Interview with Oleg Koreyba
Q. What do you like the most: Modeling, Texturing, Lighting or Rendering?
:-) During more than 10 years in CG I drew the concepts, made textures, modeled, lightened, tuned shaders in game editors, etc… and every aspect taught me something unique. In concept art I like creative spirit, in modeling endless 3D graphics features and capabilities. ZBrush appearance made real revolution in modeling. Work on surfaces became much easier and much more interesting. This tool fits as for digital artist as for sculptor. Good textures dress the models. I began CG exactly from textures. So, modeling some character I look on it in different lighting variants, this became a habit. Preparation and tuning the scenes for rendering is an exhausting process. Rendering in fact is a mostly technical process rather than creative and I get it as necessary part of whole model creation process. With a pleasure I have to admit that it’s great to see a good picture after a long, long waiting of final calculation under maximum texture sizes and quality settings. 
Q. Please tell us in detail about your project Sheikh Zayed, why and for whom this was done?
I have a lot of colleagues and friends in Kiev. One day my friend Vladimir (very talented animator that works for “4a Games”) mentioned that his friends seek for specialist to create realistic 3D portrait for using as hologram later. I haven’t any ideas at that time on which hologram he was speaking. After some queries on Internet I found a video.
I was really impressed by these products, especially “Small invader” by Fred Bastide and “The Hide” by Timur “Taron” Baysal. It was a great challenge for me to make something for this new kind of Art like hologram and I agreed. Customer was based in Dubai named “4DstudioR” with holograms as key company business. The task was to create 3D portrait of Sheikh Zayed who was president of United Arab Emirates for 30 years. Very famous person! There was too small amount of Sheikh’s photos and such I had where with very low quality at the same time I got a task to create portrait with maximum congeniality. I focused on face and skin identity to make the realistic skin shader.
Portrait was modeled in Maya, sculpting I made in ZBrush and a rendering - in Maya with Mental Ray. Because of heavy SSS shader and 2854 х 613 resolution final rendering for 1280 frames took more than 3 days on fully charged 3 computers. The background for Shaikh portrait customer wanted to see the flag of the UAE, but before printing, we decided to replace it on the mosque, built after the death of Sheik Zayed and named in his honor. You can see the renders on and printed hologram video on the links...
printed hologram
video rendering video
 Onу interesting story related to this project. I have a metal canopy on my balcony. Sometimes birds walk on it with ticking sound. On a day when I finalized a portrait, sound from birds’ foot changed and I came to balcony intrigued with that sound from big bird foots. The step of the new came bird was wide, slow and well measured. On a canopy I saw one bird of prey with long foots. It was really similar to the bird that often presented on photos with Sheikh. It didn’t hurry to fly away and I ran to take camera. I got one picture before it left. Such a story … understand it like you want ;)
Q. In movies, these days CG characters replacing the real characters or using mocap,when real character can do the justice with the help ofmake-up like in thepast. So, what’s your thought on this trend?
 Yes. Sure. Characters, Monsters, mechanisms especially gigantic and miniature sizes are used in CG and will be used in future. Technologies are very close to what user can’t differentiate from reality and what he sees on the screen. So to make complicated and risky trick in the movie, now it is much easier and safer to change an actor to 3D personage.
It seems to me everybody selects to depict or create something clearer and close to his understanding. I like an approach used by Weta Digital company. This company successfully combines all methods.
My warm regards to my friends and colleagues from Kiev that for a long time work for Weta Digital in New Zealand.
Q. On which projects you are working these days?
Currently I work on an interesting project. Unfortunately I can’t disclose its name and customer. Please be patient. You’ll see it later on KoreybaArts site and on CGArena.
Q. Anything you like to add? It is your chance now to state your opinion about anything!
Thank you. I’d like to refer to readership. If you make a movie or AAA game – feel free to write me. My team will work with you on an interesting and challengeable project with a pleasure. Take a look our portfolio at www.koreybaarts.com
Another topic that I’m going to continue, painting in more traditional way - on paper and canvas. All interested in oil painting on canvas or 3D portrait, please feel free to contact me.
I’m very grateful to my parents and my wife that during many years supports me and inspire.
Good luck for everybody in creative work, business and love.
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