Neil Scholes Webinar: Journey from VFX to Directing Commercials, TV, and Film

Neil is a director and artist for commercials, promos, TV and film. He is the founder and creative director of Valkyrie Beowulf in London.  

Interview with CD Neil Scholes

2022Mar 22

Neil joined us for an in-depth webinar where he discussed his career journey, his approach to VFX, and demonstrated how he uses cloud rendering for his projects. In the webinar, Neil shares insights on learning Houdini, working as a generalist, and how technology is democratizing filmmaking. He also discusses:

• His unconventional career path from BBC to corporate videos to high-end commercials;

• The technical challenges of creating VFX;

• Why he believes generalists will be essential in the future of VFX;

• How cloud rendering is enabling independent filmmakers to compete with major studios;

• His advice for aspiring content creators on whether to specialize or generalize.

"What's amazing about GridMarkets is it obeys dependencies and dependencies are everything in Houdini... I'm getting the best of cloud computing without needing the most amazing Internet which for me isn't just amazing - it's REALLY amazing."

Transcript:

But the thing about GridMarkets is, I was aware of it for at least a year or two, and very recently I sat down and played with it, just to install it, get to know it, and try it out. I did a simple explosion, like everybody does.

It sounds stupid, but it was just that instant realization: you get your renders back really quickly, and you’ve got that instant sort of farm on the cloud. When you do a test, you go, “Oh my God!” And suddenly I realized, this is what’s going to make my film. This is how I can do it, because a lot of the effects I’m doing are volume sims and particle sims, lots of volumes, and that’s hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes of data.

I don’t want to spend a fortune on a render farm, I don’t want to spend a fortune on terabytes of data, and I don’t really want that geometry data. I just want to generate it and use it to create renders.

Actually, just this weekend, I did my first tests, which I can show you, with Axiom and GridMarkets. Axiom is a GPU solver in Houdini, and I started using it recently. It’s phenomenally fast, it uses the GPU, and it’s great for pyro sims. I actually asked GridMarkets if they’d consider supporting it, and about two weeks later they did, which is amazing.

What’s really impressive about GridMarkets is that it obeys dependencies, and dependencies are everything in Houdini. Houdini is very much a pipeline of a CG tool—you define the order of things you want to do.

So before I send this off, I make sure I’m happy with what I’m doing. I say, “Okay, I’m going to do my cloud sim, then my particle sim, and then when all the geometry is ready, I’m going to do two renders in parallel using 30 machines: one Arnold render for the volumes and one Mantra render for the particles.”

Then, I load up Envoy, which is a really nice interface, and once Envoy is running, I can submit everything. What’s fantastic is that the simulation of all the geometry stays on the cloud. I just pre-flight the scene, check the setup, send it to the farm, and it does all the sims. Then I get my renders back, and I don’t have to worry about anything.

When I sent it off, it used over 30 machines and took about two or three hours to complete, and I got everything back, which is phenomenal.

For me, when I’m making my film, I’ve got a lot of stuff to develop, and I need to do a lot of post-viz so I can slip the edit and make sure everything is working and timed correctly. Just having that quick iteration is absolutely essential. If I were to do that on my own, it would take four or five days of rendering and simulating, and I would probably give up.

So right now, that kind of quick iteration is amazing. That’s why it’s so valuable, and that’s what I’m going to use it for.

Again, the thing about GridMarkets is that it’s cloud computing, but I’m not relying on it as a workstation. I’m just using it to process data, store that data temporarily, and get my images back. I get the best of cloud computing without needing the fastest internet, which for me is just incredible.

Watch the full interview