Interview Rod Seffen

AN INTERVIEW WITH Rod Seffen

Q. Hi could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background in CG?

I only got into computers and CG about 4-5 years ago. Before that I did some oil painting, watercolors, and portraits, but only as a small hobby. I have no official art training at all; I didn’t even do art class at high school.

I’ve spent most of the years since starting CG working on game mods for the experience, which is a good idea if you want commercial game work.

Q. So, you are a freelancer, may I know what the reason of not joining any studio is?

I live in Northern Ireland; there is very little CG work around here, so I’m just some doing some freelance work while training myself, until I think I’m good enough to get a decent commercial job - in England probably. I don’t want to start off as the guy who fetches the coffee and does the UV mapping.

Q. What software program(s) do you use for your CG and why?

I use Lightwave. I’ve been using since I started. I instantly loved the interface and clean workflow. When I started 4 years ago, I think it was the only dedicated modeling available, and that that time was clearly the best modeling software on the market.

There are more and more dedicated modeling apps these days, and I’ve tried them all, but none of them have lured me away from Lightwave.

I’ve basically got my Lightwave workflow so finely tuned, and integrate with the program so perfectly, that another app would have to be amazing to make me change.

AN INTERVIEW WITH Rod Seffen

Q. If you could invent your dream job, where would you work & what would be your job title?

I suppose being a character artist somewhere like WETA and working on movies like Lord of the Rings, which I think had the best CG work I’ve ever seen. I’ve a way to go to reach that level, but I think the creative freedom and job satisfaction would be a lot higher than working in a game studio.

Q. Please tell us what “The Dark Mod” is and what work you have done in that?

The dark mod is a project that will give fans of the Thief series of games a toolset to make their own levels. It is based on the Doom 3 engine, but we are doing a total conversion, we are changing everything except the renderer (and that’s only because we haven’t got access to the render code)

I was the character modeler on that, and made around 1 characters for it. I quit recently because it was just using up too much of my time, and I felt I wasn’t progressing the way I want to be. I’m the sort of guy who either commits to something 100% or not at all.

Q. Of all of your artwork, which piece is your personal favorite and why?

The last piece I’ve completed is always my favourite. I aim to always improve, and if I’m doing that successfully, then my latest work will always be my best one. My last completed work was The Milkmaid, and that was the best I’ve ever made, so it is my favourite.

AN INTERVIEW WITH Rod Seffen

Q. Please tell us in detail about your latest work “The Milkmaid”.

The Milkmaid is obviously a famous painting by Johannes Vermeer, a Dutch artist from the 1th century. I have loved the painting since I first saw it on the cover of a book in the library when I was about 15. I think it is one of the best paintings ever created. Unfortunately I still haven’t seen it in real life, but I hope to rectify that one day.

I have wanted to reproduce it in 3d since I first started using computers, but knew I didn’t have the skill at the time, so I was waiting until I felt I was good enough to do it justice.

The modeling was pretty straightforward really, the most difficult items being the face and the bread basket. The face was difficult because it is hard to get a good likeness with only that one awkward angle to view it from. I spent a lot of time tweaking that.

The texturing was pretty tricky. I wanted to retain the feeling of an oil painting. I used a lot of heavy, broken bump maps

so the specular highlights would look like thick dabs of paint, and to give it an overall feeling of impasto brushwork.

I also used gradients tied to incident angle and light incidence to get the vibrant colors Vermeer used, and gradients tied to vertex maps I painted on the models. I painted about 40 texture maps for this as well.

Lightwave’s surface editor has a layer system, and I used it to build up layers of ‘paint’ on surfaces like the jug and bowl, using alpha layers tied to vertex maps.

The lighting was perhaps the hardest part of all. Almost

AN INTERVIEW WITH Rod Seffen

every object had to have its own unique light tied only to itself, sometimes one only for specular, or only to cast the SSS illumination, like on the hat and bread basket. Fortunately there is a great plug-in for Lightwave called Fprime which allows you to move lights in your scene and it updates your render in real time. That helped a lot with tweaking the 3 lights in this scene.

The main light comes from a big area light emanating from the window, and the fill mainly comes from radiosity/final gathering, with a bunch of point and spot lights getting all the objects highlights and shadows exactly right.

Q. What advice would you give to future wanna be modelers out there?

Well, for character modeling, you have to study anatomy. You don’t even need a 3d package; all you need is a pencil and paper. You have to have intimate knowledge of realistic human anatomy before you can start doing variations of it to create monsters, aliens, caricatures, manga, etc.

Knowledge of your subject, whatever that may be, is 90% of the battle. Actually moving the vertices around to create the model, is the easy part.

Most of us haven’t got access to live human models. So the best thing you can do is get a DV camera and film yourself. Whatever poses it is you are trying to model, take movies of yourself in that pose. A movie is much better than a photo, it’s nearly impossible to get a good idea of the complex topology of human anatomy from still d images. With video footage you can see how the muscles contort into and out of the pose, which helps a lot. The best thing to do is to desaturate it to remove the distracting colour.

Q. What are your hobbies and where you see yourself after 5 years?

I play the classical guitar (badly) I’ve never put the same amount of work into it as into my art. I workout 4 times a week, and the rest of my time is spent chained to my computer forcing knowledge and skill into my brain.

I’d hope to be working in the industry in 5 years time, ideally in movies rather than games, and as a character artist.

AN INTERVIEW WITH Rod Seffen

More realistically, I’ll probably be working on games, because the work is a lot easier to get. I’ll at least try to find a studio that makes games that I like to play, so I can get some kind of job satisfaction from it.

Freelancing is too difficult, and I’m not a good businessman, which is really where the success lies in freelancing.

Q. Are you working on any projects currently? If so, what are they?

Mainly just some boring archviz work, which you don’t want to see. Aside from that I’m getting back to an anatomy study I started a while ago but never finished. It’s from a sculpture called ‘Fleuve’ by Augustine Pajou.

Coming up, I’ll be converting another painting to 3d. It’s ‘Saint Eulalia’ by J W Waterhouse (previous page image). It’s a tough challenge, and a lot of work, but that’s the only way to improve.

Q. Anything you like to add? It is your chance now to state your opinion about anything.

I suppose I could rant on about the terrible state the games industry is currently in. I literally don’t buy games any more at all. They bore me to tears. I feel like I’m constantly being asked to play the same game over and over again, just with slightly better graphics.

How to solve this problem is another issue, and I don’t have the answer. My favorite game studios were Looking Glass Studios, who made the Thief series and the System Shock series, Black Isle Studios and Bioware, who made games such as the excellent Baldur’s Gate series (BG is the best game ever made IMO) planescape:torment, the Fallout games, Knights of the Old Republic. Neverwinter nights, etc

I think those developers are great examples of people who really cared about their work. They were craftsmen, not just factory workers knocking out a product to make a quick buck, and that’s the way I see 99% of the games industry today. I can’t image anyone is happy making nameless shooter #345, and so they don’t put any loving care into it, just do a job.

Thanks a lot Rod for your valuable time.

Website: www.pixelwerks.be Email: odditycg@gmail.com