Mark Kochinski, Freelance Visual Effects
March 08, 2007

Mark Kochinski has been busy for years creating visual effects work for the likes of Rhythm & Hues, Digital Muse, Dreamworks, Flash Film Works, Digital Domain, S4 Studios and many more. NewTek sat down with Mark to find out what it's like to be a freelance artist, his history with LightWave and what he's been up to lately.

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your history with 3D?
I was doing video production in Houston, Texas when the Amiga computer came out. The graphics capabilities of the computer were exactly what our company was looking for. As the 3D programs began coming out for it, I was excited by the possibilities of creating films by computer. I began to teach myself. Eventually, I came out to Los Angeles.

I cut together a pretty crude demo reel, and began shopping it around. I eventually called up Ron Thornton, who had just finished the Babylon 5 pilot. They hired me to do screen displays on the Viper pilot, and for two whole weeks Foundation Imaging was Ron, Paul and me. Soon they brought on Tim Wilcox, brought Mojo back on, and hired John Teska. That was the entire crew for the first season of Babylon 5. Since then I've been busy at companies like Rhythm & Hues, Encore, Digital Muse, Dreamworks, Flat Earth, Flash Film Works, VCE, Digital Domain, S4 Studios, etc. I'm sure I missed a couple. I started supervising on Sliders in 1997, and have switched between being an artist and a supervisor for years now.

How were you first introduced to LightWave 3D?
When Ron hired me for Viper & Babylon 5. Up until then I'd been working with Imagine - and further back, Turbo Silver. I remember Ron saying that if I could do what I'd done with those programs, I could easily do it in LightWave. There was an adjustment period, but he was right.

What feature of LightWave do you like most?
For me it's the interface. Unlike most 3D programs at the time, it felt like a filmmaker's tool rather than a programmer's or engineer's hack. The tools were laid out in an intuitive manner that lent themselves to filmmaking. It's become a lot more complex since then, but it still holds true.

Are there any plug-ins you use on a regular basis?
FPrime is pretty incredible. Most of Steve Worley's plug-ins tend to be top notch. But I tend to be an old-fashioned, blunt instrument type of guy.

As a freelancer, what type of work do you usually get?
I'm a freelancer, and that basically means I'm always looking after the next job. I have a core of companies that hire me on a regular basis. Some view me as a supervisor, some hire me to composite, others for 3D. A couple still tend to use what they call "generalists". That would be pretty much what I am. I solve problems. As someone else I know has put it, I don't care how many D's there are, two OR three.

What made you decide to go freelance?
A combination of opportunities and the simultaneous slump in the entire industry around the year 2000. A lot of the work went off-shore, and there were some industry strikes which all affected the work force. Some companies went under, and a lot eliminated staff positions. A large percentage of the visual effects workforce these days has shifted to a freelance or job-by-job basis.

Of course, I've also been known to have a restless nature.

Does freelance work have any particular advantages/disadvantages?
The advantages lean heavily in favor of the companies that hire you. You lose certain benefits and you are laid-off as soon as the project is finished. To compensate, the pay rate tends to be higher. There's very little security, but it allows VFX companies to stay in business during the ups and downs that plague the industry.

A definite advantage is the variety of work and experience, though. If you can manage to keep working steadily, you can take some pride in knowing you have to be pretty good.

What are some projects you've worked on recently?
I just did some commercials at Digital Domain and Planet Blue. I worked on the film The Guardian at Flash Filmworks. Before that, I did compositing on The Triangle mini-series on the Sci-Fi channel, which won the 2006 Emmy for Visual Effects. I spent three months in India supervising the shoot on the Hallmark show The Curse of King Tut's Tomb, and two months in Thailand before that on Mysterious Island.

How was LightWave used in The Guardian?
LightWave was the primary animation and render tool at Flash Filmworks. All of the models were built in LightWave - the helicopter, the cargo ships. Most of the water was LightWave and Realflow working together, with Worley's FPrime sometimes used as the render engine. It was some of the most layered and complex work I've seen done. We were integrating real water and actors in a tank with LightWave and Realflow.

Are there any projects that were particular favorites?
Babylon 5 was a lot of fun, because we were making so much up as we went along. There were no real rules yet, no standard methods, and we were the techno-wizards that were left alone to create their magic. At the time, there was absolutely no way Babylon 5 could have been done without LightWave. During this time we also created a TV show called Hypernauts which we got on ABC, at least for a while. It was a very creative time. Later, I was lucky enough to work directly with Antoine Fuqua doing pre-visualization for Training Day using LightWave. That was fun, and I got to meet Denzel Washington. On a commercial for the director Richard Taylor, I modeled and animated the entire spot in the first day. Of course, we went through revisions, but at the end of each day I was literally delivering a completely re-worked commercial incorporating the client's requests. I don’t know of any other software I could do that in but LightWave.

Are there any projects that were particularly challenging?
They're all challenging, usually because clients always want something they’ve seen that took a huge amount of work, or they want something entirely new that no one has ever seen before. In either case, they usually have the time and the money for neither. Supervising Sliders got to be: Do whatever ILM did in the movie that opened last week. Dinosaurs, twisters... I find LightWave to be the best tool for the job 99% of the time, and I have yet to find a situation where LightWave couldn’t solve a problem better and faster than any other software. There were two other feature projects where I was brought in to do shots that the supervisors had no idea how to accomplish, and they were dubious that CGI could do the job at all. In both cases I had a test done by the end of the first day that convinced them it could be done.

Can you give us some background on the images with this profile?
The waterfall matte painting was done for Sliders originally. I mapped several layers of photographs of lush backgrounds in a series of planes, and placed a transparent highly specular "stream" with noise bumps running through it in the right places, and added a steam cloud at the bottom. It worked surprisingly well.

The Tomorrow Never Dies trailer was a matter of matching the animatic provided to us. It was very straightforward work, but James Bond is always a cool thing.

The water scene is from The Triangle, and my work there was primarily compositing elements provided to me. However, my experience in 3D actually helps me in compositing, because I know what can and can't be done, and I know what I need to make a shot work.

The Oscar model was for a Pepsi commercial during the 1998 Oscar telecast.

The Deathstar set is from Trey Stokes' hilarious, brilliant Return of Pink Five.
http://www.atomfilms.com/film/return_pink.jsp

Trey shot his film (yes, it's a full trilogy) mostly with partial sets and green screen. My job was to create the Emperor's throne room and render high resolution stills from various angles to match the footage. It's a great piece of work and a lot of fun.

The next image is the Na'ka'leen Feeder from Babylon 5, modeled by Ron Thornton and lit and animated in that scene by yours truly. The set behind the feeder was CGI as well, created to match the Babylon 5 set.

The squirrel was created for the John Water's film A Dirty Shame, modeled by Bruce Branit, fur by Rowsby and Steve Worley's Sasquatch.

The rocket and gantry was for a GMC commercial at Digital Domain, all done in LightWave. The gantry is a good illustration of what I meant by a model that has enough complexity and detail that it barely needs to be surfaced.

Iron Man was done for fun, something I've always wanted to do.

The disgusting wormy things were tests done for The Passion of the Christ. The entire scene is CGI, quarter, ruler and all. I like the ruler because I just used LightWave textures on it, no image mapping.

Have the recent changes in LightWave impacted the way you work?
Only in making things go smoother and faster.

Are there any new features of LightWave v9 you've found particularly useful?
The Layout preset (based on Digital Domain's) is probably the best layout I've seen, and it's the first time I've really drifted from the basic LightWave layout.

The dynamics are the best they've been, the hypervoxels are better, and the tweaks in Modeler make it even more intuitive and capable. I'm looking forward to diving into the nodal texturing, which I haven't gotten into as much as I'd like.

Do you have a "LightWave tip or trick" others might find helpful?
It's not a LightWave trick, but I have one basic rule that I always tell people. Screw around with it until it looks good, and then stop screwing around with it. It's amazing how many people have a hard time with the second part of that. Don't try to make it look real, make it look good – we don't pay cinematographers to make the actors look like they really do.

If your model looks good un-textured, there's a pretty good chance it will look better textured. And less of a chance someone else will screw it up.

There's no such thing in reality as a 90-degree edge.

What's next for Mark Kochinski?
In addition to doing visual effects, I also run a film festival, the Extreme Filmmaker 48-Hour Film Festival. It was started as a challenge between VFX artists, and it sort of caught on. I'm also working on a documentary about a 1930's pulp hero. As far as work goes, I’m always looking for the next project, so if you hear anything...

Do you have any advice for someone new to the 3D industry?
Remember that this is a business that you happen to create art for, and business comes first. The client is right, even when they’re wrong, and no one is irreplaceable. Other than that, have fun.

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

To learn more about Mark and his work, visit his website: web.mac.com/markkochinski.