Meet Simon Hodgkiss

Where are you from originally, and where are you located now?

Originally I was from the West Midlands in Staffordshire, and around nine years ago I moved down to Northampton through work. This location is also closer to London and Soho where I work from time to time.

How many years have involved in CGI production and in what roles?

I have been working as CG Generalist for the last 15 years and have worked in both Post Production and Games. In games I have worked on a number of AAA titles as both a Lead Artist and Lead Animator. In Post I have worked at both Pinewood and Shepperton Studios over the last few years in both Animation and Modeling and set-up. More recently before starting my own production I was a Technical CG Director on a big project at Shepperton Studios, I was responsible for the entire pipeline and tools used in production, this included tools for motion capture re-targeting, modeling and rigging as well rendering, through to compositing. I am somewhat of a control freak when it comes to production and need to know everything works as I would expect it too, before getting large amounts of artists on seats to use the tools I have chosen off the shelf.

So tell us about how the concept and pilot for The Adventures of Raz and Benny came to be?

The concept of Raz and Benny has been in an idea I have had for quite a few years and decided after helping many other companies out it was time for me to realize my own venture. Until now the software and tools where not able to deliver the style and realistic look efficiently on a budget that would make this viable as a TV Series. All episodes of Raz and Benny are set in human world but from a mouse’s perspective so a lot of detail is needed in order to make these worlds exciting and inviting to my target audience of 3 to 7 year olds. The toolset I have now enables me to deliver a show to with my team on a cost effective budget.

Where is the project “at” currently?

We are currently pitching the show idea to distributors and networks with a view to starting pre-production in the summer. Along side this we are also in talks with a games company I have worked with over starting development of the Raz and Benny games on the Nintendo Wii and Ds.

What 3D software packages and renderers have you worked with in your career?

During my career I have worked with mental ray, Renderman and Final Render and Final Toon. All have there strong areas but the look I was after for Raz and Benny could be achieved and rendered a lot faster and with less TD time. The key thing about all these renderers is how the lights work, this is personal preference for a lot of TD”s but for me modo”s lights behave as you would expect them to in the “real” world without any fuss and without costly time taken in arriving at a look you are happy with. It seems in most cases that material rendered in Modo just has a certain quality about it, plus it’s so easy to use. When you are working on a long form broadcast series, the time constraints don’t allow for many hours of tweaking. After producing the pilot I now feel very confident we can produce the shots needed without spending days on getting the look right with modo.

Well, that is quite a lot of experience. Tell us about the pipeline you used for the pilot. Please include the audio and compositing portions of the pipeline.

After using all the major animation packages I personally found Softimage Xsi’s non-destructive workflow a breath of fresh air, again like modo it allows me to work the way I want to a lot faster than its competition. By harnessing Xsi’s animation tools and hooking this up for output with modo I have found I can produce material in record breaking time that has a quality look about it. In the past I have had problems with heavy scenes and have had to breakdown the shots into many passes in order to get scenes to render at 2k. I have been able to render shots with billions of polygons in modo with Motion Blur and Gi. Also Xsi has its own compositor which takes care of anything I need to composite. All this material is brought into Final Cut Studio where I work with my foley and music guys on offlines then we use a Post House in Soho to do the final grade and onlines.

How did you first find out about modo?

I have always known about modo though a dear friend of mine (Mark Brown – who works for Luxology). I worked with Mark in animation years ago, Mark shares my views that CG work should be a creative and enjoyable process where you don’t have to wrestle with software to get where you want to go. Also it’s very exciting that someone who has been there and done it is shaping modo and building tools around an artist’s thoughts instead of a TD’s thoughts.

What hoops did you have to jump through to get 3.8 minutes of HD animation rendered at your home studio? Did you end up calling Andy (in Newcastle) for assistance?

I had to wear many hats in order to produce the show’s pilot in just over 12 weeks, the main 3d crew working on this was myself and Helen Bucknall, an animator that I have worked with on other projects in the past. Helen was working remotely in London and we shared light asset data between each other and I took care of Assets, Fx, Lighting, Editing and Rendering while Helen focused on animation. I have my own small render farm with 10 quad cores that I used to render the show with, but also due to modo’s network rendering I was also able to add my Macs into this render set-up too. I was very impressed with modo’s bucket rendering. On some of the heavier scenes I was able to have 10 Xp64 plus two Macs all helping each other out rendering these heavy scenes a frame at a time. Having the option to render on up to 50 machines with one license is not only fantastic but a massive cost saver compared to other options.

I saw see some volumetric lighting effects in there – were you using modo 401 in production?

While in production on the pilot I used 401 for all the under floor shots which had a requirement for volumetrics. This also allowed me to be more pro-active during the beta testing phase of the product. I think is very important for beta testers to use the software in real production challenges; you can normally root out bugs a lot quicker and report them back. While at first there were some problems with the volumetrics I was surprised by how the fixes happened in such a short time. Requests for getting new features into the program and fixes seem to happen a lot faster than other larger companies, and I don’t feel like a small cog in a big wheel.

Every renderer has its own look and also its own “feel” when actually using it in production... how does modo stack up?

I have used mental ray and Renderman in production and while they all have their own strengths, modo wins hands down in my circumstances due to its simplicity, speed, cost and quality ouput. I have found in the past with mental ray you can create stunning images but as soon as you switch on motion blur or you have very heavy scene you have to spend a lot of time tweaking bsp trees and optimizing the scene, and this is more a problem when you get into rendering animals with fur. Pound for pound you get more poly’s rendered in modo without the headaches, life is too short to be messing with settings to get your machines rendering your shots. Even more so in on a TV schedule – things have to happen quickly. I can see the attraction of Renderman in film as it’s a solid renderer (but expensive) plus you do need some good Renderman TD to build shaders and also wrangle heavy scenes. Again because I use off the shelf animation software like Softimage Xsi the integration of Renderman is done by plugins and as a result you have to register shaders in order to speed up pre-processing time when building rib data. If you have a large company then Renderman can really shine, hence its heavy use in features today. It’s also worth mentioning costs. I mean which other renderer out there can produce stunning realistic full ray-traced images with GI on 50 machines for less than the cost of a workstation? In most cases I can build a shot and switch on GI and have very pleasing images with very little effort, also as the lights behave how real lights do it’s very easy to make adjustments and fine tune images.

How much post work did you do on the rendered images?

I would have liked to have broken down the shots into more passes for post but did not have the time to do this so the answer is “no post” was done on around 85% of shots. Some shots had FX added like dust and the trailing pathway of Raz”s thoughts.

Did you model in modo as well?

I have modeled in modo some time ago but all the assets in this production were built in Xsi and ported over to modo for surfacing. All the animation from xsi and cameras were taken over using crosswalk and Point Oven for mesh deformation using the mdd deformation option in modo.

Do you consider modo hard to learn?

No I think its very user friendly and someone new to 3d can get up and running very quickly.

What advice do you have for people trying to create a fully animated production like this in their home?

A very understanding wife and a good pair of slippers!! ...not really! Just kidding about the slippers!

It can be done if you set yourself realistic goals, it’s very easy to get carried away with a script or idea, focus on the story telling more than the FX. There are so many different tools out there these days but remember you are telling a story. On the tech side of things pick a naming convention and stick to it, most problems can be sorted out solved a lot quicker if your pipeline is as tidy as it can be. Try and keep the number of passes down when planning render outputs, ask yourself does this shot really warrant all those passes, is it adding to the story?

Also by keeping your ideas simple there is more chance you will produce something without getting fed up thinking I will never do this. If it’s a part-time project, set yourself tasks to be completed by the end of each month the project won’t feel as daunting, plus it will be rewarding if you have met your goals a the end of each month. The main thing is to work tidy and enjoy what you do   the two go hand in hand. You will have to make compromises in order to reach your goals, even with my setup and help there is a lot of things I would have liked to have done in production but through experience have learned I would not have achieved what I have done in the time it was produced. It’s also good idea to get thoughts not just from close friends but other people that have already done it. Above all enjoy what you do, don’t make it a massive epic if it’s your first time round and choose your weapons of choice wisely.

Any thoughts you’d like to offer on the current state of CGI, and how viable independent productions like yours are?

We have been bombarded with CG on TV and in film, so you have to have something different to offer that’s interesting and engaging but above all story is the most important thing. What’s also important these days is a concept that can work in all areas, not just in TV but in games and online media too. In the current climate, the networks are not spending less on projects but are taking time to pick out a smaller number of projects that already have an online presence and can also sustain long-term development. This makes Indies have to work a bit harder in producing something that can fill this slot... but in the long run will pay dividends. There is no clear cut way of producing a hit project else everyone would be doing it if there was but I think the road ahead for both Indies and also feature film makers is going to be a challenging one! Hopefully we can all enjoy the ride and get there using software like modo.

Thank you and best of luck with your pilot!