After three years, the long-awaited 3rd Pan-CG Practical Technology Exchange Conference - Guangzhou-Shenzhen Station was successfully held in Tianhe, Guangzhou on December 16, 2023, and Rainbow Technology Marketing Chen Lizhen Rachel served as the host of this event.
Since its first event in Shenzhen at the end of 2019, the Pan-CG Practical Technology Exchange Conference has been successfully held for three sessions, building an open platform for face-to-face technical exchanges for thousands of CG enthusiasts and practitioners online and offline. The pan-CG practical technology exchange meeting once again came to Guangzhou, focusing on the "exploration of the use of new technologies in the film and television animation production process" to present a technical "feast" for all industry partners.
In this exchange meeting, we invited Zhang Xinxin, founder and CEO of Zesen Science and Industry and a well-known scientist in computer graphics, Xu Hongwei, R&D director of FaceGood, Li Hongshan, an expert in Huawei Cloud MetaEngine engine, Yang Bin, a senior 3D character production designer of NetEase, and Li Yuguang, rendering technology director of Dawn Cloud. Five industry technology experts appeared one after another to share the latest CG technology dry goods on the spot: the project application practice of domestic DCC software, the solution of facial animation technical problems, the industry case sharing of self-developed cloud-native graphics engine to reduce costs and increase efficiency, the latest AI tools in the CG production workflow and the application of render farm SDK in the production process of film and television animation.
The sudden drop in temperature on the day of the event did not stop the enthusiasm of CG enthusiasts who rushed to the scene despite the cold wind.
This event not only attracted many TD, TA and RD from well-known manufacturers such as Tencent, NetEase, and Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, but also many well-known animation production companies in the industry, such as Yidong, Heyu Wenshi, Baiman, Popcorn, and Foshan Moxing.
In the exchange and interaction session, the audience actively participated, actively asked questions, and the sharing guests were also willing to answer questions for everyone, and the technical topics of CG were shared together, and the atmosphere was warm and harmonious. This is also the purpose of the pan-CG practical technology exchange meeting - to provide a platform for free communication for CG enthusiasts.
During the intermission, Ruiyun not only prepared an exquisite tea break for the guests and partners, but also prepared a surprise blind box wall to send good wishes to the CG people who are working silently behind the scenes at the end of 2023.
We also adopted an online live broadcast in this event, so that friends from all over the country can participate in the sharing and discussion through the ** live broadcast.
Zhang Xinxin
Share the topic: Zeno - Procedural Art & Modeling System
Guest introduction: Founder and CEO of Zesen Science and Industry, a well-known scientist in computer graphics, a master's degree in computer science from New York University, a doctorate in computer science from the University of British Columbia, focusing on the research of graphics algorithms for many years, and serving as a judge of authoritative journals and conferences in computer graphics such as Siggraph, Siggraph Asia, Eurographics, Pacific Graphics, TVCG, and Graphic Forum. He has worked in Hollywood Pixar Animation Studio, WTA Studio, Beijing Film Academy Advanced Laboratory, and Tencent, and his scientific research results have been widely used in Hollywood and domestic film and television special effects.
Dr. Zhang Xinxin showed the participation of Zeno in the Wandering Earth and Hangzhou Asian Games project, and let us see its powerful fluid-structure interaction computing capabilities. By analyzing the production principles of some film and television clips, Dr. Zhang also demonstrated the three major characteristics of the Zeno muscle settlement system. In addition, as a complete procedural modeling tool, Zeno's complete terrain functions and powerful pipeline construction capabilities made the audience frequently sigh at the rapid development of domestic DCC software.
Use technology to break through the boundaries of imagination and create"The art of programming"Let CG creators open a new 3D creative experience. As the first in China"Programmatic""The whole process"The application performance of 3D content generation software and Zeno in actual projects allows us to see the infinite possibilities of domestic DCC software. I believe that in the future, there will be more and more personal computers that will be able to use Zeno to create film-level fluid effects!
Xu Hongwei
Share the topic: How to solve the technical problems of facial animation
Guest introduction: R&D director of computer science and technology of Quantum Power (Shenzhen), published many articles in IEEE trans academic journals. Lead the R&D team to complete the **atary expression capture pipeline, including software tracker, retargeter, livedrive (seattle), fogo (depth camera), etc.
Mr. Xu Hongwei introduced in detail the 3D facial full-process production software **atary, which was independently developed by the FaceGood team, empowering global 3D content creators, helping users efficiently solve the problems of collection, analysis, driving and fast binding of facial expressions, and greatly improving the efficiency and quality of animation, movies, and game CG facial animation production.
Li Hongshan
Share the topic: metaengine - cloud native engine
Introduction: HUAWEI CLOUD MetaEngine graphics engine technical expert, graduated from Shandong University and Tsinghua University with a master's degree, presided over the design and implementation of the cloud-native multi-view shared rendering pipeline on Metaengine, led the research and development of multiple key technologies of MetaEngine engine, and was the author of a number of graphics invention patents.
Ms. Li Hongshan introduced HUAWEI CLOUD's self-developed cloud-native graphics engine-MetaEngine, and demonstrated its physical rendering cases of cars, jewelry, and water bodies. In addition, visual editors and blueprint systems such as scene animation, particles, terrain, materials, scripts in Metaengine, built-in program debugging tools, fast platform packaging capabilities, quick docking cloud rendering deployment, rich material system PBR and enhanced multi-layer materials, a variety of anti-aliasing technologies such as MSAA TAA, realistic particle effects, real-time GI global illumination, The many characteristics of real-time ray tracing, high scalability and high performance also made the audience look forward to more ecological cooperation applications of domestic 3D cloud rendering engines.
Yang Bin
Sharing Theme: Innovation and Breakthrough - CG Creation and IP Expansion in the AIGC Era
Guest introduction: Senior 3D character production designer of NetEase, graduated from Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts with a bachelor's degree in arts and crafts, Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology with a master's degree in art, and has 8 years of experience in game development. Since graduation, he has been working in Guangzhou NetEase Games as a senior 3D character production designer. He is good at character material expression, stylized rendering, and the exploration and establishment of process pipelines.
Awards: 2020 Team Development and Progress Award - Outstanding Contribution Award, 2021 NetEase Game - Art Innovation Award, 2022 Art Innovation Award Ingenuity Award & Best Popularity Award, 2022 Salon - Most Concerned Award, 2022 Alliance Outstanding Contribution - Innovation Breakthrough Award, 2023 AIGC Innovation Competition Group First Prize.
Related patents: Painting style rendering based on PBR pipeline, procedural hand-drawn style material.
Through AIGC's creative experiments, Mr. Yang Bin has shown us the best and most practical application scenarios that AI can currently land in the workflow, from the early world view conception, script writing, character design to the later output concept demo. In the early stage of the project, the visual direction is efficiently presented, which greatly saves the production cost.
While it's important to follow the guidelines correctly, that doesn't mean that our artistic instincts have to be disregarded. It's the artistic perspective that really gives personality to the material. Its story is revealed through carefully crafted details and methods of expression. It is important to understand the principles and use the guidelines to distill valid information and draw inferences from others. In addition, Mr. Yang Bin finally shared some practical guidelines for his PBR texture creation, and emphasized that "in the creativity itself, the focus is not on what AI can do, but on what kind of content value you want to create." ”
Li Yuguang
Share topic: Renderbus SDK submits tasks and monitors them in a deadline
Guest introduction: Technical Director of Rendering of Dawn Technology, has been deeply involved in the CG industry for more than 15 years. The projects supported by the rendering include "The Wandering Earth", "Deep Sea", "Changjin Lake", "Lion Boy", "Nezha's Demon Boy Descends to the World", "Bear Infested" series of movies "Jue Ji" and TV series "Three-Body Problem".
Brother Guang brought us the theme sharing of "Renderbus SDK Submit Tasks and Monitor in Deadline". Renderbus is a full-featured Python SDK, covering a variety of secondary development needs, with easy integration, high reliability, and a few lines of **, you can easily control Renderbus cloud rendering. It is easily embedded anywhere in the process, whether it is in the CG software menu, or in the process management software work page, or in the local rendering management software, it can be seamlessly integrated with Renderbus cloud rendering, easily realize automatic submission of rendering jobs, and monitor the rendering progress in real time, so as to empower the workflow of film and television animation production in the later stage.
Sharing theme: A new era of film and television animation production
In the roundtable session, the guests first made a brief report on the new technologies they have been researching recently. Mr. Yang Bin shared his private stylized research, and Mr. Li Hongshan introduced himself and his team's exploration and real-life 3D reconstruction in multi-view rendering and 3D Gauss. **It is mentioned that MetaEngine is also doing some stylized exploration, as an engine tool provider, I hope to collect more feedback on everyone's needs and creative pain points.
In the interaction with the on-site partners, Beard briefly investigated the current use of traditional DCC software such as 3DS Max and Maya through the number of hands raised in the audience, and expressed his own opinions on the popular "blender" and "UE" used in the current event activities: like AI, all 3D software is just tools, and the most important thing is that the user himself wants to express the ideas that he wants to convey. What software to use is not the point, but your basic skills must be solid.
Mr. Liu Dingjun said that from the perspective of pipelinetd, a very important function in the process of film and television animation creation is to supervise and implement the operation of the process, and there is no excessive collaboration and cooperation in the whole process of individuals, but the company team involving hundreds of people will consider more cross-departmental collaboration and project cost control between different types of work in the whole team. The USD process is indeed a major direction and trend in the future, providing a strong foundation for the creation, sharing and collaboration of digital content, enabling seamless integration and wide application between various software platforms and devices, and allowing developers to handle and manage complex 3D graphics scenes more efficiently, thereby speeding up the development process and improving productivity.
In addition, it is important to understand that the assets produced by multiple software can be rendered together. Because PBR rendering is now about physical reality, and there needs to be light interaction between assets and assets, when the material standards and model descriptions used to make assets through one software are not well compatible with the assets produced by another software, then they are destined to be unable to work together on a project.
Mr. Liu Dingjun feels that more and more individual artists are using Blender, and the trend of DCC software is slowly becoming more centralized, that is, the whole process can be completed in one software, and it is an exaggeration to say that editing and dubbing may be completed in Blender in the future. Of course, at the team level, there will be more and more companies in China that are easy to move in the future. USD itself is a general scene description language, and all the production processes in the future will be integrated into one software or one process with USD, which is the trend and direction we can see now.
Regarding the application and cost benefits of offline rendering and real-time rendering in the film and television animation production process, the six guests also expressed their opinions. Mr. Hu Andi believes that the main thing is to look at the customer's project requirements, that is, the best delivery quality that you want to see in the end. At least until now, in the case of cost control, offline rendering is still the first choice, which has a charm. In the actual project process, a picture shot needs to be polished repeatedly, and under this logic, real-time rendering will actually have to pay some additional optimization costs. Regardless of cost, the quality of real-time rendering is not necessarily inferior to that of offline rendering. There is also a balance between the two, and now that real-time rendering is developing rapidly, more and more companies are turning to UE productions, and I believe that this issue will be deeply settled in the near future.
The wonderful interpretations and discussions of the guests, as well as the forward-looking thinking and perception of the future development of the industry, greatly enriched the on-site partners' understanding of the multi-faceted nature of CG art. At the end, the guests also wished that next year's pan-CG practical technology exchange meeting can go to more cities across the country to exchange and share with more CG enthusiasts.
In addition, those who can't come to the scene this time don't worry, the recording and playback have been posted torenderbus renders the b station and ** numberRemember to pay attention!