The CGI and animation industry needs you

Find out how the industry is developing, the shortage of trained professionals and how the NMIT Bachelor of Computer Generated Imagery programme is meeting the needs of the global entertainment industry.

Special thanks to Allegorithmic(external link).

Video Transcript

0:20 My name is Alexis Khouri, I’m Executive Vice President at Allegorithmic.

0.27 Substance has actually become the standard in the industry when it comes to material authoring and what we call PBR texturing. PBR stands for Physically Based Rendering, which is actually the technique, the shading technique that has become the standard in the last five years.

0:52 Substance is really something that has spread like wildfire since the advent of PBR in the industry, especially in games and film, but also in product design, architecture, and anything actually that needs high end treatment.

1:11 The whole concept of Substance is making texturing fun again!

1:18 For years people have been using old techniques to create their textures. Most of the time it was extremely manual. It was a process that could take a long time, because most of the tools were not dedicated to the task.

1:31 With Substance we really wanted to create a software that would be dedicated to texturing from scratch, and (natively) support physically based rendering.

1:46 There is today a fairly massive community, more than fifty thousand users, that are creating extraordinary materials with Substance Designer. Sometimes photo realistic, sometimes very stylised, sometimes materials that don’t exist, for a sci-fi environment or that are purely creative.

2:08 We seen in the last few years, very interesting moves. Typically the high end 3D techniques were reserved for feature films, feature animation or (feature) games. Now times have changed, now even small companies, small studios, they want to actually create art as good you can see at the movies. And not only for games and film, it’s also about architectural rendering, product design, automotive, medical simulation. So not only the visual validity is converting, but also the techniques that people have to use are converting as well.

2:50 And this is where Art schools are actually extremely important. Because the people that are being trained, are being taught in arts school, will actually be feeding every industry. Of course there is extremely inspirational to target film companies or game companies, but we see today, many other firms and actually in a much broader market people needing people with skills in 3d, in real-time rendering, in offline rendering, because this is how you actually increase productivity.

3:32 We are pretty much transitioning from an analogue world to a digital world. Everything needs to be created digitally. And if you think about the future, such as AR, everything will need to be digital. So we are talking about a brand new internet, we are taking about every object in real life having its digital version.

3:58 And we are going to need so many artists to be able to produce these objects, and we are really working to towards fulfilling the needs, of tools that are productive enough to transform everything into digital.

4:13 So at Allegorithmic we have been investing a lot in schools and education in the last three years.

4:21 So many people are looking for Substance users, for Substance Power users, we actually hear now, most of the time, that Substance is a “tool of the kids”. Meaning that this is the next generation, and all of these people that are coming on the market, about fifty thousand new students every year, that are finishing school, going on the market. It’s actually so important that they know about Substance, that they know how to use it.

4:52 And it’s such a relief for the employers to find people who can use our tool. That is a huge differentiator as well.

4:49 Being able to employ someone who already knows how to use the toolset, it’s a huge time saver, and they know they are going to be able to leverage their skills, and potentially train other people.

5:14 Recently we decided to invest in all the schools in New Zealand. Of course there is Weta Digital in New Zealand, which is one of the most amazing places to create VFX.

5:27 Typically what we would like to do in the future is organise training sessions, workshops, even a “Substance Day” in these regions. Because we believe being close to the community is extremely important.

5:48 So we are looking forward to seeing what the students at NMIT will come up with. It’s a great pleasure to see them using Substance. We are really super excited to work with NMIT.

6:02 Hopefully we can visit New Zealand sometime, because you know what, it is pretty much one of the most amazing places in the world.