Virtual Art departments with Asad Manzoor and Zach Dembinsky - Pixomondo Ep 46

Asad Manzoor 

Asad spearheads content creation for Pixomondo’s Virtual Production division, squeezing feature-quality imagery out of Unreal Engine. Recently, he has delivered such titles as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Halo, Nightbooks, and the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender.

From initial pitch to today, Asad co-developed Pixomondo’s Virtual Production division, with a sprinkle of game development throughout that time. Having taken shots from R&D through the final frame, Asad had previously handled characters, lighting, environment art, all with a sprinkle of compositing — today, he uses all of the above to ensure PXO's Virtual Production team runs smoothly.

To keep things interesting when he's not managing Virtual Production, Asad finds himself jumping back into game development, concept art, and the occasional practical SFX project.

Zach Dembinsky

With a passion for creating digital worlds since Lightwave 7.5c, Zachary is devoted to the journey of trying to mimic the reality of light. You can find him looking around random corners of the world asking, “How would I achieve that in CG…”

Zachary Dembinski brings a decades worth of VFX experience to Pixomondo’s exciting endeavor of virtual production. With his background roots in traditional vfx Lighting – he ambitiously tries to push the boundaries of real-time rendering with every environment. He firmly believes real-time rendering is the future and it’s here to stay. His latest VP projects include, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Strange New

Worlds, and Netflix’s – Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Highlights of the Episode:

0:00 Introduction

0:14 Introduction of guests

3:33 Getting into the industry

7:59 Education and biggest contributors

11:41 Zach's path into the industry

20:01 Lighting and its appeal 

22:36 Balancing making your own work and working on

 someone else's

29:33 What it's like to be more connected to virtual production

35:23 Difference between a VAD and the art department

39:30 How to help the VAD and the art department

 function well together

44:39 Level instancing or data layers in your VAD workflow?

45:56 workflow for ingesting high poly lidar assets 

49:11 Exploring Nerfs

51:06 Optimistic about AI

54:29 Collaborative working for guys in VADs

59:19 What the traditional art department need to learn to work 

better with the VAD

01:02:17 Wrap up

01:02:53 Outro

“In any project, not necessarily just visual effects, any thing that a group is working on, the more interconnected that group is, the better the product you're gonna end up with by the end.” -  Asad Manzoor

Connecting with the Guest:

Asad Manzoor 

Website: https://www.pixomondo.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asadnmanzoor/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNLNAcU-wcQ

Zach Dembinsky

Website: https://www.pixomondo.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharydembinski/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zackdembinski/?hl=en

Connecting with CG Pro:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/becomecgpro

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/becomecgpro/

Website: https://www.becomecgpro.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BecomeCGPro

#virtualart #virtualproduction #cgpro