GW: You have over 14 years of experience modeling and supervising the creation of models and digital doubles for films. What has been the biggest change since you started?

KH: The cost for making digital doubles and integrating them into films has come down dramatically. We’re seeing digital doubles used more and more frequently. And in some instances, they are replacing the traditional stuntman for stunts that would have been classically done by a stuntman.

GW: As a Senior/Supervising Modeler what assets are you responsible for from project to project?

KH: My main responsibilities from project to project are to build models that not only have a certain aesthetic value, but also are engineered in such a fashion that they fit into our production pipeline. It’s the engineering/technical aspects that I see students still struggling with. I see a lot of beautiful looking models, but when I look at the wireframe, at the engineering aspects, I find that there are tremendous issues. I spend almost as much time designing my wireframe as I spend sculpting the character. The wireframe not only has edge loops that are engineered to the rigging department’s strict guidelines and are fashioned to their satisfaction, but it also has UVs that are laid out to the specific requirements of the texture painting department as well as some minor customization done for the specific painter on the project.

As modeling is at the very beginning of the pipeline, it is essential that the model be well made. It is the foundation upon which all later work will be built, from the rigging and texture painting to look-dev and performance.

GW: In recent big budget films we have seen a large scale emergence of on screen CG characters. What are some of the major challenges for believable character work still left to tackle?

KH: I’ve been incorporating ZBrush and Mudbox into my character modeling pipeline, and I’m very pleased with the improvements I’ve been able to bring by using these tools, but I think we can still go further. I think Dr. Manhattan looks very impressive, and I’m proud to have been able to contribute to the creation of the character. I think we are seeing pressure to do all of this work for lower and lower costs. I think there is still room for greater efficiencies. Current thinking is towards standard mesh layouts with reusable UV layouts. I think this will bring the costs down because a lot of the engineering issues will have been already done. These reusable meshes will breed efficiencies in rigging and texture painting as well. I think it is a great Idea. However, I’m still an advocate of meshless modeling. I still believe that we will someday be modeling with voxels, and that voxel will be able to do all the technical things that we can do with polys. It will be very exciting to be completely topology independent. At this time, ZBrush and Mudbox are still heavily topology dependent.

GW: I am Legend is one of the films you worked on where the decision was made to go almost all digital. How much of an undertaking was this to create a whole cast of CG actors including dogs and rats?

KH: When I first started on the project, we were going to build digital versions of some of the hemocyte characters, so that they could perform actions that would have been impossible for a real person to do. As they got more and more into production, the production company realized that they could not get the translucent skin effect to work using traditional makeup techniques. The decision was made at that time to make the hemocytes CG. This presented a real quandary for us in that the Hemocytes look a lot like real people. If we were going to spend the time and money to make digital characters, it behooved us to make sure that it was clear that the character on screen wasn’t simply an actor in torn clothing. It was always planned that the hemocyte dogs and rats would be CG. An interesting issue came out while building the Hemocyte rat. We built a character ( that was quite over the top, cool), and it got texture painted and rigged, and animated, and look dev’d, and then when it was seen in the context of the shots in the sequence, the production people realized that it was just too fanciful… As they described it, it was too “Harry Potter”. The rat that ultimately ended up on screen is a much subtler rat, and it fit in better with the harsh-reality style that the film has.

There were six main human hemocytes built: the alpha male, the alpha female, and two additional male and female hemocytes. We also generated alternate heads for each of the bodies so that these could be mixed up as well to create a lot of very different hemocytes. We built an entire wardrobe for the cast ( I think it was a total of something like 60 unique costume pieces). It was a lot of work. If you see the “Alternate (controversial) Ending” that is on the DVD, you can see a lot of the hemocytes fairly close-up.

GW: How often are you changing gears from character work to hard surface work like the Hellcycle from Ghost Rider?

KH: I personally enjoy going back and forth between character work, hard surface work and even environmental work. I simply enjoy “building things”. On any given day, I might work on assets that would be in all three categories. I find that there are different tools and techniques that get used when doing one type of work over another, and if I don’t do all of these different types of modeling, I am limiting my exposure to these different tools and techniques. It is tantamount to keep up with technology, and by doing all of these different types of modeling, I can try to keep up with this ever-evolving beast.

The Hellcycle is certainly one of the most unique models that I’ve ever had to figure out how to build, because when I first saw the scan from the onset practical bike, I had no idea how I was going to build it. Luckily, I have a good relationship with some software developers over at a company called GSI. They make a very nice high end remeshing tool. And coincidentally, they were developing a new tool for the software that would allow the artist to draw polygons directly on the surface of scan data. There are other softwares that have come out with similar tools for this by now, but at the time I was building the Hellcycle this was a saving grace. I refer to the process whereby I drew one polygon at a time as “knitting.” It was a time consuming task, but it allowed me to make a very free form mesh, which is what was needed to make something as intricate as the Hellcycle.

GW: How similar was the process of creating Dr. Manhattan to the work you did in creating the hemocytes for I am Legend?

KH: Dr. Manhattan was built on the technique I’d worked out with Pixologic for extracting detail from scan data. At the time I did I Am Legend, I had to hop through a lot of hoops, and it was a very strange and awkward pipeline. Nowadays, it is simply a button push “Project All.” I learned a lot about the choices I made when engineering the wireframe for the hemocytes. I took all of that and built the wireframe for Dr. Manhattan. It has been simplified further, and it lives on in our generic male character model.

It was fun to go onto Dr. Manhattan after having done the hemocytes as most of the people I’d worked with on I am Legend moved over to Watchmen. We’d all worked well together on I Am Legend, so it was fun to see everyone getting to do a “version 2″ based on what they’d learned while doing the hemocytes. As a lot of the model was going to be done in ZBrush, I was very happy to have Elber Yen as the texture artist with whom I would be collaborating. As ZBrush and Mudbox can blend the line between modeling and texture painting, it is a good idea, as a modeler, to have an ally in the texture painting department.

GW: What is the biggest challenge in creating a “god-like” character still grounded in reality? Where do you draw the line for believability? Do you feel we are too tied to making it look real these days, losing the ability to escape into the imagination?

KH: One aspect that I really liked about the Dr. Manhattan project was that Dr. Manhattan is not real biology. It is a man’s concept of what man is. At first glance, Dr Manhattan may look like a body builder with Billy Crudup’s head. But the proportions are exaggerated to fit into man’s concept of the idealized man. The shoulders are larger than a real human. The waist is narrower, and the legs are extra long. I think Dr. Manhattan represents Man making man in his own image.

GW: Throughout your career you have taught at Gnomon. How much has managing the pipeline for the modeling department helped you in teaching? What have you learned from teaching, yourself?

KH: I learn from teaching. Initially, I had to learn the software to the level that I could present it to someone else in an organized manner. Then, I learned when trying to answer questions students asked that I never thought anyone would ask about. I find that I still learn something new every term. I also love having Gnomon as a brain trust. It affords me access to a lot of amazingly talented people who aren’t at Sony. It keeps me thinking about alternate pipelines and other ways that people may be approaching the same issue. I think to remain relevant in the field of digital modeling you must accept that you will always be needing to learn something new, whether it’s the subject of a new model being something which you know nothing about, or looking at a digital modeling tool in a new way and using it differently. I find that after 14 years, I’m still learning and refining my craft. I can see myself still learning and growing until I decide to get out of this business.

GW: What are some of the tools students can add to their toolbox to help prepare themselves for a career in modeling?

KH: I always recommend that my students think about the engineering aspects of their model. They are often overlooked in the excitement of starting to sculpt the model. UVs are also going to continue to be an issue for a modeler until they spend some time painting textures for their models. I encourage everyone interested in modeling to spend some time painting their models. I’d made corrections for painters for years based on their feedback, but it wasn’t until I took a 3D painting class, and painted on my own meshes, that I really got an understanding of the issues that texture painters face. It changed the way I do my UVs. In a similar vein, just as modeling is the start of the pipeline, I recommend spending some time learning about the needs of all of the downstream partners. Learn a little rigging, color and lighting too. As the tools become more and more approachable and intuitive, it is becoming easier to be a generalist and to contribute much more than when an artist was limited to only working within one discipline.

To see more of Kevin Hudson’s work, go to: www.kevfx.com

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