Interview with Jason Iversen

On this episode I must apologize in advance for having way too much fun.
My guest is Jason Iversen he is a Visual Effects Technical Supervisor who has worked at Digital Domain, Rythm and Hues and now is at Weta in New Zealand.
We have known each other since high school and worked together many years ago in South Africa.
He was the co-founder of the Odforce.net chat forum. And he has worked on more block buster films than I’ve had blocked noses.
We talk about visual effects, color pipelines and rendering techniques through the ages and discuss where things are heading with the merging of Weta with Unity games.

We discuss:

• (00:00) - Intro

(01:32) - Interview starts (01:39) - Let's talk about the (03:06) - Lord of the Rings (03:48) - New (04:31) - Starting (05:23) - Early virtual reality (10:05) - Cybershark (12:24) - Odforce.net origins (17:23) - Digital Domain (19:16) - DD company culture (21:49) - Titanic water simulations (25:19) - Specialization (27:31) - Pipeline development (30:12) - What color management? (30:46) - Film outs (32:01) - Look mom, no LUT! (32:18) - sRGB / Linear mashup (33:20) - Compositors bearing the brunt (35:03) - Isn't it always just painting? (36:59) - WYSI not WYG (38:33) - Jackass landlord (40:13) - Rythm and Hues (40:51) - South African attractor (42:05) - Effects and Lighting supervisor (42:50) - Software development (43:45) - Developing into a product (46:13) - Color management arrives (50:00) - SDR to HDR rendering (50:18) - RGBE (51:34) - Open EXR (52:28) - OCIO (54:00) - Life of Pi bankruptcy (56:11) - Polishing the car (57:22) - Pressure to go international (57:41) - Production technology supervisor (01:00:01) - Moving to Weta (01:01:39) - Spectral rendering (01:02:51) - Less fictitious (01:05:21) - Spectral resolution (01:06:31) - Simulate everything (01:09:07) - Avatar 3 (01:10:25) - Planet of the Apes (01:12:58) - Optical effects (01:14:20) - Phosphorescence (01:15:19) - Uplifting textures (01:17:23) - Machine learning in Manuka (01:18:58) - Image based lighting (01:23:28) - Types of Renderers (01:27:08) - Manuka's render method (01:28:25) - Coherence (01:29:39) - Wave striding (01:31:30) - Spectral rendered emulates film? (01:32:02) - www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE9rEQAGpLw (01:32:33) - Light sources in Manuka (01:34:50) - Caustics (01:37:41) - Shade before hit (01:39:26) - Photogrammetry (01:40:38) - 2D vs 3D and deep rendering (01:43:51) - Merging of film and games (01:44:42) - Gausian Splatting (01:45:12) - gsplat.tech website (01:47:50) - Splat drawn flying points (01:50:03) - Immersion (01:50:59) - Splat funeral (01:51:55) - R&D lifecycle (01:53:28) - Gemini Man (01:55:46) - Pure research (01:58:00) - Heat haze (02:00:41) - Confluence of Games and Film (02:03:09) - Unreal as renderer (02:04:04) - Crossover content (02:07:32) - Boring detail (02:09:17) - Atlas and VR stages (02:11:50) - Outro (02:12:19) - End

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