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Interview with Marco Di Lucca
A Senior Modeler at Weta Digital, Marco Di Lucca talks about creature modeling, his work on King Kong, X-Men 3 and XSI.
November, 29th, 2006, by Raffael Dickreuter
 |  | Marco Di Lucca, Senior Modeler at Weta Digital.
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Tell us a bit when and why you got started in the cg industry
To asnwer to this i have to go back in time of couple of years, lets say at least 10. I am 33 now. Thats when I started to do my first freelancing jobs in this environment or to be more precise in 3d architectural side. Actually everything started much earlier, when I was 17, when I still was studying (school related to architecture, surveying). At that time I had the chance to approach and learn CAD softwares, mainly AutoCad which I started with version 2 :) Dont really know what happened to me at that time but my interests grew a lot and everything else started to be of secondary importance to me.
At this point you will be wondering what kind of 3d I could have done at that time with those ridicoulus computers (8086 and 8088 processors) and also considering that Acad v2 had no 3d functions in it. Well yeah I had to wait Acad 2.5 to give a 'thickness' to a line for the first time in my life :) And from then it started the fun! And i am not talking about any esoteric shading algorithm ...every thing we know know didn't exist at that time, even the hidden lines thing was kinda fake :) I was so amazed to load and i still remember it so clear the San Paul(London) cathedral in Autocad and see not just plans, prospects but a '3d' version of it. Since then i spent lot of my time learning Autocad (no 3d programs were available on pc at that time) and eventually i became more skilled in it than the architects and civil engineers studios i used to go to practice my studies.
Aside that I remember my eyes truly popped out of my head looking at the first cg imagery on few magazines I could have a look at. Especially about the amazing cg effects made for movies like The Abyss, Terminator2, Jurassic Park etc. I loved to see the screenshots of the 'famous' 3D highend softwares (Alias and the glorious Softimage|3D) showing up the wireframes of still along with the rendered frames. I knew I wanted to do that one day but at the same time i knew myself it wouldn't be easy at all for many reasons. Anyway the first real 3D fun started when the first 3d Studio x Dos came out. Since then my attention was focused only about '3D'. Did lots of architectural visualizations on my own and/or for small studios but I was getting sick and bored very quickly of that. That wasn't what I really wanted. I've never liked straight lines abut because of my studies that could have been the only approach to 3D at that time. Then I started to study and play on organic shapes by myself fighting with the lack of art and anatomy knowledges but i never gave up. Don't even remember how many times I approached doing a human head in 3d before getting some satisfying results. Once again everything changed when I had a chance for the first time to get my hands on a software that till then i considered unreachable: Softimage|3D and that was 'love' :) Everything else never existed for me. In the meantime i was dedicating all my time in to get to know SI|3D the best I could, I realized I had absolutely to move from the place i was born and living since then. At that time I didn't know much about the real situation about this environment in Italy but I knew that to get i 'real' chance to work professionally was to move to Rome. Did that , worked there in a small post production facility and for the Italian television (RAI) for couple of years. But once again that wasn't enough to get myself satisfied. While working I always found my own time to improve my skills, doing personal works at home , studying thing which always interested me more like human anatomy, how light interact which objects in real life and how consequently materials interact with light.
After had spent almost 4 years in Rome and being a bit tired to work on TV stuff I decided to move again when I had a chance to join a newly born post production in Milan which i worked for about 2 years working mainly on commercials. I was very happy about that move that was what i always wanted to do and even i did everything in small steps i was getting my dreams come true. Ok honestly I go back on what I said before I was happy for sure but I knew myself I was still missing something lets say the big step but to do that i knew i had to leave my country. there was no other chance to get myself completely satisfied of all the sacrifices i made till then. It wasn't never easy because of certain personal conditions which stopped or conditioned sometimes my decision about my career (family, girlfriend and so on) but never gave up to my dreams even those would have had some consequences.A
A month after my so loved grandmother (yes Maria the one I dedicated a 3d portrait) died I had a call from Weta which offered me a few months contract to work on King Kong. I couldn't believe it happened to me I was shocked and excited at the same time but there was one only thing to do. Go there! To work for the company who brought to life the most believable 3d character i had seen for LOTR which of course i loved and tried (badly :) to replicate on my own. After that i am still very happily here doing what i really wanted to do in my life.
Tell us a bit when you have to model a character what you approach is and what standard is now required to create a stunning looking character
Talking about my own characters and creatures I think my approach isn't different from other people's approaches. Generally you have an idea and start to put it down on paper or on 2d software to start visualize it, playing with proportions, anatomy and so on. Fortunately, despite the fact I don't have any artistic background , I can put on paper a rough drawing of what i want to do when i really need to have a material reference. In fact sometimes I don't even need to draw because i already have an enough precise visualization of the idea in my mind. For sure its very important to find as much references as you can about that might be involved in the idea. God bless internet for that! But you can also take your own pictures and references like I often used to do for my personal projects.
Not very different is the work approach. Usually behind any creature or character there is a precise and well defined design ,supposely... isn't always true though. So in that term we are not really involved in that part even sometimes we can make suggestions.
Having said that we start off maquette scans or photo reference turntables. Of course the model (as everything else by the way) is constantly reviewed from supervisors and we also check with creatures dept (where the creature/character is rigged and prepared to be deformed appropriately) that the model is build the way to have proper and predictable deformations later on. So build a good model doesn't just mean to make it look good but also to have an appropriate meshes topology (edge flow, number of polys, and so on). So yes to answer to your question the approach to the home made model and a production model could be very different somehow.
Beside lately i am having fun doing my own little sculpting (with clay, plastiline). After I have had couple of tours at Workshop and being amazed by their maquettes works I was thinking to give it a try but never found the courage to do it since i had never touched clay before. Then Gino Acevedo during one of those tours gave me a piece of clay to play with and then the fun started. Now i kinda enjoying more doing real sculpting than the digital one :) Its actually really nice to give a shape to a piece of clay and also very important to understand volumes and proportions.
Portrait of Marco's grandmother Maria.
What are common mistakes you seen when you look at models and characters posted on cg forums?
Without any doubt the lack of proportions and somehow of a 'correct 'anatomy. Ok of course I am not talking about cartoony characters. But that is what i see often when i browse through cg forum especially looking at characters, creatures, heads threads. Sometime you see people go in to extreme detail but without caring at all about the underlaying structure (bones, muscles and so on). And thats is totally wrong. After that comes the mesh topology thing. What i get is that sometimes (that happened couple of times on a cg Italian forum) people don't really accept suggestions or are too selfish and blind to to that. What i think its really needed its a good and appropriate dose of self-criticism for first.
I have always been severe myself about that on my personal works and i would never show to people something I don't like myself for first and even then I was and i am always open to critics and suggestions. Believing that I am not really artistically gifted I did and I do everything I could/can to get the results I wanted/want and having an open mind for sure does help, listening to people with more experience, keeping studying, reading books not necessary related to a specific 3d softwares (mostly anatomy, design, sculpting) etc . I am very proud of being selftaught!
Applications like Zbrush introduced a new way of modeling. What do you think about it?
For sure they revolutionized the modeling world giving us the chance to add huge amount of detail (showed later on as a displacement during render time) without having to add extreme and insane detail directly in the mesh. Its also simple great to use it to explore a new design from scratch just starting from a sphere, cure or a simple mesh and then, when satisfied, rebuild the model of top of it with an appropriate topology and extract maps (normals, displacement, color, bumps or whatever). It really a great way to add to a mesh low and med frequency detail. But that also has some negative consequences like hyper super detailed models unusable in production or with lack of proper structure underneath as i was saying before.
Tell us a bit how it is working at Weta Digital
Well Its just great! A dream came true and i can say that. The environment is very friendly and relaxed (well not always though :) ). There are people from every part of the world so thats not just about work it has been also a great life experience, the mix of cultures, habits...and yeah languages :) Even we speak (or at least we foreign people try to speak English) sometime you hear people from the same country speaking in their own language and you wonder...what the hell they re talking about?! (ok i do the same with other Italians in Weta as well :) )
My day usually start at 9 in Weta kitchen making a cappuccino :) i check my email and start to work.
I also check if and what time I have dailies to go to where usually our work is reviewed by the supervisor/s. There we have feedbacks and comments about the work done till then so we can continue working on it until we get the model approved.
Tell us about your contributions to King Kong
Having joined Weta Digital the last 6 months of King Kong production unfortunately I didn't have a chance to work on the main creatures shown in the movie since they were almost and already done during the previous year of production. My work then primarily involved in doing digital doubles , digital replica of actors who had to interact with Kong and other creatures in the movie. That meant to match faces to photographs or 3d scans, built digital costumes and props, and giving them digital hair which i enjoyed since it was something completely new to me.
Marco Di Lucca with Gino Acevedo (Weta Workshop Art Director)
Tell us about your contributions to X-Men 3- The last stand
I did work on it for just a month when i returned back to NZ in January after I had spent my X-mas in Italy . Because it seems they liked the work i had done before on Digital doubles hair during King Kong :) I got to do digital hair for X-Men 3 as well wohooo! So I styled up Wolverine, Phoenix and The Beast digital hair. Plus some minor tasks on the destroyed Alcatraz model. Not too much work but very enjoyed it as usual.
What has been the hardest character to model for you so far?
I wouldn't really talk about the hardest character. I enjoyed everything I worked no matter easier or harder it could have been or it could be. Lets say to see some creatures I worked and still working on you have to wait next year to see them :) The film in question is The Waterhorse and it will be shown I guess in December 2007. Can't say more sorry. I've also enjoyed to work for a month or so on Eragon but again can't talk about it until we will see it out in this December.
King Kong Models Department
Tell us about the process of creating the "grandma Maria" character in detail, the modeling, texturing and lighting
Well it all started by taking her pictures for both modeling and textureing processes. Basically I took her front and side pictures and started soon the model. Nothing arcane though. For texturing i basically used those pictures and projected them through the appropriate camera on to the model and blended them through vertex maps. Built and appropriate UV space (starting from a cylindricval proj) and then rendermapped those photo projections blended together on to the new UV map. Then continued the texturing process in Photoshop.Built then a color map, bump, specular and a sort of displacement map for the wrinkes. Thats pretty much all about modeling and texturing. If i remember well i did kinda of a poor HDR image to light the model taking a pic to chrome sphere (it was actually a LDR image since was a single exposure image) then used Daniel Rind's Diffuse shader for SSS effect.
What personal work are you the most proud of?
About my personal works I can say i am pretty much proud about all of them. All of them represented to me a step in my learning process. For sure looking back at them and compared to the quality of the works we can see now I could say I can have done them better but generally what i showed along with them was a step further for me.
What do you think about the modeling and texturing toolset of XSI?
Coming from a Softimage|3D experience and loved its modeling toolset I couldnt be more happy using XSI. Its just great, fast and intuitive. And the proof is that I use Maya at work like XSI. Nobody else than me can work on my Maya. When my friends come to my desk and try to use it they just go crazy since I changed all the hotkeys behaviour, wireframe and components color and pretty much everything to make me feel more comfortable :) you look at my Maya and you see XSI.
Which areas of the software do you like the most?
What i liked the most in XSI is definitely the polygonal modeling toolset and the rendertree. I like the Mental Ray integration in it. Perhaps because these were the areas I was interested the most in. I just love experimenting and built shaders in the Render Tree. Its great for me and those who have no programming background abut at the same time have the chance through the render tree to built complex shaders graphically.
Which areas do you think should be improved?
For what i can say , for my little experience, and for what i read on forums I think the Particles/simulations could be much better. Lately i kinda feel the same about the texturing/UV layout tools which i find not as good as compared to other softwares. I am referring more to an appropriate and integrated pelting tool.
What do you think of the cg industry in Italy?
There is a cg industry in Italy? i didn't know that! :) jokes apart there is not that much going on. Not as many companies and most of them are concentrated in Rome or in Milan and they generally are small or medium sized post productions for commercials and TV related cg stuff. Even little bit cg for movies but I never worked for the movie industry in Italy so i can't really talk about it. I know that something is happening, some 3d projects are going on, and I hope there will be a positive change at some point. I really hope it will not stay a dream for us and all the new people who are looking for jobs.
Compare living and working in Italy with New Zealand
Ok I am honest! I miss my food! even though I have a great pizza here :) everything else if fine! NZ is a beautiful country to live in but Italy is still 'my' country :)
Lyall Bay
Wellington
Kaikoura
Is there anything you would like to say to the rest of the cg community?
I think I've said enough and beside reading through the interview lines I believe the reader will find some advice to keep it up with this passion/job. Just never give up when you run into difficulties and always believe in your dreams.
Related Links
Marco D iLucca
Weta Digital
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