Catia or ProE. These tools handle data quite differently than animation software like Maya or 3ds Max. The data is described with NURBS surfaces created in regard to production detail, not visualization use. A simple translation into the visualization software with the original structure and setup would greatly reduce any performance, if it would be usable at all. Therefore, an extensive workover is needed to create a dataset that allows the tracking of changes, and promotes astonishing visuals. To create image content for mass volume picture systems, like configuration tools that request hundreds of thousands of pictures to represent the complete product line (a car for example), you will need additional thought on structuring your data.
While tessellating the NURBS data to triangulated polygon data, performance and visual feedback is a very important part of the pipeline, particularly when the data is to be used in animation, as well as in still imagery creation.
We pay special interest to the interior parts of a product. For example, in a car, the soft parts of seats are not created at a high enough detail in the design tools. Likewise, neither are the details of the stitches or seams. These need to be modeled and added to the dataset to provide realistic and appealing interior representations.
Tell us a bit about your pipeline and how data is shared between various departments?
Mackevision has designed our pipeline according to the steps needed to get from original manufacturer data to a finished marketing or informational piece of art. It starts with receiving the data; in the data prep department, people either receive the original data from automotive internal data houses or harvest the data themselves right at the origin, which requires knowledge in the manufacturer’s specific CAD tools.
Our modeling department adds highly detailed soft parts, and all missing parts, that are not available in the manufacturer’s data. If there is no original data, it will be created here either by modeling with different kinds of modeling technologies or by scanning the original product and then remodeling it based on that information. The next step is shading and lighting. Based on our growing material libraries, our skilled visual artists define the digital representation of the product’s material. Our animators work in parallel on the motion of the scenes and products.
The final step is the 2D department bringing the project to its final beauty. As we have a very integrated workflow between 2D and 3D, most of the quality won’t be visible until these artists extract and utilize all the information created. Supporting the entire production team is an R&D group focused on keeping the company on the edge of performance, an IT department tracking the immense quantities of hardware and software running in the background and, most importantly, a quality team of technical directors keeping a constant eye on quality and workflows. For example, as we confront repetitive work steps, we have created automated rigging systems for cars, to speed up our data prep workflow. To keep track of projects and data, we have created a database system for 3ds Max which allows us to keep track of the details in very complex projects. The producers on top of every project oversee communication and project flow.
Please tell us about the total number of workstations; render farms, animators, modelers, software used in Mackevision?
Mackevision employs more than 40 artists working on different projects. The processes of modeling, data prep, shading and lighting all require a lot of resources. To keep the projects running and delivered on time, our artists can leverage more than 100 render nodes for 3D and over 40 nodes for 2D. The main process is based on 3ds Max, Vray and Nuke; but Maya, Showcase and Creative Bridge, as well as a couple of other tools, are commonly used by our artists as well. If there is an efficient software tool available that helps our production, we will try to integrate it into our workflows wherever applicable.
Which software are you using for your CG work and what’s the main reason of using those?
I use 3ds Max and Maya. 3ds Max was the first tool I learned, and it is therefore the easiest for me to use. Many professionals in the automotive industry use Maya as a standard delivery format, and most of the pipelines rely on it for exchange with some of the other automotive products. Therefore, knowledge of Maya is important for us as well.
Vray is my preferred renderer. Its speed, quality, innovative updates and roadmap make it an easy choice. Photoshop is a standard in retouching, but my most recent interest is in Nuke.
