Ziv Qual, a well-experienced 3D artist, has gained recognition with his project "Undead King Slayer," landing in the Top 100 of pwnisher’s Kinetic Rush Challenge. In this interview with Fox Renderfarm, a leading cloud rendering services provider and render farm in the industry, we chatted with Ziv and explored his artistic journey, the inspirations behind his work, and the intricate details that make his project stand out. Let's dive into the world of Ziv Qual and discover the magic behind his 3D artistry.
Fox Renderfarm: Hi Ziv! We are honored to have you here! Please introduce yourself first to our readers.
© Ziv Qual
Ziv: Hi, thank you for having me! My name is Ziv Qual, I'm 41 years old, and I started working with 3D as a hobby at the age of 15 and immediately fell in love with it. Before long, I turned it into a profession as well. Even after all these years, I still view it as much a hobby as I do a career.
Fox Renderfarm: Congratulations on making it to the Top 100 of the Kinetic Rush Challenge! Can you tell us about your journey leading up to this achievement? What inspired you to participate in the challenge?
Ziv: In the past, I used to often look for community events and challenges to inspire me to create something new. For those who have been around long enough - you might remember the CGtalk challenges by Ballistic Publishing, I took part in those often and even won one of them and judged on another. But at some point over a decade ago, I took a long break from personal projects. Last year I ran across the pwnisher challenges and got inspired immediately. The chance to take part in such a great event really sparked my interest in returning to community challenges.
Fox Renderfarm: In the context of 'Kinetic Rush,' what particular elements or concepts motivated you to develop your piece? How did you link your idea to the overarching theme?
Ziv: It's funny how the idea evolved over the first few days. Last year I decided to open up an Instagram account (about time huh?) and create "Undeadz!" themed characters. I knew I would want my entry to relate somehow to that realm and this was an opportunity to make a scene that would involve plenty of undead characters, centered around the concept of a knight barely escaping from them.
Undeadz! © Miguel LIeras
Fox Renderfarm: How did your initial concept differ from the final product? What changes did you make during the creation process?
Ziv: I knew I wanted to go for something massive with lots of details and things happening. I explored several concepts, such as the knight rescuing a princess or jumping through a portal, but ultimately it transformed into this idea. In the short 5 seconds of the video, I wanted to tell as much of the story as I could, instead of just having a character running randomly for no reason. I wanted the events to evolve from beginning to end, so I came up with the notion that he isn’t simply being chased by random characters; the character at the start is the king of the undead, and the knight has his head as a trophy. In the first half, we see the undead realm but as we progress we see the outer realm with knights who seem to be fighting many other undeads, cheering him on as he slayer the main enemy.
Breakdown Video:
Fox Renderfarm: Did you draw inspiration from any specific artists, genres, or styles when creating this project? How did they influence your work?
Ziv: I love what I do and I draw inspiration from many things, but if I have to point out one main thing that always influenced the way I approach my art it would have to be Blizzard, at least the Blizzard of 2 decades ago that first brought Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo to life, and although I loved and was inspired by their games, what influenced me the most was their cinematic creations that accompanied their games. Those were always cutting edge for their time in terms of extreme level of detail and perfection in every aspect. I have since always tried to adopt their approach, aspiring to create a compelling level of detail in my creations.
World of Warcraft © Blizzard Entertainment
Fox Renderfarm: You mentioned wanting to include more details. Can you share some specific details that added depth to the project?
Ziv: First, I believe that you would need to watch the short 5-second clip several times just to catch everything that is going on in the scene. Take the undead characters for example, there’s the king at the start, one running behind him, some climbing in the foreground, one almost catching the knight right before he jumps, plenty crawling inside and outside the cave that occupies the background, and some shooting arrows.
Base Environment © Ziv Qual
Characters-The Bad Guys © Ziv Qual
Take the other knight characters for example -in the cave, some are caged in the ceiling or shot dead by arrows near the entrance. On the outside, some are protecting the entrance with bows while others are cheering for the main character (and if you look closely you’ll spot one entering another part of the cave with a torch and some undeads creep above him).
Characters-The Good Guys © Ziv Qual
In the cave, there are plenty of different elements that contribute to its depth, but what truly accentuates this depth are the numerous torches scattered throughout, providing lots of small "local lighting" areas.
Scene Elements © Ziv Qual
Fox Renderfarm: What challenges did you face while working on this project, and how did you overcome them?
Ziv: I don’t think I ever had a large project that went smoothly without challenges. On the technical side, there was one obvious challenge I knew I’d face but still became a big issue at some point. This was managing resources to ensure smooth workflow in a heavy scene and prevent frequent freezing during actions, as well as avoiding rendering crashes.
In a scene of such expansive scale and intricate detail, this was on my mind from the start in terms of keeping the general polycount not too crazy high and cloning with INSTANCE wherever I can. Also, use 1k textures instead of 2k, 4k, or 8k for objects that are far from the camera. One thing that I did not expect did become a big issue at one point - the characters. I don't think I ever made a single scene with so many animated characters in it.
I soon came to realize that each character I cloned with a full rig added around 50 to 100 MB to the file. Considering the number of characters I wanted this was not an option so I quickly turned to creating collapsed versions of some characters (which means the whole character is in 1 mesh) and applying point cache modifiers to them. I had several versions of each animation in the point cache file. This helped a lot but was still heavy, so in many cases, I really had to calculate the exact frames where some animations would stop being visible to the camera, and then reduce the rest of the animation from the point cache files to make them smaller.
Fox Renderfarm: Did you receive any feedback during the creation process? If so, how did it influence your final submission?
Ziv: Yes, of course. I think what makes these challenges fun is that you get to interact with other people who are enthusiastic about this craft. I think the main feedback that helped me was to be more certain about what was working and what wasn't in terms of story. I also got some good tips on the lighting and how to make sure the character would stand out and not get swallowed in all the details.
Fox Renderfarm: Have you tried or heard about Fox Renderfarm’s services before? What is your impression of our cloud rendering services?
Ziv: I did not have a chance to try it out yet. I try to always be calculated about my rendering times to make sure everything will finish in decent quality and on time but sometimes unexpected things can happen, and then I will be sure to keep Fox’s render farm services in mind as a useful backup.
Fox Renderfarm: How has participating in the Kinetic Rush Challenge contributed to your growth as a 3D artist?
Ziv: I’ve been doing 3D for over 2 decades and I can still say I learn and evolve from every project. I enjoyed this challenge and I am looking forward to the next one. With the skills gained from past experiences, especially in crucial areas such as story planning and resource management, I believe I am better equipped to approach future projects.
Ziv’s Social Media:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zivcg/
- LinkedIn：https://www.linkedin.com/in/ziv-qual-7538aa19/
- YouTube：https://www.youtube.com/@Zivcg
