PDF Print E-mail
THE ARTIST BETWEEN THE RAYS: Miguel A Santiago Jr

MYMR: Hello Miguel Thank you for taking the time out your busy schedule to talk to us.

Miguel: It's a pleasure to be interviewed by My Mental Ray . By the way, thank you for such a great site! Glad to have a place where the mental ray community can collectively gather into a whole

MYMR: Tell us how and why you got started in the cg industry and what kind Of training do you have?

Miguel: As far back as I can remember all I ever did was draw. Since early childhood I've been fascinated by various types of art. Eventually mimicking the cartoons and comics I used to look at, I taught myself how to draw. For the longest time all I dreamt of doing was being a 2d artist. Whether I was going to be as an animator, comic book artist, or cartoonist that's were my goals were set. As I got older the thought of doing that for the rest of my life just seemed very boring. Don't get me wrong I have enormous respect for all the great artist out there. I just couldn't see myself doing it as a career. I still love to draw but only for myself. One of the huge factors that began to change me was cg. I feel very fortunate growing up in a time period where everything was relatively new. I still remember all the great 80's cartoons like: G.I. Joe, He-Man, Voltron, Snorks, Smurfs, Heathcliff, Transformers, and Ghostbusters to name a few.

While slowly being introduced to cg with such films of the early day like Tron, The Last Starfighter, Willow , and Abyss; I just remember watching films like these during my early years and simply being mesmerized. It wasn't until my later high school years when I became fully aware of cg. During this period I would spend as much time as possible in the art room computer graphics lab. I also encountered a hand me down old 386 Pc running at 33 MHz. This was the most horrible computer anyone had ever laid eyes on, but it was the first true place I began to learn and do cg. I would go to the library and download as much information on cg along with all kinds of freeware programs to try. Eventually I stumbled along a few free programs that I used regularly to learn. Moray was the main 3d package I was using then. I would build simple objects to experiment and learn. A render on the 386 would literally take a day or so to complete. As bad as the 386 was, I am still thankful I had a chance to be that primitive. I learned an enormous amount with that machine. I learned how to build a computer from the ground up, thanks to it. Eventually I got a much better computer as a graduation gift. In 2001 I finally decided that this was going to be my career. What opened my eyes, I would have to say is the movie Final Fantasy The Spirits Within . It just blew me away with what could be possible in cg. Still to this day I sit down and watch it in amazement. The story did not have a great plot, but from a technical artistic standpoint they did an amazing job. During this time, I decided to go to Full Sail Real World Education in Orlando , Florida . I probably could have just kept studying on my own, but I would have never gotten the real experience that Full Sail gave me. Their program was very intense and at an accelerated rate. Everything was as close to a real production environment as possible. When I began my first job in cg I felt like I never left school. All my friends out in the industry agree that it feels like school and not work. This was what I was looking to attain in my choice on going to Full Sail. I got a chance to meet and study along side some of the greatest people with the same passion as me, while getting my hands dirty in the most sophisticated software and hardware at the time.

MYMR: When you are not cooking some Cg what do you do in your spare time?

Miguel: Basically anything that gets me away from the computer. I find doing photography keeps me from being frustrated with my computer some days. As a matter of fact it's just enjoyable to go outside and get some fresh air and do something adventurous. As Cg artists we get so wrapped up in the virtual world we tend to forget about the real world. A huge added benefit of going outside is getting a chance to study the environment. This is a big reason I enjoy when summer rolls around. It gives me a valid excuse to go to the swimming pool and study the way light refracts inside the pool.

MYMR: You have contributed a lot to the mental ray community, where does the desire to code free materials come from?

Miguel: I've always been and still am an active user of free tools. So it only feels right to return the favor, since I have become productive enough to offer something back to the community. Plus the ladies love it when they know you code free materials for mental ray!




MYMR: Can you explain a little about the process of building a custom material like DT3D Skin?

Miguel: First and foremost I will gather as much information on the material I plan on doing. This will range from research papers that explain on how to implement a specific material that will contribute to my custom material. I will gather reference images on the material with as many lighting conditions as possible to understand how the light reacts with the material. I'll even search all over the net as well and find as many different implantations on the same kind of material I'm working on, including any research that has been done on the topic to contribute to my own. After every resource that I could possibly dig into is extinguished, I begin the research and development phase. I keep a yellow notepad nearby and jot down anything and everything that comes to mind: details on how to implement, ideas, bugs, and ect. I take all the information I gathered and go through and sort and brain storm ideas on how I can implement the material. This method enables me to continually scratch out ideas or rework them, and it relieves my mind from having to remember so much. Over time I've even started to use the windows notepad application and just type up notes as I'm developing the material. Now when I've developed different approaches to implementing the material I will begin to start developing and coding the material. This for me is the exciting part of the process; it's when you get to put your different ideas and approaches to the test. Once I go through and figure out what will and what will not work, I continually go back to my notes and keep brainstorming. Usually I do the best brainstorming once I'm deep into developing the material. I found that building your material into a solid structure that is broken into different sections will ease the process. This will also allow you to quickly change or add sections in the coding to develop the material. One thing to note is that once I begin to code I'm always visually checking and testing the material in the shading program. This process goes side by side.








MYMR: Your Materials have become a must have for mental ray materials, does this drive you to write more materials.

Miguel: I wouldn't say it drives me to write more materials, but it does drive me to maintain the longevity of the collection. I find a lot of very great tools are made and then just abandoned simply because the creator didn't want to take the time to maintain their tool. I have been maintaining my collection, and it is not an easy task. As long as there is a demand I'll do my best to keep them alive.

MYMR: Where do you go to get information about shader writing?

Miguel: I tend to branch into different areas to find information about writing shaders. Usually all major 3d packages come with a development kit and examples so you can begin to produce plug-ins for that specific software. In the beginning I spent a lot of time looking at the factory examples that came with the software. I would break down and examine the examples. I found it to be a valuable learning experience. Once you learn how to write a shader you can write a shader for any software. You can still get valuable information for writing shaders, not only with mental ray but also from renderman and maya. Especially now with real-time shaders becoming huge there is a massive collection of free information on writing shaders.

MYMR: Do you have anything for the future any more additions to your collection?

Miguel: At the moment the biggest plan I have is to release an advance version of my skin shader. This version has a true diffusion term as described in "A Rapid Hierarchical Rendering Technique for Translucent Materials" by Henrik Wann Jensen. So hopefully I'll get that release out soon. As for adding any new shaders, I'd say there are no plans for it right now.

MYMR: What is the process to get you inspired to build your custom materials?

Miguel: I tend to build custom materials out of necessity. When I'm working on my characters and I come to a point I feel my tools aren't giving me the results that is when I will start looking into building my custom material. In fact every material I have ever programmed has been out of necessity to have better tools.

MYMR: What are your problem solving methods?

Miguel: I have found in my experience solving by the process of elimination works best for me. I jot down areas where I think the problem is coming from, and then I go down the list one by one until I pinpoint the error. This has worked well with just about any problem I've had. When I come to a dead end with the problem that is when I will start searching the internet for answers. Usually someone else has had the same problem and you can exchange notes on the issue and solve it.

MYMR: We all know you're very active, knowledgeable and helpful in the entire forum, where does the drive to teach come from?

Miguel: It's more of a personal thing than a drive. Sometimes people climb up to the top of the hill and forget how they got there! I never want to be that guy who thinks he is above everyone or to busy. We all have to start somewhere so if I can help anyone along the way I'll gladly do my best. After all treat other's the way you'd like to be treated or so the saying goes.

MYMR: What do you think is the future of MR and lighting in general?

Miguel: I would say that the future has been happening now with all the amazing technologies that have come out in the past few years. Things like global illumination, caustics, Hdri, final gather, and subsurface scattering being very production friendly. I would say for a while things have started to lean toward physical accuracy. It seems ideas like metropolis light transport (where light paths are being statistically calculated to more accurately model the way the light acts in the real world) is becoming more mainstream. This became very apparent with a renderer like Maxwell. I'm sure with computers becoming extremely powerful more physically accurate algorithms will be incorporated in the near future.

 


MYMR: What would you say to people that want to get into high-end rendering? Where is a good place to start learning to do mr shading?

Miguel: Take your time learning your basics and work your way up. I find people tend to get ahead of themselves pretty easily. I get emails from people asking how to do advance skin rendering, yet they have no idea how to install the custom shader or even how to apply it on the object. All I'm saying is learn how to walk before you try to run. Learn at a rate that suits you with information you can take in and understand. Overloading yourself with to much information you don't understand is a quick way to become frustrated. I would also suggest delving into the technical side and learn the general concepts behind the rendering algorithms. I don't mean you have to know how to program your very own renderer, but it sure won't hurt to understand what is going on under the hood, especially when you have to debug your renders for errors. A good place to start learning mr shading is right here on my mental ray. Seriously go to the mental ray tutorials section and knock you're self out. It has everything you could ask for from basics, to more advance topics like: final gather, global illumination, optimization techniques. If you want more just press that magical number F1. It's safe to say that software packages now days come well documented.

MYMR: Can we close with some tips and tricks that will help us to achieve the type of quality of your work?

Miguel: No matter what you are doing you cannot stress enough how important it is to collect reference on the subject matter your working on. In my mind the work out there that stands out for me are the ones that go that extra mile. The small details are what make the big details shine! I'm not just referencing this to art but everything we do in life and in general. An important trait is to refine our ability to see things in the world as they truly are. I'd be the first to admit to this but as artists we tend to recreate what we think we see, not what we actually see. This is especially true in the beginning for most of us. I would agree there are people that are just born with natural talent for certain things in life, but no matter how much natural talent or no talent a person has it will never mean anything if they don't work very hard for it. In my opinion after everything is said and done it boils down to how bad you really want it!

MYMR: Miguel thank you for your time. We really appreciate it! Where can people go to know more about you and your work?

Miguel: Again it is my pleasure! You can go to these sites: DigiTeck3D - Linkedin – Myspace Also I can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it '; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text74509 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //--> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for any questions. Thank you for taking the time to read this!