Interview with Symmetrix Design Works
June 08, 2006

Symmetrix Design Works is an Australia-based illustration service specializing in architectural visualization . With 11-years experience in the industry, they are known in their area for fast and accurate modeling and match-moving work, and they've been recognized for that work with a number of industry awards. We recently spoke to James Willmott, owner of Symmetrix Design Works about the company's experience in the architecture field and their impressions of LightWave v9, having already put the pre-release version of the software successfully to task in a production environment.

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your history with 3D and how you were introduced to LightWave?
Like a lot of people, I owned an Amiga back in the 80's (and still have it somewhere). A copy of Sculpt4D was given away on the cover of CU-Amiga and I was bitten by the bug to create 3D. Problem was it wasn't very easy to use and came with no manual. Now, at the time Babylon 5 was one of my favorite sci-fi shows, and was one of the first TV shows to use CG extensively. When I found out that they had used the Amiga to do it, I needed to know more. Sculpt4D couldn't do what I saw on screen. A friend of mine worked in a studio that had a copy of LightWave, and I would play around making balls and cubes fly around when it wasn't being used. Up until then, my only creative outlet was through Deluxe Paint and Brilliance, and although I was stuck in a 2D world I'd frequently make use of DPaint's animated perspective brush mode to make pseudo-3D animations.

What feature of LightWave do you like the most?
Up until LightWave v9, I'd have to say Modeler! I like the fact that you're working with the basic building blocks of 3D in a streamlined and dedicated environment. Points and Polygons are as simple and easy to work with as you can get. People might complain about all the things that Modeler lacks such as widgets, snapping to verts and edges, no nurbs etc., but to be honest, I've seen a lot of great modeling done without those sort of features cluttering up the toolset.

If we're talking about LightWave v9, I'd have to say that Nodal editing is my number one reason for upgrading. Based on what I've seen in the videos this just blows away layers-based texturing and offers such flexibility and power you get giddy just thinking about it. The best thing about it is, we're not talking about a small scale feature update, like Photoshop blending modes, or GLSL shading. This is a very significant update, which will be used and appreciated by everyone. On top of that, it shows the 3D community that LightWave is moving forward in big steps towards something truly fantastic, and that it is no longer being held back by old school ways of doing things.

Are there any plug-ins you use on a regular basis?
Do my own plug-ins count? I've written two small LScripts which I use constantly, one selects coplanar polygons, the other selects all polys using the same material as the one selected. Beyond that I use TrueArt's EasySplit as often as I can, even if just for the sheer fun of using it.

What projects are you currently working on?
Most of our work at present is actually providing specialist services to some of the other local studios. We've got something of a reputation for fast accurate match-moving among the locals, and have recently supervised a large number of green-screen shoots and accompanying match-moves. We've also done a lot of purely modeling work with other studios for high-rises in Australia and the US, and in between have been working on a series of DVD's for marketing a line of aged-care facilities for a long-term client.

Can you tell us a little about Symmetrix Design Works and its place in the 3D industry?
We're a small architectural visualization company working in the extremely competitive market in Australia. We started out by doing 3D work for the architects we used to work full-time for. But as people learned who was responsible for their 3D work we were asked to do more and more work for our own clients, and eventually had to leave full-time employment to handle our own workload.

Just recently we've started making inroads into the local TVC market, by lending our services as and where needed. We're hoping this will lead to bigger and better things.

Half of our work is our own, but the other half sees us as a cog in a larger machine. We actually produce a fair amount of work for a number of our competitors, producing highly detailed architectural models for them to render up in their own packages, usually Cinema 4D, Max or Maya.

What is your primary role at Symmetrix Design Works, and what does it entail?
At the moment I'm a bit of everything, director, receptionist, art director, coffee boy. Most of our staff are contractors and work remotely via the Internet so I basically manage them and put the final work together based on what they have sent me. Usually I'll have two or three people sending me basic architectural models, which I'll then detail up, finish and render while they are working on the next set of models.

Have there been any projects where LightWave stands out in your mind as having been particularly helpful?
Yes! It's the usual story, the client wants the job done yesterday and it will take at least a week to actually do it properly.

We had been commissioned to produce four photomontages of a new tower development for a favorite client. The model was being supplied in 3DS format and we were going to have to do some work on it in Modeler. Thankfully the 3DS importer brought all the materials across without losing anything, so all we really had to do was remove the coplanar polygons and the model was ready to go.

We loaded the four background plates as an image sequence, mapped to the background, and set up four keyframes for the camera at the four locations where the photos were taken from.

We sent the images to the render farm, retrieved them from the queue, quickly post processed and touched them up in Photoshop and sent them to the client for review.

We heard nothing back for a few days when suddenly a request came through "Can we see the tops of the tower?"

Now, the photographs were taken with a normal 35mm looking basically straight ahead, so we were only looking at the first 4 or five stories, there were another 20 or so on top. It had taken long enough the first time to match the perspective of the camera to the photograph, now shifting the camera to view the top of the building seemed like a nightmare.

LightWave v9's new Advanced Camera Tools came to the rescue. We created a plane, perpendicular to the plane of the camera and positioned just in front of it, and then told ACT to fire it's rays from the camera position through the plane to form the image. Then, by simply moving the plane upwards, we faked the behavior of a tilt-shift lens beautifully. The tilt-shifted renders were a pixel perfect match for the original render, we didn't need to adjust our camera position, and all the verticals remained vertical, just how architects like it. We rendered four 'patches' on the render farm, expanded our canvas in Photoshop, slipped them on top of the original renders and filled in the sky.

Are there any challenges you feel are unique to the Architectural field of 3D?
Architects, like all true artists they hate to have their vision misrepresented, and the greatest challenge we have found so far is in correctly interpreting what they have drawn into what they actually want, which are usually two different things once the 3D model begins to take form. Once the form takes shape architects like to play creatively with the geometry, especially once they see how easily LightWave can manipulate their designs in real-time in front of their eyes. Of course, that causes a problem because once they have seen how fast changes can be made they expect you to go faster next time.

What's next for Symmetrix Design Works?
We are looking at forming some strategic partnerships with some of the bigger studios in Australia that deal with other creative aspects, such as advertising agencies and film production companies. Architecture has been good to us but we are eager to branch out and start doing some more TVC work, maybe even a TV series or independent film.

Do you have any advice for someone new to the 3D industry?
It's not always what you know, but who you know. That might sound corny, but I've found to it be very true. Over in Australia it is hard to get into this profession seriously coming from nowhere. To anyone new, I would recommend making contact with as many people in the industry as you can, and making sure they know what you can do.

We were fortunate. We came from working within an architect's office which exposed us and our abilities to all their clients. Many of those clients have also become ours. Not only that, but the other people who worked in the same office and subsequently left, we keep in touch with, and they have also become clients in many cases.

I'd also recommend joining 3D forums and newsgroups so you can see what phenomenal talent is out there and that will hopefully inspire you to push your capabilities. Also, the LW community tends to be very helpful which is great if you are stuck trying to produce a certain effect or find a particular technique.

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

For more info about Symmetrix Design Works, visit their website: www.symmetrix.com.au