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Exploring New Worlds: Introducing Ken Nguyen and His 22 Years of CG Journey

Victory is Ours! © Ken Nguyen The war between the E.U.N. (Earth United Nations) and the aliens has been going on for decades and brought humanity on the brink of extinction. While wars ravage the Earth, E.U.N has sent people to explore and settle colonies on other planets. The art series, "Exploring New Worlds", are created by Ken Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam, grew up in Paris, France, in the 80s and then moved to the USA in the mid-90s. Ken has over 22 years combined experience in architecture, video games, themed entertainment, immersive experiences and trade shows and exhibits. In our exclusive interview, we can find out how Ken created the amazing art series and his 22 years of CG Journey! - Ken Nguyen - Sr. 2D/3D Concept Designer - From: United States - Artstation: Fox Renderfarm: Hi Ken, thank you so much for accepting our interview! Could you give us a brief introduction about yourself? Ken: My name is Ken Nguyen. I was born in Vietnam but left the country at a very young age after the war. I grew up in Paris, France, in the 80s and then moved to the USA in the mid-90s. I have over 22 years combined experience in architecture, video games, themed entertainment, immersive experiences and trade shows and exhibits. Fox Renderfarm: As a 2D/3D Senior Concept Designer, do you think 2D art skills help you a lot in 3D art developing? Ken: Like most concept artists, I started learning traditional media such as pencils, markers, and watercolors. Then I discovered Photoshop in the late 90s. I got introduced to 3d modeling with SketchUp when I was working in architecture in the early 2000s. I would say that 2D and 3D skills work in tandem to create the desired art. Indeed, I do not think an artist is 100 percent 2D or 100 percent 3D, especially nowadays with all the new 3d software. Some use simple 3D geometries and do a lot of paint-over and photobashing in Photoshop. Others like myself use a lot of 3D and do minimum 2D work in Photoshop. However, there were some pieces that needed a lot of Photoshop paint-over for things that were faster to do in 2D than in 3D (e.g., Adding FX such as smokes, fires, or doing color corrections and whatnots in Photoshop). This one is a great example of concept that I spent a lot of time with paintover and texture/photobashing in Photoshop. The Last of Them - The Ambush © Ken Nguyen Fox Renderfarm: What’s your inspiration for your series of visual developments called "Exploring New Worlds"? Ken: It is actually a long process that started back in 2013 when I did the first concept in the series called the Last of Them. The Last of Them © Ken Nguyen It was the beginning of my alien-invasion/post-apocalyptic/end-of-the-world series of visual developments. Humans were living in peace under the E.U.N (Earth United Nations) until the alien invasion that brought the human race to the brink of extinction. The war between the E.U.N. military and the alien forces lasted for over a hundred years. As decades passed, humans developed new technology and spaceships that would allow them to escape the war-ravaged earth to explore other planets. That was when the Exploring New World (XNW) series would begin. I was laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic last year and it was a perfect time to take a break and work on personal art pieces such as the XNW environment concepts. That was also a way for me to visit those worlds and escape all the craziness happening in 2020. LOL Fox Renderfarm: How long did you take to finish the "Exploring New Worlds" series? Ken: As mentioned above, I lost my job, therefore I had a lot of free time to work on personal projects. I spent a few months during the Spring and Summer of 2020 working on the XNW series which actually consists of different themes. The main subject is Exploring New Worlds, but there are also concepts that were parts of Alien Encounters, Alien Civilizations, E.U.N. Capital, Military and Bases on other planets. Alien Encounter © Ken Nguyen E.U.N. Capital © Ken Nguyen Alien Civilization © Ken Nguyen E.U.N. Military Base © Ken Nguyen While working on XNW series, I also did some concepts for the Last of Them series that tells the story of the war between the humans and the alien/mutant races on war-ravaged Earth that will lead to the XNW series after over a century has passed. The Last of Them - The Ambush © Ken Nguyen The Last of Them - Abandoned Warehouse © Ken Nguyen The Last of Them - Behind The Car! © Ken Nguyen Fox Renderfarm: You were the Concept Artist at DIGITAL DOMAIN in 2018 in charge of environment and prop concepts for ELEVEN ELEVEN. Did you meet any difficulties while creating? And how did you solve it? Ken: I was one of the many concept artists working on Eleven Eleven, which is an original science fiction story designed for virtual reality and augmented reality and has been selected by the 2019 SXSW Film Festival. I believe the art team worked on the game several months before Digital Domain reached out to me and hired me to help with some extra environment concepts as they were on a tight schedule. I was tasked with creating the jungle and cave areas as well as some props. The challenge here was to create a jungle that looks realistic and natural by populating the scenes with trees and plants, and at the same time it must satisfy the gameplay. Designing in 3D was the biggest advantage compared to 2D. Indeed, I was able to place the vegetation assets in real-time and experience the spaces with camera movements as if I were in the jungle. Eleven Eleven VR Game © Ken Nguyen Fox Renderfarm: Among all the projects you’ve done, which project do you feel proudest and would you share with us how you make it? Ken: There are many concepts that are my favorites and that I am proud of. Among them are some from the XNW or The Last of Them series because they were the newest concepts and I have learned a lot from previous projects to create them. However, for this question here, I would like to share some renders that are perfect examples to show how working in 3D is fast, efficient and productive especially for architectural renders. This project is called A Day in the City and was an entry to the 2018 Evermotion challenge. After I read the brief, I thought it would be interesting to create a scene showing everyday life in downtown of a big city. I started gathering buildings from my 3D resource folders and played around with different layouts as shown in the WIP-01 image. I came up with seven options. They were all grey renders so that I did not have to worry about materials and textures. I then populated the scenes with people, vehicles and trees as you can see in the WIP-02 image. After picking one of the views, I started to do some color renders and played with different lightings, weather, and time of day such as evening, night, sunny, overcast, etc. I believed the final submission was the evening one. After the contest was over, I decided to do a snowy post-apocalyptic version just for fun. A Day in the City © Ken Nguyen Fox Renderfarm: What’s your pipeline of 3D art? Ken: I do a lot of 3D kitbashing using models I build from scratch as needed, free models and some that I bought from different 3D sites. A lot of them are quite affordable and they are made by professionals, therefore the quality is particularly good. After I have an idea of what I want to do, I gather the 3D assets and compose them together in SketchUp. I then export the whole thing into Lumion, set up the views, and add lighting. I usually do some tests with white box or grey renders. I can focus on the composition and lighting/values and not worry too much about color, materials, and textures. When I am somewhat satisfied with the grey renders, I start adding materials and textures. It is a long but fun process going back and forth between SketchUp and Lumion. Nothing is written in stone for the 3D composition. As a matter of fact, I kept on changing, adding, or rotating the 3D assets as needed. Everything is in real-time, therefore, I can see what the final render might look like with actual lighting, shadows, reflections on materials, etc. When I have something that I really like, I render it and bring it into Photoshop for some paintover, color corrections, FX like smokes, and so on. Fox Renderfarm: Could you briefly tell us your educational and work experience along your CG journey? Ken: After graduating from high school, I went on to study architecture. I received a bachelor and master’s degrees in Architecture and worked for about five years as an architectural designer. I never knew that learning SketchUp (a program originally created for architects to create quick 3D designs) would help me get a job in the game industry. Ever since I was a little kid, I always love to draw fantasy and sci-fi characters, environments, and architecture. Therefore, I decided to quit my architectural job and move to San Francisco, California, in 2003 to attend the Academy of Art University where I graduated with a MFA in Games focusing on concept art, modeling, texturing and animation with Maya and Studio Max. I got my first job in the game industry working on concepts of environments and architecture for an MMO in 2006 using SketchUp and E-On Software Vue. Then in 2013, I discovered Lumion3d, a program similar to real-time game engines, that allowed me to create my first alien invasion/post-apocalyptic concept that would evolve into the Exploring New Worlds series. I have been using SketchUp, Lumion3d and Photoshop to do all my environment concepts ever since. I also use Daz3d for my character designs, but my next goal will be to learn ZBrush. Fox Renderfarm: Any artists or artworks inspired you most? Ken: I get inspiration from the artists and concept art from movies like Star Wars or Avatar, and video games such as Halo, Assassin Creed, The Last of Us, and Uncharted series, and Ghost of Tsushima. I also like to look at the old masters and how amazing the intricate details are in their oil landscape paintings. Fox Renderfarm: The composition, lighting and coloring of your works are fantastic, how do you enhance your good sense? Ken: Composition, lighting, and color are basic art foundations that all artists must learn. Whenever possible, one should think about foreground, middle ground and background, and what stories the renders are telling and how the composition of the elements guide the viewers’ eyes. Lighting (and shadows) when done correctly will create a sense of realism. As for color, it creates moods and emotions. Concepting in 3D certainly helps a lot with composition and lighting especially for environments and architectural designs. Indeed, I can place, move, and rotate all the elements (e.g. rocks, mountains, plants, characters, buildings, vehicles, etc.) and see which compositions work best. Also, using Lumion I can add lights and try different weather types and times of day (e.g., morning, night, etc.) and see the changes in real-time. That would be impossible to do in 2D concepts. Fox Renderfarm: Any other things you want to share with the CG enthusiasts? Ken: Here is an advice that many of you certainly have heard: Follow your dreams and “Love what you do and do what you love” (Ray Bradbury). Also, learn from your past mistakes, be willing to embrace changes and learn new techniques and software. Finally, practice, practice, and practice! As a CG artist, it is a never-ending journey of learning and discovery to become a better artist. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Life is a journey, not a destination”.

Fox Renderfarm Supports Anima® Now!

Fox Renderfarm is committed to providing fast and secure cloud rendering service for customers around the world, and now we support the software Anima®, the 3D people animation and crowd simulation application, for rendering on our platform! Anima® 4 is the people and crowd animation application developed specifically for architects and designers that will help you create amazing 3D animated people quickly and easily! Anima® 4 introduces a new and unique hyper-realistic 4D people animation system that includes facial gestures and clothing movements. With anima®, the native plugins for 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D and UE4, you can easily add 3D people and crowds with facial gestures and clothing movements to your CG scenes! As the authorized render farm of anima®, Fox Renderfarm supports the most popular 3D software, renderers and plugins all over the world, including 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Blender, V-Ray, Redshift, etc. With enormous computing power, Fox Renderfarm will continue to provide customers with a faster, safer, cheaper, smarter, and easier cloud rendering service, helping CG artists realize their dreams.

The Rebirth of the Phoenix: Introducing 3D Artist and Entrepreneur, Reinaldo Handaya

As the sponsor and long-term partner of the CGarchitect 3D Awards, which is referred to as the Oscar of ArchViz, Fox Renderfarm, the best cloud rendering service provider, is very pleased to speak with Mr. Reinaldo Handaya, who led his team to create an amazing project -- Born Neo, and got nominated in the Image (Non-commissioned) category in CGarchitect 3D Awards. In our interview, Mr. Reinaldo shared a lot of details about how his team endeavored to make this project happen, and also revealed that he made this competition into an internal challenge. He explained the reason and shared with us the unforgettable hours behind. Besides, his story of how he got into the industry is quite inspirational and motivating. In 2004, his family factory was razed by fire and left him with $100,000 debt, in the later years, his life was changed because of 3D creation. After winning awards and praise in the ArchViz field,with his partner Evan Mandala, he set up ArchViz studio, 2G Studio, and 2G Academy, a 3D educational platform. With his relentless efforts and business mindset, he is a top-tier ArchViz artist in Indonesia now. His experience keeps us wondering how he got out of the trouble, kept his pursuit and succeeded at the same time, which Fox Renderfarm thinks you will find the answer in the latter part where he speaks about his plan in the interview. - Reinaldo Handaya - CEO at 2G Studio - From: Indonesia - Artwork Caption: This project is for our internal challenge to challenge our artist to work together as a team and as a family. We call it a pressure challenge, they have to finish the still image and animation in just 1 week, the building also needs to be modeled from scratch and have to design by themselves. This pressure challenge is also to help the artists to be creative as they want, because most of the commissioned projects are boring and for the team that wins the challenge will be rewarded with a bonus. BORN NEO © 2G Studio BORN NEO ANIMATION © 2G Studio Fox Renderfarm: Hi Reinaldo! Congratulations on being nominated in the 2020 CGarchitect Architectural 3D Awards, how do you feel about it? Reinaldo: First of all, I want to thank you for having us here. We never thought, not even once, that we would get the nomination, especially in the non-commissioned category. Having been one of the judges in 2014, and I know there are thousands of images submitted to the 3D awards, and there are tons of talented artists in this world, and I feel blessed that one of our team’s works got nominated. Fox Renderfarm: What’s your inspiration for this amazing project Born Neo? Any idea behind this name? Reinaldo: I can’t take full credit for this project, me and Evan (Co-Founder of 2G Studio) only help our team to give some space to express themselves and be creative. We give them direction, how to think, how to create the storytelling, the rest is theirs. However, this is also teamwork, not just a single-artist work. The inspiration for this building came from The Heydar Aliyev Center by Zaha Hadid, and the Harbin Opera House by MAD Architect. The rendering look and feel was heavily inspired by our own friend, Arqui9. ArchViz by Arqui9 The idea behind this name is because our president decided to move the capital from Jakarta to Kalimantan. Kalimantan’s International name is BORNEO ISLAND. And moving to a new place is kinda like being born new, and the team comes up with BORN NEO, matching the island name. And in fact, there was a competition to design the new capital city, but we didn’t join the competition since it was a design competition, not rendering. Fox Renderfarm: The building is so terrific, could you introduce the function of the building? Reinaldo: The building is a convention center, which is a meeting place and also a place for all large-scale activities such as concerts, shows, seminars, as well as national and international level meetings which will certainly be held in the new capital city. Fox Renderfarm: As you introduced, this is a project from your team’s pressure challenge, so why did you hold this challenge and how long did it take to finish the work? Reinaldo: There are several reasons why we held this challenge and they only had 7 days to finish 1 still image and a 60 sec animation. Because if there are more than 7 days, chances are, they will never finish. The first one is to let the team express their creativity, and as you know, our field is filled with people who love architecture, and we challenge our team to do the concept, and the story about why they come up with the concept. The second reason is to challenge them working overtime. Because we cannot deny that sometimes we’ve got tons of work that we need to work overtime. We just don’t want our team to get spoiled. The third reason is to give more pressure by asking them to finish in 7 days and should not disturb the real project schedule. But the ultimate reason is to train them to work as a team. So we split our team into 4 small teams and they have to deliver different concepts, so we got 4 different renderings. Fox Renderfarm: What’s the most unforgettable and interesting part of the creation process? Reinaldo: The team is actually enjoying this challenge although they work till 4 am. And it shows that they really love to do some designs and do the render, completely different than working on a real project. Just make sure not to let them do this all the time, or they will hate me for sure hahaha. The unforgettable moment is that working as a team is not as beautiful as we think, working as a team requires a lot of sacrifice. As you know, people will easily point a finger to others when under pressure. Actually the rule is when one of the team members points a finger to others, the team will be disqualified. We always believe when we point a finger to others, we need to know that the other 4 fingers are pointing to ourselves. One of the teams was actually unable to deliver the animation, only able to deliver 1 image. And of course they would have lost, but this is the most interesting part, the team still continued to work on the project, and finally created another 1 image and 1 animation. And this team is the one that created this BORN NEO. Here we can learn that it's ok to fail, but it shouldn’t stop you to keep doing what you love. The challenge only stops when you said so and they didn’t stop before they delivered 1 image and 1 animation. Well, you know how proud I am with my team. Fox Renderfarm: How long have you been in the visualization field? Who inspires you most in this industry? Could you briefly introduce your career story? Reinaldo: On November 3, 2004, my family factory was razed by fire and left me with $100, 000 debt. And then I built my furniture workshop, then in 2008 I learned 3D to present my design to my client. And I deeply fell in love with 3D ever since. My career started when I got my first award, Visualization Pro of the Week from CGarchitect, and that was in January 2011. And in March I established 2G Studio with my business partner Evan Mandala. Somehow we got lots of exposure, in 2012 one of my renderings got awarded by Ronen Bekerman, the reinterpretation render of Starbuck by Kengo Kuma and that work skyrocketed my name in this industry. And Evan’s work got Visualization Pro of the Week from CGarchitect. One of our works was also selected to be in the 3D World magazine. And in 2013-2014, CHAOS group chose me to be guest speaker for their Asia Pacific V-Ray Community Meetings and Siggraph Asia in Hongkong. In 2014, Jeff asked me to be one of the 3D awards judges. Master Bedroom PIK © Reinaldo Handaya (Won Visualization Pro of the Week from CGArchitect, January 2011) Reinterpretation render of Starbucks by Kengo Kuma © Reinaldo Handaya (Awarded by Ronen Bekerman, 2012) House La Invernada © Evan Mandala (Won Visualization Pro of the Week from CGArchitect, 2012) Most of my clients both direct clients and other 3D studios were coming from CGarchitect, and that is why I strongly believe that CGarchitect is the place where talents meet the clients. I was inspired by lots of people, not just one. But the one person that gives me a lot of influence is Jeff Mottle. It's not because CGarchitect Visualization Pro of the Week started my debut in this industry, but I can see that Jeff built CGarchitect not for himself, but to help others in this industry. Somehow it resonates with me a lot, since I also love to help others to learn 3D. And I established 2G Academy in 2013 with the spirit “helping others”. In 2017, I learned from Simon Sinek, why you do what you do is the most important thing, and I learned money is only a result from what you do. Jeff Mottle President/Founder, CGArchitect 2G Academy: Simon Sinek Author/Motivational Speaker Fox Renderfarm: What is the development vision for 2G Studio? Any new projects or plans that you can share with us? Reinaldo: The development vision for 2G Studio itself is definitely to provide the best marketing tools for our clients both developers and other 3D companies that work with us shoulder to shoulder. However we also have other developments outside the production, which give back to the community. We have our educational platform, 2G Academy and we want to give back to the community. We started a new movement in Indonesia when the lockdown happened in March 2020, we call this movement AVIS ID, meaning ArchViz Indonesia. We are aware the lockdown will affect lots of Indonesian 3D artists. Since Indonesian ArchViz artists' quality is pretty stuck, it is the time to focus on improving the rendering skills when the world stops spinning. We share free tutorials on our YouTube channel, do free portfolio reviews for Indonesian 3D artists. And we also did business and mindset talks and open for the public, we did this consistently till now. We also follow our government program “Bali Kembali” meaning Bali is back, since Bali is a tourism island. We live in Bali and we love Bali so much. And we want to promote Bali through ArchViz. We are still working on this project and we choose 3ds Max and V-Ray to do this project, and we are also going to work on this project with our students. It is going to be epic, lots of still images and animations. And this is not for our personal benefit, but for a greater cause, we also want this industry to be aware about Indonesia as one of the best in this ArchViz world, and also want to break the stereotype that outsourcing to Asia is low cost. The upcoming movement is following the CGarchitect movement, Women in ArchViz. Our version is Kartini in ArchViz, as you know there are lots of women that are not exposed in this industry. Why we call it Kartini is because Raden Adjeng Kartini is an Indonesian heroine and she is a symbol of women's right movement in Indonesia. This project is all about women in ArchViz in Indonesia, and we are also surprised that around 40% of our students are women. Sanctum © 2G Studio Fox Renderfarm: As the founder of 2G Studio, you established the leading 3D ArchViz Company in Indonesia, so do you have any views and prospects for the development of this industry in Indonesia? Reinaldo: It is very challenging, having been in this industry for years, we’ve only worked with 1 local client. The reason why it is challenging is because in Indonesia we don’t have any belief in products labeled “Made in Indonesia” and this is happening in every sector not just ArchViz. Most big developers in Indonesia send inquiries to other 3D companies outside Indonesia, because they don’t believe there is a company in Indonesia that can produce high quality images. So definitely more time is needed to build the trust. As 2G Studio itself never tried to work with locals, we know the problem, that is why we always aim to work with international clients. All the movements that we build, and all the architectural talks we did every Saturday by inviting architects in Indonesia to share their thoughts, is also to build a strong community. Definitely it's not a quick result that we are chasing after, it is a journey, and for a good cause. Fox Renderfarm: As an outstanding 3D Artist and architect, do you have any advice for the young artists in ArchViz Industry? Reinaldo: We can say that this industry is easy to make money while we are doing what we love. Most people in this industry are artists, either architects or interior designers, and most of us here is because we are introverted people that enjoy our time when we do what we love. But this comes with a cost, and what happened in Indonesia is that most people don’t know anything about business and the art of negotiation, don’t know how to add value and end up slashing the price and racing to the bottom. Racing to the bottom will always happen in any kind of industry, Arch viz is not exceptional. The only way to get out from the red ocean is learning about business and marketing. Business and marketing are the art itself with a different form. It is also the same when we learn about rendering, rendering is a journey, it needs time, business and marketing also need time, and learning about these 2 things will help us overcome our own fear. 2G Studio: www.2gs.co Instagram Facebook Youtube 2G Academy: www.2gacademy.com Instagram Facebook