Tell us a bit about how you got started on your journey into the world of 3D.

“I was born in the USA but grew up on the island of Corsica (France). The French word for a computer-generated image is image de synthèse. I remember the news anchor saying, “the objects you see on screen do not exist, they were synthetised on the screen by a machine.”  This is a quaint concept now, but it was revolutionary at the time. When I got to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit (CCS), I took my first 3D Alias class.  It was in a very mysterious computer graphics lab. It was always completely dark, full of very colourful machines I had never seen before, Silicon Graphics Indigos running a weird OS (Unix). When I started tumbling and moving around in the CG world, I was hooked. You could say I never stopped tumbling.

Tell us a little about your career journey.

After all my early schooling in France, I went back to the USA. I studied mechanical engineering at the University of Virginia with the goal of working with cars. My third year, a Ford executive came to present the new Mustang on campus. He told me about car design and CCS. Remember, that was way before the Internet. I graduated but my mind was made up to go to Detroit. Studying industrial design, I became handy with 3D, and I could not get enough of it.

I got an internship and later a job at a CG supplier in a Detroit suburb called Digital Image. If you are a student reading this, my first advice is to pay attention to the world. I did not. The economy was slowing down, and I was laid off, completely caught off guard. I had no network at the time, no portfolio, and no CV ready. In a time before LinkedIn, I did not have a list of people I could call. I did not go to shows and presentations to build my network. That was a huge mistake and I vowed this would never happen again.

I went back to France for a year to teach 3D modelling at the Institut Superieur de Design in the North. Talking about making connections, that tie helped me recruit students at that school years later. I loved teaching but I still wanted to make it in Detroit, so I went back. Six months later, after a glorious stint at McDonald’s, I got a break and started as a contract 3D modeller at General Motors Design. That was the dream job for me. Fast forward a dozen years, I was not moving up the ranks. On my job hunt, I found out that Tata Motors in the UK was looking for a new digital modelling team leader. If you are going to change it up, you might as well go big.

My family and I moved to the UK in August 2014. I spent almost 7 years there, first as team leader and then as senior manager in modelling, rendering and animation. A year after COVID, Tata Motors went through a massive restructuring, and I was made redundant. That time, I had the Internet and a lot more experience, but I had everything ready: CV, portfolio, and people to contact. I contacted an old friend in California working at a startup and I gave a throwaway line “if you need any help.” They did! COVID made me aware of a few things.

First, I really enjoyed working from home. Second, it was now validated beyond any doubt and revolutionized the job market. Even better, round the clock work could be a competitive advantage if companies managed it well. I was given tasks and only one directive: hand them off completed at your close of business day. I could walk the dog, have a coffee in town with my wife, nobody cared. It was a great period to be honest. I was very well compensated.

The guys in California were very cool to work with and they had complete trust in me because of my experience. I was having a fun time with my family.  However, it was not going to last forever, and I was not meeting anyone new in my PJs. Then Robin Oldroyd, who I met when I was at Tata, reached out and asked me if I would be interested in working for Autodesk. I jumped at the opportunity. The last two years with Autodesk have been great.

What is your role at Autodesk, and how has your career experience helped with the role?

To use a school analogy, my major is in automotive surfacing with a minor in visualization. My official role at Autodesk is Design Studio Solution Specialist. Part of the job is to create and deliver technical demonstrations of surfacing tools (mainly Autodesk Alias), remotely or onsite, to customers across EMEA. I also assist from time to time on the visualization side. I am extremely fortunate because I worked at every stage of the design process in surfacing (polygonal, SubD, CAS, Class A) but also in visualization (real time, renderings, animations).  It is an extremely complicated process involving multiples of everything (teams, software, disciplines), sometimes spread around the globe.  When we talk to clients, they are having issues somewhere in that design pipeline. Because of my experience, the other part of my job is to assist them in finding the best solutions for their specific needs.

How would you describe the state of the automotive visualisation space regarding its fast-changing pace in immersive processes and visualisation?

It is an exciting space to be in. You must break down how complicated the process is to appreciate it. You have a first line of hardware and software that process gigabytes of information and turn them into high-quality immersive experiences. Then you can deliver this experience in full collaboration, in real-time, across multiple locations on any device: phone, tablet, PC, LED wall, head mounted displays (HMDs). Because things evolve so quickly, everybody is always experimenting with the best mix of hardware and software. 

In things like design, and visualisation processes, how important for you is the role of a good quality 360 HDRI map?

What you want in a design review is confidence. You want your design to stand out and you want assurance that you have as much fidelity as possible between what you see on screen and what you would get in real life. There are free assets out there, but you usually get what you pay for. When you get a professional grade HDRI map (like the ones created by Domeble of course!) it is usually an excellent location with great lighting, and you tend to re-use it a lot because it gives you the best results.

For those that are not familiar with automotive visualisation and design reviews, can you describe what a design review is, and how you prepare for it as a viz artist?

The modelling team creates a model according to engineering hard points and design wishes. It then assembles the latest model available for a review. You can have one version or multiple versions of the same vehicle (let us say base and premium trims). You might have split models, one for the exterior and one for the interior, because 3D models can get very heavy, especially as you get closer to production. The visualization team takes over the data.  It then assigns all the materials, lights, turntables, and camera angles to see the vehicle. For materials, CMF (colour, materials, and finish) is responsible in providing the latest samples to visualization, which might have to create some of those materials from scratch.

The interior is a lot harder to light because there are a lot of materials, tons of variants and an extraordinarily complex topology.  You need to add lights everywhere to make everything stand out, and that will cost you in real time speed. Sometimes you use a series of HDRIs to check the design in different environments. Some bosses can be very particular with those. Big reviews tend to happen around a huge screen where you can see vehicles at scale, sometimes in 3D if you have a 3D wall. You must be on your game at the reviews: the design chiefs will always throw unexpected requests at you!

What are your favourite flavours of software when working on a project?

If I work on my own project, I like to model it and see it as fast as possible. I started as a classical Alias 3D modeller, but I really enjoy the speed of Alias SubD. I visualize in VRED, both Autodesk products, do my own critiques and move on.

With the introduction of Apple Vision Pro, and the new generation VR rigs, what’ your thoughts on how immersive viewing or augmented reality will now develop?

It is easy to forget that people who do not interact with all this stuff daily do not like to feel trapped in a VR headset, and that is understandable. Apple has shown the masses its vision of AR / XR. There is no doubt that others will follow. From what I read, the resolution of the Vision Pro and the immersive space are very impressive. The famous tech reporter Nick Bilton from Vanity Fair said the Vision Pro was the best screen he had ever seen to watch movies. He also said the world felt “poorer” when he took it off because there was so much overlay information at his fingertips.

I do think the future will be mixed because the technology will only get better at overlaying information on the real world, either with pass through headsets or tablets. We have done XR demos with tablets streaming VRED and people are incredibly surprised to see how good it can be.

What big projects have you worked on and enjoyed working on most?

At GM I really enjoyed working on the Cadillac User Experience (CUE). It was a full set of interior components to be shared across the line. The haptic centre consoles were groundbreaking at the time. We also managed to finish the Chevrolet Volt, the world’s first plug-in vehicle, right as GM was entering bankruptcy! My favourite project at Tata Motors was the EVision concept sedan. It was all done in house with a team I assembled. We rolled out new ways to work across all the studios, we really gelled as a team and the final product was outstanding. At Autodesk, Alias 2024 was the biggest overhaul in the product’s history, and it was great to be part of it.

Can you describe a project that required you to overcome a particularly difficult technical challenge?

For the first Tata Motors Sierra concept, the decision was made to create in house a customer facing launch movie at the Auto Expo Show in New Delhi, in early February 2020. The final model was sent to fabrication late in the fall. Our VRED model was good to go so instead of rebuilding it in polys, we decided to do the entire movie in VRED. We had to produce a storyboard and build everything else in two months.

Because of the giant screens on the stand, the format was also very odd, a severe letterbox format in 4K. I had a small team, so I had to do a lot of things myself and learn on the fly, like postproduction and vehicle rigging.  The car goes across the desert and in the snow, so the bouncing of the wheels had to look right. At night, I commandeered all the computers in the studio to render. That was fun!

There is an industry shift towards real-time development in real time image and animation workflows, what is your thoughts on that?

People have no patience (laugh). They want to see it now and in real time. Static beauty shots are nice, but it cannot beat the interactivity and the presence of a 3D real time review. I sound like a broken record, but it is all about speed, to evaluate a vehicle as fast as possible. Those are reasons I might add why Autodesk VRED has been successful over the years because you can get a great result easily and quickly.

What do you think is the future of CG and VR technology and its impact on the industry?

After a gazillion Marvel movies and now the Vision Pro, the public now is fully aware of CG and to some extent VR technology. Expectations are always going up in that department. It is a never-ending arms race on the hardware side. Moore’s law, the doubling of CPU speed every 2 years, might not be completely accurate today but it is a good gauge. Think of the first HTC Vive to today’s Varjo XR-4, it is night and day in just a decade.

The push to make quicker decisions never stops, to shorten the design cycles, to get a vehicle on the road faster because time is money. VR technology will always play a key role in that regard. Maybe there will be a design review with gloves and full haptic feedback, as you run your hands over the fenders as if they were there. Mercedes at AIF showed its collision rig in VRED. It might look primitive at first glance, but it is very effective when you try it. A fully raytraced review of a complete vehicle was possible a few years ago with a supercomputer. It may be possible with a PC in a backpack in a decade.

We know you are a champion of our Domeble Symetri Student Awards, how important do you think awards like this are for a student’s career roadmap?

It is huge. It is a straightforward way for students to stand out and to also try new things.  If you do not know much about rendering, who cares? Have a go, there is no downside. Most student graduates already have their models done from their graduation shows. All they would have to do is to do a nice rendering. By the way I walk the talk. I modelled and rendered the McLaren and the Porsche for contests. The F1 was a few years ago, an exercise in polygons. The 911 was a full SubD exercise. I learned new stuff, I got sharper as a modeller, it gave me deadlines and fun ways to explore new tools. As I mentioned, I did not do enough networking as a graduate.

There is a funny game called “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”  There is even a website for it. Think of any actor in any movie: you can get to Kevin Bacon in six movies or less. In our field, I would argue that you can link any two people in four or only three moves. There are two takeaways if you are a student. First, be a professional in this small pond and second, go out there and meet people. I know it is awkward and weird sometimes, but you really do not know where chance encounters can lead to.

What advice would you give to a graduate or an aspiring CG artist as they embark on a career in the industry?

My advice is to be curious, be a sponge for knowledge, learn as much as possible about as much as you can. Don’t stay static.  Have a major and minor. For example, be great at rendering in VRED (your major) but get some SubD modelling in Alias (your minor). I started a “simple” modeller years ago, but my tool kit is so much richer today. That California startup had no idea I could render and animate, and they were delighted. Our industry is highly unstable at times, so you want to have a maximum of things to offer to potential employers. 

Where do you see the future of rendering and HDR development?

For rendering it has always been an arms’ race. With A.I. in the picture, the race has upped in pace considerably. There is no sign that it will slow down, quite the contrary. That is good news for the users because speed will be more affordable, hopefully. Real-time will still be king. You might see disruption in the HDR domain. If you are in the cloud, why would you not animate your HDR? As a car moves along the road, the environment could move as well. Of course, that is where A.I. could appear. It could very well create an environment on the fly, maybe add rain or snow?

I have investigated using A.I. to create an HDR dome. The result was okay but not great. The lighting was off, and it takes a trained eye to get it right. It would need a lot of “manual” work to get something usable which defies the purpose. There is no doubt A.I. will advance in this domain because in a sentence you can ask for a dome anywhere in the world, in theory. Will it give you the exact location and exact lighting you are looking for? We will see. There is a reason an agency will fly Domeble across the world to shoot an HDR. A quality product takes a lot of work. 

Do you enjoy working with our Domeble content, and do you appreciate the quality assurance that it delivers?

When you are a seasoned amateur like me, an excellent product does the heavy lifting for you.  I can get remarkable results without doing a lot of work.

 It is an ever-changing world, and an ever-changing industry we work in too, what do you think the industry will be like in 5 years’ time.

What is inevitable is A.I. It is cliché but it is true. What is interesting is how companies will harness it because there are so many ways you can go. Overall, I believe the more focused the A.I. is, the better it will be at a certain task. For example, today NVIDIA already uses it to denoise shadows. By prompt or image scanning, A.I. will help you create a 3D scene, or entire environments, or your textures, or set up a 3D car shoot for a new car by analysing a previous shot you established. 

 The sky is the limit. Fundamentally, the tools used today will still be around. There will still be a need for CG artists. The French have a saying: it is by forging steel that you become a blacksmith. Even if they will use more tools than we did, young artists need to hone their craft as we all did. Artistic flair is exceedingly difficult to replicate with numbers.  Do not panic about what the industry will be then, just focus on continuous learning. Stay curious, that is my motto.