Studio: FX Academy
Website: http://www.splinegod.com
Larry Schultz has worked as a 3D artist in games, television and film for nearly a decade. Among the projects he has participated in are CG shows Max Steel, Dan Dare and Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles, Sony's Airtight Garage Attraction, and a stereoscopic IMAX film done by Amalgamated Pixels, among others. Recently Shultz has branched out into training and education, participating in NewTek's Next Dimension Training Tour and producing online courses for FX Academy. Larry's skills cover every aspect of 3D, from modeling to texturing to lighting to character rigging and animation. He finds that this type of variety in his work is the spice of life, so far as he is concerned as a digital artist.
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Proton: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
LS: Let's see...I've done lots of things in my time. In my "formal" career I was a Laser Technician and worked on things like LASER-protective eye wear that allowed the user to see clearly, and space-based weapons. I think the most interesting thing was working on something called FALCON (Fission Activated Laser CONcept). Which was basically a nuclear pumped LASER. I've been involved with computer graphics since the Amiga was around. I've worked in the video game industry, TV commercials, freelance 3D, worked for several studios and on such CGI shows as Max Steel and Dan Dare. I'm now working on LightWave educational CDs, courses and seminars.
Proton: Where does the name "SplineGod" come from?
LS: LOL, Thats a good one. This started up quite awhile ago. I used to frequent the #lightwave IRC channel on efnet. There used to be some long discussions about splines vs. other ways of modeling. I've always been a fan of spline modeling when it's appropriate to use it, especially for organic work. I used to get quite a lot of flack about using them until several people began to try some of the techniques I espoused. One day one of the people who hated splines came online very excited about getting splines to work and was sold on using them. When he saw me on the channel he said "You really are the SplineGod". As a joke I began to use that as my nick on IRC and it's stuck ever since. :)
Proton: When did you get into 3D? Why?
LS: I've always been a fan of science fiction. When I was a kid I loved shows like Lost in Space, The Invaders and so on. I was 8 years old when the first episode of Star Trek aired and I loved space ships. My father was a fighter pilot and I really was interested in aircraft as well. I also remember as a kid watching as astronauts walked on the moon. I was just really into science.
Later in life I became fascinated with movie f/x and felt that it would be great to be able to do that. I started experimenting with 2D and 3D graphics in the late 80's. When the Amiga first came out I got my chance on the forerunner of LightWave (Videoscape 3D and Modeler 3D). When I saw that the Amiga could play animation out directly to video I was hooked. I belonged to one of the first computer artists groups around and I found that I had a real talent for computer graphics and animation. I had a good friend named Gary Poole and we used to mess around for hours doing 2D and 3D graphics and talking about movies we would make.
In those days you really had to be into 3D to wait 48 hrs to see a raytrace render only to find out you forgot to turn your lights on and you waited for 2 days just to see a black screen! I also experimented with stereoscopic 3D in those days. I built a circuit that would drive some LCD glasses so I could create stereo images and animation on the Amiga using odd and even video fields. I loved DigiPaint, one of NewTek's first paint programs that allowed you to paint in 4096 colors at the same time. This when PCs only had 16 colors and Macs were still black and white. The great thing was that DigiPaint allowed you to paint in 3D! You could paint in odd and even video fields and it was a blast with those glasses on. I could even record my stereo 3D renderings and paintings to video tape and my glasses could be driven off of any NTSC signal. It was cool to watch the tape on a large-screen TV. I've used a lot of different 3D packages over the years and have stuck with LightWave. Its toolset and workflow have really struck a chord in me. I'm pretty impatient and I like to get to the end result. LightWave works the way I think.
Proton: You've worked on some very exciting projects. Care to share some of your experiences with us?
LS: I've done quite a bit of experimenting with 3D over the years. I've had my own animation business called The Animation Factory in New Mexico. I loved working on TV spots and doing things our competitors couldn't do. This is when I began to notice that few places did any character animation and when they did it was expensive. We started to do a lot of work like that. I remember applying for a job at a video game company as an engineer but ended up getting hired as an artist. I quickly became a lead artist on a PSX title. It was pretty exciting because I got to direct a game project, I designed and built a very low cost mocap system and a bunch of other things. I got to work on one of the first VR games out there.
I've done freelance work for Discovery Channel, worked as a contractor for Sony Development on their Metreon Center, Airtight Garage Attraction in San Francisco. That was a very exciting project because I was able to work for 2 years with the French artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud. He was a GREAT guy. My job was to take his character concepts and flesh them out in 3D. He loved what I did with his drawings. I would scan them and trace them with splines in LightWave. One day he watched me doing this and became very excited at how easy it was to flesh out his models. He suddenly stood up and yelled "I wish to buy LightWave!" There was a flurry of movement as people literally scattered to BUY him a copy of LightWave. In less then 30 minutes he had a new copy in his hands. It was hilarious! He was fantastic to work with and I learned a great deal from him. He also never once found fault with my work, which was cool. :)
Another interesting story, about the time I was the only artist at Sony Development using LightWave: the other artists really were amazed at what could be done with it and wanted to switch but couldn't because they were already well into the project on other software. Later another project started up and they hired a TD named Mike to decide on which hardware and software they were going to use. Mike came from the old Alias/SGI background and was a big Maya supporter. Our supervisor asked Mike to talk to me about LightWave before he made any decisions. It was made clear that he didn't have to use LightWave...just look at what I was doing with it. Mike came over and asked me to demo it for him. In a few minutes I made a hand, arm and head. Mike's jaw hit the floor and he couldn't believe how FAST one could model things in LightWave.
Mike said that what I had just shown him in a few minutes would have taken days to model in Maya. After a few more minutes he was sold. He asked how much LightWave was and another co-worker said "Oh its around 15". Mike said,"WOW! 15 THOUSAND? Thats a bargain!" I said, "No Mike, 15 HUNDRED". Again he couldn't believe it. They ended up hiring a whole crew to do a cel shaded project based on the Beatles Yellow Submarine Movie and went with LightWave. The project was an 8 month project and later Mike said that he was glad he went with LightWave instead of Maya because as he put it, "We could still be doing all the setup in Maya, but we're almost done already because of LightWave."
One interesting footnote too. This was Jen Hachigian's first CGI job because I had seen her website and met her at a show. I knew that she was good at cel shading. Her website got her hired. :)
I've also worked for Netter Digital where I worked as a modeler and animator on Max Steel and Dan Dare. Later I became their only Technical Director on Dan Dare. Later I worked at Foundation Imaging on their Character team. It was work at a furious pace, but I love it and it was fun. I learned a great deal about the right and wrong way to rig characters. Two of us ended up doing most of the rigging there. Rigging is pretty easy in LightWave and on those shows it was tricky. There were so many things that characters had to do that one character could have half a dozen setups. We also had to model and texture our own characters. Many times we had to rig things like jet packs and other complicated stuff. One fun setup was setting up a helmet that would grow up and over the characters head in stages. All an animator had to do was push a null and it would animate itself. Of course HE would get the credit for animating it! :) LightWave was a great tool and work horse on those jobs.
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I also worked for a place called Amalgamated Pixels. That was a smaller place but I really enjoyed being able to wear multiple hats. Some days I was modeling characters, another day rigging and texturing, another modeling jets and so on. We were working on 3 films at the same time, one being a stereoscopic IMAX film. When I got there they were using Maya, Max and LightWave. They were trying to do the ol' "model in LightWave, animate in Maya then render in LightWave" thing. They ended up dropping Maya out of their workflow entirely and using LightWave only because it was faster for us to just do it all in LightWave and the owner felt that the Maya artists were too specialized. He wanted people who could literally do everything. The only people I knew that could do that were typically LightWave people and that's who he replaced the Maya artists with.
I had a very interesting conversation with the last Maya guy that was working there, a very talented Japanese guy names Nori. He was one of the few people I had met that seemed to be able to do more then one thing in Maya. Anyways, I came in late one night to check some shots. Nori was there and was checking out a Dan Dare site while something of his was rendering. He said that he was very impressed with the characters in Dan Dare...that they were not just half as good as Final Fantasies characters but easily 80% as good or closer. He then asked how long we had to model a character. I told him that at Foundation if you modeled a character you typically had to rig and texture it as well. When I told him that a typical character would take 3 - 5 days to do everything. He just looked shocked and said, "There is no way you could do that in Maya". I asked why and he just said that modeling, texturing and rigging take much longer.
Nori said that he knew that we used a lot of mocap and that Final Fantasy did too. He wanted to know how long it took to produce a half hour episode. I told him that we had 6 teams or so of 10 animators and each team had 6 - 8 weeks per episode. Again, he was shocked and said again that it couldn't be done in Maya in that timeframe. I also told him that in the 26 episodes of Dan Dare there was still plenty of hand keyed animation. In fact I told him that we did 20 or so episodes in about a year. This came out to almost 8 HOURS of animation in that time. As we discussed LightWave a bit more and I showed him how easy it was to use he admitted that he couldn't believe how powerful and inexpensive it was and that he was going to get it for his company.
The best compliment came from the owner after I finished on those 3 films. He called me about a new project they were expecting to get. He said, "Could you find me some more LightWave people who are like you (meaning well-rounded). I have really been impressed with the skill level and all-around knowledge they seem to have." I sent him several people I had worked with to submit resumes. He called me back to thank me and stressed how very impressed he was with these people and how much they know. LightWave allows good artists to excel and be great artists.
Proton: Are you a Star Wars or Star Trek Fan? Why?
LS: I'm a fan of both actually. I was 18 when the first Star Wars movie came out and the line was wrapped 3 times around the theatre. I first saw Star Trek when I was 8. That gave me a good 10 years to be primed for Star Wars. I was just blown away with it. Star Trek really influenced me greatly over the years and in a way both shows were an extension of the excitement I had for anything that had to do with space. I also want to say that I'm in no way, shape or form a Trekkie. I greatly enjoy the movies, TV shows and so on but I draw my line just before the line that says "geek" :) I will also admit that I have a TON of action figures. Two of my favorites are my 7 of 9 and Gorn figures. I actually live near where they shot that Gorn episode...okay...thats getting too geeky.... :)
Proton: You are currently on tour with the "NewTek Next Dimension Tour", can you share a little bit about the tour for those of us that haven't gone yet?
LS: I'm very excited about the Next Dimension Tour. I'm glad to see NewTek sponsoring awesome yet inexpensive training. I've been working with Lee Stranahan who has years of experience presenting seminars like this. Hes great to work with. I've been impressed with the people who have been showing up. I think the way that we're presenting is a good one. We try and present a LOT of information and cover topics that people really want to know about.
LightWave has reached a point where it's hard to find anyone who knows the whole program inside and out. There are so many new features that people want to know about, which is the reason we cover a lot of ground. We decided not to make these last two tours hands-on because then you limit how many people can show up, the costs go up and you cover only a small fraction of the material.
Hands-on classes can be good but usually in small groups and when you have more than two days. The downside also is that the slowest person in the class sets the pace for everyone. This makes more advanced people feel like they're losing out or beginners feel pressured to keep up. I've done hands-on seminars many, many times and two days in a group really isn't sufficient. We decided to go with a format where we present more information, take questions and let people take notes AND charge less. We realized that nobody could remember everything we covered so we created CDs that cover the same material as quicktime movies. This takes the pressure off attendees to take notes and struggle to remember it all. Its a great idea and gives greater value to the material.
I've noticed others trying to emulate what weve been doing except that the CD we include is the same material that we covered live. The World Wide Tour CD for example has close to 10 hours of quicktime movies on it. We cover: Basic Modeling, Modeling a head using one of the easiest methods out there, Texturing, Displacements, Gradients, Expressions, Modifiers, Graph Editor, Master channels, Sasquatch Lite, Motion Designer, Particles, Hypervoxels, Rigging and more.
I also want to point out that we cover material that I have never seen in any book or video so this isn't just a rehash.
Proton: If you had to sum up the tour in a few words what would they be?
LS: "Incredible bargain."
Proton: Tell us a little about your online training. It seems to be getting a lot of good reviews from the users online.
LS: I'm very happy that everyone's been excited about my courses and CDs.
I have two courses that I've developed with more on the way. I'm working with F/X Academy to develop a whole suite of distance learning courses and tutorials. I've always been interested in distance learning. I've worked with several schools and they have many of the same weaknesses: Only local people can afford to attend, most cost over $20,000.00 PLUS you have to leave your job, pay for rent and food to try and learn. This greatly limits who can afford to take your courses.
Another problem is that most schools don't have a real curriculum or a good one. Many rely on tutorials or use teachers with no real-world experience. I found that my online courses make it easy on a person's wallet. The courses are available to anyone on the planet. You can work them at your own pace, in your bedroom and around your schedule. People can ask questions through an online support forum, have their work critiqued and interact with other students. This has been working out very well for the students and everyone has shown great improvements or have downright shocked me with what they're able to do now.
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We currently have two courses available: The Professional Character Series and Introduction to LightWave. We also have the Seminar CDs for sale as well as more inexpensive tutorial CDs. The Character Course and Intro Course both come wth 3 months MINIMUM of online support time.
The Character Series is broken up into 4 parts:
Character modeling - This contains about 12 hours of lectures that teach how to model realistic heads, eyes, ears, teeth and tongue. The course then covers modeling torsos, arms, legs, hands feet and so forth. I show how to model using two techniques, Subpatches and Splines. I think I cover both in ways nobody else has and using easier methods then what I've seen to date out there.
Texturing - About 15 to 20 hours full of information on texturing, gradients, procedurals, UV maps and more.
Rigging - Another 10 or more hours of bones, skelegons, weightmaps, IK, expressions, muscles and on and on....
Animating - Several hours of animation principles, the 12 principles of animation with my own twist on them. Endomorphs, Lip Sync, Animating to audio, creating a dope sheet and so on.
The Intro Course covers LightWave and Modeler, Navigation in both programs, basic to intermediate modeling and so on. We work on a project that we model, texture, light and then animate. This also comes with 3 months online support.
The great thing is that you get to keep and watch the CDs as many times as needed. The students are great about helping each other out. Its been fantastic. If you've read the reviews and postings everyone is very excited. I show and explain tools and techniques in a way that are easy to remember.
Proton: Why CD? Why not a Book?
LS: Books by their nature are very limited as to what they can show and explain. In 5 minutes on a CD I can say and show things that would be very difficult and time consuming to put into a book. 3D is a medium best taught by showing and explaining it in real time. In a CD I can show something, change my mind and change what I'm showing several times. This is what I want to see...WHY someone does what they do. WHAT is the thought process they're going through. If someone changes their mind, I want to know why. I want to see HOW tools are really used. I can show so much more and explain so much more in this way than in a book. It takes ten times longer to produce a tenth as much information in a book. Some of my best friends are books. I own a ton of them but I use them mainly for reference (referring to 3D).
Proton: What are some of your favorite features about LightWave?
LS: That's a toughie. I've done a lot of character work so I really enjoy the modeling and layout tools for accomplishing this quickly. I also very much think that the surfacing/texturing tools are powerful. Over the past few months I've been taking the time to really figure out and learn other aspects of LightWave (as you can tell from my recent posts). I have come to realize that LightWave is far more powerful and capable then most people realize. I am VERY excited about the things that can be done with gradients and weight maps. You can control just about anything with those. I'm excited from a rigging standpoint that displacements and morphing can be controlled with gradients, weight maps and textures in some powerful ways. I'm pumped up about hypervoxels and particles. I've found so many things that they can do that I didn't realize. Keep in mind something. I've been using LightWave for a long time. I was a TD before because I have a pretty good all-around knowledge of LightWave. I've found out some things lately that make me feel that somone just handed me another $2000 dollars in free plugins. I really feel like I just got a new 3D program. I'm having a blast with it! :)
Proton: I see that you frequent the forums and mailing lists, what is your take on the LightWave community?
LS:I think the LightWave Community has to be insane. I can't believe how much information people share. In other 3D communities I've noticed a LOT less cooperation and people tend to hoard their knowledge to try and keep that edge. I've seen people like Lernie release free plugins that are awesome! The LightWave forums all over the web seem very busy. It's hard to keep up with! :)
Proton: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us.
LS:I appreciate the opportunity. I wouldn't trade what I'm doing for anything....well ok, maybe LightWave 8. :)
FX Academy
People can find out more at either: http://www.fxacademy.com/ or http://www.splinegod.com/
I've started a student gallery at: http://www.3dtrainingonline.com/studentwork
