Dapeng Sun is a 3D environment artist with 15 years of experience and is involved in the production of many Hollywood blockbuster movies. In the Road to Infinity 3D challenge announced by Bad Normals, Dapeng won the 2nd place award with his stunning work "Landing". Congratulations To Dapeng! Fox Renderfarm as the industry's top cloud rendering services provider and render farm, was honored to sponsor this contest and interview Dapeng. Let’s take a look at Dapeng’s story in the CG industry and the creation process behind his work "Landing".
Dapeng Sun
3D Environment Artist
Former BaseFX Environment Manager, Former Pixomondo Environment Manager
Currently working as a 3D environment artist at Tencent IEG Interactive Entertainment Business Group/ Content Ecosystem Group/Content Production Center
Participated in the production of many film and television projects such as "Pacific Rim 1", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1", "Monster Hunt 1", "Transformers: Age of Extinction", "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", "Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe", "Captain America: The Winter Soldier", "The Great Wall", "Star Trek Beyond", "Monster Hunt 2", "Captain America: Civil War", "Aquaman", "The Cloverfield Paradox", "Hidden Man", "The Battle at Lake Changjin", "Creation of The Gods I: Kingdom of Storms", and more.
Fox Renderfarm: Thank you very much for accepting our interview, can you share with us how you joined the industry and your work experience?
Dapeng: I encountered the 2008 financial crisis during my year of graduation, and there was a TV special effects job offered to me that had a dormitory, which is how I joined the industry.
Fox Renderfarm: Can you share some of the projects you have worked on as well as any unforgettable experiences?
Dapeng: The most meaningful project for me personally is to be involved in the production of Hollywood blockbuster projects such as "Transformers: Age of Extinction", "Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens", and "Captain America 2 & 3", which fulfilled my childhood wish and I also learned about the power of the industry’s top streams.
Projects Dapeng has participated in © Douban
The most important projects that I have done are "Monster Hunt I and II," which helped test and establish a comprehensive 3D environment production process, and "Creation of The Gods I," which enabled us to develop a new workflow focused on environment production."
Projects Dapeng has participated in © Douban
Now I'm working at an internet company, and I'm involved in building the Unreal environment assets library. I think the CG industry is bound to become more segmented and specialized. I hope what we are doing now can provide a little help for future practitioners!
Fox Renderfarm: You won 2nd place in the Road to Infinity 3D Challenge this year, how do you feel about it?
Dapeng: It's my first time participating in this kind of competition, it's quite a surprise. I feel very lucky especially when I see so many talented works, I feel very honored to participate under the same creative theme with so many artists! Seeing the clips of the works, I admire so many of them. I think the reason why I say it was a fluke to win is mostly due to having many years of experience in production.
Top 100 Montage:
Fox Renderfarm: Why did you decide to participate in this 3D contest? Please tell us about the inspiration and production process of the winning work.
Dapeng: I happened to scroll to the contest's launch video on Fox Renderfarm. I've seen a lot of these contest videos before, but this time the theme was environment-based, which happens to be the area I usually work in. I felt that the theme would present scenes well, so I decided to participate. After seeing the theme, the first thing I thought was to utilize the existing assets and construct several themes. The final proposal was a traditional Chinese immortal hero fantasy scene, fused with some realistic elements. Generally orthodox cultivation palaces are built in the clouds, and the most common mode of transportation for cultivators is to fly with a sword, and these cultivators should have the same rules as us in the real world when they fly with their swords. This project used the Unreal process, taking a total of one month of spare production time.
Scene VFX © Dapeng Sun
Fox Renderfarm: Can you tell us about the image of the character flying with a sword? What references were made for its production?
Dapeng: The name of this animation is "Landing", and the character is designed to land in a state similar to that of an airplane. A cultivator back from an outing, soaring back to his mountain while flying with a sword.
Landing © Dapeng Sun
As someone who flies around in the sky, even if he is very good at it, he can't compete with his "driving skills" every time he goes out, right? So they should have similar flight rules as we do. The theme of Road to Infinity served as the runway for his landing. To highlight the theme of landing, a runway commander assists in guiding the descent. I specifically researched the landing procedures used at real airports for this purpose.
Fox Renderfarm: The whole scene is very exquisite. What is the origin of the big stone statue at the entrance?
Dapeng: The reason why these scene assets look very sophisticated is because they are real scanned assets! One of the major advantages I have is my self-developed asset library. Here I want to briefly introduce what I'm doing - in order to improve work efficiency, we're organizing environment-related assets into libraries, to categorize a large number of high-value assets so that they can quickly meet the production needs of CG projects. This is very different from the normal CG production process since we are making the results in advance without the target requirements. It is very troublesome and requires a lot more things to consider compared to normal project production. To enrich different types of assets, we also need to specifically design different production processes for them. Although this work is very exhausting, the performance of this production proved that the efforts were worthwhile! For example, if we wanted to produce a delicate and realistic cultivation mountain gate this time, it was very easy to present enough texture by just finding a few suitable scanned assets from the asset library.
Assets © Dapeng Sun
Of course, people use a lot of existing asset libraries in the market, such as Megascans, Kitbash3D, and PBRMAX, and we will reference their contents, but we still hope to make more diversified content that can be adapted to a wider range of libraries. If possible, we hope that in the future, this library can provide a little help to more CG enthusiasts!
Fox Renderfarm: Did you encounter any difficulties in the process of creating your work? How did you solve them?
Dapeng: My specialty is scene production, and I'm not very good with animation. I actually just switched to Unreal last year, so the animation part took a long time because I was basically watching tutorials while creating. Here I have to mention the importance of process in production. If it weren’t for the accumulation of previous processes, I wouldn't have been able to deliver the final project in time, not to mention the quality of it.
Fox Renderfarm: How do you improve professional skills in your spare time?
Dapeng: To quote a famous Bilibili influencer, "There is no future for the proletariat if they are not tough on themselves." I believe that the so called self-motivation after work is actually to keep learning. My experience is that the tutorials on Bilibili are extensive and comprehensive, making it a near-perfect platform for self-learning. However if you encounter a technical problem, it's easier to find ideas on YouTube videos. This year I also tried to participate in some CG competitions to keep my professional acumen.
Fox Renderfarm: You have been Fox Renderfarm's customer for a long time, what do you think about our cloud rendering service?
Dapeng: I believe that the CG industry must be industrialized, for 99% of the ordinary practitioners to do better. With Fox Renderfarm as the industry's most professional render farm platform, its existence represents the development of the CG industry. I believe that the joint efforts in this industry are for the benefit of everyone, so that we can create a better working environment together!
Fox Renderfarm: At the end of the interview, let's say something to our CG enthusiasts.
Dapeng: I've had the honor of working with 1% of the geniuses in the world in my work, but as 99% of ordinary people with no talent, we can also make enough wonderful works with the help of a bigger system. Of course, if ordinary people engage in this work, they won't lose their hair, but they will have a stomach ache... so please take care of your stomach, haha.
