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How R&D Works in Video Production: Kiryl Drazdovich
51 Plays3 months ago
My guest is Kiryl Drazdovich, a video expert with more than 20 years of experience in computer graphics, animation, video production and R&D. Kiryl spent significant part of his career leading technical video production teams at Wargaming and most recently founded his own studio Mroya that creates outstanding video content for global brands.
The main idea that Kiryl stands for with R&D is that creators should struggle with generating emotions and not with production tools that should be smooth and convenient.
Together with Kiryl back at Wargaming Special Projects we experimented a lot at an intersection of emerging tech, gaming and video production. It resulted in multiple award-winning projects including immersive, spatial computing, 360-degree documentaries, live event and virtual production studios and many other exciting R&D explorations.
In this episode we discuss how AI and Unreal Engine 5 advancements help to automate production pipelines, what it is like to work with celebrities like The Offspring, Dolph Lundgren, Gianluigi Buffon and Arnold Schwarzenegger, we talk about lessons learnt from creating immersive video storytelling and of course envision what’s next.
This is a personal podcast. The views and opinions expressed here are only those of the author and do not represent those of any organization or any individual with whom the author may be associated, professionally or personally.
Kiryl Drazdovich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiryldrazdovich
Alex Babko: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderbabko
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Transcript
Introduction and Rise of Video Content
00:00:14
Speaker
Hey, welcome to Month in Millions, a practical and inspiring show about innovators and immersion tech practitioners. I'm the host of the show, Alex Babko It's estimated that around 500 hours of video content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. And the number keeps growing, not counting TikTok, Instagram and other video platforms.
00:00:36
Speaker
I must admit, some parts of those videos were created by me and my teams. Whenever we worked on an audio project, we always produced a companion video to tell the story, i explain the technology capabilities and spread the word, which is quite obvious.
00:00:54
Speaker
Besides, I love working with R &D in video production, as people in this domain combine a perfect blend of understanding how creativity, storytelling and technology work together.
Meet Kirill Drosdovitch - Video Expertise
00:01:07
Speaker
And today, I invited it to my show my good friend, who has always been on the forefront of emerging tech in video production.
00:01:16
Speaker
My guest today is Kirill Drazdovich a video expert with more than 20 years of experience in computer graphics, animation, video production and R and&D. Kirill spent significant part of his career leading technical video production teams at Wargaming, known for World of Tanks, and most recently Kirill founded his own studio, Mroya that creates compelling and next-gen video content with the graphics for a global brands.
00:01:44
Speaker
And together with Kiryl back at Wargaming Special Projects, we experimented a lot at an intersection of immersion tech, gaming, video production, which resulted in a number of award-winning projects, which we will be discussing today.
00:01:59
Speaker
including immersive, spatial computing, 360-degree documentaries, live events, and virtual production studios, and many other exciting R and&D explorations.
AI and Unreal Engine 5 in Video Production
00:02:09
Speaker
We will discuss how AI and Unreal Engine 5 advancements help to automate production pipelines, what it is like to work with celebrities like The Offspring, Dolph Lundgren, Gianluigi Buffon, and Arnold Schwarzenegger to name a few.
00:02:24
Speaker
And we will talk about lessons to learned from creating immersive videos and storytelling. And of course, we will try to envision what's next. Hi, Kirill. Hi, Alex. Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me today. I must admit that ah you are one of the most like tech-savvy, creative and technical leads I've ever worked with. And I know that ah you are now um also actively experimenting with the ah with new emerging technologies in video production, with photogrammetry, with AI, and video production pipelines. So let's jump into that. So what are the R&D experiments that you are doing now in video production? Unluckily, I have no silver bullet here that just saying, okay, this one will help you all the time. No.
00:03:14
Speaker
You just need to experiment with very specific tools like, okay, let's take the latest one, ah this live portrait.
Challenges in Live Portrait Technology
00:03:22
Speaker
A lot of people talked about that. There were so many videos, on YouTube, everywhere, Twitter, showing like fake or ah fake celebrities or people doing themselves and making photos talking like a real person.
00:03:42
Speaker
So we tried and experimented a lot with this specific one. We even used it in our project, one of our projects. But ah there are so many corner cases when it doesn't work. So you have to find very specific angle of the camera. ah You should match on the high level appearance of a person talking, for example, and the person on the static image.
00:04:07
Speaker
ah You have to take care about the articulation. You should move your lips, let's say, just focus on how you do that. So still there are limits, but we are close to having a unified solution for that. And still it's only for the face. You cannot control your head rotation.
00:04:29
Speaker
I cannot control, I don't know like like your hairs, how they move in.
Advancements in Facial Animation
00:04:33
Speaker
It's so hard to create that still, it's better to simulate them. But creating reasonable, ah clear, a realistic face.
00:04:46
Speaker
We are kind of close for getting solution for that. ah Just several days ago, I saw how it was like you face fusion. I just forgot this super mix one guy created as a top of all the most interesting up-to-date solutions for animation in the face. And why it's super cool because you can experiment with all of them.
00:05:11
Speaker
You can control a seperately mouth, you separately can control emotions on the face, eyes, you can control a head rotation, even you can control all the age. and try Just to make the person younger or older, so you don't need to and go to different tools and try to work with them. Just experiment in one place.
00:05:37
Speaker
Another know a very cool thing I think all the productions should start to do. So they still use a lot of classical heavy CGI production tools like Nuke for example. It's a node-based composer for the video. But what guys did? They ah provided several plugins.
00:06:03
Speaker
where you can integrate the Kompf UI inside the Nuke like itself, like a built-in solution, like a plugin. And you can use it natively inside this very specific environment. So on the one hand, you have like expensive movie production tool. On the other hand, you have an experimental AI tool that can help you to improve, make it faster. So this one, you can experiment a lot with such names. ah AI render but forgot just give me yeah Rendering
00:06:40
Speaker
Usually people use different terms for that, but what does it mean? You just rotate in your viewport ah different objects or the scene or the characters and trying to how I can see like AI rendering something and experiment with the styles. So you can try to find the cool style at the end of the day. I want to see that.
00:07:06
Speaker
stylized picture or the photorealistic one, dark or bright, cold or warm. So to do that, years ago, you need to wait for the rendering, sometimes nights, sometimes like hours, depends on the complexity of the scene. Now, just do it in real time, and just experiment and see the result.
00:07:26
Speaker
so very simple ah message and the very simple outcome. Now production guys and creative guys can focus more on creativity, not building extreme tools. Now It helps you to deliver the final idea, to find this idea at first of all, and then to deliver it in a most efficient way, not just to struggle with it finally, but to find the interest in something. At the end of the day, you just want to see an emotion on the face of the viewer. That's why we are here, just creating generated content. So we are. struggling for emotions. We don't want to struggle with the tools and software. So I hope it will be even easier tomorrow. ah Speaking about those ah emotions and interesting creative
Innovative Video Projects and Storytelling
00:08:22
Speaker
aspects of that. So for sure, we've collaborated a lot with you. We like experimented with personalized video production, with spatial
00:08:30
Speaker
computing and video games and video production. We even like had some collaboration with International Space Station back in the days. And they so which project from those times creates that wow emotion in you? I remember two of them, so like the most interesting, bright, let's say. Okay, let's delve. the wholes leho The whole spectrum of the emotions, today definitely. The first one, it's... ah
00:09:02
Speaker
projects delivering custom videos for the journalists that write for them. It was anniversary, 15th year anniversary of board gaming, I think. Am I right? Do you remember? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was board gaming 15. Yes, yes. I was the year of 2013. Yeah, it was like so many years ago. Yeah. Close to 10 years. More than 10 years. Oh my God. It's 11. Yeah. Oh my God.
00:09:32
Speaker
So there were no there where there was lack of automation, only like pure ah emotions and desire to make cool things and task.
00:09:53
Speaker
sound super simple. We need to create something custom for all the journalists. one will They will attend the event and just try guys to bring emotions for them. So they they need to remember this this event.
00:10:13
Speaker
So the briefing itself sounds like, OK, normal task. But the next question, OK, how many journalists do you expect to to see there? OK, guys, let's start with 100 or probably 200 or even more. oh Just hundreds. Let's say hundreds. And that was the moment.
00:10:41
Speaker
I realized we're going to not die, but it will be super hard, barely possible. Because the event itself, it was three days, I think, something like that. So even rendering so many videos in three days, quite complex task. How to generate something customized that should be relevant for this specific person in the moment, kind of crazy task. So we remembered that there are so many things could be templated and we build a story
00:11:25
Speaker
where we can pre-shoot several parts of the video, not several, most of the video. We can just pre-shoot it, make pre-production, post-production, color correction, everything, and just live in the story, in the script itself, several places just to fit these persons.
00:11:45
Speaker
and make the final super custom a relevant for this person final video. And then it was like nights and days of planning, thinking how to shoot them in a short period of time, how to render it, how to deliver it.
00:12:04
Speaker
how to make it attractive, interesting, not just spending all three days in, the I don't know, like on a stage or location with a number of cameras. It should be fancy in the same moment for them. So it's just, they're
Producing Personalized Videos at Events
00:12:17
Speaker
having fun. They should, after that, write a cool article, not saying, okay, guys, it was super boring. I just have been waiting for three days, sitting from sitting waiting for my turn. No, definitely not.
00:12:30
Speaker
So, we mixed different events with the shooting sessions. ah While they were having fun we in parallel editing, obviously, they were preparing ah with the green screen, and all these technologies, automating, using render fronts, just to make it faster, in a super, super tight terms, we delivered personalized videos for them. And ah the most iconic moment, I remember there were no free cameras in ah Belarus at all. We couldn't even find one camera because we ah just hired all the cameramen and we rented all the cameras.
00:13:13
Speaker
How many cameras were there at the event? I mean, what are the numbers? ah i I'm not sure. Hundreds, definitely. to get so So many cameras, because just to speed up the process, we shoot same scene from different angles, just to have close-ups, wide angles, fisheye, just to have an option to edit it in a way we need. Predefined lighting, predefined angles. And what was the scenario? So where what are the situations that those journalists were at? They they were based on the games. We're gaming games. And we set all these games according to the development timeline and real timelines. So like ancient game, World War II game, and future the game about the future, battles in the future.
00:14:04
Speaker
So, we create a story where the person somehow connected to this period of time and what's happening. So, for example, for the ancient times, it's preparing for the battle. So, within nights, preparing for the long, long journey before the battle.
00:14:19
Speaker
A lot of horses, like swords, armor, and a lot of people, families, they just understand, okay, it will be a tough, long journey. We hope they will return. But it's a long story for you, but for this person that is going just to shoot, it's... several, just several stops for a moment. Okay. Camera camera start go see something just, I don't know, like 15 seconds. And this is more than enough just to fit into the story and make it consistent, clear from the beginning to the end. The same for the World War Two era. It was like a kind of battle. So the person just throw in a grenade and write in a letter.
00:15:06
Speaker
And I'm sure for them it was like, ah I just don't understand what's happening. Okay. It's fancy to throw a grenade. Why not? As you see all the like explosions, tanks around, it looks great. Why not? But at the end of the day, they didn't know what's happening.
00:15:22
Speaker
so until the very last moment they got this like video file view wow guys that was connected to this fancy attraction and that was the shooting for this video and was effect the effect was so great so it's like or i think There were no bad articles after that, because but I just don't believe it's possible, because you got so, so warm. I remember it's about the specific period of time. Yeah, this is very smart. Yeah. Yeah. Very smart. Yeah. 100%. So what what was the second one? For the Gamescom, where we created personalized videos one more time for the Dölfring longer. This specific case, ah the biggest challenge here,
00:16:08
Speaker
make it real looking like real-time for the person involved. So basically what we built back then with both our teams is that we brought a real-time video production studio where a World of Tanks player was sir and like competing against Dolph Lundgren.
00:16:25
Speaker
ah in a tank battle. So, each of those were a tank commander. So, Dolph Lundgren was like the tank commander of the, you know, some new Swedish World War II times tanks. And then a player from Kölln, like from ah from the place where the event was happening, was kind of like opposing him in a virtual battle and how the the We added the personalized content there, like real-time production, the super cool graphics and inserts. So that's super cool, yeah. Really would love to to make a separate story about that. I remember that we added their nicknames, they could choose their favorite tanks, on their ms sign so many options there. So ah I very well remember how ah in January 2015 I came to you with an idea, ah what if we could film an immersive 360 video story from the first-person view that would take viewers from the comfort of their chairs to the, I don't know, World War II trenches, to the events, to actually meaningfully understand like what was happening there, how
00:17:38
Speaker
um how wild it was, but to to see it like from the from the first first-person view, ah leveraging the 360-degree and VR technology. So that's basically how it resulted with an award-winning VR documentary that our teams created.
00:17:57
Speaker
And can you tell me the story from your perspective? like Because I very well remember how technically challenging it was, how we were 3D printing rigs for GoPros to make like the 360-degree cameras, and so on, because
360-degree Video Content Creation
00:18:13
Speaker
like for sure... Modifying GoPros.
00:18:16
Speaker
not just gophers, we replaced the lenses there with the bigger fisheye coefficients. So just because we need to cover more space around the camera, so you need a wider angle.
00:18:31
Speaker
and that That was great as well. so yeah verse to mention this project definitely so From the very beginning, ah we struggled with technical obstacles in many, many different worlds. First of all, there were no 360 cameras. It was just a concept that you can take enough cameras, place them somehow in space,
00:19:03
Speaker
to shoot all the directions. So at minimum it could be like a small cube made from cameras and you need at least six of them. So when you imagine the cube you have six sides of it. So you can cover it with a five but better with a six.
00:19:25
Speaker
Now you have super production ready cameras with built-in lenses, auto stitching, software, even not software, it's like built-in function, just get the final little video. At that moment there were no cameras or something like that, so yes.
00:19:43
Speaker
And that was just 10 years ago. i mean yeah Yeah, so fast. So fast happening. so just Now it's super, super strange engine technology. It's 360 videos. I'm kidding. It's not a strange engine, but now it's... Okay, it's 360.
00:19:59
Speaker
Yeah, realistically, when I went to South by the other day and they just said, hey, we're going to show you 360-degree video. I was like, are you sure? It's like 2024. I mean, we were doing that 10 years ago. Seriously, guys, yeah. So what we did, we tried to find, first of all, small, reliable cameras.
00:20:27
Speaker
that we can somehow synchronize, because we need to synchronize video and audio, because right now they synchronize on a hardware level. At that moment,
00:20:39
Speaker
They were not synchronized. So we stopped and but decided to go with the GoPro, just because they're small, reliable. You can put it in the water. We need to connect them somehow, or physically connect in the cube. We experimented a little bit with the different setups.
00:21:00
Speaker
But at the end of the day, we just printed a cage on 3D printer and put all of them inside. ah Then a we experimented with several shootings. I remember near the office building, just trying to create what what's what's happening. And the the view angle ah wasn't enough.
00:21:24
Speaker
And we need somehow to improve it. We Googled a lot, researched, and found that somehow it's possible to replace the lens built in with the fisheye lens. So there were, I think, only one ah company at that moment that sell this.
00:21:51
Speaker
ah could sell these lenses, I just don't remember, they they were from the United States. So we bought these lenses, special lenses for the GoPros, then rebuilt all this like cage with cameras, then made several tests and at the final moment we realized here it is, it works, it's super cool. We can stitch the video, it's enough in terms of the angle, it's enough in terms of the resolution quality, we can stitch them.
00:22:17
Speaker
because you need to overlap the video to make it seamless without strange lines or dark areas, or something like that. Then we realized we can use it with quadrocopters or drones just because it's easy enough for that, it's lightweight. So we experimented with this one because that was like the next stage when we shoot the video about the HMS Cavalier.
00:22:45
Speaker
Oh, right, yeah yeah. Yeah, because we made it outside and inside. There were so many different setups. That was a project for with Google Arts and Culture, like where we created the series of 360 videos and immersive storytelling inside warships,
00:23:06
Speaker
ah well most of them in the UK. Not only inside, outside as well. So from the outside, we can shoot it with the help of drone. fusion drone that can carry, stable carry this setup with the rig, then we can use it. And I remember there was like a very specific challenge that's like less related to technology, but more related to the direction of that because you... Storytelling itself. story telling Yeah, the storytelling. so that' you If you could share like some lessons that you and your team learned like how to control ah where a viewer should look at this specific moment, yes because like some events happening there. because it's like
00:23:51
Speaker
ah so Otherwise, like a person could get lost and like looking at a stone, like all the video and that's and that's it. And I mean, everything else will happen somewhere else. So what were the direct and storytelling lessons? that you First one and the easiest one, ah you have to use motion.
00:24:10
Speaker
to control the viewpoint ah of the viewer. ah So you just need to, with the camera movement or motion inside the scene, to show where is the focus, what what do you need to see right now, where it's going to happen right now.
00:24:30
Speaker
Because yes, as you mentioned, you can just, ah first of all, lose the control over the story, or you can mismatch the moment, the sound itself, and just...
00:24:43
Speaker
don't Don't catch the the sense, the script, what was's what's going on here right now. First one, control the focus of the ear with motion. Second one, use lighting. Use it smartly. Brighter areas to bring attention to this specific area, let's say, or prepare the viewer for the action in the next frame, let's say. So darker areas means less focus, brighter areas means more focus. Invite your viewer to this specific area. Be consistent. Don't jump with this area of interests. 360, don't do that. So don't make this person rotating his head like a crazy.
00:25:33
Speaker
Be consistent. If you want to somehow to flip the person, rotate the person, make it slowly moving this ah attention area ah second by second from one place to another one. So make it comfortable. Make it interesting for that um for the viewer.
00:25:56
Speaker
ah In parallel, duplicate information in a smart way with the voice over. ah not you You don't need to yeah make viewer guess about what's happening. Just double check that you pronounce what's happening or predict or um give advice to the viewer what what you want to do, what you're going to tell. Not like directly, now rotate your head like 90 degrees. No, just
00:26:30
Speaker
Implemented to your story to your script and control control at the same moment still you need to add interesting details ah to the whole video because in other way just flat video why you created 360 because there is nothing to see there so still you need to take care about the whole environment what's happening around.
00:26:51
Speaker
gives more small details they should be short short one in terms of the time frame not to over focus or overspend your your time this very specific area so be be smart think that you are in the real world and when you see another person you'll try to ah catch the eye contact You can use another person inside the video, and just and it's like instinct. It works itself. You don't need to say, okay, now just follow list this person. When you have only one person in your video,
00:27:31
Speaker
just following because this storyteller or the main character when you have a lot of them show who is the main one just to follow him so there are most of them obvious because there are many books videos how to be director how to be a cameraman here just thinking about not like a flat picture but environment itself so imagine you're in a museum or i didn't know like interest interesting location and you need to control the journey of the person through this location. And it's wine quite close to what what we are doing inside the 360 video.
00:28:18
Speaker
Oh yeah, so that's kind of like an an intersection of for like experience, design, experiential design, the interior yes experience, like the yeah like intersection of many different disciplines. And now, indeed, there are many guides and so on, but it's interesting how we were overcoming these challenges without books written.
00:28:39
Speaker
we We just experimented a lot. Just experimented. Oh, yeah. So actually one of the next gen projects that um I'd like to also cover and that we like our teams initially kickstarters long before it became like a bit of a trend in games like Fortnite.
Virtual Performance Integration in Gaming
00:28:58
Speaker
ah So we ah Aimed to create a music event inside the game. and And actually, yeah, so we were not the first one to do that, of course. So the companies have been experimenting with that for decades. And you can check the first episode with Matt Daly, who delves into that, how it was happening even in the early 2000s.
00:29:23
Speaker
It's like that kind of metaverse concerts. But anyway, so ah we are and your and your team in particular have been involved into making an offspring ah music performance inside World of Tanks. So ah can you guide me through that, how how actually you made it real back in, I don't know, whatever year it was, but maybe like some seven or eight years ago?
00:29:47
Speaker
the success of this story totally ah based on the deep collaboration between the development guys and the creative guys because tools were limited because of the game engine itself. It was game engine for tanks.
00:30:07
Speaker
It's super cool in terms of being gritty, showing cool metal machines, dirt, like having fun with them, but not for the characters, not for the human. And there were limitations, how to animate them, how to work with the skin shaders, textures, all these elements. And I just really remember how where they inspired with this opportunity, first of all, to work with the like new ah Let's see character inside the game, because tank itself is like a main character.
00:30:43
Speaker
for this game specifically but they finally can work with the humans with the people moving differently from tanks and it was like super cool band there are so many fans of like offspring music i remember guys were inspiring little wow that's that's so great and they They found it so many tricks how just to over overcome the limitations. We built so strange prototypes, especially when we need to create the scale objects with the same scale just to experiment with the motion capture technology, and understand how we need to play them, how many times do we need for the person jumping from the tank to the ground or opening the hatch.
00:31:37
Speaker
so how to blend all these animations, should it look like consistent okay or not okay from this specific angle or distance inside the game, what we can to optimize, make it easier to render or lighter, not so heavy in terms of the size, ah file size or something like that so that. That was super cool because it was a new experience for us, a new experience for them. and i think For me personally, that will just mean R&D. Research and development, it's not just these strange words when you're just sitting, I don't know, writing something or experimenting in your head. It's about being passionate. Just searching for something new. You have to think out of the box. You need to find new solution, overcome different approach. It could be super simple. It could be like a cardboard tape. I didn't know two glasses of water and have fun with that. It doesn't matter. Sometimes it's a super high technology thing, but at the end of the day, it's how you think. It's not about strange, expensive technology. It's about the way of thinking.
00:32:53
Speaker
how to find different solution for common problem that everyone knows right now but you definitely want to overcome it find a solution for that so we did that and just because we were passionate we were smart enough lucky enough of course just to do that and i think the result was great so guys from uh the team A lot of thanks who participated, just good news for you guys. It was super cool. Nice. I love that vibe and like the message about the passion and and desire like to to explore and like to to find more efficient because it's always like related to specific business tasks, right? So it's not just like just because we can.
00:33:39
Speaker
So um you've referenced already ah the video production with celebrities. like We've just talked about the offspring. And I know like your team, and and you in particular, have been working really closely with the guys like John Luigi Buffon, Sabaton, Dolph Lundgren, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and even Chuck Norris.
00:34:01
Speaker
and many others. So ah what was the experience like and what so what what you can share from ah working with such well-known, like world-known people? First of all,
00:34:17
Speaker
They are super nice people. Second point, they're super professional. They just know what to do. They don't waste time. As I said previously, they're passionate. They laugh at what they're doing. They want to find the best solution.
00:34:34
Speaker
They wanted to act, they wanted to find this role to tell this story. And that's super cool. So I think for me, it was like the very first impression. Right. So what's your take on the on using AI and celebrities and like recreating celebrities like from the past ah when they might might reappear?
Ethical Considerations in AI and Celebrity Recreation
00:34:56
Speaker
In the world, like they do, for instance, like in in Star Wars, like when they recreate the characters and like the actors who like already passed away. ah What's your take on using AI for that kind of ah re-creation and they're democratizing use of celebrities and videos? This is a tough question, definitely. because ah You can see this coin from different angles, like a tech guy. I think this is super cool because I can see my favorite actor even.
00:35:37
Speaker
he passed. I can get new emotions, new experience because he participates in the next i did no series of and I expect that and I've been waiting for years for that on the one hand. On the other hand,
00:35:54
Speaker
ah This is not the specific person, this is just a mirror, ah hologram, you can name it yourself. Pixels, not pixels. yeah just Just pixels and the story created behind these pixels, but this is not this person. so Kind of a mismatch here, and one more topic, ah this is like respect for the talent of this person.
00:36:23
Speaker
that this person deserves being famous just because this person is super talented. And now you're going to use the famous,
00:36:35
Speaker
ah smell he this fame just just just for what? So it's not your talent. You just use this like beautiful picture for i don't know for money or something. It doesn't matter.
00:36:53
Speaker
So it's super tricky ah and I think the solution here is to be fair, to be transparent and not try to sell it like like a real person. So you be you should you should be fair in what you are doing. In case you want to see the person It's very important for you. No, please, no, this is not for your one. This is AI generated. We did our best to make it as much ah believable as possible. We did our best to tell the story like this person, but this is not this person. And we just take care about the talent and we appreciate this talent.
00:37:47
Speaker
So I think this is the only way because we cannot stop the technology. We cannot stop the revolution, evolution. So it will move. We will see more and more. So it shouldn't be fake. It shouldn't be strange looking or sounds like it should be transparent for you. That's all. So we've been talking today a lot about the teams with whom we've been working and with whom we've been experimenting, who combine different competencies, different capabilities and perspectives. And sometimes like the videos that we were referencing, the projects that we referenced.
00:38:31
Speaker
And they received words which like public um acceptance of but public confirmation of the ah success. And I remember how you told me the story like when you were traveling to just like totally different ah Corner of the earth um i think it wasn't an ab show now be sure yeah and there is gonna like the one of the most important and valuable events for people in production in motion graphic in computer graphic right.
00:39:06
Speaker
and And you found yourself... but first of all First of all, video video production. right like right and you kind the The main one. okay so And you found yourself ah at the Maxon Cinema booth, which is pretty known like for for software. right and And then what? It was very exact moment.
00:39:29
Speaker
when I just stood near this booth and the show really started. And there were so many shots we made from videos we made, the team made, and I was so proud of the team. I was so proud that finally I got this super simple measure, let's say.
00:39:52
Speaker
the scale, how to understand where we are right now. So it's I think maybe for somebody, it doesn't mean anything. Okay, guys, we just submit our video to show real. But for me, it was a result of very, very long journey, building the team of talented people, making them better and better every day, delivering them all the tools and solutions that they need.
00:40:19
Speaker
inspire them and expect them that we will create something interesting. And it was like this moment, like, okay, now I realized that we we did something interesting, interesting valuable. People really admitted here, included to the show. So after that, we got a lot of awards, like world level, like epic clear hours, a lot of them. But for me, it was very,
00:40:53
Speaker
first moment when we realized we are capable of doing really good things. Super interesting. worse Worth mention. so Let's see. Yeah, that's super important. And from what I know, i some part of that team is still with you in your just recently established studio, yeah like you are. I was lucky enough. So speaking about your new venture, basically what you and your Maroia Studio teammates are working on right now.
00:41:26
Speaker
OK, yes, it was my dream ah to open the Studio, the GIS Studio, and to continue doing what I'm doing, what what I really love to do, create cool videos. But now we can do it in our own way, work with different clients, different ah and two games,
00:41:49
Speaker
different settings, so many, many options for us here right now. ah Mostly right now we focus on games gaming studios, gaming publishers, we create videos and CGI for movie, but mostly for the gaming industry. We use a lot Unreal Engine in our everyday pipeline.
00:42:12
Speaker
because As I said previously, I finally imagine that they can deliver so photoreo a picture that's so close for the we quality level that we use it a lot. and We try to unify pipelines, just use use d is Houdini in connection with Unreal Engine. So it gives so many options, what what to do, how to tell the story, do it faster, a make a lot of iterations. So now it's just more creative work. It's still a lot of technical things behind, but more and more creative work. And right now we're working on a
00:42:59
Speaker
Very interesting cinematic, totally made the site a real engine. ah We have an approved pipeline for the characters. It was very interesting for us to improve our pipeline in terms of working with the human. Because I think like in terms of emotion, telling the story, creating photorealistic, inspiring, emotional human,
00:43:27
Speaker
just like Number one goal. And this this project about that, a lot of people, a lot of characters, a lot of emotions, motion, motion capture, all this like technical nuances about the scheme, ah facial emotions, wrinkles, everything that we like here in Studio. And I hope It will be released in the middle of December, so ah we will definitely share it everywhere on LinkedIn and so on. Before that, we released all the videos for the World of Tanks.
00:44:11
Speaker
We're gaming, ah so we created several cinematics for the upcoming games, first one Night Wonder, second one Thurgill, based on a comic book of Polish
00:44:28
Speaker
Belgian author and Polish artist that created this comics. And the second one, the book that was written by Polish author as well. So I think they're cool as well, but I really like the trailers I made for them. so It was very interesting. So I have a question. If your team has been creating the assets of vehicles and tanks in particular for quite a long time, how to create humans that do not look like tanks? At first, it was hard. yes Just to rebuild pipeline, first of all. But as you said, I was lucky enough to involve and invite guys
00:45:13
Speaker
from wegamon And we we have even more talented people from all over the world. And we spent a lot of time improving our knowledge and skills, experimenting a lot ah with motion capture, with the facial capture, what's happening on the face with the facial expression.
00:45:35
Speaker
We have our own hardware for that just to do it faster and iterate a lot. And from the very beginning we were amian working with the gaming engines and just to push the limits.
00:45:51
Speaker
And I think this is the key point of the success. that be From the very beginning, I realized there is no way to follow with the classical pipeline. It will change fast. It will change a lot.
00:46:08
Speaker
and we should not follow it. We should be on the peak of this change or even try to, where is possible, control it or deliver the best solutions for clients, for ourselves. So that's the goal. That's what we're doing. Just experimenting a lot using the most recent technologies and of telling to the team. I'm just proud of them. So it's impossible moment without telling to people. Kirill, I think I have only one question remaining. So Kirill, what's next? Nice one. I hope ah in the nearest future, we will be able to get personalized, interesting story
00:47:08
Speaker
ah visualized with the help of AI, but still controlled by a human and told by human. Because in my personal opinion, still ah the story is the king.
00:47:24
Speaker
and other just just tools, just solutions that help you helps you to deliver the story. So I just see it will be faster, super personalized because it will be cheap and it's easier to generate something specifically for you.
00:47:43
Speaker
But still told by a professional, my favorite, I didn't know, scriptwriter or director. I don't want to see a strange computer generated, sort of of that what ah word bullshit. So I don't like that. This is my next step prediction. um That was Kiryl Drazdovich video production, computer graphics and R&D experts. Thanks for coming, Kirill. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Alex.
00:48:12
Speaker
Hey, thank you for tuning in into the show. You've been listening to The Month and Millions, a practical and inspiring show about innovators and immersion tech practitioners. Please subscribe to make sure you don't miss a new episode. I'm Alex Babko and you've been listening to The Months and Millions. Goodbye.