Kevin Quattro, Zoic Studios
April 05, 2007

Kevin Quattro, better known to many in the 3D community simply as "Q", has contributed to the visual effects of many of the most watched shows on television today. Having contributed to the look of outer space in shows such as Battlestar Galactica, Firefly and Serenity, Kevin took on the challenge of inner space with dual roles for the most successful franchise on the air today as Zoic's CG Supervisor on CSI: Miami and Lead CG Artist on CSI. Kevin was able to spare some time from his busy schedule to share some background with us on his work and his one-letter moniker.

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your history with 3D?
Glad to! I am Kevin Quattro, although I have gone by the nick-name "Q" for quite some time. And no, it's not in reference to the omnipotent being from Star Trek. I was first called "Q-Boy" by my 6th-grade gym teacher, since he hated pronouncing and saying my last name. Eventually it shortened to just, "Q". I have been a "professional" computer graphics artist for eleven years now, mostly in the Los Angeles, California area. I did some work in Las Vegas, Nevada for a couple of years too.

How were you first introduced to LightWave 3D?
I started in computer animation in my late years in high school back in Belleville, Michigan. That was around 1991. Not much in 3D for the home user then. Soon though, I stumbled across a new generation of programs while working summers in an Amiga dealership, one of them was LightWave 3D bundled with the Video Toaster. I was blown away at how simple the application was to use.

What feature of LightWave do you like most?
It's the render engine, even more so now with version 9.2. LightWave had always looked good, even back in the 2.0 days. Now with the new toys they have added it has been taken to a new level of realism.

Are there any plug-ins you use on a regular basis?
I find myself in a routine on the shows I work on. I rely on using quite a bit of depth-of-field and in camera compositing. So to help me get that filmed look I use a number of post processing plug-ins; G2, Virtual Dark Room, HDR-Expose, iDof and some others.

What are your duties at Zoic Studios?
I have three duties really, CG Supervisor on CSI: Miami, Lead CG Artist on CSI and LightWave beta manager. I also have my time split across other projects at Zoic when needed. CG supervising involves steering the artists in a direction that fits the format and look of the particular show. Zoic employs a lot of really talented people. This makes my job as supervisor much simpler. I usually only need to point them in a direction, give them a style guide via storyboards or animatic, and off they go. Then it's just a matter of making sure color contrasts and animation fit within the project's style. As a lead artist it's really the same thing except I am creating the CG.

What are some projects you've worked on recently?
CSI, CSI: Miami, E-Ring, Serenity

How physically accurate do you have to be with imagery for a CSI series?
I'd say it's 50% science and 80% Hollywood. I know that doesn't equal 100% but you get the idea. We have anatomy books lying around, and we use them often. But it all comes down to what makes the shot exciting.

What kind of reference material do you work from?
We use lots of anatomy books and images from Google searches. We also use Ebay, since there are so many images on there for the "hardware" shots we do on CSI, the "in the machine shots".

What is the average turnaround time for a completed shot?
Generally we have 5 days, sometimes we get a couple of extra days for very complicated ones. LightWave was not used initially on CSI (Miami or Las Vegas). I came on board after showing a small demo of what LightWave could do in such a short amount of time. Zoic and the clients were blown away. Ever since, they have been thrilled at how quickly we are able to give them realistic renders. Realistic and stylistic actually. We took the VFX of CSI: Miami to a new level, so much so that CSI asked us to start on their show the following season! Now, we have been doing both shows ever since. We even do a little work for CSI:NY now and then.

How is LightWave used on a show like CSI?
The obvious items are the "in the body" and "in the machine" shots. The not so obvious are the set extensions, background replacements and prop replacements. We do a lot of on-set prop replacement. Adding set pieces that could not be there for real, as it would make shooting difficult for the Director, is very common. We also do a lot of CG on top of prosthetics. Blending the two takes a lot of effort, but LightWave really makes it go quickly.

Was Serenity Zoic's first major motion picture?
It was the first major film Zoic was the lead on. We were tasked with nearly all the shots. We have done numerous prior films, just on a much smaller scale, wire removals, matte paintings, roto and some CG VFX work in certain scenes. For myself, I worked on the film The Jackal a while back. That was my first time working on a motion picture. I have to say I prefer the constant change of episodic television versus film.

How was LightWave used in Serenity?
95% of the visual FX in Serenity were rendered in LightWave. The major battle at the end, the Serenity itself and some digital sets were all LightWave renders. Although the bulk of the modeling and texturing was done in another application, some modeling and texturing was done in LightWave, and all of it was rendered in LightWave. We received assets from our modelers and then animated, lit and rendered everything in LightWave, this includes all the pyro and various effects seen in the film. Most of the pyro was done with real elements, but there was some HyperVoxel work in there. The Serenity's warp effect was a combination of displacement maps, voxels and image sequences.

Do you prefer sci-fi, like Serenity, or more realistic work, like CSI?
Ideally I prefer a balance of the two. Working on any one thing for too long can be very tiring. CSI is a nice blend most of the time. I get to do the stylized "in the body" shots and the more realistic "in the hardware" shots, so it keeps things interesting. I worked on sci-fi for three years at Foundation Imaging, on the Star Trek shows. When I came to Zoic I worked on Firefly and the Battlestar Galactica pilot. After that, I was pretty fried on space stuff and was looking for a change. That lead to the LightWave demo for CSI: Miami I mentioned earlier.

How does LightWave fit into your production pipeline?
LightWave is part of a multi-app hub we have here at Zoic. It slots in nicely with all the other applications we use via custom programs and scripts that tie everything together. LightWave is our defacto renderer to be sure. Almost everything coming out of this studio is rendered at least partially or even completely in LightWave.

Are there any projects that have been particular favorites?
The Battlestar Galactica mini-series (pilot) was a lot of fun. I was tasked with a couple of key shots, but mainly my duty was blowing stuff up, the station at the beginning and all the ship rigs. Using Hard FX and Particle FX made it easy to setup rigs that the artists could use to annihilate the ships with ease, and LightWave allowed for a freedom in the rigs I created so that each artist could still customize the explosions for their own artistic taste. They appreciate that and so do I.

Are there any projects that have been particularly challenging?
CSI has to be one of the hardest shows I have ever worked on. It's fun to get the storyboards in and see what new challenge they have laid out. Often it can be very frustrating when trying to come up with a solution in such a short amount of time. This is where trusting your application as well as the team around you becomes most important. LightwWave has saved our butts more than once and continues to do so with this latest version.

Can you give us some background on the images at left?
You're seeing shots from Battlestar Galactica, Firefly and CSI there. You can see good examples of the "in the body" shots, the DNA, slug and some brain neurons being examples. These shots allow for a lot of imagination and fun on my part. As I said earlier, we use real-life reference, but generally only as a starting point. Then we get to go kind of wild from there.

The "fire snake" in the one image is from Firefly. That was a fun episode, lots of voxel fire snaking its way through the halls of the Serenity. Those were all sprite voxels too. Turned out pretty cool I thought.

The station I mentioned before is featured here, the one I had to blow up in the BSG pilot. That was pretty cool. Another artist created a morphing rig for the station, and then I added in various debris bits and further destruction. It was also the first shot where we used my new technique of mapping explosion and fire sequences to sprite voxels to get a realistic volumetric fire look.

Have the recent changes in LightWave impacted the way you work?
Most definitely! The new anti-aliasing, and how it affects motion blur and depth-of-field, have greatly improved the realism of our shots. The new 3D depth-of-field realistically renders in reflected images as well as through transparency, very nifty indeed. It has now replaced the way we used to do depth-of-field. The ability to preview the effect in real time has greatly shortened the time it takes to set up our cameras.

Are there any new features of LightWave v9 you've found particularly useful?
In addition to the aforementioned depth-of-field, real lens camera and the node editor, with it's buffet of shader goodies, are all used heavily now. The shaders in particular have allowed for more detailed and real-looking digital prop replacements for all the internal body stuff we do on CSI.

Do you have a "LightWave tip or trick" others might find helpful?
I tend to over-light my shots and use LightWave's high-dynamic-range renderer to my advantage. Using the internal viewer, ImageViewerFP, you can then adjust the levels of the over-lit image to dial in exactly the look you want. For those who don't have a high-dynamic-range tool set for compositing, you can freeze those adjustments in the render using HDR_Expose.

What's next for Kevin Quattro?
To continue pushing computer generated effects in television. Every year, what we see and do in television is quickly catching up to film. We are seeing more film stars in television shows, and I'd like to help bring more film quality VFX to those shows, the ones that need it at least, heh.

Do you have any advice for someone new to the 3D industry?
Watch as many action/sci-fi films as you can. Even if you are not a fan of watching movies, it should be part of your job to sit down and see what the latest "gag" is. Staying up to date with the state of visual FX in film and television is very important in maintaining your drive and knowledge of what people want to see. Also, be sure to watch older FX-laden films. There are some great classics out there that are wonderful style guides for how to move the camera, light and texture.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Kevin!

To learn more about Kevin Quattro and his work, you can view his demo reel: www.PixelSMACK.com. To learn more about Zoic Studios and their work, visit their website: www.ZoicStudios.com.