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An interview with Alp Altiner QUESTION: For those who have been living on another planet for the past five years…who are you? ALP ALTINER : “First of all, thank you for having me. I work as a Visual FX Artist/Art Director in the film industry, and I create work for film, commercials, music videos, and video games. Most of my creations include 2D and 3D matte paintings, conceptual design, 3D modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering. I have been working professionally for over eight years now, and some of the recent movie projects I have worked on include Fantastic Four #2, Spiderman 3, Superman Returns, X-Men 3, Aeon Flux, and others. I also have been doing a lot of conceptual design-related work for video game companies such as Blizzard Entertainment, ID Software, Sega Corp., Microsoft, Majesco, Monolith, Eidos, and various others.” Q.: Can you tell us something about your professional background? A. A.: “Back home in Seattle, I started in Print Design and Multimedia. I went to the Seattle Art Institute for a while where I studied related fields and worked as a Print Artist, Web Designer and Flash Animator. Later on I did more Motion Design-related work with After Effects. But I really wanted to get into a field where I could draw and gain more traditional skills, as my passion was to illustrate and tell stories. Taking a break from design related work I worked as a comic book artist for a few years. After comics I started working as a freelance concept artist, working on various video games, and eventually got into film working as a matte painter and 3D artist. I am currently working as a Freelance Visual FX Artist/Art Director, and teach Advanced Digital Paintings at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.” Q.: So you are “classically educated”. How did you get into CG and VFX? A. A.: “After working for several years as a professional comic book artist for companies like Marvel, DC, Image Comics and Top Cow I wanted to get into video games and design characters and environments for a living. I started off doing freelance work for various video game developers and eventually got into the film industry as a matte painter. When I started to do movie related work I did not know much about 3D and was illiterate about CG, but I really wanted to learn and get into it. I probably bought every book and many DVD tutorials on 3D modeling, texturing and lighting, and studied day and night. So I am mostly self-taught as far as 3D goes.” Q.: You are mostly known for your work as a matte painter, but you also do a lot of 3D work. Can you tell us something about your latest project? A. A.: “Yes, most people know me as a matte painter, but I also do a lot of 3D work. I did 3D modeling, texturing and lighting work on movies and commercial projects using Maya, ZBrush, Terragen, Vue5, and now Maxwell Render. I recently finished a BMW commercial where I was asked to create a 3D matte painting, which involved 3D modeling, texturing, lighting, projection setup, and rendering.” Q.: You have also created great work with Maxwell Render. What was the first thing you ever did in Maxwell? A. A.: “Thank you! I am actually very impressed with the software, which is why I bought it a while back when I came across www.maxwellrender.com while surfing on the web, as I am always on the Internet looking for the latest and newest technologies. The first thing I did was trying out the shaders and the setup, and I started rendering a “data robot” which I had designed and modeled for my graphic novel The Unknown. I was truly amazed by the results and how easy it was to use. I continued rendering various 3D environments and got hooked on Maxwell Render.” Q.: For what projects have you been using Maxwell Render? A. A.: “After getting a bit more comfortable with Maxwell, I used it to create some hi-res renders for a movie project which I cannot talk about yet : ). Again, it was truly amazing to see how convincing the lighting and renders were. I know that 3D will be used more and more in matte paintings, and Maxwell is perfect for creating hard surface renderings for that purpose, especially for a scene with a lock off camera. Things will be changing in the industry with software packages like Maxwell that can realize convincing, photorealistic environments for movies and video games. I noticed that most Maxwell users are architects/ product designers, but I am sure that in the near future there will be more artists like myself using Maxwell for movies and video games. I am certainly planning to use and test Maxwell on more of my projects to create photorealistic environments. I already had many of my friends e-mailing me and asking what application I was using for my 3D renders!” Q.: What is your personal experience of working with Maxwell? A. A.: “Maxwell is the perfect software for a VFX artists like myself who uses both 2D and 3D work, for creating various elements for their daily projects. In my work it is very important to design sets and environments that have true perspective and are photorealistic, and sometimes I have to create these very quickly. I like that I can easily create my own shaders in Maxwell and get a good preview on the lighting and renders and show them to my clients before I start on the actual work. The fact that you can use Multilight is just a genius idea. In the past I did some set designs for the video game Area 51 for Midway Games. I modeled and build the sets in 3D and then painted over renders I generated using Mental Ray. But it was really slow and time consuming and now I wish I had had Maxwell Render when I was working on that project. With Maxwell, I can get very convincing renders without complicated setups, within a reasonable time.” Q.: What 3D application do you use? A. A.: “I do all my 3D modeling in Maya, then bring the geometry into Maxwell Render and create various cameras for my setups and render passes. I also use ZBrush, Mudbox, Terragen, Vue 5 and others.” Q.: Have you seen the new materials library mxmgallery.maxwellrender.com? What do you think of this resource? A. A.: “Yes, I finally had a chance to play around with some of the new shaders from the mxm gallery. I would like to thank all those artists and the Next Limit staff who took their time to create these amazing materials and share them with the rest of the industry. This is a great resource available to anyone using Maxwell, and it comes in very handy when you need a certain surface or material. I am actually creating a set of my own Alien Metal Shaders that I will be uploading soon onto your website.” Q.: Do you have any tips or tricks you would like to share with other Maxwell Render users? A. A.: “I highly recommend any user to sign up to the Maxwell forum and really go trough all the sections and chat with other users. There are many very talented artists with a lot of experience within Maxwell. I also started a Maxwell section in my own art forum www.laborganika.com/forum which I created a while ago and I hope that it will grow and that more Maxwell users will sign up there. As more people will see and start to use Maxwell, the community will grow and people will come to appreciate its full potential.” Q.: What do you do apart from painting, drawing and working? B. L.: “I am actually developing my own project, The Unknown, www.unknownproject.netwhich is due to be published as a graphic novel worldwide in 2007 in partnership with www.designstudiopress.com . I also started my own Toy Line/ Limited edition Sci-Fi Collectibles related to this project, which are being produced overseas right now. So I guess after “work”, I still work on my own ideas and projects being the workaholic I am. I find the most joy in being an artist and creator. I also have been composing music on and off in the past, and I am finally getting back into it to compose the sound design for my graphic novel project.” Q.: Could you live without your sketchbook, your art, VFX creations? B. L.: “I don’t want to do anything else but continuing to work as an artist and creator. I feel the hunger for learning, designing, sharing and creating every day, and nothing other then what I have been doing over the years would please my soul.” For more info on Alp’s work and projects, check out www.alpaltiner.com |
