I’m sure everyone in the CG community has heard about Nvidia Omniverse lately.

NVIDIA Omniverse is a powerful multi-GPU real-time simulation and virtual collaboration platform based on Pixar Universal Scenario Description (USD) and NVIDIA RTX™, dedicated to handling 3D production processes. The Omniverse virtual collaboration platform provides innovative workflows for industries such as architecture, engineering and construction, manufacturing, media and entertainment, and supercomputing.

Especially in the production control of film and television and animation production, how does ** collaborate on the same 3D scene anytime and anywhere? How do you find a medium or platform that accommodates the software used by all participants and produces the same result? ** Just leave these questions to Omniverse!

How to download and use Omniverse? What new possibilities does Omniverse bring to film/animation production? In this issue, Renderbus invited Mr. Shi Ye, technical director of Shanghai Yunxi Digital Technology, as the main lecturer to explain the process changes and possibilities brought by Omniverse to the pan-film and television field. In addition, Senior technical expert Shen Ying from Autodesk and Senior Technology Marketing Manager Shi Chengqiu from NVIDIA China will be the special guests of this live broadcast and answer your questions during the Q&A session. Such a luxurious guest lineup, quickly scan the following TWO-DIMENSIONAL code, learn together, progress together

At the end of the live broadcast, lucky audience who sign up with 10 digits of scan code will get a gift of ** Ruiyun rendering ** customized mouse pad + small fan. Scan the QR code below to make an appointment for live broadcast

Lock Renderbus ruiyun Render STATION B broadcast room on July 15, 8:30-10:30pm, let’s be there!

intro

Shi Ye Shanghai Jun Xi Digital Technology Director

  • Unreal Engine Senior lecturer

  • Judge of NCDA Awards National College Digital Art Design Competition

  • Distinguished lecturer of Shanghai International Fashion Education Center

Since she entered CG industry in 2003, she has worked as visual r&d, CG director and PM, and participated in many large-scale national projects such as the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympic Games and Shanghai World Expo.

During the 15 years in the CG industry, I have accumulated a large amount of experience in the production, development and management of CG special effects production, interactive cutscenes, car advertisements, ball screen, circle screen films, theme park special films and other projects.

Representative works

The opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

Big footprints

The five rings together

World Expo 2010 Shanghai

  • Expo Opening Ceremony pujiang giant LED image project

  • Shipbuilding Museum (Jiangnan Shipyard) digital content exhibition item

  • Online Expo digital exhibition items and other series of projects

Main Work Experience

  • 2018~2020: Application and education of Unreal Engine in film, television and animation fields

  • 2016~2018: Interactive special films and VR films based on Unreal Engine

  • 2011~2016: TVC, automobile release conference, enterprise publicity, film and television special effects

  • 2010: Participated in Shanghai World Expo series projects, special effects director /PM

  • 2008: Participated in the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympic Games, special effects director /TD

  • 2003~2007: Shanghai Crystal Stone, CG director of architectural design visual presentation

Red cloud interview

1. Ruiyun Rendering: What is the opportunity for you to step into CG industry? Can you share your learning and working experience?

Shi Ye: I have been particularly interested in CG animation in science fiction movies and games since I was a child. I learned 3ds Max by myself in college, and my work was accepted by a Canadian academy of Film and television Special effects and offered me an offer. But just before going to Canada to study in 2001, the United States broke out in the September 11 attacks, which led to the denial of all Canadian visas at that time, leading to the tragic loss of a CG talent in Hollywood.

In 2001, a Taiwanese game company and a training institution in Shanghai jointly organized a nine-month training course on closed game technology. I was the first student, probably the earliest graduate of “wild game major” in China.

After a period of unity intense and lively games after class learning, I successfully entered the domestic building visual design company leader: crystal (Shanghai), start from the architectural animation rendering division, served as a rendering team leader, the special effects team leader, the position of director of technical guidance and CG, during responsible for lead or participate in a number of municipal and national project.

2. Ruiyun Rendering: How did you get into the CG production of the Opening ceremony of Beijing Olympic Games? This is a very glorious and arduous task. Could you please introduce the project background, the content of the project and how long the production took?

Shi Ye: The 2008 Beijing Olympics was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for China to show itself to the world, and crystal stone was the leader in the domestic commercial visual field at that time, so the task of digital content production for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games fell to it. Chief designer zhang ShiYao will the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games into a grand giant show an unprecedented shock, make a card represents the image of China’s new world, design a large number of computer CG images and live-action content (even for several years since the whole of the business needs of the exhibition industry, digital content), digital content production capacity, Even at that time, the whole Beijing crystal stone has more than 500 employees, still can not digest all the production work independently, so the headquarters from the national branches of the elite, support the front line.

I was fortunate enough to join the research and development of the digital image of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games with several other colleagues as the reinforcements of Shanghai Company. The entire opening ceremony was a state secret project with a closed-door, militarized management system. Zhang yimou and his team were “locked” in a small stadium in Beijing, and each time they went in for a briefing, the personnel vetting process took longer than the actual meeting. At that time, an entire floor of the Beijing Crystal stone was dedicated to the “Olympic Opening Ceremony” floor. Armed police were stationed at the entrance of the office, and id checks were required for entry and exit, which was stricter than airplane security checks.

The entire opening ceremony was planned almost two years in advance, and Crystal was part of Zhang yimou’s design team almost from the start. The colleague sent by our Shanghai company to volunteer also went there for nearly a year, and was released after serving his sentence just before the Opening of the Olympics.

3. Ruiyun rendering: What specific content did you participate in the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympic Games? Xiaobian did not notice the trace of CG production, how did you achieve such vivid and shocking visual effects? What were the biggest challenges you faced and how did you solve them?

Shi Ye: I have participated in the production of digital content such as “Big Footprint”, “Convergence of five Rings” and “2008 Smiling Faces of children”. One of the most noteworthy is “Big Footprint”.

The countdown to the opening ceremony was marked by the famous fireworks show “Big Footprints” designed by CAI Guoqiang, the chief designer of the fireworks. According to CAI guoqiang’s design, when the opening ceremony begins, the large footprint shape of fireworks will start from the yongding gate in the central axis, step by step “step” to the Bird’s Nest Olympic opening ceremony site. However, the creative team considered the weather and traffic control factors during the live broadcast of the opening ceremony, which may lead to poor live effect, and the opening ceremony, which concerns the whole Image of China, will not tolerate any mistakes. Therefore, as early as six months before the opening ceremony, we made a preparatory plan. This preparatory plan is to make part of the aerial picture of the big footprint into CG in case of emergency.

The difficulty of CG production of “Big Footprint” is divided into two parts: digital modeling of central axis scene and special effects production of fireworks of big Footprint. The urban model team needs to start from Yongdingmen gate and make 3d models of the architecture and road environment along the whole route from the Forbidden City, Tian ‘anmen Square, Drum Tower Avenue to the National Stadium, namely the Bird’s Nest. In addition to modeling, the difficulty also needs to achieve a real city night scene. Thanks to the accumulation of crystal stone in the field of urban planning modeling and architectural performance for many years, this part of the work is relatively easy.

The biggest problem, however, is the seemingly simple fireworks effect. Before I took over, the original special effects team had tried to use Houdini, Nuke and other special effects software to create cool fireworks effects, but the chief designer’s requirements were “they must be exactly the same”, CG version of fireworks must not look any different from the actual fireworks, otherwise they would be broken. For this reason, we specially went to the outskirts of Beijing for many times in the late night to see the actual setting off effect of fireworks made by CAI Guoqiang, and took hd video as a reference. After I took over the CG effects of Dafootprints fireworks, considering the difficulty of production, the workload of rendering and synthesis, the workload of modification and other comprehensive factors, I chose a tool that special effects experts could never imagine: PArray (Particle array) particle system of 3DS Max. It is a very old particle system, and even despised by most of the peers, but it is fast, easy, I use it and the modelling of the footprints of a fine adjustment by frame model, the final render the fireworks effects from the fireworks upward trajectory, the brightness changes, to go out after smoke, and real fireworks shot video almost did the images of pixel level. I also played a trick during the presentation. I edited the CG fireworks and the shooting fireworks side by side, and deliberately marked the caption in reverse. As a result, I fooled MOE and other critical directors and passed the acceptance test. I’ve been hiding this from MOE for over 10 years.

4. Ruiyun Rendering: You have participated in the production, research and development and management of CG visual effects, ball-screen/round-screen films, advertising films and other projects of many films and TV programs. Do pipelines differ for different project types? Can you take a specific project as an example to introduce your and your team’s pipeline on production? How to improve production efficiency?

Shi Ye: AFTER I left Crystal stone, I started my own business and made almost all kinds of commercial CG films. Although they all come to the same end as “making films”, the different needs of each industry lead to different production processes and focus points.

Two examples are the report class and the theme park class. The so-called reports generally refer to the films when the architectural design process or industrial production process is reported to the relatively less professional leaders through visual methods. The focus of such films is not the final visual effect, but the clear communication of a process or information. In terms of visual design, we will pay more attention to the design of information visualization, simplify the irrelevant part as far as possible, and emphasize the expression of the core content. In addition, such products often face frequent modifications and adjustments during production, which can have an unpredictable impact on production costs. Therefore, we need a simple and fast real-time pipeline, such as **SU(SketchUp) and TW(Twinmotion)**, so that customers can make changes immediately.

And in the world of theme park specialty films, visual impact is everything. We use a set of unreal engine based pipeline, most of the work such as scene, material, lighting, special effects and so on are completed in UE. While UE can greatly improve work efficiency, “catching up with film and television pictures” is the biggest challenge we face. High-precision model scenes, real-time ray tracking GI, reflection, projection, and so on are all powerful tools to improve picture quality, and these must be built on a strong and stable hardware platform.

Basically summed up, real-time is the trend, is the future. No matter what software we use, we have to live rendering pipeline, workstation is basically equipped with 2 or 3 series RTX architecture graphics cards. Therefore, what we are looking forward to most now is your factory’s promotion activities. It wouldn’t smell so good if there was a trade-in for old customers.

5. Ruiyun Rendering: Your latest UE4 work unreal World Magic Academy was created by you personally. How long did it take? Could you give us a brief introduction of the production process of this work?

Shi Ye: Now we are transitioning to education and training. AboutCG and I jointly launched a UE film and television course, aiming to pass on our experience in UE film and television projects over the years and cultivate talents that are scarce in the whole industry: CG Artists who can tell a good story. There must be an attractive Promo Demo for making courses, and my course aims to cultivate students’ ability of “single-soldier combat”. Therefore, I plan to make this 4-minute short film with UE alone to verify its feasibility.

It took me more than 6 months to complete the whole short film from planning to final modification. It took about 2 months for the planning, script, lines dubbing and other work, and about 4 months for scene production, animation, lighting and rendering, post editing and so on. Since it is a personal work, the process of cooperation with the team is somewhat different, there is no communication cost, so the efficiency is very high. The whole storyboard is in my head, so I directly pushed the camera in the scene to make Previz.

I think the CG director’s job is to tell a good story, not to train an actor and a makeup artist. The biggest feature of my course is that I don’t teach any raw asset production, such as modeling, K-animation, and texturing. It’s about teaching you how to use your existing assets to create moving CG that’s cool enough to move people. Therefore, for this Demo, I used unreal Mall’s commercial products on assets, such as some scenes and characters, and I bought legitimate materials. Everything else, such as scene integration, animation, special effects, lighting, editing, music and sound effects, was done by myself.

6. Rayyun Rendering: There are many different scenes in Unreal World, such as treasure cave, underwater world, zombie city, etc. What is your favorite scene? What was the biggest challenge in making these scenes?

Shiye: My favorite was the scene with the nutty wizard. My reference is the ending scene of Half Life: Alyx, a popular VR game at that time. The protagonist talks to a mysterious person in the first person in a mysterious dark world, which occasionally shuttles through a different world. The atmosphere is mysterious and weird, full of fantastical possibilities.

The challenge is how to keep a slightly longer dialogue (a monologue, really) from being boring while still delivering that weird, slightly creepy vibe.

7. Ruiyun Rendering: You are constantly learning new CG production methods, from 3DS Max, Maya to UE4. What do you think is the biggest influence of UE4 on film and television animation production?

Shi Ye: The liberation of productive forces. Traditional offline rendering is great, but the biggest problem with it is that it takes too long to render locally. I’ve been interested in the possibility of using a game engine in the field of film and television animation since 2005, when CryENGINE was first developed. At that time, the technology was not satisfactory, but it gave me a glimmer of hope until the release of UE4, which made me feel that my dream of many years was really coming true.

Those of you who have done rendering know that most of your time is spent not polishing your scene, but waiting to test render. Any CG company must have a rooftop full of cigarette butts. The man standing smoking in the corner of the roof is not contemplating life, but waiting for the test rendering to end. This short is tens of seconds, long dozens of minutes of shading time, will be the original complete working time forcibly broken up into fragments of time, this time the renderer smoke a cigarette brush, shake a sound to go to the bathroom to eat a meal, thinking and feeling were smashed.

The ** real-time rendering ** brought by UE4 basically cured my smoking addiction. I can’t stop playing lianliankan every day (we call UE node programming lianliankan).

8. Ruiyun Rendering: Many CG enthusiasts and practitioners prefer technical practice, how do you think to practice to achieve both “technical” and “aesthetic”? Can you share your learning secrets?

Shiye: One of the things that newcomers to the CG industry tend to overlook is that aesthetic appreciation also requires practice. The most exciting time for CG artists like us is when a new version of software is released. We call the first person to learn a new piece of software a techie. At the beginning of every technology, what big companies want most is someone who knows that software technology. But after a while, it turns out that they are the most abundant. But the skill here is really nothing more than familiarity with the tools. As the revelation in the previous case of big footprints suggests, no matter how well you use a hammer, you don’t have enough aesthetic ability to carve a moving statue.

The way to exercise beauty is simple: see more, think more, and do more. Read excellent works, from big films to award-winning short films to photographic works, as well as all kinds of aesthetic theory, film and television theory books. To think more is to analyze those excellent works, to analyze the author’s intention, to see the author’s way of implementation, to figure out the author’s technical thinking; To do more is to make the previous ones into your work and test your knowledge with practice. The so-called unity of knowledge and action.

9. Ruiyun Rendering: You have worked in visual research and development, CG director, PM and other jobs. What qualities and skills do you think are important for your role transition from artist to management? What management tools or methods can you use to improve team collaboration?

Shiye: As a result of doing all this, MY experience is that technical management and people management are two very different jobs, and our bosses tend to get the two wrong. CG circles tend to have this phenomenon: skills and excellence are official. Bosses often promote people with good skills to be managers, to lead the team. This is often wrong. Management work is faced with rules, procedures, and even the people’s understanding, not IQ, but eq. And that’s not necessarily what a good technician has. So the common result is that you have one less skilled person and one more mediocre manager. I believe in letting high IQ people do technology and high EQ people do management. But that’s another topic.

For teamwork, the most important thing is process communication. That seems to be one of Omniverse’s strengths. In addition to its excellent real-time rendering capabilities, the OV’s greatest strength is that it allows artists to share their work in real time. I can directly see the progress and status of everyone on the assembly line in the final picture, just like supervising workers on the site. This way of working will bring the entire visual design industry can not be underestimated.

10. Ruiyun rendering: In your career, what is the person or thing that has a profound influence on you, can you share?

Shi Ye: I would like to thank every colleague in my early years at Crystal Stone. Their tolerance and selflessness gave me countless opportunities for trial and error.

I would like to thank every partner on the road of entrepreneurship. Your trust has given me the courage to move forward.

I would also like to thank each of my customers, your timely payment of the project has brought me a very firm motivation for progress!

11. Ruiyun Rendering: Finally, anything else you want to say to CG enthusiasts?

Steve: Keep it exciting! Stay hungry! … Don’t starve to death.

More on Omniverse

NVIDIA Omniverse™ is an open platform designed for virtual collaboration and accurate real-time simulation of physical properties. The complex visual workflows of creators, designers, and engineers are also transforming as users and teams connect key design tools, resources, and projects in a shared virtual space for collaborative iterations.

Omniverse product features

Real-time collaboration between users and applications

Real-time integration of user and mainstream industry 3D design tools on a single interactive platform. Update, iterate, and change in real time without preparing data, simplifying the workflow.

Real time speed, offline work quality

Omniverse offers scalable, true real-time ray tracking and path tracking. Get beautiful, physical properties accurate and realistic visual effects in real time.

RTX technology helps simulate real world scenarios

Build once, render everywhere. Transfer photorealistic photos rendered by NVIDIA RTX™ technology to any of your devices. Easily share your work and make sure it’s presented correctly.

What process changes and possibilities have Omniverse brought to the pan-film and television field? Scan the QR code below so we can watch live, learn technology and draw gifts together.

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