Hi Mitch,
It’s a great pleasure to welcome you to this short interview.
1. Can you introduce yourself and what’s your job in Vertice?
Hi everyone. I’m known as Mitch here at the Vertice HQ, but my real name (the one that my mother gave to me) is Michel Rousseau. I’m actually the Art Director of Vertice.
2. According your experience, why an Artistic Director may be interested in 3D Real Time or Interactive 3D?
Good question. In fact, I’ve been working for years in industrial CGI production and I have always been interested by the "game dev" world and all that is relative to that. I think that my creativity and my knowledge of the 3D environment is appropriate to make real time contents more attractive.
3. A long time ago, maybe in a galaxy far, far away, can you describe your experience in non serious gaming such as Slash parties and so on ?! Why this experience is so significant for you today?
Well, in fact, yes, it was in a distant galaxy… I met my friend David Catuhe (lead programmer of NOVA) as he was looking for a 2D artist at that time. The goal was to achieve a nice demo for a regional demo scene contest. My first real time experience. Such a mess. 2 hours before the dead line, our demo (for 3DFX graphic boards) was too heavy to fit the requirement of the contest. All of my textures were divided by four by David. Hum. Then, I took the 3D role and created my first real time models and asked David to make significant changes in his code to fit what I was asking for. And we finally won one , then two contests and so on.
That is when I really get aware of all the limitations of the real time pipelines, and when I could possibly take some advantages. Real time process can be a nasty thing, when you’re talking directly with a developer. However, that experience helped me a lot to find a job in a real time environment. And finally, that led to NOVA.
4. For you, is it really essential to design and develop a 3D engine mainly drived by artistics’ needs?
Ho yeah, it is the big thing. I worked for a company where all the graphic process was done by scripting things under vi, and the graphic content was created by specific tools on Unix OS. When something crashes in these conditions, you can’t get no help, until you can grab a developer by the neck! I assume it’s how the world goes round: just figure out how the web grows. In the early nineties, you needed a developer to create your websites. Then come programs such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver that gave back the graphic process to the people who knows it. Now, with the Web 2.0 specs, everyone can create a blog.
It’s quite the same thing with 3D engines, except may be in High end solutions, like video game, for instance or for big real time projects. Today, a designer, an architect or a 3d artist can create easily 3D contents for real time purpose with minimal knowledge of the process (with a good tool of course!). From a little product project to a big real time city.
5. What would your advice to a young Graphic Designer starting with Nova? What are the secrets and your method?
Read the manual? Ok, seems stupid, but it works. Then ask to a NOVA Master. You can found one easily on the NOVA website, forum section. As a young padawan, you need to start carefully, and pay attention to all the little tricks you may find. So, don’t start with a too complex project. Make something you can handle! Making shadows with real time dynamics objects is not appropriate if it’s your first experiments… Find a tutorial on our website and practice a lot. Then, with experience will come bigger projects. Eventually, you can be trained by me, in our nice sunny town. I Don’t want to be too much self-esteemed, but, I have actually a pretty good level for NOVA purposes ;-). Finally, you can ask us for projects consulting.
Well, Mitch thank you very much for the time spent with me.
It was a pleasure, Fred...
Hum, Mitch, one more thing … Everyone in Vertice knows that you are fond of Goldorak and there are many rumors about a new demo on this subject... Can you tell us more and can we see something?!
Hoo, damn. David leaked again! Well, as it was a secret project, for years, I was not under pressure… Now, I am. In fact, the Goldorak (grendizer) project comes to be useful for debug purposes and never get more accurate than that. But, well, it’s a kind of poison as well as a private joke. I really can’t finish that demo. Each time, something blows all the project up… I must be on the sith or seventh version of the Grendizer project. But it is still alive. If you’re interested, you can found some WIP screenshots on my personal french blog. I will have to finish that now…