Interview with Carlos Costa Blanes, Nominee for 2019 Architectural 3D Award by CGarchitect

As a world-leading , Fox Renderfarm, is always willing to support our CG community. As the Gold Sponsor for 3DAwards 2019, we are glad to hear that the 3DAwards this year was a massive success. 3DAwards is the largest and most prestigious awards event for the architectural visualization industry which attracts entries from top studios, freelancers and students around the world every year. Both the winners and nominees have been announced on CGarchitect’s website. Congratulations to all the winners and nominees! Today, we are honored to talk with Mr. Carlos Costa Blanes, nominee for Student (Image) Category, who steps into the Archviz industry from a student of Archaeology. He tells us how he makes the shift and more about his nominated artwork. - Carlos Costa Blanes - 3D artist at Pictury Archviz (http://www.pictury.net/) - From: Sevilla, Spain - School: Nuevas Profesiones Nominated Work http://3dawards.cgarchitect.com/gallery/showcase/32972 Fox Renderfarm: Hi, Carlos, would you please give a brief introduction about yourself? Carlos: Hello, my name is Carlos Costa Blanes and I am a 23 years old 3D artist based in Seville (Spain). I hold a BA in Archaeology though today I do nothing related to it, and afterwards I studied a two years’ 3D generalist course, ending up specializing in ArchViz through online self-learning. Fox Renderfarm: How do you feel about being nominated in The CGarchitect Architectural 3D Awards? Carlos: It is by far my biggest achievement. I am really happy and proud about it; I could not imagine a better way to start my professional career. It has definitely helped a lot. Fox Renderfarm: What’s your inspiration for this amazing project? Why did you select this artwork to participate in the competition? Carlos: I made the artwork with the idea of submitting it to the competition, so from the very start, I knew this would be the image. When looking for inspiration for a project, the amount of ideas and possibilities can be overwhelming. So, I decided I would restrict myself to the rainy/foggy mood. While working on the project, I came up with the idea to draw a parallel between today’s modern architecture and native tents with those accentuated triangular shapes and added elements that refer to the jungle/forest ecosystem, like the flying parrots or the boats. Fox Renderfarm: Could you introduce the light design and the composition of this project? Carlos: The light in the 3ds Max file, it is simply based on an HDRi with no global volumen material as may seem. It is later in Photoshop where most of the tricks happen, using a colored ZDepth element for the overall fog and exposing certain parts of the sky in order to achieve the overall look of the image. It was important for me to have the colour palette defined from the very beginning, knowing I wanted to play with the orange-blue scheme as complementary colours. Regarding the composition, I had the idea of a lake scene in order to enhance the reflections of the buildings. In order to avoid a flat image, I used some rocks on the foreground and mountains in the background. The buildings were simply located following the Rule of Thirds and I used three of them as I thought that would give the best visual result. Fox Renderfarm: How long did it take you to finish the work? Carlos: Probably between 20 and 25 hours in total, from the research for references until the post-production. Fox Renderfarm: What software, renderers, plugins did you use in this work? Carlos: I created the scene on 3ds Max and rendered it with Corona. The vegetation scattering was achieved using iToo Forest Pack. Fox Renderfarm: What’s the most unforgettable and interesting part of the creation process? Carlos: I really enjoyed and spent a lot of the time trying to achieve a fog that I was happy with, as well as playing with the colours until I got the exact tones I wanted for the scene. There are so many shades of blues and oranges so it took me some time to decide. Fox Renderfarm: Did you meet any difficulties when creating this work? And how did you solve it? Carlos: As I said, the main difficulties were the fog and deciding on the colours. I spent quite some time playing with different combinations. Fox Renderfarm: How long have you been in the architectural visualization career? And how did you make the decision to step into this career? Carlos: I have been actively self-learning about ArchViz since September 2018, so one year ago. Later that year, I contacted Pictury (www.pictury.net/) - a studio whose artwork I really liked and who were, luckily, based close to my hometown - and did an internship with them from February till June. After the internship, I started working with them professionally since July. I made the decision to step into architectural visualization because I always enjoyed the process of shading and texturing. Besides this, I really like producing photorealistic images. As I like to experiment with photography in my free time, the photographic component of the industry also appealed to me. Fox Renderfarm: Who or what project inspires you most in this industry? Carlos: There are so many amazing artists out there; sometimes it can even be frustrating to look around on different profiles on , some people are so good. However, I feel like we should look for inspiration in other areas in order to create something original and not fall in trends. Fox Renderfarm: As an outstanding architectural visualization artist, what do you think are the qualities that will make a great artist greater? And what do you do to enhance your professional skills? Carlos: The thing I consider most important today, in order to keep up to date with the evolving industry, is to never stop being a self-learner. The technical component of this industry is quite complex and deadlines are demanding, so you really need to be up to date with the latest tools and technologies in order to reduce production times and focus more and more on the artistic side of it. I think what makes the most differences between great and greater artists is the light and composition knowledge. There are more and more artists with outstanding technical skills, so I think it is the artistic side that makes the difference. I bought myself a camera just to learn photography and further develop my skills to produce CG images. (Photos by Carlos Costa Blanes from Instagram @costablanes96) Fox Renderfarm: What’s your next step? Carlos: I want to learn as much as possible right now. I think the industry is changing because of the steadily developing procedural techniques, real-time render engines and AI learning, so my focus would be to study those techniques. At some moment, I would probably also enjoy - I do not know when yet - to work abroad and who knows, to have my own studio at some point. Fox Renderfarm: Have you ever used Fox Renderfarm previously? If yes, how do you feel about it? Carlos: Not yet since my professional career in ArchViz only just started. I have not had the need to use it as a student - I normally always met my deadlines! But I think being nominated for the awards is a great chance to try it. Fox Renderfarm: Any other things you want to share with CG enthusiasts? Carlos: Feel free to contact me on my different social media, I am happy to meet people in this same industry. And by the way, there is a hidden frog on the image. Can you spot it? More Carlos Costa Blanes's artworks: Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/carloscos96 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ccostablanes/ (3D Artist Account) https://www.instagram.com/costablanes96/ (Photography Account) Please stay tuned with Fox Renderfarm, more interviews of the winners and nominees for CGarhcitect Architectural 3DAwards 2019 and industry insights will be brought to you on our website and social media channels!

Fox Renderfarm, Your TPN Accredited Cloud Render Farm

Fox Renderfarm has reached another milestone in the year 2019. With the relentless efforts and commitment to build a more secure that better protect the privacy of our beloved customers, Shenzhen Rayvision Technology (Fox Renderfarm’s company) has successfully completed MPAA’s Content Security Best Practices and officially become a TPN Trusted Partner! What is TPN? Trusted Partner Network (TPN) is a joint venture between two major entertainment industry giants, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA), the worldwide leaders in third-party entertainment industry assessments. MPAA is a non-profit American trade association with the goal of promoting effective copyright protection, reducing piracy, and expanding market access. While, CDSA, is the international content protection association that protect entertainment media throughout the supply chain, both pre and post release. As one of the most authoritative film and TV content protection corporation, TPN assessment is well acknowledged by conglomerates like Walt Disney Studios, Universal City Studios, Warner Bros., Netflix Studios and so forth. Why do we need TPN? Content and data security have always been a global concern in the movie and TV industry, especially after a serial high-profile pre-release leaks in 2017. Those included the theft and release of “Orange Is the New Black” season 5 episodes from an audio post-production firm and an episode from “Game of Thrones” season 7 that was traced to employees at a data-management vendor working with 21st Century Fox’s Star India. The hacking nightmare continued after Netflix refused to pay the requested ransom. The hacker group The Dark Overlord uploaded much of “Orange Is the New Black” Season 5 online through illegal file-sharing service and kept posting arrogant and even scolding messages online. Huge damage was caused to Hollywood’s major production studios and to the health of the whole industry. Trusted Partner Network (TPN) is a new, global, industry-wide film and television content protection initiative. The TPN program helps companies prevent leaks, breaches, and hacks of their customers’ movies and television shows prior to their intended release and seeks to raise security awareness, preparedness, and capabilities within the industry. It functions as a global clearinghouse that will set security standards for entertainment production and distribution companies. Partners who pass an independent assessment conforming to those industry best practices will be listed as “trusted partners” in the TPN directory. “Creating the films and television shows enjoyed by audiences around the world increasingly requires a network of specialized vendors and technicians,” MPAA chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin said in a statement. “That’s why maintaining high security standards for all third-party operations — from script to screen — is such an important part of preventing the theft of creative works and ultimately protects jobs and the health of our vibrant creative economy.” How does TPN work? The TPN assessment process is highly rigorous with detailed security requirements on the physical security, asset management, content life-cycle, enterprise security, risk assessment, vulnerability management, security operations and incident response, policy & procedures, human resources processes, and most importantly, infrastructure. Moreover, the assessed Vendors are required to do the annual re-assessment every year to continuously improve the security system to better meet the TPN assessment standards. The assessment reports are shared within the TPN platform and can also be shared with existing and potential customers at the vendor’s discretion. Fox Renderfarm x TPN Fox Renderfarm’s mission is to be the best with powerful render capacity, thoughtful customer service, secure data protection and flexible pricing scheme. “Your governance program (i.e. Management System) was impressive. It was very thorough from a policy and procedure perspective,” Mr. James Bourne, TPN Assessor, commented, “Rayvision (Fox Renderfarm’s company) has adopted and implemented the MPAA’s Content Security Best Practices with precision...you are now TPN Accredited.” As a TPN Trusted Partner, Fox Renderfarm will persist its steps to enhance the solutions to be more customer-friendly and also be one of the safest.

Interview With Leonard Daly, Creating A New Future Of Websites

Web-based 3D multi-media is becoming an important part of many websites. 3D on the web offers the advantages of seeing the information from a variety of viewpoints in a manner not possible with other media types. As a 3D/VR Systems Architect, Leonard Daly has made many contributions to the 3D multi-media industry. He founded Daly Realism in 1996, which can help businesses with project management, website development, secure business-to-business communications, elearning, and web-based 3D and multi-media content. With his extensive background in Web and other technologies, Leonard Daly developed Daly Realism to handle businesses needs for eBusiness and Business to Business (B2B) transactions, project management, technical strategy development, web development, information visualization, advanced web technologies, and web-based multi-media content. Knowing that the key to a successful project is quality management and leadership, Leonard Daly has developed a number of tools with proven success records for assisting in the management of projects. Daly Realism’s latest work is XSeen - a VR/3D library in JavaScript that uses THREE.js for rendering. XSeen is the first declarative language for the VR/AR/MR — xR Web. It incorporates the ability to seamlessly integrate HTML with your 3D environment. It uses HTML-like tags and attributes that are fully integrated into the DOM and manipulatable with JavaScript. It works with all of the standard JavaScript frameworks including jQuery and React. XSeen is also the JavaScript library that implements the XSeen language. It is built on top of THREE.js and other open-source web tools and platforms. It loads all standard web model formats, including glTF, THREE json, OBJ, and others. You can use the THREE editor (local-link) to create scenes that are loaded into and XSeen web page to be displayed in a browser. Fox Renderfarm was honoured to have an interview with Leonard Daly in SIGGRAPH 2019. Leonard Daly ·President of Daly Realism ·Independent Internet consultant ·3D/VR Systems Architect ·Designer of XSeen ·Co-author of “X3D: Extensible 3D Graphics for Web Authors” Fox Renderfarm: Can you introduce yourself? Leonard: Hi, I'm Leonard Daly, I'm an independent consultant here in Los Angeles. Daly Realism provides consulting services to small businesses in the area of 3D systems, architecture and data management in the cloud. Most of our work is related to website production and development. In 3D systems, I've been doing a lot of work with web standards organizations including W3C on the just released and what they call “VR complete” webXR Device API specification. I've also worked with Khronos on glTF, and looking forward to working on their new effort in the e-commerce area. In the past, I've also worked with the Web3D Consortium on the X3D specification. Fox Renderfarm: Can you introduce your latest development to us? Leonard: In conjunction with SIGGRAPH this year, version 0.8 of Xseen was released. Xseen is a library written in JavaScript. It is fully open source, including open source documentation that runs in the browser. It takes code that looks very much like HTML and allows you to display 3D content. It runs in the phone, on the desktop, in the tablets and it gracefully degrades depending upon the hardware and support available. So that on the phone you have full access to the orientation sensors and the camera, while on the desktop it's a more fixed environment, more suitable for working with the mouse. There’re two demos available, both are available through QR codes. The top, the first one is a VR demo. Its complete environment there is computer-generated background and model; and the second QR code is the same model presented through your phone to see wherever you happen to be. Fox Renderfarm: Can you introduce your team? Leonard: Xseen has been under development for about two years. At this stage is just myself with a couple of other contributions from other people interested in it. This show has been productive and I've talked to at least three people. One has expressed very strong interest in developing two portions that will be needed for future releases. Fox Renderfarm: Have your meet any challenges during your development? Leonard: The biggest challenge today on Xseen has been adjusting the model lighting to match the scene in incorporating various mechanisms. It hasn't been incorporated yet but the current under-development version is using spherical harmonic lighting which is very easy to manage, collect and project into the scene, and just light the model. Due to the development of Xseen, we will include not only the spherical harmonic lighting, but also integration and simultaneous localization and mapping, or also known as SLAM algorithm, so that the models can be tracked and located in physical space, as opposed to just relative to the orientation of the phone. Other features include fully web componentizing the systems and making sure that everything is fully integrated with the DOM API that's available in all web browsers to HTML pages. Fox Renderfarm: Have you ever heard of Fox Renderfarm? Leonard: My work with Xseen and other 3D applications have been exclusively within the browser. So, I personally have not used Fox Renderfarm, although I have heard of the company. Many of my associates within the Los Angeles Chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH do use for their purposes in episodic TV, movies and advertisements. Fox Renderfarm: Any other things you want to share with the audience? Leonard: As a long-time member of Los Angeles Chapter of SIGGRAPH, I wish from all of us to the people of Shenzhen a great day and happy year.