Articles by Christopher Nichols

Donna Smith — Hollywood Producer

Wanna make it in the movies? The Terminator, Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park producer tells Chris the secrets of cinematic success...

Hal Hickel — ILM

From singing raisins to raising the dead: ILM animation director talks ethics, uncanny valleys — and animatronic teddy bears.

Accelerate your workflow with V-Ray Next for Maya IPR

We’ve improved the way that IPR works in V-Ray Next for Maya to help you dramatically speed up your workflow. Here’s everything you need to know.

Alex Coulombe — Agile Lens

Arch viz VR studio founder on how to create great content — and the best tools for experiencing it.

Tools — Art and Technology Panel at THU

Who creates art: the painter or the paintbrush? Industry experts join Chris for a lively debate at THU.

Geoffrey Baumann — VFX Supervisor, Marvel

Black Panther’s VFX supervisor reveals how he worked his way up to this crucially important role.

Adrian Graham and D. Ryan Reeb — Google Cloud Platform

Chris Nichols chews on the future of a virtual studio in the cloud with two top dogs: Google Cloud’s Adrian Graham and CG artist extraordinaire D. Ryan Reeb.

Kevin Margo & Derron Ross — CONSTRUCT

After five years in production, Kevin Margo’s short film Construct has finally been released. Find out why it’s taken such a long time, and how this little film could change VFX workflows in a big way.

Dan Thron and Erick Schiele — Martini Giant: Alien

Join Dan, Erick, and Chris for a thorough evisceration of Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi horror movie.

Understanding metalness

The importance of metalness and why we’ve added the Metalness parameter to the V-Ray standard material to better support a PBR workflow in V-Ray Next.

Zap Andersson — Autodesk

Join the Shader Wizard for a journey through the history of ray tracing and a comprehensive guide to metalness.

Chris Nichols — Digital Domain

Chris Nichols of Chaos Group talks to Chris Nichols of Digital Domain to discuss digital humans, Thanos of Avengers: Infinity War, and how they used to get each other's emails.

Dave Macey — INK

Audi, McLaren, and Wired have turned to INK for incredible renders. Founder Dave Macey tells us how the company’s made a name for itself, and the importance of its passion projects.

© Anton Podvalny
Dramatically Expand your Material and Texture Library with V-Ray Plugin Nodes

Would you like more shaders and textures at your fingertips? In this helpful guide, we’ll reveal the key to unlocking access through the V-Ray Plugin Nodes.

András Káldos, Attila Cselovszki & Péter Sárhidai — Brick Visual

Communicating design and building apps for the future with Snøhetta and SOM visualization company.

Grant Miller — Ingenuity Studios

Look what Houdini made me do! Find out how V-Ray for Houdini powered Taylor Swift’s music video, and go behind the scenes of Get Out.

Bill Spradlin — Zoic Studios

Respected VFX supervisor on the pipelines and deadlines of Arrow, Iron Fist and Legends of Tomorrow.

© Cinniature
From another Dimension: Adobe’s software gives graphic designers 3D superpowers

Dimension CC makes it easy for anyone to create realistic 3D. Adobe's Zorana Gee and Ross McKegney explain how they launched their app faster with V-Ray App SDK.

Evan Buxton & Bryan Holmes — Neoscape

The principles of this cutting-edge creative agency join Chris and Lon for a hilarious podcast

Camille Lymer, Michelle Obayda & Zlatina Pancheva — Squint/Opera

BIG and Hyperloop One creative studio on making the world’s grandest architecture projects feel persona

Aaron Kupferman

The Meg and Avengers: Infinity War compositor on the relationship between CG artists and photographers.

Karim Mousa — Mozses

Talk like an Egyptian: Arch viz star on his stunning renders for Zaha Hadid, KPF, MVRDV and more.

Ian Spriggs

“Portrait of Cassidy” is CG artist Ian Spriggs’ latest digital portrait. Listen to find out how he created this and many of his other masterpieces.

V-Ray Next: Denoising in Production

We explain the differences between NVIDIA's AI denoiser and V-Ray Next's own denoiser. We explain how ours allows for proper compositing and temporal denoising.