StarCraft Universe has won CGRecord | RebusFarm Reel of the Month #2

StarCraft Universe has won CGRecord | RebusFarm Reel of the Month #2

[ #RebusFarm #ROTM #StarCraft ]CG Record and RebusFarm has announced that StarCraft Universe has won The Reel of the Month #2 Award. This is StarCraft fan Film by RealtimeUK's Senior Artist Chris Scubli. The third in his series of fan trailers for StarCraft Universe which took Chris's two and a half years to complete. Character animation by John Batchelor, and modeling handled by Andreea Scubli. Check out the movie below!

>> Submit your Reel or film on CGRecord TV to win CGRecord | RebusFarm Reel of the Month

Chris Scubli is kind enough to have sometime for CG Record Interview:

CGRecord: Hi Chris First of all congratulation for the Reel of the Month Award. Please give us an over view of StarCraft Universe and something about StarCraft Universe on Indiegogo.
Chris Scubli: First of all, thank you so much for the feature on CGRecord! StarCraft Universe is a fan-made mod, created by a small team of passionate StarCraft players using the built-in level editor that comes with the game. The mod combines several gameplay elements from Diablo, World of Warcraft and StarCraft, and can be played cooperatively with a group of friends using the freely available StarCraft II Starter Edition. The project itself is on Indiegogo seeking post-launch support, as the game itself is already complete. As I was starting work on my latest StarCraft animated short film several years ago, I got in touch with the StarCraft Universe team and decided to make my animation be about this mod, so they can use it as a trailer while I get to make another fun short film.

CGRecord: You've said that StarCraft is the reason that you decided to be a CG Artist, But Making a StarCraft is the goal from the beginning?
Chris Scubli: I first started messing around with digital graphics software when I was 12 years old, after playing the first StarCraft game. At the time, I just wanted to see what I can create and if this is something I want to spend more time doing. A decade later, in 2009, the marketing campaign for StarCraft II was ramping up. I had been working in the industry for a few years at the time and I was so inspired and excited by StarCraft II that I created my own fan-animation for it. It was a so fun to do and I managed to improve a lot techniques working on it. That animation got a good reception, so I immediately moved on to my next one and now at last I have finished the third in the series. It's been quite a journey.

CGRecord: Spent your personal time on and off for the past two and a half years to create the animation how you get balance between Company work and Personal work. How your wife support you? And How Realtime Support you?
Chris Scubli: Having been a freelancer a few years ago, I learned a lot about self-discipline and sorting out a personal schedule. Otherwise everything just goes out of control. This has helped me create a decent balance between company work and personal work, without going insane. There have been sleepless nights here and there, but it's all worth it in the end. Of course, work always has priority, so every time we got really busy at the studio I'd take several weeks or months off working on the StarCraft animation. My wife, Andreea has been very supportive of this, especially since we both work in the same industry, so she dedicated her own spare time to join me on this project and created some amazing models. It turned into this awesome activity that we would spend time on together. Several of my colleagues at RealtimeUK showed interest in my progress on this and they helped with spreading the word when we released the animation. I also got John from RealtimeUK and his wife to do the character animation for me, for which I am very grateful.

CGRecord:Could you please share some breakdown. The interesting technique,, the plugin, and software that you used
Chris Scubli: Main software on this was 3ds Max, rendering with V-Ray and compositing in After Effects. I was very happy with the release of V-Ray 3 and it's subsequent updates, as its new lights, skin shader and material BRDF were very useful in generating the look I was after for the project.

CGRecord: How do you think keeping do personal project is important for CG Artist to update their workflow, portfolio ?
Chris Scubli: These sort of personal projects are a great creative outlet and they nurture passion. I find it important to maintain a passion for CG, and not treat it as just a job. If the passion dies off, what's the point? You can also experiment with new techniques and risk more because you're not under a deadline. It is the ideal sandbox scenario for growing your skillset. It's also a plus to add personal work of high quality in your portfolio because it shows clients or employers that CG is more than a 9 to 5 job for you. In fact you sacrifice your own time to create and explore because it means that much to you. If you lack experience or are not allowed to show your latest and best commercial work, the best way to update your portfolio is with an awesome personal project. This gets you attention and attracts the type of work you want to do.

Credits
Additionally, you can support and learn more about StarCraft Universe
Andreea Scubli
Joseph Harford
Christina Batchelor
David Orr
Special thanks to Realtime UK Team to support us during the interview. Hope you see this message Zoe Matthews!

About Reel of the Month Sponsors

Main Sponsor: RebusFarm GmbH
The Sponsor for Reel of the Month - RebusFarm is a leading render farm service which instantly provides you with 5000 XEON CPUs to render your animations and still-images. Winning Reel of the Month means you will get 350 RenderPoints worth 350 Euro from RebusFarm.

co-Sponsor Real Displacement texture
The Real Displacement texture are produced by using highly detailed 3d-scans to get accurate color and depth informations from a real location with polycounts up to 20.000.000 and native scan-resolutions over 16k. Using a image-based-lightcancelling-process to reduce the light and shadows in the diffuse-map. All maps are provided with layers for glossyness, roughness, ambient occlusion and more, so it's prepared for physical rendering. Most maps are leveled to set it to 100% and it fits - so you save time setting up a material. Normal-maps is provided as a alternative to the displacement, or to support it. With these textures you can reconstruct the original surface incl. the geometry with a minimum of resources and a maximum of speed and flexiblity. Winning Reel of the Month means you will get 03 Free Collection of Real Displacement texture.

Please Submit your Reel or film on CGRecord TV to win CGRecord | RebusFarm Reel of the Month !

  More about Spotlight